“To Tommy.” Marty raised his soda in a toast. “A duplicitous rat to the end.”
Speaking of duplicitous rats, I checked my phone. There was no response from Otis. Or from Ted.
After a while I left the gang in the lobby and went upstairs to the office. I no longer cared what the police might find in my browser history. I wanted to learn everything I could about arsenic.
When I opened the door I saw just about the only thing that could have distracted me from a mad poisoner. Trixie was perched on the arm of the couch, looking intently at Gabriela’s invention.
“Hiya Nora,” she beamed. “What’s this thingamajig?”
Chapter 26
“Trixie!” I quickly closed the door behind me, relieved that everyone was downstairs out of earshot. “I’m so glad to see you. I was getting so worried.”
“Gee, that’s sweet of you, but I’m just grand.” She kicked her legs as she hopped off the arm of the couch. “What did everyone say about me after I left the other night? It was just the other night, wasn’t it? I checked the marquee…” A little frown appeared. She often got confused about the passage of time when she was gone and did her best to orient herself by looking out the window to see what was on the marquee. She could check that against the three-month calendar of lineups I kept on a large blackboard in the office.
“Just the other night,” I assured her. “Today’s only Wednesday.”
“Oh, good.” The frown disappeared, replaced with her previous excitement. “What did everyone say? Did they know it was me? Do they all believe in me now?”
“Most of them believed in you before,” I told her. “But you made quite an impression.”
She dimpled. “I did, didn’t I? It was so clever of you to point me to the candles.”
“I knew you could do it,” I told her.
She perched on the arm of the couch again, chewing a red lacquered fingernail. “I wish they’d been able to see me, though. Do you think we could try again?”
“I heard something about Lillian going out of town,” I hedged. “But Trixie, there’s something else. Something amazing.” I went to Gabriela’s keyboard. “This is for you.”
“Is it?” She stared at the apparatus. “Gee, it’s…something, isn’t it?” She looked at me, confusion mixed with delight. “What is it?”
“You know how you’ve always said you wished you could use one of those phones or computers?”
“Why, sure,” she nodded, curls bouncing.
“Well, this,” I touched the tablet. “Is like the screen of a phone or computer. And this,” I swept my hand over the keyboard. “Is how you can use it. At least Gabriela thinks you can. And I think you can. Do you want to see if you can?”
I was more excited than Trixie at that point.
Her face had clouded over. “Oh, but…” she passed her hand through the tablet. “I can’t…”
“Not like that,” I said. “Try just touching one of the keys. Gabriela fixed it so it should be able to sense you, by temperature. Try ‘T’ for Trixie.”
She blinked, looked at the keyboard, then looked at me again. “Really?”
“Really,” I nodded. “Try.”
She pointed at the ‘T’ key, hesitated, and then pressed her finger through it.
“I don’t quite…” she began.
Then we both screamed. Because the screen lit up and the letter ‘T’ appeared. It was quickly followed by the letters ‘R,’ ‘G,’ and ‘Y,’ but never mind. She had done it.
She jumped off the couch, backing away from the keyboard, pointing at it. “Did you see? I did it!”
“You did!” I yelled, forgetting that there were other people in the building who might wonder why I was shouting with excitement when I was supposedly alone in my office.
“Trixie, you did it,” I said more quietly.
She stepped back to the device, peering at the screen. “Why did the rest of the letters show up?”
“It must be super sensitive,” I said. “Try again, and maybe don’t put your finger all the way through the key.”
This time she hovered her finger right over the ‘T,’ but didn’t pass through it. Sure enough, it appeared on the screen after about a second. This time alone.
“Nora!” Trixie threw herself at me. I know she intended it as a hug, but she was a little too enthusiastic and rushed right through me.
“Trixie!” The cold sensation of being charged by a ghost was one I’d never get used to, but this time I hardly noticed it. “I’m so happy for you!”
There was a loud staccato knock at the door, followed by Marty opening it.
“What are you happy about? Who are you talking to?” He looked suspiciously around the room. “Never mind. If you’re losing it I don’t even want to know.”
Trixie moved away from me and I tried to look like I hadn’t just been celebrating something earthshattering with a card-carrying member of the spirit world.
“There’s a guy downstairs,” Marty informed me. “He says he’s here about some gowns?”
I left Trixie to experiment with her new technology and hustled down to the lobby. The guy from the garment storage facility looked to be in his seventies and spoke with a soft Russian accent. He was rightly horrified when I took him to the basement and showed him where I’d been keeping the famous gowns.
“Are these originals?” he asked, looking more than a little dazzled. He was the right demographic for recognizing an iconic Marilyn Monroe dress or two.
“I believe so,” I told him. “I’m waiting on the authentication, but let’s treat them like they are.”
He treated them like they were priceless, and I wrote him an account-draining check. After he packed each gown reverently in its own sturdy travel container, I suggested he pull his truck around to the alley and leave by the back door. I didn’t want to think about what rumors might get going if he were to tote what looked like six modest coffins through the lobby. We had rumors enough.
As I was locking the alley door behind him I felt my phone vibrate. I was surprised to see it was a call, not a text, from Otis.
“Otis, you got my message.” I went back to the prop room, knowing the signal would be stronger there.
“I was glad to hear from you, Nora. After our last exchange I thought you might be cooling on our project.”
Our project? I wouldn’t let myself get sidetracked by whatever his latest scheme might be. “Otis, tell me the truth,” I said, sitting on a table in the prop room. The gowns were gone, but the rest of my possessions were still scattered all over the place. “Did you buy Tommy May’s quarter-share of the Palace?”
“Why? Do you want me to? No problem.” He sounded busy and distracted, which wasn’t unusual for Otis. A normal afternoon for him involved half a dozen underlings vying for his attention while he simultaneously tore some poor writer’s screenplay apart and devoured a ham sandwich.
“Otis, you’re not listening,” I said, trying for patience. “I’m asking if you already have. Bought it.”
“No, but I can. Just have him call me,” he said, apparently forgetting that Tommy was in no position to call anyone. “Listen,” he went on without a pause. “I’ve got an update on the Venice plan. I’ve arranged for Glen Hendricks to go with us. The press will eat it up. The story will be that you two met when he signed on as the lead in—”
I abandoned patience and cut him off mid-scheme. “Otis, what are you talking about? What do you mean us? And what’s Glen Hendricks got to do with anything?” Hendricks, I knew, was the red-hot action star of a recent CGI-fueled video game masquerading as a movie.
“Glen Hendricks,” Otis explained gleefully, “is seven years younger than your husband and about a hundred times hotter. Ted’s only hope of landing any major franchise is if Hendricks passes on it first. You showing up at the Venice Film
Festival with him is going to kill Ted.”
“What are you talking about?” I wailed. I often ended up wailing when trying to talk with Otis. “I’m not showing up anywhere with Glen Hendricks. I’ve never even met him.”
“You’ll meet him, don’t worry,” he cackled.
“That’s not my point. I’m not—”
“You’re going to Venice with Glen Hendricks,” Otis insisted, his voice hardening. “The press will go nuts and nobody will pay attention to Ted or Priya or their super-secret-but-carefully-leaked wedding plans.”
I took a deep breath. “Otis, I’m doing no such thing.”
He didn’t hear a word. “Priya’s going to see that Ted may be big now, but he’s not going to be big forever. There will always be some new guy gunning for him, and sooner or later one of them will take him down. But I’m always going to be on top. I’m the one with the power to—”
“Otis!”
Miraculously, he paused.
“Otis, this has gone too far. I’m not going to traipse around Venice pretending to be with Glen Hendricks. I’m not going to do any of this anymore.”
“Sure you are,” he said. The man had an uncanny ability to hear only what he wanted to. “Think about it, Nora. This is how we’ll get them.”
“Listen to me very carefully, Otis. I don’t care about getting them. I only care about getting the money that’s rightfully mine, and to be honest, I’m caring about that less every day.” As I said that, I realized it was true.
“Sure you care,” he breezed. “Why else did you call me?”
I did my very best not to scream in frustration. “I didn’t call you. I sent you a text. Asking if you bought Tommy’s share of the Palace before he was killed. I take it your answer is no?”
“Oh, shit,” he said. “No, I didn’t. Was I supposed to?”
“Goodbye, Otis.”
He was still talking when I hung up.
Chapter 27
My phone pinged with an incoming text almost as soon as I hung up from Otis. It was from Gabriela.
Hi Nora. I’m working on the next gen tablet for our friend, but it’s going to take a few days. Any word from Lillian? Are we having another séance?
I saw the three gray dots that told me she was still typing.
I see you’ve been experimenting with the keyboard. Did you use ice?
She saw? I typed quickly.
How did you see? What did you see?
I watched the three gray dots impatiently.
I set it up so the input from the keyboard automatically gets sent to me as a text. I nearly died when I saw you type Hello Trixie this afternoon, after what looked like a couple false starts. Are you trying to get her attention?
I put the phone over my racing heart. Gabriela could see what Trixie was doing on the keyboard. I really wished I’d known that before. I wrote back.
Yep. Hey, do you mind fixing it so that the keyboard sends me a text as well? Since I’m usually at the theater it might make sense.
She answered immediately.
Great idea. Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on this. Hope we’re on for another séance!
I’ll check on that. See you soon!
I ran all the way up to the office.
“Trixie!”
She wasn’t there. I went to the keyboard and saw that the screen displayed her experimental Ts, then a few more random letters, then the word HELLO, more gibberish, and finally TRIXIE.
I sank onto the couch, my knees suddenly weak. What if she’d written something else? Something Gabriela wouldn’t have assumed was me?
All the potential consequences of helping Trixie prove she was real descended on me in that instant.
If there was proof Trixie was real—genuine proof—would it mean that I could start letting people know I could see her? Without the fear of a quick trip to a chic little sanatorium nestled in the redwoods?
Maybe.
But.
It was a lot to ask anyone to go from believing that a disembodied spirit could manifest during a séance to believing that I regularly palled around with a very lively usherette who died in 1937. An invisible presence putting out candles was one thing, but would anyone believe Trixie and I spent rainy afternoons discussing whether Clark Gable or Cary Grant was better boyfriend material? (My answer: neither of them. Save your time and go with Jimmy Stewart.)
No. The way I saw the situation, people still might—quite understandably—think I was crazy if the whole truth came out. And if people thought I was crazy, especially people who cared about me, people like Robbie, they’d want to get me away from the source of the craziness. For my own good.
I could see how it would play out. Robbie would, with all the patience in the world, tell me I’d been pushing myself too hard since Ted left. She’d tell me that taking over the Palace had been too much for me. She’d insist I get away and relax somewhere. Web links to meditation retreats and holistic spas would follow, and before I knew it she’d orchestrate getting me out of the Palace as smoothly as she’d orchestrated getting me into it.
And once I was out of the Palace, who would look out for Trixie?
“Trixie?” I called out again.
When she didn’t answer I wrote a note on a yellow index card. I propped it up against the tablet screen.
Please don’t use this again until after we talk.
Because there could be all kinds of consequences.
I was heading down to work the concessions stand before the seven-thirty show when I finally got a text from Ted. Or rather, a series of texts, pinging in one after the other. I stopped midway down the lobby stairs to read them.
“Nora?” Albert was restocking the licorice supply. “Everything all right?”
I looked at him numbly, then back to the texts.
Babe, you’re the best. I knew you’d come through for me.
I have all the paperwork on the gowns. I knew you’d love them. I really want you to have them. Like I said, the only favor I need is for you to take a meeting with a producer.
I’m totally supposed to have the lead in that Scandinavian franchise. You know, from those books you liked? With the reporter who’s ex-CIA? And the fjords?
But now I’m hearing that there’s a new producer on the deal, and he’s not my biggest fan. He’s talking to some other actor, Glen Hendricks. Like that dude could ever get a part where he keeps his shirt on.
Listen, you have to nail down this producer for me. Work your magic. I know if anyone can bring him around, it’s you.
His name is Otis Hampton. Thanks!
Albert was still peering up at me from behind his little round glasses.
“You know those gowns?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“I’m never going to get them authenticated.”
Albert went home once the seven-thirty started, and Callie left early as well, taking advantage of the fact that Brandon unexpectedly showed up during the nine-fifteen.
“I take it you haven’t found a coin yet?” I asked him.
He looked like he hadn’t slept since I’d seen him the day before. “It’s impossible,” he said, coming around the counter to get himself a soda. The machine made an alarming clanking sound, which I chose to ignore. “Have you heard what they’re saying?”
“By ‘they,’ do you mean the crazies on the game forums?”
“Them,” he agreed. He gulped down half the drink before continuing. “The latest thing going around is that there never were any coins, and the two that were supposedly found were just planted to keep everyone playing.”
“So the people who found them…”
“Fakes,” he said authoritatively. “Bots, maybe. Or plants who worked for S.”
I wondered if that could be true. Which is exactly how conspiracy theor
ies caught on, I told myself.
“Looking for the bright side,” I said to Brandon, “does this mean ‘they’ have stopped talking about me being a homicidal maniac?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, as if he’d just noticed. “I told you they’d move on.”
Thank goodness for short attention spans. At least in this case.
“Um, Nora?” Brandon said. “Could I maybe get some more hours for the next couple of weeks? I need to make some money to pay for all the stuff I bought in the game, and I need it before my mom gets her credit card bill.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told him. “Meanwhile, how about heading downstairs with a mop?”
Which is how I found myself alone in the lobby when Detective Jackson stopped by.
“I’m only here to pick Marty up,” Jackson said when he came in through the lobby doors and saw me behind the counter. He held up both hands. “Not to talk about the case.”
“Of course,” I said smoothly. “But before you go upstairs, have a free cookie. I’ve still got three left and I’d hate to have to throw them away.”
He paused on his way to the stairs. I brought the tray of Lisa’s cookies out from the glass case and held it temptingly.
“Maybe just one,” he caved.
“Take the rest to go,” I offered. “How’s Kristy? Is there any news?”
He gave me a look as he reached for the tray. “So these cookies aren’t free.”
I shrugged. “Monica’s been texting me. She’s still with Kristy’s parents at the hospital. She says there’s no change yet, but they’re still running tests. Have you heard anything more?”
He shook his head, munching. “That’s as much as I know.”
Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 67
