Murder, She Wrote by Jessica Fletcher Page B

an overhead projector. They have one at the high school.”
    â€œA neighbor of mine is a science teacher there,” Mort said. “I’ll give him a call.”
    â€œWell, that problem’s solved,” Seth said, adding his last empty mussel shell to the pile in the basin. “What’s next?” He patted his mouth with his napkin.
    â€œWe dusted the film strip for prints,” Mort said, “but it was pretty well wiped clean—some smudges, but nothing I could send to AFIS.”
    Also known as IAFIS, but not as easy to pronounce as
ay-fiss
. Mort was referring to the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI that serves police departments across the country. IAFIS is a central record of fingerprints, as well as criminal history, mug shots, scar and tattoo descriptions, and other pertinent details, and has aided in the solving of many a crime.
    â€œIt’s a shame there were no prints, but I keep coming back to the strip of film. It must have significance, given where we found it. And if we can learn what movie it’s from, that may lead us to the killer.”
    â€œI watch a lot of old movies on TV,” Mort said, “but it didn’t ring a bell.”
    â€œIf you didn’t have your reading glasses,” Seth said, looking askance at Mort, “you couldn’t see anything to begin with, never mind recognizing what motion picture that truncated bit of celluloid came from.”
    â€œYeah. I guess so.”
    â€œMitchell Elovitz said he would be happy to help you with any production questions,” I said to Mort.
    â€œWho’s he?” Seth asked.
    â€œThe director,” I replied. “You met him at the scene.”
    â€œYou mean that child is the director?”
    â€œHe is,” I said. “Mort, maybe if you show him the images your friend gets from the overhead projector, he might recognize what movie it’s part of. It’s worth asking him, don’t you think?”
    â€œYeah, I bet a lot of those kids out at the airport are film buffs. We could show the images to all of them. We might just get a hit. I’ll talk to my neighbor tonight.”
    â€œLooks like you’ve got it all worked out,” Seth said. “There’s just the one little matter left to tie up.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Mort asked.
    â€œWho pulled the trigger and where did that bullet end up?”

Chapter Nine
    â€œ S o I told Eve that if she wanted to play a role in the movie, she’d need to change her hairstyle,” Loretta Spiegel said as she ran a comb through my wet hair. “It’s about time. I’ve been pushing her for years to get her to try something new.”
    Loretta was talking about Eve Simpson, Cabot Cove’s crack real estate agent, who with little encouragement can make a mud hut sound like a mansion. Eve is a friend of long standing, although we have been known to see things differently when she occasionally stretches the truth.
    I was sitting on my back porch with a towel around my shoulders and a plastic garbage bag spread out on the floor under my chair while Loretta caught me up on the latest gossip and gave me what she called “a wash, curl, and dry.” With her salon still under construction, she was making the rounds of her regular customers’ homes to ensure that they didn’t miss their weekly appointments.
    â€œAnd what did Eve say to that?” I asked.
    â€œShe said she’d ‘take it under consideration.’ But Ideal Malloy said Eve’s had the same hairstyle for twenty years, and since the movie is set in the past, she should be just right for the role.”
    â€œIt’s not that far in the past,” I said. “And what role is that?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Loretta said, as she wound a lock of my hair around a foam roller and secured it to my head. “Eve said she was convinced they