Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

One or two of them had even become regular, discount-card-carrying customers.

Yes, if anyone could handle the Lord’s Blessing people, it was Professor James James, Darla reassured herself. Besides, it was already Saturday, and no busload of church people had yet spilled out into the street in front of her store. She glanced at the letter’s envelope and saw the postmark was from two days ago. Not much time to organize a cross-country boycott. Perhaps it had all been an empty threat. But as for the Lone Protester . . .

“Lizzie,” Darla called as her other employee made a timely if breathless entry through the front door that sent the bells jangling. “Is that girl out there this morning, the one dressed like Valerie Baylor and carrying a sign?”

“Oh, Darla, I am so sorry I’m late,” the woman exclaimed, ignoring the question and almost knocking over a display of celebrity cookbooks in her rush to reach the counter.

Lizzie’s plump face beneath a chin-length brown bob was flushed, and her pink lipstick was half gone already from her nervous habit of gnawing her lips. She stuffed the oversized canvas tote that held the manuscript she was perpetually rewriting beneath the register; then, with an exaggerated shudder, the middle-aged woman turned back to Darla.

“The bus took forever to get to my stop, and this man there kept watching me the whole time we were waiting,” she declared. “Then, when the bus finally showed up, the same creepy guy sat down right behind me, even though there were plenty of other seats. The last straw was when he started breathing on my neck. He made me so nervous that I got off two stops early and walked the rest of the way. Seriously, I’m still looking over my shoulder to make sure he’s not there.”

“How very unsettling for you,” James commented. “Perhaps once you recover from the shock of it, you might take a look at the genre shelves. They could use a bit of restocking.” To Darla, he added, “I’ll be up in the storeroom finishing inventory if you need me.”

So saying, he picked up his coffee cup and started toward the stairs. Lizzie waited until his back was turned and then stuck out her tongue in his direction.

Darla sighed and suppressed the urge to chastise the pair with a stern, “Play nicely, children.” Both were older than she—Lizzie by a decade, and James by a good thirty years!—and yet it seemed that she was the one playing the parental role.

Darla had noticed that over the past few weeks, Lizzie had grown increasingly snippy toward James while he, in turn, had become even more patronizing than usual in his dealings with Lizzie. When previously questioned, each had denied any friction existed between them. Still, looking back, Darla was pretty sure the trouble had begun when Lizzie resumed her college classes and started working only part-time at the store, leaving more of the burden to James.

She suspected the turning point had come when Lizzie had declared one morning that she would soon be a professor just like James had been. What Darla had overheard of James’s response had owed more to good old Anglo-Saxon than Latin or Greek, camouflaged though it had been among numerous polysyllabic words. By way of response, Lizzie had turned on the waterworks, and Darla had found herself playing peacekeeper.

Part of the problem, she knew, was that while James retained the store manager title, Darla reserved for herself the final word on hiring and firing. And since Lizzie had been a loyal employee for a couple of years prior to Darla’s tenure, and seemed to genuinely enjoy dealing with their customers, Darla was loath to let her go strictly to assuage James’s considerable ego. But that didn’t mean that Lizzie’s drama-llama tendencies didn’t get on her nerves on occasion, too.

“I’m sorry you had a fright, Lizzie,” she said in a mollifying tone, “but that’s to be expected if you use public transportation. What I’m more concerned about is that girl I asked you about. Was she out there?”

“Girl?” Lizzie opened her eyes wide and shook her head, sending the bob swinging. “Cross my heart, Darla, I don’t know anything about her. Ooh, customers,” she added as the bells on the door jangled, and a young couple walked in. “Gotta go help them out!”

“I didn’t ask if you—oh, never mind,” Darla muttered to Lizzie’s departing form and marched toward the front window to take a look for herself.

The street had been empty of all save the usual Saturday traffic when she’d finally dragged herself out of bed that morning after having stayed up until well after midnight finishing Valerie Baylor’s book. Darla allowed herself a rueful smile. The story had sucked her in, pure and simple, and it had been all she could do not to sneak back down to the store and grab copies of the first two in the series so that she could catch up. Later, after the signing , she promised herself as she warily peered out onto the street.

She heaved a relieved sigh when she saw no sign of the Lone Protester. Of course, it was only quarter after ten on a Saturday morning. The girl was probably still sleeping, like any normal kid her age. Darla would have slept in even later herself, save that by eight a.m. an unsympathetic Hamlet had reached the caterwauling stage as far as demanding breakfast.

She turned from the window again and shook her head. Just like Lizzie and her bus-stop guy, she’d be peering over her shoulder the rest of the day lest the Lone Protester or the Lord’s Blessing congregation make a surprise appearance outside her door.

But over the next few hours, things were busy enough in the store that Darla didn’t have much time for over-shoulder peering. Between finalizing arrangements for the Valerie Baylor appearance and a glut of teen customers all trying to snag a copy of Ghost of a Chance early—“Sorry, no sales until the autographing tomorrow”—she and her staff kept busy well past lunch. Even Hamlet stayed relatively civil toward the shoppers, save for a small incident with a teacup poodle traveling in its Paris-Hilton-wannabee owner’s purse.

The girl—in her midtwenties, and wearing exaggerated eye makeup and a pink dress that, to use one of Jake’s expressions, barely covered her lady parts—made the unfortunate error of setting down said purse next to a stack of books. Unfortunately, Hamlet had chosen the spot behind that stack for his postlunch nap.

What happened next was pure Hamlet. The teacup pup had sensed the cat’s presence and promptly let loose with a high-pitched bark of challenge. The obnoxious sound caused the feline to open one baleful green eye. He’d not bothered responding, however . . . at least, not until the poodle barked again. This time, Hamlet emitted a hiss that sounded like a cross between a ticked-off lion and a set of air brakes being released. And he’d accompanied that threatening sound with the swipe of a single oversized black paw from around the stack, hitting the purse square on.

The bag had already been sitting dangerously close to the counter’s edge. The force of Hamlet’s blow sent it skittering so that it now hung halfway off. It took but a single bound from the frightened pup for the inevitable to happen.

Darla had seen what was coming, though, and was already in full-swoop mode. She reached the counter in time to catch the handbag in midfall, saving the feisty dog from a tumble.

“Oh. My. God!” the Paris clone exclaimed in outrage, wheeling about to snatch the purse with its yelping occupant from Darla’s grasp. “Your cat nearly killed my puppy!”

“He did no such thing,” came Darla’s stern rebuke. She pointed to a standup sign on the counter, right next to where the purse had been sitting, and went on, “And if you’d read our policy, you would have known that any pet brought into the store must be held at all times. That same notice is on our front door, too.”