Feature Presentation

by K. J. Emrick

  After a few moments, Miranda saw Alma turn her attention across the cinema towards where Liam sat, and the two of them seemed to lock eyes in a less than friendly way. There was no nod of recognition or any sign that either one was a little embarrassed to be caught looking at the other. Instead, there was a rather frosty and steely determination not to be the first to look away. Miranda was left with a strong sense that there was no love lost between the two of them. Liam looked away first and then Alma rose from her seat and stalked out of the cinema.

  Realizing that the film was coming to an end, Miranda tried to pay a little more attention. She made it most of the way to the credits. Again, her gaze began to wander about the room. She observed two men in business suits arising from their seats and slowly leaving the cinema. Sapphire had said they were investors in the film. Charles Cameron and James Lee were fairly well known in the Australian film industry and it must have been quite a coup for Alma to have secured them as backers for her film.

  Miranda’s gaze wandered to the next row and this time, it settled upon a man that Sapphire had identified for her as Christopher Clark. She was not entirely sure what part he played in the movie, but Sapphire had said she thought he was heavily involved with the making of Galactic Highway.

  He watched the last few moments of the picture quite impassively, fidgeting in his seat as if bored. Miranda hardly thought that was the behavior of someone heavily involved in the making of the film. She wondered what his story really was.

  As the music swelled and the final credits began to roll, Christopher sat up just a little straighter, and leaned forward, finally very interested in what was displayed on the screen. Miranda was so intrigued by what he might be doing that when he leapt to his feet to march out of the cinema, it actually made her jump. As he passed the row where she was sitting with Sapphire, there was a glower on his face that was unmistakable. Something had set him off.

  He glowered down at her as he passed, and Miranda immediately turned away, not wanting to catch the wrath of whatever was brewing in those eyes.

  That brought the direction of her gaze to a man and a woman sitting just a few seats in front of her. Miranda was able to pick up just a little of the conversation.

  “To be perfectly honest, Pearl,” the man said, “it was only after I finished my detox phase that they rehired me for the film. I count myself pretty lucky. They could’ve said no.”

  Miranda remembered his name was Dax Brennan, according to Sapphire, and he was a cameraman on Galactic Highway. The stagehand next to him was Pearl Anderson. Whatever Pearl said in return, Miranda could not hear. They spoke for a while longer but Miranda was unable to make out any more of their conversation. And then they got up and left the cinema. Hmm. So perhaps those two were an item as well. Did everyone involved in this movie hook up?

  Miranda looked to the back of the cinema, and she saw the angry Christopher Wood had returned from wherever he had stalked off to. He didn’t seem to be in a much better mood than when he’d left a little while earlier. He slumped down into his chair, the brooding look firmly etched into his face.

  Dax and Pearl returned shortly after, both with Styrofoam cups in hand, and sat down in the seats just inside the doorway. They were still deep in conversation.

  “What did you think?” Sapphire said from beside her. She lowered her voice, cognizant of the fact they were surrounded by the very people who had made the film. “I suppose for an independent film it was enjoyable enough, but some of it seemed rather, shall we say, heavy handed? Miranda? Dear, are you hearing me?”

  “Yes…” Miranda answered distractedly. The truth of the matter was that she was distracted by the sight of Alma O’Neal entering the cinema, her expression deeply confused, walking up and down the far side of the aisle between the seats and the wall. There was a fluidity to the woman’s movement, and a certain bluish haze around her that told Miranda that she was, without a shadow of a doubt, looking at Alma’s ghost.

  “What is it?” Sapphire asked, sensing something was wrong.

  “Sapphire, you need to find Jean-Paul,” Miranda said. “You need to tell him that something has happened to Alma.”

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “Because I’m looking at her ghost.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?” Sapphire looked all around, as if she might be able to catch a glimpse of Alma herself.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Miranda sighed. If Jean-Paul and Alma really had been dating, this was going to devastate him. “Now go and find Jean-Paul. I’m going to see if I can find Alma’s body.”

  Miranda headed out through the back door of the cinema, trying to decide where Alma might have gone when she left. Sapphire had gone on ahead, breaking into a run as she searched for Jean-Paul, her dress flowing behind her. Miranda took things a little more slowly, her eyes darting this way and that looking for any sort of a clue.

  Finally, she saw what she thought were a few spots of blood on the pale grey carpet and followed them. They brought her to the ladies’ room. Tentatively, she pushed the door open just a few inches and popped her head in to take a look.

  “Oh, no.”

  Sure enough, there was the body of Alma O’Neal.

  She was lying face down on the floor, her dark hair glistening with wet blood. Miranda could see big drops of red next to Alma on the tiles, the spatters getting smaller as they led to the door.

  She realized then that Alma must have been killed here, and the trail that she’d followed had actually been left by the murderer walking away, drips of blood falling off whatever weapon had been used to club Alma in the back of the head.

  Whoever had killed Alma had most certainly been in the cinema tonight. She’d been sitting in that room with a killer.

  “What’d I miss?” Kyle asked brightly, appearing beside her. When he saw what Miranda was looking at he brushed a hand over his face with a long exhale of breath. “Well. Here we go again.”

  Chapter 3

  Miranda’s shouts for help had perhaps caused a little more stir than she intended. Jean-Paul was the first on the scene, running into the restroom past her. Liam, Christopher, Dax and Pearl soon followed close behind. The two film investors, Charles Cameron and James Lee, hung back with concern etched on their faces.

  Miranda winced to see the way the others trampled over everything. This was a crime scene after all, and seeing their total disregard for any clues that might have been there was almost painful. She wished that she had thought to take pictures with her cellphone. Or at least, gone in there to investigate first before calling everyone over.

  “Oh, Alma,” Jean-Paul cried in anguish. For the longest moment he sat there on his knees, with his fists to his eyes, crying. If there had been any doubt about how close those two had been with each other, it was certainly dispelled now.

  Everyone stood there with him, some in shock, some just not wanting to disturb him, Miranda assumed. While they waited for him to regain his composure, Miranda leaned out to where Sapphire stood teary-eyed in the hallway with the two investors who were now talking among themselves, hands gesturing wildly, no doubt worried how this would impact the film and their investment. “Call 000,” she said as quietly as she could to Sapphire. “The police have to come and look into this as soon as possible.”

  It wasn’t long after when Jean-Paul was able to pull himself together enough to stand up and start giving out orders. “Alors. Dax, I want you to lock the front doors. There is a murderer in this building, and I do not want them getting out.”

  “I don’t want to be locked in here,” Pearl said, plaintively.

  “I’m not too keen on that either,” Christopher added, crossing his arms over his barrel chest.

  “This is my cinema,” Jean-Paul reminded them. “My… that is, Alma is dead. Dax, go do as I ask, please. Take Liam with you, he can help.”

  “Sure thing,” Dax finally said, and hurried away. Liam trailed behind.

  Sapphire, finishing her phone ca
ll, finally made her way in.

  “Jean-Paul, please just come away,” she said, in her usual, lazily comforting way. Her tone seemed to soothe Jean-Paul.

  “Yes,” he said. Just that one word, but his shoulders slumped under the weight of it.

  Sapphire took his hand and gently led him away from the bathrooms. She nodded at Miranda on the way past, as if silently trying to tell her that she would look after him.

  Miranda decided to wait inside the restroom, not happy to leave Christopher and Pearl in there alone. One of them might very well have killed Alma, and she didn’t want any tampering to go on unwitnessed.

  “Can you really see me?” Suddenly, the ghost of Alma O’Neal was at her side, making Miranda jump.

  Pearl and Christopher both turned her way, but she waved a hand as if to say she was just upset. Then she nodded to Alma, very slowly. It was the most she could manage without looking like a kook talking to thin air.

  Kyle materialized through the wall next to Alma. “Miranda is the only one who can see us. She was my friend before I died, and she’s my friend now in the afterlife. You can trust her.”

  Alma nodded, the misty blue light around her trembling as she jerked back and forth, apparently trying to get the hang of not being able to put her feet solidly on the floor.

  Miranda’s attention was drawn to Christopher and Pearl, both of whom had continued to wander about, looking at everything, poking their noses into the stalls and the garbage can like amateur sleuths.

  “It looks like somebody whacked her from behind,” Pearl said, in a high-pitched and rather overexcited way. The voice suited her pinched face. Her hands were tough with calluses and her arms were as thick as Miranda’s legs. She no doubt earned her keep as the movie’s stagehand.

  “Is there anything here the killer could have hit her with?” Christopher said, still looking all about him.

  Miranda, having already worked out that the killer must have taken the weapon with him, did not bother to explain that to Christopher. Instead, she looked back towards Alma’s body.

  Her clothes looked perfectly intact. They weren’t disheveled or torn. There was nothing to indicate that a struggle had taken place. Miranda rather thought that Pearl’s assertion that Alma must have been whacked from behind—as insensitive as that might be—was likely to be correct.

  “Her purse is on the floor,” Christopher said, and pointed to it. “I wonder if there’s anything left in it?”

  “Let’s have a look,” Pearl suggested, immediately dropping to the floor and pulling the purse into her lap.

  “For goodness sake!” Miranda said in frustration. “You need to leave that to the police. Your prints are now going to be all over that purse. And anyone else’s prints, if there were any to be found, have likely been rubbed away by yours!”

  “Dear Lord,” Alma said, her eyes wide as she looked at her own body. “I’m really dead, aren’t I? Why are they just standing there? Shouldn’t they be upset, or crying, or… or anything at all?”

  “There, there,” Kyle said to her. “Everyone deals with death differently. I can’t tell you how many good long shouts I’ve had whenever I think of how dead I am. It’s very therapeutic.”

  With the purse already open, Pearl looked inside. “Well, there’s money and cards here, so it probably wasn’t a robbery.” She looked up at Miranda and shrugged apologetically. “I’m sorry, I just didn’t think. What are you, some kind of private investigator?”

  “No,” Miranda said, “I’m a crime novelist. Just… don’t touch anything else, will you?”

  With that, she left. The murder scene had been sufficiently tainted as it was and it wasn’t like anyone could kill Alma twice. The hallway outside of the bathroom was empty. Charles and James must have left sometime while she was still inside the bathroom.

  As she made her way out into the lobby with Kyle and Alma floating after her, she saw Liam squaring off with Dax further down the hallway. They were shouting at each other, at the same time, so that Miranda couldn’t tell what the reason for the squabble was.

  “Oh my God!” Alma exclaimed, sounding afraid. “I cannot believe that Liam is still angry with Dax. Shouldn’t they have forgiven each other by now? I mean, really.”

  Miranda raced to them. “Come on, guys, break this up. The police will be here soon and you need to calm down.”

  “Yeah, you need to let it go, Liam,” Dax said, shoving a finger in Liam’s face. He was a scrawny little man with two days’ worth of stubble on his jaw. It was hard to find him threatening in any way.

  “Well, I’m not gonna let it go. You were seeing her when you knew she was with me! Why the heck should I let that go? Especially now that she’s dead!”

  “Look, just back off,” Dax said, trying to back away but finding himself hard up against a wall. He turned to look at Miranda. “Please, just let the police know what he’s doing. Record this on your phone, anything, just in case he tries to kill me, too. At least you’ll have some evidence.”

  Alma screamed suddenly, sending chills up Miranda’s spine. “Shut up, the both of you!” she screeched, her voice oddly echoing now that she was dead. “I was done with both of you after all your lies and cheating. Why would I still care for either of you?” The two men looked around, unable to hear her but seemingly able to feel something wasn’t quite normal.

  Miranda was beginning to see there was quite a bit more to this story than she knew. Still, this wasn’t getting them anywhere. What she needed was for these two men to stop acting like little kids so she could go off somewhere and have a private conversation with Alma.

  “Calm down,” she said, stepping in between them. “Both of you, just calm it down, okay? Go to your neutral corners, or whatever.”

  Liam seemed to calm down considerably. He stalked away, mumbling about why he had to be locked into this stupid cinema with a man he couldn’t stand.

  “Hey,” Miranda called out after him, “aren’t you supposed to be helping Dax lock everything down?

  “He can finish it himself,” Liam called back over his shoulder. “I’m going to the men’s room for a smoke.”

  When he was gone, Miranda turned to Dax. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ve been threatened by better than him.” He swallowed hard. “It’s just… I’m going to go back to jail if I get in any more trouble. I could’ve taken him. I just, you know, don’t want to get arrested again.”

  “Right,” Miranda said, not arguing the point that Liam had at least fifty solid pounds on Dax. “So, you were seeing Alma while she was dating Liam, is that it?”

  Alma snorted behind her. “If you want to call it dating. Dax here is lacking in the… personality department.”

  Miranda ignored her, and waited for Dax’s version of events.

  “Yeah, we were. I know it’s stupid but it felt right, you know? What’s it matter now, anyway. It’s water under the bridge. Alma wasn’t seeing either me or Liam anymore. Besides, she’s dead now. I can’t… I can’t believe I’ll never see her again.”

  “You still cared for her?”

  “Yes, I still cared for her,” Dax said, shrugging as he turned his face away.

  Miranda pressed ahead, wanting to get as much information as she could while Dax was in a talkative mood. “Did anything strike you as unusual tonight? Anything out of the ordinary? Even the smallest detail might be important.”

  “Hey, you’re asking a lot of questions.”

  “Come on, Dax. You said you cared about her. You want to find out who did this, don’t you? So, did you see anything strange tonight?”

  “No, nothing really,” he sighed, shrugging again. “Well, I mean, I must admit I was a little surprised to see Pearl here.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Alma fired her from the production in the early days. I would never have thought in a million years that Pearl would turn up for the screening. I can’t imagine her being invited.”

  “Weren’t you fi
red from the production, too?”

  “No, not fired,” he corrected her. “I was let go until I could get my addiction in check. Hey, I went to rehab, I came out, and they let me keep working. Sure, I’m grateful for it but I would never do anything to intentionally endanger my job. Not like Pearl. Now, you want to tell me why you’re asking questions about this? You’re just a friend of Jean-Paul’s, right?”

  “Well, sure. And I’m trying to help a friend.”

  Alma looked at Kyle. “Does she mean me?”

  “Well, sure she does,” Kyle said. “That’s just the way she is.”

  “I’d better get on with the lockdown,” Dax said, turning to leave. “Since that good for nothing Liam isn’t going to do it.”

  “I think you can hold off,” Miranda told him, looking out the front door. “Looks like the police are here.”

  Chapter 4

  Miranda decided to head off to find Jean-Paul and Sapphire to let them know that the police had arrived. She could have stayed to see if Jack Travis was the responding officer, she supposed. The thing was, she and Jack had gone out on a few dates in the last several weeks and while she wanted to, um, take things to a closer level with him, she could sense him holding back for some reason. Maybe it was just his job getting in the way. She didn’t know, but when she’d suggested he come back to Ragged Rest for a drink with her after their last dinner date the previous weekend, he’d turned her down flat.

  For now, best to just keep her distance as well as she could.

  Walking back along the corridor, Miranda headed for the stairs and the second level where the projection booth was. She found Jean-Paul and Sapphire in quiet conversation up there.

  Through the window of the projection booth door, she couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the look on the face of the employee boxing up the film suggested that the talk might be rather unpleasant.

  “Look, Miranda,” Kyle said to her, “I’ll leave you to deal with Jean-Paul and Sapphire for a minute. I think I’m going to take Alma out of the way, so that she can concentrate, I’ll try to find out what she remembers.”