“That, too,” I agreed. Obviously Michael had seen Chris at convention parties before. And luckily he appeared to consider Chris harmless. “Please tell me Walker wasn’t singing that song.”
“With gusto,” Michael said.
“I’m sure the cops will love hearing about that.”
“By now, they’ve probably seen the video.”
“I worry about Walker,” I said. “The man has no sense of self-preservation.”
“I don’t know,” Michael said. “He was pretty quick to make sure the cops knew that Francis had the same motive he did, and then some.”
“Isn’t that pretty low, selling out your own agent?”
Michael shrugged.
“Right now, I have a hard time feeling too much sympathy for Francis. And anyway, the cops were breathing pretty heavily down Walker’s neck.”
“Probably because his motive is so obvious.”
“His motive’s not that much stronger than a dozen other peoples’ motives. I think what really made the police focus on him was the whole alibi thing.”
“He doesn’t have an alibi?”
“No one has an alibi,” Michael said. “Not for the whole time between when she was last seen alive at about three-thirty and when you found her, whenever that was.”
“Sometime just after nine,” I said.
“But Walker claimed to have an alibi, and then couldn’t prove it. I think that made the cops more suspicious than if he’d just come out and said he didn’t have one.”
“What was this unproved alibi?”
“He claims to have been off being…comforted by a sympathetic fan.”
“Sounds plausible.”
“And possibly true, but unless he can come up with her name, or her room number, or pick her out of the crowd, I don’t think the police will buy it. And for that matter, even if he does find his blond angel of the afternoon, I’m not sure the police will believe an alibi from a besotted fan.”
“I’ll ask around and see if anyone knows who she is.”
“Ask who?”
“Fans,” I said. “I’m sure someone will know something.”
“God, depressing as it is, that’s not a bad idea,” Michael said. “If he’s lucky, she’ll have spilled the beans to someone.”
“If he’s lucky, she won’t actually have had a digital camera with her, or who knows what kind of embarrassing corroborating evidence he’ll find on the web later today. Who else did the cops seem to be interested in?”
“Well, Walker and Chris, mostly,” Michael said. “And Chris’s girlfriend, Andrea, when they find her, unless she can prove that she had an alibi. Maggie, but not as much, because they seem to think two years is a long time for her to hold a grudge over getting fired.”
“Maybe they’re misjudging her staying power.”
“You don’t suspect Maggie?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid I do.”
“But that’s—”
“Ridiculous? Not at all,” I said. “I like her. Hell, I admire her; I want to grow up to be just like her. But that doesn’t mean she couldn’t have killed the QB. I don’t suspect her any more than a lot of other people, but I don’t suspect her any less, either.”
“I’m glad you’re not the cops.”
“Although, come to think about it, maybe I do suspect her a little more than some people. Hard to imagine Francis or Walker having the guts to kill anyone. But Maggie? If she decided it had to be done, she’d do it with a steady hand and not a single backward glance.”
Michael looked pained, but he didn’t argue.
“But yeah, the police are probably right,” I continued. “If she’d wanted the QB dead out of revenge for getting fired, she’d have managed to bring it off a long time ago.”
Then again, what if she had another motive for killing the QB? Something a lot more current than her own firing two years ago.
What if I found out, for example, that Maggie was very fond of someone the QB was threatening to hurt in the present—Nate, or Walker or any of the rest? Killing to defend someone else seemed a lot more in character for Maggie than killing out of revenge for being fired.
Or was I only projecting my own values on Maggie, because I liked her?
“So who else do they suspect?” I said aloud.
“Well, me,” he said, shrugging. “But only a little. I think they’re still having trouble imagining that anyone would actually want a smaller part. They let that Ichabod Dilley guy go pretty fast once they figured out he’s here by mistake. Should I assume from your questions that you’re trying to figure out who did it before the police do?”
“I’m sure the Loudoun County police are perfectly competent,” I said. “I’m just trying to make sense of it. After all, I did see her body. And probably heard her last words.”
“Last words? I thought she was already dead when you got there.”
“Yeah, but one of the damned parrots was fluttering around in the room, shrieking out things in her voice.”
“I know,” Michael said. “Get out! I need my rest! Leave me alone!” he added, in a half-decent imitation of the QB’s voice.
“Not just that,” I said. “The parrot said something else even more important. At least I think it is, and I’m wondering if the police realize it.”
“What did it say?”
I closed my eyes and concentrated.
“I’m pretty sure it was, ‘I can do anything. I own them; I can—ggggggggggg.’”
“Ggggggggg?” Michael repeated.
“Sorry, I don’t do that very well,” I said. “It was a death rattle, as they call it in the crime books. There may be a scientific term for it; you could ask Dad.”
“Death rattle will do,” Michael said, with a slight shudder. “Call me squeamish, but I hope I never meet that particular parrot.”
Chapter 20
I was still wondering what had happened to the poor witness parrot when Michael spoke up again.
“I see what you mean, that what she said before the death rattle could be significant. She was probably arguing with the killer about something she wanted to do with the show. Something the killer disagreed with, and the QB said there was nothing he or she could do, she owned it. Meaning the show.”
“Can’t be the show,” I said.
“Why not?”
“She said ‘them,’ not ‘it,’” I said. “The show would be an ‘it.’”
“You’re sure? ‘Them’ not ‘it?’”
“Positive.”
“Damn,” Michael said. “So it’s not the show; she only owns the one show that I know of. What else does she own, but in multiples?”
“People,” I said. “When I was talking to Harry, the other guy in the sword skits, about Chris’s problems with the QB, he said ‘She owns him.’ Meaning his contract, of course. But that’s how he said it. That she owned him.”
“And that’s how she’d say it, too,” Michael said.
“Especially if she was talking about people she was messing with, like Chris and Andrea.”
“Not just Chris and Andrea,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Even me and Walker. Oh, she wouldn’t come right out and say she owned me, at least not to my face, but you could tell that’s what she thought. So maybe she was talking to someone else she was jerking around. But no, that doesn’t work either. If she was talking to me or Chris or Walker, she’d say, ‘I own you’ not ‘I own them.’”
“True,” I said. “Even if she was talking to Chris about both him and Andrea, it would still be you, not them. And while I can imagine someone getting so fed up that they’d confront her about their own complaints, it’s hard to imagine anyone tackling her on someone else’s behalf.”
“Unless it’s someone who’s paid to do it,” Michael said, slowly. “What if Francis went to argue with her about both my contract and Walker’s?”
“Was he supposed to do that?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “Remember
when I was talking to him yesterday? I finally laid it on the line. Told him if he couldn’t work out a compromise on my contract, a schedule that wouldn’t interfere with my responsibilities at the college, I’d fire him and find an agent who could.”
“So he was going to confront her.”
“Yes, on my behalf,” Michael said. “And I expect Walker wanted him to talk to her, too.”
“Maybe Walker wasn’t such a weasel, pointing the finger at Francis,” I said. “Maybe just a realist. He’s known Francis a lot longer than you have. When was Francis supposed to meet her?”
“Last I heard, he didn’t have an appointment,” Michael said. “I suppose he might have just gone to her room to confront her.”
“Would he?” I asked. “Confront her that way? He always seems so…um…”
“Wimpy?” Michael said, with a sardonic laugh. “Yeah, it’s hard to imagine him getting up enough nerve to tell the QB she can’t do something, but if he did, that’s just how she’d react. That she owns us. Which, from a contract standpoint, thanks to Francis, she does.”
“Did,” I said. “Not anymore. Who owns you now? Or rather, who owns the show and gets to decide what happens with it? If Francis knew he’d have more luck negotiating with whomever took over after her death, he’d have a motive.”
Michael shrugged. I could see by his anxious expression that he didn’t like talking about this.
“Who wouldn’t be easier to negotiate with?” he said. “But I have no idea who will take over for her in the negotiations. If there are any negotiations; maybe whoever killed her killed the show, too.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “She may be the title character, but she’s not exactly the star.”
“True,” he said. “The show could go on without her.”
“Queen Porfiria could die and be replaced by her sister,” I suggested. “Queen Eczema the First.”
“That would work,” he said, with a faint smile.
“They’d probably want to rethink firing Walker, too,” I said. “I don’t think anyone but the QB wanted him to go.”
“The fans certainly wouldn’t,” Michael said. “Walker has a lot of fans.”
“Not as many as you,” I said.
“No, but almost. The fans would certainly rather have Walker stay. And Nate. If Walker leaves, he’ll have to scrap a storyline he really likes. And the way Nate felt about QB, if he hasn’t already written a death scene for her, he could do it in a heartbeat. He was always complaining about how she mangled his words.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Michael, what if she wasn’t talking about people, but the scripts. What if Nate told her she couldn’t mangle his words this time—”
“And she told him that she could do anything she wanted because she owned them,” Michael said. “Yeah, that sounds like her.”
“Although I have a hard time imagining Nate getting that worked up about it,” I said. “I mean, he loves complaining, but would he really kill over a script?”
“I think he cares more than he admits,” Michael said. “But getting up the nerve to kill her? Hard to buy. Just like Francis. You’d have to go a long way to find anyone as meek as the two of them.”
“No, you wouldn’t even have to leave the convention,” I said. “There’s at least one more person here who might have a good reason to confront the QB if he could get up the nerve—Ichabod Dilley.”
“I assume you mean Ichabod the younger, rather than Ichabod the dead and buried and presumably rather smelly by now.” Michael said. “What quarrel would he have with her?”
“He’s been researching his uncle’s work, remember? Maybe he didn’t like what he found out. Maybe he read the comics, saw one of the episodes they’re constantly running in the fan lounge, and decided to tell her she can’t do something or other because it’s a blight on his uncle’s legacy, or some such thing.”
“And she tells him that she owns them, meaning the comic books,” Michael said. “Yeah, that fits, too.”
We pondered a while in silence.
“So which of our three mild-mannered Dr. Jekylls is actually the murderous Mr. Hyde?” Michael asked.
“Beats me,” I said, rubbing my tired eyes. “There’s always the possibility that the parrot just paired those words and the death rattle at random.”
“Which takes the suspect list back up to just about everyone,” Michael said with a sigh. “Should we share all this with the police?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure they care,” I said. “When I told Foley what the parrot said, he didn’t sound too interested.”
“Maybe he’s just playing it cool,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t like to have to put a parrot on the witness stand.”
“Yes, and I don’t think Foley likes birds,” I said. “He spends a lot of time looking over his shoulder for them.”
“Don’t we all?” Michael said, glancing up at the ceiling in a gesture that had become habitual for all of us.
“Yeah, but most of us are just annoyed, and trying to avoid bird droppings,” I said. “He looks nervous.”
“Maybe he’s afraid you’ll solve the murder and show him up,” Michael said.
“No way,” I said. “I know Dad will be disappointed, but I have no intention of solving the murder.”
“So all this brainstorming is just for the fun of it,” Michael said, suppressing a grin. “You’re just trying to satisfy your curiosity.”
“Something like that,” I said.
Although that was a lie. I had good reason to want the killer caught quickly. I didn’t think the police seriously suspected Michael. But they didn’t have to suspect him to hurt his career—his real career, as a drama professor.
I could imagine how the murder would look to the Caerphilly College Board of Regents, whose mindset was something out of the fifties—the eighteen-fifties. They already found Michael’s role on Porfiria vaguely distasteful. The longer the police investigation went on, and the more publicity it generated, the greater the probability that it would hurt his chances at tenure.
But I wouldn’t mention this to Michael. If he hadn’t thought of it, why worry him? And if he had, why add to his stress by letting him know I was worried?
So I’d keep it light when he was around, and while he paneled and signed autographs, I’d do anything I could to help the police wrap things up quickly.
Handing them the killer would be nice.
“I should run,” I said aloud. “Unlike some people, whose panels don’t begin until eleven, I have to be in the dealers’ room at ten.”
“Have fun,” he said.
Chapter 21
A good thing the convention hadn’t scheduled any 9:00 A.M. panels today, I thought, as I picked my way through the lobby. The squatters had returned, and most of them were still fast asleep—including the tuxedo-clad groom, nestled down between the his-and-hers suitcases. I didn’t see the bride anywhere.
And, of course, since I was in a hurry, I ran into Mother.
She was standing in a clearing, gazing up at something.
Probably a monkey doing something amusing, I thought, joining her.
But no. She was staring at part of the lobby decoration. Someone with more ambition and energy than artistic skill had constructed, out of papier mâché, the façade of a ruined jungle temple—the sort of thing you’d see on the set of a Tarzan movie, or maybe one of the Indiana Jones sagas. It didn’t look all that bad if you half closed your eyes and squinted.
“Amazing,” Mother said, tapping her chin thoughtfully with a finger.
“Yes,” I said. “Though it’s hard to decide which is more puzzling: that anyone would actually spend the time to do that, or that having done so, they’d embarrass themselves by exhibiting it in public.”
“Oh, I know the workmanship is inadequate,” Mother said, waving her hand dismissively. “But the concept…”
She began slowly turning in a circle, looking around her. I picked up her train and shift
ed it as she turned, so she wouldn’t get tangled up.
“Yes,” she said. “You know, Meg, the problem with most decorators these days is that they think small.”
I made a noncommittal noise. I didn’t like the sound of this. Mother had toyed for years with the idea of becoming a decorator, and in the last few months I’d begun to fear that she would actually go ahead with the plan. The one benefit of her coming to the convention was that it would distract her for a few days from her decorating ambitions, and here she was, back on the same subject again.
“Yes,” Mother said. “They think small. They change a lamp here, a pillow there, instead of coming up with a truly revolutionary concept. Decorating should not be about creating pretty little rooms. We should be creating environments! Stage settings for more dramatic lives!”
She flung out her arms with enthusiasm as she said this, startling several spider monkeys on the face of the temple into flight.
“I can see it now,” she said, staring at the ruin.
So could I. I backed up, quietly, and slipped out of the clearing.
“Meg, when you and Michael finally move into that house—Meg? Meg, where did you go? Eric, come here and pick up my train; I need to find your Aunt Meg.”
I sprinted through the lobby and down the corridor toward the various meeting rooms.
Unfortunately, Eric must have been close at hand. I saw Mother emerge from the underbrush not far behind me.
“There she is,” I heard her tell Eric. “Now hold Grandma’s dress very tight and—”
“Oh, Lord,” I muttered, and looked around for someplace to hide. I ran through a vine-covered opening, then turned and watched the entrance. After a few moments, when no one else entered, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“You can’t stay here,” a voice said.
I turned and found myself staring into the eyes of Salome the tiger.
After a few moments her keeper’s voice broke the spell.
“We’re not open yet,” he said. “We’re only open from eleven to two. The crowds make her overexcited if we’re open too long.”
As if to demonstrate, Salome curled back her mouth in a growl, but I didn’t hear anything.
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