Double Booked for Death Read online

  The rear room served as the shop’s storeroom and was filled with packing materials and cartons of books awaiting shelving. It was not the most convenient of arrangements, but it was the most logical. On those days when Darla expected new shipments from her distributors, she continued a tradition started by her great-aunt and always brought in fresh pastries and coffee-in-a-box to bribe the drivers. Most were willing to haul one or two hand truck’s worth of books up to the second floor in return for bear claws and fresh coffee.

  Failing that, there was an old-fashioned dumbwaiter that went between floors. It was sturdy enough to accommodate a case of hardcovers or even, say, a fifth-grader, as Darla had happily discovered during one of her rare childhood visits to her great-aunt. She’d forgotten about the dumbwaiter’s existence until her store manager had demonstrated how Darla’s octogenarian relative had used it to ferry books from storeroom to shelves. While the process was tedious—Darla could mosey downstairs twice as fast as the well-oiled if primitive electric motor could lower the miniature elevator—it beat risking her and her employees’ backs shuffling inventory up and down steps.

  But any restocking would wait until the next day. A few more of the store’s regulars stopped in for their weekly fix of popular fiction, and a number of first-time teenage customers filtered in and out. In fact each day, this week after school let out, she’d had a steady stream of teen girls coming into the store asking about the upcoming signing. For that Sunday night, Pettistone’s was set to host an event for the hugely popular YA author Valerie Baylor, whose first two Haunted High books had been at the top of every bestseller list for the past year.

  Between sales, Darla managed to pack up a couple of signed first editions for one of their mail-order customers. As for Hamlet, he disappeared to wherever it was that he went when he wasn’t busy demanding a meal or serving as a tripping hazard.

  When, at seven p.m. she flipped the hand-lettered sign in the door to read “Closed”—her late night was Wednesday, with the shop closed on Mondays—her quick mental tally suggested that this particular Friday had actually been a profitable one. Barring major disaster, however, Sunday night was primed to be the mother lode of all profitable sales days, outstripping even Black Friday and Christmas Eve.

  “Hey, you wanna grab some food?”

  The question came from Jacqueline Martelli, Darla’s tenant-slash-friend. She had stopped in just before closing time and was sprawled on the electric blue beanbag chair in the aforementioned story circle area flipping through a Nancy Drew reprint. Jake, as she was better known to the world at large, freely admitted to being within a stone’s throw of middle age and so technically didn’t belong among the chapter books. Still, used as Darla was to being mistaken for a twenty-something, she had been surprised upon first meeting her to learn that Jake was a few months shy of her fiftieth birthday.

  Good genes, just like you, kid, the older woman had explained with a shrug, her strong, olive-toned features under a short mop of curly black hair displaying only a handful of the so-called character lines one expected to find on a woman her age. She spoke with what Darla had always assumed was a clichéd New Jersey accent but had been surprised to find was genuine . . . a linguistic mash-up that was the Sopranos’ “dems” and “dose” overlaid with Archie Bunker’s “goils” and “turlets.” For her part, Jake had been equally amazed that Darla’s twangy East Texas drawl bore such little resemblance to the honeyed Deep South accent most New Yorkers assumed dripped from every mouth south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

  Jake had readily spilled the most pertinent details of her background the day Darla had moved into the brownstone. An ex-NYC cop, the older woman had been forced to retire on disability following a shoot-out two years earlier that left her with a permanent limp. Even so, at almost six feet tall with a bodybuilder’s physique, she remained an imposing presence, the effect enhanced by the straight-legged blue jeans, battered Doc Martens, and bulky sweaters—never in pastel shades—that she habitually wore.

  Darla’s late aunt had leased the garden-level apartment below the store to Jake at a reduced rate, pleased with the idea of having what she thought of as her own personal bodyguard. In return, Jake served as unofficial security for the building, which included the bookstore on the first and second floors, and what had been Dee Pettistone’s living quarters—and now were Darla’s—on the third.

  It was an arrangement that Darla had been glad to continue. For one thing, as an unattached woman new to the city, she appreciated the built-in company. For another, Jake’s blunt manner and sly sense of humor had done much to offset Darla’s occasional bouts of homesickness for her friends and family back in Texas these past few months. Thus, despite their apparent differences, the two women had become fast friends.

  Now, Darla gave an eager nod in response to the other woman’s suggestion.

  “Food would be great. Since I was alone here in the store all afternoon, I didn’t have time for more than one of those dinky energy bars for lunch. I am famished with a capital ‘F.’”

  “Where the hell were Lizzie and James?” Jake asked as she rose somewhat awkwardly from the beanbag chair and limped over to where Darla stood at the cash register.

  The Lizzie in question was Lizzie Cavanaugh, an earnest middle-aged woman whom Great-Aunt Dee had hired the previous year to help part-time. Divorced and an empty nester—her only son had recently left home to attend college in Boston—Lizzie had elected to return to school to finish an English literature degree program. According to Lizzie, it was the same degree she had abandoned when she met her future ex-husband, an up-and-coming real estate magnate who turned out to have a wandering eye. Lizzie’s alimony settlement now allowed her to be a full-time student, working just a few hours a week for the employee discount to feed her book habit.

  “Lizzie started classes again, so she can only manage a couple of days a week anymore,” Darla explained as she slid the drawer shut and zipped the cash bag closed. “And I gave James the afternoon off, since he has to stay late Sunday night to work the Valerie Baylor autographing. You should know how he is about working events like that.”

  For Professor James T. James was, to put it mildly, terminally stuffy. A retired English professor (emphasis on nineteenth-century American literature) who also was an expert in rare volumes, he had worked at Pettistone’s Fine Books for more than a decade after finally deciding he’d had enough of the academic world. Upon their first meeting, he had made certain that Darla was aware of his scholastic pedigree: an undergraduate degree from a well-known eastern college, and multiple postgraduate degrees earned at an even more prestigious Ivy League university. He’d also taken pains to make certain that she addressed him in the proper manner, given his repetitious first and last names.

  “You may call me Professor James,” he had instructed. “Or, as you are my employer, you may address me by my Christian name, James. You may not, however, ever call me by my surname sans any honorific. And trust me,” he’d added with the practiced stern mien of college professors everywhere, “I will know the difference.”

  “Fair enough,” she’d coolly replied, “just so long as you promise never to call me ‘Red.’”

  Darla’s retort had brought one of the few smiles she had yet seen from him, and if they hadn’t exactly bonded at that moment, the ice between them had definitely broken. Now, while Darla gave her head a rueful shake at that memory, Jake allowed herself a grin.

  “Not exactly Mr. Gala Night, is he?” she agreed. “But I have to admit that until I talked to my niece the other night, I had no idea how big a score it was, snagging Valerie Baylor. I swear, the kid about peed her pants when I told her I was handling security for the author of the Haunted High series! Apparently, she’s even hotter with the teenage girls than the woman who writes those sparkly vampire books.”

  As if Darla didn’t know. “I can’t take the credit for getting her,” she said as she finished powering down the register. “The publisher and Great-Aun
t Dee set things up before she died last January. And apparently, Valerie still lives out in the Hamptons on her parents’ estate, so it’s not like they have to fly her in or anything.”

  Jake held up a hand. “Wait. You mean, the woman was already filthy rich before her books made her filthy richer?”

  “Pretty much,” Darla confirmed with a wry smile. “Not exactly the starving-writer-in-the-garret backstory for her.”

  As Jake listened with obvious interest, she went on, “I don’t think any of her official bios even mention her family. All they talk about is how some assistant agent found her manuscript in a slush pile and somehow managed to get a huge bidding war going for an author who’d only ever published a few category romances years ago. It was the whole J. K. Rowling-scribbling-her-books-in-the-coffee-shop scenario. Then some tabloid got wind that she was from money, and the cat was out of the bag after that. But in a way, I guess she did suffer a bit for her art. Apparently, the rest of the rich folk thought being a writer—especially of genre fiction—was considered a bit . . . common for someone of her background.”

  “Meh, I could suffer that way,” Jake retorted with a snort.

  Darla winced a little. Though the bookstore business was making merely a modest profit so far, thanks to her inheritance from Great-Aunt Dee, Darla’s actual net worth now was rather substantial . . . a far cry from knocking on bankruptcy’s door, as she had been only a few months earlier. Of course, most of said worth was tied up in the brownstone—house poor, her father always called it—meaning she still shopped at the discount stores.

  Sidestepping that subject, she went on, “Anyhow, my only role is to play fawning bookstore owner and make sure the whole thing goes off without a hitch . . . with your help, of course.”

  “No hitches, I promise. So, you think she looks that good in person?”

  Jake gestured at the advertising poster propped on an easel and surrounded by a veritable turret of the latest Haunted High novel artistically stacked in display. The poster was a blowup of the book’s cover, a variation on the same stylized image of a translucent teenage girl against a night sky that appeared on all the books in the series. A big “Meet Author Valerie Baylor!” with the day and time was splashed in gothic lettering across the notice, along with a photo of Valerie herself.

  Both Darla and Jake surveyed the photo with varying degrees of appreciation. The author’s portrait had been carefully staged to capture the same ghostly feel as the novels. It was a starkly lit three-quarters shot that featured a pale woman in her late thirties with cameo features and a broad forehead. Her wavy black hair fell well past her shoulders and partially obscured her face, while the rest of her was wrapped in a black velvet cape. The scarlet fountain pen she held in one white hand and the slash of crimson lipstick she wore provided the only splashes of color in the photo.

  Feeling mousy by comparison in her mint green oxford shirt and khaki slacks, her only makeup a hasty swipe of mascara and bit of pink lip gloss, Darla shook her head.

  “Guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” she answered, though the snarky part of her hoped that there’d been at least a little airbrushing involved in creating such a perfect photo.

  Gathering her jacket, keys, and purse, she added, “How about you bodyguard me down to the bank night drop? After that, we can grab a bite. What sounds good?”

  Jake had picked up one of the local free papers that Darla kept stacked near the register and was flipping through it. She paused at one ad and replied, “Looks like they’ve still got that special going at that Thai place you like. Why don’t we go there, and we can talk about all the last-minute arrangements for the autograph party?”

  Darla finished the closing process: window shades down, bathroom checked a final time, all lights off. Finally, she set the alarm, then rushed Jake to the door while the system did its beeping countdown. They had barely stepped out into the cool night air and started down the half dozen balustraded concrete steps leading to the sidewalk, however, when Darla frowned and halted.

  “What in the heck is that?”

  At first glance, it appeared that the Valerie Baylor photo had come to life right there on Crawford Avenue. Across the street from the bookstore stood a young woman, perhaps twenty years old. Her dyed black hair rippled over her shoulders, while her bloodred smear of lipstick emphasized full lips and contrasted garishly with her deliberately pale features. Little more of her was discernable, since she wore a black cape that covered her from neck to pointed black boots. Instead of the scarlet pen that the author had brandished in her photo, however, this young woman clutched a hand-painted sign.

  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 an
d 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.