We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 24

I glanced around, searching for an excuse to leave, and noticed that the show’s costumer had come into the green room.

“I’ll catch you later,” I said. “I’m trying to get all the guests’ autographs for my nephew, and I just spotted someone I’m missing.”

Not to mention someone whose motives for murder I wanted to explore.

Karen, the costumer, happily signed Eric’s program, and I didn’t have any trouble dragging the conversation around to the topic of the day.

“Wasn’t it exciting, being questioned by the police!” she exclaimed. “Of course, I’m lucky I had an alibi, aren’t I? I mean, under the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” I asked. “Was she firing you, too?”

“Well, not that I know of,” she said. “But it was only a matter of time, of course. I’m the show’s thirteenth costume designer, you know. I bet that’s some kind of a record. Anyway, it was such a relief to say that I’d gone straight from my four o’clock panel to dinner. A little early for me, normally; but I understand your mother wanted to get your nephew away from the convention for a while. Poor dear; he did have an awful experience, didn’t he?”

“You had dinner with my mother?” I asked.

“Oh, yes; didn’t she tell you?”

“I haven’t talked to her much today,” I said. “But that’s good news. After her quarrel with the QB, I’m relieved to hear that Mother has an alibi.”

“You don’t really suspect your own mother?” Karen exclaimed.

“Of course not,” I said. “But the police might feel differently. After all, they don’t know her the way I do.”

She nodded approvingly.

“I know perfectly well that Mother wouldn’t kill anyone,” I said. “At least not by bludgeoning. Too strenuous, messy, and generally inelegant. It’d be different if the QB had been poisoned in some clever way.”

Karen’s mouth fell open, and she stared at me for a few seconds. And then she burst into laughter.

“Oh, my! You had me going for a minute!” she said, through her giggles. “Your mother should have told me what a tease you can be.”

If she thought I was kidding, I wouldn’t argue.

“I hope you went someplace nice,” I said.

“Well, actually we went to one of those noisy places where they have a whole room full of video games for the kids,” she said. “But your nephew had fun, and your mother and I had such a nice talk. She told me all about your decorating plans for the new house. It sounds so…unusual!”

“Yes, any decorating scheme Mother comes up with usually is,” I said. I wondered if she was still enthralled with a jungle theme, and whether or not her rendition of it would include live animals. “Don’t noise it about—you know how Michael is about keeping his private life private.”

Although, considering how rapidly costumers appeared to come and go on the show, I supposed she’d be lucky to know Michael’s face.

“Right,” she said, looking momentarily quite solemn. And then her face broke into a smile again. “I was so sorry your father couldn’t join us.”

Damn. Too much to hope for that both of them had been out of harm’s way.

“But it was so nice of him to babysit your niece.”

“Niece?” As far as I knew, Mother and Dad had only brought Eric along to the convention. Much as Mother adored her grandchildren, she preferred having them around one at a time, ideally with Dad and other adoring relatives available to take care of any actual work the little dears caused.

“Yes, little…Samantha? Or was it Sabrina?”

“Salome?” I suggested.

“Yes, of course! Such an unusual name; I do think it’s so much better for children to have their own names, instead of a name every other child in their school has.”

I made a mental note to speak to Salome’s keeper. What the devil did he mean by putting someone he hardly knew in charge of Salome? Especially someone like Dad?

As the costumer nattered on about baby names, I found myself warming to this cheerful and apparently uncomplicated woman. She was probably the only person from the Porfiria cast and crew who hadn’t yet said an unkind word about the QB. Despite, I suspected, considerable temptation. And I had the reassuring feeling that anything that came into her ears or surfaced in her memory would come straight out her mouth, unless it was too negative to repeat.

If I could just drag the conversation back to the show.

“Oh, was that Nate?” I said, pretending to spot him behind her.

“Was it?” she said, turning to look. “Well, he must have gone out again.”

“Now he’s been with the show a long time, hasn’t he?” I asked.

“Since the first episode,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing? He’s the only one, apart from Walker and Miss Wynncliffe-Jones herself.”

“Makes you wonder what he’s got on her,” I said.

She blinked, and then decided to assume I was kidding.

“Oh, you,” she said, giving my shoulder a gentle, playful shove. “No, if you ask me, he’s sweet on her.”

“Nate?” I exclaimed.

“Of course,” she said. “He’s been with her for ever so long—since they were much younger. Why else would he stick with her through all the…difficult times.”

Yes, difficult would pretty much describe any times spent in the QB’s company. But Nate and the QB? Why did I suddenly have the picture of an ordinary housecat yearning after Salome?

I pleaded the need to mind my booth, and headed back to the dealers’ room, still pondering what the costumer had said. I took a long way round, though—deliberately—a way that took me past Salome’s lair.

I ducked under the vines that screened the room’s doorway—had they gotten thicker since yesterday? I was pretty sure they had, and I doubted the convention decorating committee had time to make the changes. Someone definitely wanted the room’s doorway to be hard to find. I could think of only one person who would care.

Salome lifted her head and inspected me briefly before closing her eyes and returning to her nap. That was more reaction than I got from her keeper.

“Didn’t I just see you in the lobby?” I asked.

He looked up, puzzled. He was holding a coffee cup that he hadn’t had earlier.

“I went for breakfast,” he said.

“Leaving Salome all alone apparently. Not that your choice of cat sitters is exactly inspired—do you really think my father is the right person to look after Salome while you’re off doing whatever you were doing yesterday afternoon?”

“I have to eat, don’t I?” he said, “and go to the bathroom occasionally? Besides, I’m not really worrying about anyone going near her with him around.”

I glanced over and saw Spike. Someone had tied his leash around a pillar, and he had pulled the leash taut, straining to get closer to Salome’s cage. He seemed oblivious to anyone else in the room.

“Anyone goes near her, he barks his head off,” the keeper said. “Freakin’ weird if you ask me, but not my problem.”

Salome lifted her head again, and when he saw her move, Spike began straining even harder and whining pathetically.

“And what happens if the knot slips, or he breaks the leash?” I asked.

“Beats me,” the keeper shrugged. “This wouldn’t be a problem if you had had him fixed.”

“He’s been fixed,” I said. “This is as good as it gets.”

“She probably wouldn’t eat him, anyway,” he said. “Too much fur. She hates getting fur stuck in her teeth, especially for so little meat. So, I hear you found the old dragon’s body. Why didn’t you tell me when you were here earlier?”

“Is it just me?” I said. “Am I too hung up on appearances? Or doesn’t anyone else think maybe it might be a good idea not to seem all that cheerful about Miss Wynncliffe-Jones’s death? Just while the police are hanging around looking for a murderer and all.”

The keeper shrugged.

“Way I see it, they’re probably more apt to find it suspicious if you walk around moping as if you’d just lost your best friend,” he said. “Nobody liked her; some of us are just as happy she’s dead; and the rest aren’t all that upset.”

He might have a point, I thought. But I felt like playing devil’s advocate.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Do you mean to say you don’t think anyone will be upset by her death?”

“Well, Caroline Willner, my boss. She won’t be pleased, but it’s not as if you could call it upset. And I’m definitely not upset. At least now Salome is safe.”

“Safe? How?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not likely a dead person’s going to buy her, is it?”

“The QB was the private owner buying Salome?”

“Yes,” he said. “Can you imagine?”

I made a noncommittal noise and wondered if he realized he had just added himself to the suspect list. My suspect list, anyway.

“The woman had no understanding of what’s involved in keeping a big cat,” he went on. “No real interest in Salome. She just wanted to keep her in a cage in her garden to impress her guests. You can’t do that with an animal that’s been socialized by humans. If you suddenly deprive them of any real contact with people, it traumatizes them. The mental anguish can make them psychotic and violent.”

Way to the top of my suspect list. But I had to admit, as Salome turned her inscrutable golden gaze in my direction, that if he turned out to be the murderer, I’d feel a lot more sympathy for him than I would for some of the others.

I had a hard time believing that anyone would have killed the QB because of creative differences over Porfiria scripts, comic books, or even the whole TV show. Not that I doubted that it might have happened, but if it did, I’d never really understand the murderer. Financial motives I could understand a little more easily—misguided people often killed for gain, or in a desperate attempt to prevent a loss. But if Salome’s keeper genuinely believed that she would be mistreated in the QB’s hands, and could find no other way to stop the sale—that I could understand. Maybe not condone, but understand.

I heard a voice from the doorway. Maggie West.

“I just want to look in here for a minute,” she was saying, popping out from the tangle of vines.

“Miss West!” the keeper exclaimed.

“Hello, Brad,” she said. “How’s she doing today?”

“Just fine,” he said.

“So you like tigers, too?” she said to me, smiling.

“From a respectful distance, yes,” I said.

She laughed, and walked up to Salome’s cage. Salome padded eagerly over to meet her and began rubbing her head against the bars. Spike barked a couple of times, and then returned to whining. Some watchdog.

“Oh, that’s a pretty little girl,” Maggie cooed.

“Little?” I echoed.

Maggie laughed.

“She’s on the small side for an Amur, even for a female,” she said. “What does she weigh, Brad? Maybe two hundred and fifteen pounds?”

“Only a little over two hundred,” he said.

“There, you see?” Maggie said. “I’ve got two big boys at home who are easily three times that.”

“You have two tigers?” I said, looking at Brad to see how he felt about this revelation.

“Eleven, actually,” she said. She reached in and began scratching Salome’s head.

“Miss West runs an animal sanctuary,” Brad explained, “Jungle West.”

“Miss West!”

An Amazon guard was peering into the room, apparently unwilling to enter.

“Yes, I’m coming,” Maggie said.

Brad, the keeper, watched with adoring eyes as Maggie ducked under the trailing vines and left the room.

He didn’t seem to notice when I followed her example—after first checking the knots holding Spike’s leash and reassuring myself that he was in no danger of getting loose.