Some Like It Hot-Buttered (16 page)

“So, do you believe Amy about the affair her husband was having with Marcy Resnick?” Leslie asked. She was eating a small salad and refused even to touch the croutons, which I thought was just a little showy. I had a steak sandwich because there was no way I was riding twenty-eight miles unless I got a reward for it. I even ordered french fries.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Everybody seems to agree that Ansella was not himself for a few months before he died. You could attribute that to guilt, I suppose. Some people at their office clearly thought something was going on between Vincent and Marcy. Amy admits they fought before he left for the movies. I would suspect her, but it just doesn’t add up.”

“What doesn’t add up?” She had put so little dressing on the salad, I was practically embarrassed to look at it.

“The murder couldn’t have been that spontaneous. Someone had to know where Ansella was going that night, get hold of the medication, grind it up and put it in the vial in advance, get to the theatre and sit next to him, sprinkle it on his popcorn and leave undetected. That’s not something that just happens; it’s something that is planned and executed.”

Leslie stopped spearing romaine to ask, “So? The crime was premeditated. No kidding. It’s not an impulsive act. We knew that.”

“So, it’s not the act of someone who just found out her husband had been cheating on her. It’s not an act that comes from a shock. It was something done after long, careful thought. And from the description Leo gave me, the woman sitting next to Ansella that night sure wasn’t his wife.”

"Marcy?”

I shook my head. “Not unless she put on a blond wig and about thirty pounds before she left the house, and hit herself in the face repeatedly with a bag of loose change. Leo said she was the ugliest woman he’d ever seen, and he was a good few rows behind them, in the dark.”

“So how reliable is his description, then?”

“Leo’s a nut, but he’s a smart nut. If he says that’s what she looked like, you can bank on it.”

“Joe Dunbar’s wife looks roughly like that.” Leslie was all cop now. I don’t know why, but I found it exciting.

“Yeah, but Leo said this woman was ugly. Christie Dunbar isn’t ugly.”

“Not everyone has the same standards of beauty that you do, Elliot,” Leslie said.

I thought about what Dunbar had said. “But there might have been someone else there . . .”

Leslie looked up sharply. “Who?”

I didn’t have time to answer because my father was walking toward us, but not even pretending to look at me. His gaze was fixed directly on Leslie, like many men’s often were, but to his credit he was looking directly into her eyes. He’s a class act, my father.

“So this is Leslie!” Classy, but not restrained. He took her hand between his own two, and held it. “It’s so nice to meet you,” he said.

“It’s nice to meet
you
,” she answered. “Come sit.” There was no question which side of the booth Dad would choose; he sat next to Leslie, who had to scoot over. I could have warned her about his brimming affection for anyone whom his son deems worthy, but it’s not the kind of thing you can adequately describe.

“So, Elliot says you’re a cop,” Dad began. Nice opening, Dad.

“A police officer, yes,” she corrected gently.

“Sorry.” He caught the distinction immediately.

“You know, I’m here, too, Dad,” I interjected.

“You I’ve seen before,” he noted without shifting his gaze. “So Leslie, why is a pretty girl like you out there carrying a gun?”

I love my father deeply, but the man can drive you nuts without half trying. “Dad,” I started.

“It’s all right,” Leslie cut me off. “It’s what I want to do, Arthur,” she continued (he had instructed her to address him that way). “I’ve always wanted to be one of the good guys. Whether or not I’m pretty doesn’t really enter into it.”

Dad thought that over, and nodded. “Makes sense. So. Are you two done? I’m ready to drive.”

“You just drove here from Manalapan, Dad. Don’t you want something to eat?”

He made a face. “Your mother made me lunch before I left.” My mother is a lovely woman, but family legend has it she learned to cook from the Marquis de Sade.

“You sure you don’t want anything, then?”

He considered. “Maybe a little something.”

We sat while he hunkered down with a brisket sandwich, cole slaw, and a side of creamed corn before ordering rice pudding for dessert. Maybe my mother couldn’t cook, but she certainly understood cholesterol, and would never have allowed such a repast if she’d been present. Which is why I didn’t say anything to Dad about it; I knew he didn’t get to enjoy himself this way too often.

He insisted on paying for everyone’s meal, over our protests, and then ushered us to his truck where we lifted the bikes into the bed, over
his
protests (he wanted to do the lifting) and got in to drive back to Frenchtown. Naturally, Leslie got the window seat, and I was stuck in the middle, feeling the drive shaft heat up beneath my . . . beneath me. Being one’s son only goes so far in my family.

In between my father’s fawning over Leslie and her enjoying it immensely, we discussed where Anthony might be. Dad was still convinced there “must be a girlfriend somewhere,” despite his having met Anthony on a few previous occasions. Of course, he was convinced that I had been the most popular kid in my senior class in high school, and we were living under the same roof at the time. So his assessment of teenage males might be a tad suspect.

Leslie speculated that Anthony was “hiding out” with friends, and assumed, as the rest of the police did, that he had pirated the DVDs and might be somehow connected to Ansella’s murder. I told her that didn’t jibe with the pre-threaded reels at the theatre, and she pursed her lips and stopped talking for a while.

I wasn’t prepared to agree with any of those assumptions, and I burrowed down deeper in my seat, trying to get into Anthony’s head. If I were nineteen and people thought I’d committed a crime, where would I go?

He was only a year and a half out of high school, I thought. Anthony wasn’t the type who would have made legions of friends in college, and probably not that many beforehand, either. If there were one old high school buddy he could trust . . . Where had Anthony gone to high school, again?

“You think he’d go back to his hometown?” Dad asked. There are times he can read my mind. Personally, it frightens me. “Wouldn’t his parents see him around? Wouldn’t he try to contact them somehow?”

“You’re still operating on the assumption that he’s guilty; that’s where you’re going wrong,” I told him. “Anthony knows people suspect him, but he knows he didn’t do it. He’s enough of a movie maniac to think there’s only one thing left for him to do.”

“Oh, my god,” Leslie said, “We’ll never find him. He’s pulling a Richard Kimble.”

“What’s a Richard Kimble?” Dad asked.

"It’s from
The Fugitive
,” she said. “He’s searching for the real killer.”

22

We stopped at Frenchtown to pick up Leslie’s car, and parted ways with Dad, who expressed no regrets about having spent almost an entire day in the car without actually going anywhere. He twinkled at Leslie before leaving, and she kissed him on the cheek, which probably made his month.

She drove me back to the town house (I don’t really think of it as “home” yet; I’ve only been there a year), where we liberated my bike from the contraption she had strapped to her car. We went inside for a quick soda and I took a shower (after she insisted we had to do so separately, the spoil sport). Leslie showered and got ready for her shift while I biked to the theatre, on the assumption that I hadn’t spent enough time on a bicycle yet today.

The elves had threaded up the projector. I guessed the elves loved me again.

Since I wasn’t busy rewinding and threading the film, I had time to think, and after I had finished checking the projection booth, I went down to the office, took out Anthony’s employment application, and looked up his educational background.

He’d gone to Cranford High School. A place to start.

I read through the rest of the application, hoping some piece of information would jump out at me, but aside from his birth date (he was a Sagittarius), parents (two), grade point average (not bad), and reason he wanted to work at a crumbling movie theatre (“I love movies. I want to make movies. I have a script that I could shoot today if I had the money”), there was little to go on. In fact, nothing.

When Sophie arrived, I reminded her that in Anthony’s absence, I’d be spending more time in the projection booth, and that she’d be in charge of most everything else. She seemed duly impressed, until I realized she still had the buds from her iPod in her ears, and was nodding along with the music, from Evanescence or some such band.

I motioned to her to take the buds out, and she sighed a little, but obliged. I repeated the instructions I’d just given her and Sophie looked more annoyed than she had before, if such a thing were possible.

“I
heard
you,” she said. “I’m not deaf.”

“It’s hard to tell with those things in your ears. If I’m going to give you more responsibility, I have to know you’re listening.”

If Sophie hadn’t already been doing her “cadaverous pale” thing, I’m sure the word “responsibility” would have made her look downright ashen. “Why would I want more responsibility?” she asked.

“So you can learn more about the movie business.”

She half-closed her eyes and pulled in her lips. “Oh joy, my career can begin at last.” Sophie put the buds back into her ears and began to undo the damage I’d done to “her” snack stand.

The house was still bigger than most nights, but clearly the novelty of going to the movies at the “death theatre” was beginning to wane. I’d have to either do better advertising or kill someone to keep the box office alive. It was a tough choice.

Our audience, I noticed, included a good number of teenagers (each of whom I’d personally asked for ID, as
Phat Ho
was rated R) dressed and made-up much like my lone remaining employee. When I could bear to pull myself away from William Powell and Myrna Loy (all right, so
The Thin Man
was a mystery; it was a
comic
mystery), I asked Sophie about the influx of Goth youth.

“They’ve come to experience the death,” she said. I knew I shouldn’t have asked.

I had just started the projectors on the second feature, a turgid sex comedy with remarkably little sex and even less comedy, when Sophie knocked on the projection booth door, and I came out.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“Can fresh popcorn go bad?” she asked.

I could feel my eyebrows crowd together into one big eyebrow. “No,” I said. “You just popped it, right? You did it yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“Then, no. It can’t go bad that fast.”

She nodded, and headed back downstairs, but I stopped her at the top of the staircase. “Why?” I said.

“Why, what?”

“Why did you ask about the popcorn?”

“Oh, because it’s all white and powdery.” Sophie headed downstairs again, and I stood there for what I hope wasn’t the fifteen minutes it felt like, then ran down the stairs to the snack bar.

Sophie was alone there, standing with the iPod buds back in her ears, bagging popcorn. Luckily, she didn’t sample any as she bagged.

It
was
white and powdery. It looked like white cheddar corn. We didn’t sell white cheddar corn.

I motioned for Sophie to take the buds out of her ears. “Did you sell any of this to anyone?” I asked.

“Popcorn?” She clearly figured I was a complete idiot, and I was starting to feel like one.

“
This
popcorn. The fresh batch.
The white and powdery stuff
.”

“Oh. No, I popped it just at the end of the intermission, but I still had some left from the last batch. Nobody’s been out here since then.” She picked a piece up, and was about to put it into her mouth.

I slapped at her hand and knocked the popcorn out. Before she could complain, I said, “Call Chief Dutton and tell him to come here
right now
. And don’t, under any circumstances, let anyone eat this popcorn. Understand? Don’t sell anybody any popcorn, and don’t eat any yourself. And wash your hands.”

Chastised, Sophie nodded, and reached for the wall phone behind the snack bar to call Dutton. Just before she dialed, however, she turned to me. “Elliot?”

I was heading to my office, but I turned back to face her. “What?”

“Are the Milk Duds okay?”

Dutton showed up fifteen minutes later, with Sergeant O’Donnell and a Midland Heights cop who was not (to my dismay) Leslie Levant. O’Donnell, who by dint of his county affiliation appeared to be in charge, made sure the officer bagged some of the popcorn in plastic.

“Are you sure nobody ate this batch?” O’Donnell asked me.

“Sophie had just finished making it, then she had to walk away from the snack bar for a minute,” I told him. “She says when she got back, the popcorn looked, and I’m quoting, ‘white and powdery.’ So she came upstairs and got me.”

“Why’d she have to leave the snack bar?” O’Donnell said.

“We’re down to a two-person staff these days,” I emphasized for him. “After the intermission, sometimes one of the people needs to walk away for a minute. You know.”

“I spoke with her,” Dutton reported. “She didn’t notice anybody near the snack bar before she left or when she got back.”

“Could whoever put the stuff on the popcorn have given it to someone in the audience already?” O’Donnell asked, looking nervously at the auditorium doors.

“Then why put it on
all
the popcorn?” Dutton said. “They could just dose the box they wanted the victim to eat, like with Mr. Ansella.”

“What do you think it means?” I asked. “Is someone trying to sabotage my business, and poor Mr. Ansella died randomly?”