Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  A number of unpleasant possibilities occurred to me in the dramatic pause Marty took. Someone watching porn? Someone tweeting something hateful? Someone using a filter to make his selfie look like Bogart? Anything was possible.

  “He was…” Here Marty shuddered and passed me the pastries. “He was watching Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “Ooohhhh.” Callie exhaled in sudden and sympathetic understanding.

  “Right?” Marty turned back to her. “Of all films!”

  “Of all films,” I agreed. Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, and not one woman in a speaking part) is one of the greatest achievements of wide-screen spectacle in the history of film. There is truly a cast of thousands, and that’s not counting the camels. Watching it on a phone was completely missing the point of a legitimate screen epic.

  “Marty,” I asked, fearing the worst, “what did you do?”

  “I merely pointed out that he was committing a sacrilege,” he sniffed.

  I could only imagine at what length and volume he had pointed this out. “And?”

  “He smirked.”

  I steeled myself for another tirade, but suddenly all the fight seemed to go out of him.

  “What kind of world are we living in?” he wailed. “With what kind of people? People who smirk at the idea of giving a film the respect it deserves?”

  “Well—” I began, but he wasn’t finished.

  “And how complicit are we? What are we even doing here today? What fresh hell are we going to unleash on an unsuspecting world tomorrow?” His distress, once we got past his bluster, was oddly touching.

  Callie apparently thought so too. She took the bakery box and offered it back to Marty. “Have a cupcake. It’ll make you feel better.”

  “I don’t want a cupcake. I don’t even know what’s in the box. Lisa just handed it to me and rushed me out of there.” He took a deep breath. “She probably didn’t want a scene.”

  She probably already had a scene, and she wanted to end it. Lisa, the owner of Café Madelaine, was a friend. I’d ask her about it later.

  Callie raised the lid. “There’s, like, a scone…”

  “A scone is small consolation for a world gone mad,” he sniffed. But he took it.

  “I don’t really think we’re complicit in the end of civilization,” I said, in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. “We’re still holding on. I consider us a last bastion.”

  Marty took an enormous bite, scattering crumbs and sighing. He looked up at the vast high ceiling, painted with small gold stars and home to an enormous glittering chandelier. The lobby we stood in was a glorious remnant of a time when movie theaters were modern palaces, with gilt touches on hand-carved wooden paneling, a long glass concessions stand, and an elegant staircase sweeping up to a balcony. Admittedly, if you looked too closely you saw the wear in the deep blue carpet, and perhaps some of the fixtures were less than pristine, but still. This single-screen relic was the kind of theater where a person should see Lawrence of Arabia. Or any of the other thousands of classic films we showed.

  “We are a last bastion,” Marty said, squaring his shoulders. “This is the hill we die on.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “This is the theater we show movies in. At least as long as we can afford to keep the doors open. Speaking of which…” I gestured to the stacked cartons of merchandise that cluttered the lobby. “Shall we get started?”

  But that would have been too easy. Instead, we were interrupted by the bang and clatter of the lobby doors announcing the hasty arrival of a third member of my staff.

  “Am I too late? Is he here?” Brandon Dunbar, high school senior and part-time popcorn wrangler, glanced around the room with breathless anticipation. Of what, I had no clue.

  “Is who here?” I greeted him. “Why are you here? Don’t you have school today?”

  He waved a hand at this triviality. “Is S Banks here?”

  He pronounced the name with a sort of hallowed awe, indicating the lofty position this S Banks person held in the online gaming culture that Brandon had recently become devoted to. “I saw online that he checked in at a coffee shop on Divisadero,” he continued. “But he isn’t there. Is he here?”

  “Who is S Banks?” Callie asked, for which I liked her more than usual, which was quite a lot. “And why are you stalking him?”

  “Who’s…?” Brandon stood before her flummoxed. Normally he stood before her in a sort of haze of unrequited passion, so her cluelessness must have hit him hard.

  “S Banks is the antichrist,” Marty told her unhelpfully.

  At this Brandon recovered. “He’s a genius!” he protested, flushing to the roots of his ginger hair. “He’s just the most brilliant game designer on the planet, that’s all! What he’s doing with AR is just—I mean—he’s only the—”

  He might have gone on sputtering for a while, but Marty cut him off, nodding. “He’s the antichrist.” As if they were saying the same thing.

  “Okay, enough.” I raised my voice before things got even more out of hand. “He may be a genius,” I told Brandon, “or he may be the antichrist. He may be both. I don’t know or particularly care. What I do know is that the whole point of tomorrow’s webcast is to announce his new thing. Whatever that is and whoever he is only matters to us because it matters to Tommy. So how about we start unpacking these cartons?”

  Tommy May was a Silicon Valley tech guru and, more importantly, a one-quarter owner of the Palace. He was also a partner in Banks’ new offering and the reason we’d be playing host to a gaggle of nerds the next day as they watched a live feed of the webcast announcement.

  Setting up for the high-tech unveiling was the whole reason we were working that day. Usually the Palace is closed on Mondays, but since we were one of only eighteen theaters worldwide that would be getting the live stream the next day, we had a little prep work to do.

  I’d opened a few of the cartons the night before, when they’d arrived by special courier, shrouded in a veil of secrecy. The tape that sealed them was printed with all sorts of dire warnings about security protocols and strict injunctions against sharing any of the contents with members of the press or general public. I’d taken a peek, expecting marketing pamphlets or brochures or something, which just shows that I have no business living in the epicenter of technology that is the San Francisco Bay Area.

  “They’re tablets,” I told Brandon, who had approached the nearest carton with the same kind of awestruck fascination that Sidney Greenstreet had for the Maltese Falcon.

  He stopped in mid-reach and stared at me.

  “I got instructions from Tommy last night,” I explained. “He sent a text to all the theaters. Apparently the ‘old media’ way of printing brochures has too many opportunities for information to be leaked, so everything about the game will be delivered online. These tablets will get it all first.”

  There were fourteen cartons on the counter. “Those are all full of tablets?” Marty said. “How much are they spending on this thing?” He looked slightly queasy.

  “I mean, why would they care?” Callie asked. “Whatever they’re announcing will be so huge they might as well be printing money.”

  She had a point. Tommy, who I assumed was already printing money from a handy little travel app that everybody seemed to use, had partnered with the hottest game developer on the planet: Brandon’s hero with the one-letter name. Whatever Tommy and S were going to announce the next day was bound to rake in more money than I could imagine. And I have quite the imagination.

  Brandon took a boxed tablet from a carton. He held it in both hands like a grail.

  “There’s some special app on it,” I told him. “Tommy said they’ll hit all of them with data, all over the world, tomorrow during the announcement, so everyone attending in the theaters will get the same thing at the same time.” />
  “And I’ve got one.” Brandon hugged the boxed miracle of technology to his chest.

  Marty plucked another one out of the carton, holding it between two fingers as if it were toxic. “What are we supposed to do with them?”

  “One per seat in the auditorium,” I told them. “We need to take them out of their boxes and make sure they’re ready to get the bat signal tomorrow. Let’s get moving. There are also a couple of banners to hang.” I reached into another carton and pulled one out, unfurling a length of heavy crimson fabric more suitable to a medieval castle wall than a theater—even the Palace.

  “It’s a logo,” Brandon breathed.

  I looked at the image, embroidered in gold thread. “It’s a globe. It probably means there’s some sort of travel component to whatever they’re announcing, right? Which would explain why S the game guy partnered with Tommy the travel app guy.”

  Brandon swallowed. “It’s going to be awesome.”

  “Uh huh.” I put the banner back in the box. “In any case, we’ll find out all about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, the fee for hosting this event is enough to pay our electricity bills for the next six months, so how about we get set up?”

  I picked up a box and opened the door to the auditorium, where I found another member of the Palace family hanging out. Beatrix George, more generally known as Trixie, was the longest-serving usherette in the history of the Palace and possibly the only person in the city with less technical know-how than myself. Although she had a better excuse. She died in 1937.

  Chapter 2

  “Hiya, Nora!”

  Trixie was perched on the steps up to the stage, waving enthusiastically. I didn’t answer her, beyond a quick stealthy nod, because I had some silly desire not to be committed to a quaint little asylum for the completely insane. I was the only one who could see or hear the ghost of the Palace. I knew she was real, but I had no expectation that anybody else would take my word on that.

  She scampered up the aisle toward us, the shiny gold buttons and braid of her usherette’s uniform gleaming, her little cap at a jaunty angle on her bouncing blonde curls, her wide blue eyes taking in the boxes and the banners with delight.

  “What’s all this? What are you doing? Gee, are we having a party?” She clapped her hands. “Oh, I love a party! Why, I haven’t been to a party in I don’t know how long!”

  I gave her a warning glance. One that reminded her that I really couldn’t chat when there were other people around. She nodded and grinned, then mimed a zipper across her mouth.

  Callie, Marty, and Brandon had hauled the cartons into the auditorium and were now doing the math to figure out how many of the theater’s seats were going to get a tablet.

  “Thirteen boxes, not counting the one with the banners, with twenty-four tablets per box,” Callie said. “That means we have 312.” She glanced at me.

  “There are 311 names on the guest list for tomorrow.”

  “Ohmygod! Can I have the extra?” Brandon flushed with excitement.

  “Sure. If we get to keep it, you can pick it up after the announcement.”

  He looked at me like I’d slapped a cookie out of his hand. “What do you mean ‘after’? I’m going to be here for the announcement.”

  “The meeting is at eleven in the morning on a school day,” I reminded him.

  “What meeting?” Trixie asked me. “What announcement? It isn’t a party?” Her lip zipper hadn’t lasted long.

  “You don’t think I’m going to miss this, do you?” Brandon protested. “S Banks! In this theater! Announcing his new—”

  “He’s not going to be in this theater.” I slid a carton of tablets toward the teenager. “He’s going to be in some event space in Palo Alto. We’re just getting the live feed. You know that. You can watch it later online. After school.”

  He stared at me, stunned betrayal washing over his face.

  “Nora, who’s not going to be in the theater? Who are we talking about?” Trixie whispered loudly.

  Callie, holding an armful of tablets, gave Brandon a gentle prod with her elbow. “Come on. Let’s get started.”

  But even she wasn’t getting through to him. “Nora, you don’t understand. I have to be here. There’s no way to know what S Banks might do. He might be here as a hologram. He might be here as AR and these tablets might be the only ones in the world you can use to see him.”

  “Um, Nora? What’s a hollow gram? Is it like a telegram?” Trixie asked. “I didn’t think people used those anymore. Is it something new?”

  “This could be the most important announcement in the history of gaming!” Brandon was verging on the hysterical.

  “Gaming?” Trixie said. “Like backgammon?”

  “Well, I want no part of it,” Marty proclaimed. “Whatever this announcement is I predict nothing good will come of it.”

  I ignored them both, regarding the rapidly disintegrating Brandon. “Listen. I’ll make you a deal. I need a call from your mom. Not a text—a call. I have to hear her voice telling me it’s okay that you skip school tomorrow morning for this.”

  It was ridiculous how quickly hope surged back into him. “She’ll call! I promise! She will!”

  “I’m so confused.” Trixie slumped into one of the aisle seats.

  I saw a way to end her confusion and put Brandon’s nerd knowledge to work. “Let’s get cracking,” I said. “Brandon, while we’re at it, tell us everything we need to know about gaming, S Banks, and whatever the hell AR is.”

  “Oh!” Trixie sat up and fixed Brandon with her attention. “I just adore hearing about new things.”

  What we heard, at great length, was that gaming was the most important thing in the world, and that S Banks was the most important guy in gaming. I had a hard time swallowing this, because, duh, movies were the most important thing in the world. But I listened. After all, I’d signed us up for this gig.

  “AR stands for Augmented Reality,” Brandon eventually explained. By this time Marty had removed himself to the far end of the stage to hang a banner. He’d made quite a production of putting his earphones in to drown Brandon out.

  Callie, Brandon, and I had formed a production line of sorts. Callie unboxed each tablet, then passed it to Brandon, who fired it up and checked for the app that would allow it to receive data the next day. He then gave it to me to record the serial number and place it on a seat. Trixie supervised. Brandon talked the whole time.

  “Do you guys remember that game that was everywhere about two years ago? The one where you chased virtual alien invaders in the real world?”

  I vaguely recalled the craze. I’d been in LA at the time, managing Ted’s career and believing I was in a happy marriage.

  “I mean, sort of,” Callie said. “Was that the thing where you used to see people all over town, walking around in clumps, staring at their phones?”

  “Not clumps,” Brandon informed her. “Rebel alliances. In the game, Earth had been overrun by alien invaders, and only small bands of rebels were still free. We had to work together to overthrow the alien overlords.”

  “Through reasoned negotiations and diplomatic outreach?” I guessed.

  He stared at me. “By hunting them down and blasting them.”

  “Right.”

  Trixie’s head had been swiveling to keep up with the conversation. “Gee, that sounds fun!”

  Brandon went on. “The app used your GPS to know where you were, and based on your location and sometimes on other things, like time of day or how many other players were around you, you could see the aliens.”

  “What did they look like?” I asked, prompting Callie to send me a don’t-encourage-him look, but I was curious despite myself.

  “There were over four hundred unique characters,” Brandon told us. “Some were green and slimy, some were purple with tentacles—all kinds of things. Diff
erent weapons worked on different ones. They were so cool!”

  Trixie made a face. “I don’t know, Nora. Slimy and tentacles? Weren’t there any nice ones? And how do you see them, anyway? Were there film projectors hidden all over the place?”

  I couldn’t answer her, but I could give Brandon a prompt. “So you saw them when you looked through your phone?”

  “Right, the game used the camera on your phone. That’s the reality part. The augmented part is that sometimes you’d see a Thupolis in a doorway or a Vlaguard in a crosswalk or something.”

  Trixie blinked.

  “Like a cartoon?” I asked.

  “Like CGI,” he said. “Way more advanced than cartoons.”

  That was a shame. Trixie understood cartoons. I’d explain CGI to her later. Possibly with an editorial aside about how it had ruined movies.

  “Didn’t I hear that a bunch of people died while they were playing that stupid game?” Callie asked. “Like, wandering into traffic and falling off roofs and things?”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” Trixie exclaimed.

  “A lot of that was urban legend,” Brandon said. “I don’t think anybody really died.”

  “I don’t know,” Trixie said. “Not all urban legends are fake. Look at me, for instance.”

  I laughed, causing the two non-ghosts I was working with to give me startled looks. Trixie slapped a hand over her mouth.

  I cleared my throat and changed the topic. “I wonder what the new thing will be.”

  Which set Brandon off on a fresh bout of fevered speculation. I gave Trixie a quick grin, but she was listening to the teenager again, eyes wide with wonder at this unimaginable world he was explaining.

  Right about that time I got my own little dose of technology, in the form of my phone chiming to remind me that I had an appointment. The four co-owners of the Palace were meeting, and I’d been invited to join them.

  “Hey, guys, you’ll have to finish up without me. I need to head over to Monica’s for the owners’ meeting.”