Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  “Nora,” Trixie shimmered into view behind Todd. “I can’t hurt him. I wish I could but I can’t.” She swiped a fist through his torso.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know what?” Todd looked at me narrowly.

  “I know you’re Kate’s husband.”

  I hadn’t known that, not until he’d just called her Ellie. But now, watching the stunned look on his face, I absolutely knew him to be the violent predator Kate had run from. Run for her life.

  “How did you find her?” I asked. I’d surprised him. Maybe I could use that to keep him off guard.

  He made a guttural sound, low in his throat. “Something you should know about hunting,” he said. “The trick is knowing how to wait.”

  While he spoke I took a step to my right. He did the same, unconsciously mirroring me, and I felt a surge of hope. If I could move slowly around the room, keeping him across from me, eventually I’d have my back to the door. And then I’d just have to run.

  “That’s what separates the good from the great,” Todd said. “Waiting. Keeping a sharp eye out. Holding for your moment.”

  Trixie appeared at my side, facing him with me. “I’m going to get help,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I promise I’m going to. Please just keep him talking. Just don’t let him near you until I get you help.”

  I nodded and she vanished. Where she would get help at dawn in an empty theater was something I didn’t want to think about. I just hoped she could do something.

  “So you found Kate,” I said. “And then what? Why the whole lie about ‘Todd Randall’ and a film festival? Why not just come for her? And what’s your real name, anyway?” Another step to my right.

  He moved forward. Damn. “You ever see a cat with a mouse?” His eyes glinted. “That cat never has more fun than when the mouse realizes how stupid she is.” He weighed the iron bar in his hand. “That space between when she knows she’s going to die and when the final swipe of the claw comes…” He sliced the bar through the air. “That’s the magic time.”

  I swallowed. “What about the money?” I asked. “How did you find out about it? And what about Raul?”

  “Oh, is this the part where I confess everything?” His lips twisted.

  “I’ll tell you what I think.” I stepped to the right again. This time he followed. “I think you made a date to finally meet Kate in person. I’ve seen the emails. You were going to meet at the café across the street.” Another step. “But you didn’t stick to that. You came a day early. Why?”

  “You just keep going, honey. You’re doing fine.” He took another step.

  I now had the door on my right, but I’d have to navigate around the poster cabinet and table to get to it. Todd would have a clear path. I had to keep him moving.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The fact is you showed up at the theater a day early. Kate wasn’t expecting you. Was Raul already there?”

  A flash of annoyance crossed his face. Or was it jealousy?

  “Is that why you didn’t stick to the plan? Did you come a day early to watch Kate without her knowing it? Did you see her meet Raul in the lobby and go up to the office? Did you think there was something between them?”

  Definitely jealousy. And now matched with rage.

  He struck out with the iron bar, shattering one of the glass lamps I’d moved.

  “That bitch!” he seethed. “Throwing herself at me over email and all the while she was spreading her legs for that—” Whatever derogatory term he used to describe Raul was lost in another smash of the bar.

  “So you followed them up to the office,” I said. “While Random Harvest was playing and everyone else was busy.” I took another step. “Then what did you do? Hit Raul from behind? That seems to be your—”

  The bar shot out, smashing a mirror.

  “She had no right!” he shouted. “She was my wife!”

  “So you knocked Raul unconscious,” I said.

  This seemed to take him by surprise.

  “Didn’t you know? You didn’t kill him. When you put him in the ice machine he was still alive.”

  Todd recovered quickly. “He’s dead now, isn’t he?”

  “What happened?” I asked. “How did Kate wind up with a broken neck?”

  “It was her own damn fault,” he said. “I wasn’t going to kill her. Not before I made her pay for everything she put me through.”

  “Oh,” I said without thinking. “What she put you through.”

  The bar came crashing down again, this time on the table. On the Dracula poster.

  “That slut thought she could buy me off,” he snarled. “Once she saw I meant business she couldn’t wait to tell me about all the money she had. She’d give it to me, she said, if I’d just go away.” His voice took on an ugly, mocking tone. “She wouldn’t tell anybody what I’d done. She’d give me the money if I’d just leave her alone. Yeah, right.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I played along. I let her think she could win.”

  There was nothing I could lay my hands on that would stand up to that heavy iron bar. I had to run. It was probably about fifteen steps to the door, then through the dark hallways to the back door and escape. If I didn’t take a wrong turn.

  “She told me I could use the back stairs and hide the body in the ice machine down here.” Todd said “She wouldn’t tell anyone. It could be months before it was found, and I’d be long gone by then, with all that money in my pocket.”

  I could imagine this conversation, Kate pleading for her life, trying desperately to figure a way out, to find her chance to run.

  “I made her drag him from her office to the stairs,” Todd went on. “But then she got stupid and made a run for it.” He held his head up, pointing the bar at me. “I did not kill her. The bitch tripped. Fell down all those stairs and broke her damn neck.”

  My stomach turned. Kate had died on the hard concrete stairs. Running from him, as I was about to.

  “So you hid Raul’s body, like you’d planned,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “And then what? The ice machine wasn’t big enough for both of their bodies?”

  “I went looking for some other place to put her,” he said. “And instead I found a wheelchair.”

  I made a small, strangled sound of understanding. Albert had told me the wheelchair had gone missing from the prop room.

  “Why the park?” I asked. “Why did you take her to—”

  He laughed, an ugly, rasping sound. “She’d broken her neck,” he said. “I thought I could make it look like an accident. If she wasn’t found here, nobody would look around for clues here, and nobody would find the other guy until I was long gone. And San Francisco is supposed to be full of hills, isn’t it? So I checked the map on my phone for the nearest one.”

  “That’s so…” stupid, I thought. Then I got a vivid mental image of him pushing her up to the top of the hill and throwing her over the side. It wasn’t stupid. It was cold-bloodedly horrific.

  My mouth had gone dry. “And you’ve been looking for the money ever since.”

  He twisted his lips into a smile. “And now there’s nothing left to do, is there, sweetheart? Except for one last little thing.” A light glinted in his eye.

  I ran. It was pure instinct. I didn’t even think.

  I was halfway across the room before he grabbed me from behind.

  Chapter 33

  He caught me by my hair, whipping me around until I crashed into the brick wall. A nearby mirror rattled with the impact.

  Dazed, I staggered back. He caught me, dragging me over to the mirror where I saw a bloody gash on my cheekbone. He stood behind me, holding me by the neck, grinning into the mirror.

  “Aren’t you pretty,” he said. “I like a girl with a little color in her cheeks.”

  He wiped the edge o
f the iron bar across the cut on my face, then held the bloody tip to my neck.

  “You asked me before what my name is.” His mouth was at my ear. His voice was low and husky. “It’s Nate. Nate Campbell.” He moved the bar, drawing a capital “N” on my neck in blood.

  An “N.” Kate’s scar hadn’t been a “Z” after all. It had been an “N.” It only looked like a “Z” because when he’d carved it into her skin he must have been holding her head at an angle. The angle he was now holding mine.

  “I’m just sorry we don’t have more time, sweetheart. There are things I’d like to do—”

  Suddenly the entire room was filled with the deafening sound of the 20th Century Fox overture, louder than I’d ever heard it. Todd jumped and loosened his grip on me, swearing. In that split second I took my chance. I ran.

  “Marty!” I shrieked. Out the door and down the hallway, with a murderer crashing along behind me. The halls were still pitch black, but I got the turns right and the darkness seemed to slow him down. I’d planned on escaping out the back door, but now, knowing someone else was in the theater, I sprinted up the stairs instead, shouting for help.

  I felt Todd behind me as I raced to the top of the stairs, to the lobby-level landing. I could hear his heavy breathing and with just a few steps to go I felt the bar swiping at the back of my jeans. It didn’t connect, but the next strike would.

  I kept my eyes on the top of the stairs, and suddenly a blinding light blazed on the landing above. It was Trixie, incandescent with fury, her form blurred and burning, opening her mouth in a scream as she rushed forward, passing through me, howling an unearthly “NO!”

  I heard Todd scream behind me as she appeared to him, terrifying in her glorious blinding rage. I felt as much as heard him crashing backwards down the stairs. Almost at the top, I turned to look and stumbled. I could feel myself about to fall down the stairs after him when I was grabbed by the wrist from behind.

  “What the hell?” Marty shouted.

  I hugged him like I’d never hugged anyone before in my life.

  Chapter 34

  Marty and I stared down at the body of Todd Randall, lying at the bottom of the stairs. His head was twisted in a way that said he wasn’t going to be a threat to anyone ever again.

  Trixie was nowhere to be seen.

  “What the hell?” Marty said again. “Is he dead? What the hell?”

  I loosened my grip on his flannel shirt and looked up at him, intending to try to explain, but it freaked him out more when he saw my bloody face. “Holy shit, Nora! What happened?”

  Which is when we heard the sound of shattering glass from the lobby.

  “Nora!” A voice called. Hector’s voice.

  Marty and I stumbled out of the stairway in time to see one of the lobby doors shattered and Hector sprinting up the grand lobby stairs.

  “Hector!” I yelled. At least I tried to. It came out as more of a squeak.

  But it was enough. He turned, took one look at the two of us, and said “I’ll kill you.”

  It took me a moment to realize he was talking to Marty.

  “No!” I yelped as he slammed back down the stairs. “It wasn’t him! I’m fine! Marty saved me!”

  “I did what?” Marty looked even more confused.

  “What happened?” Hector crossed the lobby, pulling me away from Marty and touching the area around my cut cheek surprisingly tenderly. “I saw the lights flash and knew you were trying to signal me.”

  “What lights? How did you even know I was here?” His gentle touch was really, really nice.

  “I saw you from the cameras I put in the back alley,” he murmured. “I’ve known each time you have entered or left the building.”

  “You what?”

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” Marty yelled.

  I withdrew from Hector’s attentions, taking a step back to look at them both.

  “You.” I pointed to Hector. “Have a lot of explaining to do. And you.” I pointed at Marty. “Deserve all the doughnuts in the world and a full explanation. But do you mind if I call the police first? Because there’s a dead killer in the basement, and I think they’ll want to know.”

  I was very collected when I said this. Then the lobby started to sort of swirl a bit and my legs seemed to lose the ability to keep me standing. They each grabbed an arm as I slumped against the candy counter.

  I didn’t faint. I feel I need to make that perfectly clear. I just got a little woozy. And if Hector or Marty thought it was strange that I murmured the name “Trixie” as I drifted in my wooziness, they didn’t say anything about it. At least not then.

  Many hours later, after a trip to the ER for stitches and X-rays—which thankfully revealed an unbroken cheekbone—I went back to Kate’s office hoping Trixie would appear, but there was no sign of her. I had no idea how much it might have taken out of her to show herself the way she had. I just hoped she was okay. And yes, I did realize how weird it was to hope that a ghost was okay.

  I opened the blinds for the first time in days and raised my hand to the window across the street where Hector was presumably still keeping watch. He’d left before the police arrived, preferring not to get involved if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. The police made the assumption that Todd/Nate had broken the glass lobby door, and Marty and I didn’t correct them.

  “Are you okay?”

  I jumped when I heard Marty’s voice, and turned away from the window.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you again.”

  He shrugged, then closed the door behind him and took a seat in the chair opposite the desk. “Is it true?” He crossed his arms and waited.

  The police had questioned us separately, Marty at the theater and me at the hospital. But I assumed by now he’d heard at least part of what I’d told Detective Jackson.

  I sat on the couch facing him. “Todd Randall was Kate’s husband,” I confirmed. “She ran from him over twenty years ago. His real name was Nate Campbell, and her real name was Ellie.” My voice faltered as I said this. It filled me with an unexpected surge of emotion to speak her true name out loud.

  Marty blinked rapidly, nodding. Then he looked at me, raw. “Why didn’t she tell me?” For the first time since I’d known him his defensive shield was torn. “She was—” He swallowed, hard. “She was my best friend.”

  “She was,” I said. “But her past was her past, and she’d gone through a lot to keep it that way.”

  He swiped at his eye, his pain turning to anger. “And that bastard hunted her down and killed her.”

  Technically, the way Todd had explained it, Kate’s death had been an accident. But in my mind that technicality didn’t matter. “Yes,” I said. “He killed her. And Raul.”

  “And he would have killed you if he hadn’t tripped.”

  Or if he hadn’t been frightened half out of his mind by a vengeful ghost.

  “He would have killed me if he hadn’t jumped when you blasted your morning music,” I said. “That damn overture probably saved my life.”

  Marty raised his head, his defiance returning. “That damn overture is my life.”

  “And I will never say one word against it again,” I promised. “I’m just glad you came in so early.”

  He shrugged. “I’m always early.”

  “Right,” I said slowly. “But not dawn early. Why were you here that early?” Had Trixie succeeded in sending out some sort of psychic cry for help?

  Marty shifted in his chair. “I had an idea, all right? I wanted to check it out.”

  “An idea?”

  “About the MacGuffin. I got to thinking in the middle of the night.”

  “Oh! Marty—”

  “I got the idea from Gaslight,” he went on. “What if the MacGuffin is jewels sewn into some of those old costumes down in the prop room?” He leaned forwa
rd, willing me to slap my forehead and call him a genius.

  “Yeah. I thought so, too,” I told him. “I checked them out yesterday.”

  This took a moment to register, then he sat back, deflated. “Oh. Well. Sure. It was just an idea.”

  “Marty,” I tilted my head. “Why don’t you ask me why I was here so early?”

  “I—” He was about to continue blustering, then he stopped, and looked at me closely. “Why were you here so early?”

  “The police are all gone, right? Because we’re going to have to cross the crime scene tape. I need to show you some posters.”

  About two minutes later he let out a whoop that could probably be heard across the entire city of San Francisco.

  By the time the 4:15 of Dial M started the broken glass in the lobby had been swept up and the door covered with a sheet of plywood. Callie and Albert had been told everything—well, mostly everything—and all of the original posters were safely stored in in a large safety deposit box at the nearby First Republic Bank.

  Albert and Marty had looked up online estimates of what the collection was worth while Callie had hovered over them saying a lot of things like “Wait, What?” They were dumbfounded at the roughly seven-million-dollar result. I didn’t think I’d be able to stick to my story of Kate having saved that amount out of the Palace’s petty cash but luckily they hadn’t asked about it. Yet.

  With everything under control, I grabbed Hector’s leather jacket and went across the street to Café Madeline, where I found the crime-lord-turned-rescuer at a table by the window.

  I dropped the jacket on the chair next to him and sat opposite. “What the hell do you mean you installed cameras at the theater?”

  He smiled, which was really irritating, mainly because it was such a good smile. “May I get you a coffee?”

  “You may answer my question.” I folded my arms and waited, then realized I was acting like Marty and unfolded them.

  Hector sipped from his own coffee cup. “I know you suspected me, and I didn’t blame you. I would have suspected me too.”