Murder in the Balcony

by Margaret Dumas

  Today she looked as angry as I felt.

  “Why? What’s going on?” I pocketed my phone. I’d sent the texts. There was nothing more I could do now.

  She nodded her head toward a less crowded area of the shop. I followed her and listened as she leaned across the counter, her voice lowered. “McMillan,” she said darkly. “Has he been after the Palace, too?”

  Alarm bells went off. “What do you mean?”

  “Stan McMillan,” she said. “The real-estate developer? He’s trying to take over this whole block. Is he coming after your side of the street too?”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” I said. “What do you mean ‘take over?’”

  “He’s trying to buy every business on the block,” she said. “He wants to tear it all down and put up one of those big mixed-use developments.”

  “No!” I said, probably louder than I should. People glanced over at the two of us. “No,” I said more quietly. “Has anybody sold yet?”

  “The yarn shop and the kitchenware place on the corner,” she said. “He got to them before anyone found out his big plans. Marla at the nail salon thinks her landlord will be next and she’ll be out. Now that everybody knows what he’s up to the prices are going up. But I don’t want to sell.”

  “Of course not!” I knew Lisa poured her heart and soul into her café. You only had to bite into one of her chocolate-filled croissants to realize that.

  “But I don’t know if I can take the pressure of being the last holdout. He has a reputation for getting nasty.”

  I hadn’t ever heard that. Of course, I hadn’t heard a lot of things. I was still new to the neighborhood. What I did know is that McMillan Real Estate was one of the three firms that would be participating in the event June and I had set up at the Palace for Monday.

  “He hasn’t come after your side of the street?” Lisa now asked.

  “Not as far as I know,” I told her. “But he wouldn’t have to talk to me.” I wasn’t the owner of the Palace. My best friend Robbie had a one-quarter share, as did Monica Chen, who owned a cannabis shop a few blocks away on Divisadero. There were two other partners I didn’t interact with much, one about an hour south in Silicon Valley, and another in LA. This McMillan might have gone to any of them and I wouldn’t know anything about it.

  “But Robbie or Monica would have told me,” I said. As much to myself as to Lisa.

  “Well, be careful,” she said. “That man’s a snake. And when it comes to real estate, there’s no such thing as a friend.”

  Great. Something else to worry about.

  I took my coffee and left, dialing Robbie as I crossed the street.

  The call went straight to voicemail.

  Chapter 11

  Running an entire theater with a crew of only three people can be great for taking your mind off everything else. For the next few hours I was too busy to worry about what Lisa had told me. Or for that matter, to think about Ted. Or Warren’s death. There’s nothing like a broken cash register with a crowd (okay, a handful) of impatient filmgoers to focus the mind.

  Once Marty started the film, he came down to the ticket booth, bringing a small bundle of tools that I hoped would mean an easy repair rather than an expensive replacement of the register.

  I took over the concessions stand from Albert, encouraging him to go upstairs and take a break until the next rush. Sometimes, when he was slinging popcorn and making change, I forgot that he was over ninety years old. But then he’d sit down with a sigh and I could see every year in the droop of his shoulders.

  “You know, I think I’ll take you up on that offer,” he said, adjusting his round glasses. “I could use a rest. I was up late last night working on my project.”

  He seemed to want me to ask, so I did. “What project?”

  He tapped the side of his nose, channeling Paul Newman in The Sting (1973, Newman, Robert Redford, and an amazing ragtime score.) “I don’t want to say anything yet,” he said. “But I think you’ll like it.”

  Cool. More secrets.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee from the old drip pot, not having fully mastered the complexities of the new espresso maker yet. I’d just pulled out my phone to check for messages when a windblown woman came in from the street.

  I glanced at the big round clock over the lobby doors. “You’ve missed the first few minutes,” I told her. “But I can tell you what happened. Norma Shearer’s husband is a fink.” He’d probably already told her that the other woman didn’t mean a thing.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not here for the movie. June sent me.”

  “Oh! You must be Sam.” Samantha Beach. The realtor who had been among the last to leave the bar the night of Warren’s celebration. “June told me you’d call.”

  She set a large leather tote bag on the glass countertop. “I was going to, but then I thought I’d drop by instead. I haven’t been here in years.” She looked around the lobby appraisingly, which ordinarily wouldn’t have given me a second thought. Most people gawked a little when they first came in. Gilded accents and spectacular chandeliers aren’t exactly common in movie theaters anymore, nor are grand (if threadbare) staircases leading to full balconies. That’s why the Palace was a palace.

  So, no, normally I wouldn’t have even noticed someone taking it all in. But after what Lisa had said about that realtor gobbling up all the businesses across the street, I found Sam’s assessing gaze more than a little disconcerting.

  “You’ve updated the agenda for Monday?” I asked her. Maybe a little more sharply than the question called for.

  “Yeah.” She rustled around in her bag and pulled out a folder, which she handed to me. “We’re going to have a moment of silence for Warren. June will handle that, and then we’ll go into the state-of-the-market presentation instead of the lets-get-pumped session. We decided to push that to after lunch, when people are starting to lose momentum anyway. Everything will be in the right order on the PowerPoint deck. Will we be projecting that onto the big screen?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “The podium will be in front of it, off to the side. Then when you have your panel sessions, we’ll raise the screen so you can have full use of the stage.”

  The Palace had been built when vaudeville was still clinging to life, so we had a full-sized stage, complete with backdrop rigging and boarded-up trapdoors hidden behind the movie screen. Not that it got much use anymore.

  “Perfect,” she said. “Can you think of anything else?”

  “Not right now.” My eye was drawn to one of the topics. “Crushing the Market with Mixed Use.” Was that on the agenda because Stan McMillan planned to put up a mixed-use development in the neighborhood? Was he already prepping the brokers to sell it? Was he already planning to tear down the Palace?

  Sam cleared her throat meaningfully. I glanced up at her. “Sorry,” I said. “I do have a question. I’m going to have a film crew here to record the sessions so June can post them on her website. Do you think she’ll want to film the moment of silence?”

  She looked startled. “Oh, I don’t know. Do you think so?”

  I didn’t, because I couldn’t imagine June wanting to post it. Nevertheless. “I’ll ask her,” I said. Then I asked my real question, “It was so terrible about Warren. Did you know him well?”

  She put on a brave face, which struck me as being rehearsed. “We were very close.”

  Interesting. “He seemed like such a nice guy,” I said. “He was dating someone who works here, so he came around fairly frequently.”

  She blinked a few times. “I heard about her.” She glanced up the stairs. “Is she around?”

  “Not today,” I said. “She mentioned that a lot of people from Warren’s office were at the bar that night. Were you there?”

  I knew she was. I also knew she’d been among the last to leave.

 
; She nodded, her face assuming the silent-film version of a tragic heroine. “Who could have imagined that would be the last time we’d all see Warren?”

  I shook my head. “It’s terrible.”

  “So terrible,” she agreed. And something about the way she seemed to enjoy saying it made me wonder if she’d been behind some of the wild speculations making the rounds at June’s office.

  “You probably had to talk to the police,” I said, with the tiniest suggestion that this made her special.

  She preened. “A couple of times.”

  “Oh, that must have been so hard for you.” I was being shameless now.

  Another brave face. Or maybe she was going for noble. In any case, nothing about her behavior struck me as genuine.

  “But I’m sure they want to know about absolutely everyone who was there.” I leaned across the candy counter, as if we were just a couple of girlfriends dishing about any old Friday night. “I gather Warren was surprised by some of the people who showed up.” Particularly the person he’d referred to in his text. Had she seen them too? It might not be important, but I still wanted to know who it was.

  “Yeah…” She seemed about to say something more, then stopped herself. Another look crossed her face. This one speculative. “Um, I’d better be going.” She reached for her tote bag.

  If she did know who the mysterious person had been, she wasn’t going to share it with me.

  “I’ll see you on Monday,” I said, unable to come up with any line of conversation that would keep her here, spilling her secrets.

  She nodded, looking preoccupied, and was out the lobby doors with a purposeful stride before I could think of anything else.

  I watched her leave. She was an attractive woman. Probably a few years older than Callie or Warren. And tall. A tall woman with short blonde hair.

  And she was hiding something.

  “Do you think she was Warren’s other girl?” Trixie asked breathlessly.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “There are probably a bunch of tall women with short blonde hair running around the city.”

  We were in my office, me sitting at the desk and Trixie perched on the arm of the sofa, her petite feet on the seat cushion.

  “But this one worked with him. And she said they were close.” A perfectly plucked eyebrow was raised.

  “Let’s just say she was,” I picked up a pencil and twirled it, thinking. “And let’s say she wasn’t just the last person at the party, but she actually went home with him…”

  “Then why isn’t she dead, too?” Trixie asked.

  “She might have been, if it really were a case of a burglary gone wrong,” I said. “But if it wasn’t…”

  “Oh, Nora!” Trixie sat up straight, her eyes wide. “Do you think she killed him?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “But if she did go home with him, she might have seen his phone or something—his main phone—and seen Callie’s texts. I mean, it seemed like she knew about Callie but maybe she didn’t think they were serious? Maybe Warren had said Callie didn’t mean anything? And then she found out…?”

  “And killed him in a fit of jealous rage!” Trixie proclaimed. “Like Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce! Wait, was that jealous rage? Was that even Joan, or was it her daughter?” Her brow wrinkled.

  “Her daughter,” I said. Although Joan in Mildred (1945, Crawford and Ann Blyth) had much more to be upset about, in my opinion, than Sam did in the real world.

  “Then like Bette Davis in The Letter!” Trixie declared. She sighed. “Gee, I loved that movie.” She placed the back of her hand to her forehead in a dramatic pose and deepened her voice to quote Davis’s famous line ‘With all my heart, I still love the man I killed!’”

  “Right.” I’d just been thinking about The Letter the other day. “We’ll have to show that one soon.”

  “Show what one?”

  Marty stood at the office door, suspicion on his face. Trixie looked from me to him and back again, then mouthed “I’m sorry”—although it wasn’t as if he could hear her—and vanished.

  “What are you up to?” Marty came in and loomed over the desk. “Why are you talking to yourself? Have you finally lost your mind? And when they come to take you away, do I get your job?”

  “I haven’t lost my mind,” I informed him. Although some might beg to differ. “I was just thinking out loud.”

  He made a harrumph sort of noise and collapsed onto the couch. “I fixed the register.”

  “Yay. Thank you.” There were still a thousand other things in need of repair, but I’d take whatever wins I could get. “How was the animation festival last night?”

  He gave me a dark look. “David went back to work. I blame you.”

  “Blame the murderer,” I said. “I just told him something that he apparently felt was worth looking into.” Which meant he probably thought Blondie was involved somehow. Had she killed Warren? And had I just had a nice chat with her downstairs in the lobby?

  “What did you tell him?” Marty asked.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, come on. You’re dying to,” he said. “Look at you, you’re bursting.”

  “I’m doing no such thing.” But I automatically sucked in my tummy anyway.

  “Fine. You don’t tell me what you know about Warren’s murder and I won’t tell you what I know about Sally Lee’s blog.”

  “What?” Sally Lee is the name I blog under. But the smug way Marty was looking at me didn’t make me think he’d found me out. If he’d found me out, he wouldn’t be smug. He’d be apoplectic.

  “I think she’s local,” he said smugly. “I bet she is, and I bet she comes to the Palace.”

  I blinked a few times, catching up. “Hang on, I thought your theory was that Sally was a man.”

  He waved a hand. “That was just an idea. And it may still be true, but more importantly, look at what she’s written up in the past few weeks. Summertime? His Girl Friday?” He paused for dramatic effect, then announced “Roman Holiday!” as if he were Perry Mason summing up a particularly compelling case.

  “All excellent movies,” I said. Summertime (1955, Katharine Hepburn and Rossano Brazzi) had been one of my predecessor’s favorites. We’d shown it recently in a lineup that had paid homage to her taste. His Girl Friday (1940, Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell) was a fast-talking masterpiece that we’d run before the holidays. And of course Roman Holiday had been our midnight movie just last…oh. I saw where Marty was going.

  “That could be a coincidence,” I told him.

  “Or,” he said, “she could be in this theater right now!”

  Well, she was, but I didn’t think that was what he meant.

  “I’ve been paying attention to the regulars, and I have some ideas,” he said.

  “Please don’t start accosting the few paying customers we actually have.”

  “I’m not going to accost anybody. I’m simply going to figure out which one she is, and then worship her.”

  I had a feeling he really, really wouldn’t.

  “Great,” I told him. “Sounds like a plan. Just don’t get arrested or anything.”

  He shrugged that possibility off. “David would get me out.” His gaze sharpened. “So are you going to tell me what you told him last night?”

  “Nope.” I shuffled some papers on the desk.

  “Come on. I told you mine.”

  “Yours is a ridiculous theory. Mine could be evidence in a murder.”

  He sniffed. “Since when did you get all ethical?”

  Since what I knew had the potential to hurt Callie even more. But I didn’t tell him that.

  The Letter

  1940

  We begin with a moonlit night on a rubber plantation in Singapore. A shot rings out. A man staggers from a doorway across a veranda. Bet
te Davis follows, wearing a diaphanous gown and firing a gun until she empties it.

  Fix yourself a gin sling, my friends, and settle in for some DRAMA. Because what we have here is The Letter.

  This is high Bette Davis. She gets to be bad, and she gets to be calculating, she gets to play the innocent, and she gets to suffer for love. She is glorious.

  But back to the plot: Yes, she killed him. She sends one of the workers for the police. “Tell them there’s been an accident and Mr. Hammond is dead.” An accident, Bette? She sends for her husband and the family lawyer. Everybody knows the victim. He was part of their expat social circle. So what happened? “He tried to make love to me and I shot him.”

  The men’s reactions demonstrate how swell the patriarchy can be when it’s on your side: “May I say that I think you behaved magnificently… It’s obvious the man only got what he deserved.” Sure. Then she dons a frilly apron and makes them all breakfast. Seriously. Of course, she’ll have to be arrested, but she’s not to fret about it. “The attorney general is a decent chap.”

  We might relax at this point, but the next shot of her shows the light through the louvered windows creating the effect of bars. Visual cues, people. Notice them.

  Herbert Marshall, as her husband, comes off as noble, stalwart, and not terribly bright. “You’ve been the best wife a man could possibly have,” he tells her. Has she, Herbert? We’ll see.

  Flash forward. Bette’s been in jail for a while as the investigation takes place. They’ve found that the victim, Hammond, was married. But more than that, he was married to a “Eurasian woman,” described as “all covered with gold chains and bracelets and spangles,” which sounds pretty fabulous to me, but it’s totally turned public opinion against the victim. Now Bette has racism as well as the patriarchy on her side.