Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

Darla frowned, trying to recall if she’d ever seen Lizzie lash out at anyone but unable to think of an example. On the other hand, Lizzie had been married to a womanizing control freak for twenty years. No doubt she harbored resentment on that front. And Darla had seen her flash of anger the day of the ill-fated autographing as they’d watched the Lone Protester doing her thing . . . which had turned out to be Lizzie’s thing. Given all that, was it possible that she had impulsively taken revenge on her former college classmate when the opportunity presented itself?

The front door jangled again, and Darla realized in dismay that she’d forgotten to relock it. A customer finally had decided to stop by, with her in no mood to play ye olde shopkeeper. But it wasn’t a customer after all, she saw as she struggled out of the beanbag’s squishy embrace. It was Mary Ann.

The elderly woman rushed toward her, her maroon shirtdress flapping about her bony knees. “Thank God you’re here, Darla,” she gasped. “I happened to glance out my window and saw Lizzie being put into a police car by that nice Detective Reese. Why, it looked like the poor girl was under arrest!”

“She’s just going into the station to answer a few questions,” Jake assured her before Darla could reply. “I’m sure she’ll be home again in a couple of hours.”

“Questions?” Mary Ann echoed, eyes wide. “Oh my gracious, surely this doesn’t have anything to do with that terrible accident the other night, does it?”

“We might as well tell her,” Darla said before Jake could toss out another evasive answer. “It turns out that Lizzie was the one who orchestrated having that girl holding up the signs and protesting Valerie Baylor’s appearance here. Now the police are trying to figure out if she’s also the one who shoved Valerie in front of the van.”

“Oh my gracious!”

Mary Ann clutched the bodice of her dress in the clichéd be-still-my-heart gesture that Darla had always associated with old ladies in television melodramas. Mary Ann, however, appeared genuinely distressed, so much so that Darla pulled out one of the stools from behind the counter and set it beside her.

“Sit down a minute,” she urged, helping the woman onto the seat. “The police haven’t arrested her—”

“Not yet anyhow,” Jake interjected.

“—and it’s probably all a formality,” she finished with a dark look at her friend, who merely shrugged. “That whole protest thing was pretty darned stupid on her part, but it doesn’t mean Lizzie is a cold-blooded killer by any stretch of the imagination.”

Then another thought occurred to her. “Mary Ann, you were there at the counter the entire time. Do you recall seeing Lizzie leave the store, especially when Valerie disappeared that last time?”

The old woman gave her hands a helpless flutter.

“Lord, there was so much going on at the register, I didn’t have time to keep up with everyone else. I know I looked over at the signing table a couple of times and saw her helping James, but that doesn’t mean she was there every single second.”

Then, with a hard look at Jake, she added, “And it doesn’t mean she wasn’t, either.”

“You’re right, Mary Ann,” the ex-cop agreed, “and that’s what Reese is trying to find out. And like I told you, they only took her in for questioning. She’s not under arrest.”

Yet.

Though the qualifier was unspoken this time, it seemed that everyone still heard it. They exchanged uncomfortable glances before Mary Ann stoutly declared, “Well, you won’t convince me that she’s guilty. After all, what motive could a girl like her possibly have?”

Darla fleetingly considered explaining about Lizzie’s plagiarism claim but thought the better of it. No reason to give Mary Ann something else to worry about. Instead, she smiled and said, “I’m sure the truth will come out soon enough. Why don’t you go on back home, and I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”

“You’re right. No sense borrowing trouble,” she agreed, but without returning the smile. Brushing aside Darla’s attempt to help, she stiffly climbed off the stool and shook out her skirts. “I’d best go back to the store now. I left Brother all alone there.”

Appearing far older than Darla recalled ever seeing her look, Mary Ann made her way out of the store. Darla followed, locking the door firmly behind the woman.

“I’m officially calling it quits,” she declared. “I’ll let you out the side door, Jake, and then I’m going to go back to the apartment to eat ice cream and watch awful movies for the rest of the day . . . or, at least until lunchtime.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me. If you feel like company later on, let me know.”

“No offense, but I probably won’t. But do me a favor and call me when you hear from Reese about Lizzie. I have a feeling she won’t be calling me.”

They were headed for the side door when Darla heard what was becoming a familiar sound now: the unmistakable splat of a tossed book landing on the floor.

“Damn you, Hamlet,” she muttered.

To Jake, she said, “Ever since that little devil learned how to pull books off the shelf, he’s been making a game of it with me.”

Darla sought out the source of the sound, and found Hamlet lounging in the drama section near a slender volume facedown on the floor. Turning it over, she glanced at the cover so she could return it to the correct spot on the shelf, and then promptly wished she hadn’t. For, just as with some of the other novels that he’d snagged in recent days, Hamlet had pulled down a book that seemed eerily appropriate to the situation.

With an uncertain glance at the cat—what, was he Mr. Psychic Cat now?—she hurriedly shelved the book in her hand, which had just happened to be a copy of the famous courtroom stage play, Twelve Angry Men .

TWENTY-FOUR

“ONE NEVER KNOWS ABOUT THESE THINGS, DOES ONE? AH, well, I am certain you will find an appropriate replacement for Ms. Cavanaugh.”

James shook his head and took a contemplative sip of coffee. As always, he’d brought his own brew in a thermos from home and drank it from his personal china cup that he kept there at the store. The only proper way to drink the beverage , he had told her early on in their acquaintance, not hesitating to inform her about his disdain for the ubiquitous lidded paper cups of the local coffee chains.

It was midafternoon, and the store manager had just arrived for his shift. As threatened, Darla had retreated to her apartment for a couple of hours to indulge in triple-dip ice cream therapy, but by noon she’d grown bored with her bout of self-pity and returned to the store. Now, she barely waited for the door to close behind him to give James the heads-up as to all that had happened that morning.

Though genteelly stunned by the turn of events, he had seemed less dismayed by Lizzie’s actions than Darla had expected. Perhaps the recent enmity between them had been more serious than she’d thought, as James seemed well prepared to paint the woman a villain. Even so, he had expressed polite relief to learn that Lizzie in fact had avoided arrest and returned home around lunchtime.

Darla had been equally thankful when Jake called to give her the news.

“That doesn’t mean she’s off the suspect list,” the woman had reminded her. “It just means there’s not enough evidence against her right now to issue an arrest warrant. But Reese did find out something interesting when they did a background on her. While Lizzie was still married, the cops went out to her place on a domestic disturbance call.”

“Lizzie already told me about that,” Darla had replied. “She said she and her husband fought all the time in the six months before they separated, and that one night things got so out of hand that a neighbor called the police.”