The Movie-Town Murders (The Art of Murder 5)

“It did?”

“I think it did. Last I heard, it did. Georgie said she’d finally got the money together—God knows how because she was always broke—but the seller changed their mind. Georgie was sick about it. She was really counting on getting her hands on that print. That’s a book that would have sold.”

Still more bad news for Georgie. Did this provide another motive for suicide?

Jason said only, “Did she mention who the seller was?”

“She was careful not to mention who the seller was, but obviously it was someone on campus.”

“Why obviously?”

“Well, I mean, from the way she spoke, it seemed to me it had to be someone she saw fairly regularly. I just assumed.”

“She belonged to some kind of film club, didn’t she? Could—”

“No. They kicked her out after she went to the police about Eli Humphrey. But yeah, it’s possible, I guess.”

A little confusing, but he thought he followed. “Did she tell you what the film was?”

Lois shook her head. “I know it was supposed to be a film noir from the 1950s, which rules out all the missing Chan and Holmes films. I know it was supposedly American-made, which eliminates The Diamond. The problem is, there aren’t any known missing crime or mystery films from the ’50s to fit that description. Which I told her.”

“You think it was a scam?”

“I think it must have been. But Georgie knew her detective films, so there was something there for her to get excited about. Maybe a screenplay exists? Or she was shown some outtakes or publicity stills? My guess is the film was never actually made.”

“But Georgie didn’t think it was a scam?”

“No. She was one hundred percent convinced she had found a lost noir masterpiece.”

Jason was thinking out loud. “If it was a scam, why didn’t the seller carry through with the scheme?”

“My take? Georgie was not someone you’d want to try to scam. She’d have gone straight to the cops, whether she implicated herself in wrongdoing or not.” Lois’s laugh was short and harsh. “Hell, even if that film existed, if she decided there was something suspect in how it was acquired, she might have gone to the police. She could be a little bit…fanatical.”

That certainly sounded like the Georgette Ono who was taking shape in Jason’s imagination.

If the person attempting to sell Ono this purported lost film was someone she dealt with on a regular basis, surely they’d known her proclivity for going to the authorities before ever reaching out to her?

The question remained: why had they backed out?

Jason had to wait until Lois finished ordering dessert—Basque cheesecake for an inconsequential fourteen dollars—to ask, “When did this deal fall through? Do you know?”

Lois shook her head, and the little black balls on her hat swayed back and forth. “We weren’t seeing each other. Georgie mentioned in passing that last evening that it had fallen through.” She added bleakly, “It was obvious she cared more about losing an imaginary film than losing me.”