Chapter 26

“Trixie!” I quickly closed the door behind me, relieved that everyone was downstairs out of earshot. “I’m so glad to see you. I was getting so worried.”

“Gee, that’s sweet of you, but I’m just grand.” She kicked her legs as she hopped off the arm of the couch. “What did everyone say about me after I left the other night? It was just the other night, wasn’t it? I checked the marquee…” A little frown appeared. She often got confused about the passage of time when she was gone and did her best to orient herself by looking out the window to see what was on the marquee. She could check that against the three-month calendar of lineups I kept on a large blackboard in the office.

“Just the other night,” I assured her. “Today’s only Wednesday.”

“Oh, good.” The frown disappeared, replaced with her previous excitement. “What did everyone say? Did they know it was me? Do they all believe in me now?”

“Most of them believed in you before,” I told her. “But you made quite an impression.”

She dimpled. “I did, didn’t I? It was so clever of you to point me to the candles.”

“I knew you could do it,” I told her.

She perched on the arm of the couch again, chewing a red lacquered fingernail. “I wish they’d been able to see me, though. Do you think we could try again?”

“I heard something about Lillian going out of town,” I hedged. “But Trixie, there’s something else. Something amazing.” I went to Gabriela’s keyboard. “This is for you.”

“Is it?” She stared at the apparatus. “Gee, it’s…something, isn’t it?” She looked at me, confusion mixed with delight. “What is it?”

“You know how you’ve always said you wished you could use one of those phones or computers?”

“Why, sure,” she nodded, curls bouncing.

“Well, this,” I touched the tablet. “Is like the screen of a phone or computer. And this,” I swept my hand over the keyboard. “Is how you can use it. At least Gabriela thinks you can. And I think you can. Do you want to see if you can?”

I was more excited than Trixie at that point.

Her face had clouded over. “Oh, but…” she passed her hand through the tablet. “I can’t…”

“Not like that,” I said. “Try just touching one of the keys. Gabriela fixed it so it should be able to sense you, by temperature. Try ‘T’ for Trixie.”

She blinked, looked at the keyboard, then looked at me again. “Really?”

“Really,” I nodded. “Try.”

She pointed at the ‘T’ key, hesitated, and then pressed her finger through it.

“I don’t quite…” she began.

Then we both screamed. Because the screen lit up and the letter ‘T’ appeared. It was quickly followed by the letters ‘R,’ ‘G,’ and ‘Y,’ but never mind. She had done it.

She jumped off the couch, backing away from the keyboard, pointing at it. “Did you see? I did it!”

“You did!” I yelled, forgetting that there were other people in the building who might wonder why I was shouting with excitement when I was supposedly alone in my office.

“Trixie, you did it,” I said more quietly.

She stepped back to the device, peering at the screen. “Why did the rest of the letters show up?”

“It must be super sensitive,” I said. “Try again, and maybe don’t put your finger all the way through the key.”

This time she hovered her finger right over the ‘T,’ but didn’t pass through it. Sure enough, it appeared on the screen after about a second. This time alone.

“Nora!” Trixie threw herself at me. I know she intended it as a hug, but she was a little too enthusiastic and rushed right through me.

“Trixie!” The cold sensation of being charged by a ghost was one I’d never get used to, but this time I hardly noticed it. “I’m so happy for you!”

There was a loud staccato knock at the door, followed by Marty opening it.

“What are you happy about? Who are you talking to?” He looked suspiciously around the room. “Never mind. If you’re losing it I don’t even want to know.”

Trixie moved away from me and I tried to look like I hadn’t just been celebrating something earthshattering with a card-carrying member of the spirit world.

“There’s a guy downstairs,” Marty informed me. “He says he’s here about some gowns?”

  

I left Trixie to experiment with her new technology and hustled down to the lobby. The guy from the garment storage facility looked to be in his seventies and spoke with a soft Russian accent. He was rightly horrified when I took him to the basement and showed him where I’d been keeping the famous gowns.

“Are these originals?” he asked, looking more than a little dazzled. He was the right demographic for recognizing an iconic Marilyn Monroe dress or two.

“I believe so,” I told him. “I’m waiting on the authentication, but let’s treat them like they are.”

He treated them like they were priceless, and I wrote him an account-draining check. After he packed each gown reverently in its own sturdy travel container, I suggested he pull his truck around to the alley and leave by the back door. I didn’t want to think about what rumors might get going if he were to tote what looked like six modest coffins through the lobby. We had rumors enough.

As I was locking the alley door behind him I felt my phone vibrate. I was surprised to see it was a call, not a text, from Otis.

“Otis, you got my message.” I went back to the prop room, knowing the signal would be stronger there.

“I was glad to hear from you, Nora. After our last exchange I thought you might be cooling on our project.”

Our project? I wouldn’t let myself get sidetracked by whatever his latest scheme might be. “Otis, tell me the truth,” I said, sitting on a table in the prop room. The gowns were gone, but the rest of my possessions were still scattered all over the place. “Did you buy Tommy May’s quarter-share of the Palace?”

“Why? Do you want me to? No problem.” He sounded busy and distracted, which wasn’t unusual for Otis. A normal afternoon for him involved half a dozen underlings vying for his attention while he simultaneously tore some poor writer’s screenplay apart and devoured a ham sandwich.

“Otis, you’re not listening,” I said, trying for patience. “I’m asking if you already have. Bought it.”

“No, but I can. Just have him call me,” he said, apparently forgetting that Tommy was in no position to call anyone. “Listen,” he went on without a pause. “I’ve got an update on the Venice plan. I’ve arranged for Glen Hendricks to go with us. The press will eat it up. The story will be that you two met when he signed on as the lead in—”

I abandoned patience and cut him off mid-scheme. “Otis, what are you talking about? What do you mean us? And what’s Glen Hendricks got to do with anything?” Hendricks, I knew, was the red-hot action star of a recent CGI-fueled video game masquerading as a movie.

“Glen Hendricks,” Otis explained gleefully, “is seven years younger than your husband and about a hundred times hotter. Ted’s only hope of landing any major franchise is if Hendricks passes on it first. You showing up at the Venice Film Festival with him is going to kill Ted.”

“What are you talking about?” I wailed. I often ended up wailing when trying to talk with Otis. “I’m not showing up anywhere with Glen Hendricks. I’ve never even met him.”

“You’ll meet him, don’t worry,” he cackled.

“That’s not my point. I’m not—”

“You’re going to Venice with Glen Hendricks,” Otis insisted, his voice hardening. “The press will go nuts and nobody will pay attention to Ted or Priya or their super-secret-but-carefully-leaked wedding plans.”

I took a deep breath. “Otis, I’m doing no such thing.”

He didn’t hear a word. “Priya’s going to see that Ted may be big now, but he’s not going to be big forever. There will always be some new guy gunning for him, and sooner or later one of them will take him down. But I’m always going to be on top. I’m the one with the power to—”

“Otis!”

Miraculously, he paused.

“Otis, this has gone too far. I’m not going to traipse around Venice pretending to be with Glen Hendricks. I’m not going to do any of this anymore.”

“Sure you are,” he said. The man had an uncanny ability to hear only what he wanted to. “Think about it, Nora. This is how we’ll get them.”

“Listen to me very carefully, Otis. I don’t care about getting them. I only care about getting the money that’s rightfully mine, and to be honest, I’m caring about that less every day.” As I said that, I realized it was true.

“Sure you care,” he breezed. “Why else did you call me?”

I did my very best not to scream in frustration. “I didn’t call you. I sent you a text. Asking if you bought Tommy’s share of the Palace before he was killed. I take it your answer is no?”

“Oh, shit,” he said. “No, I didn’t. Was I supposed to?”

“Goodbye, Otis.”

He was still talking when I hung up.