Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“Got it.”

Satisfied for the moment that Callie was taken care of, Darla made her way down the line. She was pleased to see that the crowd continued to be civilized, save for those occasional earsplitting shrieks. She wondered if Jake and Reese had pre-intimidated the crowd into good behavior, or if Valerie’s fans were naturally well behaved. Either was fine by her.

Then she glimpsed the Lone Protester in her usual spot, and her good mood dissolved.

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.