Murder, She Wrote by Jessica Fletcher Page A

a napkin, plate, silverware, and a glass of water, and replaced our bread basket with a full one. I grabbed a piece before all the bread disappeared again.
    â€œSo where do you go from here?” Seth asked.
    â€œBack to square one, I guess,” Mort answered. “I’m planning to drive out to the airport tomorrow to question some more people—that is, if I can get away with it without having some reporter dogging my steps.” He looked at me. “I especially want to interview your former houseguest, Mrs. F. She might have some insights into who disliked her mother, and I’d like to know where she was when Ms. Stockdale was killed. Will you give me a hand with that?”
    â€œBe happy to,” I said.
    â€œHere’s your mussels,” Marie said, deftly balancing two heaping bowls of the bivalves and placing one in front of me and the other before Seth. “Your pizza will be out in a minute, Sheriff, and I’ll be right back with a basin for the shells and with Dr. Hazlitt’s spaghetti.”
    â€œShe’s a wonderful waitress,” I said. “Do you mind if we start without you?” I asked Mort.
    â€œGo ahead.”
    As I picked up my fork, Mort leaned over to inhale the spicy scent rising from my dish. “May I?” he asked me.
    â€œHelp yourself,” I said.
    He plucked out a mussel and tipped his head back to allow the plump meat to slide into his mouth along with a bit of the sauce. He made a fist. “Mmm!
Delizioso.
Reminds me of home.”
    â€œYour mother was Italian?” Seth asked.
    â€œNope, but we had a great Italian restaurant right around the corner. This was my favorite dish.”
    â€œThen why didn’t you order it for yourself just now?” Seth asked.
    Mort shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in the mood for pizza.”
    â€œAnd here it is,” Marie said, sliding a metal stand on the table with Mort’s pizza atop it, and placing a side dish of spaghetti next to Seth.
“Bon appétit!”
    â€œThat’s French,” I said.
    â€œSorry,” she replied. “I’ve been watching Julia Child reruns.
Buon appetito!
”
    I waited until Marie turned to another table before saying to Mort in a low voice, “What are you going to do with that piece of film we found?”
    While the tables at Peppino’s are not on top of each other, and the sound level is pretty high, I was nevertheless being careful not to be overheard. Many a rumor had begun as an innocent statement plucked at Peppino’s, then nurtured at Sassi’s Bakery, until it burst into full bloom at Mara’s Luncheonette. It was like a grown-up version of Telephone, a game I’d played as a child. The first player whispers a secret phrase into the ear of the one sitting next to her, something like “I’ll call for you.” The second whispers the message into the ear of the third, and so on down the line until the last child to receive the message announces what she heard: “cauliflower.” We didn’t want any “cauliflowers” grown in the gossip garden.
    â€œDo you have any idea what movie it might have been from?” I asked.
    â€œI didn’t recognize anything on it, but frankly it was hard to see the pictures,” Mort said. “They were so tiny. I didn’t have my reading glasses with me.”
    â€œMaybe you should see if someone can run it slowly through a projector for you,” Seth put in. “Let you look at a bigger image.”
    â€œGreat idea, Doc!”
    â€œThe problem with that,” I said, “is that the light from a regular movie projector is so strong, it could burn a hole in the film.”
    â€œIt went through a projector at the movies, didn’t it?” Mort asked.
    â€œYes, it did, but very quickly, before the film had time to burn,” I replied. “But maybe we can blow up the images and take photographs of them using