Али Брэндон - Double Booked For Death

Jake’s amused expression evaporated as she spoke, and her fixed gaze momentarily reminded Darla of the look she had turned on the three young thugs. As for the unsaid sentiment it reflected, she knew it was Not again, not on my watch .

“I see where you’re coming from,” Darla ventured, “but how do we figure out what club Hillary was talking about?”

“We can do it the hard way”—Jake slanted a look at her over her sunglasses—“which would be to tail her or Morris all day and hope we don’t get spotted before we figure out where they’re headed. Or, we can do it the easy way.”

“I’ll put in my vote for the easy way.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

She refused to elaborate, however, until they arrived back at the brownstone.

Once back in the store, Jake picked up one of the free newspapers that Hamlet had kicked aside earlier, and thumbed through it while Darla went to wait on the customer who had followed them into the store as she was unlocking the door. Once assured that her assistance wasn’t needed, she casually sidled over to Jake and addressed her in a low tone.

“Okay, spill it. What’s the easy way of figuring out which of a few hundred clubs around town is the one where Morris and Hillary will be?”

By way of answer, Jake folded back the paper so that a single large notice was visible. “My money’s on this one,” she said and tapped her finger on the banner headline.

Eyes wide, Darla began reading the advertisement aloud. “The Club Theater Presents Othello by William Shakespeare, Starring DeWayne Jones and Harry Delacourt.”

Jake nodded. “As soon as good old Mrs. Gleason mentioned her cop show, I remembered seeing this same ad in last week’s throwaway. DeWayne Jones is the hunky guy who stars in that show.”

“And Hillary said she was going to meet Morris at the club . . . which must be the Club Theater,” Darla finished for her.

Jake gave a small, satisfied smile. “We have a winner. So, what do you say, kid, you want to take in an off-Broadway show tonight?”

AS SHE STRUGGLED TO KEEP UP WITH JAKE’S LONG STRIDES DOWN THE sidewalk, Darla—her own feet pinching uncomfortably in the same heels she’d worn to Valerie’s funeral—reflected on all the ground they’d traversed the past few days. At least this time, they’d taken the subway part of the way. Even so, she wondered how Jake’s bum leg was holding out after their twenty-block walk to Morris’s place and back that morning.

That question was partially answered as the ex-cop strode ahead of her, and she saw peeking out from beneath the woman’s full-length black leather duster a pair of calf-high, patent leather Doc Martens in canary yellow. Jake glanced over in time to catch her bemused look, and grinned. “Remember how I told you that sitting on your ass is one of the first things they teach you at the academy? Well, so is always wearing a pair of shoes you can run in without falling over and breaking an ankle.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” came Darla’s rueful reply as she skipped a little to keep up with her longer-legged and more sensibly shod friend.

Reaching their destination, they stepped through the main double glass doors and into a small lobby already swarming with playgoers. Despite the seriousness of their mission, Darla couldn’t help a feeling of excitement at the prospect of seeing live theater. This would be the first theatrical production that she’d attended in New York City. Of course, when various touring companies came through Dallas she had managed to take in a few major musicals— Cats , The Phantom of the Opera , Les Miserables —and she was a devoted Shakespeare in the Park fan, but the remainder of her experience with plays had been limited to a brief stint in her high school drama club.

Knowing this, James had once felt the need to enlighten her on the seemingly confusing difference between Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.

“It is not so much where the theater itself is located,” he had explained, “as it is the size of the house. Anything under five hundred seats but more than one hundred falls into the Off-Broadway category, but the primary qualifier is whether or not the shows are mounted by companies working under an Equity contract.”

This place was definitely Off-Broadway. The Club Theater was a notorious former 1980s nightspot that had started life as a warehouse, and whose latest incarnation was as a trendy three-hundred-forty-seat venue. The new owners apparently had left much of the club’s original—and now cringe-worthy—décor intact. The old aluminum-and-mirror bar had literally been divided in two, with half now peddling drinks to customers on one side of the lobby, and the rest serving as a box office on the other. A lighted alcove near the ticket booth led to another pair of doors, both of which were marked “Private.”

The “Let’s Get Physical” vibe continued with the lobby’s shiny black walls, mirrored columns, and large-can track lighting that zipped along the ceiling. A pair of sculptures, each consisting of three giant aluminum cubes piled haphazardly atop one another, flanked the double doors leading into the main theater.

“All that’s missing is the disco ball,” Jake observed as she shed her long black leather coat and took a look around.

Used as she was to seeing her friend in her usual uniform of jeans, sweater, and boots, Darla had not been prepared for the sight of Jake in a clingy, off-the-shoulder leopard print dress that accentuated her lean body and stopped short of her knees by several inches. Combined with the yellow Docs, the outfit screamed “bad-girl chic” and was drawing more than one admiring set of male eyes in the ex-cop’s direction. She was also wearing lipstick, probably the clandestine purchase she had made at Great Scentsations, Darla realized.

Catching Darla staring at her a second time, Jake demanded, “What?”

“Nothing,” Darla exclaimed, sadly aware she’d never be able to pull off the same sexy, rough-and-tumble look. “It’s just that you look really great tonight.”

“You think? I had this in the back of my closet and just threw it on.”

She said it with a careless shrug, but Darla could tell she was pleased with the compliment. “Of course, I could have really rocked that red satin number of Morris’s, but I figured he probably would have missed it if I’d swiped it.” Then, returning the praise, she added, “You clean up pretty good yourself. I didn’t think with your hair you could wear red, but it really works on you.”

Darla had made do with the same black wrap dress—minus the picture hat—that she’d worn for Valerie Baylor’s memorial service. She had vamped it up, however, with a kitschy red velvet rose that she pinned to its neckline and then topped it with a matching red velvet stole, both items that she’d found in Mary Ann’s shop. Darla hoped that all her recent purchases there had more than made up for the loan of the vintage cigarette lighter. With her hair pulled back into a loose chignon, she felt like she’d stepped out of an old Katharine Hepburn film.

“Okay, enough with the mutual admiration society,” Jake decreed while Darla preened just a little. “We need to get the lay of the land before we take our seats. I’ll get the tickets and poke around a little bit. You go find a potted plant or something to hide behind and keep an eye out for Hillary. We need to know where she is sitting in the theater so we can follow her when she gets up to make the exchange.”

“How do you know it hasn’t happened already?”

“Trust me.”

With Darla looking over Jake’s shoulder, the older woman flipped through the program she’d picked up just inside the door. She paused at the page headed “Meet the Production Staff” and ran a finger down the alphabetized names. Near the bottom, along with the biographies and photos of the rest of the stage and behind-the-scenes crew, was a listing for one Mavis Vickson.