Priests – Priests (Priests tend to be found at Catholic colleges.)

Nuns – Nuns (Nuns are often found in proximity to priests.)

The two columns continued in this baffling vein – similarities conceded, but always with a duh-obvious rationalization. There was a handwritten note at the bottom, in a rather fussy hand:

This document was one of the key pieces of evidence presented in Zervitz v. Hollywood Pictures, where a judgment of a million dollars was awarded to the plaintiff. I am working on my own list but have been advised that I need the letter about which we spoke to proceed. Yours, Wilbur R. “Bob” Grace.

Tess examined the base of the Emmy. Perhaps the band had popped off with such ease because it had been removed recently and not replaced as it should be. What had Ben said about Greer? She loves to buff Flip’s Emmy. She just took it to a local jeweler to have it all shined up.

“You’re getting fingerprints on it,” Lloyd said frantically. “We need to fold it up and put it back the way it was, and I gotta get to the office before everyone else tomorrow, even Lottie.”

“I don’t think so,” Tess said. “In fact, I think you’ve done a good thing, finding this.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Possibly the MacMuffin.”

“MacGuffin,” Lloyd said.

TUESDAY

Chapter 32

While Tess often lamented the colliding spheres that had made her sometimes rowing coach and erstwhile employer into her uncle, there were advantages to having Tyner Gray in the family. After all, few other lawyers would manage to get the details on Zervitz v. Hollywood Pictures while she was on the water, her first rowing session since she collided with Hollywood a mere eight days ago. And fewer still would then meet at the boathouse to brief her – and not charge her a dime for any of it.

“You could have found most of what you needed to know from the Beacon-Light archives,” Tyner scolded her. It was his style to be perpetually disappointed in her, but Tess had come to realize it was how he expressed affection. “But I hunted down the judge and got an overview.”

“And?” Tess asked, hosing down her shell, taking care to avoid Tyner. She wouldn’t have minded splashing him, but the water was hell on his wheelchair.

“There was this Kevin Bacon movie, The Air Up There, about a basketball coach who goes to Africa to recruit players. Think what’s-his-name.”

“Manute Bol.” Tess had seen the impossibly tall, impossibly thin Sudanese native play for the Washington team years ago, so long ago it was still known as the Bullets. “Was that movie even successful?”

“A movie doesn’t have to be successful to be plagiarized. Zervitz, a local man, said he gave Barry Levinson’s assistant a two-page treatment for a college basketball film. Later, Levinson’s literary agent happened to be one of the producers on The Air Up There, along with her husband. They never proved that anyone saw Zervitz’s treatment, other than Levinson’s assistant, who swore she didn’t pass it along. The credited writer even produced notebooks that purportedly showed he started working on the idea before any of this happened. But a local jury awarded the guy a million bucks, and the Hollywood Pictures people decided not to appeal it.”

“So they did steal it,” Tess said.

“Don’t be unsophisticated, Tess. No one will ever know exactly what happened to that two-page treatment, and the defendants may have decided it was cheaper, in the end, to pay the guy off. The plaintiff had expert witnesses saying it was too similar, it had to be stolen. But there also is a school of thought that writers, working independently, can produce strikingly similar stories, especially if they’re working in a conventional vein.”

“‘Nuns are often found in proximity to priests,’” Tess said, quoting from the document she had found last night.

“Yes, the list you saw was part of the defense, taken from the case file, a side-by-side comparison of the two projects.”

Tess was now in sync with Tyner, her mind speeding along a parallel track. “Wilbur R. Grace showed the list to someone – presumably Greer – because he thought he had a similar claim against Mann of Steel. But he mentioned a letter that he had to have as well. Greer had the letter that Grace wanted, but instead of giving it to him, she used it to leverage her position in the production. This is what Ben has been looking for, but who else? Who else wants that letter, now that Grace is dead? And where is it?”

“Maybe Greer was playing more than one person. Aren’t there a lot of people who would be upset to see Mann of Steel undone by a legal claim?”

Tess thought about that. Flip and Ben would be devastated, of course. They believed this was their chance to have a commercial success. Lottie, too, would be disappointed. The local crews wanted the show as well, in hopes that it would provide steady work.

And then there was one person who would be thrilled to see it all fall apart – Selene. But Selene didn’t have the power to give Greer anything she wanted.

“Thanks, unc,” she said, raising her shell over her head, preparatory to putting it away. She used the nickname because she knew he found it doubly infuriating. Tyner didn’t want to be called uncle, and he found “unc” loathsome. “You’re a gem.”

“I can’t believe that you think that was even an adequate washing,” he said. “You know better than that, Tess. Why bother to hose it off at all if you’re not going to do the job right?”

“Love you!” she called out from under the shell. One half-assed wash job wouldn’t destroy her scull, and she was keen to talk to Ben, find out what he knew about Wilbur R. Grace.

Ben wasn’t at the office when Tess arrived at nine, but almost everyone else was – including several Baltimore detectives. Tess, who had told Lloyd to let her keep the Emmy for now, worried that its absence had already been noted, prompting Lottie or Flip to report a burglary to the police. Tess should have remembered how jumpy everyone was about any breach of security at the production office.

“Is this about Flip’s Emmy?” she asked. “Because I have it, but there’s a reason-”

“Flip’s Emmy?” Lottie asked blankly. “No – God, no. I wish, it’s just-” And with that, tough little Lottie broke down and began to cry, while Flip tried to comfort her, although Flip’s idea of comforting someone seemed to consist of soft punches to the shoulder.

“Johnny Tampa,” Lloyd said. “He was kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Grabbed right out in front of his condo this morning,” Flip said. “His driver saw the whole thing as he was arriving. Two guys came out of nowhere, dragged him into a car.”

“Has there been a ransom demand?”

Flip shook his head. “Not yet.”

“And Selene?”

“Safe and sound. Thanks to your detail, no one can get close to her. We told her to stay in the condo until we hear something. We’ve had to suspend shooting, of course. When the West Coast wakes up, they’re going to ream me about this.”

Tess turned to the nearest detective. “How are you handling this? Do you have to call the feds in because it’s a kidnapping?”

“We’re keeping them out of it for now. This happened only an hour ago, and there’s been no communication. It seems that Tampa went to a bar last night and flirted with a local, pissed off her husband. This could be related. But that makes it more of a mobile beat-down than a kidnapping.”

This didn’t sound like the Johnny Tampa whom Tess had observed over the past week. Lottie, too, looked surprised, but Flip was nodding.

“I was there. He invited me out last night, after we finished, and I thought I should go, in the interest of, you know, male bonding. We went to this place in Fells Point, near where he lives, and he was chatting up a woman in there, and it clearly bugged the guy she was with.”