Double Booked For Death

Which sounded better than admitting she’d been outrun.

Jake squinted at the card a moment and then read aloud, “Sorry for what I did, I needed the money.”

“I told you there was something fishy going on,” Darla exclaimed. “Maybe everyone was wrong about Marnie and her gang being innocent victims, too. Maybe the Lord’s Blessing Church paid her to help bump off Valerie.”

Her enthusiasm for her hypothesis building, Darla rushed on, “It all makes sense now. The girl lured Valerie outside with the whole protest act, waited for the right moment and, pow . . . off the curb Valerie went. Marnie and her van do the dirty work, the girl vanishes into the crowd of fans, and the police chalk off Valerie’s death as an accident. Case closed. So what do you think?”

“I think you need to take a deep breath and leave the investigating to the professionals,” Reese answered her, not bothering to suppress a dismissive snort that promptly burst Darla’s sleuthing bubble. “There’s a little thing called evidence . . . and a random Hallmark card isn’t enough to convict someone with.”

“Whatever,” Darla muttered. “But you have to admit, that card is more than the police have.”

“Now, now, children . . . play nice,” Jake said with an absent frown, still studying the card in question. Darla noted that she, too, was taking care not to touch more than a corner of it. She reviewed it a moment longer and then looked back up at Darla. “I hate to ask, but how about we take a look at the lipstick note that Hamlet found?”

While Jake explained to Reese how Hamlet had found the discarded paper, Darla opened the desk’s top drawer and triumphantly handed over the page, still in its plastic protector.

Jake scrutinized both documents side by side before walking them over to Reese. “Doesn’t look like the same handwriting, but it’s kind of a coincidence that we found this, too. Take a look.”

Reese did as ordered, and a flicker of interest replaced his previous expression of forced tolerance. “Okay, let’s see if we can track down that cab.”

He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. His muttered conversation with the person on the other end took only a few seconds before he hung up and addressed the women again.

“I’ve got a buddy at the cab company who’ll call me back in a minute. Now, don’t get your hopes up,” he cautioned as Darla allowed herself a celebratory fist pump. “Even together, all this isn’t exactly what I’d call a confession, but maybe your hellcat over there”—he gestured at Hamlet, who responded with a yawn—“has a knack for police work. Darla, do you have a computer here with Internet access we could use?”

“Sure.”

Feeling vindicated, Darla slid up the rolltop’s slatted panel to reveal a sleek laptop within the oversized cubby. She booted up the computer as Reese abandoned his seat and headed in her direction.

“I assume you want to drive?” she said with a deliberately bright smile, vacating her seat.

Appearing not in the least chastened, he simply nodded and sat down. While Jake and Darla both peered over his shoulders, he entered the address of a popular video-upload site.

“Like I said before, with all the kids and their camera phones, I figured there’d be plenty of video from the autographing floating around. I checked when I got home last night and found at least fifty new Valerie Baylor clips that had been uploaded to YouTube. I must have watched forty-nine of them before I found something.”

He typed in a search string, and a series of tiny screen shots appeared on the page. He clicked on one, which pulled up a black rectangle tagged at eleven minutes, seven seconds that was labeled “Me and Alexa and Bridgette and Emily waiting for Valerie Baylor.” The clip loaded to focus on a red-lipsticked, braces-filled mouth that presumably belonged to the “me” of the title. The lips pursed in a series of air kisses, while girlish shrieks and giggles served as an audio backdrop.

After a few seconds, the amateur videographer turned her camera from her dental work to the grainy, close-up faces of several other shrieking teens, equally red-lipped and grinning. Wincing a little, Reese dialed down the volume. Now, the clip was a silent show of black-caped girls chattering, dancing, and mugging for the camera. Despite the nighttime venue, however, the ambient light along the street had provided a surprisingly decent view of the action.

While Darla and Jake watched expectantly, Reese took on the role of voice-over narrator. “You’ve got the one girl filming her three friends”—he pointed out two blondes and one brunette, all of whom appeared about fourteen years old—“and you can see the antique store behind them. That’s our establishing shot. Now, the girl with the camera phone swings around to show the steps leading up to Darla’s store, and then goes back to her friends.”

“Ugh, I’m getting dizzy,” Jake complained as the video swirled just as he predicted. “Another Spielberg, the kid ain’t.”

“It goes on like this for a while,” Reese said. “Now, around the nine-minute mark is where we get down to business. You’ll see Ms. Baylor walking toward us in a minute. Watch.”