Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  I half listened while I dropped the laptop bag to the floor and ransacked my backpack for my phone, glad that he was arrogant enough to think he could reason with me instead of kicking down the door with one try.

  “You see, I’d given her a down payment for the film festival,” he said.

  Where was my phone?

  “And I found out she’d spent it on something else. An investment, she called it. She said it would triple my money.”

  My fingers hit the blessed rectangular shape and I pulled the phone out, my hand shaking so badly it took three tries to unlock it.

  “But then she died, and I just want my down payment back,” Todd was saying. “I don’t know what she bought, but she used my money, and I need it to get my website up and running. You understand, don’t you? I should have told you, but I didn’t want to damage Kate’s legacy.” His voice was plaintive, and if I had been the trusting sort I might have fallen for his story.

  But two people had been killed in this theater, and that meant I was no longer the trusting sort. So I dialed 911 and backed away from the door, speaking loudly enough for Todd to hear me.

  “My name is Nora Paige and I’m at the Palace Theater on Sacramento street. There’s an intruder and I need you to send the police. The intruder’s name is—”

  With that the door came crashing open. I screamed, and the operator said something, but then Todd grabbed the phone out of my hand and threw it against the wall. He turned to me, the imploring look on his face in direct opposition to the violence he’d just exhibited.

  “You didn’t have to do that. We could have settled this between us.”

  I swallowed and backed up until I felt the counter behind me. “The police are on their way.”

  He advanced on me. He expression was still pleading, but there was something simmering underneath it. Then I heard a cry behind me and Trixie appeared, rushing at Todd. “You keep away from her!” she yelled.

  She was amazing, and completely ineffective. Todd was oblivious to her presence as she swished right through him, her fists flailing. I grabbed the only thing handy, the empty coffee pot, and raised it like a club. “You’ve got about two minutes until the cops show up, Todd. Is this really how you want to spend it?”

  “Nora, you’re overreacting.” His voice was calm and infuriatingly patronizing. “I really want what’s best for you. What’s best for the Palace and Kate’s memory.” Then he hesitated, noticing the laptop bag on the floor between us. His glance shot from it back to me, and recognition dawned. “Is that Kate’s computer?”

  “No.” I lowered the coffee pot.

  “It is.” He made a grab for it as I dropped the pot and did the same. Glass shattered. He swept the bag into his grasp and backed away from me, toward the door, his eyes locking on mine.

  “No,” I repeated, my shoe crunching on glass as I took a step toward him.

  “Trust me, Nora. This is what Kate would have wanted.” And he was gone.

  I’d reached the door in pursuit when Trixie’s voice, sounding dazed, stopped me.

  “Nora?” She was on the floor where she had fallen after heroically throwing herself at—through—Todd. “I don’t feel so well.”

  I turned back to her.

  “I think…” she said.

  Then her eyes fluttered and I found out that ghosts can faint.

  Chapter 22

  How do you revive someone who’s fainted? If that someone is a ghost, you can’t exactly rub their wrists or wave smelling salts under their nose. Not that I had any smelling salts handy. I was just considering whether I should try splashing some water on Trixie’s face when she moaned and came around.

  “Are you okay?” I knelt on the floor beside her.

  She blinked a few times, seeming disoriented. Then she looked at me and I could see it all came rushing back to her.

  “Oh, Nora, he was so angry. I thought he was going to conk you on the head,” she said. “I was so scared he would, and then you wouldn’t be able to see me anymore.” Her lower lip trembled. “I can’t go back to being alone, Nora. I just can’t.”

  “Oh, sweetie—” Which is when I learned that you can’t hug a ghost. My arms went right through her, which was cold and awkward for both of us. “You were so brave,” I told her as she reconstituted herself.

  “I was so scared,” she said.

  “But you didn’t go poof,” I pointed out. “You stood up to him.”

  “Gee, I suppose I did,” she said. “I must have been more scared about losing you than scared of him.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” I said, which is when we both heard police sirens on approach. “But for now, do you think you should, um…”

  She nodded. “I could use a rest.” She began to fade, and then came back into focus, a stern look on her face. “Don’t you go getting conked, you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She gave me a quick nod and vanished.

  I went downstairs to greet the police.

  An hour later the squad car was just pulling away from the curb in front of the theater when Marty came around the corner from the opposite direction. I waited for him outside the ticket booth.

  He glanced at the retreating car. “What did they say? Did they take down the crime scene tape?”

  “I wish,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. “What?” he accused. “What have you done now?”

  I stopped myself from flaring at him with a “Me? How dare you imply…” sort of response. Because I’m the bigger person.

  “Todd Randall,” I told him instead. “He broke in and was searching Kate’s office for something when I got in this morning.”

  Alarm flashed across his features. “Are you okay?”

  I was surprised that his first response wasn’t to accuse me of being in cahoots somehow. “I’m fine,” I said. “But he took Kate’s laptop.”

  “Is that what he was looking for?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I rubbed my forehead. “He had some story about how he’d given Kate a deposit for that film festival, but she’d spent it on something, and he just wanted his money back.”

  “I one hundred percent don’t believe that,” Marty said. “How much money?”

  “He didn’t go into detail, as he was on the other side of a locked door and I was calling 911,” I said. “Oh, and we’ll need to fix the break room door.”

  Marty looked at me closely, and I can’t imagine what he saw. I only knew how I felt and, despite my brisk words, I felt like I was just about ready to shatter into a million pieces.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re going to need to tell me the whole story, from the beginning. But you’re going to need to do it while drinking a very strong cup of tea. And maybe while wrapped up in a blanket or something.”

  Whereupon he led me into the theater, and—I have a hard time believing this myself—did his gruff best to take care of me.

  “Do you suppose there’s a tiny grain of truth anywhere in his story?” I asked Marty.

  I was under an ancient plaid blanket on the couch in the office. I’d sipped hot sugary tea and told Marty everything while he’d put the contents of Kate’s drawer back in place and rummaged through the desk looking for signs of anything else that Todd Randall had disturbed.

  “You mean about the deposit?” he asked. “No. If things had gotten that far with an actual film festival Kate would have told us all about it. And if he’d paid her any money she’d have given him a receipt. That whole story is bogus. What did the police say?”

  “That we need to change the alarm code and fix the lock on the back door.”

  Marty looked at me sharply. “He had the code to the alarm?”

  “They asked me how long since we changed it.”

  Marty grimaced. “Probably two or t
hree years.”

  “Right. That’s what they figured. And with as many people as have worked here in that time…”

  “Okay, but they’re looking for him, right? For Randall?”

  “I gave them his name, which they told me might not be real, and his description, which boils down to ‘tall white guy around fifty.’” I shrugged. “I got the impression that they wouldn’t have gotten all excited over a stolen laptop, but with Kate and Raul...we should expect a call from Detective Jackson later.”

  Marty’s jaw tightened as he scanned the bookshelves for anything out of place. With all the clutter, I didn’t know how he’d be able to tell.

  “One part of Randall’s story makes sense,” he said. “He was looking for something. I don’t believe it was anything Kate owed him, but there must be something he knew she had. Something valuable.”

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “I don’t think it’s on the laptop. Or if it is, it isn’t anything obvious like a password to a Swiss bank account or a stash of Bitcoin. I think I’ve opened every single file on the hard drive,” I said. “Everything except the emails, and now we won’t be able to get to them, even assuming any of the hackers who answered the Craigslist ad could get in.” Several dozen had responded by the time I’d checked the night before.

  “Of course,” I said, more to myself than to Marty, “there could be all kinds of passwords to Swiss bank accounts or Bitcoin stashes in her emails.”

  “Who said anything about Swiss bank accounts or Bitcoin?” Marty asked.

  “They’re just ‘for instance,’” I said. “All we know is that Todd Randall was looking for something. Something valuable. We don’t know what it is, why Kate had it, or how Randall found out about it, but there’s something. And even though he started his search in this room, realistically it could be anywhere in the theater. And I hope it is. I hope it’s an actual physical thing and it’s hidden in the Palace. Because if it isn’t, if it’s just a piece of information that’s on the laptop, Randall already has it.”

  Marty dropped into the desk chair. “Something hidden somewhere. That narrows it down.”

  “Have you got any idea,” I asked him. “Any idea what it could be?”

  “Not a clue.” He shook his head, then looked at me. “It’s the MacGuffin.”

  I nodded, realizing he was right. The MacGuffin is a term used by screenwriters. It means the thing that drives the plot—the thing the good guy has and the bad guy wants, or the bad guy has and the good guy has to get. It’s the Maltese Falcon or the Queen’s diamond studs. It doesn’t really matter what the MacGuffin is. The story is driven by people trying to get it.

  And people willing to kill for it.

  My phone was blessedly unbroken. I mean, aside from a spectacularly cracked screen. But when I eventually left Marty in the office and went looking for it in the break room, it still worked. Seeing that almost made me feel like a whole person again.

  Then I saw a text from a number I didn’t know.

  I have your laptop. Please meet me across the street in the cafe. Come alone. HA

  What? Was Todd Randal sitting across the street and mocking me? Laughing at me? I stormed down to the lobby and was halfway across the street before I realized how stupid I was being. Then I saw who was sitting in the window of the Café Madeline and I felt stupid in a wholly different way.

  HA. Not as in “ha, ha, ha.” As in the initials H.A.

  Hector Acosta stood to greet me as I entered the café. He was dressed less formally today, but his gray-green sweater was cashmere and his jeans fit in ways that would have made the designers at Balmain very pleased. A leather jacket was flung over the back of one of the chairs. Kate’s laptop bag was on the table.

  “What? How?” I looked from the bag up to his stubbled face. Was he working with Todd Randall?

  The look he gave me was wary. “Please don’t be alarmed.”

  “Alarmed?” I said, probably more loudly than I should have, as several people looked up from their screens.

  He pulled out a chair. “Please. Sit. Can I get you something? A coffee?”

  I gave him a look that I hoped spoke volumes. “You can tell me what the hell is going on.” I sat.

  He nodded and took a seat opposite me, the laptop between us. “There is something that I must confess to you.”

  “Damn right there is.”

  “I have been watching your theater.”

  I stared at him, a dozen questions racing through my mind. How long had he been watching? And why? Didn’t he trust the police investigation? Didn’t he trust the people at the Palace? People like me?

  Of all of those, the only question I asked him was the final and perhaps most pressing one. “What have you seen?”

  A fraction of the tension seemed to leave his body. Apparently I wasn’t going to cause a scene over his blatant invasion of my privacy. At least not yet.

  “Nothing until this morning,” he said. “But at five forty this morning a man entered the theater by way of the back door in the alley.”

  Five forty. That meant Todd had probably been in the office for only a few minutes before I’d gotten there. And it meant that the police’s assessment had been right. He’d come in the basement door, near the bottom of the back stairs and the room where Raul’s body had been found on ice.

  Hector gave me a moment for everything to register before going on.

  “The break-in was observed by my associate, who was watching the back of the theater from a parked van. My plan was to follow the intruder into the theater and observe his actions, in hopes that he would somehow incriminate himself in my brother’s murder.”

  “What—?” I began, but Hector was on a roll.

  “That plan was changed when I saw you approaching the building. I attempted to get your attention, but you were—”

  “Listening to a podcast,” I realized. “I had my ear buds in. Where were you?” I may have been catching up on NPR on my walk to the theater, but I wasn’t oblivious. I knew I hadn’t seen anyone on the street.

  “I was upstairs.” His gaze darted briefly to the ceiling of the coffee shop. “The proprietress here has graciously consented to rent me her storage room for an exorbitant daily sum. It is a small space, and uncomfortably chilly. But it affords a direct view across the street and into the windows of your office and staff room.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’ve been spying—”

  He waved his hand impatiently. “Any one of your employees might have murdered my brother. You are the only one at that theater who surely did not kill him, as you were in Los Angeles. Specifically, you were attending a meeting with your lawyers on Wilshire Boulevard that afternoon, a fact that was well documented by the pack of paparazzi who were following you.”

  His accent became more pronounced when his temper flared. I stared at him, not really believing that he had apparently investigated me and probably every single person at the Palace.

  “Have you—”

  “Getting back to the events of this morning,” Hector deflected what would have been the first of many questions. “By the time I got to the street you were already in the building. I assumed you would be going to your office, and I had observed the intruder already there from my window. I knew you to be in danger.”

  Well, that part was accurate. Todd hadn’t actually raised his fists to me, but I’d absolutely felt in danger.

  “Unfortunately,” Hector went on, “you locked the lobby door behind you, and I have many skills but rapid lock picking is not among them. So I was forced to run around the block to the alley and enter the same way the thief had. By the time I got to the top of the back stairs I saw the intruder rushing down the hallway to the lobby stairs. I heard your voice from the staff room and glanced in, but you didn’t appear to be harmed so I chose to pursue the intruder.”

  I must hav
e been checking on Trixie by that point. My back would have been to the door. I hadn’t even heard Hector.

  “I take it you caught him,” I said, looking pointedly at the recovered laptop. “Is he…did you…” Something about asking a person whether they had committed murder that morning was a little unnerving.

  Hector rubbed his jaw ruefully, and I now noticed a darkening under his stubble. “He evaded me. My associate and I managed to relieve him of your laptop, but we were unable to pursue him.”

  “Why?” I asked. “And for that matter, why didn’t your associate go up the back stairs after him? Why wait for you to get there?”

  “Because Gabriela is in a wheelchair,” Hector said. “Her job was to observe, which she can easily do. But pursuit was out of the question. The thief had a car and was gone before the police arrived. At which point I sent Gabriela away and I myself went back to my observation post to wait until you were free.”

  “And you asked me to come alone because you still think someone at the Palace killed your brother?”

  He shrugged. “That has not been ruled out. Although this morning’s activities raise other strong probabilities.”

  “You mean like Todd Randall being the murderer?” I said. “That had occurred to me.”

  Hector looked thunderstruck. “Todd Randall? You know who this man is? Where is he?” He rose, grabbing his jacket, as if ready to charge off right that instant.

  “Calm down,” I said. “I know who he says he is. But I’m pretty sure everything he’s ever told me has been a lie, and I have no idea where he is.” I blew out a breath. “Or what he’s up to.”

  Hector sank back into his chair. He ran a hand through his hair, but it was so well-cut it just fell back into place. “I need you to tell me absolutely everything you know about this man.”

  I did, which didn’t take long, since I didn’t know much.

  “So,” I concluded. “Let’s assume that whatever Randall was looking for is the reason he killed your brother and Kate—that’s assuming he killed your brother and Kate, which I think we reasonably could.”