While Healy paid off the cabbie, Holly and her father got out and stared at the wreckage of their house. Rented house, it was true. But still the second home they’d lost in the course of one year. Would a flood be next? A plague of locusts? Maybe they’d get whipped up in a tornado like in that old movie and wind up in the land of Oz, dancing around with the Lollipop Guild.
“I always hated that palm tree,” Holly said, staring at it as it lay, placidly, with its trunk sprawled across the roof.
“Never trusted it,” March said.
“Yeah.”
“Go inside and get your stuff,” he told her. “We’ll go stay in a hotel or something.”
“Okay.” Holly headed off, ducked under the yellow tape that said CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS over and over.
“We’ll get room service,” March called.
Behind him, he heard the sound of a car pulling in and thought maybe the cab had come back, maybe they’d left something in the back seat. But turning around he saw it was a two-tone Oldsmobile, a clunker whose undercarriage was dragging against the pavement and whose driver was in similar condition. Before he saw her face, March saw her support hose emerge, and then the giant batik handbag, which landed in the driveway by her feet.
With a groan, Lily Glenn dragged herself out of the seat and hobbled over to where the two men were standing. She peered at March through her thick, round lenses.
“Mister March,” she said, and she did not sound pleased.
“Mrs. Glenn,” March said.
“I need to talk to you,” she intoned.
“What a, what a wonderful surprise,” March said, with what he thought must be the worst fake smile he’d ever mustered.
Mrs. Glenn peered past him at the fallen tree, the shattered windows. “That your house…?”
“We’re remodeling,” March said. “Listen, this isn’t a great time—”
“It is a great time,” she insisted. She walked over to Healy. “He is supposed to be looking for my niece.”
Healy stared at March. “Is he really.”
March pretended he hadn’t heard.
“I thought he quit,” Healy said.
“Oh, he did,” Mrs. Glenn said, “he tried. But I insisted he continue. Because I saw her.” Her voice rose. “But nobody believes me. Why will nobody believe me?”
Behind her, March was making gestures—a finger rotating beside his ear like a pencil sharpener, a finger across his throat.
“I’m sure I don’t know, ma’am,” Healy said.
“I saw her,” Mrs. Glenn said, “in her house, through the front window, as clear as day. Writing something, at a desk. She was wearing a blue pinstripe jacket.”
“I’ve seen that jacket, sure,” Healy said.
March stopped gesturing. “What do you mean you saw that jacket?”
“In Shattuck’s place, this storage room, with a bunch of other clothes.”
“That jacket was in Sid Shattuck’s place?”
“Yeah,” Healy said, “the whole suit. It was bagged up, had Misty’s name on it and the name of the movie.”
March’s eyes lit up. It was the illumination of a circuit suddenly closing. You could almost literally see the lightbulb go on.
“It’s wardrobe for the film,” he said. “It’s wardrobe for the film!”
So? Healy wasn’t sure why that was such an exciting bit of news. So it was wardrobe for the film. So what? It meant the old lady hadn’t been imagining things when she described what she saw her niece wearing, but what it meant beyond that Healy couldn’t grasp.
But March clearly had something in mind. “Holy fucking shit,” he said.
“Oh!” Mrs. Glenn exclaimed, and wagged an outraged finger in his face.
“Sorry,” March said, then took hold of her arm and started marching her back to her car. “Mrs. Glenn, I need you to take us to Misty’s house, I need you to show us exactly what you saw.”
* * *
They drove up a steep hill to a little place with white walls and a red door, raised over a garage it shared with the house next door. Wrought-iron railings out front, bay window, some planters on the wall. It wasn’t a mansion, that was for sure. Most of the profits from her films had gone to Shattuck, clearly. But it was a decent place to live, in a decent neighborhood. March wondered how many of Misty’s neighbors had known how she paid her mortgage.
“There—there,” Mrs. Glenn said, pointing, “that’s the window. I was coming around that corner, and I saw her, through that window, writing on her desk against the far wall.”
They all got out, filed up the stairs and into the house, March first, then Healy, then Holly, and finally, slowly, Mrs. Glenn. One by one they all spotted the same thing. Mrs. Glenn was the one to put it into words.
“But—no—it was here, the desk was here!”
She was standing by a bare wall.
“No desk there now,” Healy said.
“Well…I don’t know what to say…”
“Dad, what are you doing?” Holly was staring at her father’s backside as he crawled around on all fours, poking at what looked like a bulky wooden coffee table in the middle of the room. Actually, it didn’t look quite like a coffee table—it was too high and blocky and it had a strange seam down the middle, almost like a dining room table that you could expand by pulling it open and inserting extra leaves. But it didn’t quite look like that either.
“Give me a second,” March said, grunting, pressing with his fingertips against the base of the unit. Finally he found something, a latch, and pulled it. The two halves of the unit slid apart at the seam, and from underneath a piece of equipment rose into view.
It was a film projector.
“World’s worst detective, huh?” He stared at Holly, who had her arms crossed again. Her favorite pose. But she was going to have to eat her words.
“You did see your niece, Mrs. Glenn,” March said exultantly. “You saw her on that wall, at a desk, in a pinstripe suit.”
“So, what she saw through the window,” Healy said, slowly, remembering his own recent encounter with a projection system that threw the image of a beautiful woman, large as life, on the wall of a room, “was a movie.”
“Not a movie,” March said. “The movie. The movie!”
“But the film burned up,” Healy said.
“Well, how did she see it two days after it supposedly burned up? And the wardrobe matches perfectly?”
“So Amelia had a second print?” Healy said. “She had a copy?”
“Wouldn’t you?” March said.
Holly spoke up. “And she gave that copy to Misty. So after Misty dies…she comes here to get it…checks the film against that wall…”
“Lily sees it through that window,” March said, pointing.
“…and Lily starts knocking on the glass, so Amelia splits. And takes the film.”
“And goes…where?” Healy said—but then realized he knew the answer. “The Western Hotel. To meet the businessmen. Didn’t you say that Rocco guy was a—”
“Distributor,” March said, and he threw his hands up. “Distributors! She was screening it for the distributors! It’s out there, the film exists, now we just have to find it.”
Holly, meanwhile, was poking around the movie projector. There was no film threaded on it, no film anywhere inside the cabinet it came out of. But she did find a slip of paper.
“Hey, look,” she said, and read aloud: “ ‘Opening night, nine PM.’ Signed, Chet.”
“Fucking Chet,” March said.
“The protestor guy?” Healy said.
“Give me that shit,” March said, and took the slip from Holly. He read it over again. “She was planning something with Chet. ‘Opening night.’ What’s opening around now that they would care about…?”
“The L.A. Auto Show,” Holly said. “It’s today, right? It’s been all over the radio.”
“Yeah,” Healy said. “Big party, mucky-mucks, loads of press. If you wanted to get a story out there…”
“And fucking Chet’s a projectionalist,” March said.
“Please!” Mrs. Glenn was standing there, on the verge of tears. “Please, stop talking. I’ve been listening to everything you’ve said—does this mean, does this mean…that my niece is dead?”
“Yes!” March exploded. Holly and Healy looked at him. Jesus. He lowered his voice. “I mean, you know, yes? She was murdered. Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“But we’re going to bring down the people who did it,” Holly said, firmly.
“Yeah,” March said, nodding sincerely. “And for a deeply discounted rate.”