We’ll Always Have Parrots

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 shifted 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.

“She has a soft growl, doesn’t she?” I said.

“She’s not growling, she’s flehming,” the keeper said. “When they open their mouths like that, they’re actually sucking in air and sampling it with this extra scent organ in the roof of their mouths. It helps them sense things.”

“What kind of things?” I asked.

“Food, for one.”

Salome flehmed me again.

“I liked it better when I thought she was growling,” I said.

Salome dropped something she’d been chewing—the shredded remains of a leather baseball glove—padded over to his side of the cage and rubbed her head against the bars. The keeper stuck his hand through the bars began scratching her behind the ears.

He saw me watching and frowned.

“Don’t try this,” he warned. “You might think she’s just like an ordinary housecat—”

“No, actually the four-inch claws and fangs are a dead giveaway. I suppose you can do that because she knows you.”

“Yes,” he said, giving Salome one last scratch before withdrawing his hand. “And because I accept the fact that she might kill me, or do something like this again.”

He pulled back the sleeve of his sweatshirt to reveal two red scars running parallel down his right arm, from wrist to elbow.

“Yikes,” I said, stepping a little farther from the cage.

“She ate a Pomeranian once,” he said, pulling the sleeve down again.

“You’re not serious?” I said, frowning.

“She tried. She would have, if I hadn’t distracted her.”

“So you’re just trying to scare me.”

He shrugged, and walked over to the door to hang up a CLOSED sign. I noticed that he didn’t have full use of that badly clawed arm. I edged farther away from Salome’s cage. Maybe “scared” was good in this case.

“So what makes you want to own a tiger?” I asked.

“I don’t own her.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I realize you can’t own a wild animal, or even a domestic one in the same sense you can own a car or a house; that at best we’re only temporary guardians of the earth and—”

“No, I mean I don’t own her,” he said. “I can’t afford it. I work at the sanctuary. The Willner Sanctuary. They take in big cats and other exotic animals that have been mistreated or abandoned, and try to give them an appropriate environment.”

“Sounds worthwhile. But what’s she doing here? Even with the jungle decorations, I’d hardly call this an appropriate environment.”

“It takes a lot of money to run a place like that. Do you know how much meat a tiger eats every day?”

Salome chose that moment to yawn.

“I don’t even want to guess,” I said, watching Salome’s teeth.

“Eight pounds, in her case,” he said. “Not as much for the smaller cats, of course, like the servals and bobcats, but more, for some of the larger cats. And the sanctuary currently has thirty-seven big cats.”

“Expensive.”

“So we do educational and fund-raising events,” he said, pointing to a jar in the corner.

I walked closer to the jar—it took me farther from Salome as well. The jar contained a scattering of coins and one lone dollar bill.

“Doesn’t look as if it would pay for the gas to get here,” I said.

“This doesn’t seem to be a very generous crowd,” he said. “A shopping mall appearance does better.”

“So, if it’s not working out, do you take her home early?” I asked.

“I only hope I get to take her home at all.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Mrs. Willner is negotiating to sell her,” he said. “The sanctuary’s having a hard time making ends meet as it is. If she sells Salome, she has one less mouth to feed, and the proceeds can support the others.”

“Sounds reasonable, I guess,” I said. “Sort of a bloodless way to let one tiger feed the rest.”

“If the buyer likes her, and the sale goes through, I’ll have to escort her to her new home.”

He stared mournfully into the cage. Salome stared back, looking equally depressed, though for all I knew she merely regretted that the bars prevented her from making him an hors d’oeuvre.

Maybe separation from Salome was exactly what this guy needed.

“So she’s going to another sanctuary?” I said.

“No. To a private owner.”

“Is that legal? I mean, can anyone just go out and buy a tiger?”

“In most states, perfectly legal,” he said. “And it should be illegal to own an animal unless you’re genuinely qualified to take care of it, and willing to take the responsibility.”

“If you tried to enforce that, half the cats and dogs in the country would be homeless.”

“Probably,” he said. “Certainly most of the people who own big cats wouldn’t be allowed to. And that would be just fine with me.”

He fell silent, and I decided that if he and Salome faced separation, maybe I should give them a little time together. I pulled out my camera and took a picture of the two of them, and then I fished into my wallet, plunked a ten dollar bill into the jar, and tiptoed out.

Mother had disappeared by the time I emerged, but I ran into Dad.

“Meg! Just the person I was looking for!” he exclaimed. “I want to hear about the body.”

“You generally do,” I said. “Walk with me.”

I told him the gist of what had happened while we waited in line at the hotel coffee shop’s carryout counter—our new room didn’t have amenities like a coffee pot. And then he peppered me with questions as we threaded our way through the crowd to the dealers’ room. He paid no attention, as usual, to who might overhear us. Of course, most of the people in the hotel already knew there had been a murder on the premises, but most of them still looked startled when they heard someone at their elbow asking questions like, “Had rigor mortis begun to set in?” and “Can you describe the head wound?”

The answers, incidentally, were “I have no idea; I didn’t touch her” and “No, because she was lying face up.”

“I wish I could have seen the body,” he said, with a sigh.

“I took pictures,” I said.

“Really?” Dad said. “How clever of you! Let me see.”

But, of course, the tiny camera screen was just as unsuitable for his study of the body as for mine of the paper scrap.

“Kevin’s having blowups made for me of a couple of the photos I took of the crime scene,” I said. “Call him, and maybe he can add in some blowups of the body.”

“Excellent idea,” Dad said, “and I should probably see if I can talk to the medical examiner.”

He didn’t mention the medical examiner by name, so I deduced that it wasn’t one of his old buddies.

“If you manage to talk to the M.E.,” I said, “see what you can find out about the paper she was holding in her hand.”

“What was it?” Dad asked.

I decided to evade that question. Not because I suspected Dad, but because I knew that his idea of keeping quiet would be to swear everyone he met to secrecy before blurting out everything he knew. And if too much information about the comic fragment got out, Detective Foley would know exactly who to blame.

“The police don’t seem to think it’s very important,” I said, shrugging. “Could there be a medical reason for that?”

“Possibly,” Dad said. “Of course, they would have to wait for the M.E.’s report to be sure, but a seasoned homicide detective would suspect if something had been staged—if someone placed the paper in her hand after death, for example. Do you think it’s important?”

“No idea,” I said. “Just curious.”

“Morning,” Alaric Steele said, falling into step beside us. “Rumor has it you had quite an adventure last night.”

“Adventure’s not the word I’d use,” I said, “but if you heard I was the one unlucky enough to find the QB’s body and spent the next hour getting interrogated, then you heard right.”

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” Dad said, “meanwhile, I’ll be following a line of inquiry of my own.”

With that, he trotted off.