Read Online Double Booked for Death by Ali Brandon - Free Book Online

noise level outside must be getting up there in decibels. Adding to the ruckus were the occasional honks from passing vehicles—traffic control wasn’t due for a few more hours—with the inevitable shouted question, “Early for Halloween, aren’t you?” The occasional answering middle finger from one of the black-draped girls brought a few pithy comments in return, but none worse than Darla normally heard on a walk through the neighborhood.
    Thank God, no one is complaining . . . yet , she thought, mentally crossing her fingers that her fellow shop owners would continue to take the situation in stride.
    She’d forewarned her neighbors of the event so they could make their own preparations for the expected crush. Some were fans of Valerie Baylor’s and were thrilled to have her in the proximity; others simply saw the influx of hundreds of people, plus the inevitable press that would be covering the event, as a positive. The few who were not with the program simply gritted their teeth and chose to close early rather than weather the fan-girl storm.
    “Wow, check this out!”
    Lizzie, wearing her official Haunted High black cape over a sensible smocked blouse and a pair of mom jeans, held up her phone to display its small screen. A self-proclaimed middle-aged techno geek, she’d had her phone out most of the morning, checking the various social networks to see if word of Valerie’s appearance was making the rounds. Hers was one of those high-end models that surfed the Internet, served as a GPS, took photos and videos . . . and occasionally even was used to make calls.
    “Darla, you should be proud. As of now, Pettistone’s Fine Books is one of the top trends on Twitter, and we’re showing as a hot topic on Alexa,” she confirmed. “Oh, and we’ve had the same number of hits on our website in just the past two hours as we usually get in a month. And that Facebook page for the store that I set up last week already has almost a thousand fans now.”
    “Well, let’s just hope some of that momentum keeps up after Valerie has come and gone,” Darla muttered as she rang up the latest celebrity diet book for a bleached blond matron dressed two decades too young for her likely true age. “We could use an infusion of new customers. Not that we don’t love all our regular folks,” she clarified with a smile for the woman before her.
    The customer rolled her heavily made-up eyes. “These teenage girls, what’s with them and their ghosts and vampires and wizards? They should try reading something more wholesome like we did when we were kids. Like Nancy Drew.”
    “So long as they’re reading, I’m happy,” Darla replied. That catchphrase had become her mantra and kept her from succumbing to James-like snobbery anytime a customer hauled the latest blockbuster movie novelization to the register.
    The woman sniffed again in disapproval; then, catching a glimpse of Hamlet lounging behind the counter, her demeanor promptly changed.
    “Oh, how cute,” she squealed, drawing a cold green squint from the feline in question. “Kitty gets to go to work with Mommy. I bet she’s a hard worker, too. What’s her name?”
    “ His name is Hamlet,” Darla replied, managing not to laugh at the gender confusion and the presumed cuddly relationship between the two of them.
    The woman looked suitably impressed. “Oh, is he named after those cats at the Algonquin Hotel?”
    Darla had heard this question before. Her customer was referring to the successive feline mascots that had been a tradition for several decades at the New York City landmark hotel. Most of those cats had been named Hamlet, too—though the most recent female holder of that post had broken tradition by being dubbed Matilda. Darla recalled reading of the famous Algonquin cats as a child, but she had forgotten about that quaint tradition until she moved to New York.
    Now, she shook her head. “Nope, no relation,” she said with a smile. “Our Hamlet came by