I sank onto a stool behind the counter. “Nobody obviously stood to gain.”
“Sorry,” she said.
I tried another angle. “Am I at least right in thinking that the Chief Marketing person would be the one to stage anything like a publicity stunt?”
Her eyebrows went up. “You think two massively powerful CEOs were murdered for the publicity?”
“Well, not when you put it like that,” I admitted. I groaned. “I think I’m back to square one, and not for the first time today.”
“Sorry,” she said again.
I waved a hand. “Don’t be. That’s not even why you’re here.” Then I remembered why she’d come to the theater. “You said you had something to show me?”
Gabriela grinned. “I couldn’t sleep last night,” she said. “I had this crazy idea, and I had to figure it out. Then I went into the lab and worked on it all day.”
She reached for a large backpack that was hanging off the back of her chair. “I’ve got an incredibly rough prototype. Where can we set up?”
Which is when it hit me that I couldn’t say “my office” and dash up the stairs with her. There were no elevators at the Palace. There was one a small gender-neutral restroom off the lobby for moviegoers with disabilities, and spaces for wheelchairs in the back rows of the auditorium, but that was it in terms of accessibility.
Gabriela saw the look on my face and understood what I’d just realized. It must happen to her all the time.
“Never mind,” she said. “Everyone’s in watching the movie. Let’s just set up out here.”
“Perfect,” I agreed. “I should stay down here anyway. Albert’s gone home for the night and every teenager who works for me called in mysteriously sick today. Either there’s a pandemic or they’re all off searching for coins somewhere, so I’m on my own.” Callie was out in the ticket booth and Marty was upstairs in his projection domain, but I was the sole minder of the lobby and candy counter.
Luckily, nobody had gotten around to taking the old metal desk back down to the basement after the Desk Set party. Gabriela and I went over to it and she began unpacking something from the backpack while I brought a stool around from behind the counter.
I had no idea what she meant by a prototype. When I joined her at the desk she laid out what looked like a computer keyboard with small semi-sheer mesh panels on each of the keys, connected to a tablet propped up in a holder.
“What is it?” I asked.
She pushed away from the desk to face me and took a deep breath.
“Last night during the séance I felt something,” she began. “Intense cold. I felt it near my shoulder, and then it spread all across my back, as if I’d been draped in a chilled blanket.”
She’d been draped in a chilled Trixie. “That’s the same sensation Lillian gets.”
Gabriela nodded vigorously. “And it got me thinking. You know that I work with adaptive technology for people with disabilities, right?”
“Right. Robot artificial limbs and things.”
She grimaced. “Close enough. After last night, I started wondering what I could do to link that sensation of cold with technology.”
“You mean to record the temperature? To prove the ghost is real?”
She pushed her glasses up. “No. I mean to create a highly temperature-sensitive input device.”
I blinked.
“A keyboard,” she said. “For a ghost to type on.”
Chapter 23
“Oh. My. God.” I stared from Gabriela to the keyboard and back again.
Trixie was going to absolutely love this.
If it worked.
“I know it’s crazy,” Gabriela said. “I don’t even know if we can summon the ghost again, or if we need Lillian, or what, but—” She shrugged. “I just had to do it.”
“Does it work?” I gingerly touched one of the semi-transparent pads on the keys. Every tiny pad had a tiny wire, all those tiny wires meeting up in a bundle connected to a larger wire that was attached to a circuit board and from there to the tablet.
“I don’t think we’ll know until we can contact the ghost again,” Gabriela admitted.
My tap on a random key had done nothing.
“I tested it with a rubber glove filled with crushed ice,” Gabriela said. “Just hovering the cold glove over the sensor without touching works. But that’s as far as I got today.”
I stared at her. “Oh, that’s all? Just inventing a device that will get the entire spirit world on Twitter? What did you do with the rest of your day?”
She laughed. “Like I said, contacting the ghost will be the hard part.”
Which is exactly when I would have loved to hear Trixie’s voice saying something like “Gee, that’s not hard at all. Here I am!”
Sadly, the lobby remained silent.
“Should we have another séance?” Gabriela asked.
I didn’t know if I could take another séance. Or if Trixie could.
“Let’s ask Lillian,” I hedged.
Gabriela nodded. “I’ll start working on a more refined version.” She began gathering her things. “Meanwhile, I’ll leave this one with you. We should put it out somewhere the ghost can find it, if she comes back.”
“I know just the place,” I told her. “There’s a cold spot in my office.” That wasn’t technically true. But there was a spot on the arm of the couch where Trixie liked to perch. “I’ll set it up there. Do I need to plug it in?”
“Just the tablet,” she said, digging in her backpack for the charger. “That’ll keep everything powered up.” She handed it to me, stifling a yawn.
“Are you driving all the way back down to Menlo Park?” I asked. I knew she lived down the Peninsula, close to her work.
She shook her head. “I’m too tired after being up all last night. I’ll just crash at Hector’s and get an early start in the morning.”
Hector. We’d managed to spend all this time without even mentioning him.
“Shall I tell him you say hi?” she asked.
I was spared an answer when the auditorium doors opened and people began straggling out of Swing Time, just as Marty began playing “A Fine Romance,” one of the best numbers from the film, over the theater’s sound system.
Say what you will about Marty, his timing was perfect.
I had to work the concessions stand between the shows, so I didn’t walk Gabriella out to her van. I did take a minute to put an empty M&Ms carton over the keyboard, just to avoid curious stares from the patrons who were showing up for the nine-fifteen.
“Let me know what Lillian thinks,” Gabriela said before she left. “I’ll try to have something more refined by next week, just in case.”
I hugged her. “You’re a genius, you know that, right?”
She waved a hand. “Or a lunatic. Just don’t tell my boss what I’ve been up to. I’d rather not have them send the men in the white coats after me.”
I knew exactly how she felt.
Callie closed out the ticket booth and came in after Silk Stockings had gotten underway.
“How’s your mom?” I asked her.
“Impossible.” She slid the cashbox across the glass countertop of the concessions stand and dropped onto one of the stools with an epic sigh. “And exhausted. She slept all day and still doesn’t feel a hundred percent.” She polished a spot on the counter with her sleeve. “I mean, she’s always said she has this ‘gift.’ Don’t even ask me about what happened at my middle-school fundraiser.” She shuddered. “But those candles last night—” She shook her head. “It was, like, an order of magnitude more than she’s ever experienced. She wants to try again as soon as she can.”
“So does Gabriela,” I said, pouring her a cup of coffee.
“Okay, but Gabriela isn’t an old lady with high blood pressure getting
herself all worked up.”
“Your mother is not an old lady,” I told her. Lillian was only a dozen years older than me. “But I didn’t know about the high blood pressure.” That was concerning. And it was clear that Callie, however much she claimed to be embarrassed by her mother’s eccentricities, was truly worried about her.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you want to try again?”
I turned to find Callie scrutinizing me. I’d been about to say something flip and noncommittal, but instead I handed her the coffee and told her the truth. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
I didn’t tell her why. Because telling her why would mean telling her I was afraid that it had all taken too much out of Trixie, as well as Lillian. It was close to twenty-four hours since Trixie had disappeared, and I didn’t like that she hadn’t come back. I wasn’t officially worried yet, but I would be soon.
“My dad’s been talking about taking a vacation,” Callie said carefully. “Like, taking my mom to Paris or Venice or somewhere.” She looked at me. “I could, I mean, maybe suggest that they don’t need to wait until June?”
“Paris is very nice in April,” I offered. “They write songs about it.”
“And, like, it’s almost April.”
“It is,” I agreed.
She held up the coffee in a toast. “To Paris.”
There was the sound of clomping on the balcony stairs and we turned to find Marty coming down. “What about Paris?”
I poured another cup of coffee and handed it to him when he got to the counter.
“Thanks. Are we doing Paris musicals next month? April in Paris? Funny Face?”
I exchanged a look with Callie. “Well, we are now.”
Once again I waited until everyone left and then did a sweep of the Palace, talking to Trixie whether she could hear me or not. I cleared off a small table in the office to set up Gabriela’s paranormal keyboard, plugging in the charger and leaving it all on, just in case.
When I finally came down the balcony stairs, to a lobby lit only by the glow of the exit lights, I saw a figure silhouetted outside the glass lobby doors. I froze. The figure took something from a pocket. I reached into my bag for my phone as I moved carefully down the rest of the stairs, dialing 9-1, ready to hit the last digit if necessary. I wasn’t taking any chances. There was still a murderer running around.
Then the figure spoke.
“Nora, it’s me. I was just about to text you. I didn’t want to frighten you again.”
Hector.
I experienced roughly fifteen thousand different emotions in the time it took to cross the lobby and open the door. The minute he stepped into the dim lobby I settled on one: indignant fury.
“What the hell, Hector?”
This was apparently not the greeting he was expecting. I could tell by the way he backed up, his eyes widening.
“Three days? We finally both admit there’s something between us and you stay away for three days? You wave at me from the sidewalk? You don’t even send a damn text? Nothing? For three days? You give me arguably the best kiss of my life and then vanish? With not one word? What in the actual hell do you—”
“The best kiss?” he interrupted. He’d stared at me with something akin to panic as I’d blasted him, but now his mood shifted. He looked suspiciously as if he might smile.
“That’s all you just heard? The part about the kiss?”
“The best kiss,” he corrected.
I stared at him, stone-faced. “Arguably,” I reiterated.
He moved a step closer. “It was arguably the best kiss I’ve ever had as well.”
I looked up at him. “Then I repeat…What the hell?” But this time it didn’t come out as furious. It came out frustrated and hurt and fifteen thousand other things.
“Nora, mi amor.” Now he was very close. “Please let me explain.”
He’d never called me mi amor before. It had the oddest effect of turning my spine into something squishy and gelatinous. I was in danger of melting into the well-worn carpet of the lobby floor.
I took a deep breath.
“This better be good.”
“My father was an adulterer,” Hector began.
For the second time in as many days I was seated on the balcony stairs. But this time it was with just one other person, and he had a lot of explaining to do.
“Your father was also a criminal kingpin and a drug lord,” I said. “I fail to see what he has to do with anything.”
“He was all of those things, and worse,” Hector said, his voice low. “But the only thing about him that matters tonight is that he was a lifelong, dedicated, enthusiastic adulterer. He broke my mother’s heart. Many times.”
I still didn’t know where he was going with this, but he had my attention.
“I have done many things in my life that I am rightly ashamed of,” Hector went on. “But there is one thing I promised my mother I would never do.”
He was seated on the step below me, something he’d probably planned, because it allowed him to look up at me with those damn eyes of his. He took my hand in both of his. “On her deathbed, I vowed to her that I will never become an adulterer.”
For a moment I was so focused on the warmth of his hands and the heat in his eyes that I didn’t take in what he’d just said. Then it caught up to me.
“You’re married?” I snatched my hand away and jumped to my feet. “How could you—? What do you—? Who?”
“No!” he yelled, standing.
“Don’t you dare!” I took a step away, my back against the stairway railing.
“Nora! I’m not married! You are!”
I stared at him. “What?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “In the eyes of the church, having relations with a married woman is committing adultery,” he said. “And if I had stayed with you for one more minute the other night…” He gave me a meaningful look.
I mustered my dignity. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you.”
He just looked at me. Smoldering
I cleared my throat. “Although possibly accurate,” I allowed.
“Can you understand?” Hector asked. “Do you see that as long as you remain married to that…that…”
“Lying, cheating, lying rat,” I supplied.
“Yes, him.” He blew out a breath. “I know your marriage is over. I know this is an absurd technicality. But I have tried to change my life in the years since my mother died. I have tried to become a better man. A man deserving of a woman like you. That man cannot break a promise made to his dying mother.”
I stared at him. Then I did the only thing I could think of. I took my phone out of my pocket, dialed a number with no regard for the fact that it was after one in the morning, and left a voicemail when nobody picked up.
“Ted. I was wrong. You can buy me. I’ll handle that meeting if you finalize the divorce.”
Chapter 24
I had three reasons to go to the Potent Flower the next morning. I was going to join the call with Tommy’s lawyer to learn the fate of his share of the Palace, I was going to corner Kristy and figure out what exactly she’d seen and possibly done before S was poisoned on that stage, and I was going to spill my guts to Monica about Hector.
Since I got there half an hour before the meeting and well before Kristy was due in, we started with the last item.
“Wow,” Monica said when my guts were sufficiently spilled. “I wouldn’t have guessed Hector was a stickler for the rules.”
“Only some rules, I suspect.”
We were in her soothing saffron-colored office, drinking coffee that I’d stopped for on my way to Monica’s shop.
She took a sip. “You’re not seriously going to bail on getting Ted to cough up what’s rightfully yours, are you?”
“I got a littl
e overly dramatic in the moment,” I admitted.
“It sounds like it was quite a moment,” she grinned. “So where are you now? With Hector, I mean.”
“We’ve agreed to keep seeing each other, and to ‘exercise restraint.’”
She laughed. “I’m guessing those were his words.”
“They were.” I sat back in my chair. “And, honestly, it’s for the best. I’m still all tangled up with Ted and I’m not looking for anything serious. I need to get my head straight before I’ll be in any condition—”
“Yeah, sure,” Monica interrupted, still grinning. “There’s only one thing wrong with that.”
I looked at her.
“Um,” she said, as if she were about to state the obvious. “It’s Hector.”
I exhaled. “It’s Hector,” I agreed. I finished my coffee. “Meanwhile, Ted hasn’t called back, of course, but I emailed my lawyers this morning telling them there’s an increased urgency to finding where he hid the money so we can finalize the settlement.”
“Increased urgency. Is that what you kids are calling it these days?” Monica was enjoying this way too much.
“I also sent a text to Ted this morning,” I continued, ignoring her obvious delight. “Telling him I misspoke in the voicemail. What I meant was that I’ll handle that meeting he wants me to if he sends the paperwork authenticating those gowns,” I told her. “Which was what he was after all along, so I’m not happy about it, but I can’t afford to care about that anymore. Once I have the authentication I can sell them, or exhibit them, or whatever makes the most sense.”
“Oh, I forgot about the gowns.” Monica sat up. “I wanted to see them the other night, but with the séance and everything…”
Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 65