Jack began to cross the street; approach the idling car. Just as he did, the driver peeled away, sped toward the corner, didn't even stop for the red light. Jack glommed the license, jotted down the numbers in his notebook, noted the wheels were spode green, and went back to waiting.
Twenty minutes later, the district attorney emerged from the hotel again; hair mussed, tie askew.
"Not exactly a sixty-minute man," Jack muttered.
He wasn't surprised at the brevity of the encounter. For some of these slobs, their marriages had grown so cold that just being in a hotel room with a chippy was enough. A blouse was unbuttoned, a lacy brassiere peeked through, then it was wham-bam, Act Three, and curtain.
Burwell walked to the corner, hailed a cab on Sixth Avenue. Jack flagged down another and followed Burwell east to Park then north to the Upper East Side, land of cliff dwellers.
One of the grandest avenues in Manhattan, Park was bisected by an island of lush topiary, its sidewalks cleaner than a hospital ward. The hack coasted to a stop in front of one of the endless rows of majestic stone high-rises. The place wasn't as big as Buckingham Palace, but it probably held more servants. A doorman in a uniform stepped forward, opened the cab's door. The DA greeted the gold-trimmed attendant, moved out of the shadowy street, into the light of the building's lobby.
Jack made a note of the time. He was about to give the signal to his own cabbie to beat it when he noticed a familiar lady turning the corner. It was Mrs. Burwell, strolling alone down the avenue, a white stole glowing like a fur lifesaver around her neck. She smiled and nodded at a passing couple, approached her doorman, had a few quiet words with him, then ventured inside.
Jack recalled Mrs. B. telling him about her weekly Junior League dinner meetings. The DA obviously made interesting use of his evenings when his wife was occupied. Like clockwork, he'd had it all timed perfectly, making it home just before the little woman.
But Jack was on the job now. And once he got that flash picture in his hands, Mrs. Burwell would no longer be in the dark.
"Dust out, buddy," he called, then told the hack to take him back where he belonged. "Downtown."
CHAPTER 1 Opening-Night Jitters
When it concerns a woman, does anybody ever really want the facts?
– Philip Marlowe, Lady in the Lake, 1947
Quindicott, Rhode Island Present Day
LISTEN, BABY, YOU can't solve a puzzle when half the pieces are missing…
That's what Jack Shepard advised me after I'd found the corpse that bright, spring morning, even though I pointed out his declaration had a few holes in it. People guessed at half-solved puzzles all the time.
"What about Wheel of Fortune?" I argued. "You can buy a vowel and sound out the words. You don't need all the pieces."
Jack wasn't impressed with my TV game-show analogy, partly because the show hadn't been invented until decades after he'd been shot to death in my bookstore, but mainly because he'd had more experience with homicide than yours truly, and not just because he was a victim of it.
Jack Shepard had been a cop in New York City before heading off to Europe to fight the Nazis. After he returned from the war, he opened his own private investigation business- until 1949, when he was gunned down while pursuing a lead in a case.
Unlike Jack, I, Penelope Thornton-McClure, single mom, widow, and independent bookshop owner, was far from a professional sleuth. Sure, I was a longtime fan of the Black Mask school of detective fiction; but a few years back, when the Rhode Island Staties were eyeing me as a person of interest in a murder investigation, I'd needed more than a fictional detective, and I got one.
Not that I rely on the ghost exclusively. After I discovered the corpse that sunny May morning, I notified the authorities, like any sane citizen. But while our local police chief was still deciding whether or not the death was accidental, the PI in my head was pronouncing it murder. Not only that, Jack believed the first effort to end the victim's life had been attempted the previous evening, during the opening night screening of Quindicott's first-ever Film Noir Festival.
At the time, I hadn't realized the "accident" I'd witnessed was attempted murder. Nobody had. Most of us had been too distracted by the preparations for the long weekend of events, myself included.
The festival was going to feature book signings as well as movie screenings, lectures, and parties. At least a dozen of the invited speakers and panelists had front- or backlist titles to hock, and my bookshop was stepping up to handle the trans-actions.
The primary reason for the film festival, however, wasn't to hand me book sales, but to draw crowds to the Movie Town Theater.
For decades the old single-screen movie house had been a boarded-up wreck. Then a group of investors bought the property and worked for years to resurrect its spirit. I couldn't wait to see the renovated film palace, and on opening night, I was one of the first in line…
"SO, PENELOPE, WHAT do you think?" Brainert asked, rushing up as I stepped out of the sparkling new lobby and into the theater proper. "How do you like our restoration?"
J. Brainert Parker was a respected professor of English at nearby St. Francis College, a loyal Buy the Book customer, and one of my oldest friends. He was also a leading member of the group who'd bought and restored Quindicott's old movie house.
As the chattering crowd flowed around us, I stood gaping in shock at the theater's interior. When a few impatient patrons jostled my stupefied form, Brainert grabbed my elbow.
"Come on," he said, "we're in the reserved section."
As we walked, I continued to gawk. Every last chair in the 700-seat theater had been reupholstered in red velvet. The aisles were lined with a plush carpet of sapphire blue that matched the lush curtains, now parted to reveal a huge movie screen beneath a proscenium arch carved in art deco lines. The lines were reechoed in the theater's columns, where sleek, angular birds appeared to be flying up the posts toward a sky mural of sunset pink clouds painted across the ceiling, which supported three shimmering chandeliers of chrome and cut glass.
"Oh, my goodness, Brainert…"
"She speaks!"
"It's… it's amazing!"
Brainert straightened his bow tie and grinned. He had a right to preen. Few people thought restoring our little town's only theater was worth the effort.
"Looks a lot different from all those Saturday afternoons we spent here, doesn't it?" he asked.
I pushed up my black rectangular glasses and shook my head in ongoing astonishment. "Do you even remember the last movie we saw here?"
Brainert pursed his lips with slight disdain. "The Empire Strikes Back. Don't you recall? It was your brother's idea to take us."
"Oh, my god… that's right… "
I'd almost forgotten my older brother's obsession with Luke Skywalker, lightsabers, and space travel. Shortly thereafter, Pete's passion had fallen from the fantastical heavens to more earthly pursuits: hot rods and a hot girl, to be exact, both of which had led him to showing off on a dark road, where a tragic accident had taken him to an early grave.
The Movie Town Theater had died around the same time: A brand-new multiplex had opened up on the highway. Eight screens meant eight different choices versus the Movie Town 's solitary offering. Like a lot of businesses on Cranberry Street, it appeared to have outlived its era.
But Brainert disagreed vehemently with that mind-set. Retro was in. The nearby seaside resort town of Newport had been restoring like crazy, and he became obsessed with returning Quindicott's own dark theater to its art deco glory.