Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“Did Reese believe her?”

The older woman shrugged. “He’s hedging his bets, but I think he’s inclined to accept her at her word. All I know for sure is that they didn’t charge her with any crime, so she’s free to do her own thing for the moment.”

“So who’s the person who hired her?” Darla persisted.

Jake rose from the steps and gave an elaborate stretch. The routine reminded Darla of Hamlet, minus any legs thrown over any shoulders. Kink-free now, she said, “That’s where it gets interesting. Your girl claims she answered a help-wanted ad for a performance artist on TheEverythingList.”

TheEverythingList, Darla knew, was a popular Internet want-ad site that listed, well, everything. It was a place where people bought and sold and hired and advertised availability by means of online postings. Darla had used the site herself, or, rather, she’d had Lizzie post some of the store’s old fixtures for sale and found it an easy way to unload unwanted goods.

“Since she’s a theater major at Tisch,” Jake went on, referring to the well-known school of the arts in New York City proper, “this gig was right up her alley. She got her instructions by email, and only met the person who hired her when it came time to collect her first payment. They hooked up at a fast-food joint.”

“Don’t tell me,” Darla interrupted with a snort, “the guy she met was in disguise.”

“Actually, the guy was a woman, but otherwise you’re right. Janie says she was wearing a scarf and dark glasses, so Reese didn’t get much of a description out of her. From what she said, the woman claimed to work for Valerie’s publisher. The whole protest thing was supposed to be a publicity stunt.”

“But Valerie didn’t need publicity,” Darla pointed out. “Besides, Koji Foster was her publicist, and he certainly didn’t indicate he was in on the joke the night of the signing.”

Jake nodded. “I think we can pretty well eliminate the possibility that Scarf Lady was legit. The emails were sent from one of those free email accounts, not from the publishing house. And, of course, the payment was all in cash. Janie’s a little ticked, too, because she’s still owed fifty bucks for last night, and the so-called publicist wasn’t at the fast-food place this morning to pay like she said she’d be. Reese said he’d passed on the email address to one of the department’s IT guys to track. But here’s the real kicker—”

Her words were cut short by a sudden chorus of angry horns as someone slowed a bit too long while passing the Valerie shrine. The driver who’d drawn the ire of his fellows responded with a single-finger salute. Jake shook her head and shouted a few choice Jersey-isms at them all.

“We’re going to be pulling more bodies off the street if this keeps up. I’m going to call a friend of mine in Traffic and see what they can do. So, where was I?”

“The real kicker,” Darla helpfully supplied.

Jake hesitated, and then went on, “According to Reese, Janie claims that Scarf Lady spoke with a southern accent.”

Something in her tone made Darla hesitate as well. Then understanding dawned, and she gasped. “Don’t tell me that Reese thinks I’m Scarf Lady?”

“Well, he did kinda float that theory for about five seconds, until I told him he was being an idiot,” Jake admitted.

At Darla’s yelp of disbelief, she grinned a little before continuing. “Of course, if you think about it, it’s not that far-fetched. I mean, drumming up a publicity stunt like that in advance of the signing could get people talking, which equals you selling more books. Besides, the first rule of police work is that everyone’s a suspect until they’re not. But I told him how upset you were over the whole protest thing, and that I was pretty sure you weren’t the second coming of Meryl Streep who could fool me. I think I convinced him, but heads up in case he wants to put you in a photo lineup.”

“Great,” Darla muttered. Then the obvious thought hit her. “What about Marnie? Talk about a prime suspect. Southern accent, hated Valerie Baylor, ran her over with her van ,” she persisted, ticking off the points on her fingers.

Jake shrugged. “True, but Janie’s first meeting with the Scarf Lady was a week before the autographing. Even if Marnie had someone else mail that letter for her to throw us off with the postmark, she drove up here with a carful of other people. The timeline’s off. Nope, we gotta keep looking.” She glanced at her watch and added, “Reese is going to drop by my place with pizza and an update around six. You’re welcome to join us if you want, listen to his theories, protest your innocence and all.”

“Sure, why not? Nothing better than spending an evening dodging suspicion with your friends.”

So saying, she stood and spared a final look at the most recent worshippers gathered at the spontaneous Church of Valerie. Jake could have them and the traffic snarl. Darla was going to grab some quiet downtime in the peaceful confines of her third-story apartment.

Peace, however, was not quite what she found when she unlocked her front door.

FOURTEEN

“HAMLET!”

Darla stared in dismay at the havoc that had been wrought in her short absence from the apartment. To be fair, the chaos was limited to one corner of her living room, right in front of the ceiling-height bookcase along the wall. Still, it was significant.

Fully half the books—classics, mostly, along with a few biographies and trendy self-help volumes—had been pulled down from the upper shelves and lay in piles upon the floor. As for the culprit, he’d not bothered to make tracks. Instead, he sat with regal stiffness between two neat stacks of volumes tall as he, his green eyes fixed upon her as if daring her to say anything.

She dared.

“You little hellion! What possessed you? You’re a bookstore cat—you should have more respect for the written word. I swear it’s going to take me an hour to put everything back in the proper order.”

Still huffing, she set down her purse and started toward the jumble. She should have taken the squirt gun to him earlier in the store, when he’d pulled down the Capote book. Given that there had been no consequences that first time, he apparently had decided that snagging books from shelves was an entertaining way to pass an afternoon.

Her irritation mingled with dismay, however, as another explanation occurred to her—since she’d never seen him be destructive just for the fun of it before, what if there had been mice in the bookcases, and Hamlet had been trying to catch them? She might have to call in an exterminator for the entire building. After all, where there’s one nasty little rodent, there’s bound to be—

She abruptly halted, swept by one of those something’s-wrong-but-I-can’t-quite-put-my-finger-on-it moments. Hamlet had not moved, but remained seated like an Egyptian statue, the books on either side of him serving as matching columns. She swore he was trying to communicate something . . . something other than his usual disdain, that was.

Then it struck her.

Hamlet could easily leap to the uppermost shelf, and he had already demonstrated that he could pull books out of a bookcase. But even a cat as clever as he lacked the facility to stack those volumes into such carefully arranged towers. So if he hadn’t been playing architect with the collected works of Austen, Brontë, and Dickens, then who had?

“Hamlet?” she repeated, far more softly this time. With a small shiver, she gazed about the room. Someone had been in her apartment while she was gone, and for some reason had searched her bookcase. The question was, why? And, more important, was that person still in the apartment with her?