A Novel Way to Die

TWO





“HE TOOK OUT ANOTHER ONE?”

Jake Martelli put down her half-eaten turkey Reuben and leaned forward in her chair, her expression incredulous. Lowering her voice, as if she were worried that someone else in the crowded deli might overhear her, she went on, “How did he do it this time?”

“iPad kidnapping, followed by a full-frontal fake out. I swear the little so-and-so is back at the store laughing up his cat sleeve at his cleverness.”

Darla took an angry bite of her own sandwich, chewing miserably. Even the mile-high stack of juicy white turkey breast piled on pumpernickel and topped with sauerkraut, Swiss, and dressing wasn’t enough to restore her to something resembling a good mood.

Jake nodded sagely and reached for her own sandwich. Through a mouthful big enough to choke a linebacker, she mumbled something that sounded like, “Any blood?”

“Not this time. But the screams were pretty darned awful.”

“Look, kid, why don’t you just stick Hamlet in a carrier or something while you’re interviewing?” Jake suggested in a reasonable tone. “Keep the applicants out of claws’ reach, at least until after they’ve filled out the paperwork and you’ve asked all your questions. Once you’ve hired someone, well, it’s survival of the fittest.”

Darla considered the notion a moment and then shook her head.

“Unfortunately, I know who’s going to come out on top in that battle. And I don’t have time to train a series of people. It’s mid-October, which means the holiday buying season is only a month away. I need someone I can depend on to help me and James, and I need them trained before the big rush starts.”

Darla took another bite.

“I’ve got another applicant coming in after lunch,” she told her friend. “Maybe I’ll luck out with him. Of course, with the job market like it is, it’s not like Hamlet will run out of potential hires to torment anytime soon.”

“Well, speaking of the job market . . .” Jake swallowed the last of her sandwich and reached into the pocket of her brown corduroy jacket to withdraw a business card. Tossing it onto the table in front of Darla, she gave a casual shake of her curly black mop and said, “Check it out.”

“Does this mean what I think it does?”

Jake nodded, her strong features glowing with a proud smile. Darla hurriedly wiped a bit of errant dressing from her fingers and snatched up the card to read it aloud.

“Martelli Private Investigations, Inc., Jacqueline ‘Jake’ Martelli, President. Oh, and you even have a website!” Darla’s smile matched her friend’s as she added, “I can’t believe you finally did it. Congratulations!”

“Well, I figured sitting on my butt for two years was enough,” Jake replied. “Those occasional security jobs along with the disability settlement might pay the rent, but I can only watch so much cable television when I’m not hanging out in your store. I missed being in the thick of things.”

“Once a cop, always a cop, right?

“Pretty much. Besides, fifty is too damn young to retire.”

“So is forty-nine,” Darla said, knowing that her friend wouldn’t actually be turning fifty until January, when she’d officially start collecting her retirement. This still gave Darla a couple of months to plan the surprise birthday party she intended to throw. And since Darla’s own next major milestone birthday wouldn’t be for almost five years, when she hit forty, she was pretty confident that she was safe from any similar birthday revenge for a long time.

Aloud, she merely said, “Actually, as soon as you started talking about going into business, I checked into the zoning laws here. There’s no issue if you want to go ahead and run your office out of your apartment.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, since I already ordered the signs to hang on the fence and doors,” Jake confessed, her grin now a bit sheepish.

Darla had inherited Jake as her garden apartment tenant—Darla always had to correct herself from calling it a basement—in much the same way she’d ended up with Hamlet and the bookstore. The aforementioned fence was a sturdy, wrought iron barrier to the short series of steps that led down to the apartment, which was partially below sidewalk level. Jake had moved into Dee’s brownstone soon after the on-duty shooting that had left her with a permanent limp and hastened her retirement from her police detective career. Viewing Jake as her personal on-site security force, Darla’s great-aunt had in return offered Jake a rent well below the going rate.

Darla had also inherited the subsidized lease, but she agreed with Dee that it was rather cool to have her own personal cop—or rather, ex-cop—keeping an eye on things. Besides, she and Jake had become fast friends.

Now, Darla laughed. “Actually, I think there’s a certain cachet to having a private investigator in the same building as an independent bookstore. Maybe I need to expand my mystery section, take advantage of the atmosphere.”

“Don’t go wild until I see if things really take off or not. I’m hoping for walk-in business, to start . . . you know, the old word-of-mouth thing. God knows how many PIs in town I’m competing against. I figure if I keep it in the neighborhood, I’ll have an advantage.”

“So, you going to be skulking around with a camera taking pictures of cheating spouses?”

Jake snorted. “Not if I can help it. I’ve got plenty of corporate contacts, so I’m looking at narrowing the field. Corporate espionage, insurance fraud, surveillance—”

“Mystery shopping,” Darla supplied with a grin, earning an eye roll from her friend. “Let me know if you need any help with that. I can spend other people’s money with the best of them.”

“Maybe I’ll hire Hamlet. He proved himself a pretty good little sleuth with that whole Valerie Baylor business.”

Jake’s tone was rueful, but Darla had to concede that she was right. Valerie Baylor, the YA author famous for her Haunted High series, had made a well-publicized stop at Darla’s store—drawing hundreds of fervent fans, and one pitiless murderer. In the aftermath, Hamlet had demonstrated an uncanny knack for what Darla began to call “book snagging”: knocking seemingly random books off the store shelves, books that had proved, in retrospect, to have bearing on Valerie’s murder and the killer’s true identity. And though Hamlet didn’t get any credit, the feline had definitely had a paw in solving the crime.

Then her frown deepened. “Actually, I should hire you to tail the little beggar. It’s bad enough that he’s got some secret cat tunnel where he can go back and forth between the shop and the apartment. Now I think he’s found a way to sneak out of the building at night.”

“What makes you say that? Did you see him out on the sidewalk or something?”

Darla shook her head. “He’s too smart to tip his hand—er, paw—like that. But Mary Ann said she saw him outside last night. And, come to think of it, the other morning when I went to feed him, I saw what looked like grease or oil on his fur, like he’d crawled under a car. I’m afraid he’s out prowling the neighborhood looking for trouble.”

“Not good,” Jake agreed.

Darla took another determined bite of sandwich. “Mary Ann thinks he might be getting out through your place, so keep an eye out, okay? And let me know if you stumble across a cat-sized GPS we can stick around his neck.” Then, with a glance at her watch, Darla added, “Time to get back to the shop. James will be waiting, and I’ve got a few things to do before the next interview.”

They gathered their now-empty plates and dropped them off in the overflowing dish bin before heading for the door. Jake paused by the community bulletin board near the exit long enough to pin up a few of her new business cards.

“Half the neighborhood eats here,” she reminded Darla. “You never know who might need a private investigator.”

Darla pulled her olive-colored hip-length sweater more tightly around her as they made the two-block walk back to her store. The temperature was barely above fifty. It made for a perfect day for New Yorkers, but was pretty darn cold for a Texas girl used to battling summertime weather this time of year. She definitely wasn’t looking forward to winter in New York.

Jake must have seen her reflexive shiver, for she laughed. “Toughen up, kid. In another month or two you’ll be wading through snow up to your waist.”

Which meant said nasty white stuff would come up only to Jake’s thigh, Darla thought with an inner snort. Her friend was a good six inches taller than Darla’s own five-foot-four-inch height, and in the stacked Doc Marten boots that were part of her personal uniform, Jake easily topped six feet.

Halfway down the block from the corner deli, they both halted before the lace-curtained windows of one of Crawford Avenue’s many brownstones. This building, like Darla’s elegant, three-story Federal and several other brownstones on the surrounding blocks, had been converted to retail on its ground floor and apartments above.

The shop in question was a bath-and-body boutique that had become a favorite guilty pleasure of theirs. Aptly named Great Scentsations, the store was designed for indulgence, offering custom perfume, handmade soaps, and organic makeup, among other alluring merchandise.

“Wanna do a little retail therapy?” Jake suggested, her expression one of longing as she gazed at a genie-bottle-shaped vial of body lotion displayed amid a tiny desert oasis scene.

Darla gave her head a reluctant shake, even as she moved to the next window.

“I really need to get back to the bookstore. But Hilda is so talented with her window designs that I always like to take mental notes every time she puts up a new display.”

“Hilda” was Hilda Aguilar, the impeccably coiffed and dressed owner of the boutique. The petite Cuban woman was in her fifties, and bore a faint resemblance to the late Princess Grace of Monaco. She exuded an air of class and good taste that, to Darla’s mind, one had to be born with, though Hilda constantly asserted that she used no beauty products other than what could be found at Great Scentsations. Which gave her customers hope that they could attain similar class and good taste simply by shopping there.

“Not that I can ever come up with anything half as clever,” Darla added on a note of admiring regret. “I thought I was doing pretty good hanging my store with black crepe and jack-o’-lanterns. But next to Hilda, I’m a rank amateur. Isn’t that cute how she made that little Halloween graveyard with soaps for tombstones and those net poufs for ghosts?”

“Yeah, cute,” Jake agreed with a quick look at the phantom scrubbies, though her gaze quickly returned to the genie bottle. Then, with a sigh, she added, “I really shouldn’t be spending anything until I pull in a client or two. But once I cash my first check, a-shopping I will go.”

“All right, but in the meantime, let’s get you out of temptation’s way.” Grabbing her friend by the arm, Darla dragged her back to their brownstone.

They arrived at the bookstore a few minutes later. While Jake headed down to her apartment, Darla trotted up half a dozen balustraded concrete steps to her shop’s door.

She paused as she reached the top to glance over at a second, smaller set of steps that lay to the right of the bookstore’s stairway. At the top of those steps was a modest glass door. This was Darla’s private entrance to a hallway where a long flight of stairs led up to her third-floor apartment. It was a handy arrangement. She didn’t need to cut through the store to go home; instead, an inner door connected that hallway to the shop, which meant she could travel from home to store at any time of day or night without ever leaving her building. She had a feeling that, come winter’s snowy weather, she’d be doubly grateful for this convenience.

For the moment, though, she was looking for cat-sized exits and entrances. She saw no gaps in the bricks, however, which meant Hamlet must be pulling his Houdini trick around the back of the building. Sparing a few choice words for the little beast, she reached for the doorknob. Gilded letters on the door’s wavery glass above it proclaimed “Pettistone’s Fine Books.” As always, the sight gave Darla a small thrill.

Once inside, she headed straight for the counter. Sections of the parlor’s original mahogany wainscoting had been cleverly repurposed to build a narrow, U-shaped counter near the front window where the register was located. Darla fondly regarded this area as her control center, her personal literary cockpit. For the moment, however, her store manager had assumed command and was planted there behind the register.

Dressed in his usual cable-knit vest, handmade Oxford shirt, and sharp-creased wool trousers, James looked more like a model for an upscale gentlemen’s emporium than a clerk in a neighborhood bookstore. A former English professor at one of the area’s more prestigious universities, Professor James T. James was, to put it mildly, terminally stuffy.

James—You may call me Professor James, or 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, I will know the difference—had taken early retirement from the academic world ten years previously. He had been working full-time at the bookstore ever since, both to supplement his pension and, as he put it, to keep him off the streets. While his area of expertise was nineteenth-century American literature, he also was an expert in rare volumes in general. In that capacity, he brought in a nice revenue stream for the store by catering to collectors—one more reason that Darla tolerated his often supercilious air.

The other reason was that she actually quite liked the man. Besides, he and Hamlet, while not exactly bosom chums, got along well together. This alone was worth the price of his salary.

“Ah, the prodigal returns,” was his wry greeting as Darla stepped into the shop and headed in his direction. With a deliberate glance at his watch, he added, “I was beginning to fear that you and Ms. Martelli had been abducted by aliens—or, even worse, by one of those Russian gangs I have been reading about in the newspapers.”

“One of the perks of being the owner,” Darla cheerfully replied. “I can drag my butt in a few minutes late, and no one can fire me.”

“That may well be, but such disregard for scheduled break times does set a poor example for the other employees.”

Since James was, for the moment, her only employee, Darla shrugged off the criticism. Instead, she asked, “Were you able to work out the price with Mr. Sanderson on that signed Hemingway while I was gone?”

“A thousand here, a thousand there, and we finally came to an agreement,” he replied with a casual wave, going on to name a dollar amount that made her gulp. While she mentally tallied their profit, James added, “As soon as we have confirmation of his bank transfer, I will have the book couriered to him.”

Darla nodded. Book lover though she was, she still could never see paying five figures for a volume to stick on the shelf, no matter that it was rare or that it had been autographed by a long-deceased popular author. And it took every bit of effort she could muster to put up a similar cash outlay on speculative rare book purchases, even knowing that James had never failed to resell any such purchase for a respectable profit. But in a down economy, Darla felt it her duty to take advantage of those wealthier sorts who weren’t feeling the pinch like the rest of the common folk, and wouldn’t let a thing like pesky double-digit unemployment hold them back from making luxury purchases.

“Good work,” she said sincerely, adding with a rueful smile, “At least we won’t have to sell the china to pay the electric bill this month. What else did I miss?”

“Your one-thirty interview arrived a bit early. I took the liberty of sending the young man upstairs to fill out the application and told him to stay put until his appointed time.”

“You left him upstairs? Alone?” Faint tingles of alarm began racing up her spine. “What about Hamlet?”

“I saw no sign of him in the lounge, or down here, for that matter. Besides, you assured me before you left that he was safely secured in your apartment.”

“I did, and he was,” Darla replied, grabbing up the folder that held resumes and her notes on the various candidates. “But you know Hamlet. I’m coming to believe that he has all sorts of secret little cat passages throughout the building that let him sneak around wherever he wants to go.”

Leaving James to hold down the fort downstairs, Darla rushed up the steps to the second floor, keeping in mind another of Hamlet’s tricks: flying up the stairs and zipping between some unwitting climber’s feet—usually, Darla’s. Agile as he was, and lucky as Darla apparently was, he’d never yet tripped her; still, she was waiting for the day when his impeccable feline timing was off a second or two. The result would not be pretty.

But her greater concern at the moment was that Mr. Fur-covered Land Shark might have decided to seek out yet another hapless would-be employee to terrorize. No way could she let this happen. She’d had enough cat mayhem for one day.

Panting slightly, she reached the top step and discovered to her relief that the lounge area was free of marauding felines. At the round table that usually held a pile of advance reader copies for employee perusal, a young man was bent over a clipboard, scribbling away at an awkward angle. An empty candy wrapper lay on the table in front of him; obviously, filling out forms was hunger-inducing work.

From what she could see of the youth, huddled as he was over his paperwork, he couldn’t be much older than eighteen or nineteen. Younger than she’d hoped to find, but at that age he’d be more likely to accept the salary she could offer. Besides, it would be useful to have a strong young man to haul boxes around the store. James was nearing retirement age, and she felt guilty every time he wrestled cartons on delivery days. Heck, her own back had developed a twinge or two in recent weeks.

Crossing mental fingers that the boy was as good as the resume that he’d emailed her, and that Hamlet might find him acceptable, Darla headed in his direction.

“Hi, I’m Darla Pettistone, store owner,” she said with a bright smile, holding out her hand. With a quick glance at the paperwork in her other hand, she added, “You must be Robert Gilmore.”

He looked up and unfolded himself from the overstuffed chair, and then grunted what she took to be an affirmation. The handshake he gave her in return was unenthusiastic, at best. Darla, who had taken her share of motivational workshops in the past, reminded herself: Not always a negative trait, particularly in teenagers. Still, her own enthusiasm flagged as she took swift stock of him.

Up close, Robert looked vaguely familiar. Her fleeting confusion faded, however, when she realized he simply resembled any number of young men his age that she’d seen about the neighborhood. The one difference was that, while he was dressed all in black, his shirt was tucked in and his pants did not sag unduly.

Neatly groomed. For that, she mentally gave him credit points; this despite the fact that his posture needed work. If he stood up straight, he’d be almost as tall as Jake. Unfortunately, his slouch and his unsmiling visage lent him an air of teen surliness that even the undeniable spark of intelligence in his bright blue eyes couldn’t quite counteract.

Definite problems in the customer service area, she predicted, picturing him interacting with the portion of her customer base that was Social Security age. Still, he’d made the effort to send a resume and come in for an interview. The least she could do was hold up her end of the deal and grill him over his qualifications.

“All right, let’s talk about your work experience,” she began, determined to give it the old college try. “It says here you’ve done the fast-food thing summers and weekends, you graduated high school back in June, and up until last week you worked at Bill’s Books and Stuff.”

But barely had Darla gestured him back to his chair and taken a seat opposite him than she knew why he’d appeared familiar to her.

“Robert!” she exclaimed, her red brows knitting into a thunderous frown. “You’ve got a girlfriend named Sunny, right?”

Not waiting for his reply, she shoved back in her chair and stood. “You’ve chopped off that silly lock of hair and gotten rid of your piercings, but I know who you are. You’re that kid who accused me of murder!”