“I hope they’re not disappointed that it’s just me,” Trixie said, looking doubtful. Then she brightened. “Gee, I can’t wait!”
“Trixie,” I said. “I know you’re excited, but maybe you shouldn’t get your hopes up too much.”
She waved her hands. “I know. Nobody else might be able to see me, no matter what kind of hocus pocus they do.”
That raised some alarming questions in my mind. “What kind of hocus pocus are they planning?”
She shrugged, grinning. “Oh, candles and things. Between Lillian and Monica they had all sorts of ideas.”
“I bet they did. Still…”
“I know, Nora.” She sobered. “They probably won’t be able to see me, and that’s all right. It would be wonderful if they could, but just the fact that they want to is pretty darn great.”
“It is,” I agreed, wishing, not for the first time, that I could hug my friend.
As I finally walked home I gave thanks that Trixie hadn’t shown up in the break room a few seconds earlier and heard me arguing with Tommy about closing the Palace for good. I couldn’t imagine what the thought of that might do to Trixie, who seemed destined to spend the rest of eternity in the theater where she’d died.
I considered myself Trixie’s caretaker. As long as I was able, I’d keep the Palace safe for her. But how long would I be able? The thing about eternity is that it’s longer than one lifetime.
I didn’t believe in séances, but I hadn’t believed in ghosts before I’d met one. I wondered if Lillian, in all her metaphysical explorations, had ever come across a way to help a stranded ghost move on. It was something I hadn’t really considered before. Trixie assumed she’d missed her one chance to go when she’d chosen to stay behind after her death. But what if there was another way?
I looked up at the sky, the stars dim in the dear-dawn light, and I did what I do best. I worried.
After a solid three hours sleep I woke to worry about something else. A text from Tommy.
The lawyers think the thing about S holding me hostage over the game is a good start for a defense. But what they really want is a plausible alternate theory. That means I need to point the finger at someone else. Meet me for breakfast. I got a suite at the Four Seasons. Let’s brainstorm.
Typical. I’d handed him a nice little get-out-of-jail-free theory and now he wanted more. No, he expected more.
I did not reply. Instead I threw the covers off and fumed. Once again he expected me to drop whatever I was doing and come to him. At the Four Seasons, no less. Tommy and I had very different definitions of what it meant to be broke.
But as I showered and dressed, fuming gave way to thinking. And I thought the lawyers were right. The police were unlikely to give up on Tommy as a suspect unless they had a more promising line of enquiry. So I was back to the question I’d asked Callie the day before—if Tommy hadn’t killed S, who had?
This was the kind of question best mulled over coffee. I was halfway to the kitchen before I remembered I was out. I cursed cruel fate and sent a text to Tommy.
I’ll be at Café Madeline in ten minutes.
He could come to me.
“Coffee,” I said pleadingly to Lisa when I got to the Café’s counter. “Much, much coffee.”
“Sit,” she ordered, assessing me with a professional’s eye. “I know how tired I am after last night, and you were still at it after I left. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. Why are you up so early?”
I didn’t mind her question, since it was accompanied by her filling a giant cup and grabbing a chocolate croissant before steering me toward a window table.
I sat and took a restorative sip. “You are a goddess and I worship you,” I informed Lisa.
“Sure. You and everyone else.” She joined me at the table. “What’s up?”
I took a deep drink before answering her. “I’m meeting Tommy for breakfast and brainstorming.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Tommy who? Tommy May?” She lowered her voice, darting a look at the customers around us. “The guy who murdered his business partner?”
I took a bite of croissant and started to feel the tiniest bit awake. “He didn’t do it,” I said. “At least I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”
“Why are you even talking to him?” she asked. “I seem to recall you and Monica wanting to kill him a few days ago over something he said in a meeting.”
Oh. Right. We’d talked about that at the very table where I now sat. “That may have been a misunderstanding,” I told Lisa. “Either that or he’s realized he has to change his mind about the Palace if he wants me to help him.” I’m not an idiot—this thought had occurred to me. Was Tommy just manipulating me—telling me what I wanted to hear—to get my help now that he needed it? And if that were true, would I be able to count on him not changing his mind again once he was cleared?
I downed the rest of the coffee. “There’s a lot I need to figure out,” I told Lisa. “Thus, a breakfast meeting.”
She nodded, then glanced at something out the window. “That has to be him now.”
I looked out and saw a low-slung sportscar in the process of parking across the street. The car looked like the one James Bond drives, and it was parking illegally in the loading zone in front of the Palace, so I agreed with Lisa. That had to be Tommy.
I saw his silhouette in the driver’s seat as he unbuckled his seatbelt. He took a long drink of something before opening the door. Probably an energy drink, but I’d bet anything it wasn’t the brand S had endorsed.
“Why do people drink those energy drinks when there’s coffee in the world?” I asked Lisa.
“Branding,” she said. “I’ll get you a refill and some menus.” She left with a grin.
Tommy extracted himself from the car, and I noticed he didn’t look for oncoming traffic before stepping into the street. I was mentally calling him an idiot when he staggered. He stopped in the middle of the street and shook his head, as if to clear it. Then he looked toward the café window, and our eyes met as he put a hand to his throat. An expression of panic flooded his face. He opened his mouth and said something, but I couldn’t make out what it was. Then he fell to the street in a heap.
Chapter 15
Marty and Callie showed up for work to find me watching as the last of the police cars left, escorting the tow truck that took Tommy’s car.
The police had come after I’d seen Tommy fall. After I’d run out into the street as Lisa called 911. After some other café customers had come to help. After we’d carried Tommy from the street to the sidewalk. After we’d realized that whatever help would come would be too late. Tommy was already dead.
Then the police, and a promise of more police to follow up later. I’d told no fewer than five officers exactly what I’d seen: Tommy had parked, taken a drink, left his car, died.
Callie and Marty ushered me into the theater and up to the break room. We were on our second pot of terrible coffee and about our hundredth possible theory of the crime by the time Albert arrived, accompanied by Hector.
“Look who I found outside,” Albert said.
“I came as soon as I heard.” Hector knelt by my chair. “Are you all right? Is it true? Is Tommy dead?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I just can’t believe it.”
He gave me a searching look, then rose and turned to Marty. “What does Detective Jackson say?”
“Usually something about staying out of active investigations,” Marty replied.
“They told Nora he’d be here later,” Callie volunteered. She didn’t look up from her phone. She’d been glued to her screen, following the news. “Meanwhile,” she informed us, “the gamer blogs are on it.”
“Oh, dear.” Albert sat in the chair next to me. “I don’t imagine that will be helpful.”
“Actually, it might be,” I said.
“The reason Tommy was meeting me this morning was so we could come up with a plausible alternate theory of who killed S. Last night we figured out that Tommy had a good defense story, but his lawyers wanted to be able to point to someone else. Maybe the blogs will come up with someone.”
“Space aliens, no doubt,” Marty muttered. “Or women who don’t want to sleep with them.”
Hector was staring at me. “What do you mean you figured out Tommy’s defense last night? And what do you mean you were meeting with him this morning? I assumed he’d just come to the theater looking for you this morning.”
I shook my head. “We talked last night. He was waiting for me in my office after everyone left. Napping, actually. Callie, he said you sold him a ticket?”
“Damn right I did,” she nodded. “No freebies for billionaires, isn’t that our policy?”
“It is,” I agreed. Even billionaires who might be down to their last couple million.
“Wait.” Hector held up his hands. “You entertained a murder suspect here? Alone? In the middle of the night?”
Oh. That’s what he was upset about. “Well…” Hector was looking at me with a mixture of fury and incomprehension. I blinked. “It’s pretty clear now that he wasn’t the murderer.”
Hector let forth with a volley of Spanish that it’s probably just as well I didn’t understand. Callie, who spoke Spanish fluently, regarded him with raised brows. “I mean, wow,” she muttered when he was done.
“Perhaps we could all calm down and agree that what’s in the past is in the past?” Albert suggested mildly.
“Do we have to?” Marty asked. He was grinning, apparently enjoying someone else yelling at me for a change.
Hector glared at me in a way that clearly communicated we weren’t finished discussing this, as Albert gave Marty the kind of reproving look only available to ninety-something-year-old grandfathers.
I decided to ignore them all and turned to Callie. “What’s everyone saying online?” I asked. “Isn’t there some sort of theory about the wisdom of the crowd? What’s the prevailing wisdom of the Internet?”
“I’m on it.” She consulted her screen.
I drank some more terrible coffee, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Here’s one. This guy thinks a rogue game developer did it,” Callie told us, scrolling. “Some mythical guy who’s the ‘real inventor’ of all of S’s games, who’d finally had enough.” She made a face. “Or this one says that the whole golden coin thing was a hoax, there was never any money, and the players are now turning on S and Tommy.”
“They turned on S before they ever saw the game,” Marty reminded us. “How would they have known it was a hoax before it even launched?”
“Never let a fact get in the way of a good conspiracy theory,” I replied.
Hector had poured himself a coffee and now joined us at the table, still not happy with me. There was something simmering behind his eyes, and it wasn’t the good simmer that occasionally made me think dangerous thoughts. I re-focused on Callie.
“Here’s one that says it’s revenge for someone who died playing S’s last game,” Callie went on. “The thing where you chased the monsters. It says the father of someone who fell off a building while playing has gone all vigilante.”
“Did that even happen?” I asked. “Someone falling off a building?”
“What did you just say about truth and conspiracy theories?” Marty asked.
“Good point. And anyway, the vigilante dad theory only explains why someone would have killed S. Tommy’s partnership was after that monster game. He didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Guilt by association?” Albert suggested.
“Or maybe the killer didn’t plan to kill Tommy at first,” Callie said. “But maybe Tommy saw something when S was killed. That would have made him, like, a loose end that the killer had to clean up.”
“Are you sure you only want to make documentaries?” I asked her. “Because that’s a nice little plot idea.”
She shrugged.
“I suppose it’s possible Tommy saw something,” Albert said doubtfully.
“If he did, he’d have already told the police,” I said. “At least, he’d have told them if he realized what he’d seen was important. If he realized it could clear him of suspicion.” I shook my head. “Meanwhile, what I saw with my own eyes was Tommy drinking something in his car and dropping like a stone just a few seconds later. It was faster than the way S died. There were no spasms, or…” I shuddered, and Albert put his sinewy hand over mine. “But it sure looked like poison again.”
“Perhaps a different kind?” Albert suggested.
“Or a different dosage,” Marty guessed. “If it’s a serial killer they may be refining their process. What?”
We’d all turned to stare at him. All except Callie, who was back on her phone.
“A serial killer?” I asked. “Are you really going there?”
He sniffed. “Ask me when the next tech guru is killed.”
“Serial killer or not, the two deaths must be linked, don’t you think?” Hector asked, finally deciding to get over himself and join the conversation.
“How could they not be?” I agreed.
“Here’s another theory,” Callie read. “Tommy killed S because he wanted control of the game, but then he couldn’t control it, so he was going to pull it?” Her brow wrinkled. “I mean, I think that’s what this is saying.” She glanced up. “Online conspiracy theorists don’t seem very concerned with, like, proper punctuation.”
“Nutjobs, the lot of them,” Marty muttered.
“Hang on—they’re saying that Tommy was planning to end the game?” I asked Callie.
She nodded, focusing on the screen. “They think one of the gamers killed Tommy because he was close to finding a coin and didn’t want the game shut down before he could claim the money.” She blinked. “Does that make any sense?”
“Not to me,” Hector said. “It assumes first that Tommy was going to shut the game down, second that this person knew about Tommy’s plan, and third that this gamer decided to take the time to kill Tommy instead of just finding the coin and getting the money.”
“That is a lot of assuming,” Albert mused.
“It’s right about one thing,” I said. “Tommy told me yesterday that he was planning to shut it down.”
“Seriously?” Marty asked.
“He felt like he had to. This is…what? Day five? So each coin is worth five million dollars? That’s twenty-five million in payouts and it’s still going up. I don’t know the latest on how much the game has brought in so far, but I bet the gap between revenue and payout is getting narrower every day.”
It was silent for a moment as we all mulled that over.
“I wonder what happens to all the money now,” Albert said.
Hector put his cup down. “Surely Tommy’s company is still responsible for paying the prizes, assuming the coins are ever found.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “I can’t imagine his death would change that. The question is, will his company have enough money to pay the winners by the time there are any winners? And if they take the game down, will they be obligated to refund the money that people spent in it while they were playing?”
“Those are the kinds of question that makes me very happy I didn’t go to law school,” Hector said. “But it does seem that with Tommy’s death the company now has an excellent excuse for calling a halt to the game.”
“True,” I said. “If Tommy had pulled it, I’m pretty sure the gaming world would have turned on him. But if the company does it now, saying it’s out of respect for S and Tommy or something…or if they just come clean and say the details of the game died with its creators and they can’t continue without them...”
“Except who at the company has the power to make a decis
ion like that?” Marty asked. “Who’s in charge of this thing?”
“Probably the person who killed Tommy,” Callie said. When she realized we were all staring at her she put the phone down. “That isn’t my theory, it’s just swirling around online with the rest of them.”
“It raises a good point, though,” I said. “Who’s in charge?” Then I was jolted with something that hadn’t occurred to me before. “Ohmygod,” I yelped. “Who owns Tommy’s share of the Palace?”
“That’s a very interesting question.” An unexpected deep voice made us all jump. Detective Jackson was standing in the doorway. “And it’s one my Lieutenant is asking as well.”
Something in the way he looked at me, the seriousness, the purposefulness, made me very nervous.
Hector stood, facing him. “What are you saying?”
Jackson ignored him. “Nora, I need to speak to you privately.”
Chapter 16
“Wait—what?” Marty looked from the detective to me and back again. “David! You don’t think Nora had anything to do with anything?”
Jackson gave him an even look. “What I think is that Nora and I need to speak privately.”
“Now, wait just one minute.” Hector started for the detective.
I put a hand on his arm. “Stop. It’s fine. I’m sure Detective Jackson just wants my opinion on everything. You know how he always wants my opinion.” I grinned, but nobody was buying it, so I tried something else. “Everybody needs to get to work, anyway. We haven’t even opened up yet.”
Albert stood. “Come, everyone, let’s get set up. The twelve-fifteen show must go on.”
“I mean, that popcorn won’t pop itself.” Callie said lightly. But she looked worried. She knew what it was like to be questioned by the police.
“Right,” I said. “Get to work.”
They filed out, all except Hector. “I’ll call you later,” I told him.
He crossed his arms. “I’m staying.”
Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 59