Some Like It Hot-Buttered Read Online Free PDF Page B

freedom-of-speech issue, and it’s not.”
    “You’ve always been good at pointing out what my problems are.”
    Sharon and I have lunch once a week, usually at C’est Moi!, but sometimes elsewhere. We frequented a diner in Highland Park called Penny’s until it changed hands, and now we stay in Midland Heights, where my business and her practice exist within a couple of blocks of each other.
    It started as a way to keep our divorce from being a typical, no-holds-barred, knockdown event in which the two people forget what it was they liked about each other to begin with and merely try to inflict as much damage as possible. But I still find talking to Sharon a way to define my strengths and weaknesses. I specialize in the “strengths” department, and she handles the rest.
    I didn’t say it was a perfect arrangement.
    “Don’t be snippy, Elliot,” she said. “I know you’re frustrated. But I can’t believe it’s the police closing your theatre for a couple of days that’s getting you so angry.”
    “Stop saying, ‘your theatre’ like that. It makes my business seem like a cute little toy I’ve decided to play with that you think is just adorable, but that I’ll outgrow.”
    “What should I say?”
    “You should say ‘ the theatre,’ or ‘Comedy Tonight.’ I realize you don’t appreciate the name I’ve chosen, but it illustrates what the place is about.”
    “Okay, fine. So, what’s really bothering you, if it’s not the police closing Comedy Tonight?”
    Ah, who was I to argue? She was right (as was irritatingly often the case)—I was more worked up about losing two nights’ worth of negligible business than I should have been. I just hadn’t had the time, nor the inclination, to think about it long enough to understand why.
    “I guess I’m insulted,” I said finally. “Some person decides to off poor Mr. Ansella, whoever he was, and they go out of their way to do it in my theatre. I mean, poisoned popcorn? That’s not a crime of passion; that’s not an impulse buy of a murder. It’s not a question of someone seeing an opportunity to get rid of a guy they really don’t like and then possibly regretting a rash action later. This person had to plan it. Go over Ansella’s schedule. Determine he was coming to my theatre last night, maybe lure him there.”
    “You just said, ‘my theatre.’ How come it’s okay when you do it?”
    I ignored her, which was another one of the issues in our marriage. “They had to decide how to kill him—poisoned popcorn. That was a decision based on his coming to Comedy Tonight—see, I said it correctly—and they used my business as the place to do it. They had to find a poison that wouldn’t be detectable in popcorn, or one that would work so quickly that the bad taste wouldn’t matter. And they had to get it onto his popcorn somehow, knowing that he’d order popcorn at the movies, and get him to eat it, then scurry away before they could be discovered. They did it on my watch, and they counted on my not stopping it.”
    There was a long pause. “Scurry?”
    “Would you prefer ‘slink’?”
    She frowned. “So you’re choosing to take it personally that whoever killed Mr. Ansella didn’t just pour the poison into his coffee or do him in at the Laundromat? You think that the fact they killed him at . . . Comedy Tonight . . . was a personal affront to you? Geez, it’s all about you, isn’t it, Elliot?”
    “Well. Not all .” I felt sheepish, except for the woolly part.
    “Maybe you need a life outside your theatre. Maybe you should start dating again. You said there was a blond cop? Was she cute?”
    “You just want me to remarry so you can stop paying alimony. ”
    She made a face like Donald Duck does right before he says something unintelligible. “Yes, Elliot. That’s why I ask. Because between Gregory and myself, two practicing physicians, we really can’t afford your alimony.” Sharon could have left it there, but she was