Double Booked for Death

by Ali Brandon

  “Enjoy your trip to Rome,” he said as he bagged the last volume. “ And don’t forget to try that café near the Vatican that I told you about.”

  “We’ll make sure to stop there,” the shorter of the two replied with a fond look at his mustachioed companion. “We’ve been planning this trip for ages, and we intend to sightsee and eat ourselves into oblivion.”

  Darla waited until the smiling pair had left before addressing James. “Sorry to leave you like that,” she said. “Jake was following up on a lead.”

  “You mean regarding Ms. Baylor’s unfortunate demise?”

  “Well, yes.”

  She’d kept her conversations with Jake and Reese confidential, but it occurred to her that James might also have some insight into the matter. “You know those pictures you printed for me? I don’t suppose you took any others once the autographing started, did you?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I was busier than the proverbial lower-extremity amputee participating in a posterior-kicking competition.”

  He paused and gave Darla a keen look. “You and Ms. Martelli have been carrying on about something for the past week. Should I assume that there is more to the accident than we have been told?”

  “I think that’s the problem, James. We’re not certain it was an accident.”

  She hesitated. Surely there was no reason she couldn’t let him in on their suspicions. James had been there that night and had the same passing acquaintance with all the major players she did—more, in some cases, like Lizzie.

  She gave him a brief recap of what little they’d gleaned. Then, casually, she asked, “By the way, did you notice anything unusual about Valerie’s makeup artist, Mavis, the night of the signing?”

  “You mean other than the fact that she was a he? Though, in fairness, he did carry off the masquerade rather well, do you not agree?”

  Darla looked at him in surprise, even as she reminded herself that very little got past the former professor. James, meanwhile, frowned as he considered the matter.

  “Mavis and Ms. Baylor did exchange a few confidences during the event,” he finally said, “but nothing about their conversation appeared alarming. Should I assume that this makeup artist might be under suspicion?”

  “I’m not sure ‘suspicion’ is the right word,” she conceded, “but remember how you printed off those pictures for me to give to Valerie’s brother, Morris? It happens that Valerie and Morris were fraternal twins. And it turns out Morris has an even closer relationship to Mavis than that.”

  She gave James a significant look, waiting for him to pick up the hint. When he merely looked at her expectantly, she clarified, “Morris and Mavis are one and the same.”

  “Indeed?” James raised both brows. “I must admit, I was not expecting that. Intriguing family dynamic.”

  Before Darla could continue her story, one of their regulars walked in to pick up a special order. Leaving further conversation for later, she left James to wait on the woman and went to the computer to check her email.

  Along with the usual store-related correspondence and a few personal messages, she found the pictures from Callie. She immediately saved them to the hard drive and was in the process of pulling up the first when she heard the door jingle again.

  Jake entered, carrying a tiny, pink-lace printed bag that starkly contrasted with her uniform of boots, black jeans, and black sweater. She seemed unaware of the incongruity, however, as she hurried over to join Darla at the computer.

  “Did you get the photos?”

  “Yep. Just looking at them now.”

  On a full-sized monitor, the figures were grainy, but far easier to distinguish. Even better, Callie had had a surprisingly clear view of the action from her vantage point, which included the autographing table and the back door leading to the courtyard.

  In the first photo, Valerie was seated at the table, visible behind a line of fans wearing similar capes to hers. Her own hood, however, was draped over her shoulders, her dark hair spilling in a heavy waterfall down her back. The figure directly behind her appeared to be Lizzie, for a bit of brown bob peeked out one edge of her hood. Hillary stood to one side, distinguished by the glint of her glasses. The fourth figure had to be Mavis, though the hood made it difficult to tell for certain.

  Scrolling through the series a second time, Darla was now able to pick out who was missing from each subsequent shot. First, Valerie vanished, then Lizzie. In the third shot, Hillary was gone, presumably leaving only Mavis remaining. But it was the fourth shot that held Jake’s attention.

  “Zoom in,” she commanded. “Now, scroll over to the right. Okay, zoom again. Again. To the right again, and zoom one more time.”

  What filled the screen now was a blur of black, the images so pixilated that the details were fuzzy. But Jake was smiling in satisfaction.

  “Look,” she said and pointed to what appeared to be Mavis moving toward the back of the store. “See his—her—hand? She’s holding something white with streaks of red on it. Morris has the lipstick note.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  DARLA STARED AT THE INCRIMINATING SHOT FOR A LONG moment and then met Jake’s triumphant gaze. “It does look like the note,” she agreed, “but that still doesn’t tell us if Mavis—or, rather, Morris—only received it, or if he was the one who wrote it. And there’s something else.”

  She reached under the register for her purse. Just as with the lipstick letter, she had thought that Reese might confiscate Morris’s business card as possible evidence, so she had scanned it and stuck the copy into her purse for safekeeping. Now, she retrieved that folded page and set it on the counter, and then pulled out one of the autographed copies of Ghost of a Chance she’d hidden away. Setting the book beside the note, she flipped it open to the title page where Valerie Baylor had signed it.

  “I thought about this when Morris pointed out that it was hard to match lipstick to ink. We all agreed that the lipstick writing looks a lot like the writing on the back of Morris’s business card . . . but doesn’t it look a lot like Valerie’s handwriting, too?”

  Jake took a look at the similar sharp pen strokes and then muttered a choice expletive. “I see your point,” she conceded.

  Feeling a bit odd to suddenly be arguing the opposite point, Darla went on, “And aren’t we forgetting that little thing called a motive? Why would he kill his own sister?”

  “Sibling rivalry . . . he got tired of her snide comments . . . she threatened to reveal his secret hobby of cross-dressing,” Jake said, ticking off the possibilities on one hand . . . the same possibilities that previously had occurred to Darla. “Maybe Valerie did something that finally sent him over the edge after years of putting up with her bull, and he snapped.”

  “Ahem.”

  The sound made them both jump. James had come up behind them and now stood there shaking his head.

  “Really, Jake, I realize you are bored with your forced retirement, but you should know better than to jump on Darla’s bandwagon and try to make a murder out of a molehill,” he said, his expression disapproving.

  When Jake opened her mouth to protest, he raised a silencing hand and went on, “And both of you should keep in mind that your would-be suspect and his supposed victim were fraternal twins. I have done a bit of research into the psychology of siblings, and I can assure you it would be almost unheard of for one twin to deliberately kill the other. The symbiotic relationship between fraternals is almost as close as that of identical twins. When one of the pair dies, the other is left feeling half a person. Indeed, the research on surviving twins and their stages of grief makes for interesting—”

  “Thanks, cowboy.” Jake cut him short with a sour look. “Here, I had just joined Team Darla, and now you’re shooting holes in my theory.”

  James raised a brow and, indulging in a rare bit of whimsy, blew imaginary gun smoke from his finger pistols a la Ted the security guy.

  “Call me Sheriff James. But now, if you will excuse me, I have a few spe
cial orders to finish up before day’s end.”

  He left the two of them staring at the picture on the monitor. Darla was the first to break their mutual silence.

  “We might be trying too hard, but to quote Callie, I still think there’s something sneaky going on with Morris,” she said in a determined tone.

  Jake shrugged. “Yeah, but much as it pains me to admit it, James is right. Sneaky doesn’t equal motive or evidence.”

  “So what you’re really saying is that we’ve hit a dead end.”

  “No, I’m saying that we need to step back and see if we’ve missed anything. Because Professor James was wrong about one thing: swapping theories with you has nothing to do with me being bored.”

  Jake’s tone took on a hard edge. “No matter how it happened, your author ended up dead on my watch. If Valerie was deliberately pushed, no way am I letting the person responsible get away with it. Even bitches deserve justice.”

  “Sounds like a T-shirt slogan,” was Darla’s wry reply.

  Before Jake could comment, her cell phone went off, the ring tone sounding suspiciously to Darla like the first notes of that old Bee Gee’s song from Saturday Night Fever. She wasn’t too surprised when the other woman announced, “It’s Reese,” before taking the call.

  Jake’s end of the conversation was maddeningly cryptic. Certain it had to do with the Valerie Baylor situation, Darla waited impatiently for her to hang up and share whatever news she’d learned from the detective.

  Jake, however, wasn’t doing any sharing.

  “Sorry, kid, I need to help Reese out with something,” she said as she ended the call. Heading toward the door, she called back over her shoulder, “Do me a favor and forward me those pictures when you get a chance, okay?”

  “Sure,” she agreed, trying not to let curiosity consume her over whatever “something” it was that Reese needed. She’d simply have to go on the assumption that, if she needed to know, Jake would make sure that she did.

  James was taking care of the customer who’d just stopped in, so Darla took the opportunity to scan through the photos one more time before sending them to Jake’s email address.

  The photo she kept returning to was the one where the four caped figures stood in close proximity to each other. It was interesting, she thought, how such a simple garment gave such anonymity to such a varied group. Even knowing who they were, she had to look closely to distinguish them from each other—all of which demonstrated that a disguise didn’t need to be elaborate to be effective. Hadn’t the Scarf Lady who’d hired Janie made do with only a pair of oversized sunglasses and a length of cloth around her head, when even Callie had recognized Morris underneath the elaborate masquerade that was Mavis?

  Mavis!

  A thought occurred to Darla as she stared again at the picture on the computer screen. Had they overlooked another, perhaps even more obvious possibility? Could Janie’s Scarf Lady actually have been Morris? Had Valerie’s own brother planned an entire secret campaign against her . . . which might or might not have culminated in his deliberately throwing her in front of the Lord’s Blessing Church’s van?

  The more she thought about it, the more likely her theory seemed. But given that she’d not been able to get any sort of admission from Morris regarding his Mavis alter ego, it seemed unlikely he would spontaneously confess to the Scarf Lady masquerade should she confront him with that accusation. But perhaps she could try a more subtle tactic.

  According to Reese, Janie’s contact with her mysterious employer had initially been via email. Doubtless, whoever had contacted her would have used one of those free email address services to hide her—or his!—identity. From what Reese had indicated, however, he’d passed on that address to the police department’s IT group, which could then backtrack it to its true owner. But would the police even bother to pursue that lead now?

  Nothing was stopping her from doing a bit of cybersleuth-ing herself, she decided.

  She gave a thoughtful frown. A cleverly worded email to the Scarf Lady’s address might prompt its owner to inadvertently reveal his or her identity. Unfortunately, she had no idea where Janie had sent her messages.

  She shut down the computer’s photo viewer and took another look at the page with Morris’s email address. It was straightforward: Morris@VicksonEnterprises.com. No guesswork there, she wryly thought. Had that been the address Janie supplied to Reese in her statement, Morris might well have been behind bars by now. And since she doubted Reese would share what he likely considered to be confidential police information, what she needed was to find the ad that Janie had answered and get the poster’s email address that way.

  Her frown deepened. Jake had said that the Lone Protester had found her so-called performance-art job by trolling TheEverythingList. If she was lucky—or the poster had been careless—perhaps the ad was still there. Mentally crossing her fingers, Darla swiftly logged onto the site and plugged in a few keywords to search.

  “Valerie Baylor” didn’t do it . . . nor did “book signing” or even “performance art.” She was about to give it up, assuming the unknown poster had taken down the ad already, when as a last resort she finally typed in the word “protester.” To her surprise, an ad popped up titled “Professional Protester.” That had to be it!

  Professional protester needed for worthwhile cause. Must be willing to picket popular literary figure while dressed in costume. $50 per appearance, one week only. Email to prettywoman-ny@theeverythinglist.com.

  Darla rolled her eyes. You would think Mavis would be more subtle, she told herself, even as a small thrill of anticipation swept her. It looked like her theory was about to be proven correct. Now, all she had to do was send a message to that address and see if Mavis—or, rather, Morris—replied.

  She thought a moment, and then swiftly typed, Sorry that our last conversation ended on an unpleasant note. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Darla.

  She hit “Send” before she could change her mind. As the email vanished off the screen, she stepped back from the computer and let her breath out in a whoosh. Just doing a little trolling, as they say back home, she told herself, hoping she didn’t regret this spontaneous attempt at undercover work. Her email address had the Pettistone’s Fine Books web address in it, which along with her signature file made it obvious that she was the sender. With luck, that blatant announcement as to her identity would give the impression that she simply was making casual contact in her role as store owner.

  She stared at the screen for a few moments, waiting to see if a reply would pop up. None did. Darla shook her head. She couldn’t stand there for the rest of the afternoon hoping for a return message. Despite the customer slowdown, there was still work to be done around the store.

  “Like right now,” she muttered at the now-familiar clatter of a book hitting the floor. Hamlet, at it again!

  “I’ll take care of it,” she called to James, who nodded back from his perch on the ladder where he was pulling down some overstock to fill a few gaps in the inventory.

  She stalked back to the classics shelf, which seemed to be the feline’s current choice of playground. At least this time, he had limited himself to a single volume instead of half a dozen. Even so, she shot him an annoyed look and threatened, “If you keep this up, I’m going to trot your furry butt down to the vet and get you declawed.”

  Not at all dismayed by her ire—no way would she do that, and he knew it—Hamlet sat boldly in the middle of the aisle beside his latest literary victim. Maybe she should get some of that canned air like Ted had used and try a little aversion therapy with him. Snag a book, and hear a nasty hiss. To be quite honest, however, his mischief was far less destructive than that of some of her customers.

  Particularly the children.

  She still shuddered at the memory of finding a half-eaten lollipop stuck between the pages of one of her most expensive art books a few weeks earlier. She’d had to mark it down to half price and put it on the “
hurt book” table. There it still sat along with other vandalized volumes, including a popular bestseller where some high-minded customer had thoughtfully used a black marker to obliterate all references to male and female anatomy.

  “All right, Hamlet. What say we give this little game a break until tomorrow,” she declared as she bent to retrieve the volume.

  A glimpse at the title gave her momentary pause.

  “So you like Russian literature, do you?” she asked with a quirk of a brow as she read the title, Crime and Punishment. Giving him a stern look, she added, “Or are you trying to tell me something?”

  The feline did not bother to respond to either question. Instead, with a dismissive flick of his whiskers, he turned tail and headed for the stairway leading to the second floor. Darla watched him go and then returned her attention to the book she held. Coincidence, or . . .

  “Coincidence,” she firmly said and returned the volume to its spot.

  She checked her email twice more during the course of the afternoon, only to find each time that “prettywoman-ny” had made no reply to her earlier message. But at least she had tried, which she suspected was more than the police IT department had done.

  It was closing time, and James had already left for the day when she pulled up her store email one final time. And there, sandwiched among a few end-of-day announcements from various publishers and distributors, she saw it: a return email from prettywoman-ny.

  Success! came her first triumphant thought, followed immediately by a wave of nervousness. She had found the Scarf Lady . . . now, what was she going to do about it?

  “How about opening the email?” she muttered aloud after several moments spent simply staring at the sealed envelope icon with its “re: follow-up to our conversation” subject line. She took a deep breath and then clicked.