It Happened One Knife (15 page)

“Please go outside, Elliot,” Dutton said.

“That’s different. No.”

He didn’t argue beyond that. “Then don’t question my methods. You had your chance to get out.”

“I don’t like the way that sounds,” I told him.

Dutton didn’t answer. He put his fingers back on the box, worked the flap out of the tab in the front (which must have taken half a minute on its own), and very, very slowly raised the top of the box, checking all the while for wires that might have been connected. There were none.

When he lifted the top, Dutton could see into the box. He and the two uniformed officers leaned over it, and blocked my view. I held my breath.

They let theirs out.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

Dutton leaned away from the box, and let me see inside. Sitting in the shoebox was an old-fashioned alarm clock, one with two bells on the top, set to the right time, which was currently 10:06. A Goofy cutout pointed at the numbers just to make it look more ridiculous.

Taped to the clock was a printed note (Times New Roman) that read, “If this were a bomb, you’d be dead now.”

At that moment, a click came from the box, and the alarm bells began to ring. I came very close to needing a change of underwear.

Dutton reached over, hand still gloved, and turned the alarm off. He turned toward me with an expression of fatigue and annoyance.

“I’ve begged you to stop bothering people, haven’t I, Elliot? ” he asked.

18

WE
let the audience—or what was left of the audience, which amounted to Leo and seven others—back inside, and then Dutton berated me for a couple of hours and asked about my most recent activities in bothering people. We agreed that the clock in the shoebox was most likely sent by one or both of the Towneses. They were the only ones I’d annoyed enough to warrant this much attention, except for maybe Gregory, Sharon’s current husband, but he knew Sharon would kill him if he even tried to hurt me again. Besides, he wasn’t this witty.

Since the NYPD was already going to harass Wilson Townes about shooting me in the butt, it didn’t seem like that much more trouble for them to question him about terroristic threats, transporting a clock across state lines, and copyright infringement. It was one thing to threaten my life and invite the wrath of the states of New York and New Jersey, but you didn’t want the Walt Disney Company mad at you.

“There’s no chance that Anthony would do this, is there?” Dutton asked. We sat in the projection booth while I rewound the films and Dutton, screwdriver in hand, started to take up the piece of plywood from the floor again. He had ordered a fingerprint kit from his headquarters for the alarm clock and the box in which it had been delivered, and the kit had materialized a few minutes before.

“Send me a fake bomb because he thinks I took his movie away?” I considered. “No, that’s not Anthony’s style. He’d do something gorier. Send me a fake severed finger, or something. A fake bomb in a Goofy clock is a comedian’s threat. Anthony’s more of a Wes Craven kind of guy.”

Dutton had gotten the plywood up, and pulled the cans of film out from under the control console. Again wearing latex gloves, he placed the cans very carefully on the floor and began dusting them for fingerprints, something I’d never actually seen done before, and still don’t entirely understand.

I couldn’t watch for long, because the reel I was rewinding had finished, so I took it off the projector and got ready to rewind the next and last reel, in order to set it up for tomorrow’s showing. Being a theatre owner means never having to say you’re stuck for something to do.

“You have a vacuum cleaner, don’t you?” Dutton asked me. He pointed to the dust he was accidentally spreading all over the projection booth floor. “I don’t want Anthony to know what’s been going on when he comes in tomorrow. ”

“He won’t,” I said. “But I’ll vacuum it up, anyway.”

Dutton finished with the first film can and started on the second. “Can I dust the reels themselves?” he wondered aloud.

“I’d advise against it,” I answered. “I don’t know what that stuff would do to the film, and it’s Anthony’s only copy. Besides, if someone were stupid enough to handle the reels without gloves, he’d probably be stupid enough to handle the cans without gloves, too.”

Dutton nodded, and went back to his work. “So, why do you think Les Townes would send you a fake bomb?”

“He doesn’t like me asking questions about Vivian Reynolds, and he wants me to stop,” I said. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been asking myself the same thing.

“
I
don’t want you to ask questions about Vivian Reynolds, and it never occurred to me to dress up a Goofy clock and suggest I could blow you up with it.” Dutton carefully blew a little dust off the film can, noticed a fingerprint, and began to lift it with some kind of tape.

“You just don’t have a creative mind, Chief,” I told him. “Don’t feel bad about it; most people don’t.”

“What about Townes’s son?” Dutton ignored my remark. “Do you think he could have taken it upon himself to warn you off?”

“Wilson Townes is a big, big man, Chief,” I told him. “Maybe bigger than you, but I got a strong impression that he doesn’t do anything his father doesn’t tell him to do.”

“At least there aren’t a lot of suspects,” Dutton said as he saved a slide with the fingerprint on it. “The last time somebody threatened you, we didn’t know where to look first.”

“Good times, good times,” I said.

Dutton finally stood up, brushed some dust off his clothes, and put the slide, along with some of the other equipment, into a kit he’d placed on the console. “I think I got all I’m going to get,” he said.

“I’m going to vacuum, then,” I told him. “I don’t want that dust getting inside the console, or I’ll never run this projector again.”

I went down the stairs to the closet where we keep the vacuum cleaner, noticing to my pleasure that my war wound suffered at the Battle of Queens was not hindering my movement as much as before; I was starting to feel better. I reached the landing, and walked across the lobby to the closet.

But on my way, some movement caught my eye from the direction of my office. The door was open, and I was almost certain I’d closed it when the uniform cops had taken the “bomb” out and Dutton and I had gone upstairs. There wasn’t anyone else in the theatre at this time of night.

Was there?

I changed course, but slowed down as I headed for the office. It occurred to me to go back upstairs and get Dutton, but my butt wasn’t feeling
that
much better, and besides, this could be nothing at all. An optical illusion. A trick of the mind.

Instead, it was Jonathan, standing next to my desk.

“What the heck are you doing here at this time of night, Jonathan?”

He stiffened, stood straight up, and turned. I think it was pretty clear I’d startled him. I’ve seen more subtle moves in Keystone Kops films.

“I was just looking for something to do, Mr. Freed.” Wow. That’s probably the lamest excuse possible under the circumstances.

“Didn’t I send you home an hour ago?” After he and Sophie had cleaned up, and while Dutton was still debriefing me about the package, I distinctly remembered telling the two of them to leave. Sophie had almost left a vapor trail, she’d gone so quickly.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t happy with the way the auditorium looked, so I cleaned up a little more in there.” Uh-huh. Yeah, that massive crowd we’d had tonight must have done some kind of damage.

“It’s after midnight, Jonathan. Go home. Do I need to call your mom to give you a ride?” He only lived three blocks away, but it was late.

“No, I’m okay walking. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mr. Freed.” Jonathan walked out the office door at sixty miles an hour and headed for the front doors, so stiff he looked like he was concealing an ironing board in the back of his shirt. Picture the Frankenstein monster on methamphetamine.

I assessed the office after he’d left. Was there something he was trying to find? Something he’d want to take home? I didn’t know Jonathan very well yet, but I knew he had an eye for some of the memorabilia I keep around the theatre. Still, he could have just asked me if there was something he especially wanted; I probably would have let him have it.

It didn’t occur to me until I noticed where he’d been standing, right over the desk, a few feet away from the iMac I keep there. I ran my eyes across the desk, wondering what might have attracted Jonathan’s attention.

The only thing that looked like it had been moved was my Rolodex. Yes, I know, I can keep all those files on my computer—and at home, I do—but I appreciate the old cards and the feeling of flipping through that thing randomly. Besides, a computer program has never really been able to absorb my “system” of filing names. That whole alphabetizing thing is so twentieth century.

Walking to the desk, I looked more closely, and sure enough, the dust that had settled all over the rest of the desktop (nobody ever accused me of being especially neat) had a Rolodex-sized break in it, a few inches to the left of where the Rolodex was now. I leaned over to see if I could discern what Jonathan had been looking at.

The Rolodex was turned to one of the newest cards, one I’d added less than a week before, white and crisp among the yellowed, worn, dusty ones.

The card with Les Townes’s address and phone number on it.

19

“YOU
think Jonathan Goodwin is conspiring with Les Townes to threaten you?” Sharon could barely hide her amusement, although to be fair, she wasn’t trying very hard. “You seriously believe that sixteen-year-old kid is trying to help an eighty-year-old man cover up a murder that took place in 1958?”

The restaurant, trying its very best to be quaint, was stopping short of rustic. Called The Settlers Inn, it was meant to be a colonial dining experience, when in fact the only thing the least bit colonial about it was the presence of goose on the menu. And you had to call a day in advance to get that. We hadn’t.

“I’m not saying it’s a perfect theory,” I countered. “But Chief Dutton took it seriously enough to consider it.”

“Did he call Jonathan in for questioning?” My ex-wife’s large green eyes were drinking in my discomfort like wine. Assuming eyes drink wine.

“No.”

“Did he call Jonathan’s mother?”

“No.”

“Did he ask the New York cops to talk to Townes about it?”

I waited a beat. “So. How was
your
day?”

Sharon giggled. “Just lovely,” she said when she’d reigned in her amusement. “I treated a man with shingles and a woman with a persistent cough, among many others. ”

“You should be flattered I’m even breathing near you, considering the germ factory you must be by the end of the day,” I told her.

“I’m very clean,” Sharon said.

The waiter, an unfortunate young man with a fake pony-tail and a three-cornered hat, came over to explain the specials, most of which came with succotash, and some with a wild rice medley. I couldn’t remember one hit song that wild rice had ever recorded, but it certainly sounded better than succotash, so I went with a chicken dish of some sort that included the rice. Sharon, adventurous soul that she is, went for a fish dish that sounded downright rustic and came with succotash.

And to think, I had chosen this restaurant myself. I should have known better.

“Where were we?” I asked when the waiter retreated back behind redcoat lines to give our orders to the Hessian at the grill.

“We were discussing my level of cleanliness,” Sharon answered.

“Perhaps it’s time to move on to another topic, then.”

“Yes, let’s talk about someone sending you a bomb, and how you think that Jonathan Goodwin is involved.” Sharon’s hundred-watt smile never so much as flickered.

“You’re a fine first date,” I told her.

“I’m a better second date.”

“I remember.”

She gave me a pointed look to remind me that we were starting fresh. “I can’t believe you suspect Jonathan. You’re so paranoid. That boy is like a little lamb; you just want to hug him.”

“He’s five foot ten and stares at the floor all the time,” I countered. “There are people I can think of I’d rather hug.”

“You keep on being mean, and you’re not going to get lucky tonight,” my ex-wife said.

I widened my eyes. “You mean I actually have a chance on the first date?”

“No. But why shouldn’t I give you the illusion of hope?”

The waiter came over with some brown bread and “freshly churned” butter that was ostensibly from a cow here on the “farm.” Forget that the pats all had “Land O Lakes” stamped on them. I have been well trained, so I waited until he walked away before I tore off a hearty portion and began slathering it. I hadn’t eaten much today.

“Look,” I told Sharon through a mouthful of bread (I’m not as good on a first date as she is). “I don’t
want
to suspect Jonathan. But I walked in, he was there when he shouldn’t have been, he was acting guilty, and the Rolodex was open to Les Townes’s card. Now, you tell me how I should interpret that without being, as you would say, paranoid. ”

“Maybe he just wanted to talk to Townes. He’s a movie nut like you.” Sharon used the serrated knife I hadn’t noticed to cut herself a “human-sized” slice of bread. Women can be so civilized it hurts.

“And it’s just a coincidence that he’s there past midnight right after I got a threatening package that we assume came from Townes?”

“Precisely. Coincidences do happen, you know.”

“Yeah, in Dickens novels. In real life, they’re just way too . . . coincidental.” I was losing, and we weren’t even having an argument. “But let’s forget this whole thing. I came here to have a night with you.”

“An evening. A night, you don’t get on the first date,” Sharon said.

“I believe you might have mentioned that. So. Tell me what kind of medicine you practice.” If she wanted a first date, I could give her a first date.