Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

Watching the taxi speed off with the girl inside, Darla had made an immediate vow to join a gym and get back into shape.

Now, back in her apartment, she was fortifying herself with a tall glass of sweet tea as she related the details of her missed encounter to the detective and Jake. Both were perched on the prickly horsehair couch while Darla paced impatiently about the small room. Reese had exchanged last night’s head-to-toe black for a fashionably tight and faded pair of jeans topped by a short-sleeved, navy Henley. He’d stripped off the black motorcycle jacket that he’d walked in wearing—a jacket that looked like it had seen the asphalt at some point—giving her a good look at the bulging biceps she recalled from the previous evening. Remembering, too, that she was still ticked at the guy for his attitude last night, she made a point of not paying attention to said muscles, or the fact that this vaguely retro look suited him.

To her credit, Jake hadn’t yet cracked a smile over the situation, though she was surveying Darla with a tolerant expression that spoke volumes. She set down her own tea glass on the coffee table and propped her Docs-clad feet beside it.

“All right, kid, let me catch up here, since I came to the party late,” the older woman began. “You say you saw this girl from a third-story window half a block away, but you’re sure she’s the same girl from the other day who you also saw only from a distance. No offense, but that’s pretty thin as far as eyewitness testimony goes. How could you be sure it was her?”

“Right,” Reese interjected, jabbing his pen in the air for emphasis. Though technically off-duty, he had whipped out a notebook and was scribbling in it as she described her encounter. “I was there last night and saw the same girl, too—except I didn’t really see her face, because she was wearing some sort of hood. No way could I pick her out of a crowd. Jake’s the only one who actually ever talked to her, as far as I know.”

“I know it was her,” Darla insisted. “I could tell from her body language, from the way she stood.”

When the pair merely looked at her expectantly, she shook her head.

“Look, back in high school I had a friend who was nearsighted. She couldn’t wear contact lenses for some reason, and she was too vain to wear glasses. But it didn’t matter. She told me she could see someone clear down the hall and tell who it was, even though they were blurry, just by the way they moved. Same principle here. Besides, isn’t it telling that the girl took off running when I tried to talk to her?”

“Uh-huh.” Reese flipped his notebook shut. “Which is what I’d do if I had a crazy woman chasing after—ouch!”

Clapping a hand to his neck, he swung around to glare at Hamlet. The feline lay sprawled atop the sofa back, conveniently within paws’ reach of the man but with both those appendages neatly tucked against his chest.

“Your damn cat scratched me,” the detective claimed in an accusing tone. Hamlet stared back at him, green eyes unflinching and round with innocence. Darla knew from experience that this likely meant the hardheaded feline indeed was guilty as charged, despite none of them having actually witnessed the supposed attack.

She suppressed a smile as she fleetingly reflected on the concept of instant karma as it applied to Reese. Hamlet was owed a nice treat for that one. She and Hamlet might not be bosom buddies, but apparently he didn’t care for a stranger dissing his human roommate.

Aloud, however, she made the appropriate noises of concerned dismay.

“Bad kitty!” she declared and shook a finger in the cat’s direction. Then, to Reese, she added, “Are you bleeding? Here, let me take a look. I’ve got bandages if you need them.”

“Don’t be such a big baby, Reese,” Jake said before he could answer. “I can see from here it’s just a nick. Hell, I’ve had worse paper cuts than that. Believe me, you’ll live.”

From the expression on the detective’s face, Darla guessed he was counting to ten. After a few seconds of silence, and through gritted teeth, he said, “Thanks for everyone’s concern . . . and yes, I’ll live. But that spawn of Garfield better hope I don’t come down with cat scratch fever.”

The detective shot the spawn in question a cold look and removed himself to one of a pair of ladder-back chairs situated a safe distance from the feline. Straddling it—chair, not cat—and tapping his notebook against his knee, he said, “So let’s assume the girl you saw is your Lone Protester. That could be interesting in light of some things I found online last night. Problem is, your sighting doesn’t do us much good, not unless you got the cab number.”

“Gotcha covered.” Darla rattled off the information, which she had taken care to memorize as soon as she realized that the girl had escaped her. While Reese scribbled that down, Jake gave her a smile of approval.

“First-rate work, kid. Now, I don’t suppose your girl conveniently dropped her wallet or anything, did she?”

“Not her wallet . . . but I have something almost as good.”

Setting down her tea, Darla went over to her old-fashioned rolltop desk. Propped atop it was a large white note card illustrated with a single red rose. Careful to hold it by one corner, she handed off the note to Jake, who’d dragged herself up from the couch to follow.

“I saw her put this on a pile of black carnations along with a bunch of other cards,” she explained, trying to sound blasé, though in fact her discovery had only bolstered her earlier suspicions. “I stopped to pick it up, and that’s how she got away from me.”

Which sounded better than admitting she’d been outrun.

Jake squinted at the card a moment and then read aloud, “Sorry for what I did, I needed the money . ”

“I told you there was something fishy going on,” Darla exclaimed. “Maybe everyone was wrong about Marnie and her gang being innocent victims, too. Maybe the Lord’s Blessing Church paid her to help bump off Valerie.”

Her enthusiasm for her hypothesis building, Darla rushed on, “It all makes sense now. The girl lured Valerie outside with the whole protest act, waited for the right moment and, pow . . . off the curb Valerie went. Marnie and her van do the dirty work, the girl vanishes into the crowd of fans, and the police chalk off Valerie’s death as an accident. Case closed. So what do you think?”

“I think you need to take a deep breath and leave the investigating to the professionals,” Reese answered her, not bothering to suppress a dismissive snort that promptly burst Darla’s sleuthing bubble. “There’s a little thing called evidence . . . and a random Hallmark card isn’t enough to convict someone with.”

“Whatever,” Darla muttered. “But you have to admit, that card is more than the police have.”

“Now, now, children . . . play nice,” Jake said with an absent frown, still studying the card in question. Darla noted that she, too, was taking care not to touch more than a corner of it. She reviewed it a moment longer and then looked back up at Darla. “I hate to ask, but how about we take a look at the lipstick note that Hamlet found?”

While Jake explained to Reese how Hamlet had found the discarded paper, Darla opened the desk’s top drawer and triumphantly handed over the page, still in its plastic protector.

Jake scrutinized both documents side by side before walking them over to Reese. “Doesn’t look like the same handwriting, but it’s kind of a coincidence that we found this, too. Take a look.”

Reese did as ordered, and a flicker of interest replaced his previous expression of forced tolerance. “Okay, let’s see if we can track down that cab.”