We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 19

Michael pulled the pillow over his head. I growled, and reached for the phone.

“Meg? It’s Kevin.”

“Kevin?”

I must have sounded pretty out of it.

“Kevin? Your nephew? You’ve only known me for, like, fifteen years.”

“And I’ve only been asleep for, like, five hours,” I said. “Give me a break. What’s up?”

“These photos you sent me? The ones of the comic?”

“Right,” I said, sitting up.

“Is that really her hand? That Porfiria lady?”

“That’s her,”

“You actually found the body, and she was holding this in her hand?”

“Yes.”

“Coo–ul!” he exclaimed.

“I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I like it, too. At least I think I will, when I can see it well enough. Preferably on paper.”

“An actual dead hand,” he said

“Kevin!”

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly. “I don’t suppose you can leave the hotel and go to a Kinko’s? According to MapQuest there’s one about a mile from you.”

“I really need to mind my booth,” I said.

“You can’t just leave it for an hour or so?”

“If you could get the photos to me without my having to leave the hotel, I might be persuaded to send you a photo of her whole body.”

“Wow! Is it gory?”

“Exceedingly,” I lied. “Now isn’t there some way you could—”

“Hang on,” he said.

It took half an hour, and in the long run I might regret giving Kevin my Visa card number, but he arranged to download the photos to the Kinko’s, have the staff there print them out, and then call a courier to bring the photos to the hotel. When I was sure he had it all arranged, I sent him two photos of the QB’s body, after checking one last time that they weren’t really all that gory.

“I wouldn’t have had the slightest idea how to do all that when I was his age,” I said to Michael, who decided halfway through my conversation with Kevin that he might as well get dressed.

“You’d have managed,” he said.

“I’m sure I would, but this kid is only fifteen, and he already knows. Should I worry about that?”

Michael seemed to find the question hilarious. He also reassured me that I probably wasn’t warping Kevin for life by sending him the murder photos.

“After all, the kid watches all the forensic shows on the Discovery Channel,” he pointed out. “Not to mention listening to your father.”

I’m not sure that last point made me feel better.

Despite the lack of sleep, Michael’s cold seemed better. Not to mention his mood. I heard him whistling cheerfully as he went through his usual morning routine.

Whistling “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead!”

“You might want to watch your musical selections when you go back out in public,” I said, as he came out of the bathroom.

“Well, it’s not as if I started it,” he said. “Or didn’t you like the Amblyopian Minstrels’ rock rendition last night?”

“I seem to have missed that,” I said, shaking my head.

“They were doing it when I came in,” he said.

“Must have been when I was interrogating Chris.”

“Interrogating him? Or fending him off?” Michael asked.

“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.”