FIVE
DARLA TAPPED THE SHOULDER OF ONE OF THE CLOAK-WEARING girls in line.
The teen turned her way, displaying a moderate case of acne and a shock of bleached hair so overly processed that it would probably ignite if it came within ten feet of an open flame.
“Yeah.”
It was less a question than a statement, but Darla took it as a conversational opening.
“See that girl across the street?”
she asked, pointing.
“Do you know who she is, or why she’s protesting Valerie?”
The girl smacked her gum and shot a bored look at the still figure.
“I dunno.
Some loser, I guess.
Why don’t you go ask her?”
A reasonable enough question
, Darla wryly told herself.
She had half a mind to march over there and have a few words with the girl—or send Lizzie out to do the dirty work—but she wasn’t sure what that would accomplish.
The last thing she needed was to get into a brawl with some disgruntled teen just as Valerie and her entourage were pulling up.
And then there was the problem of physically getting over there to her.
Valerie Baylor’s upcoming appearance was bringing out all the gawkers, with traffic picking up rather than dwindling as it usually did on a Sunday evening.
At least the police were doing a great job with traffic control, and the passing vehicles were moving along at a brisk pace, Darla thought in approval.
But that meant crossing the street would be an even dicier prospect than usual.
No point risking her life just for the satisfaction of telling off a teenager.
She received similar responses from a few other girls that she questioned, though the last teen added, “She must be stupid.
Everyone knows Valerie wrote all those books.”
Conceding defeat, Darla started back toward the store, pausing under a streetlight to check her watch.
Quarter to seven.
Surely, Valerie should be there by now!
Jake met her coming down the stairs.
“Any idea where the big star is?”
“No clue, but they have the store’s number if they need to call.”
Glancing up at her apartment window, where a light was burning, she said, “I’m going to run upstairs real fast and check on Hamlet.
It’s nearly his suppertime, and you know how he gets.”
A few moments later, she was unlocking her apartment door.
She’d half expected a fleeting swipe of a p.o.’d paw when she walked in, but it seemed his highness had decided against exacting punishment for her tardiness.
She flipped on the kitchen light, prepared to see him there by his bowl.
Instead, there was no sign of the cat, in the kitchen or anywhere else.
Darla quickly put out food and fresh water and headed back to the door, calling over her shoulder, “You’d better be in here, Hamlet, and not wandering around downstairs.
Back soon.”
The sound began drifting up to her as she hit the second landing.
Frowning, she made it to the first floor, and then realized what it was.
Chanting.
“We want Valerie!
We want Valerie!
We want Valerie!”
“Great,” she muttered as, using her key, she let herself into the store via her hallway entrance.
No way was she going to run that gauntlet from outer door to outer door!
Inside, Lizzie, Mary Ann, and James had their faces pressed to the window.
They turned as one when she asked, “Any word?”
James shook his head.
“Neither the publicist nor the driver has called.
I put on the radio and heard nothing about any traffic backups.
So it seems that they are, in a word, late.”
“Great,” Darla repeated, managing not to modify the word with the universal adjective.
“How are Jake and Reese holding out?”
“Except for the chanting, everything appears under control.
But perhaps if you have a contact phone number, you might wish to—”
A cheer erupted from the crowd outside, cutting short James’s suggestion.
Lizzie, who had still been glued to the window, spun about.
Cheeks flushed and black cape swirling, she rushed toward the door while exclaiming the obvious.
“Valerie Baylor is here!”
“YOU WILL FIND PLENTY OF EXTRA PENS HERE, MS.
BAYLOR,” JAMES said, pointing to a box on the black and red draped table, “and we have a selection of bottled water, as you requested.
We also have soft drinks stocked, if you would care for one, or there is freshly brewed coffee, if you prefer.
Oh, and the strawberry yogurt and whole wheat bagels with butter you requested are waiting upstairs in our lounge area.”
“Actually, what I really want to do is to take a pee and have a smoke, preferably in that order.
Point me to the ladies’, would you?”
Long black velvet cape swirling, Valerie Baylor sauntered off in the direction James indicated.
Darla’s first less-than-kind thought upon meeting Valerie had been the satisfied realization that the author’s publicity photo had definitely been retouched.
Not that Valerie wasn’t an attractive woman, despite her theatrical spill of black hair and pale features.
In person, however, her cameo features showed the beginnings of middle-aged sag, while the slash of red lipstick emphasized the trademark smoker’s wrinkles that radiated from her mouth.
But she was dressed for the role, with tight black leather pants and a black silk blouse, along with three-inch red satin pumps that Darla guessed came from Manolo Blahnik or some other trendy designer.
Valerie’s entourage included a young woman in a too-short yellow sweater dress who looked like a brunette, grown-up version of Callie, and a chunky Asian man in his fifties, who was wearing designer jeans that appeared to have been both starched and then ironed into sharp-creased submission.
It didn’t take much imagination to guess that the second man in the group—a bald, buff African American sporting wraparound shades similar to those Reese was wearing—was the official bodyguard.
“Name’s Everest, ma’am, like the mountain,” he introduced himself to Darla before taking up position at the front door to serve as a living roadblock.
The final member of Valerie’s posse was a model-thin woman with broad shoulders and sleek blond hair almost as long as the author’s.
Her apparent Botox addiction had left her gaunt face almost expressionless, though her liberal application of makeup was flawless.
She opened a satchel from which she now was pulling various pots and tubes of cosmetics and laying them like surgical tools upon the signing table.
The Asian man, meanwhile, stuck out an uncertain hand in Darla’s direction.
“Hi, Darla, right?
I’m Koji Foster, Valerie’s publicist.
We’ve been emailing back and forth.”
Indicating first the brunette and then the blonde, he went on, “That’s Hillary Gables, Valerie’s agent, and Mavis, her personal assistant.
So sorry we weren’t here earlier, but traffic was bad.
We’ll be ready to start in just a few minutes, I promise.”
“Don’t worry, we understand.
And I’m sure the kids outside do, too,” Darla answered, glancing over at the wall clock and noting that it was only quarter after seven.
But then, with another look at the cosmetic counter’s worth of products the assistant had by now unloaded, she wondered, just how much prep time was the author going to need before she was ready to meet her public?
The screams that had risen from the crowd as Valerie’s limo pulled up had rivaled those of the audience at the boy-band concert to which Darla had taken her preteen niece a few years earlier.
Flanked by her bodyguard and agent, and wrapped in her signature black cape, the author had graciously waved to the line of ecstatic young women before rushing up the steps to the store, Koji and Mavis trotting after her.
She’d favored Darla with a limp handshake and brief greeting before eyeing the autographing area with a jaundiced look in her pale blue eyes that made Darla regret she hadn’t sprung for a red carpet or something equally over-the-top.
“The store looks lovely,” Hillary spoke up, as if she sensed Darla’s concerns, though her distracted gaze was fixed on the closed bathroom door Valerie had disappeared behind.
She pulled a tissue from her jacket pocket and snuffled into it.
“Sorry, allergies,” she explained, tucking the tissue away again.
“And I was so sorry to hear about your aunt.
I met her once before during another event here and thought she was charming.”
“Well, I’m sure she would have gotten a kick out of Val Vixen returning to her store as the famous Valerie Baylor after all these years.”
“Much better,” Valerie declared as she burst from the restroom and headed back toward the table.
Plopping into the slipcovered chair, she added, “Koji, you did make sure the people here know my rules about what I will and won’t sign, didn’t you?
For Chrissakes, we don’t need a bunch of little twerps selling scraps of paper with my signature on them all over eBay.
And if the press show up, no interviews.
They can read what I have to say in my blog.
C’mon, Mavis, I need a touch-up.”
This last was directed toward the silent assistant, who obediently plucked an oversized satin bib from her bag of tricks and tied it about Valerie’s neck before she began applying dramatic smudgy color to the author’s lids.
She used her array of brushes with the swift expertise of one of those artists on the old PBS how-to-paint television shows, much to Darla’s admiration.
She herself was still trying to perfect the art of applying mascara without leaving behind a few clumps and smears.
Darla noted in passing that Mavis’s hands seemed unusually large for her thin frame, though they fluttered about her client’s neck with practiced grace as she adjusted the bib.
And she couldn’t help but admire the heavy gold puzzle ring the woman wore on one long finger.
Darla recalled a far cheaper version of that ring that she’d once bought for herself, having been intrigued by the series of thin interlocked bands that linked together to form what resembled a Celtic knot.
Unfortunately, she’d succumbed to temptation and had taken it apart, only to concede after several fruitless hours that she had no clue how to put the darn thing back together again.
In frustration, she had given the ring to her then six-year-old niece—and within five minutes, the girl was triumphantly sporting her auntie’s reassembled ring on one chubby finger, leaving Darla to shake her head in amazement.
“And make sure you keep things moving this time, Koji,” Valerie instructed the publicist as, shadow applied, she rolled her eyes upward for an application of mascara.
Shutting them for a dusting of powder, she went on, “I want these kids in and out again as quickly as possible .
.
.
not like the last event.
We spent way too much time in that store in Boston.
Christ, I had one girl talking to me for almost three minutes before you managed to get her out of my face.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll be moving your readers through here lickety-split,” Darla hastened to assure her, not sure whether to laugh or simply be appalled at the woman’s cavalier manner toward her fans.
“In fact, I have a stopwatch that we use for the writers’ critique group that meets here.
Maybe I can let Koji borrow it.”
She smiled as she said it, intending the suggestion as a mild joke to take the tension down a notch.
To her surprise, however, the writer nodded.
“Not a bad idea.
Dig it out, why don’t you, and we’ll get this down to a science.”
Then, snatching a hand mirror from Mavis, who had finally set aside her brushes, Valerie stared at her retouched reflection a moment before making a sound of disgust.
“For Chrissakes, I’m supposed to look ethereal, not like the Crypt Keeper.
No, no, leave it alone,” she went on as Mavis attempted a bit of repair with a cosmetic puff.
“We don’t have time to fix it.
I’ll just look a hot mess, and who the hell cares?”
Yanking off the bib, she tossed it and the mirror onto the table and shoved back her chair.
“God, I need that cigarette now,” she announced in Darla’s direction.
“Is there a place out back I can smoke?”
“Right this way, Ms.
Baylor,” James smoothly interjected.
“We have an enclosed courtyard just behind the store that you can use.”
Darla suppressed a smile.
The word “courtyard” was a bit fancy for what basically was a walled rectangle of brick-paved space five feet wide and perhaps twice as long that stretched from back door to alley.
At its far end was one of those open-style walls—the kind with every other brick missing—which flanked a wrought-iron gate that opened onto the alley.
The accoutrements were equally simple: a wrought-iron table with two matching chairs, and a pair of stone urns holding some sort of evergreens topiaried into three stacked balls.
Here, Darla and her employees took lunch when the weather was nice, and here Jake indulged in the occasional cigarette herself; that was, when she wasn’t in the middle of another attempt to quit.