Double Booked for Death by Ali Brandon Read Free Book Online Page B

took forever to get to my stop, and this man there kept watching me the whole time we were waiting,” she declared. “Then, when the bus finally showed up, the same creepy guy sat down right behind me, even though there were plenty of other seats. The last straw was when he started breathing on my neck. He made me so nervous that I got off two stops early and walked the rest of the way. Seriously, I’m still looking over my shoulder to make sure he’s not there.”
    “How very unsettling for you,” James commented. “Perhaps once you recover from the shock of it, you might take a look at the genre shelves. They could use a bit of restocking.” To Darla, he added, “I’ll be up in the storeroom finishing inventory if you need me.”
    So saying, he picked up his coffee cup and started toward the stairs. Lizzie waited until his back was turned and then stuck out her tongue in his direction.
    Darla sighed and suppressed the urge to chastise the pair with a stern, “Play nicely, children.” Both were older than she—Lizzie by a decade, and James by a good thirty years!—and yet it seemed that she was the one playing the parental role.
    Darla had noticed that over the past few weeks, Lizzie had grown increasingly snippy toward James while he, in turn, had become even more patronizing than usual in his dealings with Lizzie. When previously questioned, each had denied any friction existed between them. Still, looking back, Darla was pretty sure the trouble had begun when Lizzie resumed her college classes and started working only part-time at the store, leaving more of the burden to James.
    She suspected the turning point had come when Lizzie had declared one morning that she would soon be a professor just like James had been. What Darla had overheard of James’s response had owed more to good old Anglo-Saxon than Latin or Greek, camouflaged though it had been among numerous polysyllabic words. By way of response, Lizzie had turned on the waterworks, and Darla had found herself playing peacekeeper.
    Part of the problem, she knew, was that while James retained the store manager title, Darla reserved for herself the final word on hiring and firing. And since Lizzie had been a loyal employee for a couple of years prior to Darla’s tenure, and seemed to genuinely enjoy dealing with their customers, Darla was loath to let her go strictly to assuage James’s considerable ego. But that didn’t mean that Lizzie’s drama-llama tendencies didn’t get on her nerves on occasion, too.
    “I’m sorry you had a fright, Lizzie,” she said in a mollifying tone, “but that’s to be expected if you use public transportation. What I’m more concerned about is that girl I asked you about. Was she out there?”
    “Girl?” Lizzie opened her eyes wide and shook her head, sending the bob swinging. “Cross my heart, Darla, I don’t know anything about her. Ooh, customers,” she added as the bells on the door jangled, and a young couple walked in. “Gotta go help them out!”
    “I didn’t ask if you—oh, never mind,” Darla muttered to Lizzie’s departing form and marched toward the front window to take a look for herself.
    The street had been empty of all save the usual Saturday traffic when she’d finally dragged herself out of bed that morning after having stayed up until well after midnight finishing Valerie Baylor’s book. Darla allowed herself a rueful smile. The story had sucked her in, pure and simple, and it had been all she could do not to sneak back down to the store and grab copies of the first two in the series so that she could catch up. Later, after the signing , she promised herself as she warily peered out onto the street.
    She heaved a relieved sigh when she saw no sign of the Lone Protester. Of course, it was only quarter after ten on a Saturday morning. The girl was probably still sleeping, like any normal kid her age. Darla would have slept in even later herself, save that by eight a.m. an unsympathetic