Murder on the Silver Screen, page 14
“Kristy,” I approached the sales associate once order had been somewhat restored. She was still radiant with excitement. “We need to talk.”
“Sure,” she said. “But not right now. I’ve got to go. My shift is over in five, and my squad is gathering to play. There are more coins out there.”
“Wait.” I put my hand on her arm as she turned to go. “What about S?”
A flash of impatience crossed her face. “I told you what happened,” she said. “Tommy killed him. I saw him throw that bottle at S when they were fighting. He’s the only one who could have poisoned it. It had to have been Tommy.”
“I really didn’t think Tommy did it,” I said to Trixie. “But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he just played me.”
We were in the break room. I was making a pot of terrible coffee and telling her everything Kristy had said.
“Do you think that girl told the police what she saw?” Trixie asked. “Is that why they arrested Tommy in the first place?”
“He didn’t say anything about there being a witness,” I said doubtfully. “But, then, he wouldn’t.”
She perched on the table, her petite shoes on a chair, biting her lip in concentration.
“Well, let’s just think it through,” she said. “Why…?” She scrunched her face. “No, but how…” she tapped her forehead. “No, who!” She beamed. “That’s the question—if Tommy killed that other fella, then who killed Tommy?”
“And why?” I asked. “Who and why?”
“At least we know how,” Trixie offered helpfully.
“There’s that,” I agreed. “I have to talk to Kristy again. She said she saw Tommy throw the bottle at S. Did she see him open it? Did she actually see him tamper with it?” I shook my head. “Never mind why he’d just happen to have a lethal dose of bee pollen on him.”
“Don’t worry,” Trixie said. “You can talk to her again tomorrow, can’t you?”
I gave her a blank look.
“At the séance, silly!”
Oh, dear lord. I’d forgotten about the séance. Again.
I spent most of the day Monday in my office on the laptop, playing what felt like several rounds of whack-a-mole with lawyers.
First I set out to find Tommy’s personal lawyer. The latest news was full of information about his criminal defense team, but I assumed they were not the same bunch who would have handled his will. I kept sleuthing until, in an online profile from a few years back, I saw the name Marc Picco mentioned as Tommy’s longtime attorney. I found Picco’s website and sent him an email asking who the ownership of Tommy’s one quarter of the Palace would pass to now that he was dead. The lawyer might not tell me, but least I’d find out if he was the right guy to ask, and I’d be able to tell the other owners who they should get in touch with.
After that I searched through the small print of Tommy’s company website, looking for the name of his corporate law firm. I hoped they could answer the big question about Tommy’s presumed motive for killing S: With S out of the way, would Tommy make more money? I had no expectation that these lawyers would tell me anything about anything—why would they? So instead of asking them, I wrote to my very expensive team of lawyers down in LA and told them to find out whatever they could, hoping that a little attorney-on-attorney action might yield some information. You never knew.
And as long as I was writing to my lawyers, I took the opportunity to inform them that my supposedly bankrupt, almost-ex-husband Ted had enough money to buy a fortune in Hollywood memorabilia, in the form of famous movie gowns. Where had he come up with that money? And when, when, would I be free of him for good?
I did not send a text to Ted, asking what he needed me to do so much that he’d attempted to bribe me into doing it.
I did not send a text to Otis Hampton, asking whether his team of private investigators had come up with any leads on where Ted had stashed our life’s savings.
I did not send a text to Hector.
Lillian Gee, noted fashionista and amateur spiritual medium, showed up for Monday night’s séance fully looking the part. She wore a flowing black lace dress, ropes upon ropes of black jet beads, and tiny black silk roses in her thick wavy hair.
“If you say one word to mock her,” Callie greeted me in the lobby. She and her mother, as well as Albert, were already at the Palace when I got back from the walk I’d taken in an attempt to get into a séance-y mood.
“Never in a million years,” I promised. “What’s all this?” I looked at the half-dozen high-tech bags and crates surrounding her on the floor. “Spectrographs? Ectoplasm detectors? Ghostly voice recorders? And, by the way, I’m not mocking your mother. I’m mocking you. I didn’t even think you were coming.”
Lillian was out of earshot, talking animatedly with Albert on the far side of the lobby. I could tell the aged devotee of the Palace was almost as enthusiastic as Callie’s mom was.
Callie gave me a dark look. “It’s my camera equipment. I’m filming it. Didn’t she tell you?”
“Nobody told me anything.” Aside from Trixie, that is. But it was probably a little early in the proceedings for me to bring up my conversations with the Palace’s famous ghost.
Oddly enough, I hadn’t seen Trixie all day. I’d been in and out of the theater setting things up and banging out emails with not a peep from her. I hoped that her excitement over the séance hadn’t been too much for her. When things got to be too much for her, she had a habit of going poof—simply disappearing for some indeterminate length of time.
“Nora!” Lillian opened her arms and floated across the lobby when she spotted me talking to Callie. “I’m so excited! I can just feel the energy—can’t you?”
“I feel something,” I said, returning her hug. “Hi, Albert.”
“Nora,” he said with a smile. “I have a feeling this will be a night to remember.”
“We can only hope.” I knew Albert had seen Trixie. He’d known her in life, when he was just a ten-year-old kid and she was a bombshell usherette he and his friends had all crushed on. But he’d once told me that he’d also seen her since then, just glimpses over the years. I had a feeling the aged Albert was still half in love with her. And I had a feeling he suspected I knew more about her than I was saying.
“I put a table and chairs on the stage,” I told them. “How many are coming?”
“Well,” Lillian clasped her hands together. “The four of us, and your friend Monica is bringing friends.”
“Abby and Kristy,” I nodded.
“So that’s seven.” She turned to her daughter. “Calandria, dear, what about your colleagues?”
“Brandon’s off playing that game,” she said. “And I banned Marty from the building. I figured you wouldn’t want his negativity.”
“Exactly right,” she said, nodding sagely. “The spirits can sense an unbeliever.”
I knew one spirit who made it a habit to watch a movie from the projection booth with her favorite unbeliever at least once a week, but I wasn’t the expert here.
“Gabriela said she was coming,” I said. “With Hector.” I felt self-conscious saying his name, as if everyone would be able to sense something had happened just by the way the word “Hector” left my lips.
Would Hector show up? Would he act like no epic moonlit kiss had happened between us? And if he did, would I be able to refrain from bludgeoning him to death in frustration?
“I think that’s them,” Callie said, looking out the lobby doors to the sidewalk.
She was right. Hector’s car had pulled up. I watched as he got out and took Gabriela’s wheelchair from the trunk. It felt so weird to watch him opening her door and assisting her into the chair. So weird because it was so normal, when it felt like everything had changed.
Then Hector straightened and looked up the walkway to the lobby. Looked directly into my eyes, as if he knew I’d been watching. My heart stopped. He raised a hand, the expression on his face completely neutral. Then he got back into his car and drove away, and I miraculously managed to neither collapse on the lobby floor nor go running after him.
Albert held the door for Gabriela. “Good evening, my dear.”
“Hi Albert, hi everyone.” She looked at me. “Hector sends his apologies. He had something he couldn’t get out of.”
Which is right about the time I stopped feeling weird and self-conscious about Hector. I started feeling something different. I started feeling furious.
Chapter 20
My follow-up interview with Kristy would have to wait. She was a no-show for the séance.
“She’s off playing the game,” Monica told me when she arrived with Abby. “Along with half the city, from the looks of it out there.”
“Half the world,” Abby said. She was wearing the same green multi-pocketed jacket that she’d worn to the midnight movie. “At least, the under-thirty half. Running around in the dark without looking where they’re going. They’re liable to get themselves killed.”
“Well I’m glad you guys could make it,” I told them. “Everybody else is already inside.”
We entered the auditorium, and I had to admit, the place looked suitably atmospheric. The house lights were down, with only a few freestanding lamps on the stage providing light. There’s nothing like a near-empty, near-dark theater with almost a hundred years of history to get a person’s imagination going. The few remaining flecks of gold leaf glinted on the detailed art deco woodwork surrounding the stage. The balcony was shrouded in mysterious darkness. The back recesses of the stage were dim and shadowy.
Never mind that the ghost we were trying to conjure was one of the brightest, bubbliest people I’d ever met. The stage was set for old-school spiritualism.
Earlier that day I’d raised the movie screen and hauled the battered round table down from the break room to the big empty stage. I’d gone to a neighborhood fabric store for a length of dark blue velvet that I’d draped over the table before surrounding it with mismatched chairs.
I’d been nervous at the thought of how many candles Lillian might bring, given the fact that there had been a fire on the stage a few months ago. But it turned out she only had three large white pillars that she placed in the center of the table. She hadn’t lit them yet.
“What’s she doing?” Monica whispered as we walked down the center aisle to the stage.
“Purifying the space,” I whispered back, feeling ridiculous.
Earlier Lillian had produced something that looked like a rough cigar, which she’d informed us was a sage wand. She’d lit one end until it smoldered, and was currently waving the aromatic smoke all over the stage. When Abby, Monica, and I walked up the ramp to join everyone, she waved it over us as well. Which was fine. A little purification couldn’t hurt. Although, in my experience, Trixie was more drawn by the scent of fresh popcorn.
Monica coughed discretely, but Abby closed her eyes and raised her arms as the smoke circled her, seeming to get into the spirit of the thing.
“Are we all here?” Lillian asked. “Let’s begin.”
Callie joined us at the table, her expression guarded. Her cameras, three of them, were set up on tripods around the table and were already filming.
I was increasingly nervous as we all took our seats. Albert was on my left. Next to him was Lillian, then Abby, Gabriela, Callie, and Monica, who was on my right. I was nervous not because of what might happen, but because of what might not.
There was no sign of Trixie.
I knew that even if she showed up, the others still probably wouldn’t see her. Trixie had tried to show herself to Albert, Callie, and just about everyone else who’d hung around the Palace in the last eighty-plus years. So far, I was the only one who had ever really seen her, and that was after I’d been conked on the head by a broken light the first day I met her. I truly wanted her to be able to make contact tonight, but I wasn’t counting on it. I didn’t think Lillian planned to conk anyone on the head.
“We are seven,” Lillian began, her voice suitably dramatic, “which is a very auspicious number for contacting the spirits. In Chinese, the number seven—chi—sounds like the word for ‘vital energy,’ and the seventh month is the ‘ghost month,’ when spirits are known to visit earth.” She looked around at us. “There are seven days in the week, seven stars in the Pleiades, seven wonders of the ancient world. In Christianity there are seven gifts of the holy spirit, and seven deadly sins.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d have had similar facts if all nine of us had shown up.
“I believe we are seven for a reason tonight,” she continued. “There is power in seven.”
I thought I heard the tiniest sigh coming from Callie’s direction.
“Now, some guidelines to remember,” Lillian said. “We need to be very clear in our intention. We gather here to contact the ghosts of the Palace. But once we enter the spiritual plane, there’s no saying who might try to contact us.” She looked meaningfully around the table. “We need to enter into this circle with only love in our hearts.”
Across from me, Abby compressed her lips into a firm line and nodded.
“I’m sure everyone at this table has experienced loss,” Lillian continued. “We all have someone on the other side. Some more than others.” She placed her hand over Albert’s briefly. “We must remain open to all possibilities.”
Because I just happened to be looking across the table, I caught a flash of something in Abby’s expression. Pain? Longing? Was there someone she was hoping to contact? Someone she’d lost? Someone who wasn’t a chatty usherette?
“When we light the candles, our journey will begin,” Lillian said. “Please do not attempt to speak to me once I begin initiating contact. The thread between the worlds is very fragile.”
We all nodded, and I was reminded, suddenly, of Madame Arcati, the batty medium who holds a séance in Blithe Spirit (1945, Rex Harrison, and Margaret Rutherford as the medium.) I realized with a start something I’d never put together before. When I’d gotten conked on the head in the balcony that day, Blithe Spirit had been playing onscreen. Specifically, the séance scene. Had that had something to do with why I could see Trixie afterward?
More importantly, where was Trixie?
Lillian stood, and produced a silver filigreed matchbox from a pocket in the folds of her lacy dress. She lit the three thick candles, intoning “Light in the darkness” each time a wick took the flame.
She sat and held her hands out to Albert and Abby, indicating that we should all hold hands. We did, forming a circle around the table and waiting for what would happen next.
What happened next was humming. Lillian closed her eyes and began making a tuneless droning sound. The rest of us glanced around uncomfortably, not sure if we should close our eyes as well. While we were still figuring it out, Lillian’s humming found a melody. It took me a minute, but then I thought I recognized it, improbably, as the old folk song “Mockingbird.” I had no idea why she’d chosen that song, but the tune, beginning with “Hush little baby, don’t say a word…” was definitely what she was humming. I looked around to see if anyone else had picked up on it, but everybody’s eyes were closed except Abby’s. She was staring wide-eyed at Lillian.
Then, suddenly, the humming stopped and Lillian’s eyes flew open.
“I sense a spirit!”
She wasn’t wrong. Out in the auditorium, Trixie had appeared at the far end of the center aisle, and was walking slowly toward the stage, her hands held out in front of her like she was a hypnotized bride in a Boris Karloff movie. My initial surge of relief faded when she got closer and I saw that her eyes were closed. It looked like she was being drawn to us. Had Lillian actually summoned her?
I swallowed, worried that the séance had done something to Trixie. I’d assumed it couldn’t do any harm, but what did I know? Trixie looked like she’d been possessed as she walked slowly up the ramp to the stage. The gold braid of her uniform winked in the flickering light, her cap was at its usual jaunty angle on her curls, but there was no, for lack of a better word, life to her.
I could tell by the way they were all glancing around nervously that nobody else saw her, but Lillian shivered. “You are welcome here, Spirit,” she said.
Trixie stood still. Then one eye squinted open as she took a peek at her surroundings. When it was clear I was the only one who could see her, she opened both eyes, putting her hands on her hips and tossing an errant blond curl out of her eyes. “Why, I should hope to say I’m welcome here!”
I sagged in relief.
“Come on, now, no fooling!” Trixie stamped a petite foot. “Can’t anybody else see me at all? I made that whole entrance and everything. I looked just like Elsa Lanchester. I know I did!”
Everyone else was still looking around for an apparition, oblivious to the outburst of the exasperated ghost in their midst.
The ghost looked at me and sighed. “Hi, Nora. Isn’t this something? All that fuss and nothing works.”
“Spirit, have no fear!” Lillian commanded. I realized I was the only one at the table not looking toward her expectantly.
“’Course I don’t have any fear,” Trixie said. She approached the table, pausing between Abby and Gabriela. “Hello!” she yelled, waving. “Olly-olly-oxen-free!”
She put her hands on the shoulders of the women on either side of her. Abby didn’t seem to notice, but Gabriela reacted immediately. She looked in Trixie’s direction. “I think I feel something.”
“That’s good,” I said, encouraging Trixie.
She jumped with excitement. “She feels me, Nora!” She turned all her attention on Gabriela, bending to wrap her in the same sort of hug she’d used on Lillian the other day in the lobby.
