Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“How’s it going, Harry?” she addressed the cop, who had halted before them, the van passengers hanging back in a small uncertain knot behind him.

The officer pulled off his cap to reveal a balding pate. Wiping a sleeve across his brow, he resettled his hat and shrugged. “You know how it is, Jake. Good as it gets under the circumstances.” Then, with a look at Darla, he added, “You’re Ms. Pettistone, the bookstore owner?”

“That’s me,” Darla said, wondering which of his five white-clad charges was the ill-fated driver. Best she could make out, there were three women and two men, all dressed in the same odd fashion.

The cop thrust a beefy thumb over one shoulder. “We’ve got the driver’s and passengers’ statements, so these folks are free to go for the moment. But the driver wanted to talk to you . . . claims she knows you.”

She?

That was Darla’s first surprised thought. Somehow, she had expected that the driver would have been male. On the heels of that came confusion. How in the world did the driver know her, unless maybe she was a bookstore customer who’d had the horribly unfortunate bad luck to be driving past at the same moment that Valerie stepped off the curb? But before she had much more than a moment to wonder, one of the white-robed women pushed past the cop to stand toe-to-toe with her.

She was about Darla’s age, with blond hair that had been teased and sprayed into a magnificent concoction that rose a good three inches at the crown of her head. But despite the woman’s exaggerated hairdo, Darla was surprised to note that she wore almost no makeup, just a touch of mascara on her wide blue eyes. And as soon as the woman opened her mouth and Darla heard a familiar twangy drawl, she knew this was no Snooki wannabe.

“This is so unfortunate,” she exclaimed in a soft voice that wavered on the edge of tears. “You don’t know how sorry I am”—she gestured at her companions—“how sorry we all are for this terrible accident. I was just trying to find us a parking spot—I swear, there’s not one to be had in this city!—and I never saw that poor woman until she was right in front of me. You can be sure that our entire congregation will be praying that she repented of her sins in those last precious moments of life. Eternal damnation is not a pleasant fate, I do assure you.”

Eternal damnation? Darla’s confusion deepened . . . and then, abruptly, she realized just who this woman might be.

“You’re my sister Linda’s neighbor, the one who wrote me that letter,” she choked out in disbelief.

The wavering lips firmed into a small smile that didn’t quite reach those wide blue eyes.

“Why, yes. Yes, I am,” she replied and stuck out a small, neatly manicured hand from the oversized sleeve of what Darla realized now was a choir robe. “I’m Marnie Jennings. My fellow brothers and sisters in Christ drove all the way here from the Lord’s Blessing Church in Dallas, Texas, to help you and all those poor children find salvation.”

EIGHT

“JAMES, YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS,” DARLA MUTTERED IN her store manager’s ear, casually drawing him aside from the others still inside the bookshop. She waited until they were near the front door, and softly added, “You know the driver of the van that killed Valerie Baylor? It turns out she is that same crazy woman who wrote the letter I showed you.”

“You mean, Mrs. Bobby Jennings of the Lord’s Blessing Church? You actually talked to her?” James stared at her, one eyebrow raised . . . for him, an indication of extreme surprise.

She nodded. “The highway patrol officer brought her over to me. He was taking her statement about the accident, and she told him that she knew me.”

Darla went on to relate her mercifully brief encounter with Marnie and the other congregation members a few minutes earlier. With their church van impounded by the police, they were stranded, at least for the night. For a single awful moment, Darla had feared that the woman was going to ask if she and her church posse could stay with her. Relief had swept her when Marnie had told her they had already been in contact with a local church who’d agreed to put them up until their van was returned to them.

“And thank God for that,” Darla finished, the words as heartfelt as any prayer of Marnie’s. “You should have heard the things she was saying about hellfire and damnation. I was serious when I told you she was a crazy woman.”

“So do the police think this was a deliberate attack on her part?”

“Surely not, or they would have arrested her . . . or at least held her longer for questioning.”

Darla hesitated. But, could it have been?

“No,” she repeated more firmly, “no way could she have known that Valerie would step out onto the street, and no way could she have timed it so exactly. Heck, no one even realized the dead woman was Valerie at first, with all those girls and their black capes. Awful as it is, I would guess Marnie’s not going to be charged with anything.”

Though Darla cynically wondered if all the nasty vibes Marnie and her gang had sent Valerie’s way could be considered a contributory factor in the tragedy. Changing the subject, she asked, “So how are things going in here?”

“Your Detective Reese has already taken my statement, as well as those of Lizzie, Mary Ann, Mavis, Mr. Foster, and Ms. Gables. Ms. Baylor’s bodyguard is the last person waiting to be interviewed . . . that is, besides you.”

Darla nodded. She saw that Everest now sat with Reese at the signing table, while everyone else was gathered near the register, where someone had arranged a few of the chairs in an impromptu circle. Mavis slumped desolately in one, flanked by Koji and Mary Ann, both of whom were murmuring words of consolation. Lizzie sat slightly apart, her nose in a new paperback romance, while Hillary sat texting away on her phone. The agent looked up as Darla and James approached. “I don’t know why they’re bothering to take our statements,” she said with more than a hint of pique. “We were all here inside when it happened.”

“Not necessarily,” was James’s smooth rejoinder. “Busy as we all were, I venture to say that no one was taking attendance. Besides which, almost everyone in the store with the exception of myself and those two gentlemen”—he gestured at Everest and then Koji—“was wearing a black cape, making it difficult to know who was where, and when.”

“And what the hell does that mean?” Hillary snapped back.

“Yes, what does that mean?” Lizzie echoed, a quaver in her voice as she looked up from her novel. “Are you saying one of us might have followed her outside?”

“I am merely pointing out that the police are obliged to check out all possibilities when someone is killed. But it does seem apparent that what happened to Ms. Baylor was, in fact, nothing more than a tragic accident.”

“Are you certain about that, James?”

This came from Mary Ann, who had left Mavis’s side and now was busy wrapping the uneaten food. As all eyes turned her way, she calmly went on, “I heard there was some girl who was causing trouble out there on the street. In fact, I overheard Officer Reese say that she might have pushed Valerie into traffic on purpose.”

“It’s Detective Reese, ma’am,” the man in question corrected as he approached the group. “And all I said was that one of the witnesses claimed she saw what she believed to be a deliberate push. We don’t know for certain yet exactly what happened tonight.”

“But are you saying that maybe it was murder?” Lizzie’s quaver had morphed into a squeak, while her fingers fluttered at the ties that held her black cape around her throat.