Murder in the Balcony

by Margaret Dumas

  Sally Lee

  Chapter 5

  Callie gazed at her phone yearningly as Detective Jackson sealed it in a plastic bag and put it in his pocket. I expected withdrawal symptoms to set in shortly.

  I thought the detective would go off to do more detecting after we wrapped up, so I was surprised that he crossed the street with us when we left the café, lingering outside the theater.

  The Palace, as its name implies, is an old-fashioned movie palace. Its marquee still juts out proudly over the sidewalk, above a freestanding ticket booth. Movie posters, both of the current lineup and of random classics, line the tiled walkway leading to the lobby doors. The detective seemed oddly interested in the poster of Fred and Ginger, billed as “the King and Queen of Carioca,” in The Gay Divorcee.

  It was a good movie, but I wouldn’t have pegged the detective as a fan of vintage musicals.

  “Um, is there anything I can do for you?” I asked him.

  “No, no, I was just—” His eyes flicked to something behind me. A broad grin crossed his face. “Marty!”

  Marty?

  I turned around to see the projectionist approaching us from the corner. His brief expression of confusion was almost instantly replaced by a more familiar glare of annoyance.

  “David. Why are you here?”

  David?

  Callie and I both turned from one to the other as Marty joined us, understanding hitting us simultaneously. The vibe between them was unmistakable.

  “Sooo…” Callie pointed first at Marty (still glaring) then to Detective Jackson (still grinning). “You two…” Then she flicked her hand. “I can’t even.” She turned her back and went up the walkway to the lobby.

  I should have gone with her. It was abundantly clear that the detective wanted to talk to Marty. It crossed my mind that maybe that was the reason he’d been so accommodating about waiting to speak to Callie, and about having the conversation at the café rather than at the precinct.

  “Would you like to come in for some coffee?” I asked him, ignoring Marty. Also ignoring the fact that we’d just left a coffee shop.

  “No, he wouldn’t,” Marty said, still looking at Jackson.

  I really enjoyed teasing Marty. And I would tease him, extensively, at some point. How could he have kept what was clearly a personal relationship with Jackson a secret was beyond me. But even I could see that now was not the time.

  “Detective.” I held out my hand to Jackson. “Thank you. Please let me know if you need anything else. Marty,” I turned to him. “I’ll see you inside.”

  Whereupon I went into the theater and—I’m not proud of this—dashed up the stairs to my office to see if I could overhear them from the window above the marquee.

  I could not.

  “Hiya Nora. Whatcha doing?”

  I jumped as Trixie appeared by my side, looking out the window. The way she popped in and out of existence could be a little startling.

  “I’m spying on Marty.”

  “Oh.” She leaned closer to the glass. “I can’t see him.”

  I turned away from the window and sank onto the couch. “I didn’t say I was good at it.”

  She grinned. “Catch me up. What have I missed? How long have I been gone?”

  It wasn’t clear where Trixie went when she disappeared. She just called it “away,” and never had any memories of it when she came back. She also had no sense of time when she was away. Before she had me to help her keep her bearings, she’d oriented herself by checking the marquee to see what was playing and matching it to the blackboard in the office that showed a three-month schedule of films.

  “Just since yesterday,” I told her. “Remember how Callie hadn’t heard from her boyfriend all weekend?”

  “The stinker.” Trixie wrinkled her pert nose and perched on the desk.

  “The stinker was murdered,” I said.

  Her mouth formed a lipsticked O. “Oh, Nora. That’s awful! Poor Callie! Is she okay?”

  “As well as can be.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “The police are trying to figure it out.”

  She shivered, then nodded, as if she’d made up her mind. “He was a good guy. I’m sure someone good came for him.”

  The way Trixie understood things, someone in your family comes to take you along when you die. It was only because Trixie had refused to go when her ancestor came for her that she still haunted the Palace.

  “I’m sure they did,” I agreed, pushing any doubts about Warren’s character firmly out of my mind.

  “Aw, the poor kid,” Trixie said. “She was really in love with him.”

  “She was.”

  She rested her chin in her hands. “Isn’t love the most terrible awful thing in the world?”

  I blew out a breath. “It is.”

  “And isn’t it the best?”

  I smiled at her. “It really is.”

  Callie and Warren. Marty and Detective (David!) Jackson. Even Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. The sparkly days of a new relationship. It made you think. It made me think, at least. And what I thought about was Ted. About Ted in the sparkly days, when he’d been this amazing, funny, sweet guy who wanted to be an actor. Who’d told me he wouldn’t be able to do it—do anything—without me. Who’d made me feel brilliant and invincible when I was around him. That was before he’d turned into Ted Bishop, International Action Hero. Back then he’d quoted Shakespeare and cracked me up with improv and completely captivated me until I was drunk on him. Dizzy with love. Giddy and happy and so, so sure that it would always stay that way.

  “Whatcha thinking, honey?” Trixie brought me back to the present.

  I sighed. “Love.”

  “I thought so. You had that kinda dreamy look on your face.”

  Had I? How embarrassing.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said. “Do you regret it? Falling in love with your husband, I mean? Because, even with how everything turned out, I’m still glad I fell for Eddie.”

  Eddie was the reason Trixie was sitting there with me instead of enjoying whatever more attractive options an afterlife might have to offer. He’d been the guy she’d had a crush on back in 1937, when she was a twenty-year-old usherette. Because of a brawl he’d gotten into in the balcony one night, Trixie had met her death at the Palace. It was also because of Eddie that she’d given up her chance to move along when her grandfather had come for her.

  “Are you?” I asked. Eddie had never seemed like much of a catch to me. Case in point: on the night in question he’d been out with another girl.

  “Sure,” she said. “There’s nothing else like it. Why else would they make so many pictures about it?”

  I had to agree with that.

  She brought her perfectly plucked eyebrows together. “But it also kinda makes you crazy, doesn’t it? Stupid, even. Take the pictures. Look at any of those women. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Garbo—don’t even get me started on Garbo—perfectly rational people until they fall in love, and then it’s everything else they’ve ever worked for right out the window. And we don’t even blame them, because he’s Spencer Tracy or Clark Gable or somebody, and we’d do the same if we were in their shoes, don’t you think?”

  “I think you’ve captured the essence of a successful screenplay,” I told her.

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “But it’s strange, isn’t it, how most pictures end? I mean when they end. It’s with the big kiss, mostly, or with the wedding sometimes. But not the part where she finds herself alone every night when he starts working too late at the office, if you know what I mean.”

  She was looking at me intently. I think I knew what she meant.

  “And they hardly ever show what this woman—Joan or Bette, you know—what she does when that happens. How she picks herself up. How she tells h
im to scram, maybe, or how she might start working too late at the office herself.” She gave me a knowing look. “I suppose I got to thinking about it because of the picture that’s on now, with Norma Shearer?”

  “The Divorcee,” I said.

  “Right.” She nodded. “There’s someone who tells her husband what she thinks of him, and then goes out and, well, you know.”

  I knew. The movie had been made before the moral strictures of the Hayes Code were enforced, so when Norma finds out about her husband’s philandering, she makes it quite clear that she’s entitled to even the score. Which she does. Gleefully. All over Europe. And without anything horrible happening to punish her.

  “Trixie,” I said carefully. “Are you suggesting that I should even the score with Ted?”

  “Oh, honey, I would never tell a girl what she should do.” Her eyes grew disingenuously large.

  “Right.”

  “All I’m saying,” she glanced nonchalantly out the window. “Is that maybe a girl should realize it when the first reel is over. And decide how she wants the second reel to go. I mean, at some point she has to ask herself, is she Bette Davis or is she Norma Shearer?”

  I told myself that Trixie probably wasn’t suggesting that I follow Norma’s lead and sleep my way across Europe. On the other hand, the first image of Bette Davis that came to my mind was her standing with a smoking gun over the body of her dead lover in The Letter (1940, Davis and Herbert Marshall). But Trixie probably wasn’t suggesting I should shoot Ted, either.

  Probably.

  Chapter 6

  “I’d make a terrible detective.”

  I greeted Marty with this a while later in the break room. He was pouring milk into a bowl of cereal.

  “You’re the last person in this room to realize that.”

  We were alone in the room.

  “I had no idea,” I told him. “I mean, I knew you were crushing on Detective Jackson back in October, but—”

  He whirled around, holding up a spoon. “I was not crushing on him. I have not crushed on anyone since Chris Katsoros in the eighth grade.” He sniffed. “That did not end well.”

  “And this?” I leaned against the counter. “Is this going well?”

  “It’s going none of your business.”

  “Says the man who has no problem telling me what I should do about my marriage.”

  “That’s different.” He took his bowl to the table. “The state of your marriage is broadcast to the entire planet on a daily basis.” He shoved an overflowing spoonful of brightly colored fruity somethings into his mouth, which didn’t stop him from talking. “Of course, it wouldn’t be if you moved on from that spotlight-seeking pretty boy, but who am I to judge?”

  “Says the most judgmental man on the planet.”

  “I’m not judgmental. I’m opinionated.”

  I grinned. “You’re opinionated with a boyfriend.”

  He ratcheted his default glare up a few notches. “I’m past forty, and so is David. I may be seeing him, but he is not anyone’s boyfriend. Nor am I.”

  “Noted.” I sat at the table. “I just don’t know how you find the time. You’re always here.”

  “Of course I am. I’m indispensable.”

  Which was and wasn’t true. Yes, Marty was the only one who knew how to keep a lot of the Palace’s ancient projectors and equipment running. But I’d learned a lot about the theater business in the last few months. Like the fact that we didn’t actually have to use most of the old equipment most of the time. The majority of classic movies we showed were available digitally, and any old idiot—myself included—could run that equipment.

  Marty clung to the old technology, and I understood that up to a point. The soft hum of a digital projector is no match for the clackety-clack excitement of a vintage reel. Even the smell of the old prints…but I digress. I understood there were a lot of reasons for Marty to want to hide up in the projection booth, tinkering with cogs and splicers all day. I also understood that he was hiding.

  I looked at him as he tilted the bowl to his mouth to finish the last of the milk. “I’m happy for you,” I said.

  He shot me a look, waiting for the punch line.

  I laughed. “No, really.”

  He nodded, looking supremely uncomfortable. “Thank you. And I’ll be happy for you once you get off your ass and do something about your whole…” he waved the spoon in my general direction, “situation.”

  I sighed. “Noted.”

  After Marty left the breakroom, I got off my ass and did something about my whole situation. I sent my husband a text.

  Don’t cancel Sundance. It makes sense for you to go. You need to support the film. Besides, Sundance is fun and we could use a little fun. Which is why I’m going with you.

  The whoosh sound of the message flying off to him had a certain air of commitment to it. And I was glad. It made the most sense, if we were really getting back together. And if we were really getting back together, I was going to have to face the old crowd at some point. All those people who had suddenly remembered urgent commitments when he’d left me. The ones who broke coffee dates and canceled on dinners and said we really had to catch up while they backed out of rooms. Getting back together with Ted didn’t have to mean returning to my LA life. I wasn’t going to let it mean that. But it did mean I’d have to see a few people who had written me off the minute his arm was around some other woman’s waist. And I figured I might as well see them in the snowy backdrop of a mountain film festival.

  I should have felt triumphant. I’d made a decision. A sensible one. I should have felt relief. Happiness, even. Lots of people were happy when they gave their marriages another try. But I had a vague memory of what happiness felt like, and this wasn’t it. In fact, if I had to identify the main thing I was feeling, I’d have to go with queasy.

  I did want to go to Sundance with Ted. The problem was, I wanted to go with the Ted I’d been thinking about earlier. The Ted of late-night walks home when we couldn’t afford a cab. Of running lines before an audition, him telling me he couldn’t do it without me. I was still madly in love with the Ted who had piled everything we owned into a beat-up Subaru and held my hand across the gearshift all the way to Hollywood, assuring me that we were both destined for greatness. I just had to make sure he was still there, buried somewhere in the guy who had parked a Tesla in Robbie’s garage after leaving me for someone else. Who assumed a Tesla would fix it.

  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 t
o 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?”