Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“Meh, a bitch, I can handle. It’s those five hundred teenage girls that have me worried,” Jake said with a grin. “By the way, did I tell you I’ve strong-armed an off-duty cop friend of mine to help me work crowd control for you? I think everything is in place now.”

She gave Darla a quick rundown of the steps she was taking to keep the potential chaos down to a workable level that weekend.

Given the bookstore’s small size, only the first five hundred people in line would receive one of the coveted numbered wristbands that would allow access to the event. That had been fine by Valerie’s publicity representative, who said that the author preferred to limit her crowds, so as not to get overwhelmed. The waiting line would start at the bottom of the bookstore’s front steps and stretch down the block, with barricades dividing the sidewalk lengthwise, so that regular pedestrian traffic could pass. Jake had also arranged for traffic control in case the sight of several hundred teenage girls proved a driving distraction. To keep the crowd entertained during their wait, Darla planned to have Lizzie periodically hand out trivia quizzes and raffle tickets for drawings of Haunted High memorabilia. Inside, they would keep the fans orderly by means of the old velvet-rope routine.

“If we start right at seven and keep the line moving, we should be able to get everyone through by ten o’clock, latest,” Jake finished with a satisfied nod. “The outside stuff is already cleared with the city, and the barricades will be delivered Sunday morning. Reese and I will want to do a final sweep of the shop around six, so if you close early at five, we should be fine. Oh, and I’ve also made arrangements for a couple of patrol cars to make a few extra drive-bys of the area once the signing begins.”

They finalized the details over servings of bean curd ice cream; then, sharing mutual groans at their overindulgence, they each paid their own bill and headed back home. Darla breathed a sigh of relief to see that the Lone Protester, as she’d come to think of the Valerie clone, had apparently abandoned her post for the night.

Once they reached the brownstone, Jake waited on the sidewalk while Darla trotted up a second, smaller set of steps situated to the right of the bookstore’s main entry. At the top of that stoop was a more modest glass door that opened into her private entrance hall. It was a convenient arrangement in that she didn’t need to cut through the store to reach the two flights of stairs leading up to her apartment but could enter directly from the street. Even better, an inner door connected that hallway to the shop, which meant she could travel from home to business at any time of day or night without ever leaving her building. Talk about an easy commute!

After Darla had locked the outer door behind her, she returned the favor by watching through the mottled glass until Jake made her ungainly way down the half dozen steps to her garden apartment, as Jake had informed her the basement dwelling was euphemistically called. Once Jake had flashed the outside light twice—the older woman’s signal that she was safely inside—Darla gave a satisfied nod.

“Goils gotta look out for other goils,” she reminded herself with a grin as she managed a fair imitation of her friend’s streetwise accent. Then, flipping on the replica Tiffany lamp that sat on the hall table, she unlocked her mailbox and grabbed up the handful of mail. A reflexive glance at the blinking red light on the keypad installed beside the door leading into the shop reassured her that the store alarm was properly set. Tucking the mail beneath her arm, she started up the two flights of stairs leading to her apartment.

TWO

BARELY HAD DARLA TAKEN HER FIRST STEP UP THE STAIRS when a sleek black shadow dashed between her legs and vanished around the curve at the first landing. Heart pounding, she grabbed for the banister with her free hand and managed to avoid stumbling.

“Damn it, Hamlet, you sorry little so-and-so!” she yelled up the steps after him.

The stair race was one of his favorite tricks, along with burrowing in her underwear drawer, using her jar of expensive face cream as a soccer ball, and assorted other mischief designed to torment a hapless human. Bolstered by fond childhood memories of her family’s placid orange tabby Topsey, whose worst offense had been leaving the occasional dead mouse on the back step, Darla felt certain that none of this was instinctual cat behavior, but instead was carefully plotted in Hamlet’s little feline brain. As she’d told Jake only the day before, if the cat had opposable thumbs, he’d be running a major corporation . . . that, or ruling a third-world country.

By the time she reached the second landing, Hamlet was already seated like a small deity in front of her apartment door: body erect, tail tightly wrapped around his body, and green gaze focused with luminous intensity upon the knob as if willing it to open. Which, of course, it did when Darla inserted the key.

“Must be nice to have your own personal doorwoman,” she muttered, kicking off her shoes and dropping the mail on the antique sideboard. Then, well-trained human that she was, Darla bypassed the combination foyer/living room/dining nook that comprised most of the third floor and obediently followed Hamlet into the sleek galley kitchen. There, she scrubbed out his cut-glass drinking bowl and refilled it with filtered water.

A sharp meow stopped her just as she was about to set it down on his woven grass place mat there in the tiny butler’s pantry.

“Sorry, I forgot,” she apologized with exaggerated dismay, punching the button on the refrigerator to dispense a handful of ice—crushed, not cubed—into his lordship’s drinking water. After checking to make sure his food bowl was full (surprisingly, he preferred the basic store-brand kibble to the fancy stuff in a can), she left Hamlet to his evening repast and flopped down on Great-Aunt Dee’s horsehair couch.

As always, Darla also failed to remember that the century-old hide retained something of its original wild nature, in that it had a tendency to poke through clothing and stab at delicate flesh. Grabbing the well-worn quilt that was folded over its curved back, she spread it over the offending cushions and then flopped again, this time with a sigh. She’d not yet eased into a formal evening ritual; in fact, though she’d lived there almost half a year now, the apartment still felt unfamiliar enough to her that she often felt she was merely house-sitting for her aunt and would be hopping on a plane for home in the next few days.

Part of the problem was that, when she’d moved into the place, it had been pretty much as her great-aunt had left it . . . not surprisingly, since the old woman had simply passed away one night in her sleep. Luckily, James and her aunt’s friend, Mary Ann, had cleared the kitchen of all perishables and tactfully disposed of the mattress where she’d breathed her last. But Dee’s personal effects had still filled the drawers and shelves for Darla to sort through. She had dutifully taken on the task, alternately chuckling and raising her brows over various of her aunt’s possessions she had discovered in the process. She’d also taken an immediate vow to destroy or dispose of anything of her own that she would be embarrassed to have found should she suddenly depart life without any warning.

Of course, her late great-aunt’s brownstone had not been totally unknown to her when she’d taken up residence there. Back when she was in grade school, she and her mother had occasionally paid visits to New York to see the original Darla Pettistone, after whom Darla had been named. By then, however, her great-aunt was on her third well-to-do husband and had long since shortened her given name to Dee, claiming that “Darla” was too quaint for a woman of her status. She had also abandoned the blond beehive that every good Texas female of her generation had proudly sported, instead wearing her hair cropped fashionably short and hennaed a blinding shade of red that made Darla’s auburn hair appear positively subdued in comparison.