We’ll Always Have Parrots (13 page)

As I passed through the lobby, I saw people clustered around the closed door of the hotel restaurant. Shouldn’t it be open for lunch by now?

I pushed closer, and saw a sign taped to the door:
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
. Below that, in bright red letters, someone had added, “
BY ORDER OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT
.”

The fans were already responding to the health department’s action, in a variety of ways. Several rude remarks in felt-tip pen already graced the margins of the sign. A few people were organizing parrot-and monkey-catching squads. A few more were organizing fast-food runs. And most were milling around, grumbling.

“I was getting to like the animals,” I heard one fan say.

“Yeah, only I was thinking we should have more of a variety next year,” another replied.

“And bigger ones,” a third suggested. A murmur of general approval followed. I made another entry to my growing mental list of reasons to avoid next year’s Porfiria convention. Assuming there even was a next year’s convention.

I headed for the dealers’ room. Not that I expected much to happen there. The only vendor doing much business was the enterprising owner of the Undiscovered Treasures booth, who’d bought a case of cheap, brightly colored umbrellas and was selling them as “parrot-sols.”

I’d begun to regret taking the booth. Of course, when I’d signed up for it, I hadn’t expected having a murder to distract me and, more important, my potential customers. Maybe business would pick up later in the day, but for the moment, when the convention-goers weren’t in panels, they were out in the lobby and the halls, watching the reporters outside, trading rumors, and getting underfoot whenever the police tried to do anything. Judging by the crowds that followed him, Detective Foley was fast becoming one of the most popular guests at the convention, though he wasn’t going to stay popular if he kept refusing to autograph programs.

I found Harry from Blazing Sabers loitering near the booth, talking to Steele.

“Chris said to remind you that we’re doing another demonstration tonight,” Harry said. “Doesn’t look like we’ll get much rehearsal time, so we’ll just do the same bit as yesterday.”

“Do they really think anyone wants to see it twice?”

“Why not?” he said, shrugging. “Twice is nothing; this crowd’ll watch the same Porfiria episode twenty times and come back for more.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” I said. “Hey, sign my nephew’s program, will you?”

“Sure,” he said, taking the pen I handed him and flipping neatly to the center spread. “I love these things; only time I ever get asked for my autograph. Of course, from what I hear, fans have started asking the police for their autographs now, so I guess I shouldn’t get too stuck up.”

With that, he turned to stroll off.

“Harry,” I called. “Are you busy?”

“Nah,” he said. “Chris and I were going to work out some new routines, but he’s still off driving the porcelain bus.”

“He’s that hung over?” I said. “Please tell me not to feel guilty that I didn’t confiscate his beer last night.”

“He’s a big boy,” Harry said. “Besides, it wasn’t the beers, numerous though they were; it was the tequila shooters later on.”

“Later on? How late did the bar stay open?”

“Only till one, but the parties went on long after that,” Harry said. “In fact, I think there’s still one going on down in 232 if you get bored.”

“I’ll pass,” I said. “Look, do me a favor, will you?”

“Sure,” he said.

I grabbed a Magic Marker and a sheet of paper, scrawled a sign that read “Get the edge in your next argument…swords, daggers, and other implements of destruction—booth 13,” and pinned it to the back of Harry’s costume.

“And while you’re wandering around, how about carrying this?” I suggested, handing him a knife. An unsharpened one, of course, and safely peace-bonded so the security guards wouldn’t confiscate it.

He wandered off, chuckling. I stood behind the counter.

Steele had tipped his folding chair back against the mound of empty boxes stored behind our booth, pulled his battered period hat over his eyes, and appeared to be dozing.

“Think that’ll do any good?” he asked, from under the brim.

“Who knows?” I said. “Worth trying. Business is a little slow.”

“Slow? Try immobile,” he said, his voice still emerging slightly muffled from under the hat.

I envied his calm. I kept tapping my feet and drumming my fingers on the table. I decided not to look at the clock until I was sure fifteen minutes had passed.

Oops. Try four minutes.

Not that I was waiting for anything in particular. But it annoyed me, being stuck at the booth with nothing to do.

In fact, it was driving me crazy. I envied Steele his apparent tranquility.

And I couldn’t resist interrupting it.

“So where did you learn blacksmithing, anyway?” I asked.

“In a commune,” Steele said.

“A real commune? What was it like?”

“Not my scene,” he said, shrugging. “Stuck around till I got the basics of blacksmithing down, then I split.”

I waited for more. Anyone who asked me how I got into blacksmithing risked a half hour monologue.

“So you liked blacksmithing?” I asked, finally.

“Seemed useful,” he said. “Better than all the odd jobs I’d been knocking about with up till then.”

Obviously Steele and I were not kindred spirits. I went back to drumming my fingers.

Luckily, before my nervous percussion drove Steele crazy, a visitor finally stopped by the booth. Not a customer, of course—Steele disappeared back under his hat. But then, I needed to talk to this visitor.

“Feeling any better, Chris?” I asked. He seemed to be holding his head a little carefully.

“I see you’ve been talking to Harry,” he said.

“Look, Chris, I’m trying to get a program signed for my nephew—the one who had such a bad experience with the QB yesterday.”

“Sure,” he said, reaching for the program and flipping it open, almost by instinct. He’d obviously signed a few of them this weekend. He had his pen poised above the space before he noticed it was already signed.

“Hey, one per customer,” he said, laughing and handing it back to me. “I already did this one. In fact, I think I remember your nephew. Tow-headed kid with a mean little dog, right?”

“That’s him,” I said. “Chris—tactless question of the century, I know, but I’ll ask it anyway—any chance of getting Andrea to sign? Did she even come?”

He shook his head.

“Back in California,” he said. “I found out that much from the police. They, uh, checked up on her. Won’t tell me where she is, though.”

“For all they know, you could be an abusive boyfriend trying to hunt her down,” I pointed out.

“Instead of just a philandering one, you mean?”

I shrugged.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “Last night was out of line. I know that now.”

“And you didn’t know it last night? Maybe Andrea’s got the right idea.”

“Yeah, probably,” he said. “Hey, at least she’s got an alibi, thank God. And she’s not stuck with a future jailbird.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

He shrugged.

“The one thing I’ve got going for me right now is Walker,” he said. “They like me for it, but they love Walker. Stupid as that is.”

“You don’t think it could have been Walker?”

“No way,” Chris said.

“Why not? Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but I’d like to hear your reasoning.”

“Oh, it’s not that I don’t think he could kill someone,” Chris said. “If he was mad enough, and scared enough, I can see him losing all sense of reality and doing something he’d be very sorry for, five minutes later. But I don’t see him daring to kill the QB, even if she was firing him, and from what I’ve heard of how it happened, there’s no way he could have done it.”

“Why not?” I said. “No guts?”

“No head for heights,” Chris said, “and absolutely zero sense of balance or coordination. I’m his stunt double, remember? And not just for sword fights. Anything where he goes more than three feet off the ground, or anywhere near an edge, they bring me in. Rumor has it you did the balcony climb when you found her, right?”

I nodded.

“Not a lot of fun, was it?” Chris said. “No way Walker would even try that. The man won’t even climb a stepladder to change a light bulb.”

“Did you tell the police about this?”

“Yeah, of course I did. I’m not trying to withhold evidence that would help the poor guy. I know I didn’t do it, but I don’t think he did, either.”

“Do you think they believed you?”

“Probably not. He’s lawyering up, anyway. Don’t you love that phrase? Lawyering up.”

“I’m fonder of the phrase, ‘no longer a suspect,’” I said. “Who do you think did it, anyway?”

“No one with the show, if you ask me.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s just a show,” he said, sounding rather surprised. “Just a job. Yeah, we all gripe about how she treated us, and if she fires us, we’re upset for a while. But it’s only a job.”

“Spoken with the sublime self-confidence of someone who can probably walk into half-a-dozen better paid jobs the minute Porfiria’s canceled,” I said.

“Yeah, but even so—the crew can get work, no problem,” Chris said. “The actors—maybe some of them won’t ever work again, but none of them believe it. They all think the next audition will get them
the
part. That’s where Andrea is now. Off in California auditioning. You want to know who I think they should be looking at? Them.”

“Those two people in the Amblyopian ranger costumes? Why?” I asked, following the direction of his pointing finger.

“No, I mean the fans generally. All of them. They’re the ones who get obsessive about this. They don’t like the way a character is developing or how an episode ends, and the next thing you know, there’s a Dumpster full of petitions in the mail room; the network’s mail server is down from the overload; protest sites all over the web. It’s a job to us, but for them it’s reality. So when the police finally figure out who killed her, it won’t be someone who got fired or was paid too little or treated badly on the set. It’ll be someone who doesn’t think Porfiria should have declared war on Urushiol, or double-crossed Mephisto, or slapped her maid Alopecia in season two.”

“That’s crazy,” I said.

“And killing people is sane?”

I couldn’t exactly argue with him.

“Just do me a favor, okay?” he went on. “When you and Michael move into that fancy house in the country with the jungle room and the Moroccan tent room and whatever else your mother has planned, get a damned good security system, okay? ’Cause I’d hate to wake up one morning and read in the paper that you got stabbed by some wacko who thinks she’s the chosen bride of Mephisto, and you’re messing with her man.”

And with that rather melodramatic closing line, he tapped his watch, picked up his musketeer hat, and strode out in the direction of the ballroom.

Okay, he had a good point. Several good points, in fact. I made a mental note to talk to Michael about installing a security system, and another mental note to have a serious discussion with Mother about her decorating schemes.

And then I sat back to ponder his take on who killed the QB.

A fan? Maybe. His reasoning sounded logical to me. But somehow, it didn’t feel right.

I was trying to figure out why when a voice interrupted my reveries.

“Have you seen Nate?”

I looked up to see Typhani standing in front of the booth.

“No, sorry,” I said. “Anything important?”

“Damn,” she said. “It’s just that I’m trying to be as helpful to Nate as possible. I mean, it would be really cool if he could get me another job in television, you know?”

“So you liked working for the QB,” I said.

“Not really,” she said. “I’d have quit after the first week, except I knew she’d give me a lousy reference, and bad-mouth me to everyone in the industry, and I really want to work in television. So I stayed—what could I do? Anyway, it’s a pain not to have another job lined up and all, but it’s not like this one was much of a loss.”

For some reason, Typhani’s cool reaction to the QB’s death bothered me more than most people’s. Or maybe hers was just the last straw.

“God, is there anyone not happy that she’s dead?” I said. “It doesn’t have to be someone who was actually fond of her, you understand. Just someone more hurt than helped by her death.”

Typhani was frowning. Good grief, she was taking me literally.

“I can’t think of anyone offhand,” she said. “But I can ask around if you really need to talk to someone like that. Only I don’t understand what you want them for.”

“She’s gotten you used to trying to do six impossible things before breakfast, hasn’t she?” I said. “No, that was just a rhetorical question.”

“That means she was just blowing off steam,” Steele translated. “She doesn’t really want an answer.”

“Okay,” Typhani said, and from the look on her face, I could tell I’d just been filed in the category of people to be avoided because they asked boring questions, like what were you going to do with the rest of your life.

“I’ll go find Nate,” she said, and hurried off.

“Sorry,” I said. “She gets on my nerves.”

“Look on the bright side,” he said. “I bet she got on her late employer’s nerves, too.”

Even in my temporary, feeling-sorry-for-the-QB mood, I had to smile at that.

But I also remembered how, when I’d found her crying in the bathroom, Typhani had said the QB was too mean to live. I agreed. Hardly enough to make her a suspect though.

A little later, I spotted a suit jacket approaching through the fur, feathers, and chain mail.

“Morning, Ichabod,” I said.

“Good morning,” he said. He grabbed the edge of our booth table like a swimmer reaching a life raft. He looked awful. Not hung over, like Chris. And not dazed and shell-shocked as he’d been yesterday. More like profoundly despondent.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I learned some very strange and disturbing things last night,” he said. “I’m not sure how I can possibly face the fans at my panel today.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Those con parties always get pretty wild. Chances are, most people won’t remember whatever it is you think you did, and even if they do, it’s a very tolerant group.”

In fact, if he’d gotten a little wild and crazy, it might improve his image.

“It’s nothing I did,” he said, looking horrified. “It’s something I learned about my uncle.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

He frowned, and stared at me for a few moments, as if unsure whether to trust me. Then the need to unburden himself won out.

“Remember what I told you yesterday?” he said. “About my parents paying off my uncle’s debts?”

I nodded.

“It’s worse than I thought,” he said. “After he died, some very unsavory people came to see my parents and claimed my uncle had borrowed a lot of money from them. Thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“What for?” I asked.

“Drugs, obviously,” he said. “What else could it be?”

“A lot of things,” I said. “Maybe he gambled. Maybe he had some kind of medical expenses. Who knows? I have an aunt who practically went bankrupt buying stuff on eBay.”

“They didn’t have eBay in the seventies,” Dilley said.

“No, but buying stuff you don’t need and can’t afford has been around for centuries,” I said.

“Would anyone other than drug dealers send thugs to collect their money?” he asked.

“You’ve obviously never met any loan sharks,” I said. “Don’t automatically assume the worst about your uncle.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But even so—what am I going to say to his fans?”

“The truth,” I said. “Just not the whole truth. And put a positive spin on it.”

“How?” he asked.

“Your uncle died impoverished and unknown, thanks to a world that failed to appreciate his genius,” I improvised. “And only the love of a few far-seeing and dedicated fans like those attending this convention kept his work alive until the television show could bring it to a wider audience.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I can work with that. Died impoverished and unknown. Yes.”

He wandered off, muttering to himself. He looked much more cheerful. Perhaps I could count cheering him up as my good deed for the day.

And perhaps he’d solved the mystery of why his uncle had sold the rights to his work to the QB for such a low price. He’d been desperate for money.

But did that get me any closer to finding out who killed the QB? Not that I could tell.

I whiled away a little time trying to close a tough sale. Okay, it was for one of Steele’s swords, but considering how much I’d left him to his own devices, maybe it was only fair.

Steele gave up as soon as a customer expressed the slightest reservations about a sword. Usually about the price tag. But while he was talking to another customer, a prosperous-looking fan in an Amblyopian ranger costume asked the price of one of Steele’s swords and gulped at the answer. So I went into full sales mode. Described all the steps that went into making the blade and then the hilt. Showed him some of the finer points of construction that you wouldn’t find on cheap, mass-produced swords. Opened up a couple of reference books to prove how historically accurate it was. And as a grand finale, I dragged out a similar sword that I’d gotten from an inexpensive mail order catalogue, let him see the two, side-by-side, and let him pick them both up.

“You see,” I said, as he hefted the two appreciatively, “the handmade one’s at least a pound heavier, but the balance is so good it actually feels much lighter.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, nodding.

Of course, you’d notice the extra pound quick enough, if you actually tried to fight with the thing for a few minutes, but I doubted if this particular ranger would ever take it off his wall.

I confess: I was showing off for Steele’s benefit. Nice of him not to laugh when my would-be customer said he’d have to think about it, and slipped away, his body language clearly telling me that he wasn’t coming back.

“Now I know why you had that piece of junk around,” was all Steele said.

So much for my superior sales skills.

“Hey, Meg!”

I turned to see Eric standing in front of the booth.

“Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Are you all by yourself?”

“No, Grandpa is over there talking to another parrot,” he said. Dad had acquired a stepladder from somewhere, and was perched atop it, holding the tape recorder out toward a pair of blue and yellow birds.

“Great,” I said. At least Eric didn’t seem bored or unhappy. He was watching Dad’s latest antics with the same bemused interest all the grandchildren felt before they got old enough to be embarrassed by them.

“Where’s Grandma?”

“She went to a fabric store.”

I winced. Mother didn’t sew; she only went to fabric stores when she got the decorating bug.

“Oh, Eric,” I said. “I got the rest of the signatures on your program. All except Andrea; she didn’t come at all this weekend.”

“Wow,” Eric said. “You mean, you even got…
her
autograph?”

“Piece of cake,” I said, flipping to the QB’s picture. “Nobody’s tougher than your Aunt Meg; you remember that.”

“Cool,” Eric said. “I was going to get her to sign the big photo at the beginning, but this is probably better. It all matches.”

Big photo at the beginning?

“Can I see that for a second?” I asked.

Eric obediently handed back the program.

The guest biographies were arranged, three to a page, in a section toward the middle of the program book. Arranged alphabetically. The fourth page, where I’d had the QB sign, contained Michael Waterston, Maggie West, and Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones. I flipped forward one page and saw that the middle spread included Walker Morris, Andrea and Harry from Blazing Sabers, the elderly character actor who played Porfiria’s chief counselor, Karen the costumer, and the professor I’d seen holding forth on Jungian archetypes in Amblyopia: The guests whose last names fell between
F
and
T
.

Flipping forward again, I saw a full page portrait of the QB occupying the page opposite the first three guests: Nate Abrams, Chris Blair, and Ichabod Dilley. Eric had already gotten signatures from all three before tackling the QB.

“This was where you were asking her to sign?” I said. “When she said that funny thing to you?”

“That she wasn’t going to sign on the same page as that imposter,” Eric said, nodding. “I guess she meant Ichabod Dilley, since he was only the nephew of the real guy.”

“That must be it,” I said.

I handed the program back, and Eric trotted away holding it.

Yes, she probably did mean Ichabod Dilley. But how had she known he was an imposter? I’d probably found out before anyone at the convention, but that was still only a few minutes before one. When we’d gone to her room at two, she hadn’t called him an imposter. She’d sounded worried about what he would say. And I doubted the subject had come up during her panel. When did she find out?

Maybe there was no particular mystery about it. Maybe someone had told her between the time she left her room and the time Eric went through the autograph line. Or maybe she already knew. Even if she didn’t know him well enough to keep in touch after she bought the comic book rights from him, thirty years was time enough for her to have heard about his death somehow.

But if the QB already knew Dilley was dead, why hadn’t she said something when she saw his name on the program?

And if she didn’t know he was dead, how did she know Dilley the younger was an imposter, sight unseen?

And, in either case, why had she been so worried about what Ichabod Dilley, real or fake, had to say?

“Something wrong?” Steele asked, interrupting my reverie.

“Long story,” I said, slightly distracted. I’d spotted Nate cutting through the dealers’ room. He looked upset about something—news about the show perhaps?

“Mind if I run out for a minute?” I asked. “I need to ask Nate something.”

“What? And leave me with all these customers?” Steele said. Since the only three customers in the room were browsing in the used book and video booth, I took that for permission.

I caught up with Nate just as he stepped out into the hall.