Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  They pretty much spell out their future relationship right at the beginning.

  Him: “What a dope you must think I am.”

  Her: “I think you’re rotten.”

  Him: “I think you’re swell, as long as I’m not your husband.”

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Everything begins at night, of course, with something very wrong with MacMurray. How wrong, and how it got so wrong, is the totally noir tale he’ll tell his Dictaphone.

  In flashback, MacMurray meets Stanwyck on a sales call at her gorgeous Spanish-style LA home. She’s wrapped in a towel, looking at him appraisingly from the top of the stairs. The spark between them is immediate. This is classic noir stuff. She’s bad and he knows it, but he can’t look away. And BTW, he’s no prince himself.

  They’re sniffing each other out from the first. Does he handle accident insurance? You bet he does. And that’s not all he’d like to handle. MacMurray is full-on sleazy in his role, which was a departure for him. I wonder if his heavy-handed come-ons and his leering obsession with her ankle bracelet seemed quite as gross in 1944. Or would the sexually-provocative Stanwyck have been “asking for it”? I mean, there is that ankle bracelet…

  In any case, innuendo gets poured all over everything, and then MacMurray heads back to his office, where we meet his boss, played by Edward G. Robinson looking so much like my Grandpa John that it’s eerie. Robinson is our only moral actor in this piece, and he has a sixth sense about insurance fraud. This will be significant.

  MacMurray knows full well what Stanwyck wants of him. He put it to her in unvarnished tough-guy terms: “Look, baby, you can’t get away with it. You want to knock him off, don’t ya?” She does.

  Later, MacMurray confesses to the Dictaphone. “I knew I had hold of a red-hot poker and the time to drop it was before it burned my hand off.” But knowing and doing are different things. The next time he sees her it gets steamy quick, and then it’s all “I’m crazy about you, baby” and tales of accident policies and widows winding up in jail. The good news is, he’s seen it all so he knows what mistakes to avoid. He has a plan. Right.

  Back at the office, Robinson sums up the difficulty in trusting a partner in crime. “It’s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end of the line, and the last stop is the cemetery.” This is eerily similar to the promise Stanwyck repeatedly makes to MacMurray. “It’s straight down the line for both of us.”

  And where will that line lead? I’ll just say that in these matters you should always listen to Edward G. Robinson.

  Killer lines:

  This movie is so full of killer lines! MacMurray’s voiceover defines the tough-guy 40’s image, everything tossed off with nonchalant swagger. And Stanwyck gives us fast-talking dame for the ages.

  “Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money. For a woman. I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. I was thinking about that anklet.”

  And this has to be the best sexually charged exchange ever between two people who’ve known each other less than five minutes:

  Her, knowingly: “There’s a speed limit in this state Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.”

  Him, with a sly grin: “How fast was I going, officer?”

  Her: “I’d say around ninety.”

  Him: “Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket?”

  Her: “Suppose I let you off with a warning this time?”

  Him: “Suppose it doesn’t take?”

  Her: “Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles?”

  Him: “Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder?”

  Her, steely: “Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder?”

  Him, smiling: “That tears it.”

  Movies My Friends Should Watch

  Sally Lee

  Chapter 17

  “Trixie!” I was so relieved to see her in the office the next morning I could have hugged her, assuming that was even possible.

  “Nora! I’m so glad you’re here! How long was I away? It can’t have been too long because the same pictures are on the marquee. That’s how I know, sometimes, when I come back. I see if the same pictures are playing. If they are, I know I was just away for a little bit, but if they’re different I have to check the board to see what I’ve missed.” She nodded to the blackboard, her curls bouncing. “That’s if I can remember what was playing before I went away.” A shadow passed over her face, then she shook it off and brightened again.

  “What did I miss? Have you told Albert that you can see me? Have you thought of a way for him to see me, too? I can’t believe he’s been looking for me all these years. Imagine that! And I think I might just remember him. Can you ask him if he wore glasses back then? There was this serious little boy who wore glasses who was just the sweetest thing. I wonder if it was him. Do you think—”

  “Trixie,” I interrupted. “I have to ask you something. It’s important.”

  “Oh!” She sat on the edge of the desk and put her tiny feet on the chair in front of it. “What is it, honey? What’s happened?” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees.

  “I found something out,” I told her. “About the man you saw in the basement. I met his brother yesterday.”

  “Oh.” Her expression became concerned. “Did you tell him that his brother is all right? That his mother came for him, and…everything?”

  I sank onto the couch. “Well, that’s a little awkward, you know? Without telling him how I know it?” That had hit me when I was with Hector yesterday. Telling him I knew Raul had gone to a better place, that he was with their mother, would sound like empty platitudes without citing my spectral source. And citing my spectral source was the first step on a path that was likely to get me locked away in a nice, quiet psych ward somewhere.

  “Oh.” She deflated. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “What I wanted to ask you,” I began. “I found out that Raul was…” how to put it in the sort of 1930s terms she would understand? “He was kind of a gangster.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “He was trying to go straight,” I added. “But I think that must have had something to do with why he was killed.”

  “Sure,” she nodded.

  “But I still don’t understand why he was killed here. And how Kate was involved.”

  Trixie’s forehead creased in concentration. She held up a finger, as if she were about to say something, then stopped herself. She tilted her head, frowning, then opened her mouth but closed it again before speaking. She bit her lip, then chewed a fingernail, then sighed in exasperation.

  “I don’t understand it either,” she said.

  I’d been holding my breath throughout her entire visible thought process. Now I let it out, disappointed.

  I tried another angle. “Trixie, I’ve found out one more thing. Kate died on the same day that Raul did.”

  The perfectly painted mouth formed an O.

  “I want you to think very hard. You got a feeling when Raul was about to die, right? You felt it like electricity.”

  She nodded.

  “Did you feel anything like that any other time that day? Did you feel it when Kate died?”

  Trixie’s expression shifted. Her gaze went to a faraway place. When she came back she looked certain. “No.”

  “You’re sure?” I pressed.

  She shook her head. “If I felt a stranger like that, surely I would have felt Kate. Wouldn’t I?”

  “I think so,” I agreed. Which meant that Kate probably had died in the park. Which just made things that much more confusing.

  I lo
oked over to Trixie, who was sitting on the desk next to Kate’s laptop, contemplating the situation with her chin in her hands.

  “Trixie, I keep forgetting to ask you,” I said. “In all the times you were around Kate, and she was working on her laptop, did you ever notice what she entered as her password? Or if she wrote her password down someplace and hid it? Did you ever see anything like that?”

  She smiled quizzically. “What’s a laptop?”

  So, technology wasn’t exactly Trixie’s strong suit. Fair enough. After a bit more pointless speculation she left to go watch Dr. Jekyll, because “That Spencer Tracy is just dreamy,” and once again I contemplated the email situation.

  I’d had it. I did what I probably should have done in the first place. I placed an ad for a hacker on Craigslist. I didn’t actually say “Wanted: Nerd of dubious morals to hack a dead woman’s email,” but the posting in the Gigs | Computer section pretty much summed up the need. Without violating the site’s terms of use.

  After hitting the Submit button I stared at Kate’s computer desktop. And then I realized I’d totally forgotten to pester Robbie about what Naveen had said about the Palace’s finances. I used my phone to send her a quick text asking her to call me when she got a chance.

  Then I stared at the laptop screen some more. Finally I took a deep, strengthening breath and clicked on the only folder I hadn’t yet explored. The folder I’d been avoiding, afraid of what it would contain. It was titled “Repairs.”

  There were yearly spreadsheets going back five years, which is probably how old the laptop was. Each had a list of repairs to the Palace, along with what they had cost. Unfinished repairs from one year were carried over to the next. When I opened the current spreadsheet I saw that the list was long, and even though it was October, the tasks were barely a quarter complete. And there were some significantly big-ticket items—electrical and plumbing to name a couple—that were still glaringly not checked off.

  Why in the world had Kate been spending money on pricy equipment that she didn’t use when she had a list like this of things that really needed to be done?

  I thought I found the answer when I clicked on a subfolder titled “Renovation.”

  Kate had been planning something big.

  I studied the plans for a while, and then I went looking for Marty. I couldn’t imagine that Kate had been planning the kind of massive remodel she’d itemized in that folder without talking it over with her second-in-command.

  He wasn’t in the projection booth.

  “Hi, Nora,” Brandon greeted me in a cheerful whisper.

  “Hey.” I hadn’t seen the teenager in a few days, as he hadn’t worked the weekend shifts. “I’m looking for Marty.”

  “He said he had to run an errand, so Callie’s watching the concession stand while I watch things up here.” Brandon said. “He’ll be back before the movie ends, which is…” he glanced at the large clock above the window through which the film was projected. “In fifty-three minutes.”

  I glanced at the screen through the window. Things were getting pretty complicated for Spencer Tracy, what with keeping a mind-bending secret of vast metaphysical implications and everything. I could relate.

  “Marty left you in charge?” I asked Brandon. I hadn’t thought Marty ever left the booth when a film was playing.

  Brandon nodded. “He put the whole film together on a platter, so it doesn’t need to be switched from one machine to the other between reels,” he explained. “I’m just here in case anything goes wrong. But it won’t.” He tapped his forehead. “Knock on wood. Should I tell Marty you were looking for him?”

  “Sure.” I left him in the dimly-lit booth. I was thinking about alibis and wondering if Random Harvest had also been set up on a platter. Would that mean Marty would have been free to roam around the building when Raul and Kate were getting murdered?

  I went down the stairs to the lobby slowly, thinking. What if Kate had been planning to turn the Palace into a first-run theater after all? Marty certainly would have been opposed to that.

  Violently opposed?

  My increasingly wild thoughts were interrupted by a man’s voice.

  “Nora.”

  “Todd.” The film blogger. Better looking than I’d remembered and regarding me in a way that said he knew it. He lounged at the concession stand, one elbow on the counter, where he had apparently been in conversation with Callie.

  “It’s so good to see you again.” He left the counter and grinned engagingly as he approached. “I was just asking this young lady where I might find you.”

  Callie shot me one perfect “I’m so bored” look, then picked up her phone. There were no other customers in the lobby.

  “You’re looking gorgeous today,” he told me. This was, objectively, a lie. I was wearing sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt advertising the 2015 Telluride Film Festival. I couldn’t even say for sure if I’d showered that morning.

  “Thanks. Sorry I haven’t called.” I couldn’t actually remember if I’d promised to.

  “Please,” he held up his hands. “No worries. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I might be lucky enough to find you free for coffee.” He tilted his head invitingly. “Or a late lunch? Or an early drink?”

  “Um…” I was thrown. And there was no good reason to be thrown by a perfectly nice guy asking me out for a perfectly innocent coffee. Or even a not so innocent coffee. Yes, I’d been married for the past ten years, but I hadn’t been mummified. Men had flirted with me on a fairly routine basis in Hollywood. Was I thrown by this guy just because for the first time in a long time I might be available?

  He was still waiting for an answer.

  “I’m sort of in the middle of something.”

  He lowered his head, giving me a fair approximation of puppy dog eyes from behind his sexy professor glasses. “Please. You have to eat.”

  Which I realized I hadn’t done in a while. But despite the eyes and the obvious interest, or maybe because of them, my instinct was to reject the idea. Rationally, I told myself it was because I still hadn’t managed to check out his story about working with Kate on the film noir project. But irrationally, there was just something about him. Sure, with all of his charm he was the tiniest bit Cary Grant-ish. But, I realized with a jolt, it was the Cary Grant from Suspicion (1941, Grant and Joan Fontaine).

  I stood a little taller. “Some other time,” I told him. “I promise. But right now I’m afraid I have…” I glanced around the lobby. “…Things to do.”

  It wasn’t a strong finish, but he accepted it, holding his hands up again in mock surrender. “That’s what I get for dropping in on such a busy woman,” he smiled. “Next time I’ll call.”

  “You do that.” I didn’t offer my number.

  He nodded, giving me one last look. It was a good look. Maybe I should have gone for coffee with him.

  I watched him walk out the lobby door, wondering if this sort of thing was going to happen a lot post-divorce. I was exhausted just thinking about it. If Ted hadn’t been such a cheating narcissist of a bastard I might have preferred to stay married to him.

  “Soooo…” Callie said as the door closed. “He’s thirsty.”

  I gave her a look. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” I was still stung from her “your era” comment about my advanced age. “He’s just a blogger,” I told her.

  “Uh huh,” she nodded. “I guess that’s why he’s acting like he’s Rick and you’re Ilsa and you just ran into each other at a cute little bar in Casablanca.”

  I had to give her points for the reference. Still. “He just wants to use the theater.”

  “Uh huh. So, are you going to, like, have coffee with him?”

  “There is no having coffee with him,” I said. “He just wants to put on a film festival.” Even I didn’t believe that anymore.

&
nbsp; “Uh huh. If you say so. But, like, that guy’s totally not interested in a film festival.” She raised her eyebrows. “Just saying.”

  I frowned at her. “He probably just googled me and now he thinks I can help him get his screenplay made.”

  “He has a screenplay?”

  “Everyone has a screenplay.” I leaned my elbows on the counter. “My head hurts.”

  “Mine would too.”

  I grimaced. “Tell me again where I can find Monica’s pot shop.”

  Chapter 18

  The Potent Flower was four blocks down and three blocks over from the Palace on a busy section of Divisadero Street. I showed my driver’s license to the guard outside the door and walked into what looked like an upscale boutique.

  The shelves were light glossy wood, and the walls were a soothing gray-green. There were a few free-standing display cases with glass tops, and the overall vibe was of the kind of place you’d find in Malibu selling hundred-dollar candles endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow. Except it was much more crowded.

  And there were no candles. Instead, the shelves on the right side of the shop held a multitude of small jars containing buds of every possible shade of green. Each strain was labeled, and available for purchase au natural or already rolled. The other side of the store had more shelves, these containing beautifully packaged chocolates, caramels, teas, ointments, and other goodies, presumably all made with THC. The whole place reeked of stoner chic. It also, to a lesser extent, reeked of weed.