The Mystery Megapack

intending to shanghai as many authors as possible into reading her Werewolf Hunter novel and then forward it to their agents and editors. It wasn’t an unusual situation, and Shannon should have been able to handle it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. It was Andi, who was stationed in the dealers’ room, who heard the commotion and buzzed me.
    By the time I got there, the aspiring writer and Marilynn Byerly, well-known author of Werewolf Hunter novelizations, were having a shouting match in the middle of the room, lobbing phrases like “incompetent amateur” and “sleazy hack” at one another. Plus the signing lines were in disarray, with people pushing and shoving their way to the front. I yelled, “Linus in the signing room!” into my walkie-talkie—that was the code word that meant that all available redshirts should blanket the room with security.
    Needless to say, Shannon showed up late, after the rest of us had things back in order. Wanda Wannabe had been sent off with a warning that she’d be ejected from the convention if she approached any more authors with her manuscript, and Ms. Byerly had been soothed with a Coke and the promise of a good seat at Bane’s talk. As for the lines, Pinky had people queued up like Catholic schoolchildren, and I’d been both too busy and too embarrassed to see how he’d managed it.
    Shannon didn’t even have the good grace to look winded. “What’s up?” she said.
    “Where the hell were you?”
    “I had to go to the bathroom. I was only gone a minute.”
    “Then how come I’ve been here for ten minutes, and the people here said there was nobody here when the session started twenty minutes ago? Why didn’t you tell somebody you were going to the bathroom? That’s what your walkie-talkie is for. And why didn’t you come when I called the Linus?”
    “I left my walkie-talkie in here.”
    I was furious. Not only had she been away from her post and out of contact, but she’d left an expensive, rented walkie-talkie unattended. If I’d had anybody to replace her with, I’d have fired her, but the convention was too far along to scrape up another volunteer. “Then since you’ve had your break, I don’t want you to leave this room again until one.”
    “What about the panels?”
    “I’ll take care of them.”
    “What about Bane’s talk? I want to work that.”
    I just glared at her, then turned to see Pinky shaking his head in disgust. I wasn’t sure if it was at Shannon, me, or both of us.
    The next disaster was right before Bane’s talk. It was scheduled for after lunch, which meant that most of the fans were skipping lunch so they could line up for good seats. While they waited under the watchful eyes of most of the redshirts, Bane was enjoying a private lunch with a few privileged members of the convention staff. Naturally, the invitation list for that lunch had caused more dissension than almost anything else during convention planning. I’d stayed out of it. Just being in the same room as Bane got me flustered—I could only imagine what would have happened if I’d tried to eat in front of him.
    Through my careful planning, Elliot and I both had the lunch hour free, and were headed for the hotel restaurant when we saw Pinky being confronted outside the door where the VIP lunch was being held.
    “Should we give him a hand?” Elliot asked.
    “He hasn’t called for backup,” I said.
    “I know, but that’s the woman Bane took to bed last night.”
    The woman in question was blonde, buxom, and swearing like a sailor. Since she’d been Bane’s Friday night conquest, I mentally tagged her Girl Friday.
    Elliot and I joined them, and I asked, “Anything wrong?”
    “Nothing I can’t handle,” Pinky replied, keeping his security guard face firmly in place.
    The woman appealed to me. “I’m supposed to go in there to meet Bane for lunch, but this fascist won’t let me in.”
    “It’s by invitation only,” Pinky said, “and she’s not on the list.”
    “Bane didn’t know me when the list was made,” the woman argued, “but when I asked him to meet me for lunch today, he said I could come if I wanted to.” Presumably realizing that wasn’t the most enthusiastic invitation, she bolstered her authority with, “It was early this morning—when we got up—so he probably forgot to add my name.”
    More likely he didn’t remember her name, I thought to myself. “Pinky, have you checked with Bane?”
    He