Some Like It Hot-Buttered (20 page)

“And you didn’t approve?”

Christie waved a hand. “What’s to approve? I’m not his mother. But it did drive a little wedge between Joe and Vince, toward the end. I don’t know why, but it did.”

“Christie,” I began, not knowing how to phrase it less obviously, “you didn’t happen to go to the movie with Vince the night he . . . the night it happened, did you?”

She looked at me as if I’d suggested that she plant a few magic beans and go kill a giant. “Me? No! Why the hell would I go see a movie alone with Vince Ansella?”

“So where were you that night?”

It was the only time I saw her actively evading a question. “I was . . . out.”

“Out? Just out?”

Christie tried to snarl, but it just came out as a different kind of grin. “Yeah. You never been out before, Elliot?” She couldn’t sustain it, and the grin reverted to her usual one.

I had one last question. “Why do you think Amy called Joe a murderer at Vince’s funeral?” I asked.

Christie didn’t hesitate. “Because she couldn’t accuse herself.”

I told Amy Ansella I wanted to come back because I was interested in buying part of her husband’s comedy library, and to a certain extent, that was true. I certainly would have to take a few of the more rare items, like
Flickers
, off her hands, just to ensure that they didn’t end up on eBay, being sold to people who thought they were buying pornography or art house cinema.

I rode the bike rather than take the bus; it wasn’t too far, and that way, I could set my own schedule. I needed to be back at the theatre in time to set up for the Friday night “crowd,” which tonight would probably consist mostly of parents and children, since a family comedy was the contemporary draw for the week. The tainted popcorn incident had not produced the boost in ticket sales that the murder did, but crowds were still a bit above average.

Amy was not dressed in black when I arrived this time. I don’t want to give the impression that I generally lust after recent widows, or that I do an inordinate amount of lusting overall. But Amy was a remarkably attractive woman in an indefinable way: she didn’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model or the girl next door with a naughty side, but she commanded attention.

She ushered me into the living room, and I immediately noticed that a number of the video titles were missing from their shelves. I breathed a sigh of relief that my favorites were still there.

“I see I’m not the first to inquire,” I said as I assessed the collection. It had been haphazardly picked apart, with one title from a series missing and others randomly replaced on racks. The sight of it probably would have driven Vincent Ansella crazy.

“I gave some of them away,” Amy said in a small voice. “I gave my sister-in-law some for her kids, you know,
The Pink Panther
and stuff like that.”

It was true: the titles that were missing, as far as I could tell, were movies that parents would feel comfortable showing their children. For example, the Laurel and Hardy section was missing only
March of the Wooden Soldiers
, and the animated section was practically gone, with only things like
Fritz the Cat
and
Cool World
remaining (Ansella really
was
a completist!).

“I’m sorry I can’t make you an offer for the whole collection,” I said. “I’d love to keep them together, but the theatre isn’t making me enough of an income for that.”

“I’d be happy to get rid of them,” Amy said, looking me straight in the eye. “I don’t want the reminders, and Vincent’s insurance left me with enough money so that I don’t have to worry about the value. Make me an offer.”

Stunned, I did. I was even more stunned when she accepted it.

“I didn’t think you liked me all that well the last time we met, Amy,” I said after I’d written her an amazingly small check.

“I liked you just fine,” she said, giving me the same reassuring attention I’m sure she would any man. Amy Ansella knew how she looked, and knew the effect it would have on men. But it seemed to have become reflexive, to the point that sometimes, I wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “I wasn’t crazy about some of the questions you were asking.”

“Because I mentioned Marcy Resnick?” Meg had said to prod in the sensitive areas, too.

Amy’s face wasn’t as attractive when I said that. She again mentioned a word that rhymes with Ipswitch, and said, “Yes, because you mentioned
her
.” Nothing more than that.

“But I’m okay now that it’s all about the collection?” I asked. Well, getting on her bad side hadn’t helped much.

“You’re fine, Elliot,” she said, again almost by rote. “When can you come to take them away?”

“How’s Monday?” I asked. “Comedy Tonight will be open during the day all weekend, but on Monday I can borrow my father’s truck.” Saying it out loud made me realize just how much sentences like that will take you back to high school. Maybe not owning a motor vehicle was a problem, after all.

Amy agreed on Monday as the moving day for her husband’s enormous video collection, and I thanked her and said good-bye. She walked out to see me off, and just as I was adjusting my helmet, I figured it was worth one last shot.

“Why didn’t you tell the police you were at the theatre the night your husband died?” I asked.

“Oh, Elliot,” Amy said, disappointed. “And you were being so nice.” She turned and walked back into the house.

28

I hadn’t intended to schedule a talk with Marcy Resnick so soon after seeing Amy, but it was the only way Marcy’s schedule worked out. Naturally, I didn’t tell her I’d just come from seeing Vincent Ansella’s widow, and there was no reason to bring it up. Best I didn’t mention that Amy had called her names.

Marcy came to Comedy Tonight from her office, since I had to set up for the evening’s showing (I was getting used to Anthony not being there, although I checked every night to see if the gremlins had threaded up the projector— tonight they hadn’t), so I treated her to the Elliot Freed version of dinner: a sandwich from Tastee Sub Shop of Edison and a soda from the theatre’s fountain. Never let it be said that I’m a cheapskate. At least, never let it be said to my face.

There was hardly enough room for us to both sit in my office, so I pulled two chairs up to the table we have next to the snack bar for popcorn salt, napkins, and straws. What it lacked in elegance it made up for in dreariness.

Marcy looked around at the lobby and nodded her head. “I like it,” she said. “It’s not like a multiplex at the mall.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s more like Pompeii after the eruption.” She covered her mouth to laugh. “It has charm.” So did John Wayne Gacy, I thought, but I let it go.

Marcy looked more closely at me. “You didn’t invite me here to discuss the decor, did you?”

“No.” I felt awkward, but even Fred Astaire would have felt awkward in this situation, white tie or no.

“You’re still looking into the thing with Vince, aren’t you?” Marcy’s gaze was probing, but it didn’t burn through me like it could have. She wasn’t accusing me; she was just trying to get it clear in her own mind.

“It’s stuck in my head,” I said, possibly to myself. “I can’t stop thinking about it. And I’m concerned that the police think my projectionist is involved, when that doesn’t make any sense.”

Marcy watched me for a while, thinking. Then she said, “How can I help?”

“You can forgive me if my questions aren’t tactful.”

Her face clouded over. I was going to ask about the rumors again, and she knew it. “I didn’t have an affair with Vince Ansella, Elliot,” Marcy said. “I already told you that.”

“So why do people think you did?”

She stood up. A theatrical move, but I understood it; I’m better on my feet as well. “People think what they want to think,” Marcy said. “I had lunch with the guy a few times, and they turned it into this hot romance. By the standards of the office gossips, you and I are having a wild affair right now. But so far, I’ve managed to fight the impulse to jump your bones.”

It was just as well. Marcy was a very attractive woman, though in exactly the opposite way that Amy was: she could very well have been the girl next door, if the girl next door had grown up compact, slim, and down-to-earth. But at the moment, my life was overstocked with women, and I wasn’t prepared to add another. Not that Marcy was exactly making an offer.

“I understand how rumors get started,” I told her. “But Amy Ansella believes it’s true, and she doesn’t really have contact with the gossips at the office, does she?”

Marcy’s mouth puckered a bit at the mention of Vincent Ansella’s widow. “I don’t know what her problem is,” she said. “She knows I didn’t have an affair with her husband, but she’s resentful of me.”

“If you only worked with Vincent, and had lunch with him on occasion, how would his wife even know enough about you to be resentful?”

She sat back down. “From . . . being around, you know. Office Christmas parties, Fourth of July picnics, that sort of thing. The company’s really into pretending we’re a big happy family.”

Marcy didn’t seem too keen on finishing her sub, and I thought it would be rude to scarf it up while she was sitting there, so I cleared the table and threw out the remains of our dinner. I gave her the tour of the theatre, showed her the projection booth and screened a three-minute trailer for
Help!
, the classic film of the evening, which she found, and I’m quoting now, “groovy.”

“You’re off by a few years,” I told her. “Actually, it’s ’fab.’ ”

“Gear.”

I smiled and nodded, but I’d killed our chance at easy conversation by talking about her rumored liaison with Ansella. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” I told her as I walked her to the theatre entrance. “Are you sure you won’t stay for the movie?”

“I’d like to, but I have to walk the dog,” she said. “He’s probably sitting home with his legs crossed as we speak.”

“Another time, maybe.”

“Yeah.”

I unlocked the front door and reached over to open it for Marcy, then stopped. “Can I ask one last impertinent question? ” I said.

She nodded, a little hesitantly.

"Why do you think Amy called Joe Dunbar a murderer at the funeral?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Speculate. I could use your perspective.”

Marcy thought about that, searched my eyes, and nodded. “I don’t think she loved Vincent as much as she should have, as much as he wanted her to,” she said. “Once he was dead, I think she felt guilty, so she had to shift the blame to
somebody
.”

“You think Amy killed her husband?”

Marcy shook her head. “No. I don’t think she cared about him enough to kill him. You can chalk that up to the word of a suspected adulterer, but that’s what I think.”

“You’re not a suspected adulterer,” I told her.

“I’m not?”

“Of course not. You’re a suspected
adulteress
.” Marcy chuckled, but there wasn’t much mirth in it. “I have one last uncomfortable question.” She nodded, accepting. “Where were you the night Vincent died?”

“I had a date,” she said. “The police asked me that, too.”

“Have they confirmed it with the guy?” I asked.

“No.”

My eyebrows dropped. “Why not?” I asked.

“I haven’t told them who I was out with.” She clearly wasn’t going to tell me, either.

I repeated the offer to stay and watch the movie, but Marcy seemed to want out of Comedy Tonight as soon as possible, which made me feel bad. I unlocked the door for her, thought about what a nice person she seemed to be, and wondered why what she’d said had unsettled me so badly. And then I wondered if Sharon had ever loved me as much as I wanted her to. I wondered if anybody ever loves someone as much as that person would like.

And I was willing to bet Marcy didn’t have a dog.

29

The showing that night went by uneventfully, which was a blessing, considering how hard my mind was racing. Having immersed myself in the investigation of Vincent Ansella’s murder, I used my most trusted mental tool— obsession—to attack the problem, and so far, I was coming up empty.

Beyond a few gut feelings, a rumor or two, the observations of relatively unreliable observers, and a succession of women of varying degrees of attractiveness, I had pretty much nothing to go on. Ansella was just as dead as he’d been three weeks earlier, and there had been no arrests.

Meanwhile, back at the theatre, the projection booth was still unmanned, the basement had been cleared of its illegal booty weeks ago by a team of armed men and women from an agency of either the county, state, or federal government (I never could get a straight answer on that one), and worst of all, the novelty of seeing a film at the Scene of the Crime had worn off, so my crowds, as I was still euphemistically calling them, had dwindled to their pre-murder numbers. New furniture in the town house would have to wait.

None of that would have bothered me, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed that whoever had killed Ansella seemed to have it in for me, too, these days. Besides the unsettling image of a bleeding popcorn box affixed to my countertop with a deadly weapon was the even more unsettling image of my left leg, now an adorable shade of purple under its bandage, and the equally upsetting thought of what would have been if my reflexes had been just a hair slower or the concrete divider just a little less strategically placed.

Not to mention, I wasn’t having sex with anybody, and while I’d gotten used to that since the divorce (actually, a while before the divorce), my first chance since then was gone, and that was a real downer.

Other men have a best friend or a spouse off of whom they can bounce feelings and ideas like this, be told they’re acting ridiculous, and get on with their lives. I, on the other hand, was vacuuming the lobby of an ancient movie theatre while a sixteen-year-old girl trying her best to look like Wednesday Addams listened to Alien Sex Fiend on her iPod and tried very, very hard to pretend I wasn’t there.