by John Gaspard
“Leave the gun, take the cannoli.” Chip Cavanaugh said this loudly and with a self-satisfied smirk. He looked around, clearly disappointed his bon mot, as bon as it may have been, had received no reaction from the group.
“Oh. The Godfather. Right,” Randall Glendower said with a laugh, nodding at Chip. “Good one, man.”
Chip winked in response and then both men turned back to Quinton, who was patiently waiting for the exchange to conclude.
“Yes, our killer left the gun and left the money,” Quinton continued, playing with the words dramatically. “However, the mistake in looking at those two actions is to conclude they were born of the same circumstance. However, I believe they were two separate events which our killer hoped to solve with one single and—I think—remarkably clever solution.”
Quinton started moving away from the edge of the stage and toward the aisle.
“Eli and I agree on many, many things,” he said, flashing a smile in my direction, “and we do agree on this one key idea: Tyler James was not shot in the projection booth. He was shot elsewhere in the building but fled to the projection booth, either for his safety or to protect the money. Or both.”
He began walking up the aisle, slowly and deliberately, keeping his gaze on the small audience the entire time. He turned and looked directly at Mrs. Tyler James.
“I don’t believe he was shot in the projection booth,” he repeated with emphasis. “I believe Tyler was in fact shot in the theater’s lobby, where an after-hours clandestine meeting went terribly awry. The details may be fuzzy, but this much is clear: Tyler exited the lobby with two bullets in his back and one primary goal in mind: get to the projection booth and keep the killer from getting the $75,000.”
Ever the showman, Quinton had positioned himself so virtually everyone in the audience was forced to turn and look over their shoulders to see him. And, amazingly, every single one of them did it, even Sherry Lisbon’s two attorneys. The only exception was Sherry Lisbon herself, who I noticed was looking at me and not at Quinton. I turned my attention back to Quinton, hoping she would do the same but not wanting to check and see if she did.
“Tyler proceeded to his one place of safety, his beloved projection booth,” Quinton continued. “There he locked the door and then collapsed and died on the floor.”
Quinton let this pronouncement sink in for a moment as he slowly, oh so slowly, began to head back down the aisle toward the stage.
“So now our killer has two problems: The first is the money, which is out of reach behind a thick, well-secured steel door. And the other is the gun, which is on the wrong side of that same door. If the killer can get the gun into the booth and the money out, the motive for the killing will become fuzzy and the police will be led astray by focusing on a locked room mystery. What to do? What to do?” Quinton put a finger to his chin in a dramatic thinking pose.
“And then our killer landed on a solution which, effectively, solved both problems and left a puzzle for the police to solve. Which they—and everyone else—have been unable to do. Until today.”
Quinton looked down. He was standing right next to Randall Glendower, who had kindly followed my instructions and had taken a seat on the aisle.
“Can I ask a favor?” Quinton asked in his calmest voice. “And in the same instant, speak a phrase that one can go one’s entire life without having the pleasure of uttering?”
Randall, looking mesmerized, slowly nodded.
“Thank you,” Quinton said, then added with a smile, “may I borrow your monkey?”
* * *
The next portion of Quinton’s demonstration took a few moments to set up.
He headed up to the door of the projection booth, while everyone turned in their seats and watched. Detective Wright met him by the booth and opened the reinstalled door while Quinton turned to his audience below.
“To recap: We have a gun…” Quinton looked at Wright, who suddenly had the look of an actor in a play who has forgotten his lines. He patted his pockets and finally pulled out a tiny handgun.
“This is the same model of gun which was used to kill Tyler James,” Quinton said in a booming voice as he held it up. The gun was so tiny, from our position in the front of the theater it virtually disappeared in his hand. He held it with the tips of his fingers and turned it until it finally caught the light, sending off a brief glimmer we could see from our seats.
“I should point out the firearm is unloaded and, for further safety, the firing pin has been removed,” Wright added.
“Yes, but other than that, it is virtually the same as the gun which shot Tyler James, correct?”
Detective Wright nodded in agreement.
“All right, we have the recently fired gun on this side of the door,” Quinton said as he reached into his breast pocket, “and an envelope with $75,000 in it on the other side of the door.” He pulled a thick white envelope out and held it up for our approval and then handed it to Wright. The entire exchange was taking on the feel of a well-practiced stage routine.
“Detective Wright, would you agree the envelope you now hold in your hand is the approximate size and weight of the one found in the projection booth the night Tyler James was found murdered?”
Wright murmured something and Quinton immediately teased him. “I can’t hear you, Detective.”
“Yes it is,” Wright said, now speaking louder than necessary.
“All right, the gun is on this side of the door, and the money and the dead body—” Quinton gestured to Wright, who again looked like an actor who’s lost his place in the play. Wright held up the envelope one last time, then stepped into the projection booth and shut the door. “The money and the dead body are on the other side of a locked door.” He waited a moment and then spoke again, this time louder. “Behind a locked door.”
Even from the front of the theater we could hear the metallic clunk as the lock slid into place.
“Thank you.” Quinton shook his head with a smile, which produced a laugh from the crowd. “We rehearsed and everything.” He shrugged his shoulders in a “what are you gonna do?” gesture, then moved back into performance mode.
“All right, so I am the killer and I have two issues of high concern. I have the movie, but there is $75,000 on that side of the door,” he said, with a nod toward the booth, “and I’m out here with the murder weapon. It looks like I am, as they say, screwed. Except in addition to the murder weapon, I also have a secret weapon.”
He bent down out of sight for a moment. We could hear another, much smaller metallic clink, and when he stood up, Quinton was cradling what looked like a furry baby in his arms.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to my assistant: Jinx.”
There was an involuntary coo from the ladies in the audience, with the exception of Sherry Lisbon.
“Cool—a monkey!” Chip Cavanaugh said, sounding truly excited by the sight.
“Not just a monkey, but a Javan macaque monkey. And this is the only thing small enough—and smart enough—to go through the small square hole in the front of the projection booth.”
He gestured at the hole in the booth and we all looked from where he stood to the position of the hole. It was clearly out of the reach of a human, as it was in the center of an otherwise smooth wall with no obvious handholds in sight.
“I believe my furry friend here was able to successfully complete one-half of his mission that night, but the arrival of Eli Marks and the police forced him and his owner to depart sooner than anticipated.”
All eyes turned toward Randall Glendower, who was watching the presentation with intense interest.
It slowly dawned on him he was the sudden center of attention and moments later he realized why.
“Hey,” he said, suddenly standing, but then he noticed Homicide Detective Fred Hutton was moving toward him, so he took his seat again. Our
attention was pulled away from him by Quinton’s booming voice up by the projection booth.
“He was not able to get the money, but with Jinx’s help, he was able to place the gun into the locked projection booth. Like this.”
With that, he handed the small gun to Jinx and set the monkey on the edge of the seat in front of him. From where I stood, I watched as everyone in the audience—including Sherry Lisbon—turned their heads and visually traced the path the monkey was about to make: a simple jump up to a narrow ledge which ran the length of the wall by the door. Then a sharp turn, where the cables from the small hole in the wall that ran to the digital projector in the ceiling would provide swinging access to the larger, center hole. From there, it was through the hole and into the booth. An impossible trip for a human, but a simple romp for just about any small monkey.
Except, as it turned out, for Jinx.
He examined the gun, sniffed at it, gave the handle a lick and then tossed it on the floor. He turned and looked down at us and appeared to smile widely, showing a truly impressive set of white, wet teeth. Quinton picked up the gun and handed it back to Jinx, and then helped to get him started by placing him on the narrow ledge. Jinx didn’t seem to care for the ledge, because he immediately jumped down, landing on Quinton’s shoulder, and then he bonked Quinton in the head with the small gun.
Quinton patiently took the gun from Jinx’s small, furry hand and placed the monkey back up on the ledge. He handed the gun to Jinx, who batted it away. Quinton offered it again, and again the monkey batted it away. On his third attempt, Jinx pushed the gun away, leaned down into Quinton’s face and gave him the monkey equivalent of a raspberry.
“I’ve seen enough.” The sentiment came from Sherry Lisbon, who stood up while declaring it, but I had the sense others in the small audience shared her feelings.
I held up a hand.
“If you would indulge me,” I said. People who had started to get up took their seats again, either due to the force of my personality or the fact that Homicide Detective Fred Hutton was now standing beside me with his arms folded.
“I’d like to offer an alternate theory,” I said. “But before I do, I’d like us to watch just a few minutes from that classic missing masterpiece, London After Midnight.”
On cue, the lights in the auditorium went out and a white light filled the movie screen.
Chapter 21
The audience was remarkably patient and sat through a full thirty seconds of flickering white light before I sensed they were once again getting restless. I climbed up onto the stage and stepped into the beam of light.
“In my view, this is what remains of London After Midnight,” I said, gesturing to the blank illuminated space behind me. “The film that was part of a sales exchange gone wrong was no more substantial than the light coming from that projector.”
Detective Wright had finally become adept at picking up his cues and the projector light switched off just as the lights popped back on in the auditorium.
He peered down at me from the small square hole in the center of the back wall and gave me a quick thumbs up and a wide smile.
I nodded my approval at his timing and then continued.
“This investigation has focused on the various people who had the interest and resources to buy the movie if it existed,” I said, scanning the small audience below me. “But no real time was spent looking at people who knew it didn’t exist. And who also needed money.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” I continued, carefully making my way off the stage and down the stairs. “It’s safe to say the killer knew about Tyler and his black market dealings.” I stepped off the last step and turned toward Mrs. Tyler James and Gunnar, both of whom turned away immediately. Just as in my act, I seemed to have a sixth sense to find audience members who really had no interest in being part of the show.
“Mrs. James, you were aware of your husband’s side business. Can you tell us how it worked?”
“How it worked?” she repeated, in a classic stalling action.
“Yes, if I had something to sell and wanted Tyler to handle the sale, how would I go about it?”
She rolled her eyes, sighed, and then spoke in a flat monotone which was designed to express her contempt at this process and, by extension, me.
“It was all done via email,” she said, snapping her gum as she spoke. For all I knew, it was the same gum she had started chewing in my shop earlier in the week. “If you wanted to buy something, you’d email Tyler and he’d track it down. If you had something to sell, same thing. He’d look around for a buyer.”
“And either way, he took a cut?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a charity, if that’s what you mean,” she said.
“So it could be relatively anonymous,” I added.
“Completely anonymous,” she said.
“And how did the money change hands?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes there’d be a wire transfer, sometimes an actual money drop. It varied.”
“Basically, anyone with access to Tyler’s email could take part, as a buyer or a seller.”
“Sure,” she said, crossing her arms and settling back into her seat to physically demonstrate she’d said as much as she was going to.
“So,” I said, turning my attention back to the full group, “if someone needed money, they could use Tyler’s system to entice a buyer to hand over a large sum of cash for a treasured item.”
“Like $750,000,” Randall Glendower said suddenly.
I held up my hand. “Actually, I think in this case, all they were counting on was the deposit—$75,000. The killer knew the movie didn’t really exist—or didn’t care one way or the other—so they were only planning on taking the ruse as far as the deposit stage.”
I looked over to see Quinton had taken a seat next to Megan. He was giving me a puzzled expression as he tried to see where I was headed with this theory.
“Let’s assume the killer got in touch with Tyler, told him the print of London After Midnight was available to the highest bidder, and let Tyler go do his thing. After some negotiations, he found a buyer in Clifford Thomas.”
“I knew it!” Randall Glendower nearly shouted as he started to get up, and then realized this probably wasn’t the best place for an outburst of this type and settled back into his seat.
“Yes, you were outbid,” I said to Randall, and he somehow found a way to both nod and shake his head at the same time. “Tyler may have had some help in jacking up the price by bringing in another, more competitive bidder,” I said, turning to Sherry Lisbon.
One of her attorneys turned to her and started to whisper something, but Lisbon pushed her away.
“There’s no way you can prove that,” she snapped.
I shrugged. “No, I can’t. I also can’t prove Tyler took sympathy on Clifford when he recognized the writer’s passion for the movie and let him win the auction, even though others would have gone higher, just for the fun of taking it away from him.” I glanced back at Sherry Lisbon, but she was now staring straight ahead, clearly not interested in engaging further on this topic.
“Somehow or other,” I continued, “Clifford Thomas won the auction and presented Tyler with a ten percent down payment on the purchase, which in this case was $75,000.”
“In cash, no less.” This observation came from Chip Cavanaugh, who had spent much of my presentation scrolling through messages on his phone.
“Yes, in cash,” I agreed.
“That would indicate trust in the middleman,” Chip continued, not taking his eyes off the phone. “Which would indicate Cliff had done a lot of business with Tyler.” He looked up and seemed surprised all eyes were on him. “I’m just saying.”
“Be that as it may,” I said, trying to pull back the ownership of the presentation, “some sort of pre-arranged drop was made—Tyler left the mo
ney and picked up the film reels—but that’s when things started to go wonky. Because when Tyler got the film reels back to the projection booth and opened the canisters, they were empty.”
“But he would have known they were empty as soon as he picked up the canisters,” Randall said, almost whining. “Film reels are heavy.”
“Yes, which is why the killer had placed some free weights in the canisters. Tyler had a weight bench and some weights up in the booth,” I said. “The night we found his body, I noticed he had a complete set, along with four other weights that weren’t the same color as the full set. I think those were taking the place of the film reels in the canisters.”
To prove my conjecture, I pointed up to the projection booth. Detective Wright was standing by the door. He held up a black twenty pound weight in one hand, and then held up another, lighter-colored weight in the other. Despite his serious expression, the demonstration had the distinct feel of a product reveal moment from a cheesy seventies game show.
“When he realized he’d been fooled, Tyler went to confront the seller.”
“All right, wait, I thought the process was anonymous?” This, surprisingly, came from Quinton. Even he seemed a little unnerved he had suddenly spoken up, but then he pressed on. “I mean, isn’t that the premise? That this was anonymous?”
“I believe it was,” I said. “But I also believe somehow Tyler figured out who had put this alleged lost film on the black market. And when he went to confront that person, he didn’t have to go far.”
I scanned the room and everyone followed my eyes, nervously waiting to see where my gaze would land.
“It was a short walk,” I continued. “Just down the hall to the theater manager’s office.”
Chapter 22
Tracy, seated on an aisle, looked first left then right, quickly assessing her situation.
To her left, one seat over, sat Deirdre. To her right, walking up the aisle, was Homicide Detective Fred Hutton.