Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  Something like the gigantic circles under my eyes, probably. And the fact that I’d been yawning for the past half hour.

  “Thank you.” I took the tiny bottle. “I don’t usually—”

  She waved her hand. “Don’t worry, you won’t start craving Cheetos or want to listen to the White Album backwards,” she smiled. “Just put a few drops in a cup of herbal tea at night. I guarantee you’ll sleep better.”

  I put the bottle in my pocket. I couldn’t sleep any worse.

  Albert was the first to call it a night. He rose from his position on the bottom step, creaking audibly as he stood. I walked with him to the lobby doors.

  “I knew Trixie was still here,” he said, wrapping a scarf around his neck. “I think I’ve always known. Even when I told myself it was only my imagination, or wishful thinking.” He glanced around the lobby, as if seeking her out. “Goodnight, Trixie,” he called. Then he gave me a rueful smile and left.

  “Gabriela, do you need a ride?” Monica asked. “Or is Hector coming back for you?”

  They’d come over to the doors. “I’m fine,” Gabriela said. “Hector had that…thing, but I texted a friend a while ago. She should be here any minute.”

  “It was good to see you.” Monica bent to give Gabriela a hug, then went back to gather her things from the stairs.

  “That was some night,” I said, suddenly tongue-tied with Hector’s cousin.

  “I’ve never really believed in…you know,” Gabriela said. “But I felt something tonight. Someone.” She shivered. “It was an intense cold, targeted, as if someone was holding an ice pack just an inch away from me.” Her brows were bunched in concentration, remembering the feeling, then shook her head. “It was so weird. I’m just wondering…”

  “What?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Never mind. Just an idea. I’ll tell you about it later, if I can figure it out.” She cleared her throat. “I’m also trying to figure out why Hector didn’t even come in to say hi to you, after he suddenly had some bogus thing to do tonight. Any ideas?” She looked at me shrewdly.

  I swallowed the urge to launch into a full-on rant about her cousin and how he’d disappeared after that amazing kiss. I might have confided in her if we were alone, but the others were still chatting and milling around, so I just shrugged.

  “Something’s going on with you two,” Gabriela said. “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but I’ll tell you this: He’s worth fighting for.” She squeezed my hand. “And so are you.”

  We heard a car’s horn from out in the street and I opened the door for Gabriela to go.

  “Sooo,” Callie spoke from behind me as I was watching Gabriela greet her friend at the sidewalk under the pail glow of the streetlights.

  I turned around. “So.”

  Callie had loaded all her camera equipment onto a cart, ready to leave as soon as Lillian finished saying her good-byes. Earlier we’d all taken a look at the video the cameras had captured and had seen no sign of Trixie. Not even when she’d waved.

  “That was literally...” Callie’s voice trailed off.

  “It was,” I agreed.

  “I mean…”

  “Yup.”

  She looked at me. “What are we going to tell Marty?”

  We were already keeping one secret from the world’s grumpiest projectionist. A few months ago, Callie had figured out that I was the movie blogger Sally Lee. So far she’d not told Marty, who adored Sally. Finding out I was his blogger idol would have made his head explode, so I’d asked her not to let him know. What was one more secret?

  “I think the least complicated thing to tell him is that we had the séance,” I said. “And that some candles blew out.”

  She looked at me closely and nodded. “I mean, they did blow out, right?”

  I thought about it. “Check the film again,” I advised her. “The camera doesn’t lie.”

  Which was nonsense. Cameras lied all the time. You just had to look at the tabloids to know that.

  Monica and Abby were the last to leave. They offered me a ride, but I wanted to walk home. After they left I made the rounds of the theater, making sure doors were locked, lights were off, alarms were set, and ghosts were all gone.

  “You did great tonight,” I called to Trixie. “I’m so proud of you.”

  I never knew if she could hear me when she went away, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to talk to her anyway.

  Once again it was after midnight when I locked the lobby door behind me. I turned and looked down the walkway. There was no shadowy figure lurking near the ticket booth. No Hector.

  I’d just gotten to the sidewalk when my phone pinged with a text. I pulled it out of my pocket, assuming someone had left something behind in the theater. When I saw the name on the message I cursed.

  Lillian might not have conjured any new ghosts that night, but maybe her powers had conjured an old one.

  The text was from Ted.

  Chapter 22

  Babe. I know you’re angry. And I know I can’t buy you. But I also know you’re the only person in the world who can help me. Please say you will. I just need you to take a meeting. One meeting. Please help me out. Please.

  Great. As much as I enjoyed the novel experience of my not-yet-ex-husband groveling, I really didn’t want to deal with him in the wee small hours of the morning after a séance. I pocketed the phone and walked home without answering.

  The morning brought a slew of emails from lawyers. Mornings often did that, but on this morning they were emails I actually wanted.

  The most interesting was from Marc Picco, who had been Tommy’s personal attorney. He’d replied to my request for information about who would inherit Tommy’s quarter of the Palace with a request of his own.

  “He wants a meeting with all the remaining owners,” I told Robbie over the phone as I walked to the theater on that bright, brisk Tuesday morning. She was driving to a location shoot in Malibu, and I enjoyed picturing her in a red convertible with enormous sunglasses and an Hermès scarf tied around her hair, tooling up the sundrenched PCH. In reality she was probably in the back seat of a production car, surrounded with work and not even glancing out the windows, but I liked my version better.

  “A meeting? Like, to read the will?” she asked doubtfully.

  “The lawyer didn’t mention a will,” I said. “He just said he thinks it would be easier to update you all on the ownership status in person, so he could answer any questions that come up.”

  “I bet that means questions will come up,” Robbie said.

  “Well, we’re talking about Tommy, so there’s bound to be something weird and controlling about it.” I waited to cross the street and saw a group of teenagers huddled together over their phones in front of the yarn shop. Probably looking for a cartoon gold coin when they should be in school. And with that thought, I officially became a cranky old lady.

  “Does this meeting need to be in person?” Robbie was asking.

  “No, Picco said he’d set up a video call.” I crossed the street. “For tomorrow morning at nine, if you can all make it. I already talked to Monica, and she’s in.”

  “Oh, good. You two can video in together,” Robbie said.

  “I’m not an owner,” I reminded her.

  “That’s just a technicality. You should join the call. I’ll ping Mitch and let him know. Hey, is everyone up there playing Tommy’s game? All of LA seems to have gone nuts.”

  “They’re nuts here too,” I told her, passing the clump of truant gamers. They didn’t even look up from their screens as they moved as one into the street. For the past few days I’d been paranoid that everyone involved in the game would recognize me as the woman the conspiracy theorists accused of murdering S and Tommy, but I needn’t have worried. They’d have to look away from their screens for that.

 
“Remember what you said about inventing an app?” Robbie asked. “You should do it. Just think of something original and brilliant that will capture the imagination of the entire world. How hard could that be?”

  “I’ll get right on it,” I promised. “Just as soon as I de-gunk the popcorn maker.”

  Another email I’d gotten that morning had been from my lawyers. For once, they’d been able to respond to a question with an actual answer. Probably because the question had been about Tommy and S, and not my divorce from Ted.

  They’d looked into it and were able to inform me that neither S’s death nor Tommy’s death made a bit of difference in terms of who got the profits from the game. It was a corporation-to-corporation agreement that bound them, never mind that both corporations had been headed by high-profile, now-deceased CEOs.

  There were some excruciatingly boring details, but the takeaway was pretty simple: Tommy had not stood to gain from S’s murder. So that eliminated his most compelling possible motive. I’d been briefly diverted by Kristy’s theory of Tommy as killer-turned-remorseful-suicide, but this news sent me back to the much more likely theory that the same killer had poisoned both S and Tommy. Although I couldn’t exactly count that as progress, since I still had no idea who that killer might be.

  It crossed my mind that Kristy’s insistence on Tommy as killer might be because she was hiding something. Was that crazy? I’d been thinking her value was as a potential witness, but maybe I should start thinking of her as a potential killer. She was at the scene of the first death, presumably with access to the bottle S drank from. On the other hand, I had no idea why she might want to kill her soulmate. But if I could figure that out, her motive for killing Tommy would be clear—to draw suspicion away from herself.

  I had to talk to Kristy again. If she was just a witness, maybe I could get her past her conviction that Tommy had killed S and just tell me clearly everything she’d actually seen at the launch that day. She might have seen something important. And if she was a suspect, there were all kinds of questions I wanted her to answer.

  It was too early for the Potent Flower to be open, so I sent at text to Monica asking when Kristy would be at work.

  As I got closer to the Palace I saw that Marty was up on the ancient wooden ladder, changing the marquee to the new lineup. Technology Week had finally ended.

  “Happy Mid-Month Musicals,” I greeted him.

  Mid-Month Musicals marked my latest attempt to increase ticket sales. People loved musicals. They were the gateway drug of classic films. So I’d decided to sprinkle them liberally throughout our offerings. Each month, in the middle of the month, we’d feature a musical lineup. That week we were showing Fred Astaire, with Swing Time (1936, a young Astaire and Ginger Rogers in a nightclub act that really made me wish nightclubs were still a thing) and Silk Stockings (1957, an older Astaire and Cyd Charisse as dancing opposites who very much attracted).

  Marty scowled down at me. “Thanks for cleaning up the stage and putting the screen back down after all your folderol last night.”

  “We have hours and hours until the first show,” I said. “I’ll take care of it now.”

  “Except I was here hours and hours ago and already took care of it.” He started down the ladder. “You’re welcome.”

  “You didn’t have to, but thank you,” I told him.

  “I did have to if I wanted somewhere to sit in the break room.” He began folding the ladder. “Dare I ask if you made contact with the undead last night?”

  “Technically, the undead would be vampires, or possibly zombies,” I informed him. “We were looking for spirits.”

  He snorted. “I think I’d know if I’d been working side-by-side with a Vaudeville showgirl or a wisecracking thirties usherette for the entire time I’ve been here.”

  “Yeah, you’d think,” I agreed.

  The wisecracking thirties usherette was nowhere to be seen inside, so I busied myself with the details of keeping the Palace running. I’d hoped to skip out and go talk to Kristy at some point, but Monica had responded to my text with frustrating news.

  Kristy called in sick. So did two others and I bet they’re all out playing that stupid game. If it’s important, here’s her number. One thing you can be sure of, she’ll have her phone with her.

  A link to a phone number followed. I clicked it, and after a few rings got Kristy’s voicemail. I hung up, knowing enough about millennials to know a text was more likely to get a response.

  Kristy, I’d really like to talk to you again about everything that happened at the launch event. It’s important. It won’t take long, and I can come to you. Just let me know where you are.

  I’d just pressed Send when I heard a clatter from the hall and my office door burst open.

  “Did you hear?” Brandon panted. “They found the second coin!”

  It was a full week since the game had launched. A full week since S’s murder. So the coin that had been found in a Tokyo alley was worth eight million dollars.

  “Is the game still profitable at this point?” I asked Brandon.

  We were on the game’s website, watching live video feeds of people reacting to the news of the latest coin.

  He looked away from the screen long enough to send me a withering look. “Only by about a billion dollars or so.”

  “Wait, what?” I shut the laptop, causing him to squeak in protest, or possibly withdrawal. “I thought you said it was going to lose more ground as the payout got bigger.”

  “Sure, but that was before the first coin was found. Since then the whole world started playing. And everyone’s buying clues and equipment and maps and shortcuts.” He’d been standing next to me at the desk, looking over my shoulder. Now he went over to look out the window. “It kind of sucks. I can’t compete with people who are spending thousands of dollars a day to—”

  “Thousands?” I yelped.

  “Especially in hot zones,” he said. “Now that one coin has been found in Europe, and one in Asia, people are saying that the other three are bound to be in North America, South America, and Africa.” He looked out the window again. “One of them is here. I just know it.”

  Possibly, but North America was pretty big, last I checked.

  “I’ve got to go,” Brandon said, turning from the window.

  “To school, I hope.” It was still only late morning.

  “Sure. To school,” he grinned. “Um, but about later, can I have the day off?”

  “Go,” I waved my hand, giving up. “Find a coin. Buy a yacht and take me sailing.”

  He left, and I thought over what he’d said. It looked like Tommy had been wrong. S really had been a genius. Had they lived, they both would have made a fortune with the game. And their companies still would. Maybe even more than they would have if the two high-profile CEOs hadn’t been murdered.

  I wondered again about whether the murders could be some sort of sick publicity stunt. I opened the laptop again. Follow the money was a tried-and-true adage for a reason. Where did that much money lead?

  I knew a lot about classic movies, and I knew a lot about how to work a Hollywood party. What I knew nothing about, I realized after scouring press releases and corporate profiles for over an hour, was how giant tech corporations were structured. My most up-to-date reference on the subject was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967, Robert Morse and Michele Lee) and that was so dated it featured a steno pool.

  I couldn’t figure out who was now in charge of either S’s company or Tommy’s. But I thought I knew someone who might. Gabriela worked at a giant tech corporation. She might be able to help me understand the hierarchy among all the corporate job titles that started with Chief.

  I sent her a text and was happy when she responded right away with the news that she was already planning to come to the theater.

  I’ll be there late
r tonight. I want to show you something. You have to tell me if I’ve lost my mind.

  I wasn’t sure I was in any position to judge that, but I told her I was willing to try.

  By the time Gabriela got to the theater it was almost nine and Swing Time was heading toward the big finish.

  “I came straight from work,” she said. “I usually don’t like to drive my van in the city, but I had this crazy idea and I just had to show it to you.”

  “I’m so glad,” I told her. “I wanted to ask you something, too.”

  She shrugged off her jacket and looked up at me, startled. “Me?”

  Usually incredibly fashionable, today Gabriela had pulled her hair into a ponytail and wore jeans and a long-sleeved tee displaying the logo of the Silicon Valley company where she worked. But even dressed more or less like me, she still looked great.

  “You’re the only person I know who understands the tech industry,” I told her.

  “No one understands the tech industry,” she said. “But I’ll do my best. What do you need to know?”

  We’d gravitated toward the concessions stand. I took her jacket from her and put it on the counter. “I’m trying to figure out who’s in charge at Tommy and S’s companies now,” I explained. “I want to know who stands to gain with them both gone. But I have no idea what any of the job titles actually mean. I get what a Chief Financial Officer is, and a Chief Marketing Officer, but would a Chief Operating Officer outrank a Chief Knowledge Officer? And what the heck is a Chief Engagement Officer?”

  “Probably not what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “Probably not. But is it obvious to anyone with a clue who the next in line is? I mean, I was looking for something like a Vice President, but—”

  Gabriela shook her head. “VPs are small potatoes,” she told me. “And every company’s different, really. S and Tommy were both such larger-than-life chief executives, I’m not even sure there would be a cut-and-dried successor for either of them. Both of the companies have boards of directors, and the boards will probably end up appointing someone from inside, at least for the short term, but ultimately they may do a headhunt and bring in someone from outside the companies.”