Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  Norma Shearer made another movie about divorce. The Women. And she took her husband back in that one, too, beating the scheming other-woman Joan Crawford at her own game. At least I hadn’t had to go to those lengths. I’d just sent an email. I was just going to a film festival.

  Ted didn’t send a reply.

  I wandered down to the lobby after the five-fifteen started. As I expected, Brandon was alone at the concessions stand.

  “Hey, Nora. People really like the new espresso machine.”

  “I’m so glad.” Mainly because it had been the biggest capital expenditure of my reign. But at the rate we were selling expensive caffeine it should pay for itself in a couple of months.

  “Brandon,” I perched on the stool behind the counter. “Did you speak to Detective Jackson yet?”

  A guilty look spasmed across his face, which immediately flushed bright pink.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “I haven’t told Callie. I just wondered what he had to say when you told him.”

  “Um…” The flush deepened.

  “Brandon?”

  He looked at me, wincing. “I just don’t want Callie to know I was…you know.”

  “Spying on her boyfriend?” I asked. Maybe a little too harshly.

  “It’s not like it matters now, right? I mean, it can’t have anything to do with somebody breaking in to his place.” The teenager clearly wanted me to agree with him.

  I didn’t. “We don’t actually know that’s what happened,” I reminded him. “The police need to know everything so they can sort through it all and figure out what really matters.”

  He flinched.

  “Look,” I told him. “You’ve already told me you think Warren was seeing someone besides Callie. I’ll make you a deal. Tell me what else you know. If I think it makes a difference, I’ll go to Detective Jackson with it.”

  He glanced around the empty lobby. Callie had gone home a while ago, but he didn’t want to be overheard by anyone else.

  “Okay. You know how Warren was always on his phone?”

  I nodded. Compulsive phone checking was one of the things he and Callie had in common.

  Brandon raised his eyebrows and have me a Highly Significant Look. “That wasn’t his only phone.”

  I tilted my head. “What?”

  “I found a phone on the floor of the break room a few weeks ago. I didn’t know whose it was, so I woke it up to see. You know how new messages can appear just for a second before the screen asks you for your password?”

  “Sure.”

  Another look, loaded with meaning. “These were from a girl. And, I mean, they were, um…” The flush returned with a vengeance.

  “Sexy?” I guessed.

  He nodded, and then recited from memory, not meeting my eye. “‘Hey dub-man. I can still smell you on my sheets.’”

  Ugh. “Okay, that sounds pretty incriminating.”

  “And there was a picture,” he said.

  “Did you recognize her?”

  He looked down and mumbled something.

  “Brandon?”

  “It wasn’t of her face,” he repeated.

  “Right.” And, again, ugh.

  “So you’re thinking ‘dub-man’ was Warren.”

  He nodded. “Dub as in W. Like everyone uses when they talk about the Warriors.”

  I didn’t follow sports, but I was aware of the wildly popular Bay Area basketball team. “Dub Nation,” I said. “I’ve seen the bumper stickers. Still, how do you know it was Warren’s phone and not some random Warrior fan’s? For that matter, if it was Warren’s phone, how do you know the message wasn’t from Callie?”

  He looked profoundly distressed at that thought.

  “I know it was Warren’s phone because I put it back on the floor and waited,” he said. “He came looking for it. His jacket was on the coat rack and it must have fallen out of the pocket or something. But he also had his normal phone, the expensive one he’s always carrying. This was a different one.”

  “Did he explain anything when he picked it up?” I asked.

  “Well, ah, he probably didn’t see me.”

  The break room was not that big. “How—”

  “I was, ah, in the broom closet.” Brandon’s voice trailed off into nothingness.

  I gave him a look.

  “I’m not proud, okay, but the point is he was cheating on Callie. And before you even ask me, I know the texts weren’t from her.” He took a huge breath. “Because I saw him with the other girl when I followed him home.”

  I held up my finger. I needed a minute.

  Okay, so my fresh-faced young employee was a stalker. Right. I’m sure other managers of other theaters had similar personnel issues to deal with. My primary concern now was how to tell Detective Jackson what Brandon had found out without getting the teenager into trouble. Or giving him a plausible motive for the police to consider—Jealousy.

  Which, I realized, would be the same motive they could assign to Callie.

  Sure, managers of other theaters probably had to deal with things like this all the time.

  Chapter 7

  I left Brandon with some stern words about personal privacy as well as some unasked-for words about getting over his crush on Callie. I had little expectation of his heeding any of it. High School seniors aren’t exactly noted for taking advice.

  After leaving him I grabbed my jacket and bag and went out for a walk. I’ve always thought best while walking, and I needed to think this through.

  The early January evening was damp and chilly, the streetlights coming on to show the lightest of all possible drizzles, which would have been very atmospheric if I were making a film noir, but as I wasn’t it was just annoying. I pulled my hood up.

  Did the police suspect Callie in Warren’s death? If so, I didn’t want to hand them what looked like a gilt-edged motive. But if the other woman Brandon had found out about did have anything to do with the crime, I didn’t want to withhold that from Detective Jackson.

  It would be a lot easier if Brandon had actually seen the woman’s face. If he’d be able to identify her. But, although he’d admitted to following Warren fairly frequently, and seeing him meet her more than once, he hadn’t ever gotten a good look. He said she was taller than Callie, with short blonde hair, but that was about all.

  I’d stopped digging for details when he’d said, “It was hard to get a good look at her face with Warren’s tongue down her throat.” That had pretty much eliminated any “maybe there’s a simple explanation” argument.

  The explanation was simple. Warren was a cheating fink.

  But did that matter to the investigation?

  My rational brain shouted “Hell, yes!” But my protective brain cautioned “What are the consequences?” And I wasn’t at all sure.

  So I kept walking.

  I wandered around the city for over an hour. I’d gotten to know the area around the Palace pretty well in the last few months. I went uphill along streets lined with houses that were definitely out of my price range, then turned to follow the perimeter of the Presidio, a former military base that was now largely public greenspace, and back down through blocks of more houses until I found myself on the sidewalk in front of the place I had probably meant to go all along. June’s office.

  The Howard Realty sign was still lit. I knew June and her staff kept whatever hours their clients demanded, so even though it was after seven and there was nobody at the receptionist’s desk, I knocked on the glass door.

  A moment later June herself appeared in the lobby. She waved when she saw it was me.

  “Nora, I’m so glad to see you,” she greeted me as she unlocked the door and let me into the blessedly warm waiting room. “I wanted to touch base.”

  “Why? Have you heard something?”

 
She looked momentarily confused. “Oh, about Warren? No. Have you spoken to the police yet?”

  “I was with Callie when she did.”

  This conversation took place as she led me from the windowed lobby down a hallway to her office in the back of the building, overlooking a tiny garden. The office was small but decorated in the same faultless style that June showed in her wardrobe. Neutral tones, understated and expensive. The kind of place where Grace Kelly would feel right at home. I hadn’t noticed anyone else working late in the rooms we passed, but June closed the door once I’d taken a seat.

  “How is Callie?” she asked. She opened a cupboard to reveal a small bar. “I was just going to have a glass of wine. Can I tempt you?”

  “Without even trying,” I said. “She’s okay. I mean, as okay as you could expect.”

  June uncorked a bottle of something white. “The poor kid,” she said. “Did they tell her anything?”

  “It was more of an asking situation.” I accepted the glass she handed me. Instead of taking the guest chair opposite mine, she moved around to sit behind her desk, which made things feel more businesslike. “Have the police told you anything more?”

  She shrugged. “What else is there to say, until they catch the burglar.”

  If it had been a burglar. “How is everyone here doing?” I asked.

  It couldn’t have been easy to lose a colleague to violent death. Even if he’d only been there a short time.

  June shrugged. “As well as can be expected. A few tears in the breakroom. A lot of gossip and speculation about what happened.” She took a healthy swallow. On anyone less chic it might have been a gulp.

  “What’s the prevailing speculation?” I didn’t come out and ask if it involved a mysterious blonde.

  She shrugged. “Oh, all the kinds of stuff they’d see in movies. Was he involved with drug dealers? Did he owe someone money? Had he pissed off someone’s husband?”

  That last one sounded promising. “Is there any basis in reality for any of it?”

  “Who knows?” She took another swig of wine. “But it’s all more dramatic than what probably really happened, which was that it was just his dumb luck to be home when somebody broke in. And lord knows everyone wants drama.” There was a bitterness to her voice that she probably hadn’t intended.

  “How about you?” I asked. “How are you holding up?”

  She gave her wine a contemplative look. “I’m sad, of course. And shocked that something like this happened. You read about things in the papers, but when it’s someone you know…” She made a face. “I called my security company to get a check on my home system. You can’t be too careful if this is turning into the kind of city that has this kind of crime.”

  I was on the point of commenting that all kinds of cities have all kinds of crime, as do all kinds of small towns. But everyone reacts to this sort of thing in their own way. Instead I just said something like “Hmm.”

  “Not that I would ever say anything like that to a client,” June said conspiratorially. Forgetting, apparently, that I was a client.

  “Have you heard anything more from your team?” I asked her. “Callie mentioned a couple people were there at the bar on Friday night.”

  “We were all so pleased for Warren.” This came out a tiny bit robotic. I got the impression that she’d said it a lot recently.

  “Right. So I wondered if anyone had mentioned when he left the bar, or what condition he was in?” June gave me a curious look, so I hastily elaborated. “Callie just said it seemed like he was drinking fairly heavily.”

  She pursed her lips. “I was happy to hear he didn’t drive home.”

  So she had heard something. Had she heard about the last text Warren had sent to Callie? The one that said June would freak out about someone he’d seen at the bar? Had he texted June?

  “That’s what I was worried about on Saturday,” she said. “When he didn’t show up at the open house he was supposed to be working, I thought he might have…” she shuddered. “But Sam told me he got a rideshare, so then I just went from being worried to being pissed.” She finished her wine and poured another glass. “If I only knew.”

  I made a soothing noise. Then, “Sam stayed until the party broke up?”

  June shrugged. “I suppose so. I didn’t interrogate her.”

  “But she’s spoken to the police,” I said. Then, at the look of surprise on June’s face, I amended that statement with, “I would assume.”

  “We all did,” she said. “Not that we had much to say. It’s not as though Warren’s work life had anything to do with his death.”

  “Of course.” Unless it did. I was just about to ask her whether she’d been told about the text when she changed the subject.

  “Nora.” Her tone became a little brisk. “I’m glad you came by. We should talk about Monday.”

  Monday? Monday! I’d completely forgotten about the event June and I had planned for the next week. It was a corporate off-site. An all-day series of meetings, networking, and informative talks for her employees, as well as the staff of two other independent real-estate firms, roughly a hundred people in all. When she’d mentioned she was putting it together, I’d suggested that she cancel her reservations at a boring downtown hotel ballroom and hold it at the Palace instead. She’d instantly loved the idea of using the local landmark for her event. I’d loved the idea of opening up a new source of income for the theater.

  “Of course,” I said. “Do you want to postpone?” Even as I asked her, my heart sank at the idea. I’d arranged for catering and the rental of furniture and equipment for the day’s speakers. I’d lined up a film crew to record the talks so June could post them on her website—okay, the crew was just some of Callie’s friends from film school, but still. I’d put a lot of work into the planning, hoping that renting the theater out for special events like this one might turn into a lucrative revenue stream. I hadn’t even thought about it since Warren’s death, but of course it would be in poor taste to hold what amounted to a corporate pep rally the week after a colleague was killed.

  “No,” she said, surprising me. “I’ve thought about it, and as much as we all cared for Warren here, the event isn’t just for my company. A lot of very busy people have cleared their calendars for this, so I think we should go on with it.”

  As the person who wanted to make the Palace financially viable, I was relieved. But as a person person, I felt more than a little squicky about it.

  “I think we should start with a moment of silence,” June said. “For Warren. And then carry on.”

  “And maybe shift the order of events?” I suggested. I knew the day was scheduled to begin, after coffee and pastries, with a rousing motivational speech entitled “Get Pumped and Stay Pumped.” It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that could easily follow a moment of silence for a murdered colleague.

  June frowned. “You’re probably right. I’ll have Sam take a look at it all and call you in the morning.”

  “Okay.” I finished my wine. “I’ll let the gang know we’re still on. Callie was going to help out, but I’ll find someone else.” I couldn’t imagine she’d still want to direct the filming.

  “Good.” June looked relieved.

  She stood, which gave me the feeling I was being very professionally kicked out. I hesitated when we got to the lobby door, but at the last minute I decided not to ask her about the text.

  I’d ask someone else instead.

  As I walked down the street toward the Palace, I took my phone out of my pocket, noted that my maybe-ex-husband still hadn’t responded to my text about Sundance, and dialed Detective Jackson.

  Chapter 8

  “Your not-a-boyfriend isn’t answering his phone.”

  I informed Marty of this when I got back to the Palace. He was up in the dimly lit projection booth, fiddling with some piece of ma
chinery and half watching through a tiny window as Fred and Ginger drifted elegantly around a gloriously art deco set in The Gay Divorcee. Fred was graceful and sophisticated. Ginger was too, but backwards, and in heels.

  “He’s not my—” Marty began. Then he shot me a hostile look. “I’m not his keeper.”

  “But it occurred to me that you might know if he has plans this evening.” I came into the booth and closed the door behind me. This was Marty’s lair, and I always felt a little nervous in the cluttered, confined space. One false move and I could break the last thingamajig on earth that made the ancient projectors work. And with carefully arranged mechanical junk balanced everywhere, it wouldn’t be hard to make one false move.

  “Why do you care?” Marty regarded me narrowly. “What are you up to?”

  “I have to tell him something,” I said. Leaving out that I also wanted to ask him something. “So I was thinking. If you were planning to meet for an after-work drink or late dinner, maybe I can tag along for a few minutes.”

  I gave him my friendliest smile. He looked like I’d suggested something obscene.

  “You one hundred percent cannot tag along,” he said. “And besides, David doesn’t drink.”

  “Really?” Several dozen cop clichés sprang to mind. That’s what happens when you’re a recovering TV writer. I’d already mentally spun out a plot involving the tragic death of his partner and a shaky hold on recovery before I caught my next breath.

  “Really,” Marty said. Then he gave me a long-suffering look. “He does, however, eat ramen.”

  My eyebrows went up. “So you’re meeting him? I can go with you?”

  “Don’t be insane. But if you were to go to Marufuku in Japantown right about now you’d probably find him ordering the deluxe pork belly special. Extra spicy.”