Double Booked for Death

by Ali Brandon

  By now, Jake had joined Reese there on the corner. Darla watched the distant pantomime as the pair seemed to confer for a moment, Reese gesturing in the girl’s direction. Then, shaking off the restraining hand that Jake had put on his arm, he plunged into the stream of cross traffic.

  “No!” Darla gasped and shut her eyes, certain a repeat of last night’s deadly accident was imminent. Sure enough, horns blatted, and more than one set of brakes squealed. When a few more seconds passed and she didn’t hear the impact of steel against human flesh, however, she assumed he must have made it across the street safely.

  She sighed and opened her eyes again, only to find herself nose to nose with the same policeman who’d just given her a parking ticket.

  “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, lady. I told you if you didn’t move your friend’s car, I was gonna slap a boot on it and call a tow truck. Well, you didn’t, so I am.”

  “Wait!” she told him, urgently pointing down the street. “Here he comes . . . and he has the suspect.”

  For the Lone Protester, looking tiny and defeated, was indeed walking between Reese and Jake. Leaving her to stand alongside the Mercedes, Officer Hallonquist—she’d finally gotten a good look at the name pinned to his uniform—hurried to join them.

  The four halted a short distance from her. She saw Jake speak to Reese for a few moments before breaking away to head back in Darla’s direction. The two men remained where they were, the girl between them as they conferred. A moment later, they hustled the girl into Hallonquist’s patrol car, which was double-parked a few cars from Darla, and then climbed in after her. The car took off down the street, presumably headed to the nearest precinct.

  Jake, meanwhile, had made it back to the Mercedes. She grinned and thrust a fist at Darla for the obligatory bump.

  “Good work, Nancy,” she exclaimed as their knuckles collided. “You were right about your Lone Protester, whose name is Janie, by the way. She admitted right off that she was the one holding up the anti-Valerie signs. Of course, she denied shoving her into the street to be squashed like a bug, but she agreed to go in for questioning. We’ll let Reese worry about getting a confession out of her.”

  Rather than joining Jake’s moment of triumph, however, Darla felt herself gripped by a nagging sense of guilt. Anyone who’d had a hand in killing someone else deserved prison time, at the very least; still, the girl looked awfully young to go to jail for the next twenty-odd years. And something about her defeated air seemed unlike the attitude one would expect of a brazen murderer. Could the girl’s claim of innocence be legitimate?

  Jake seemed not to notice Darla’s dismay. Instead, after ruefully snagging her abandoned phone from the rear of the Mercedes, she hopped into the front seat, furtively massaging her bad leg while pretending to do an after-workout stretch. “Jeez, I didn’t realize how much I missed the old running-down-a-perp routine,” she exclaimed as Darla slid behind the wheel. Snatching the citation Darla still clutched, she added, “I’ll see that Reese takes care of this. Your friend Officer Hallonquist won’t mind, not after he’s had the chance to help collar a murderer.”

  “Alleged murderer,” Darla sourly corrected as she turned the key. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say until someone is actually convicted?”

  Jake waved away such trivialities, though she gave Darla a keen look. “So what’s got your panties in a twist, kid? I thought you’d be thrilled that Hamlet and you have a knack for detecting.”

  “I am.”

  Darla pulled out into traffic again and turned Maybelle back toward Brooklyn. “What was going on inside the coffee shop?” she asked instead, deciding she needed to wait until she was alone to contemplate the other topic. “Unless it’s a heck of a lot bigger than it looks, you should have been in and out of there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah, the kid behind the counter played us, I think. He claimed your girl had been in the shop but had to leave to find an ATM, and that she’d be back any minute. It sounded kinda fishy to me, but it was all we had, so we decided to wait it out for a while. Good thing you were keeping an eye on things from here.”

  “So much for street smarts,” Darla muttered, recalling how Jake had praised Reese’s innate instincts the day before. Apparently, his intuition had taken a vacation this afternoon. “What happens to Janie now? I guess she’s under arrest?”

  “Not at this point. Like I said, right now she’s going in for questioning. We’ll see what happens after that. And who knows, maybe they won’t find anything to charge her with after all.”

  The remainder of the trip back to the brownstone focused on whether or not Darla would be open for business as usual in the morning. “It wouldn’t be fair for James to lose a day’s pay,” she finally decided. “Besides, if we get the kind of sales tomorrow that I had in just a few hours today, I can’t afford not to be open.”

  “Business is business, kid,” Jake agreed. “And you know that if the situation had been reversed, Valerie Baylor darn sure wouldn’t have taken a day off touring out of respect for you.”

  Darla swung by the brownstone first before heading to the garage, telling Jake she was worried about how things were going at the Valerie shrine. In truth, she was more concerned about her friend. She’d noticed the older woman still massaging her bum leg when she thought Darla wasn’t looking her way. The impromptu sprint outside the coffeehouse hadn’t done her any good, and Darla didn’t want her to walk back from the garage while still in obvious pain.

  She’d halfway expected Jake to protest this special treatment, but she agreed to have Darla drop her off outside the building. As they approached their block, they could see that the shrine had continued to grow exponentially in their short absence. Now only a narrow strip of sidewalk remained for pedestrians to pass by, and the tribute’s length almost reached the antique shop. The shrine had become a gawking hazard for drivers as well, with most of them slowing as to stare in amazement at the profusion of candles and flowers. Pretty soon, the city would have to send some sort of traffic control down to keep things moving . . . that, or assign a front-end loader to clear it all away!

  Darla took advantage of the confusion by pulling right up to the store’s curb. “I’ll be back in a few,” she told Jake.

  She waited until the other woman climbed out, and then pulled back into Monday afternoon traffic. A few minutes later, she had situated Maybelle in her usual spot in the parking garage and was headed back to the brownstone on foot.

  Normally, the walk would have been a pleasant one. The weather was fine, and the handful of crazies who wandered her neighborhood had apparently decided to stay inside for the duration. But Darla couldn’t stop thinking about Valerie Baylor and the Lone Protester—Janie—who might well be responsible for the author’s death.

  More unsettling than that, however, was a selfish concern. Though she had tried at the time to dismiss it, she couldn’t help but worry that Robert and Sunny’s threatened boycott might come to pass. Chances were the teens had several hundred so-called friends each on their respective pages, meaning it wouldn’t be hard for them to drum up a few dozen people to march around just for the fun of it. It was hard work keeping a bookstore afloat these days. Should too many people jump on their emo bandwagon, Pettistone’s Fine Books might meet much the same fate as Valerie.

  Jake was waiting for her on the stoop, seated on the concrete steps leading up to the quaint wood and glass door. She apparently had been talking on her cell, for she snapped her phone shut at Darla’s approach.

  “That was Reese,” she announced. “Seems Janie sang like a canary. Problem is, she only knew one verse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She admits to the whole protest routine, but she said someone paid her to do it. And she swears she wasn’t the one who tossed your author under the bus . . . er, church van. She claims she ditched her sign in the alley and left the scene almost half an hour before the accident, and had no idea what happened until she
saw the news story online.”

  “Did Reese believe her?”

  The older woman shrugged. “He’s hedging his bets, but I think he’s inclined to accept her at her word. All I know for sure is that they didn’t charge her with any crime, so she’s free to do her own thing for the moment.”

  “So who’s the person who hired her?” Darla persisted.

  Jake rose from the steps and gave an elaborate stretch. The routine reminded Darla of Hamlet, minus any legs thrown over any shoulders. Kink-free now, she said, “That’s where it gets interesting. Your girl claims she answered a help-wanted ad for a performance artist on TheEverythingList.”

  TheEverythingList, Darla knew, was a popular Internet want-ad site that listed, well, everything. It was a place where people bought and sold and hired and advertised availability by means of online postings. Darla had used the site herself, or, rather, she’d had Lizzie post some of the store’s old fixtures for sale and found it an easy way to unload unwanted goods.

  “Since she’s a theater major at Tisch,” Jake went on, referring to the well-known school of the arts in New York City proper, “this gig was right up her alley. She got her instructions by email, and only met the person who hired her when it came time to collect her first payment. They hooked up at a fast-food joint.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Darla interrupted with a snort, “the guy she met was in disguise.”

  “Actually, the guy was a woman, but otherwise you’re right. Janie says she was wearing a scarf and dark glasses, so Reese didn’t get much of a description out of her. From what she said, the woman claimed to work for Valerie’s publisher. The whole protest thing was supposed to be a publicity stunt.”

  “But Valerie didn’t need publicity,” Darla pointed out. “Besides, Koji Foster was her publicist, and he certainly didn’t indicate he was in on the joke the night of the signing.”

  Jake nodded. “I think we can pretty well eliminate the possibility that Scarf Lady was legit. The emails were sent from one of those free email accounts, not from the publishing house. And, of course, the payment was all in cash. Janie’s a little ticked, too, because she’s still owed fifty bucks for last night, and the so-called publicist wasn’t at the fast-food place this morning to pay like she said she’d be. Reese said he’d passed on the email address to one of the department’s IT guys to track. But here’s the real kicker—”

  Her words were cut short by a sudden chorus of angry horns as someone slowed a bit too long while passing the Valerie shrine. The driver who’d drawn the ire of his fellows responded with a single-finger salute. Jake shook her head and shouted a few choice Jersey-isms at them all.

  “We’re going to be pulling more bodies off the street if this keeps up. I’m going to call a friend of mine in Traffic and see what they can do. So, where was I?”

  “The real kicker,” Darla helpfully supplied.

  Jake hesitated, and then went on, “According to Reese, Janie claims that Scarf Lady spoke with a southern accent.”

  Something in her tone made Darla hesitate as well. Then understanding dawned, and she gasped. “Don’t tell me that Reese thinks I’m Scarf Lady?”

  “Well, he did kinda float that theory for about five seconds, until I told him he was being an idiot,” Jake admitted.

  At Darla’s yelp of disbelief, she grinned a little before continuing. “Of course, if you think about it, it’s not that far-fetched. I mean, drumming up a publicity stunt like that in advance of the signing could get people talking, which equals you selling more books. Besides, the first rule of police work is that everyone’s a suspect until they’re not. But I told him how upset you were over the whole protest thing, and that I was pretty sure you weren’t the second coming of Meryl Streep who could fool me. I think I convinced him, but heads up in case he wants to put you in a photo lineup.”

  “Great,” Darla muttered. Then the obvious thought hit her. “What about Marnie? Talk about a prime suspect. Southern accent, hated Valerie Baylor, ran her over with her van,” she persisted, ticking off the points on her fingers.

  Jake shrugged. “True, but Janie’s first meeting with the Scarf Lady was a week before the autographing. Even if Marnie had someone else mail that letter for her to throw us off with the postmark, she drove up here with a carful of other people. The timeline’s off. Nope, we gotta keep looking.” She glanced at her watch and added, “Reese is going to drop by my place with pizza and an update around six. You’re welcome to join us if you want, listen to his theories, protest your innocence and all.”

  “Sure, why not? Nothing better than spending an evening dodging suspicion with your friends.”

  So saying, she stood and spared a final look at the most recent worshippers gathered at the spontaneous Church of Valerie. Jake could have them and the traffic snarl. Darla was going to grab some quiet downtime in the peaceful confines of her third-story apartment.

  Peace, however, was not quite what she found when she unlocked her front door.

  FOURTEEN

  “HAMLET!”

  Darla stared in dismay at the havoc that had been wrought in her short absence from the apartment. To be fair, the chaos was limited to one corner of her living room, right in front of the ceiling-height bookcase along the wall. Still, it was significant.

  Fully half the books—classics, mostly, along with a few biographies and trendy self-help volumes—had been pulled down from the upper shelves and lay in piles upon the floor. As for the culprit, he’d not bothered to make tracks. Instead, he sat with regal stiffness between two neat stacks of volumes tall as he, his green eyes fixed upon her as if daring her to say anything.

  She dared.

  “You little hellion! What possessed you? You’re a bookstore cat—you should have more respect for the written word. I swear it’s going to take me an hour to put everything back in the proper order.”

  Still huffing, she set down her purse and started toward the jumble. She should have taken the squirt gun to him earlier in the store, when he’d pulled down the Capote book. Given that there had been no consequences that first time, he apparently had decided that snagging books from shelves was an entertaining way to pass an afternoon.

  Her irritation mingled with dismay, however, as another explanation occurred to her—since she’d never seen him be destructive just for the fun of it before, what if there had been mice in the bookcases, and Hamlet had been trying to catch them? She might have to call in an exterminator for the entire building. After all, where there’s one nasty little rodent, there’s bound to be—

  She abruptly halted, swept by one of those something’s-wrong-but-I-can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it moments. Hamlet had not moved, but remained seated like an Egyptian statue, the books on either side of him serving as matching columns. She swore he was trying to communicate something . . . something other than his usual disdain, that was.

  Then it struck her.

  Hamlet could easily leap to the uppermost shelf, and he had already demonstrated that he could pull books out of a bookcase. But even a cat as clever as he lacked the facility to stack those volumes into such carefully arranged towers. So if he hadn’t been playing architect with the collected works of Austen, Brontë, and Dickens, then who had?

  “Hamlet?” she repeated, far more softly this time. With a small shiver, she gazed about the room. Someone had been in her apartment while she was gone, and for some reason had searched her bookcase. The question was, why? And, more important, was that person still in the apartment with her?

  A prudent woman would have left the place posthaste. Jake had a gun and would know how to search a house for a possible intruder. But Darla remembered the way the ex-cop had surreptitiously coddled her bad leg after her impromptu sprint. While the other woman would not hesitate to make the roundtrip up and down two narrow flights of stairs to guarantee Darla’s safety, Darla was loath to put her through the pain. Besides, Hamlet had now abandoned the books for the back of the sofa, which meant whoever mig
ht have broken in was probably long since gone.

  Probably.

  Cell phone in one hand and a clublike wooden rain stick that Great-Aunt Dee had brought back from a Chilean vacation in the other, Darla checked out the rest of the apartment. Her first thought was for her laptop and television. Both were in their usual places, as was her jewelry and the small stash of cash she kept in a mug in an upper kitchen cabinet. Her aunt’s valuable nineteenth-century glassware and a lesser-known example of Jackson Pollock’s early work were untouched as well.

  The bedroom appeared equally intact. No drawers were dumped onto the floor, no mattress was flipped, and no crazed book stackers leaped out of any closets at her. She ended the hunt back in the living room a few minutes later, feeling relieved yet somewhat foolish. After all, what kind of thief limited his ransacking to overstuffed shelves of highly uncollectible volumes? Just to be certain, she checked the windows. All were locked, so that even if the intruder had scaled the front of the building or somehow had managed to crawl onto the fire escape in the back, he’d not come in that way. The deadbolt on the apartment door had been locked, as had the ground-level door. As for extra keys, Jake had the only other one. Unless Hamlet had opened the door to a stranger, there was no way someone had entered from the outside.

  Setting the rain stick back in its spot in one corner, Darla flipped open her cell phone and dialed Mary Ann’s number. Something still didn’t seem right about the situation. She’d run it past Jake and Reese at supper. In the meantime, it didn’t hurt to find out if Mary Ann or her brother had seen someone lurking around the building.

  “Why, Darla, it’s been so long since we’ve spoken,” the old woman answered her call on the first ring, chuckling at her mild joke. “What can I do for you?”