Double Booked for Death

FIVE

DARLA TAPPED THE SHOULDER OF ONE OF THE CLOAK-WEARING girls in line. The teen turned her way, displaying a moderate case of acne and a shock of bleached hair so overly processed that it would probably ignite if it came within ten feet of an open flame.

“Yeah.”

It was less a question than a statement, but Darla took it as a conversational opening. “See that girl across the street?” she asked, pointing. “Do you know who she is, or why she’s protesting Valerie?”

The girl smacked her gum and shot a bored look at the still figure. “I dunno. Some loser, I guess. Why don’t you go ask her?”

A reasonable enough question, Darla wryly told herself. She had half a mind to march over there and have a few words with the girl—or send Lizzie out to do the dirty work—but she wasn’t sure what that would accomplish. The last thing she needed was to get into a brawl with some disgruntled teen just as Valerie and her entourage were pulling up.

And then there was the problem of physically getting over there to her.

Valerie Baylor’s upcoming appearance was bringing out all the gawkers, with traffic picking up rather than dwindling as it usually did on a Sunday evening. At least the police were doing a great job with traffic control, and the passing vehicles were moving along at a brisk pace, Darla thought in approval. But that meant crossing the street would be an even dicier prospect than usual. No point risking her life just for the satisfaction of telling off a teenager.

She received similar responses from a few other girls that she questioned, though the last teen added, “She must be stupid. Everyone knows Valerie wrote all those books.”

Conceding defeat, Darla started back toward the store, pausing under a streetlight to check her watch. Quarter to seven. Surely, Valerie should be there by now!

Jake met her coming down the stairs. “Any idea where the big star is?”

“No clue, but they have the store’s number if they need to call.” Glancing up at her apartment window, where a light was burning, she said, “I’m going to run upstairs real fast and check on Hamlet. It’s nearly his suppertime, and you know how he gets.”

A few moments later, she was unlocking her apartment door. She’d half expected a fleeting swipe of a p.o.’d paw when she walked in, but it seemed his highness had decided against exacting punishment for her tardiness. She flipped on the kitchen light, prepared to see him there by his bowl. Instead, there was no sign of the cat, in the kitchen or anywhere else.

Darla quickly put out food and fresh water and headed back to the door, calling over her shoulder, “You’d better be in here, Hamlet, and not wandering around downstairs. Back soon.”

The sound began drifting up to her as she hit the second landing. Frowning, she made it to the first floor, and then realized what it was. Chanting.

“We want Valerie! We want Valerie! We want Valerie!”

“Great,” she muttered as, using her key, she let herself into the store via her hallway entrance. No way was she going to run that gauntlet from outer door to outer door! Inside, Lizzie, Mary Ann, and James had their faces pressed to the window. They turned as one when she asked, “Any word?”

James shook his head. “Neither the publicist nor the driver has called. I put on the radio and heard nothing about any traffic backups. So it seems that they are, in a word, late.”

“Great,” Darla repeated, managing not to modify the word with the universal adjective. “How are Jake and Reese holding out?”

“Except for the chanting, everything appears under control. But perhaps if you have a contact phone number, you might wish to—”

A cheer erupted from the crowd outside, cutting short James’s suggestion. Lizzie, who had still been glued to the window, spun about. Cheeks flushed and black cape swirling, she rushed toward the door while exclaiming the obvious.

“Valerie Baylor is here!”

“YOU WILL FIND PLENTY OF EXTRA PENS HERE, MS. BAYLOR,” JAMES said, pointing to a box on the black and red draped table, “and we have a selection of bottled water, as you requested. We also have soft drinks stocked, if you would care for one, or there is freshly brewed coffee, if you prefer. Oh, and the strawberry yogurt and whole wheat bagels with butter you requested are waiting upstairs in our lounge area.”

“Actually, what I really want to do is to take a pee and have a smoke, preferably in that order. Point me to the ladies’, would you?”

Long black velvet cape swirling, Valerie Baylor sauntered off in the direction James indicated. Darla’s first less-than-kind thought upon meeting Valerie had been the satisfied realization that the author’s publicity photo had definitely been retouched. Not that Valerie wasn’t an attractive woman, despite her theatrical spill of black hair and pale features. In person, however, her cameo features showed the beginnings of middle-aged sag, while the slash of red lipstick emphasized the trademark smoker’s wrinkles that radiated from her mouth. But she was dressed for the role, with tight black leather pants and a black silk blouse, along with three-inch red satin pumps that Darla guessed came from Manolo Blahnik or some other trendy designer.

Valerie’s entourage included a young woman in a too-short yellow sweater dress who looked like a brunette, grown-up version of Callie, and a chunky Asian man in his fifties, who was wearing designer jeans that appeared to have been both starched and then ironed into sharp-creased submission. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that the second man in the group—a bald, buff African American sporting wraparound shades similar to those Reese was wearing—was the official bodyguard.

“Name’s Everest, ma’am, like the mountain,” he introduced himself to Darla before taking up position at the front door to serve as a living roadblock.

The final member of Valerie’s posse was a model-thin woman with broad shoulders and sleek blond hair almost as long as the author’s. Her apparent Botox addiction had left her gaunt face almost expressionless, though her liberal application of makeup was flawless. She opened a satchel from which she now was pulling various pots and tubes of cosmetics and laying them like surgical tools upon the signing table.

The Asian man, meanwhile, stuck out an uncertain hand in Darla’s direction.

“Hi, Darla, right? I’m Koji Foster, Valerie’s publicist. We’ve been emailing back and forth.” Indicating first the brunette and then the blonde, he went on, “That’s Hillary Gables, Valerie’s agent, and Mavis, her personal assistant. So sorry we weren’t here earlier, but traffic was bad. We’ll be ready to start in just a few minutes, I promise.”

“Don’t worry, we understand. And I’m sure the kids outside do, too,” Darla answered, glancing over at the wall clock and noting that it was only quarter after seven. But then, with another look at the cosmetic counter’s worth of products the assistant had by now unloaded, she wondered, just how much prep time was the author going to need before she was ready to meet her public?

The screams that had risen from the crowd as Valerie’s limo pulled up had rivaled those of the audience at the boy-band concert to which Darla had taken her preteen niece a few years earlier. Flanked by her bodyguard and agent, and wrapped in her signature black cape, the author had graciously waved to the line of ecstatic young women before rushing up the steps to the store, Koji and Mavis trotting after her. She’d favored Darla with a limp handshake and brief greeting before eyeing the autographing area with a jaundiced look in her pale blue eyes that made Darla regret she hadn’t sprung for a red carpet or something equally over-the-top.

“The store looks lovely,” Hillary spoke up, as if she sensed Darla’s concerns, though her distracted gaze was fixed on the closed bathroom door Valerie had disappeared behind. She pulled a tissue from her jacket pocket and snuffled into it. “Sorry, allergies,” she explained, tucking the tissue away again. “And I was so sorry to hear about your aunt. I met her once before during another event here and thought she was charming.”

“Well, I’m sure she would have gotten a kick out of Val Vixen returning to her store as the famous Valerie Baylor after all these years.”

“Much better,” Valerie declared as she burst from the restroom and headed back toward the table. Plopping into the slipcovered chair, she added, “Koji, you did make sure the people here know my rules about what I will and won’t sign, didn’t you? For Chrissakes, we don’t need a bunch of little twerps selling scraps of paper with my signature on them all over eBay. And if the press show up, no interviews. They can read what I have to say in my blog. C’mon, Mavis, I need a touch-up.”

This last was directed toward the silent assistant, who obediently plucked an oversized satin bib from her bag of tricks and tied it about Valerie’s neck before she began applying dramatic smudgy color to the author’s lids. She used her array of brushes with the swift expertise of one of those artists on the old PBS how-to-paint television shows, much to Darla’s admiration. She herself was still trying to perfect the art of applying mascara without leaving behind a few clumps and smears.

Darla noted in passing that Mavis’s hands seemed unusually large for her thin frame, though they fluttered about her client’s neck with practiced grace as she adjusted the bib. And she couldn’t help but admire the heavy gold puzzle ring the woman wore on one long finger. Darla recalled a far cheaper version of that ring that she’d once bought for herself, having been intrigued by the series of thin interlocked bands that linked together to form what resembled a Celtic knot. Unfortunately, she’d succumbed to temptation and had taken it apart, only to concede after several fruitless hours that she had no clue how to put the darn thing back together again. In frustration, she had given the ring to her then six-year-old niece—and within five minutes, the girl was triumphantly sporting her auntie’s reassembled ring on one chubby finger, leaving Darla to shake her head in amazement.

“And make sure you keep things moving this time, Koji,” Valerie instructed the publicist as, shadow applied, she rolled her eyes upward for an application of mascara. Shutting them for a dusting of powder, she went on, “I want these kids in and out again as quickly as possible . . . not like the last event. We spent way too much time in that store in Boston. Christ, I had one girl talking to me for almost three minutes before you managed to get her out of my face.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll be moving your readers through here lickety-split,” Darla hastened to assure her, not sure whether to laugh or simply be appalled at the woman’s cavalier manner toward her fans. “In fact, I have a stopwatch that we use for the writers’ critique group that meets here. Maybe I can let Koji borrow it.”

She smiled as she said it, intending the suggestion as a mild joke to take the tension down a notch. To her surprise, however, the writer nodded.

“Not a bad idea. Dig it out, why don’t you, and we’ll get this down to a science.” Then, snatching a hand mirror from Mavis, who had finally set aside her brushes, Valerie stared at her retouched reflection a moment before making a sound of disgust.

“For Chrissakes, I’m supposed to look ethereal, not like the Crypt Keeper. No, no, leave it alone,” she went on as Mavis attempted a bit of repair with a cosmetic puff. “We don’t have time to fix it. I’ll just look a hot mess, and who the hell cares?”

Yanking off the bib, she tossed it and the mirror onto the table and shoved back her chair. “God, I need that cigarette now,” she announced in Darla’s direction. “Is there a place out back I can smoke?”

“Right this way, Ms. Baylor,” James smoothly interjected. “We have an enclosed courtyard just behind the store that you can use.”

Darla suppressed a smile. The word “courtyard” was a bit fancy for what basically was a walled rectangle of brick-paved space five feet wide and perhaps twice as long that stretched from back door to alley. At its far end was one of those open-style walls—the kind with every other brick missing—which flanked a wrought-iron gate that opened onto the alley. The accoutrements were equally simple: a wrought-iron table with two matching chairs, and a pair of stone urns holding some sort of evergreens topiaried into three stacked balls. Here, Darla and her employees took lunch when the weather was nice, and here Jake indulged in the occasional cigarette herself; that was, when she wasn’t in the middle of another attempt to quit.

“Uh, sir, if you don’t mind?” This interjection came from the bodyguard, Everest. “I need to check it out first, sir, just to make sure no fans will see her and try to get in that way.”

“The space is hardly large enough to fit a mob,” James responded, “and the gate locks from the inside. But I understand your concern. You are welcome to make your inspection.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry, I forgot that Grandma Everest sees danger lurking behind every lamppost,” Valerie said with exaggerated politeness. Then, giving him a proprietary pat on his beefy arm, she added, “Just kidding, Ev. Come along, if you must, but for Chrissakes make it fast so I can hurry up and suck down a bit of nicotine, okay?”

Led by James, the odd couple made their way to the back of the store. Darla could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from everyone—herself included—in the wake of Valerie’s departure. What she definitely did hear, however, was a single soft word: “Bitch.”

Muttered in an unmistakable baritone that seemingly was meant only for her ears, the descriptive made her jump . . . not so much because she disagreed with the sentiment, but because it had come not from Koji, but Mavis. She—or, rather, he—shrugged a skinny shoulder.

“I call them as I see them,” he explained in the same soft yet manly tones as he began packing up his gear again.

While Darla struggled a moment in uncomfortable silence—had anyone else heard or noticed what had just happened? —Lizzie shook out the folds of her black cape and brightly proclaimed, “All righty, then. Why don’t I bring out some of those refreshments, like James suggested?”

“Good idea,” Darla said with a grateful nod in the other woman’s direction. To Hillary and Koji, who were pulling on black cloaks of their own, she added, “I’m going to give my folks outside the heads-up that we’re almost ready to begin. Can I get anything for you?”

“You might want to grab that stopwatch,” Hillary answered with a sour little smile, while Koji blinked nervously. “I can guarantee that if you don’t, she’ll ask about it.”

Could be worse, Darla told herself as she headed to the front. At least Valerie hadn’t asked for a bevy of male strippers and a tub of M&Ms with all the yellow ones picked out. She peered out the door only to wince as the fans’ Valerie chant began anew.

“Almost ready,” Darla yelled to a waiting Jake. “Give us five, okay?”

Having apparently blessed the miniscule courtyard as being safe for his charge, Everest had now returned to his post. A few minutes later, Valerie also returned, trailing a noticeable odor of cigarette smoke after her but looking surprisingly cheerful. Settling into her chair, she said to Darla, “That’s one cute kitty you have out there. We had a nice little chat.”

“You mean Hamlet?” she asked in dismay. How in the hell did the little bugger get out? “Solid black with green eyes, about the size of a small horse?”

“That’s him. What a sweetheart.” Glancing over at her assistant, she added, “Mavis adores cats, too. May, darling, you really should go out and take a look at him. He’s a cutie.”

Valerie’s smile was genuine, and Darla reluctantly found herself revising her opinion of the woman. If she liked cats, she couldn’t be all bad. Then again, she was talking about Hamlet . . . maybe the pair of them had simply recognized kindred evil spirits and had bonded over some secret blood ritual.

“Sure, maybe later,” Mavis agreed with a hint of a smile and in a soft soprano that made Darla do a mental double take. Surely she hadn’t imagined the masculine voice that had come from the assistant just a few minutes earlier? “Excuse me, Valerie,” Lizzie interjected, a stack of the author’s books in her arms. “James asked if you’d sign a few of these for the store real quick while we queue up the first group of readers.”

“Sure, sure.”

Flipping open the first one, Valerie scrawled her name in sharp letters. Lizzie, meanwhile, expertly ran through the rest of the stack, tucking each dust jacket flap like a bookmark at each title page so that the author didn’t have to fumble for the right spot in the book to sign her name. As for James, he had pulled a camera from his vest pocket and clicked away while Valerie wielded her pen.

Always get the author to sign some store copies first, James had reminded them both earlier in the day. Otherwise, if you wait until the end of the event, your author invariably has writer’s cramp and the signatures are almost illegible.

Which made sense, Darla thought. After three hours of dashing off one’s name, it was inevitable that the quality control would go down. Despite James’s disdain for genre fiction, he knew the value of a signed first edition to fans of a particular author. Valerie finished signing the last one with a flourish and then set down her pen. She frowned a bit at Lizzie, who stood clutching the signed stack, an expectant look on her face. “Was there something else?”

Lizzie gave an eager nod, though it seemed to Darla that her expression had taken on a strained air. “Actually, I wanted to see if you remembered me. I’m Lizzie Cavanaugh. We took an Intro to Novel Writing class together back in college. Professor Jardin’s night class.”

“I recall the class, but I’m afraid I don’t remember you. Did we ever talk?”

“I sat right next to you. We were in the same critique group for the class project.” When Valerie continued to stare blankly, Lizzie persisted in a sharp tone, “You read my work in process, about a girl who breaks up with her fiancé and decides to go to the police academy. I’m sure you remember that.”

“If you say so, Lisa,” the author agreed with a careless shrug, while Darla cringed a little on her employee’s behalf, “but I’m afraid I don’t recall your book, or you. Of course, that was quite some time ago, and it was a large class, wasn’t it?”

“It’s Lizzie. And, yes, twenty people . . . really large.”

Head high and cape swirling, Lizzie marched over to the register and tucked the signed books under the counter. Recalling their earlier conversation about her college days, Darla could imagine that if Valerie had treated Lizzie the same casually cruel way when they were students together, no wonder Lizzie had a chip on her shoulder about the woman.

Valerie merely blinked, and turned to her publicist.

“For Chrissakes, what are we waiting for? Let’s get this show on the road.”

Darla didn’t wait for further encouragement. Grabbing up her own black cape and pulling it on, she propped open the store’s front door and called down to Jake and Reese, “We’re ready.”

Spontaneous applause rose from those closest to the front of the line, and though it was not meant for her, Darla felt a small thrill sweep her anyhow. So this is what it’s like to have a fan base, she thought with a grin. Maybe being famous wasn’t a half-bad gig after all.

From her post at the top of the stairs, Darla could see the movement begin at the rear of the line and ripple forward. The sight reminded her of the train station scene in the old Hitchcock movie where Cary Grant’s falsely accused character disguises himself as a redcap and disappears into a veritable sea of scarlet-hatted porters, to the dismay of the police in pursuit. She could picture a teen on her cell phone trying to get hold of her BFF to let her know where she was this night.

Hey, Tiff, I’m here in line at the bookstore. You’ll find me, no problem. Look for the girl wearing a long black cloak and red lipstick.

But as the whooping and laughing fans began rushing toward the door, Darla realized with a jolt that perhaps she’d made a tactical error in not getting out of the way sooner. Everest, however, had obviously done this kind of thing before. Before she could move, he had slid into place in front of her. At more than six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds, his mere presence was enough to halt the girls at the threshold.

“Ladies, show me your bracelets,” he ordered, getting what looked like a Black Power salute in return as the front of the pack simultaneously raised their fists to display the bands in question. “Thank you. Now, we’re going to do this quietly, and in order. You young ladies walk inside in a nice line, hear?”

They heard. As soon as Everest stepped aside, the girls marched into the store with almost military precision, walking two abreast to the register to pay, and then winding through the maze toward the table where Valerie awaited. Darla saw him doing a head count as well, allowing in perhaps forty of them before cutting off the procession at the threshold.

“You’ll have a maximum occupancy here, ma’am,” he told her with a professional nod, his single diamond earring catching the light. “Don’t want any problems with the fire marshal.”

Darla gave him a grateful smile and went inside. The air of orderliness that Everest had imposed continued to hold, though within half an hour the noise level had risen substantially. That was to be expected, so she grinned and bore it. Lizzie and James were working the table, passing books down to Valerie with almost automated precision, while the constant camera flashes lit up the place like a disco. Mary Ann played the register with professional panache while chatting up the teens, several of whom proposed to buy her dress on the spot. The elderly woman smilingly declined all offers but passed out business cards with her brother’s store’s website so they could join her special vintage clothing email newsletter.

“Oh yes, I’m quite the social networker,” Darla overheard her tell one teen who had expressed surprise that someone of Mary Ann’s generation had an email address, let alone actually communicated in that fashion.

And so, with all positions filled, Darla was left with little to do but supervise.

“I’m going to go check on Jake and Reese,” she called to Mary Ann, and then squeezed her way through the caped throng to the door.

A cool breeze swept her like a literal breath of fresh air, and she inhaled deeply. Though her black cape was but a cheap knockoff, it made a pretty effective blanket . . . nice out here in the early autumn night, but stifling in the crowded store. At the bottom of the stairs, she spied a familiar pink backpack and waved to Callie, who jumped up and down and waved back. With a final smile for the girl, Darla turned her attention to the rest of the line.

While it seemed that Hillary and Koji—stopwatch or not—were keeping things moving in the store, the line here on the street didn’t seem to be getting much shorter. Though the barricades still remained in place, it appeared from Darla’s vantage point that the blue sawhorses had steadily shifted. The line was no longer a neat, single file affair, but rather an untidy column three and four abreast in some spots.

Moreover, a new wrinkle had been added to the festivities. The Lone Protester had abandoned her post across the street and was now walking up and down the line of Valerie’s fans, her sign held high. That one-woman demonstration was not going unnoticed by the faithful, for Darla could hear a few vulgarities being shouted over the general backdrop of noise.

She barely had time to tell herself, Trouble waiting to happen , when it did.