Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. His muttered conversation with the person on the other end took only a few seconds before he hung up and addressed the women again.

“I’ve got a buddy at the cab company who’ll call me back in a minute. Now, don’t get your hopes up,” he cautioned as Darla allowed herself a celebratory fist pump. “Even together, all this isn’t exactly what I’d call a confession, but maybe your hellcat over there”—he gestured at Hamlet, who responded with a yawn—“has a knack for police work. Darla, do you have a computer here with Internet access we could use?”

“Sure.”

Feeling vindicated, Darla slid up the rolltop’s slatted panel to reveal a sleek laptop within the oversized cubby. She booted up the computer as Reese abandoned his seat and headed in her direction.

“I assume you want to drive?” she said with a deliberately bright smile, vacating her seat.

Appearing not in the least chastened, he simply nodded and sat down. While Jake and Darla both peered over his shoulders, he entered the address of a popular video-upload site.

“Like I said before, with all the kids and their camera phones, I figured there’d be plenty of video from the autographing floating around. I checked when I got home last night and found at least fifty new Valerie Baylor clips that had been uploaded to YouTube. I must have watched forty-nine of them before I found something.”

He typed in a search string, and a series of tiny screen shots appeared on the page. He clicked on one, which pulled up a black rectangle tagged at eleven minutes, seven seconds that was labeled “Me and Alexa and Bridgette and Emily waiting for Valerie Baylor.” The clip loaded to focus on a red-lipsticked, braces-filled mouth that presumably belonged to the “me” of the title. The lips pursed in a series of air kisses, while girlish shrieks and giggles served as an audio backdrop.

After a few seconds, the amateur videographer turned her camera from her dental work to the grainy, close-up faces of several other shrieking teens, equally red-lipped and grinning. Wincing a little, Reese dialed down the volume. Now, the clip was a silent show of black-caped girls chattering, dancing, and mugging for the camera. Despite the nighttime venue, however, the ambient light along the street had provided a surprisingly decent view of the action.

While Darla and Jake watched expectantly, Reese took on the role of voice-over narrator. “You’ve got the one girl filming her three friends”—he pointed out two blondes and one brunette, all of whom appeared about fourteen years old—“and you can see the antique store behind them. That’s our establishing shot. Now, the girl with the camera phone swings around to show the steps leading up to Darla’s store, and then goes back to her friends.”

“Ugh, I’m getting dizzy,” Jake complained as the video swirled just as he predicted. “Another Spielberg, the kid ain’t.”

“It goes on like this for a while,” Reese said. “Now, around the nine-minute mark is where we get down to business. You’ll see Ms. Baylor walking toward us in a minute. Watch.”

Darla and Jake obediently leaned closer as the camera girl apparently ducked beneath the barricade. The video jumped about again for a few dizzying seconds, and Darla felt a bit of momentary queasiness herself. Then the camera focused in again, showing a long view of the street leading away from the store.

The line of blue barricades was clearly visible, though the youthful fans lining the sidewalk behind those sawhorses were almost indistinguishable from each other with their uniform black garb. Just as Darla recalled it, they had managed by this point in the evening to edge the barricade closer to the street, leaving barely enough space on the walk for a pedestrian to squeeze by.

Knowing what was to come, she focused on the street traffic with an uneasy eye. A steady stream of vehicles rushed toward the camera, the view unimpeded because of alternate-side parking restrictions on that side of the street. While not traveling at expressway speeds—and, in fact, they were going slower than the posted speed limit due to the gawking factor—it was apparent that those cars and trucks were moving swiftly enough that no amount of emergency braking could stop them in sufficient time should a pedestrian dart into traffic.

“There,” Reese said, diverting her attention back to the sidewalk.

He pointed toward a black-caped figure walking on the wrong side of the sawhorses, moving toward the camera. The figure sidestepped a concrete trash container at the curb, the movement revealing a second similarly caped figure following behind the first. A flash of white broke the latter’s black silhouette, and by dint of squinting Darla recognized a large rectangular shape that appeared tucked beneath the second figure’s arm.

The protest sign.

“Which one’s Valerie?” Jake demanded, her nose almost touching the screen now.

Darla had leaned closer, too.

“That must be her in the back, because she was holding the sign when she was hit.” Then, remembering the witness statements that Jake had mentioned, she amended, “But maybe that’s her in the front, since some of the kids said they saw her struggling with the protester.”

“Uh, it’s hard to say, since you still can’t see any faces,” Reese admitted, cranking up the volume again so that the sounds of laughing and shrieking girls filled the room again. “Now, watch. The one with the sign is going to grab the other one.”

As he spoke, the first caped figure paused and turned, as if sensing trouble. The pursuer swiftly closed the gap between them and reached out to grab her quarry’s arm with her free hand. With the other, she gesticulated with the sign that she clutched, seemingly forcing the other to read it. The pair was perhaps a dozen feet from the camera now, Darla judged—close enough to tell both pursuer and pursued were of similar height, though the billowing capes made it difficult to distinguish their builds. The first figure shook off the other’s grasp and made as if to turn.

And that was when a trio of grinning teenage faces shoved their way into a close-up, all but blocking the scene going on behind them.

“Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” Jake exclaimed, the words echoing Darla’s own annoyed reaction. She thrust a strong finger toward the screen, pointing at a gap between two of the mugging girls. “There. You can see Valerie and your protester, but I still can’t tell which one is which. But it does look like some sort of a struggle going on. And, wait, they’re moving closer to the curb. Crud, and now the damn kids are blocking the view again!”

Listening to Jake’s blow-by-blow description, Darla gnawed her lower lip in equal frustration. Not that she was looking forward to watching Valerie Baylor’s grisly end; she simply wanted to know the full story of what had happened to the author. Accident, or something more sinister? And where was the white van being driven by Marnie?

Sure enough, in the line of oncoming traffic Darla spied a large white vehicle headed on its inevitable path toward what would be the accident scene. She glanced at the progress bar again and saw that only a few seconds now remained of the video. She sucked in a deep breath and steeled herself for what she knew was coming.

The moment of truth proved distinctly anticlimactic.

Darla managed another glimpse of the grappling pair when one of the mugging teens bent with exaggerated laughter. The girl bounced back into the frame almost immediately, however, once more blotting out the action behind her. Then, so swiftly that she almost missed it, Darla saw a flutter of black that must have been Valerie’s cape spiral out of camera range behind the girl. At the same instant, though barely audible over the block-party bedlam, Darla heard the unmistakable squeal of automobile brakes being frantically applied.