Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  Marty seemed pretty nuts to begin with, but I let that thought go unspoken. No, I didn’t. “More nuts?”

  She grimaced and slumped onto an ancient leather sofa under the window. “He’s really not that bad,” she said. “He just tends to go from zero to furious in, like, no seconds.”

  “I noticed.” She was the third person to tell me Marty wasn’t that bad.

  She shot me a look. “He took Kate’s death hard. I mean, we all did,” she said. “But the rest of us just miss her. We don’t think someone killed her. And I heard the cops say that guy has probably been down there for about two weeks, which is right around when Kate died, so you know…What?”

  She must have seen what must have been a confused look on my face. “Who thinks someone killed Kate?”

  “Marty,” she said, her tone implying that I needed to keep up. “He’s been going off about it ever since she died.”

  I stared at her. “How did Kate die?” Robbie had said “accident” and I had automatically filled in “car crash,” but I didn’t really know.

  “She fell,” Callie said. “She was walking on the path up Strawberry Hill—at Stowe Lake?” Seeing my baffled expression, she explained. “It’s in Golden Gate Park, and it’s a totally easy path. I mean, like, people do it with strollers and stuff. But she must have slipped or something and...” Her jaw flexed and she looked away from me. “Her neck was broken.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed. “Callie, I’m so sorry.”

  She waved my words away. “Anyway, that was two weeks ago, and now the cops say this guy downstairs has been dead for like two weeks, sooooo…”

  “Marty’s going to go nuts,” I concluded. And, I reasoned, going nuts might be a perfectly rational reaction. The timing was suspicious.

  “Did you know him?” I asked Callie. “I mean, the…” I made a vague gesture toward the basement.

  “The dead guy?” she said. “I don’t think so. But I didn’t really take any lingering looks.” She shivered.

  Right. Neither had I. But the sight of him was still burned in my brain.

  After Callie left, I started sorting the clutter of Kate’s desk into organized piles. Because if you can’t control unfaithful husbands or bodies turning up in your basement, at least you can control random paperwork, right?

  Pamphlets and brochures in one stack; bills (a rather alarming number of them), in another; miscellaneous correspondence; and lastly the handwritten notes, most of them seemingly of ideas for future programming.

  I found one that read ‘Have / Have,’ ‘Sleep,’ and ‘Millionaire’ and assumed it referred to To Have and Have Not (1944, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart), The Big Sleep (1946, ditto), and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953, Bacall, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty Grable). It took me a bit longer to figure out that ‘Rain,’ ‘Charade,’ and ‘Yankees’ probably referred to Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds), Charade (1963, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn), and Damn Yankees (1958, Gwen Verdon and Tab Hunter). The connection among those films was the director Stanley Donen. One of my favorites. I would probably want to include Indiscreet (1958, Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman) in any Stanley Donen lineup, but that was just me.

  And that was assuming there would still be a Palace to keep showing these movies. I tried not to think about the fact that finding a body in the basement might have cast the slightest bit of doubt on the Palace’s future. And on my first day, no less.

  Kate’s last note was still on the scratch pad. It was longer than the others, and I didn’t immediately see the connective thread among “Win,” “M,” “Lace,” “Sorry,” and “Gas.”

  I gave up, stretched, and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. I knew I should go back downstairs to ask the detective when they might be finished with their work. There were movies to either show or cancel based on his answer. When I opened my eyes again Marty was standing in the doorway watching me.

  “I put a sign in the box office window and told everyone to go home,” he said. “The cops won’t tell me anything, but it looks like they’ll be here for a while, and I know I’m not the manager or anything, but I—”

  “Thank you.” I cut him off before he could launch into a full-blown rant. “I’m sure that was the right call.”

  He didn’t seem to know what to do with that. He shrugged, then came into the room. I saw he was carrying a laptop, which he set none too gently on the desk. “Callie said you were looking for this.”

  “Right. She told me you’ve been taking care of everything, and—”

  “Someone had to,” he said. “Just like someone has to get out the ladder and change the marquee in the morning and someone has to run the projectors and fix them when they break down, and someone has to order the concessions, and—”

  “Marty,” I said. “I’m trying to thank you.”

  He gave me a close look, checking for signs of mockery. Then he sniffed and looked away. “The Wi-Fi network is ‘PalaceWeb’ and the password is Hitchcock, capital ‘H’ and ‘K,’ one instead of the ‘I.’”

  I must have looked baffled because he blew out an exasperated breath, grabbed a pencil, and plucked Kate’s last list from the top of the pile. He wrote the password on the back of it, then handed me the paper.

  H1tchcocK

  “Right,” I said. “Thanks.” I tucked it into a pocket of my backpack.

  “Stop thanking me. It’s unnerving.”

  He looked away again, and I broke what threatened to turn into an awkward silence with a suggestion. “Should we go downstairs to find out what the hell is going on?”

  “We should,” he said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

  His agreement felt like a small victory. “Did you catch that cop’s name? The one who seemed to be in charge?”

  “The bear with the voice like liquid heaven?” he said. “I think it’s Officer He-Wants-Me-But-He-Doesn’t-Know-It-Yet.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “No, I think it’s Detective He-Wants-You-But-He-Doesn’t-Know-It-Yet.”

  Marty gave me a look. “Don’t,” he said. “We’re not friends yet.”

  Noted.

  Chapter 4

  “At least if we’re going to start tripping over corpses we’re doing it at the right time of year,” Marty said as we made our way to the lobby. “Half the people we turned away think this is a Halloween stunt.”

  “That would be in questionable taste.”

  “This is San Francisco at Halloween,” he told me. “Questionable taste is what we do. And if it were a stunt, it wouldn’t be a bad one. I mean, we’ve got the ghost movies starting tomorrow, so why not stage a murder and then say we have a new ghost?” He seemed to be more thinking out loud than talking to me.

  “What do you mean, ‘a new ghost?’”

  He shot me a look. “You know the Palace is haunted, right? I mean, you do know something about this place?”

  “Hang on, are you saying you believe—”

  But whatever he believed about ghosts and haunted theaters would have to wait. Because Detective I-Wish-I-Could-Remember-His-Name was at the bottom of the stairs talking on his phone. He hung up when he saw us.

  “I was just coming to find you,” he said. “We have an ID on the victim.”

  “Raul Acosta,” I echoed.

  The detective had just told us that a wallet found on the body contained a driver’s license and credit cards identifying the victim as Raul Acosta, which rang no bells for either Marty or me.

  “David Jackson,” Marty said, taking the card the detective now held out.

  “We’ll need to see your records,” Jackson said. “Mailing lists, suppliers, anything that could tell us whether Acosta had a legitimate reason for being here.”

  “Of course,” I said. “How much longer—” But the detective’s phone rang and he turned away
to take it before I had a chance to ask any questions. The answer was clear anyway—they’d be done when they were done.

  I’d had enough of hanging out in Kate’s office, so Marty and I went upstairs for the laptop and my backpack, then went across the street to a coffee place called Café Madeline. It was late afternoon and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Not that I was hungry. But a double-shot anything seemed like a good idea.

  The cafe, modern and clean with high ceilings and free Wi-Fi, was warm and smelled comfortingly of coffee and autumn-spiced baked goods. We scored a table at the window so we could keep an eye on the theater across the street.

  Marty downed an extra-large Americano while we scoured the Palace records for any mention of Raul Acosta. We checked the list of people who subscribed to the weekly email blast. We checked the database of frequent filmgoers who were part of the Palace loyalty program. We checked popcorn vendors and film suppliers and former employees going back nine years. We even checked the name of the guy who had last repaired the icemaker. Nothing.

  “So how exactly did Raul Acosta wind up in our ice machine?” I asked, as Marty began copying all the files into a folder to email to the detective.

  “There’s a back door,” he said. “It goes out to the alley behind the theater. It’s always supposed to be locked, but someone could have left it open.”

  “Or he could have broken in,” I said.

  “In an attempt to rob us of our stockpile of Necco Wafers?” Marty scoffed. “Or just to get warm? After which he crawled into the ice machine to commit suicide by freezing?”

  “He was bludgeoned,” I said.

  “What? How do you know that?”

  “One of the guys in paper jumpsuits pulled Detective Jackson aside to tell him when he was questioning me earlier. He kept his voice low, but I’m pretty sure he said ‘blunt force trauma to the skull,’ which means Raul Acosta was bludgeoned, and didn’t commit ironic suicide.”

  “Hrumph.” Marty sat back and crossed his arms. “Well, the detective said he had credit cards, right? So he wasn’t some homeless guy just wandering in off the street to find a place to sleep.”

  “Then who was he?” I asked. “And what was he doing in the basement of the theater?”

  “And when, exactly, was he killed?” Marty rubbed his eyes, suddenly looking even more exhausted. “Was it before or after Kate? And what’s the connection?”

  “I thought Kate died in the park,” I said.

  He gave me a look filled with distain. “Kate was found in the park. And what sounds more likely to you—that she died in a freak accident at the same time this completely random murder took place in the basement, or that there’s a connection between the two? That maybe the same person who murdered Mister Deep Freeze also murdered Kate?”

  “Murdered?! Wait, what?” Robbie’s voice over the phone was understandably confused.

  “This is why you have to return my texts,” I told her. “A lot happened on my first day.”

  It was almost midnight, and I was back at the guest cottage, having finally been able to lock up the theater after the departing police. The first thing I’d done after walking the six chilly blocks home was raid Robbie’s wine rack. I now took a large sip from a large glass of Napa Valley red and told her everything that had happened.

  “I’m sure the police will be calling you,” I concluded. “You do own the place.”

  “Co-own,” she said. “And they already called. I got a couple messages but they didn’t say what it was about. I was on set all day and didn’t get a chance to call back—to call anyone back, including you, for which I am so, so sorry, Nora. Are you okay? I mean, this is not exactly the therapeutic escape you signed up for.”

  I swirled the wine in the glass. “Weirdly, I think I’m okay. I mean, yes, I was having a meltdown when I sent you that text, but finding a murder victim can apparently have a surprising sort of team-building effect.” I said it lightly while acknowledging it was true. Callie had apologized for her remarks about my marriage and Marty and I had spent several hours at the coffee shop together without drawing blood once.

  “And if nothing else,” I told Robbie, “I didn’t think of my cheating rat of a husband for hours at a time. So from a distraction perspective, this might actually be working.”

  “I was hoping it would all be a pleasant distraction,” Robbie answered. “Not involving heart-attack inducing shocks and visions that will haunt your nightmares.”

  “Albert didn’t have a heart attack,” I told her. “He was cleared by the EMTs.” After which he’d assured everyone that he’d be right as rain once he went home and had a good strong cup of tea.

  I took another good strong sip of wine. “And speaking of haunting my nightmares, what’s this about the theater being haunted? Marty said something about a ghost like it was common knowledge.”

  “It is common knowledge,” Robbie said. “Didn’t I tell you? Which ghost was he talking about, the showgirl or the usherette?”

  I took a moment to take the phone away from my ear and stare at it incredulously before responding. “Are you saying you believe in ghosts?”

  “I’m saying I believe in legends surrounding historic movie palaces,” she said. “There’s one about a showgirl who died during a knife-throwing act, back in the very early days of the theater when they still got the Vaudeville troupes, and there’s another about an usherette who was thrown off the balcony some time in the thirties.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, seriously. They even filmed an episode of one of those ghost hunter reality shows there.”

  ‘Reality’ may not have been the best description for a show about ghosts, but I let that pass. “I don’t suppose they actually captured either of these ghosts on camera,” I said.

  “Shockingly, no. I think they felt cold in the balcony and saw lights flicker backstage or something.”

  “Lights are flickering, all right,” I told her. “And icemakers are on the fritz, and I think I’m going to have to talk to you about a serious refurbishment budget, but let me see what happens on Day Two before I commit to anything.”

  “You don’t have to stay,” Robbie said. “If this was a bad idea just come home tomorrow. Or don’t come home. You can still go to Paris or Fiji or wherever you want.”

  “I know,” I said. She was right. I could go just about anywhere. The question was what I would do with myself once I got there. “I’ll stick it out here a little longer. I actually want to find out what happened. And besides, I haven’t even seen my first movie yet.”

  After I got off the phone I realized I was starving. Robbie had seen to everything else, so I had no reason not to expect that the same person she’d employed to put fresh sheets on the bed and fresh towels in the bathroom might have put some fresh food in the refrigerator.

  I was correct. There were supplies for days, and I made myself a very comforting plate of eggs on toast to go with another glass of wine.

  I hadn’t explored the compact little house when I’d gotten in the night before, but there really wasn’t much to see. A small but well-designed kitchen was outfitted with all the necessities, including the wine rack. It was open to the main room, which contained a deep L-shaped couch, a massive television, and a desk upon which now sat both my laptop and Kate’s.

  Almost the whole front wall of the house was glass, looking out on Robbie’s garden and the back of her three-story main house. She’d wanted me to stay there, but I’d had enough of rattling around in huge empty houses during my marriage. The cottage suited me just fine now.

  Behind the main room was the bedroom, separated not by a wall, but by a floor-to ceiling semi-sheer curtain. It contained a king-sized bed and a chair that looked like it was made for reading on rainy afternoons. Off the bedroom was a black-and-white tiled bathroom and a walk-in closet.

 
I’d opened my suitcase in the closet the night before, and now I stood over it, telling myself that any self-respecting woman would probably do more than just rummage through it when she needed a change of clothes. A self-respecting woman would hang things up and put things in drawers. After a while of not doing any such thing, I realized that I was no longer staring blankly at my jumble of clothes. I was staring blankly at my reflection in the closet’s full-length mirror.

  I’d avoided mirrors ever since I’d seen the first photo of Ted “canoodling” with Priya Sharma. I hadn’t needed a mirror to point out the stark contrast between her voluptuous curves and my lanky athleticism. Between her twenty-six-year-old freshness and my thirty-nine-year-old lack thereof.

  My hair, shoulder-length and streaked with mandatory Hollywood highlights, was now in a careless ponytail. I looked forward to the highlights growing out. I looked forward to becoming as pale and invisible as the ghosts of the Palace, while Priya Sharma gloried in her lush dark curls and her smoldering bedroom eyes, and the love of the man who had once promised to forsake all others, keeping only to me.

  Okay. Enough of that.

  I shook my head, and quoted Cary Grant out loud. “Well, that’s no good. That’s not even conversation.” It’s what he said to Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940, Cary, Kate, and James Stewart), right after she (wrongly) called herself an “unholy mess of a girl.”

  I, too, felt like an unholy mess of a girl. But I was an unholy mess of a girl with stuff to do. I raised my head defiantly and turned my back on my reflection. I had lots of stuff to do, and the first thing on my list was to google everything that was known about Kate Winslow and her death.

  By two a.m. I’d learned enough about Kate to know that the Palace, and the world, was a lesser place without her.