“There was a lot going on,” I agreed. “And you may have missed your chance, at least for a while. The storage people are picking them up this afternoon.”
“Do I even want to know how much that’s going to cost?”
“You don’t,” I said. “You really don’t.”
The video call started on the dot of nine. Monica and I used the big screen in her shop lounge, Robbie and Mitch were each at their desks in LA, and Marc Picco, Tommy’s lawyer, was in an expensive-looking conference room, presumably at his law firm. I was surprised to see he was alone. In my experience, you never talked to one lawyer when six would do.
“Thank you all for joining on such short notice,” Picco began, once introductions were out of the way. He was probably in his comfortable fifties, with thinning gray hair and a tailored gray suit. “Let me begin by offering my condolences on the loss of your partner and friend.”
“Thanks,” Mitch said. “Can we cut to the chase? I’m due on set and all I really want to know is who inherits Tommy’s share of the Palace. I’m assuming it isn’t one of us.”
Mitch was a successful sitcom director not generally noted for his diplomacy off the set.
Picco cleared his throat and opened a leather portfolio on the highly polished table in front of him. “Yes, of course.” He donned a pair of reading glasses only so he could take them off when looking back at the video camera. “I will begin by enquiring if any of you were aware that Thomas May sold his one-quarter share of the Palace Theater three days before his death?”
Digital cameras captured four jaws dropping simultaneously.
“He what?” Robbie was the first to speak. “He sold?”
“Could he even do that?” Monica asked. “Without telling us?”
“He could and he did,” the lawyer informed us.
“That was the day after S was killed,” I said, working backward on a mental calendar from the day of Tommy’s murder.
“Was this something he’d planned?” I asked Picco.
“Just that week he was making all kinds of threats to close the Palace if we didn’t turn it around,” Robbie protested. “Why would he have called that whole special meeting if he knew he was going to sell?”
“This is crazy,” Monica said.
“And just like Tommy,” Mitch fumed. “Giving us one more rattle to the cage before he buggered off. That conniving snake!” He realized we were all staring at him. “May he rest in peace.”
“Mr. Picco,” I spoke above the new round of protests that broke out. “Who did he sell to?”
The protests abruptly came to a halt. We all looked at the lawyer.
Another use of the glasses to consult the paperwork that I was pretty sure he knew by heart. Another removal of the glasses to face us.
“The reason I felt it was best to meet like this was to inform you that the purchaser wishes to remain anonymous.”
The owners were silent for one stunned moment, then they all started shouting at once. I sat back in my chair, a cold feeling of dread settling in my stomach. Eventually Picco got tired of everyone yelling at him and held up his hands.
“Please! Please!” he shouted. “The wishes of the purchaser are very clear and quite legal, if unorthodox.” He straightened his jacket, having gotten everyone to simmer down, at least for the moment. “All business relating to the Palace Theater will be handled through me, for the time being,” he informed us. “I will personally attend any board meetings, and you should consider me the owner’s proxy in all matters.”
“Now, wait just one minute!” Mitch yelled. Robbie and Monica were also demanding answers, but Mitch’s voice drowned them out.
I let them have at it. I was thinking. And I had two thoughts about who might have bought Tommy out on the condition of anonymity.
Because I knew two people that I’d expressly forbidden to do any such thing.
Hector. Tell me the truth. Did you buy Tommy’s share of the Palace? Be honest. I promise I won’t be angry.
I’d be livid.
I sent Hector the text from Monica’s office after the meeting concluded. There had been many more demands, protests, and accusations, but Picco had held firm. No further information was forthcoming.
Hector’s response was prompt. Whether it was truthful, only time would tell.
Buy his share? Of course not. You were quite clear in your feelings on that subject.
Damn right I was. Hector texted again.
Are you saying someone bought his share? Who?
Well, that was the question. If it wasn’t Hector, odds were it was the other person who’d recently offered unwanted financial help. Otis Hampton, no doubt scheming to get me further in his debt so he could continue to entangle me in his plot against Ted. I was about to send a fiery email in his direction when Monica opened the door. She’d gone out front to open the shop after the video call, leaving me to stew and text in private.
She came in with a worried look on her face. Worried enough that I put the phone down. “What’s wrong?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” I repeated.
“Kristy.” She sat at her desk and opened her laptop. “You know how I told you she called in sick yesterday? I figured she was just off with the rest of them, playing the game.” She glanced from the screen to me. “But the others are here today, and they say she wasn’t with them yesterday.”
For the second time that morning I got a very bad feeling. “Have you heard from her today?”
She shook her head, consulting the laptop and dialing a number on her phone. “It’s ringing.” She waited, and apparently got Kristy’s voicemail, as I had the day before. “Kristy, call me when you get this. We’re all worried about you. Hope you’re okay.”
Monica and I exchanged a look when she hung up.
“Kristy was there the day S was killed,” I said. “If she saw something...”
Monica nodded.
“Do you have her address?”
She looked relieved. “You think we should check on her?”
I stood. “Let’s go.”
Kristy’s address was only a few blocks away, the top flat in a tall converted Victorian on Pine. We hurried up the steep flight of stairs from the sidewalk to the locked front door. There was no answer when we buzzed Kristy’s flat. We tried another apartment number, and the lock on the door clicked in response.
Once inside, we were starting up the stairs when a tall thin guy with bed head opened a door on the first floor.
“Aren’t you UPS?” he asked. “I’m expecting a package.”
“Sorry,” I called as we took the stairs up.
We reached the attic flat and knocked. There was no answer. We knocked again, louder.
“Should we call the police?” Monica asked. “Detective Jackson?”
“Just a second,” I said. There was a deadbolt above the doorknob, but I couldn’t tell if it was locked. “If the deadbolt isn’t locked, maybe…”
I reached for the doorknob, wondering if I could use a credit card or something on that lock. I’d seen it done in the movies and it didn’t look too hard. But when I gave it a test jiggle, the knob turned.
“It’s unlocked.”
Monica and I exchanged looks as I opened the door.
“Kristy?” She called.
Nothing.
“Kristy, we’re coming in,” I announced.
The apartment was small, with the pitched roof and odd angles of a Victorian attic. Everything seemed neat in the tiny living room and kitchen. There was evidence of tea having been made on the countertop.
“Kristy?” Monica moved toward the bedroom, barely big enough for the double-sized bed. Again, nothing seemed to be disturbed.
“Maybe she just went out of town,” Monica said doubtfully.
>
I smelled something. Something floral.
“Bubble bath?” I said, crossing the bedroom to the bathroom.
It was a tiny room painted white, almost all the space taken up by an old-fashioned claw-foot tub beneath a round window.
In the tub, pale and waxen, her lavender hair floating around her like Ophelia, was Kristy.
Chapter 25
I rushed to the tub. The water was cool, the bubbles long gone. Kristy’s skin was puckered, her lips tinged with purple. I heard Monica repeating “No, no, no, no, no” as I put two fingers on Kristy’s neck.
“There’s a pulse!”
Hours later Monica and I were in a hospital waiting room. We knew only that Kristy was unconscious but hanging on. We’d made the mistake of telling the truth when the admittance nurse asked if we were relatives, and we’d gotten no more updates since.
There had been a flurry of making calls and sending texts, but once that was over we’d settled into a numb sort of shock, staring at the muted TV screen because it was easier than making conversation with any of the other groups of worried people speaking in halting, hushed tones while waiting for their news.
Eventually the hushed tones were interrupted by a deep authoritative voice coming from the nurse’s station. I stood and motioned for Monica to come with me. We saw a large familiar figure talking to a nurse.
“Detective Jackson.”
He turned as the nurse moved busily away. “Ladies. They told me you were here. I’m going to need you to answer some questions.”
“Arsenic.” I stared at the detective.
“Not as much as Tommy May had in his system,” he said, “but enough to put her into a coma.”
We’d moved to a small consulting room, and Jackson had asked us for every last detail of what had happened before confirming that Kristy had been poisoned.
“Will she be all right?” Monica asked.
“They tell me it’s too soon to say,” he said heavily. “But she’s lucky she didn’t drown.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Tell me anything you think might be relevant.”
“Do you think something was tampered with?” Monica asked. “That she ate or drank something?”
“There was tea on the counter in her kitchen,” I said, remembering. “Will they…”
The look on Jackson’s face said “duh” pretty clearly. Of course the police would test the beverage Kristy had presumably drunk just before falling into an arsenic-induced coma.
“You know Kristy was at the game launch in Palo Alto when S was killed,” I said to Jackson.
He nodded. “We questioned her at length.”
“She thought Tommy did it,” I told him. “Did she tell you that? She thought Tommy killed S in a fit of rage and then committed suicide.”
“So she said,” Jackson agreed.
“She was wrong,” I said. And I was wrong for thinking, however briefly, that she might have been the killer. “The same person who killed them poisoned her.”
The two-thirty was well under way by the time I got back to the Palace. Callie and Albert were huddled together over the candy counter, Callie showing him something on the tiny screen of a video camera.
Albert came around the counter as soon as he saw me. “Nora, how are you? How is the young lady? Any update?” I’d texted them with the news once it became clear I wouldn’t be around to open the theater that morning.
“I’m fine,” I said. “And she’s holding steady. That’s all we know for now.”
“I mean, it’s a good thing you and Monica are the worrying kind,” Callie said.
I rubbed my eyes. “For once that paid off,” I agreed. “Kristy’s parents got in from Fresno before I left. Monica’s staying with them at the hospital for a while. Is everything okay here?”
“We’re a well-oiled machine,” I heard Marty say from behind me. He was coming downstairs from his lair. “What could go wrong?”
“Please don’t say that,” I said. “There’s enough going on without tempting fate.”
“People who believe in fate have given up,” he told me, crossing to the concessions stand to get himself a soda. “What happened at the owners’ meeting?”
I slumped onto one of the stools at the counter. Had the meeting with Tommy’s lawyer only been that morning? “That feels like a hundred years ago.”
“Who did Tommy leave his share of this place to?” Marty asked. “Or are we going to be in probate hell for the rest of our lives? He probably didn’t even leave a will. Guys like that think they’re immortal.”
“He didn’t leave it to anyone,” I said before he could get up a good head of steam. “He sold it. The day after S died.”
They all stared at me.
“The buyer is anonymous.”
The employees of the Palace freaked out in much the same way the owners of the Palace had freaked out that morning. I let them get it all out of their systems. Once I explained exactly what the lawyer had told us, there were several more minutes of “I can’t believe he—” and “How could he have—” before Albert cleared his throat and asked a coherent question.
“Who do you think bought it?”
I took a breath. “My first thought was Hector, in some misguided attempt to make my life easier,” I said.
“I mean…yeah,” Callie agreed. “That tracks.”
“Right, but I’d already told him I didn’t want him to, and he says he didn’t.”
“So who?” Marty demanded. “And why?”
“The only other person I can think of is Otis Hampton,” I told them. “And the why is that he somehow thinks it could be a bargaining chip in his war with Ted, or he thinks he can use it to control me, because I’m another pawn in his whole twisted…” I gave up. “I know I’m mixing metaphors, but you get what I’m saying. He’s secretive and manipulative and always has an agenda, so it could be him.”
Albert had poured a large cup of coffee while I’d been babbling. He slid it across the counter to me. “What did Mr. Hampton say when you asked him?”
My eyes flew open. “I didn’t!” I grabbed for my phone. “I was just about to text him when Monica told me Kristy was missing.”
I quickly finished the text I’d been writing to Otis that morning.
Someone has anonymously bought Tommy May’s one-quarter share of the Palace. Was it you? Tell me the truth or I’m done.
Callie was putting her camera away. “I mean, why would Tommy have sold?” she asked.
“The why isn’t so hard to figure,” I said. “He wasn’t happy with the Palace profits being down, so under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be weird for him to sell. But the when is definitely weird. Why would you yell at all your partners—not to mention your hardworking manager—on a Sunday if you’re planning to sell your share the next Tuesday? Why even call the Sunday meeting?”
“Perhaps he thought he’d get his way in the Sunday meeting,” Albert suggested. “And when he didn’t, he decided to wash his hands of it all.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “But S was killed the day between the meeting and the sale. I can’t imagine Tommy would have been thinking of anything but the murder and what it meant for the game at that point. He had a lot more at stake with that investment than with the Palace.”
“Maybe he was thinking of the murder,” Marty said. “He probably knew he’d be arrested. He knew he’d need quick money for expensive lawyers.”
“How would he know he’d be arrested?” Callie asked.
“Because he killed S,” Marty said authoritatively.
The lobby erupted in objections.
“Hang on,” I finally said. “If Tommy killed S, then who killed Tommy? And tried to kill Kristy?”
“You haven’t seen nearly enough movies,” he said, inaccurately. �
�Kristy killed Tommy because he killed S. Then she took just enough poison herself to throw the police off the track. It’s classic noir stuff.”
I stared at him. “Please tell me you’ve shared that ridiculous theory with your boyfriend the homicide detective.”
“I mean, is it ridiculous?” Callie asked. “The second two poisonings were different from the first. Bee pollen, arsenic, and arsenic, right?”
“May I remind you that Kristy is in a coma?” I pointed out. Even if I had suspected her myself, I couldn’t imagine anyone being crazy enough to poison themselves as an alibi. I mean, outside of a movie.
“I never said she was a good poisoner,” Marty sniffed.
“All right,” Albert gave him a firm look. “That’s one theory. Who has another?”
“Could the buyer be the killer?” Callie suggested. “Whoever bought Tommy’s share of the Palace?”
“Because someone wanted a fourth of a broken-down classic movie theater enough to kill for it?” Marty scoffed. Then he looked up in the general direction of the lobby chandelier. “No offense.”
“The buyer,” I ignored Marty and responded to Callie’s suggestion, “would have had no reason to kill Tommy. They’d already done the deal.” I thought about it. “This is a crazy thought, but what if Picco, the lawyer, who is now acting as this anonymous buyer’s proxy, is actually the buyer? Or what if there really is no buyer? What if when Tommy died Picco saw his chance to take control? And he made up the whole story about the mysterious buyer so nobody would suspect?” I frowned. “But would he have killed Tommy to get control? And not just Tommy, but—”
“I’ve often accused you of suffering from a failure of imagination,” Marty cut me off. “I take it back.”
I wasn’t offended. It was a crazy theory. It would have been shot down much more mercilessly in any Hollywood writer’s room.
“One thing’s for sure,” I told them. “Tommy was totally manipulating me when he asked me to help him clear his name. He made all sorts of promises about what he wanted to do with the Palace, telling me he didn’t want to close it, and talking about turning it into a non-profit, when didn’t even own it anymore.”
Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 66
