Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

The wording was barely visible in the dying light: “Valerie Baylor Plagiarized My Story . ”

“Yeah, I meant to tell you about that,” Jake said, her tone apologetic, while Darla stared in growing dismay. The girl stood there motionless, reminding Darla of one of those living statue performance artists she’d seen busking at an art festival she’d attended down in Austin once. “She’s been standing there all afternoon. Guess she’s not a Haunted High fan, even though she looks like a Valerie Baylor doppelganger.”

“But what if she’s still there Sunday, when Valerie and her entourage arrive? They might cancel the autographing!” Darla’s dismay was now wavering on the brink of mild panic. “Can’t you have one of your cop friends arrest her for trespassing or something?”

“Technically, we could probably roust her for loitering or for protesting without a permit, but she’ll probably find some ACLU backup who would hit back with that whole free-speech thing and make us all look bad. So if she shows up again on Sunday, I say ignore her.”

Darla considered Jake’s words for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Even if she’s jumping up and down waving that sign of hers, no one will notice her with five hundred fan girls all clamoring to get Valerie’s autograph. Without the sign, she’ll look like just another fan in costume.”

Half an hour later, having taken care of the night drop, the pair headed back to Thai Me Up for the weekly special Jake had suggested . They managed to score a table by the front window . Seated on high stools, they worked their way through appetizers of coconut milk soup while they waited for the rest of their order. Jake finished first, giving a satisfied smack as she pushed away her now-empty cup. Then she glanced out the window.

“I wonder what that whole plagiarizing thing is about,” she mused in the direction of where the anonymous girl had been standing down the block.

Darla reluctantly followed her gaze. It was dark enough now that the girl—assuming she was still there—was hidden in the shadows of the brownstone row. Good, stay hidden until after the autographing , she thought, sending “go away” vibes in that direction.

Putting aside her own empty soup cup, Darla replied, “It seems like every time someone comes out of nowhere with a blockbuster book, there’s half a dozen other people following after them insisting they wrote the story first. There were those guys who claimed The Da Vinci Code was lifted from their research, and a couple of other people who swore they wrote about sparkly vampires and boy wizards and single girls in big cities years before they became bestsellers for someone else. Most of the times, their claims are bogus and the similarities coincidental. After all, how many ways are there to describe a vampire or a love scene?”

“Love scene, eh? Well, how about—”

“Or, sometimes it turns out to be true,” Darla rushed to cut her friend short, knowing from the other woman’s grin that she was prepared to launch into a blush-inducing recital of adjectives to prove Darla wrong. “An author gets behind on a multibook contract and can’t seem to come up with a decent idea, so he—or she—figures why not crib part of their story from someone else’s book? Preferably one a dozen or so years old and that came and went without much fanfare. A paragraph here, a paragraph there, just enough to get over the rough parts. Most of the times, no one knows, unless a fan happens to have read the book the author stole from and realizes what’s happened. If I recall, there were a few juicy lawsuits with some pretty big romance-genre names back in the nineties.”

“You sure know a lot about this sort of thing, for someone who only just inherited a bookstore,” Jake said, her surprise evident in her lifted brows.

Darla smiled. “You think Great-Aunt Dee would have left me her store if I didn’t know jack about books? I’ve been a voracious reader since first grade. When I was in high school and all the other girls were reading Tiger Beat and other teen magazines, I was reading Publishers Weekly . And while I was studying for my business degree, I earned a couple of semesters’ tuition money working at a big chain bookstore. Heck, I’ll even buy supper if you can stump me on an author or book title.”

They played that game for a few minutes, with Darla triumphantly giving correct answers each time, much to Jake’s exaggerated dismay. They called it quits only when their teenage waitress returned and set down two heaping plates of beef pad thai.

Darla had noticed earlier that the girl wore a pink T-shirt with the title of the first Haunted High novel, Dead But Still Doing Homework , emblazoned across the front. The title was appropriate, since the lead character in the series was a high school freshman killed in a freak accident on Homecoming night, but who continued to hang out with her friends despite the fact she was now a ghost.

Darla waited until the waitress was headed back toward the kitchen before remarking to Jake, “I hear that this signing is actually part of Valerie Baylor’s ‘Up Yours’ tour.”

“Really? Do tell,” Jake urged through a mouthful of noodles.

Darla set down her own fork, having had it drummed into her as a child that one did not chew and talk at the same time.

“Remember I told you before that she had published a few category romances? It was about ten or twelve years ago when the first one came out under the name Val Vixen. The books were well reviewed, but she didn’t get any sort of push from her publisher, and most of the big book chains turned her down when she asked to do signings in their stores.”

“Val Vixen?” Jake gave a considering frown as she slurped down another forkful. “You know, I think I used to read her books. She had a series featuring lady cops that was decent. The first one was pretty funny. A gal breaks up with her fiancé and goes to the police academy, and when she graduates, her first official bust turns out to be her ex. Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she added with a snort when Darla raised a brow. “You work a high-stress job, you need a little escapist reading.”

“No, I think it’s great,” Darla protested, quite sincerely. Already, she’d seen her share of customers who would load up on the romances but then insist they be bagged so no one else could see what they were buying. The old written-by-women-for-women-so-it’s-got-to-be-sneered-at syndrome, she thought, realizing that becoming a bookseller had also raised her feminist sensibilities a few notches.

“Anyhow, only a few of the independents, including Great-Aunt Dee, bothered to host her anytime she had a new book out,” she went on. “The publisher finally dropped her after a few books, and she quit writing romance. But when she hit it big with her Haunted High series writing as Valerie Baylor, she remembered which stores had treated her right back in the day, and which ones had blown her off. When her new publisher put together her big tour, Valerie told them that the only places she would make appearances were the independent stores and any place where Val Vixen had been allowed to sign. As for everyone else . . . up theirs.”

“Good for her,” Jake declared through a bite of egg roll. “Sounds like my kind of girl.”

“Well, maybe not. Apparently it’s not only the bookstores that snubbed her that get the ‘up yours’ treatment. Rumor is that all the fame and success has gone to her head, and that she’s turned into a real bitch on wheels. She travels with a whole entourage—makeup, publicity, personal assistant, even a bodyguard—and all of them hate her guts.”