Murder in the Balcony

by Margaret Dumas

  Chapter 21

  The police had been summoned by the alarm we’d set off, then they called the fire department and the EMTs, who bandaged a cut on my hand from the fire extinguisher that I hadn’t noticed. We both got oxygen and were draped in thermal blankets and told to wait in the open back of the EMT truck.

  I glanced up at the theater to see Trixie’s anxious face at the office window above the marquee. I smiled as best I could behind the oxygen mask and gave her a thumbs up, shielding my hand from Hector’s view with the blanket. She waved back, mouthing something I couldn’t make out but looking relieved.

  Then the doors to the theater burst open and Callie and Monica spilled out into the street.

  “Nora!” Callie yelled. “What’s—”

  “Are you all right?” Monica called as they crossed the street to us. “What happened?”

  I lifted the mask from my face. “I’m fine. There was a fire at the café.”

  “And you went in there?” Monica stared at my bedraggled state. “What’s the matter with you? Are you crazy?”

  “You tell her, lady,” a passing fireman said. He looked over at Hector and me. “You guys are idiots. You should never have gone in there. Nothing is worth getting killed over.”

  He was right. Of course he was right. But my instinct hadn’t stopped to check with my common sense when I’d seen Lisa’s café on fire. My instinct could have gotten me killed. And Hector. I shivered.

  Callie was still staring at all the flashing lights and activity in confusion. Monica was fussing with my blanket. “You guys should go home,” I told them.

  This seemed to call Callie back to her senses. She looked at me. “I’ll put some coffee on. Tell everyone the lobby’s open if they need to come in and get warm.” She turned on her heel and left. She hadn’t even noticed Hector.

  “I’ll bring some CBD salve over in the morning,” Monica said. “It’ll help with—” She stopped. She’d just noticed the man sitting next to me.

  He removed his oxygen mask. “Hello, Monica.”

  “Hector?” She looked from him to me.

  “He came with the pizza,” I explained.

  “You…why are you here?” she asked him.

  “Yes.” I turned toward him. “Why are you here?”

  He looked at me. “Gabriela told me you said ‘hi.’”

  Served me right.

  The police asked me a hundred questions, but I really couldn’t tell them anything. I’d seen a glint of light. I hadn’t seen the person leaving. It had been dark. The door had been locked. I had been an idiot.

  Hector had his turn with the authorities as well. He hadn’t seen anyone leave the café. He’d broken the window and unlocked the door.

  “Were the deadbolts thrown?” a policewoman asked. “There are three deadbolts on the door. One at ground level.”

  Hector shook his head. “Just the lock in the knob.”

  The policewoman had written that down.

  Eventually Lisa arrived, wild with panic at first, then ridiculously grateful when she was told what Hector and I had done, and finally grimly stoic as she assessed her ruined kitchen.

  “They say I’m lucky,” she told me. We were standing in the street after hugs and tears, staring numbly at the storefront. She was wearing pajamas with a raincoat over them. “We’ll have to close for repairs, but they don’t think it looks structural.”

  “Who could have done this?” I asked. There was no doubt in my mind that someone had deliberately set the fire. Someone I’d not managed to see skulking away.

  “Who do you think?” she said bitterly. “McMillan. I told him I wouldn’t sell, and he thinks he can burn me out.” She looked at me, hatred lighting her eyes. “I’ll see him in hell first.”

  It was close to three in the morning before I made it back to the lobby, where Callie was cleaning up as the last of the first responders cleared out.

  I slumped at the stool behind the candy counter. “You should go home now,” I told her. “I’ll call for a ride.” I reached for my phone.

  “Thanks,” Callie said. “But you don’t need to. One of the guys said he’d give me a lift.” She glanced out the door, where an extremely fit young EMT was hovering.

  “That makes sense.” I gave her a vague wave. “Thanks for everything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “OMG tomorrow,” she said, eyes widening. “I need to get some sleep.”

  OMG tomorrow was right. “Are you still up for it?” I asked.

  “Of course. Are you?”

  “I don’t think I have a choice.”

  Callie went off with her EMT, leaving me alone in the lobby. At least for a moment.

  “What’s happening tomorrow?” I hadn’t even noticed Hector had gone anywhere, but now he was coming down the balcony stairs, carrying my jacket and bag.

  “We’re hosting a corporate event,” I told him. “It’s part of my ingenious strategy to keep the Palace from financial ruin.” Although at the moment I was having trouble keeping my head from falling to the counter.

  “I always suspected you of genius.” He draped the jacket over my shoulders.

  “We’ll be playing host to a hundred or so realtors,” I said. “Including the one who may have murdered Warren, and probably set that fire tonight. Oh, and also he wants to tear down the Palace.”

  “Now you have my undivided interest,” he said. “I suggest we find someplace that’s open at this late hour where we can get a strong drink and you can tell me everything that’s been going on.”

  Speaking of the late hour…I looked at the clock above the lobby doors and groaned before I could stop myself. “I’d love to,” I told Hector. “But I really do have an early morning tomorrow. How long are you going to be in town?”

  He leaned one elbow on the candy counter in a casual sort of way. “That depends. San Francisco has become very appealing to me. I’m thinking of buying a place.”

  “Oh.” Okay. Lots of implications. Most of which I wasn’t prepared to deal with. But there was one intriguing possibility. I looked up at him again. “I can introduce you to a realtor.”

  His glance sharpened. “The murderer?”

  “The possible murderer,” I hedged. As much as I loathed him, MacMillan was only one possibility. We still had Other Girlfriend Ingrid to think about.

  “That sounds delightful. Meanwhile, since you have such an early morning tomorrow, and since it is so very late tonight, perhaps I should take you home.”

  He held out a hand and I took it.

  “Yes, perhaps you should.”

  Chapter 22

  I woke up reeking of smoke and panicking about the day ahead. After Hector had left me at my door I’d fallen into bed and crashed for all of three hours. Now I had to shower and get to the theater, where shortly a hundred realtors would arrive expecting coffee and pastries. Which would have been no problem if Café Madeline, where I’d placed an order a week ago, hadn’t been set on fire last night.

  I called for a rideshare and went to a different bakery, a place off Clement that specializes in croissants, where I bought everything they’d let me, which surely wouldn’t be enough. The driver helped me carry it all up the walkway to the lobby doors.

  “What happened across the street?” he asked, taking in the café’s boarded-up door and blackened interior.

  “Arson,” I told him.

  I set all the boxes out on the candy counter and started a pot of coffee. Even with the new espresso maker there was no way I’d be able to keep up with the demand. I was just about to dash out again when I heard keys jangling at the lobby door.

  Albert and Marty came in with a blast of cold morning air, carrying just a hint of last night’s smoke. Marty had six pink bakery boxes stacked in his arms, and Albert was pulling a cart filled with bottled juices.


  “I have never loved anyone more than I love you two right now,” I told them.

  Marty scowled.

  “Callie called us,” Albert said. “She told us what happened to the café. We’ve got this and she’s sending one of her film crew to Peet’s to bring in gallons of extra coffee.”

  “You guys are amazing,” I told them.

  Marty set his boxes on the counter next to mine. “The Palace has a reputation to uphold,” he said. “No fire is going to make us look bad.”

  “Go, team Palace!” I held up my hand for a high-five.

  He looked at my raised palm as if it carried the Ebola virus. “Don’t.”

  Go, team Palace.

  Sam Beach was the first to arrive. June had asked her to come early and make sure everything was on schedule. The last time I’d seen her I’d wondered if she’d been Warren’s other girlfriend. Now I knew about Ingrid, but Sam was still interesting to me. After all, she was one of the last people who’d seen Warren that night.

  She was smartly dressed and professionally groomed in a way I’d never have been able to pull off at seven in the morning. Her hair was smoothed back, and she wore a tailored gray pantsuit and chunky heels. She had a laptop bag over her shoulder and carried a file box filled with nametags and stuffed folders for all the attendees. “Careful!” she yelped as I took the box from her. “I’ve got all the nametags arranged alphabetically so I can just spread them out on the registration table.” She took in the near-empty lobby. “Where’s the registration table?”

  Albert and I had just finished setting up two long folding tables at the bottom of the stairs. He was smoothing tablecloths over them. “Here you go.” He patted the table. “All ready.”

  The morning went on like that, with us keeping just inches ahead of whatever was needed. Sam handed her laptop off to Marty, who took it up to the projection booth to do a dry run, then she arranged her materials while Albert and I laid out what the agenda called a “Continental Breakfast.”

  “What are we going to do about lunch?” Albert asked quietly.

  “That’s under control,” I told him. “We weren’t using the café for that. The party rental people should show up at ten, when everyone’s gone into the auditorium. They’ll set up tables and chairs in the lobby and on the balcony landing. We’ve got three food trucks who’ll park on the street outside so everyone can order whatever they want and–Oh! Let’s get the cones out to keep the parking spaces open.” I’d gotten the city permits and traffic cones the week before. “Once we get through the arrivals and breakfast, everything should go smoothly.”

  Looking back on things, I really should have knocked wood.

  Callie and her film crew arrived about an hour before the guests were scheduled to start showing up. Three guys with cameras, one young woman for sound, and a production assistant who pushed a wheeled black trunk full of equipment into the lobby. With five gallon-sized insulated boxes of hot coffee on top.

  “You’re my hero,” I told her.

  Callie told me their names, but as they were all dressed in black and moved swiftly and unquestioningly at Callie’s commands, I just mentally referred to them as the film ninjas.

  “Who’s going to be in my booth?” Marty called down from the balcony landing.

  Sam, seated at the registration table, looked up from her phone. “I will. What do you need?”

  He stared down at her. “I hooked your laptop up to the projector, and it’s all working. The only thing in the room you’re allowed to touch is your keyboard. Got it?”

  Her eyebrows went up and I went over to her. “Don’t worry, Marty. Sam won’t break anything in the booth.”

  He gave me a “you better hope not” sort of look, then went back to his lair.

  “Sorry,” I said to Sam. Then I told her what several people had told me when I’d first come to the Palace. “Marty isn’t really that bad.”

  She waved a hand. “Trust me, I’ll have him eating out of my hand by the lunch break.”

  I could only wish her well. As I was turning to go my gaze fell on the nametags she’d arranged in neat alphabetical lines on the tabletop. One name jumped out at me. Ingrid Barnes.

  I glanced at Sam, but she was communing with her phone again. I slid the nametag on top of Ingrid’s away to see her job title. “Director of Mortgage Operations, Chase Bank.”

  Warren’s Ingrid. She had to be.

  I left Sam and went over to the candy counter, now covered with open boxes of baked goods. I’d left the printout of the agenda there. Yep. Other Girlfriend Ingrid was speaking on the panel about mortgages.

  Which meant both of my suspects in Warren’s murder would be onstage at the Palace that day.

  I went upstairs to the balcony, where I knew Callie had set up her film production area. None of the realtors would be seated up there, and it would give her a birds-eye view of the proceedings. I’d expected to see her looking at her monitors or something, but she wasn’t there. Two of her ninjas were still setting things up. They didn’t know where she was.

  I checked the break room, but found only Albert and Marty, who hadn’t seen her. I told them about Warren’s other girlfriend being on the agenda.

  “Oh, dear.” Albert blinked rapidly behind his thick round glasses.

  “My money’s on Callie,” Marty said. “If some blonde gets tossed off the balcony this afternoon, I’ll know who did it.”

  “Well, that’s just rude.” I didn’t have to turn to know it was Trixie who’d just spoken behind me. “Some of us are a little sensitive on that subject.”

  I didn’t turn around.

  “If you see Callie, warn her,” I told the guys. Only then did I turn, giving Trixie a subtle nod to come with me to my office. When we got there, I closed the door and really wished I could hug her.

  “Nora, honey, are you okay? I was so worried last night! I saw you two running across the street, and I would have given anything to be able to help.”

  “I’m fine,” I told her, collapsing onto the couch. She perched on the arm opposite me, her feet on the cushion. I rubbed my eyes. “I just have to feed a hundred people, make sure everything goes off without a hitch, keep Callie from having a meltdown when she realizes Ingrid is here, possibly keep Ingrid from having a meltdown when she realizes Callie is here, introduce myself to Stan McMillan and get him to say something incriminating about setting the fire or killing Warren, and hope Lisa doesn’t show up to kill McMillan for setting the fire.”

  Trixie nodded. “That seems like a lot.”

  “Plus make June so happy that she tells everyone what a great venue the Palace is so we can stave off financial ruin.” I took a breath. I had no intention of letting Trixie know the Palace itself was in danger. “Luckily I got plenty of sleep and a hot, nutritious breakfast,” I told her.

  “Oh, now I know you’re fibbing,” she said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  I smiled at her. “I’m just so glad to see you.”

  I couldn’t believe everything that had happened since the scene in the lobby with Callie’s mom.

  “Callie’s mom!” I said. “How weird was that?”

  “Oh, Nora, do you think I’ll be able to communicate with her? I mean, not like with you, but a little bit?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Let’s hope so.” Then something she said caught up with me.

  “Trixie.” I looked at her with new eyes. “There is something you can do to help today.”

  She sat up, clapping. “Gee, that would make me happy. What is it?”

  I got up and went to the desk, opening my laptop. “I’m going to show you some pictures of a man. His name is Stan McMillan and he’s a realtor. He’ll be here today. What?” A look of disappointment had appeared on her face.

  “Nothing. It’s just that I thought we liked the Latin Lover.”
/>   I blinked. “We do like the Latin—Hector,” I told her. “This has nothing to do with that. This has to do with eavesdropping on MacMillan today and seeing if he says anything incriminating to anyone about either the fire last night or Warren’s murder.”

  Trixie’s mouth formed an O. “You want me to spy on him,” she said, eyes shining.

  “Well, you’re in a pretty unique position to overhear things,” I said.

  “Oh, Nora!” She hopped off the sofa and scampered over to the desk. “Show me his picture! Oh, I can’t wait! I know just what to do. I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen Mata Hari!”

  Since Mata Hari (1931, Greta Garbo and Ramon Navarro) had ended with Garbo on her way to a firing squad, I wasn’t sure that was the best of all possible training, but on the other hand, I didn’t see how Trixie could get into trouble.

  She was very excited. “Oh, I wish I could wear a costume! I’ll be the best spy ever, why—”

  But what she would be was cut off by a quick rap on the door, followed by a voice calling from the other side. “Nora?”

  “It’s Hector,” Trixie said. “Quick, show me the pictures.”

  I opened the web page that I’d looked at before, wishing Trixie could tap the keys and navigate from there—not that tapping would be the only issue with teaching a hundred-year-old ghost about web surfing. But I got a page of images up as I called “Come in!” to Hector.

  He opened the door looking rested and refreshed, as if he hadn’t attempted to beat a fire into submission with only his leather jacket the night before. I noticed he wore a different leather jacket this morning, black, over a pale gray cashmere sweater and dark jeans.

  “Golly,” Trixie said. She was looking at Hector, not the collection of photos.

  I tapped the screen to refocus her attention, then looked back to Hector, about to tell him how very busy I was at the moment. Until I caught a whiff of something. “What’s that amazing smell?”

  He held up a white paper bag. “A scrambled egg sandwich on a multi-seed bagel,” he said. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t have eaten a decent breakfast.”