Some Like It Hot-Buttered Page 4

  When not taking orders, the Midland Heights cops had little to do with O’Donnell. They were the local cops, and he was the investigator from the prosecutor’s office. For a force as small as Midland Heights’, it was necessary to bring in the County Major Crimes Unit on a murder, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it. They answered his questions when he asked—which was a rarity—and otherwise did little in the way of investigating besides searching under seats (although it was unclear what was being sought) as O’Donnell had directed them to do.

  Sophie, who had come directly to the theatre from school, had gotten over her obvious horror of the night before, and was back to displaying the kind of overpowering level of blasé that only a teenage girl can muster. To look at her, you’d think Sophie wouldn’t be especially concerned if Godzilla had entered the auditorium and demanded a really, really large soda.

  Part of her demeanor could be attributed to the presence of her parents. Ron and Ilsa Beringer were trying hard to support their daughter, and by doing so, were in the process of embarrassing her to the point of physical violence. On Sophie’s part. They stood with O’Donnell and me in the auditorium, while their daughter cringed at virtually every word they spoke, moaned frequently, and generally gave off the vibe that the ground should swallow them up.

  Sophie wandered over toward Anthony, who was sitting and reading a copy of On Location, a publication for directors and crew. Anthony is nothing if not an optimist. Sophie started talking quietly to him, in an apparent attempt to forget her parents were in the room.

  “She couldn’t sleep a wink last night,” Ilsa told Sergeant O’Donnell. “She cried for hours. The poor girl.” Ilsa cast a glance in my direction that was not entirely friendly, while I wondered exactly how this had become my fault. “I held her in my arms for half the night.” Sophie was trying as hard as she could to sink into the floor, and I think she had made it up to her knees at that point. “I can’t understand why she’d ever set foot in this place again.” Apparently, my providing her daughter with (semi) gainful employment was merely a ruse to traumatize her. I must have known someone was going to check out in my theatre the night before. After all, I was the owner, wasn’t I?

  I moved closer to where Sophie and Anthony were talking, noticing that Sophie’s pseudo-Goth face appeared a little agitated. “Just don’t tell them anything, okay?” I heard her hiss.

  “They’re your parents,” Anthony said. “They’ll understand. ”

  “Have you ever had parents?” Sophie saw me walking over and straightened up, made her face impassive. I ushered Sophie back toward O’Donnell, who had more questions for her. She stared at her shoes.

  Meanwhile, Ron patted his wife on the shoulder. “Come on now, Ilsa,” he said, somehow speaking without actually moving his lips. “You know she’s got to get right back on the horse.” Really, the man had a future in ventriloquism if he wanted one.

  “I don’t know anything about a horse.”

  Anthony, sitting with his feet up on a seat in row G (which I’d asked him not to do, since it leaves marks, and our seats aren’t in such great shape to begin with), put his head back and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to embarrass Sophie, so he’d pretend he was asleep. He’s a nice kid.

  O’Donnell, however, wasn’t interested in anybody’s feelings. He stared past Sophie’s parents and spoke to her directly. “Are you sure he came in alone?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure of anything,” Sophie said, her tone Gothful and disinterested. “How can we be certain of our own existence?”

  “Don’t be rude, Sophie,” her mother admonished. “Mr. O’Donnell’s simply trying to do his job.”

  O’Donnell ignored her, which was a talent I was hoping to develop. “We need to establish whether or not the man was here alone or with someone else who might have poisoned him. So I’ll ask you again, Sophie. Do you remember whether he came in with another person, or by himself?”

  “I don’t look at every face,” she said, staring into his. “But I think he was alone. I think he bought one ticket. And I think Fargo is the capital of North Dakota. I can’t be sure.” (She was wrong: the capital of North Dakota is actually Bismarck.)

  “And I think that you’ll have to do better than that if you want to get home at a decent hour today,” O’Donnell said, seeing her Goth and raising her a Bad Cop. “Think hard, and I’ll come back to you.” He waved his hand, and Sophie and her parents walked to a corner near the exit. Sophie looked like she wanted to keep going, but her mother stood between her and the open door.

  Through the auditorium door, I saw Officer Levant call over Officer Patel and ask him something, pointing to the basement door. Patel shrugged, then nodded his agreement. Reluctantly, I diverted my attention from Levant, who demanded attention even in a cop’s uniform, and toward the guy running the investigation, although he wasn’t as much fun to watch.

  Sergeant O’Donnell glanced at Anthony, who by now really was asleep in perhaps the only two adjacent unbroken seats in row H. O’Donnell shook his head slightly, as if convincing himself not to do something he really wanted to do, and beckoned to me. I decided not to hide my resentment at the way he had talked to Sophie.

  “You swept up after the cops left last night?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Glad to see that you reserve the threats for the sixteen-year-old. She’s just putting on a brave face, O’Donnell.”

  “Sergeant O’Donnell.”

  “You’re not going to earn respect with me by browbeating that slip of a girl,” I told him.

  He curled his lip. No, really. “How am I going to get anywhere if your staff won’t cooperate with me?” O’Donnell asked.

  “Cooperate? Nobody’s done anything but cooperate. Do you seriously believe that a high school junior poisoned Mr. Ansella at the movies because she had nothing better to do that night?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you treating her like a suspect?”

  “Because I don’t know who the suspects are yet.” Damn it, he had a point. O’Donnell sighed dramatically, which didn’t fit his manner. “I don’t think anyone on your staff is a criminal, Freed,” he began.

  He was interrupted by Officer Patel, who walked into the auditorium with an air of urgency I had not seen the previous night. Sophie and her parents, in the corner, were arguing, probably about her attitude (I distinctly heard the word “Moth-errrr”). The two cops took notice of Patel, but kept flashing their lights under the seats in row B. O’Donnell and I were the only other people in the room, unless you counted Anthony, who was snoring ever-so-slightly by now.

  “You’d better take a look downstairs,” he told O’Donnell. “There’s something you’re going to want to see.”

  Downstairs? I hadn’t been in the basement in days, maybe weeks, now that I thought about it. The door was always locked when we were open for business. How could Mr. Ansella’s murder have anything to do with my theatre’s musty old basement?

  “I’m coming with you,” I told O’Donnell. He didn’t object, but then again, he didn’t say anything at all. He gestured to the two cops with the flashlights, and they followed him.

  Patel seemed anxious to get O’Donnell downstairs quickly, so we didn’t waste any more time. I noticed Sophie and her parents follow us out of the auditorium. Anthony was perfectly happy, his legs up on row G, seat 12. It would have been cruel to disturb him.

  At the door to the basement was the open padlock, whose key I had given the officers when I arrived. The light was on in the stairwell, and Patel led the way. At the top of the stairs, O’Donnell pointed to Sophie and her parents. “Stay up here,” he said. There was no protest. Even Sophie looked like she’d prefer it that way; the look from last night was back in her eyes.

  O’Donnell followed Patel and I followed O’Donnell. The stairs were narrow, and frankly, I was curious, but in no hurry to confront whatever had gotten Patel so excited. He hadn’t blinked once the whole time h
e was in the auditorium.

  Officer Leslie Levant was at the bottom of the stairs, looking considerably more serious than she had the previous night. This was alarming, as the previous night there had been a dead body in the room. I tried to catch her eye, but she was looking straight ahead, following Patel with her eyes.

  The basement was, well, a basement. I didn’t keep anything perishable or edible down there, as I couldn’t completely vouch for the absence of nonhuman forms of life. There were some tools; some broken seats; access to the electrical, heating, air-conditioning, and water systems; cleaning supplies; and a good deal of dust and grime. Cleaning the basement of Comedy Tonight had always seemed somehow superfluous, like polishing the decks of the Titanic.

  Had I known we’d be entertaining down here, I might have reconsidered that position.

  I might also have noticed the rows of large cardboard cartons to which Patel was now leading O’Donnell and, by extension, me. I definitely hadn’t put them there, and to the best of my memory, had never even seen them before. But Patel was just about panting in anticipation.

  “You see?” he said to Sergeant O’Donnell. “There are close to two hundred boxes. Almost ten thousand in all.”

  “Ten thousand what?” O’Donnell and I said, almost in unison.

  Patel opened the flap on one of the cartons and pulled out a small jewel case. Levant came up behind me and stood a little to my left. I didn’t see her, but I could tell she was there.

  “These,” Patel said. “Almost ten thousand of these.”

  O’Donnell held up the jewel case, the size of a CD or computer disc, and I caught a look at the artwork on the front cover, which made my stomach fall to an area somewhere around my left knee.

  “Okay, I give up,” O’Donnell said. “What do some CDs have to do with . . .”

  “They’re not CDs,” I broke in. “They’re DVDs. And they have the artwork from the poster I have hanging outside my theatre right now.”

  O’Donnell’s face was impassive as he thought that over, and then his eyes widened and his head tilted back just a bit. “So that means . . .”

  “Exactly,” I said, although it sounded like my voice was coming from another part of the room. “Officer Patel has found close to ten thousand pirated copies of Count Bubba, Down-Home Vampire.”

  “You know, Freed, pirating copyrighted material is a federal offense. If we discover that these were being offered for sale outside the state of New Jersey, I’d have to bring in the FBI.” O’Donnell was looking at me, but he was really watching his career advance by about seven steps in an afternoon.

  “Is there a reason you’re telling me that, O’Donnell?” I asked defiantly, while feeling about as defiant as the average ladybug.

  “Sergeant O’Donnell.” He left out “of the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office,” which I considered a friendly gesture.

  “Why did you point that comment at me, Sergeant?” I asked.

  “Well, as you keep pointing out, it’s your theatre,” he said.

  “Honestly, with a murder investigation going on, if I was keeping pirated movies in my basement, do you think I’d be stupid enough to leave them here waiting for you? I had lots of time to get them out of here, if I’d known they existed to begin with.”

  “There have been cops watching the theatre since last night. And to tell you the truth, I just met you a half an hour ago,” O’Donnell answered. “I have no idea how stupid you are.”

  “I’m . . .”

  “He’s not stupid, sir,” Officer Levant stepped forward and volunteered. “It’s not that I know he wouldn’t pirate movies, but given the choice, he’d certainly have pirated Young Frankenstein instead.”

  We’d barely spoken the night before, but she’d definitely gotten a strong sense of my character. Because that’s exactly what I would have done. I began to see Leslie Levant in a nonofficial light.

  “Not as profitable,” O’Donnell countered.

  “I own a movie theatre that only shows comedies, and half of them are classics made before you were born,” I told him. “Do I sound like the kind of a guy who worries about what’s profitable?”

  “You sound like the kind of a guy who could use some extra income,” O’Donnell said. Somehow, alimony from my ex-wife didn’t seem the type of thing I wanted to mention in front of Levant, so I said nothing.

  It was Officer Patel who broke both the silence and the glares being traded between O’Donnell and me. “Well, if it wasn’t you, Mr. Freed, could it have been one of the people on your staff? Do they have the key to this area?”

  “No, but they know where I keep it, and they could get at it if they wanted to.” I took a breath. “Hey, wait a minute, neither of my staff did this.”

  O’Donnell cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really?” he asked. “And how do you know that? You told me you’ve known them for maybe four months. You can vouch for their integrity? ”

  “I’ve known Anthony for five months, and Sophie for three,” I said. I pushed air through my lips in a scoff. “Sophie’s sixteen years old. She’s more concerned with finding black clothes to wear than selling pirated DVDs.”

  “She has to pay for those clothes with something,” O’Donnell said.

  “Please. She has the pittance I pay her, and, oh yeah, the money she gets from her parents, who own three different hybrid vehicles for the two and a half drivers in the family. I don’t think Sophie has tastes that expensive.”

  “How about the other kid?” he asked.

  I hadn’t wanted to think about that one. Anthony, budding young filmmaker that he was, always needed money for his latest project. He would have had access to the equipment to dub the film, not to mention to the projector and the film itself, and he knew every piece of technology ever invented by its first name. It could have been him.

  “It couldn’t have been him,” I said.

  O’Donnell nodded with great sarcasm, the unofficial State Language of New Jersey. “Let’s go ask him,” he said.

  After directing Patel to stay with the cartons, O’Donnell led Levant and me upstairs. Sophie and her parents were still in the lobby, where Sophie was busying herself with washing down the frames for the Coming Soon posters, and her parents were finding the tiny spots she missed before she had a chance to check for herself.

  We walked directly into the auditorium as I tried to think of ways to a) accuse Anthony of video piracy and send him to a federal penitentiary, and b) wake him. As it turned out, neither of those tactics would be necessary.

  Row H was empty. So were all the other rows and seats.

  Anthony was gone.

  6

  It had been useless to search for Anthony, I realized the next morning as I was biking back into Midland Heights from New Brunswick. He had turned off his cell phone, never gone back to the off-campus apartment he rented with three other Cinema Studies majors, hadn’t called his parents (and the police calling them had made for a truly memorable experience, I’m sure), and had no girlfriend, which wasn’t a tremendous surprise. Most women wouldn’t flock to Anthony until he had won his first Golden Globe Award.

  If he were behind the pirated videos, did they have anything to do with Vincent Ansella’s murder? How did the two fit together, if at all? And how much longer did this mean Comedy Tonight would have to remain closed? (Not all my impulses are altruistic.)

  Sergeant O’Donnell had again questioned Sophie and her parents, but they insisted they hadn’t seen Anthony leave the auditorium, and I believed them. The officers had followed us out of the auditorium when we left, assuming Anthony was asleep, and he’d probably gone out one of the side exits, which the cops had been using all day. Normally, those doors set off an alarm, but I’d turned off the bell at the request of the police.

  See? It pays to show that fire exit announcement before every movie.

  I had no idea where to start looking for Anthony, although O’Donnell had been skeptical about that the night before. I’d shown him
my records, which listed Anthony’s parents as the “in case of emergency” contacts, and his address on Guilden Street in New Brunswick as his local address, but the investigator had insisted I must know of some other contact in case Anthony didn’t show up for work one night.

  “Anthony hasn’t missed a day of work since I hired him,” I’d told O’Donnell. He wasn’t happy about that, either.

  I rode up Edison Avenue past the Dunkin’ Donuts to Comedy Tonight. My father, Arthur Freed, stood in front of the theatre, ahead of me as always, dressed in polyester slacks, a belt, and a double-knit shirt that was less wrinkled than the tuxedo I’d worn at my wedding. I stopped the bike just at the door.

  “I thought we were painting today,” I told my father. We get together once or twice a week to do repairs and continue the restoration of Comedy Tonight.

  He looked puzzled. “We are.”

  “You dress better for painting than I would to apply for a bank loan.”

  Dad chuckled. One of his many virtues is that he thinks I’m funny, even when I’m being perfectly serious. The man hasn’t raised his voice to me once since I was fourteen, and that’s mostly attributable to the fact that even when I was doing my adolescent best to infuriate him, Arthur Freed thought I was a riot.

  I unlocked the front door and let him inside. Today we were working in the auditorium, not the lobby, since I didn’t have to worry about patrons smelling paint fumes or getting ladders out of the way in time for the show. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. (But soon, and for the rest of my life?) In fact, who knew when? Now that evidence of a second crime had been found on the premises, it was anybody’s guess when Comedy Tonight could reopen.

  When my father retired from the retail paint and wallpaper business, he probably didn’t expect to spend this much time immersed in the decoration of a rapidly deteriorating movie palace. Okay, movie house. Movie fixer-upper. But he had offered to help, in his typically genial way, and I had accepted as much to hang out with Dad as to get his expertise, which was considerably more expert than my own. I had pretty much given up painting in kindergarten when they switched us from fingers to a brush.