We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 31

Yes! I thought, but I tried to stay calm and think of just the right thing to ask. If I wanted to be subtle, it was too soon to ask whether he’d been in love with her, or whether he knew anything about her buying the rights to Porfiria so soon before Ichabod Dilley’s untimely and downright suspicious death.

“What was she like?” I asked instead.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What’s anyone like when they’re young? Ambitious, impatient. Beautiful, of course. You have to be, to get anywhere in this business. And tough. I mean, I know a lot of people call her a bitch and a dragon, but that’s because they don’t understand what she had to go through to get where she is. You have to be tough.”

“And talented,” I suggested.

“Yeah, well,” he said, shrugging. “That’s not as important as you think. Not that she was untalented. But it’s not as if she ever pretended to be a great tragic actress or anything. Still, she could really have gone someplace, been much bigger if she’d only had the breaks.”

Just then we heard Maggie’s laugh, somewhere nearby. Nate smiled, involuntarily—the way most people seemed to when they heard her. Then he looked down at the table and sighed.

“Actually Maggie was the one who really should have gone someplace,” he said.

“Why didn’t she?” I asked.

“Who knows, with Hollywood?” he said. “She was good enough, and gorgeous enough, but maybe she didn’t want it enough. Or wasn’t mean enough. All I know is, I lost track of her for…I don’t know. Fifteen years? Maybe twenty. Then I got an invitation to this fund-raiser she was running, and I went, just for old time’s sake. And when I saw her, I thought, my God. She still had it. I thought it would be a great PR stunt, signing her for the show: old friends getting together to bring to life the long-neglected work of their dead buddy.”

“Oh, they were friends of Ichabod Dilley? Maggie and the QB?”

“They all worked on the same movie,” Nate said, shrugging. “I don’t know about friends, but they probably met, one time or another. And if they didn’t, what did it matter. It was just a PR stunt. Stupid idea.”

“Only problem is that word ‘long,’” I said. “As in ‘long in the tooth.’”

“Yeah, stupid me for not realizing that,” Nate said. “I was surprised when she hired Maggie anyway. And then, first week on the set, I realized why. Gave her the perfect excuse to make life miserable for someone she never liked. I was surprised Maggie stuck it out as long as she did.”

“Stuck it out? I thought the QB fired Maggie.”

“Yeah, she did, finally,” Nate said. “Soon as she figured out how much the fans loved Maggie. Or maybe realized how much better Maggie looked on camera. You ask me, Maggie was probably relieved that the battle was over, and she could go home to her animals again.”

“Her animals?” I said, feigning ignorance.

“Yeah, she runs this animal sanctuary up in the foothills outside L.A.,” Nate said. “That’s what she ended up doing when her career slowed down. Or maybe it was part of the reason it slowed down, that she started spending all this time rescuing abused animals. Not dog-and cat-type animals. Big animals. Orphaned lion cubs, neglected iguanas, abandoned boa constrictors.”

“Do you think Maggie running a sanctuary had anything to do with the QB trying to buy a tiger?”

Nate shuddered.

“God, if I’d known she was serious about that!” he exclaimed. “Yeah, probably. She doesn’t even like having to bother with a dog. I don’t know what she’d have done with a tiger. But she’s competitive. Maggie has tigers, she wants tigers.”

He kept talking about her in present tense. Was that significant? Perhaps it meant that he hadn’t really accepted her death. Didn’t really believe it possible, and therefore couldn’t possibly be her murderer.

Or maybe that was just what Nate wanted me to think.

“What did Maggie think about the idea of the QB owning a tiger?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We never talked about it. Maybe she wouldn’t—hell, that’s a lie. We both know what Maggie would have thought about it, if she’d known. She’d have thought it was a crime, giving the QB custody of a helpless animal. Or even a not-so-helpless animal. She gave the convention organizers what for about the monkeys. And the parrots. Says it’s cruel treatment, bringing them here.”

We both glanced upward, involuntarily. Half a dozen monkeys lurked near the ceiling, intently watching the bar’s human occupants. The staff had put the peanuts, pretzels, and other bar chum in jars with supposedly childproof safety lids, but the monkeys hadn’t given up yet. The several illicit customers scattered throughout the room kept one hand over their plates while eating with the other. Several parrots perched near the widescreen TV, intently watching a baseball game and learning to sing the beer commercials.

“You ask me, the monkeys and parrots are having as much fun as anyone,” I said.

“More than me, anyway,” Nate said. “I just wish I knew whether I still had a job.”

“When will you know?” I asked.

“No idea,” Nate said. “After all, I’m only the writer.”

I shook my head sympathetically, and then, as I’d expected, he shared what he’d found out.

“It’s probably a good thing we’ve got the third season in the can,” he said. “If we were in the middle of the season, with the meter running, they’d just shut us down for good. But this way, we’ll have time to come up with a solution to the problem.”

“Cast another actress,” I suggested. “Soap operas do it all the time. There’s no shortage of unemployed fifty-something actresses.”

“Yes,” he said. “But some fans always have trouble accepting the change. On the other hand, you can’t just kill her off—she’s the title character.”

“What would you do if she went out temporarily?” I asked. “You coped when Walker broke his foot.”

“We had Mephisto capture him and chain him to a dungeon wall,” Nate said. “For a couple of weeks, we just showed him lolling around in a loincloth with his cast hidden in some straw. The fans loved it. But who would have a reason to kidnap Porfiria?”

“Just have her kidnapped,” I said, shrugging. “Figure out who did it later.”

“Ooh! Yes!” Nate exclaimed. “And everyone accuses everyone else of being responsible. A power struggle over who runs Amblyopia in her absence.”

He reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a pen and a mini legal pad, and began scribbling words, and making little drawings to illustrate the action—though I don’t know why he bothered with the drawings. All he ever drew were stick figures, with or without indistinguishable objects stuck to the ends of their arms, so they all looked as if they were either shouting for help or brandishing dumbbells at each other. But it seemed to help him think.

“And then halfway through the season, we introduce a whole new group of villains!” he said, drawing another cluster of stick figures with such a heavy hand that he actually tore the paper, and then nodded as if in satisfaction at this concrete evidence of his new villains’ dastardly nature.

“See, I knew you could do it,” I said.

“We needed a new big nasty,” he said. “Not monsters, this time; you have no idea what the prosthetics do to the budget. Something easy. Knights. All you need is tin foil. Knights with magic. Where’s your father?”

“Dad? Why?”

I didn’t think Dad’s parrot project would increase Nate’s confidence in his new technical advisor.

“I need a name for the knights. The Something Knights. Something with an M, I think. I should go and find him,”

“Mastoid Knights?” I suggested.

“Sounds obscene,” Nate said, shaking his head. “What is a mastoid, anyway?”

“A bone,” I said, reaching behind my ear to tap the bone in question.

“Still sounds obscene,” Nate said.

“Metatarsal Knights?”

“Yes!” Nate said. “And in the big, two-part season finale, they all invade the Dungeons of the Metatarsal Knights!”

Just then Maggie sailed into the bar and beckoned to me to join her, so I left Nate covering sheet after sheet of his legal pad with illegible scribbles, muttering to himself as he did so.

We took a table at the back and to my surprise, the bartender appeared to take our order.

“Aren’t you worried about the health department?” I asked.

“Guy hasn’t been seen for hours,” the bartender said, with a shrug. “We’re thinking maybe he’s knocked off for the weekend.”

“He probably saw how mutinous the fans were and decided it was safer,” Maggie said.

I fingered the mini tape recorder in my pocket. What would Maggie say if I played the tape and asked when she’d said the fateful words, “Prepare to die, you—whoops!” The appropriately subtle, nonchalant way to introduce the topic into conversation hadn’t yet appeared.

“He looks like a kid with a new toy,” Maggie said, indicating Nate.

“Working on some ideas to keep the show going without Porfiria,” I said.

“God, wouldn’t she hate that?” Maggie said. But instead of laughing, she shook her head. “Weird, isn’t it? She fought tooth and nail for that silly show, first to get it on the air, and then to make it a success. And not twenty-four hours after her death they’re having to write her out of the picture. It’s almost sad.”

I kept quiet, hoping she’d go on. She looked at me quizzically.

“Is that a stupid thing to say?” she asked. “That I feel sorry for someone that I hated?”

“Not really,” I said. “Seems only natural after so much time. How long were you—did you know her?”

Maggie laughed.

“I’ve known her for thirty-two years,” she said. “But that’s not what you started out to ask, is it? You were about to ask how long we’d been friends.”

I nodded.

“About the first ten minutes,” she said, with another of her amazing laughs. And while I was congratulating myself at how well my time machine project was working, she sat back, held her glass in both hands, and stared down at it, shaking the ice a little now and then.