It Happened One Knife (20 page)

This mattered.

I didn’t want to call Dutton or Meg Vidal with questions about this—not just yet—so I convinced myself that I needed crime investigation advice less than Internet advice this morning. I resolved to call Ned Overberg, a computer expert I know from college, as soon as possible, but since it was seven thirty a.m., it would probably be counterproductive to do so now.

Instead, I skipped breakfast (I hadn’t eaten in the morning since I’d bought the Rialto and turned it into Comedy Tonight, mostly because I was rarely awake much before lunch) and took the bike to the theatre. I figured I could do some repairs on some of the auditorium’s shakier seats until the rest of the world was at work. This being an early riser might result in more work being done, but was that really a good thing?

Astonished, I found Dad standing at the door of the theatre when I rode up.

“How could you know I’d be here this early?” I asked him when I caught my breath.

“I saw the news about Harry Lillis last night,” he said. “I told your mother you wouldn’t sleep. Figured you’d be here early.”

I took the front wheel off the bike and chained it to the water pipe in the alley next to the theatre. “You frighten me sometimes,” I told my father.

“Then my work here is done.”

“Far from it. Come help me fix seats.”

We went inside and got some tools from the storage closet (is there a closet in which storage is not the whole idea?), then headed for the auditorium. Dad didn’t mention Lillis again until we were trying—with little success, initially— to secure a row R seat back to the cement floor. My father isn’t the man he used to be, and I never was.

“When was the last time you talked to him?” he asked, not bothering to clarify who “him” might be; I knew what he meant.

“A couple of days ago,” I said. “He said Les Townes had threatened his life, and I told him to be careful, but he didn’t want to hear about it from me.”

Anyone else would have a violent reaction to the news that Lillis’s life was threatened by his ex-partner days before he died. Not my father. Arthur Freed has the power of an internal calm. I got my metabolism from my mother.

“Did you believe him?” he asked me.

“Yes. After all that went on with Townes, I was pretty sure Les had a pretty hot temper.”

“Hold that steady,” Dad said, pointing to the bolt I was keeping still and he was tightening. “A temper doesn’t automatically make the guy a murderer.”

“How about threats?” I asked.

“Circumstantial. Yes, it means he’s thought about being violent, but the man is in his late seventies, at least.”

“You’re almost seventy,” I told my father. Because he might not know how old he was.

“Thanks for reminding me. Do you think I could drag a six-foot-tall man out to a gazebo and keep him unconscious long enough to set him on fire?”

“Maybe Townes lured Lillis out there and then knocked him out. You could hit someone with a wrench, or something. ”

Dad stood up, holding the heavy steel wrench in his hand. “Like this one?” he asked.

“It was just a thought.”

“Elliot. You’re grasping at straws. You want to believe Les Townes is a killer because then you can come riding to the rescue and solve the crime, and let Harry Lillis rest in peace. The sad truth is, he’ll rest how he’s resting, either way.” Dad shook the seat a little to see if it was solid; it was. “What’s next?” he asked.

“Next?” I thought about that. “I think next is to let the police do their job.”

“I meant with the chairs, but okay, let the cops investigate. Without your help?”

“Help?” I asked. “Ask Chief Dutton how much help I am. After he’s done laughing, he’ll be able to draw you a pie chart that proves I actually cost the taxpayers of Midland Heights money with how much help I am.”

“So what are you going to do?”

"I’m going to help Anthony get his film back.
That
I can do.”

25

The Ghost Breakers
(1940) and
Boo!Ya
(this week)

“ELLIOT,
if I knew anything else, I . . . might or might not tell you.”

Chief Barry Dutton sat back in the swivel chair we have for Anthony in the projection booth. It took a good deal of convincing to get Barry Dutton to come to Comedy Tonight in order to retrieve
Killin’ Time
. I hadn’t seen the point, really; I thought I was just as capable of loosening four screws and removing a piece of plywood as the next man. Dutton (who apparently
was
the next man) saw it differently, saying he wanted to see Anthony’s face, as well as Sophie’s and Jonathan’s, when the film was returned. “Helps eliminate suspects,” he said. I thought he didn’t have enough crime to keep him busy, but kept that notion to myself.

He’d even made me wait an extra day for the “revelation, ” possibly in an effort to prove he did indeed have other crimes to solve. But first, I was pumping him for information on Harry Lillis’s death. He didn’t have much, but he did tell me that the medical examiner was working on an autopsy report, which would probably take a couple of weeks to be made public. Over my protests, he added that a couple of weeks was “actually faster than usual” in such cases, especially since Bergen County, where Lillis died, is the largest in New Jersey (by population; if you want sheer square mileage, you go to Burlington County), meaning that a good number of people died there on the average day. More than one of them did so in mysterious ways that required a county medical examiner’s attention.

“Have they determined for sure that it was Lillis?” I asked, again. I was clinging to the irrational hope that someone else—one of the other residents, perhaps—had wandered out to the gazebo at the Booth Actors’ Home and gotten caught in the fire. But Dutton just pursed his lips, trying to restrain himself. So I’d become a broken record (that’s a reference for the vinyl crowd). Fine. But nothing had been definitive yet.

“They’re sure,” Dutton said. “For goodness’ sake, Elliot, it’s been two days. Harry Lillis isn’t in his room and hasn’t been seen on the grounds. Everyone else who lives and works there is accounted for. Who do you think died in that fire? Frankenstein’s monster?”

“There aren’t many police chiefs who say ‘for goodness’ sake,’ you know.” I had to get a dig in.

“There aren’t that many who can back it up,” Dutton noted. Touché.

“Were there any visitors at the Home that night? Maybe someone else . . .”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe.” Dutton shook his head. “I didn’t get the complete report; I don’t think it’s even written yet. Elliot. Lillis is dead. You’ll have to accept it eventually. ”

“Why can’t I talk to the Englewood cops?” I asked him. “They’re not telling you everything.”

His eyes widened, and he looked amused. “So they’re going to tell
you
?”

“I want to talk to them.” When in doubt, act like a four-year-old.

“Be my guest,” Dutton said, hands laced behind his head, relaxing. “How do you think you’ll talk your way in? You’re not going to pretend you work for a fake newspaper again, are you?”

I hung my head, but looked at him. “You knew about that?”

“I’m the chief of police. I see all, and know all.”

“I thought that was a guy in the justice department. Look, Chief, I’m going up there to talk to the Englewood detectives working on the case. Now, I’ll keep your name out of it . . .”

“Big of you,” Dutton said.

“. . . but I
am
going up there. And I don’t care what kind of deception I have to use, or what lies I have to tell. Harry Lillis was an important figure in my life, and I’m not going to just let him die without anyone looking into it deeply enough. These guys probably think that it was only an accidental fire, just like the cops in L.A. fifty years ago thought Vivian Reynolds died in an accidental fire. It’s the easy solution, and you’ll have to forgive me, but cops generally like easy solutions. They’re not going to dig unless someone makes them, so I am going up there.”

Dutton hadn’t liked the comment about cops and easy solutions, and he raised a finger to scold me, but he didn’t get a chance. The phone rang, and, still staring at him, I picked it up.

“Comedy Tonight.”

“Is this Elliot Freed?”

I admitted it was.

“This is Detective Lieutenant Benjamin Honig of the Englewood Police Department. Mr. Freed, we are looking into the death of Harry Lillis, and I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to come in for an interview.”

I stared at the phone for a moment. “I’m not sure I can make it,” I said. Hell, all of a sudden the cops were looking for me? Did I need a lawyer?

“It’s very important,” Honig said. “But I can tell you that you’re not in any trouble, Mr. Freed. We’re hoping you can help us. Some aspects of the incident are not entirely consistent. ”

“Can you send a car?” I asked.

AFTER
gloating for a few minutes to Dutton, I summoned the staff to the projection booth so we could begin our little scripted pageant. I found Anthony at the base of the stairs to the balcony, apparently in the midst of an argument with his father, who looked smaller than usual as his son berated him. It was one of those moments when I didn’t mind not having children.

“It’s my life, not yours,” Anthony was saying to Michael Pagliarulo. “If this is because you pay my tuition . . .”

“It’s not about money. You
know
it’s not about money,” his father told him. “If it was about money, I’d
want
you to quit school, so I wouldn’t have to pay for it.”

“Meeting upstairs,” I said, hoping the next few minutes would defuse the tension between the two of them.

Anthony looked confused to see Dutton in the projection booth, as did Sophie and Jonathan when they arrived, but Anthony’s look was a warier one. Could he have known why the chief was there? Could this really have all been a scam of some sort on Anthony’s part?

Sophie, all teenage impatience, lowered one eyebrow and looked through her bangs, which were hanging in her eyes. Anything involving men had to be bad, and she was stuck in a room with five of them. Well, four and a half men: Jonathan was wearing a SpongeBob T-shirt and the same leather flip-flops he seemed to wear in all weather. Sophie barely looked at him.

Dutton took charge, being the largest, most weapon-carrying person in the crowded room. “I’m glad you were all available on such short notice,” he said.

“We all work here,” Sophie told him. She was an equal-opportunity obvious-noter. “Except Anthony’s dad.” Michael Pagliarulo nodded in her direction, seemingly afraid to get on Sophie’s bad side, and I didn’t blame him.

“Yes,” Dutton had to agree. He did his best to regain what little dignity could be had in a room built for one person that was currently holding six. “As you know, the night of the screening of . . .” He actually referred to a reporter’s notebook he pulled from his back pocket.

“
Killin’ Time
,” Anthony said, his voice so dry I swear dust flew from his mouth.

“Yes,” Dutton said again. After being abused by my staff for months, there was a certain guilty pleasure, I admit, in watching them do it to someone else. “On that night, the only copy of
Killin’ Time
vanished from this booth right after the show.”

Sophie gave him a look that would probably have vaporized a weaker man. “Do you think one of
us
stole Anthony’s movie?” she hissed.

“That’s just the point,” Dutton answered. He picked up the screwdriver from the control table and knelt down to begin opening the panel on the floor, which we had loosened earlier (Dutton wanted to better heighten the drama of the moment). It took just a few seconds to get the screws loose. “I don’t think
anybody
stole Anthony’s movie.”

The booth door opened, and Sharon stuck her head in. “Elliot?” she called. “You in here?”

“Yeah, come on in,” I offered. “We’re reenacting the stateroom scene from
A Night at the Opera
.”

Sharon squeezed her way into the booth and took in the scene. I’d told her Dutton was coming to the theatre, but hadn’t told her why.

“What are you talking about?” Michael Pagliarulo asked Dutton. “If nobody stole the movie, where is it? Wouldn’t it still be here?”

“Exactly.” Dutton was savoring his moment. “Wouldn’t it?” He pulled up the plywood panel and set it aside.

I watched their faces. Nobody looked especially guilty, although Sophie did stifle a yawn.

“Are you saying the reels are in there?” Anthony asked, spoiling Dutton’s surprise.

The chief was gracious about it; he didn’t shoot Anthony for spilling the beans. “Yes, that’s what I mean,” he said. And he reached inside the storage compartment.

Then Dutton’s expression changed from one of slight disappointment but great anticipation to one of utter confusion and more than slight disappointment. He reached inside the compartment again. Deeper. Until his arm was pretty much out of sight.

Anthony got down on the floor next to him. “What’s wrong, Chief?” he asked. “Can’t you lift them?”

Dutton stared directly at me when he said, “No. The problem is the reels aren’t here anymore.”

Anthony and Sophie turned their heads to stare at me, too. I could feel their eyes burning into my cheeks, and it wasn’t a pleasant, warming feeling. Anthony’s father looked at the chief, wondering why such a man would play this mean trick on his son.

“Wow,” Jonathan said, squinting into the storage compartment. “There’s all kinds of wrenches down there.”

But I was staring at Sharon, who looked strangely amused.

26

DETECTIVE
Lieutenant Benjamin Honig was a tall, broadly built man with curly hair going prematurely white. He had a prominent nose and stared down it at me, but I wasn’t intimidated. I was sitting in front of his municipal desk, in a metal chair with a leather cushion on it, drinking coffee that wasn’t all that bad, but I had to make believe it was, because it had been brewed in a police station.