Impatiently, Lindsay drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair she was reluctantly occupying at Monarch Press. Seeing her scowl, Lauren leaned forward across the reception desk and said confidentially, “She won’t be long now. The editorial meeting never lasts past eleven. Danny’s always got too much on to waste time letting them rabbit. He only allows the editors five minutes max to pitch any of their titles.”

Lindsay pursed her lips and glared at her watch again, as if that would make the time pass more quickly. She couldn’t even use the minutes constructively to see if Lauren’s brain contained anything else worth picking since the reception area was never empty for more than a minute at a time. The longer she had to wait, the more her conviction of Baz’s guilt grew. No matter that the meeting Baz was in was a routine weekly session, Lindsay couldn’t prevent herself feeling Baz had made herself deliberately unavailable to spite her. Illogical and paranoid, she knew, but the feeling still wouldn’t depart. She flipped open the front pocket of her backpack again and checked that her microcassette recorder was in voice-activated mode. She wasn’t taking the risk that Baz would confess something she’d later try to deny.

Finally, as the minute hand crawled towards the hour, a young woman appeared, looking harassed. “You’re waiting to see Baz, right?” she greeted Lindsay. Without waiting for an answer, she gestured impatiently to the door. Lindsay got to her feet and forced herself to follow the woman through the editorial floor at a measured pace rather than the trot that would have matched her mood.

Baz was sitting behind her desk shuffling papers when Lindsay walked in. She glanced up. “Hi. Siddown, yeah?” she said as she finished reading the top sheet and scribbled what might have been a signature across the bottom of it. Then she looked up, her face still a painful scarlet from too much sun. “I’ve spoken to Meredith,” she said bluntly.

“Good. That’s one less awkward conversation for us to have,” Lindsay said, her voice the only chilly thing in the partitioned space.

“So what brings you back here?”

“Your boss asked if I could track down a copy of Heart of Glass,” Lindsay said, avoiding the guest’s chair and perching on the edge of a credenza stacked with manuscripts that ran along one wall, forcing Baz to turn awkwardly in her chair to maintain eye contact.

“You’ve managed to find it?” Baz asked cautiously. “Where was it?”

“Penny always deposited a set of back-up disks with friends for safekeeping. It wasn’t hard to find out where they were and to get a copy. You don’t seem as excited as I expected.” Lindsay crossed her legs at the ankles and leaned back on her arms.