Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  I unfolded the paper, looking at what had presumably been Kate’s last list.

  “Win,” “M,” “Lace,” “Sorry,” and “Gas.”

  It occurred to me that it would be a nice gesture to use Kate’s last list to program my first slate of films. Sort of a nod of respect at the changing of the guard. That was, if I could figure out what movies she was talking about in that random list of five words.

  Not random, I corrected myself. Kate’s lists always seemed to have some theme.

  My phone alerted me that the car had arrived and as I stashed the paper and cards back in my bag a question popped into my mind. Why five films? The theater usually showed only two or three at a time.

  But of all the odd things I needed to figure out, that was pretty far down on the list.

  Callie was in the ticket booth when the car dropped me off outside the Palace, in anticipation of the crowds that were expected for the 4:45 show. And by “crowds” I mean roughly nineteen people. At best. She glanced up from her phone as I approached.

  “Feeling better?”

  When I’d last seen her I’d left her with the impression that I was about to go stock up on pot. “You know, I think I am,” I told her. Mostly because of a good cry and a brisk walk in the fresh air, but I didn’t want to blow my street cred by telling her that.

  The look she gave me assured me that I had no street cred. “Marty was looking for you.” She went back to her phone. “I think he’s in the break room.”

  “Thanks.”

  I waved to Brandon as I came in the lobby door and just about collided with Albert at the top of the balcony stairs.

  “Oh, Nora. There you are. Marty was asking about you.”

  “Thanks. He’s in the break room?”

  “Yes.” Albert peered at me a little more closely. “Hello. You’ve got some roses in your cheeks.” He stepped back and grinned approvingly. “Whatever you’ve been doing, keep it up.”

  I’d been wandering around a hilltop trying to get into the mind of a murderer. And I probably would keep it up, at least until I’d figured out who had killed Kate and Raul, and what any of it had to do with the Palace.

  “Thanks, Albert.”

  Marty was doubtless looking for me because I’d told Brandon I was looking for him earlier. I’d wanted to ask him what he knew about Kate’s plans for renovating the theater. So I was just the teensiest bit blindsided when I strolled into the break room and he asked me the question I’d been meaning to ask him. Although he asked it in his own inimitable way.

  “What the hell was Kate planning? And why the hell didn’t she tell me about it?” He practically attacked me the minute I appeared in the doorway. Then he crossed the room to stand too close, towering above me. It took all my strength of will not to back up into the hallway. He glared at me for a moment, then turned away and ran both hands through his already-disheveled hair.

  “Nora,” he wailed. “What the hell is going on?”

  Chapter 20

  Here’s what happened: The handyman had finally come to fix the ice machine. And when Marty had asked him—or more likely yelled at him—about why the Palace’s routine maintenance had fallen so far behind schedule, the handyman had told him that Kate had instructed him to defer anything that wasn’t an emergency because she was going to change everything anyway in the massive remodel she was planning.

  I got this backstory out of Marty in pieces, sandwiched in between his accusations of duplicity, treachery, and general awfulness. I finally got him to listen long enough to convince him I wasn’t any of those things—at least in this case—and that I hadn’t been keeping anything from him.

  “Seriously, I just found out about the renovation plans this afternoon,” I told him. “And the first thing I did was come looking for you.” Partially because it had crossed my mind that he might have killed Kate in a fury over her plans, but his obvious distress now pretty much convinced me that he hadn’t known a thing about them.

  The truth finally seemed to sink in for him, and he dropped into a chair at the break room table, all the fight gone out of him.

  “Why wouldn’t Kate have told me about it?”

  Now, instead of being angry and accusatory, he was just hurt.

  “Do you think…” I was about to say something that might get him all worked up again, so I accompanied the question with a box of cookies that I grabbed from the counter and poured onto a paper plate in front of him, on the theory that a spoonful of sugar, etc.

  “Do you think,” I sat opposite him and started again, “maybe she was planning something she knew you wouldn’t like?”

  He stared at me, munching furiously on snickerdoodles. “What wouldn’t I like?”

  Right. Because he was so open-minded. “Maybe,” I suggested, “modernizing?”

  “Why wouldn’t I like that? We’ve been talking about new carpets and upholstery for years. And the screen could stand an upgrade, and you’ve experienced the state of the light fixtures.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But that’s not what I mean. What if she wasn’t just thinking of modernizing the building? What if she was thinking of modernizing what you show? Turning the Palace back into a first-run house?”

  Marty stopped munching. He swallowed painfully and looked me in the eye. “Never.”

  I sat back, and he must have seen the doubt on my face.

  “You don’t get it,” he said. “This isn’t in your blood. But this theater, these movies, they were her life. She saw this place as more than important. It was…sacred to her.” He looked at me searchingly, desperately wanting me to understand something he didn’t think I could. “People like us, in places like this, we keep these films alive. It isn’t the same to see them on your living room couch. It isn’t the same to stream them to your phone. To see them on a real screen, in a theater—this kind of a theater, that was literally made for them—to see them in the company of other people, laughing together and feeling together—that’s more than a movie. That’s an experience. Kate would never, never have given that up. She’d have died first.”

  I caught my breath, both of us realizing the implication of his last statement.

  “I understand,” I told him. “I know you don’t think I do, but I get it.”

  “Then you see how ridiculous it is to think that she’d have wanted to show 3D IMAX bullshit action flicks in one of the last bastions of classic film.”

  I saw. But. “Why did she buy that projector?” I asked him. “The 4K laser extravaganza that’s in a box on a shelf in your projection booth?”

  He snorted. “She didn’t buy it. She won it at a trade show she went to last spring. And it’s still in a box because she was trying to sell it to raise money to keep the Palace going.”

  Oh.

  Still. “That was a pretty expensive prize.” When I’d looked it up it had been in the range of a hundred thousand dollars.

  Marty shrugged. He probably hadn’t looked it up. And he was still obsessing. “None of this makes sense,” he said. “If she was planning to restore the theater, she knows I would have been on board. One hundred percent. She would have talked to me about it. She would have asked me what we needed.” He looked at me. “When we upgraded the sound to the new Dolby equipment three years ago she asked me to design everything. Why wouldn’t she talk to me this time?”

  “Maybe it was going to be a surprise?” I suggested, knowing how lame that sounded.

  He didn’t even acknowledge the idea. “And how was she going to pay for it?” he went on. “Is there some new investor I don’t know about?”

  That hadn’t occurred to me. Was the extra money that was apparently pouring into the theater an investment from some silent partner? Someone Robbie didn’t even know about?

  “That would be pretty strange.” I reached for a cookie. “Marty, how much are you usually invol
ved in the Palace finances?” A casual question, no big deal.

  “Not at all,” he said. Then he looked at me sharply. “Why? What’s going on with the finances?”

  “Just some bookkeeping I don’t understand,” I said, minimizing the situation. “Robbie has a guy figuring it out.”

  Marty’s expression returned to hostility. “I hope you’re not suggesting that Kate was up to anything—”

  “No, no, no,” I said quickly. Although I didn’t have any other explanations. “I just didn’t understand some things. I’m not an accountant. I can barely balance my checkbook.”

  “How long has it been since you had to?” Marty scoffed.

  Fair point. Being married to a hugely successful movie star had had major financial perks. I felt a pang, knowing how many unread emails my lawyers had sent me on just that subject.

  “In any case,” I evaded. “I’ll let you know what the finance guy says. Maybe he can clear everything up.”

  “Fine,” Marty said, unconvincingly. “And speaking of you not knowing what you’re doing—”

  “We weren’t—”

  “I looked up that guy who’s been hanging around. His blog is bullshit.”

  This piece of news distracted me from defending myself.

  “What blog? You mean Todd Randall?”

  He snorted. “Todd Randall. That’s probably not even his real name. That Real on Reel website? He’s got about ten movies on it, and his descriptions of them are lifted straight out of IMDB.”

  IMDB is the Internet Movie Database, and it’s an incredible source of useful information—and useless information, which can be more fun.

  “What do you mean? He just copied and pasted?”

  “It looks like he put that site together in half an hour. If he’s a real blogger—and the bar for being a real blogger is incredibly low—I’m a Goldwyn Girl.”

  “Please don’t make me visualize that,” I said, sincerely not wanting to imagine him as a rhinestone-studded chorus girl. What I did visualize was the guy who had gotten into the theater on Sunday morning when I was now suddenly sure I’d locked the door. “What the hell is he up to?”

  Marty shot me a look. “According to Callie, he’s up to hitting on you.”

  “And I suppose Callie’s an expert?” Actually, she probably was. “In any case, he was hanging around before that. He said he was working on a film festival with Kate before I ever got here.”

  “He said,” Marty emphasized.

  “Well, at least we should be able to check out that part of his story. I advertised for a hacker this morning. With a little luck we should be able to get into Kate’s email and see if she really was in contact with him. Meanwhile, let’s tell everyone to let one of us know if Todd Randall shows up here again. I don’t want him wandering around the building.”

  “We should tell everyone to throw his ass out on the basis of that so-called blog alone,” Marty said. “I mean, for God’s sake, all anybody does in those movie blogs is regurgitate the same set of facts that they lift from Turner Classic or IMDB or the one movie star’s biography they may have read. But at least most of them do it with a minor attempt at creativity. This guy just flat out stole.”

  “How could he think he’d get away with something like that?” I wondered. “Especially with me?” I opened my eyes wide as I remembered something. “He did ask me not to judge him by the site. He said it was under construction or something.”

  “Especially with you?” Marty’s tone dripped with mockery.

  “Not everyone thinks I’m an idiot,” I told him.

  “It looks like Todd Randall does,” he countered.

  Which could have sent us spinning into another argument, but I was distracted by the sight of a vintage usherette in the doorway.

  “Nora! Where did you go? I came back after the picture, but you were gone. I heard Callie tell Albert you went out.” Trixie came into the room and perched on the counter behind Marty. “Gee, I miss going out. Did you have fun?”

  I did my best not to look at her, speaking to Marty. “Um…Don’t you have a projection booth to run?” Because it was hard enough having a conversation with him without Trixie in the room.

  Marty looked startled, then disappointed. He’d probably been looking forward to another round of I-know-more-about-movies-than-you-ever-will.

  He stood and made a point of looking down on me from on high. “That’s right. I have essential things to do around here.”

  He was just about out the door when I threw caution to the wind and stopped him.

  “Hey, I know you hate movie blogs, but the other day you said there was one you read. What is it?”

  He hesitated in the doorway. “You’ll never have heard of it. It’s called Movies My Friends Should Watch.” He turned. “It isn’t exhaustive and it isn’t updated as regularly as it should be, but at least it has an honest-to-God point of view.”

  Interesting.

  He left, and I turned back to Trixie, who tilted her head and looked at me curiously.

  “Hey Trixie,” I said.

  “Hey Nora,” she grinned. “What’s a blog?”

  Chapter 21

  “I just can’t get over these computer things,” Trixie said, following me down the hall to the office. “You say just anyone can write their own newspaper articles?”

  I’d said something like that. It wasn’t easy to explain the Internet to someone who hadn’t ever used a telephone without a switchboard operator to connect her call.

  “People can write their own articles,” I told her. “And record their own music, and even make their own movies and put them on the computer so everyone else can see them.”

  She stared at me. “Why, that’s just…unnatural.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s also pretty egalitarian. Back in your day you’d have to convince one of the handful of old white men running the major studios that your idea was good enough to turn into a movie. Now you don’t have to.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Then how do you know it is good enough?”

  Wow. Times had really changed.

  “I guess you just have to believe it yourself.” I told her. I sat at the desk as she curled up in a corner of the couch. “Does that make sense? What do you think?”

  She gave the laptop a suspicious look. “I think there must be a lot of terrible pictures on that contraption.”

  I laughed. “Oh, there are. But some pretty good ones too. And even some of the great ones, from your day.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean like with Clark Gable? And everybody? Right there in that thingy?”

  “More or less,” I said, not having any desire to get into the specifics of cloud-based content servers with a hundred-year-old ghost.

  “Gee,” she marveled. “Clark Gable. Right there whenever you want to see him.” She shook her head in wonder. “Well, that’s different. Just imagine.” She looked at me. “It kind of makes you think anything is possible, doesn’t it?”

  It hadn’t, until I saw it from her perspective. But now…“It kind of does,” I agreed.

  The next morning I woke to the sound of an incoming text from Robbie.

  Happy week anniversary. I’ll call with Naveen at 2.

  Good. At least one part of the Palace puzzle might be revealed by her financial expert. I sank back onto the pillow, having a hard time believing I’d only been in San Francisco for a week. One week, two murders, and a ghost. Two Murders and a Ghost. That sounded like the title of a movie Jack Benny might have made. Or maybe Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. It would be a comic thriller. I’d want Ann Sheridan as the fast-talking female lead and we’d set it in a castle in Scotland with Gale Sondergaard as the sinister housekeeper.

  This is how I usually spent my sleepless hours. Casting imaginary movies or thinking up ways to adapt my favorite
classics for a modern audience without ruining them. At least that’s how I’d spent my sleepless hours before they’d become filled by the hideous imaginings of what inventive new ways Ted would find to enjoy the many delights of Priya Sharma. Maybe it was a good sign that I was casting imaginary movies again.

  I looked at the clock. Five a.m. Robbie must have had an early call. I told myself it was way too early to get up and go to the theater.

  Then I got up and went to the theater.

  There was a light on in the office. I noticed it as soon as I turned the corner in the hallway. It was too dim to be the ceiling light. Probably the desk lamp. I’d probably forgotten to turn it off when I’d left after closing up the night before.

  That’s how clueless I was. It never occurred to me to be alarmed about a light in an empty office. It never dawned on me to be afraid. Not until I breezed into the room and saw Todd Randall going through the desk drawers.

  I froze. He’d spilled the contents of a drawer onto the desk and was running his hand along the underside of it, as if looking for a secret compartment. He froze too when he saw me.

  I had a flash of primal certainty that I had to be the one to unfreeze first.

  I spun around and started for the lobby stairs.

  “Nora! Come back! I can explain!” I heard him pounding after me and knew he’d catch up before I got downstairs and out to the street. So instead I flung myself into the break room and slammed the door behind me. I flipped the lock, just a flimsy button on the doorknob, and threw my weight against the door.

  “Nora,” Todd said through the door. “I’m so sorry I startled you.” He was breathless but reasonable, apologetic, his voice overly patient. “Please. Come out. Let me explain.” He paused. “I didn’t want to say anything to you before, because I honor Kate’s memory, but the truth is she owed me money.”