Chapter 6

“Tommy wants to close the Palace.”

Hector and I hadn’t gone to a bar. We’d just gone down the hall to my office, where I had a decent bottle of cabernet and some paper cups from the concessions stand tucked away in a file cabinet. It occurred to me that others might have judged me for keeping wine in the office. Hector just reached for a cup.

“Close? You mean for good?” He looked stunned.

I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

“Why? What kind of a—”

I held up a hand to cut off his outraged sputtering, then sat heavily at one end of the couch that sagged under the window. Hector took a breath and sat next to me. “Tell me everything.”

I took more than a sip before I started.

“Remember how the Palace used to be involved in some questionable financial practices?” I asked. “And how when I got here and figured it out I decided it would probably be better for everyone if we put a stop to that and didn’t all go to jail?”

“I remember.” Hector’s brother had been murdered at the Palace, in part because of those questionable financial practices.

“Ever since then the owners’ profits have plummeted. In fact, if I hadn’t started supplementing a little bit here and there, the Palace would be losing money.”

“I’ve always thought it was a bad idea for you to put your own money into the theater,” Hector said.

“Funny. I’ve always thought it was my own decision.” I held his gaze until he shrugged slightly in concession to my excellent point.

“But even with that we’re still on thin ice,” I admitted. “The Tesla money has only gone so far.”

When my errant almost-ex Ted had briefly tried to worm his way back into my affections, he’d casually given me a very expensive car. I’d sold it to a high-powered Hollywood producer named Otis Hampton, and unknown to anyone but Hector, I’d used a fair portion of the proceeds to pay for some urgently needed repairs to the Palace. But even with that, and with all the work I’d been doing to find new ways for the theater to earn more, I still had to hold my breath when I balanced the books each month.

“Tommy just can’t accept that a classic movie theater in a quiet neighborhood doesn’t make the kind of money he was used to. At least, not if it isn’t doing something shady on the side.” I could still see him, across the table in Monica’s back room, getting more and more angry as I tried to make him see the reality of the situation.

“He blames me for everything,” I told Hector. “He says it was all good before I came along.”

Hectors expression darkened. “Does he have any idea what you’ve done around here? How hard you work?”

“He doesn’t care. I tried to explain, and Robbie and Monica backed me up, but he said the only thing that matters is the bottom line. He said if I can’t get the profits back up we should close the theater, stop hemorrhaging money, and ‘regroup,’ whatever that means.”

“It means he’s an ass,” Hector said. “But if he’s an ass who only cares about money he’s an ass easily taken care of. I’ll buy his share and you won’t have to worry about him.” He stood.

“Sit down and don’t be crazy.”

“How is that being crazy?” he demanded. “I can help you. That’s not crazy.”

“I don’t want you to help me. I want—” But what I wanted couldn’t happen. At least not yet. “I want to buy his share myself,” I finally said. “I just need the lawyers to get their hands on my money in time to do it.”

“I’ll loan you the money until that happens,” Hector said swiftly. “Done.”

“Not done. I can’t let you do that since I don’t know for sure if I’ll ever be able to pay you back. I don’t know if I’ll ever see the money Ted took again.”

The muscle in his jaw flexed as Hector held back what he undoubtedly wanted to say. Then he said it. “You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.”

I wasn’t sure if “this” referred to my current predicament with Tommy, my ongoing predicament with Ted, or the relationship with Hector that we were both trying to figure out.

“I know,” I told him. “But I can’t do it any other way.”

He gave me a long look, then nodded. “All right. Then what will you do about the immediate problem? How much time do you have to act before this character makes good on his threat?”

“Not much.” The last thing Tommy had said at the meeting, pointing a finger and staring daggers at me, was “Fix it, and fix it fast.”

Just thinking about it made me furious. “How does someone like that even run a company?” I asked. “He should know what it takes to turn a business around. And what kind of a creep spends weeks texting and emailing with me about the stupid launch but waits until he’s got me in front of everyone to tell me what he really thinks of me? What kind of a person does that?”

“The kind of person who doesn’t deserve you.” Hector began pacing, his hands forming fists. Then he stopped. “And why? Why does he need the money? He’s supposed to have those Silicon Valley billions, yes?”

“I don’t know about billions, but lots and lots of millions.”

“In any case, the amount of money he’d been getting from the theater, even at its most, shouldn’t have been that significant to him.”

I thought about it. “Maybe it isn’t about the money. Maybe he just doesn’t like me.”

“Impossible,” Hector said dismissively.

I poured more wine and thought about it. “Maybe it’s just the principle of the thing. If the Palace can make more money, it should make more money.” I shrugged. “Or maybe he’s got us all snowed. Maybe he isn’t rolling in it. Maybe he spent it all. Maybe he’s strapped for cash because this new game took a ton of investment. And maybe he’s not convinced it’s going to be the success everyone thinks it is. Oh!” I sat up. “Or maybe it will be a huge success and he killed his partner so he wouldn’t have to split all the profits.”

“I do so enjoy it when you weave a chain of maybes,” Hector said.

“Screenwriter’s habit.” I fell back into the cushions. “Maybe I should go back to screenwriting. Fictional problems are so much easier to solve.”

“How would you solve this one in a movie?” Hector sank onto the couch next to me. “Would Tommy have been the one to collapse on that stage?”

“That would have a certain appeal.” I made a face. “But it would just create a new set of problems.”

“I agree. The police would undoubtedly come looking for you. You would have had an entirely justifiable motive for killing him.” His eyes glittered. “So would I.”

“Aw, thanks. That’s so chivalrous.” I shot him a look. “Also deeply disturbing.”

We were prevented from exploring further plotlines by Brandon throwing open the door.

“Nora! Are you watching? S was poisoned!”

  

“I only know about poison from what I’ve seen in the movies,” I said.

Marty, Callie, and I were slumped on stools at the far end of the concessions stand while the seven-thirty show was underway. Hector had left hours ago, and I’d sent Brandon and Albert home after the five-fifteen. Albert because he was looking tired, and Brandon because he’d been driving us all crazy with his endless stream of updates on the poisoning of S Banks.

“You only know about most things from what you’ve seen in the movies,” Marty pointed out.

“True,” I agreed. “Sadly, in this case I don’t think Arsenic and Old Lace is going to be very helpful.” Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Cary Grant, Pricilla Lane and two sweet old ladies whose elderberry wine you should absolutely refuse) was many things, but a useful source of information on present-day poisonings wasn’t one of them.

“I mean, I kind of can’t believe it was murder,” Callie said. “Right there onstage in front of a million people.”

“One point eight million people,” I corrected her. “At least, that’s what Brandon said. If you include everyone in the eighteen theaters and all the fans watching the webcast online.”

“Who decides to murder someone in front of 1.8 million people?” she asked. “And why?”

“And how?” Marty asked. “Do you think it was in that smoothie thing he drank? I one hundred percent think there was something in that.”

“I thought he looked puffy,” I said. “Did you guys think he looked puffy?”

“He looked stoned,” Marty said. “Even before he took that drink onstage.” Marty had gotten himself a coffee and was systematically adding eight sugar packets to it. “That was weird, wasn’t it, that he brought that out onstage during his big announcement?”

“Not if he was paid to,” Callie shrugged.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Didn’t you notice how he turned the label so everyone could see it while he drank? I bet he’s got an endorsement deal or something. Like half the people you see on Insta.”

I’d stopped looking at Instagram and all the rest of the social media sites right about the time Ted’s infidelity had been a trending topic.

“Do you think that’s true?” I wondered. The way he’d paused for a drink had seemed weird to me at the time, but what did I know about tech people?

“I’d bet on it,” she said. “Which doesn’t mean that’s how he was, like, poisoned. I mean, would it happen that fast?”

“That depends on what they used,” Marty said authoritatively. “In Arsenic and Old Lace it worked right away, but they mixed a teaspoon of arsenic, half a teaspoon of strychnine, and—”

“Just a pinch of cyanide.” We both finished the quote, exchanging a look.

Callie shrugged. “Okay, but in D.O.A. it took days.”

“Right,” I agreed. In D.O.A. (1949, Edmond O’Brien) the victim had lived for several days. “But that was because he had to survive long enough to solve his own murder. And wasn’t it some weird sort of radium something?”

“It was movie poison,” Marty agreed. “I think it was arsenic in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, and that took forever, but Bogey was trying to make it look like natural causes.”

A husband killed his wife with poisoned milk in The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947, Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck) and a wife suspected her husband of trying to kill her with poisoned milk in Suspicion (1941, Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine). “I wonder if guys got away with a lot more poisoning back when doctors thought women could die of ‘nervous complaints,’” I mused. “And when drinking milk at bedtime was a thing.”

“Probably. And I think arsenic used to be, like, legit easy to get,” Callie said. “Can you even get it anymore?” She looked at Marty.

“How would I know?” He shifted his coffee cup away from her.

“I mean, what did Claude Raines use to poison Ingrid Bergman in Notorious?” Callie was getting into this now. “Because that wasn’t fast, either.”

“No,” I agreed. In Notorious (1946, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant) Bergman had lingered long enough to thwart the Nazis. “But is that because Ben Hecht was a screenwriter who knew his poisons or just because he needed Ingrid to hang in there until Cary could rescue her?”

“You’re the writer,” Marty said. “You tell us.”

I stood and held up my index finger. “I’m not a screenwriter anymore.” I held up another finger. “We don’t know what poison killed S.” A third finger. “And we’re not going to figure anything out by analyzing the famous poisonings of classic films.”

Marty looked at Callie. “Two out of three of those are true.”

I didn’t ask him which he meant. I didn’t want to know.