Murder at the Movies Read Online Free

wild flying sequence, the crash. Then Olliegoing up to heaven. A little corny maybe …” His eyes grew into saucers. “A horse. Then Ollie turns into a horse.” He jumped up. “With a derby on!”
    Tretheway waited for Jake to calm down before he went on. “And remember they discussed reincarnation earlier in the movie?”
    â€œThat’s right.” Jake sat down. “Ollie said he wanted to come back as a horse.”
    â€œDoesn’t that remind you of tonight? A plane crash? With the pilot killed? Reincarnation? A horse with a derby?”
    â€œJust about bang on.” Jake’s eyes were not returning to their normal size. “But what’s it mean?”
    â€œProbably nothing.” Tretheway pushed himself out of the easy chair. He flipped his cigar into the fireplace. “Just a dumb student prank. Inspired by a silly movie.”
    Jake followed him down the hall. He watched while Tretheway took another beer out of the ice box and lowered himself gingerly onto the front edge of a kitchen chair. He stared across the room.
    â€œSo how come you’re worried?” Jake said.
    Tretheway took a long pull from the fresh quart.
    â€œThere are lots of things out there I can’t figure out,” he began. “Like Adolph Hitler’s behaviour. Or Chamberlain’s. Or even Roosevelt’s. The war in Spain. Japan ravaging China. IRA bombings. But that’s big stuff. I can’t do much about it. And you like to think somebody else is keeping an eye on things.” He turned and glowered at Jake. “But a few hours ago, only five blocks from my house, a nice widow lady is scared out of her bloomers by a sick phone call. Someone steals a horse and hides it in her garage. With my bowler onits head. Just like the movie. Coincidence? A prank? The start of something? I don’t know. And it bothers me that I can’t figure it out. That’s why I’m worried.”
    Tretheway cradled his beer in one arm and clumped down the cellar steps to perform the nightly cold weather ritual of furnace stoking. Jake stood by himself in the kitchen. He listened absently to the muffled noises reverberating up through the network of old pipes and hot air ducts as Tretheway hurled shovelfuls of coal into the insatiable innards of the grey metal monster.
    The twin vertical creases between Jake’s eyebrows deepened. When Tretheway worried, he worried.

Chapter
3
    T he parade of movies continued into February. Tretheway and Jake saw such beauties as
Drums, Count of Monte Cristo, Dawn Patrol
and
You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man
while enduring others best seen once and forgotten. This category included
Boy Meets Girl, The Devil Is Driving, Men Are Such Fools
and
Hold That Coed
.
    Usually just Tretheway and Jake went together, but there were exceptions. Addie went to
Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm
. Tretheway passed. Bartholemew Gum joined them for
Gaiety Girls
and, a week later,
Blondie
. Jake saw them all.
    Bartholemew Gum played cards regularly at the Tretheways’ well known Saturday night euchre sessions. He lived with his mother only a few blocks away on the periphery of Coote’s Paradise, a wildlife area protected in perpetuity by the Royal Fort York Botanical Gardens Society. As children, both Gum and Jakehad roamed its two thousand acres of natural parks, forests, ravine trails and, depending on the season, canoed or skated on its marshy expanses. Active in the scout movement, Scouter Gum led his troops on hikes to destinations in Coote’s with the evocative names of Kingfisher Point, Ginger Valley, Rat Island, Sassafrass Point and the Desjardins Canal. His colourless eyes gazed kindly at birds, animals and life through thick rimless glasses he had worn forever. He walked slowly, carefully looking down as though avoiding insects. What hair he had was curly.
    Bartholemew Gum accompanied Tretheway and Jake to the showing of
Only Angels Have