Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

“It’s about that protester with the sign who was hanging around the Valerie Baylor autographing . . . except, she wasn’t protesting because she believed in a cause. It seems someone paid the girl to stand there and hold her sign.”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded page.

“She claims she answered an ad on TheEverythingList—you know, one of those online classified services. We checked it out and found the ad in question. I’ve printed it out.”

He paused and held out the paper. “Would you mind taking a look and telling me if you recognize the email address on it?”

Lizzie reached out a reluctant hand, as if he were proffering a rattlesnake instead of a single sheet of twenty-pound bond. She took a look, barely long enough to read the few lines, and then thrust it back at him, her manner one of defiance now.

“No, no, I don’t recognize it.”

“You might want to rethink that answer, ma’am. Your employer”—he glanced at Darla—“says that she sent a message to that same email address, and you replied. And my department traced it back to your home address.”

The belligerence seeped from the woman like a bicycle tire going flat. She let her bag and sweater drop to the floor while she turned a pleading look on Darla. “I tried to tell you before what Val did to me. Back in college, she stole my first manuscript—the one about the girl who goes to the police academy and then arrests her ex-fiancé—and she published it as hers.”

“The Lady Cop and the Collar,” Jake exclaimed with a snap of her fingers, causing Darla and Reese to stare at her in surprise. “I read that one. You mean to say it was really your book and not Valerie Baylor’s?”

Lizzie nodded, seemingly intent on reviving her previous air of bravado. “She stole it . . . I mean, literally stole my manuscript out of my bag one night after class,” she explained, sniffling. “I had it packed up in a Bloomingdale’s box, ready to mail it out the next day. Valerie suggested we all stop for a drink after class to celebrate, but she left before I did. I didn’t even know the manuscript was gone until I went to pay my tab. Everyone told me it must have been someone in the club who thought there was something valuable in the Bloomie’s box, but I knew the truth. I should have been the famous author, not that—that thief. So I called her on it. What’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong,” Jake went on in a firm yet sympathetic tone, “is that Valerie Baylor is dead, and we have what might be video evidence showing someone shoved her off the sidewalk and into the van’s path. And, unfortunately, you had the motive and the opportunity to do it.”

“But I didn’t!” Lizzie wailed, bravado forgotten as tears pooled in her brown eyes. “I wouldn’t murder anyone. What about that girl I paid? How do you know she didn’t push Valerie just because?”

“Reese has spoken to her already, and he has cab company records and statements from witnesses that put her away from the scene before the accident.”

“But I was inside the store the whole time during the autographing. Darla, you saw me helping James. Tell them I was here in the store when Valerie was killed! Tell them I wouldn’t have shoved her,” she pleaded.

Darla didn’t hesitate. “Of course you couldn’t kill anyone, Lizzie. I don’t believe that for a moment.”

And she didn’t. True, she’d known Lizzie for only a few months and had often found her prone to melodrama, but she had never seen any indication of malice in the woman. But could she say with any certainty that Lizzie had never left the store?

Now, she did pause. She herself had been in and out several times during the event, and with the glut of black capes it had been difficult to distinguish anyone. And during the time that Valerie had vanished on her supposed smoke break, she had noticed that a few other people had been missing as well. Had Lizzie been one of them? She simply couldn’t recall.

“I’m sorry, Lizzie,” she finally answered, feeling equally as deflated as her employee, “but if I had to testify in a court of law, I couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty that you were inside when Valerie Baylor was hit.”

The other woman’s features crumpled, and she bent her head, shoulders shaking. Silent tears trickled down her cheeks, catching in the gently swaying edges of her sleek brown bob. Staring at her, Darla felt like weeping, too. She turned to Reese.

“Are you going to arrest her?” she asked, choking a little over the words.

“I’d like to take her down to the station for questioning. Ms. Cavanaugh, will you come with me?”

Lizzie gave a soft wail by way of response but nodded. Darla hurried over to the counter and pulled a business card out from her Rolodex, and then rushed back to where Lizzie stood.

“This is the number for a criminal attorney who was a friend of Great-Aunt Dee,” she said, pressing the card into the woman’s limp hand. “If you don’t want to answer the cops’ questions, tell them you have a right to ask for a lawyer, and then call him.”

“Don’t worry, Darla,” came Reese’s dry response from behind her.

She turned to see him hanging up his cell phone. He added, “I don’t know how they do it back in Texas, but here we’re pretty good about reading people their rights and all that official stuff. Right now, this is all informal, and Lizzie is coming in of her own free will. If for some reason we get beyond that point, and she decides she needs an attorney, she’ll get one.”

“Oh, right,” she mumbled, having forgotten for a moment that he was one of the cops in question. She gave the woman a quick hug and stepped back to let Reese take her by the arm.

His expression had morphed back into the same neutral mask he’d worn while acting as security for the autographing. His grip on Lizzie, however, was firm, and Darla recalled his comments about not wanting to take part in another sprint. He nodded in her direction.

“I put a call in for a car. Take a look outside and see if it’s here yet.”

Darla did as instructed. Sure enough, a patrol car had pulled up to the curb, and the officer already had the rear passenger door open to the sidewalk.

“It’s here,” she said with a nod and opened the shop door.

Jake had already grabbed up Lizzie’s abandoned cardigan and purse, tucking the former into the latter before hanging the bag from the woman’s free shoulder. Reese walked her toward the front.

And so the lion captures his prey , Darla told herself, though the realization brought dismay rather than satisfaction. Lizzie kept her gaze downcast, not acknowledging her as the pair passed by and then started down the steps. She waited until Reese had safely loaded the woman into the backseat and then climbed in up front beside the officer. Then, with a sigh, she shut the door and turned to Jake.

“I still can’t believe it. Do you really think that Lizzie could shove Valerie Baylor into traffic like that?”

“She admitted to placing the ad, and she disguised herself so that Janie wouldn’t recognize her,” Jake reminded her. “That’s a lot of trouble to go to, if all she wanted to do was prove a point.”

“But murder!?”

Darla sank into Jake’s favorite beanbag chair and shook her head. “As far as the protester, I guess that makes sense. I’m sure she was afraid I’d fire her if she went out and held up the signs herself.”

“And would you have?”

“No . . . yes . . . maybe,” she replied in frustration, realizing as she did so that she was echoing her words to Reese about her little poltergeist problem. “All I know is that I have to fire her now, damn it.”

“Listen, Darla,” Jake told her, “I’ve seen people kill other people over a five-dollar bet. I once arrested a guy who stabbed his wife to death because his steak wasn’t cooked right. They didn’t plan to do it—at least, that’s what they all swore—but their victims were dead, all the same. Something about impulse control . . . some people just don’t have it.”