We’ll Always Have Parrots (20 page)

I was looking around for Steele, or someone else to watch the booth, when I felt someone tugging at my elbow.

“Excuse me?”

I turned to see the pudgy figure of the producer who’d been talking to Steele about doing the armor and weapons for his movie.

“Alaric’s stepped away for a few minutes,” I said. “Can I—”

“Yes, I know,” the man said, looking around furtively. “That’s why I came over. I’ve been discussing a project with Mr. Steele—”

“I noticed,” I said. Maybe it was rude, cutting him short like that, but quite apart from the fact that I didn’t see what I had to do with his deal with Steele, I saw Detective Foley and his partner step into the dealers’ room.

“I’d be interested in your perspective on the project,” the man said

“My perspective?” I said.

“Frankly, we’re looking for something a little less expensive,” the man said. “Perhaps if you could look these numbers over. Give us your thoughts.”

He held out a piece of paper. Something Steele had given him as part of their discussions, I surmised. I could see rough sketches of a helmet and an ornate sword hilt. And numbers. Impressively large numbers, but then he wanted quite a lot of custom iron work.

My perspective? He wanted a lower bid. Someone to do the work more cheaply, or maybe just competition to help him push Steele’s price down.

“I don’t think—” I began.

“Just look it over,” the man said. “Here’s my card; I already picked up yours yesterday. I’d like to talk to you.”

With that, he disappeared into the crowd.

What a little weasel! Was this how TV producers really worked? Not the top drawer ones, I’d bet. I slipped the card and the paper into my pocket. When Steele got back, I’d warn him what the producer was up to.

In the meantime, the cops had gone from one end of the dealers’ room to the other, looking around. Looking for someone in particular, or just looking?

It didn’t matter. They were about to leave the room, and I wanted to talk to them. I glanced around and spotted a familiar face.

“Dad!” I said, running out into the aisle and catching his sleeve. “Can you watch my booth for a few minutes?”

“Well,” he said, “is it important?” I could see that he had his eye on a bright green parrot fluttering overhead.

“It could be,” I said, in the mysterious and conspiratorial tone I knew would catch his interest. “It could be what cracks the case. I’ll come and tell you as soon as I see what the police say.”

“Right!” he said, and scrambled behind the counter.

I followed the police into the wide hallway outside the dealers’ room.

Detective Foley and his partner were talking to several uniformed officers when I reached them.

“When I give the word,” I heard Foley say, and then he turned to me, frowning. “What can I do for you?”

“This may sound crazy,” I began.

“Why not?” he said. “Everything else today has.”

But he listened while I explained my theory. Listened intently, but I wasn’t sure whether he found my theory fascinating and plausible or just had trouble following it.

I confess, at the last minute, I waffled, and didn’t indict Nate as definitively as I’d originally intended. After all, if I was wrong, Michael still had to work with him. Probably a mistake. It weakened my argument, so all you had left was an impassioned but confusing plea that Foley look a lot more deeply into Ichabod Dilley’s death, his relationship with the other members of the cast of
Acid Vision
, and the real identity of every fifty-something person in the hotel.

“That’s very interesting,” Detective Foley, said, glancing at his silent partner.

“You don’t believe me,” I said. He could probably tell from my voice that I wasn’t pleased.

“Oh, actually we believe you,” he said. “We’ll be talking to Ms. West and others to develop the information you’ve given us. It dovetails very nicely with our theory of the case.”

“Your theory?” I said.

The other detective gave him a baleful look, as if to suggest that he was talking a little too much to a civilian, but Detective Foley was on a roll.

“Yes,” he said, tucking his thumbs in his pants pockets and rocking back on his heels. “We happen to agree with your basic assumption. We think Ichabod Dilley is very much alive. And we can’t find any trace of our mild-mannered suspect over there before around 1970.”

He was pointing across the lobby, to where Nate was standing, talking to Francis and Walker.

My brain reeled. Okay, I had pointed the finger at Nate. But maybe I wanted to be wrong. I liked Nate, and I certainly hadn’t expected the police to confirm my suspicions quite this readily. As I watched, Walker clapped Nate on the shoulder and strolled off.

“If you’re finished showing off, maybe we can arrest the guy now?” Foley’s partner suggested.

Foley nodded, and the two of them headed across the lobby with a firm, purposeful air.

Nate and Francis looked up. Nate looked alarmed. Of course, so did Francis, but that was his normal expression.

Detective Foley reached into his inside jacket pocket for something. His badge, maybe.

Nate and Francis could see it, too. Nate looked anxious.

Francis turned and ran.

Francis? Wait a minute. I thought they were after Nate—but he just stood there with a puzzled look on his face. Francis was the one running away.

The detectives followed. Because he was the one they were after, or just because he was running?

No matter. They followed him. So did I. At a safe distance. My Renaissance wench costume slowed me down, but then I didn’t want to overtake the police, just see what happened when they caught Francis.

Glancing up, I saw a growing number of monkeys, always curious about new human antics, swinging along above us, chattering eagerly. The half-dozen parrots currently infesting the hallway merely squawked as the monkeys shoved them aside.

The crowd grew thinner, and I could see that Francis’s flight was destined to end shortly. The detectives were gaining on him, and the path ahead was blocked by an unexpected obstacle. Apparently Brad, Salome’s keeper, had gotten permission to pack up and bring her home. Under his direction, several nervous bellhops were pulling her cage along the hall toward the open double doors leading to the parking lot.

Francis crashed into the cage. Salome roared and began flinging herself from side to side. The bellhops fled, knocking Brad down on their way.

Francis looked startled for a moment, and then he reached out and jerked aside the latch holding the cage door closed.

“Stand back or I’ll turn her loose!” he yelled.

People started leaving. Fast.

“Power to the people!” Francis shrieked. “Free the Pasadena Pair!”

Just then, Salome hit the cage door, which popped open, sending her sprawling ten feet out into the middle of the hallway floor.

She lay there for a few moments, as if stunned—or perhaps feeling the same sense of acute embarrassment domestic housecats suffer when they do something clumsy.

I flattened myself against a wall, convinced that I’d be trampled by the panic-stricken mob. But I had to hand it to this crowd. For a panic-stricken mob, they did an astonishingly efficient job of emptying the hallway. By the time Salome shook her head and bounded to her feet with a roar, only a dozen people remained.

I decided it was stupid to be one of them and began backing slowly down the hall, feeling behind me for a doorway.

Salome lashed her tail and looked around.

I saw Brad, the keeper, slipping out through a doorway.

I felt a doorframe behind me. I backed up, hard, pushing the door open. I could see tile floor. I was in a bathroom. Okay. I kept on backing, staring at the door, until I hit something hard, and grabbed onto it. I kept expecting Salome to burst in. As seconds passed and nothing happened, I could feel my heart slow and my brain start working again.

I glanced back and decided to let go of the urinal.

“Hello?” I said, not too loudly. “Anyone in here?”

No answer, just the usual hollow bathroom echo.

And I didn’t hear any roars outside, or any screams of terror or anguish.

But I didn’t hear any reassuring sounds of the convention resuming, either.

Great. I was trapped in the men’s room.

At least if I’d found an exit door, I could mill around outside with the rest of the evacuees. Find out if the police had caught Francis, or if his diversionary tactic had worked and, more important, find out when they’d caught Salome. As it was, I could either stick my head out and risk having it bitten off or lurk around here until someone came in and found me crouching among the urinals. I’d be a long time living that down.

Also a long time getting over the ick factor of fondling a urinal. I washed my hands, twice, and then realized the bathroom was out of paper towels.

Typical of this dump, I thought, drying my hands on my skirt.

Something crackled in my pocket.

I reached in and found the folded piece of paper. My fingertips rasped over the rough, pebbly texture. I pulled it out and stared at it. Off-white with little flecks of color.

“I know who killed her,” I said, half-aloud. I’d been wrong. And the cops were wrong. And I knew how to prove it. Provided the killer didn’t do away with the evidence before I could get it to the police.

I opened the bathroom door a crack and peered out. Nothing. No Salome. No people, either, which probably meant she was still on the loose.

The only sane thing to do was to stay in the bathroom.

Of course, sanity has never been my strong point.

I slipped out into the hall. Still nothing. I crept quietly across the hall, and then along the opposite wall, until I got to the small side door that led into the dealers’ room. I opened it as quietly as I could.

Of course, all this silent creeping might prove useless. Maybe tigers relied more on smell than hearing. If I’d known I’d be trying to elude one, I could have looked it up before coming to the convention.

I glanced into the dealers’ room. No sign of Salome.

Of course there were things she could hide behind. Just a few, but still.

I heard a faint noise in the hall. Monkeys, chattering softly.

Chattering at what?

I slipped inside quickly and closed the door. I’d have felt better if some idiot hadn’t left a door at the other end of the room hanging wide open.

I half-ran over to the booth and grabbed a sword—one of the ones I’d sharpened because, crazy as it had always seemed to me, some customers wanted them that way.

Not so crazy now. I felt suddenly, though quite irrationally, safer. Stupid; what could I really do with a sword if Salome came at me? But I didn’t put it down, even though it hampered me a bit when I searched the booth.

Alaric Steele’s side of the booth.

I might be risking my neck for nothing. He might have already gotten rid of the sketchpad, the one containing the off-white paper with the colored flecks. Of course, I still had the sheet of paper in my pocket, the paper on which Steele had done his estimates for the producer on making armor and swords for his TV show. Neat, legible letters and numbers—his printing had an almost calligraphic elegance. Several very deft sketches—I wished I could draw designs for potential customers that well. It looked quite good on that sheet of pebbly, color-flecked drawing paper. More like fine art than a craftsman’s sketch. But he could always claim he’d found the paper somewhere. It would be so much more satisfactory to find…

The pad. He’d hidden it among the packing materials, sandwiched in between several sheets of cardboard at the bottom of a box filled with Styrofoam peanuts.

Inside, I found pages of the same rough-toothed paper, covered with sketches. I hadn’t seen him sketching at the booth, but suddenly I could see him sitting alone in his room, drawing. Just him and the sketch pad.

He was good. Hell, he’d been good thirty years ago. He was brilliant now. His figures, always strong, were cleaner, simpler—now but just as subtle and lifelike, as if he’d learned to achieve the same results with fewer lines.

The first few pages contained small sketches of various people at the convention. You could tell at a glance how he felt about each subject. He mocked the costumed fans, but gently, as if their antics amused him. He wasn’t quite so kind to the bearded professor or Walker. I was relieved that he hadn’t drawn Michael.

He liked Maggie. He didn’t idealize her, didn’t remove any lines or gray hairs, and yet the sketch of her had a warmth and vibrancy that made you smile just to look at it. It wasn’t unlike the glow Porfiria had in those early comics. Yeah, he liked Maggie.

He liked me, too. The sketches of me didn’t quite have Maggie’s warmth, but they did have their own kind of heat. I didn’t think my Renaissance wench costume was quite as low cut as he’d drawn it, and I knew perfectly well he’d exaggerated my figure. Nice to know I retain my appeal to the criminal element.

But the QB—he’d sketched her, more than anyone, and the pictures radiated a cold hatred that made me hesitate to touch the page. And they made her look startlingly ugly and repulsive. The more startling because they didn’t seem distorted. More like photo-realism, and yet through some subtle alchemy, he’d made the seemingly straightforward lines and curves reveal not only the outer shell but the cruel soul inside. I found myself staring into the eyes of one sketch and thinking that Medusa must have looked just like this, to turn her viewers into stone. I certainly stood staring down at the page for far too long.

A monkey chattered overhead, and I snapped out of it.

“I need to get out of here,” I muttered.

But which way? Back the way I’d come, or out the other side of the dealers’ room?

I should have paid more attention to which way Salome was going. Or, for that matter, where Steele went when he left the dealers’ room a few minutes before Francis turned Salome loose.

“Lady killer or tiger?” I muttered, looking back and forth between the two escape routes. Though for all I knew, if I chose the wrong path, they’d both be lying in wait.

Maybe I could sneak out the back way while they were fighting over who got to finish me off.

“Chill,” I told myself. Odds were Steele was outside, with the rest, waiting to hear that Salome had been recaptured. The last time we’d talked, I’d been busy explaining why I suspected Nate. He had no way of knowing that his producer friend had just handed me the clue that gave him away.

“Just move,” I muttered. I decided that if I were Salome, I’d steer for the lobby, so I headed toward the opposite side of the dealers’ room, where the back exit would take me near the ballroom and the green room. It would have taken Salome longer to reach those.

Though between the time I’d spent cowering in the men’s room and the time it had taken me to search the booth, she could have strolled halfway downtown.

I walked as quickly and quietly as possible to the other end of the room and peered out the open door. Quiet out there.

Possibly too quiet? Would the parrots and monkeys shut up if they knew Salome was nearby?

No way to tell. I peered around the doorway, carefully. Nothing. I slipped out and headed toward the ballroom door. My plan, to the extent I had a plan, was to slip into the ballroom and then out again through the back door Michael and I had used the night before. Odds were few people at the convention knew that route, and Salome would have trouble with the door handles.

Halfway down the hall, I heard a noise. From the ballroom.

Or was it my imagination?

I crept into the ballroom. Definitely a real noise, and coming from a utility closet. Which was locked, from the outside. Perhaps someone had taken refuge in the closet, as I had in the bathroom, and been locked in.

I opened the door and found the bound, gagged figure of the man from the health department.

“Ah, so that’s where you went,” I said.

He wriggled frantically, and made a lot of loud umphing noises that didn’t really need translation.

“Yes, I can untie you if you like,” I said, “but it really might be better to wait until they catch the tiger, and besides—”

Just then, I felt the point of a sword at my back.