Some Like It Hot-Buttered
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
FURTHER FUNNY FILM FACTS FOR FANATICS
Praise for Some Like It Hot-Buttered
“Some Like It Hot-Buttered bursts with mystery, action, romance, and laughs. Jeffrey Cohen is the Dave Barry of the New Jersey Turnpike, and his boffo Double Feature Mystery series is a sure-thing smash hit.”
—Julia Spencer-Fleming, Edgar® Award nominee
and author of All Mortal Flesh
“Knock, knock. Who’s there? Cohen. Cohen who? Cohen buy yourself this most entertaining book.”
—Larry Gelbart, writer of M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!,
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,
Barbarians at the Gate, etc.
“Movies, murder, characters who are real people, laughs, danger, and damn good writing. Some Like It Hot-Buttered truly has something for everyone: a comedy tonight—and so much more!”
—Linda Ellerbee, television producer, journalist, and
bestselling author of Take Big Bites and
And So It Goes
“Cohen’s debut Double Feature Mystery is a double winner. He doesn’t just make you laugh; he makes you care about his characters. I give it two buttery thumbs way up!”
—Chris Grabenstein, Anthony Award-winning
author of Tilt-a-Whirl
“Many authors create good characters, but to create side-splittingly funny ones and make them believable is a tour de force. Jeffrey Cohen accomplishes that in his delightful Some Like It Hot-Buttered, which comes roaring in like a blast of fresh air.”
—Denise Dietz, author of
the Ellie Bernstein/Lt. Peter Miller Mysteries
Praise for the previous novels of Jeffrey Cohen
“You’d better hold on to your butt with both hands, because you’re going to laugh it off.”
—J. A. Konrath, author of the
Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels Mysteries
“A mystery with humor, warmth, and dead-on characterizations of family life—Jeff Cohen is barking up the right tree.”
—Rochelle Krich, Mary Higgins Clark
Award-winning author of Grave Endings
"Briskly-paced ... Soars with a tightly focused plot with realistic characters.” —South Florida Sun-Sentinel
"Hilariously twisty and twisted plot full of entertaining characters . . . Much like Evanovich, Cohen fills his novel with off-the-wall characters just zany enough to seem real.” —Crescent Blues
“Cohen succeeds in injecting humor and humanity into this clever puzzler . . . Should appeal to a broad cross section of the mystery market.” —Publishers Weekly
“Humorous asides arise from screenwriting deadlines, cockeyed in-laws, and self-castigating remarks. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal
“Quirky, adorable, and downright funny.” —Booklist
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
SOME LIKE IT HOT-BUTTERED
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / October 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Jeffrey Cohen.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without
permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the
author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-436-23292-0
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME CRIME design
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To my two greatest influences:
my father and Harpo Marx.
Alas, neither got the chance to read it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am a very lucky man. I get to do what I love to do for a living, and I have a great support system, which as always is headed up by my unparalleled wife and constantly amazing children. There are no better.
This time out, however, I had help from many different people, and they each deserve much more than thanks (but that’s all I can afford). For help getting Elliot’s story seen, thanks to Julia Spencer-Fleming, Ross Hugo-Vidal, PJ Nunn, and Bruce Bortz.
Extremely special thanks are due to a very special person: Linda Ellerbee, whom
I had never met nor spoken to before As Dog Is My Witness. She has become, I think, a friend. Anyone who recommends your book to the Today show is a friend, but Linda is also as gracious and open as they come.
For help in finding the right poison for poor Vincent Ansella, my thanks to Kay Lancaster, P.J. Coldren, and especially Luci Hansson Zahray (otherwise known as “the Poison Lady”), who gave me the information I ended up using, which I’ve probably messed up herein. She knows what she’s talking about, even if I don’t.
And for enormous amounts of information on how a projection booth works, what it costs, and all that sort of thing, I am indebted to Denise Brouillette of the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas; Robert Bruce Thompson, Bert Sandifer, Carl Brookins, and John Stewart (not of The Daily Show), also of the Paramount in Austin. I wasn’t even in the A/V club in high school, so they have literally taught me everything I know, as selflessly as is humanly possible.
I’d be a total swine (an awful thing for a Jewish boy) if I didn’t acknowledge my incredible agent, Christina Hogrebe of the Jane Rotrosen Agency (and all I met there), without whom this book wouldn’t exist, and the terrific editor of the Double Feature Mysteries, Shannon Jamieson Vazquez, without whom this book wouldn’t have been nearly as good.
Something peculiar, something for everyone: a comedy tonight!
—Stephen Sondheim, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
1
Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.
—attributed to every dying English actor since Richard Burbage (1567-1619)
TUESDAY
Young Frankenstein (1974)
and Count Bubba, Down-Home Vampire (last Friday)
The guy in row S, seat 18, was dead, all right. There was no mistaking it. For one thing, he hadn’t laughed once during the Blind Man scene in Young Frankenstein, which was indication enough that all brain function had ceased. For another, there was the whole staring-straight-ahead-and-not-breathing scenario, and the lack of a pulse, which was good enough to convince me.
“Were you the one who found him?” I asked Anthony (not Tony, mind you), the ticket taker/usher/projectionist. Anthony, a Cinema Studies major at Rutgers University, was nineteen years old, and a film geek from head to toe (sorry, Anthony, but it’s true). He was wearing black jeans, a T-shirt with a picture of Martin Scorsese on it, and a puzzled expression that meant he was wondering how to work this event into his next screenplay. Anthony shook his head.
“Sophie found him,” he said, indicating our snack stand attendant/ticket seller/clean-up girl, who was standing to one side, biting both her lips and ignoring her cell phone, which was playing a Killers song by way of ringing. Sophie was, in her own high school junior way, freaked out. I considered gesturing her over, then realized she wanted to stay as far away from our non-respiring patron as possible, so I walked to her side instead.
“It’s okay, Sophie,” I told her. “Just tell me what happened. ”
She avoided looking toward the man, who appeared to be in his early forties, maybe five years older than me, and was dressed for a late April evening out in Midland Heights, New Jersey: pink polo shirt, with the proper reptile depicted on the left breast, tan khakis, no socks, and penny loafers that looked to have last been shined during the Clinton Administration. His box of popcorn was still on his lap, although there was very little left in it. The popcorn had spilled onto the floor at some point, but the carton remained in his hands.
“I was picking up the wrappers and whatever,” she said, her usual teenage indifference betrayed by her wavering voice. “I saw him sitting there as the people filed out, and I didn’t think anything about it. You know, some people just sit there and wait for everybody else to leave. But then they all, like, left, and he didn’t move. And when I went over to see . . .” Sophie fluttered her left hand in a gesture of futility, and then it went to her mouth. She didn’t want us to see her cry; it would ruin her image. Sophie was the Midland Heights version of Goth, which is to say, she wore all black and straightened her hair. But her clothes were clean and pressed, her makeup leaned toward pinks (which didn’t have much effect on her pale complexion), and her shoes were open-toe sandals. She was about as Goth as Kelly Clarkson, but she was in there swinging.
“Okay,” I said. “Did you call 911 like I asked you to?” It had been the first sentence out of my mouth when Anthony had informed me someone had died laughing—or in this case, not laughing—in our theatre. Sophie nodded earnestly, just as her cell phone stopped playing music. “Good. I think everyone had better stay put until the cops get here. They’ll want to talk to us.”
“Mr. Freed?” Anthony refuses to call me “Elliot,” even though Sophie, three years his junior, does. He thinks that just because I once sold a novel to a film company, and the movie was actually made, that I now have a direct line to Quentin Tarantino and must be treated with every respect. He’s wrong. I looked at him. “Should we close his eyes or something?”
I think Sophie’s hands went to her belly at that point. Not that she actually has a belly, but if there were one, that’s where it would be. Sophie actually looked a little like a girl scarecrow dressed for an evening out at Dracula’s place.
I shook my head. “No. Don’t touch anything. Once the police get here . . .”
“When are they getting here, already?” Sophie asked. Her voice made her sound like she was about eight years old. “It’s been hours.”
I smiled with one side of my mouth. “It’s been nine minutes, honey. Take it easy. Do you want to go and wait in the lobby?” She nodded, and was out the door in roughly the same amount of time it takes a Pauly Shore movie to go to DVD.
Anthony and I spent a few uncomfortable moments staring at each other, then he broke the tension by staring at the ceiling, while I completed a close study of the exit sign to the left of the screen rather than look at him or our less animated guest. Normally, Anthony would be asking me about some obscure movie he’d seen in class that week, and I’d be telling him I didn’t know much about it, but let’s say we were a touch preoccupied at the moment. A dead guy staring at a blank movie screen will do that to you.
Luckily, we heard the sirens just seconds later, which gave us a clear agenda, even if we didn’t know what it would be yet. The people who handled these situations had arrived.
The EMTs got inside first, rolling a gurney and acting like it was an episode of ER. Clearly, we idiot civilians couldn’t be trusted to tell when someone was dead, and it would be in their purview to resurrect my guest and show us all how ignorant we had been. Even medical people spend too much time watching television, and sincerely believe they, too, can be heroes in every possible situation. I had given up that attitude two years earlier, when my wife the doctor had decided she’d prefer to be married to another doctor. And then six months later, married him.
“Stand aside,” the taller one said, despite the fact that neither Anthony nor I was standing anywhere near the stiff in row S, seat 18. The EMT and his partner rushed to the seat and blocked my view as their arms flailed and they barked orders at each other. After a few moments, the second EMT, eager for his role in the drama, looked dolefully at me.
“This man’s dead,” he said solemnly. If he’d said, “He’s dead, Jim,” he could have been DeForest Kelley on Star Trek; that’s how perfectly final his words were.
“No kidding,” I told him. “I thought he just wanted to get into tomorrow night’s show without paying a second time.”
He stared at me a moment, but was unable to react to my insubordinate behavior with anything except surprise. It was lucky for him that the police arrived at that moment. It was probably lucky for me, too, as I was feeling sorry about being so snotty, and was about to apologize.
Two uniformed Midland Heights police officers walked through the open door to the auditorium, a blond woman in her mid-thirties and a youngish man who looked to be of Indian or Pakistani descent. They nodded to the EMT, who had just pronounced the dead m
an dead, and the blond officer took a look at the guest of honor, who was now considerably more disheveled than he had been, but no more animated.
“What do you think?” she asked the taller EMT, who was probably the senior technician. He was about forty, and the flecks of gray at his temples gave him that look of authority that works so well in commercials for Lipitor and other cholesterol-lowering drugs.
He puffed himself up at the sight of the attractive cop. “Heart attack,” he said. “It’s just a guess, but it looks like it hit him so fast he didn’t even blink before he was dead.”
The blond officer turned to me. “Did you notice him during the film?” she asked.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I told her. “I’m Elliot Freed. I own the theatre.”
Her eyes widened a bit, and she almost smiled. “I’m sorry. It’s my first dead movie patron.”
“Mine, too.”
She nodded. “That’s Officer Patel,” she said, indicating her partner, “and I’m Officer Levant.”
Officer Patel was questioning Anthony over to one side. “I’ve never met anyone named Levant before.” I’d seen Oscar Levant in some old movies, and was wondering if she were some descendant.
“It used to be Levine, they tell me.”
My eyebrows probably rose. “You don’t look it,” I told her. I can say that because I do look it.
She pursed her lips, but not in a nice way. “My ex-husband, ” she said. “Given name is Baldwin.”
“I didn’t mean to react that way,” I apologized. “I’m a little shaken up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she responded. “It’s understandable. Now . . .”
“I noticed he wasn’t laughing, during Young Frankenstein ,” I told her.
“What scene wasn’t he laughing at?” She seemed to mean it.
“The Blind Man scene,” I answered.
Levant looked surprised. “You should have called us sooner,” she said.
Really? Could I have saved his life if I’d taken the talents of Mel Brooks more seriously? Levant smiled at my worried expression. “Calm down,” she said. “I’m kidding. You’d think the owner of a theatre that only shows comedies would have a better sense of humor.”