We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 36

“Every forensic and investigative tool available to modern American law enforcement,” I muttered.

“What’s that?”

I looked up to see that Michael had emerged from the police suite.

“Damn, what did the police want with you again?” I asked, feeling a sudden flutter of anxiety.

“Questions about Walker,” Michael said. “I gather I have you to thank for the decorative damsel whose arrival made them lose interest in me?”

“Yeah, Walker found his alibi, and I convinced her to talk to the police.”

“Thank God,” Michael said. “Of course, this means they’ll go looking for another prime suspect.”

“And looking in the wrong place, not to mention the wrong decade,” I said.

“Wrong decade?”

“Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but here goes,” I said. “Foley said something about them using every forensic and investigative tool available to modern American law enforcement. And yes, law enforcement has come a long way in the past thirty years. But even back in 1972, they didn’t do too shabby a job on forensics, right?”

“At least in the big cities, where they had money to get the right equipment,” Michael said, nodding.

“Yes, places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Ichabod Dilley hung out,” I said. “But Ichabod Dilley didn’t die in California, where the case would get decent police scrutiny. He died in a small Mexican town where the PI his family hired to investigate thought the authorities had been bribed to conceal something.”

“Like what?”

“Suicide or murder—the story doesn’t say which,” I said, with a shrug. “And possible motivation for either; he owed a lot of money to the wrong people.”

“Which is a lovely bit of Porfirian history, but how does it relate to the QB’s murder?” Michael asked.

“One of the few people who knew Dilley back in those days has just been murdered,” I said.

It sounded pretty weak when I said it aloud.

“Two murders, thirty years apart?” Michael said.

“And the second murder happened at a time when several of the people who knew Dilley happened to be around,” I said. “Nate. Maggie. Francis, if he was stretching the truth a bit about when he’d represented the QB. Which wouldn’t surprise me. If he knew something fishy had gone on back in 1972, wouldn’t he try to hide the fact that he’d known her back then?”

“In a heartbeat,” Michael said. “Right now, he’s so freaked at having his clients turn into murder suspects that I suspect he’d try to hide his connection to me and Walker if he thought he could get away with it.”

“Of course, they’re all hiding things, or at least leaving out things, fairly crucial things,” I said. “And if you call them on it, they shrug and confess, like children caught in a minor fib. As if it didn’t really matter. Or is that only another layer of deception?”

“What do you expect?” Michael said, looking suddenly tired. “It’s a habit a lot of people pick up when they’ve been working too long in an industry that cares too much about youth. So you don’t mention everything you’ve seen or done, or everyone you know, because sooner or later, someone will do the arithmetic and realize that you’ve been around a little too long. Hell, yesterday Walker asked me to stop mentioning how long ago we were in the soaps together. And it’s not as if we’re geezers or anything.”

No, but the closer Michael got to forty, the less he liked big birthday celebrations. I wondered suddenly if some kind of male biological clock thing was behind his ever-increasing desire to discuss the M word, as we called it. I’d have to think about that.

Later. When I didn’t have murder on my mind.

“Yeah, maybe that’s an explanation for how Nate, Maggie, and Francis have been acting,” I said. “But maybe one of them had something much more serious to hide than an inconveniently distant birth date.”

“Such as?”

“I can think of two theories, actually. First, one of them killed Ichabod Dilley, and the QB knew about it, and was threatening to expose them.”

“After thirty years?” Michael said.

“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but why wait that long? Are you suggesting that the killer meekly endured the QB’s blackmail all these years, only to lose his or her temper and bump her off this weekend?”

“Okay, maybe that’s a little far-fetched, but what if the QB, after concealing her knowledge all these years, finally revealed it, only to have the killer strike her down?”

Michael nodded slowly.

“A little more plausible,” he said. “I like the picture of the QB like a spider on her web, sitting on her secret for decades until just the right moment to use it. Yes, she’d play it that way. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Maybe a tad too melodramatic?”

“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly. “A little too much like one of Nate’s scripts, maybe. But I have another theory.”

“I never doubted you would.”

“What if the QB herself was the murderer?”

“Of Dilley, you mean?”

“Right,” I said. The more I thought about it, the more I liked this theory. “I can imagine her killing someone who stood in her way. And maybe she didn’t even have to do the deed herself—maybe all she had to do was set him up for the guys who were after him?”

“I’m not sure that counts as murder,” Michael said.

“Legally, I suppose not, but morally, I think it does. So what if Ichabod Dilley didn’t really sell her the rights to Porfiria? What if, instead of getting paid peanuts, he was the one who ended up paying—with his life?”

“And thirty years later, someone took revenge?”

“Someone who cared about Ichabod Dilley, and only found out what really happened to him recently—maybe even this weekend.”

“Found out how?”

“The other Ichabod Dilley,” I said. “If she’d killed the original, she’d have known her Dilley wasn’t coming to the convention. And yet, with no picture in the program…maybe she thought it was some kind of trick, designed to expose her.”

“A tall, gaunt scarecrow in bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed shroud, rising up out of the audience, like a boomer version of Banquo’s ghost, pointing the accusing finger at her?”

“Not quite,” I said. “Although you may want to suggest that to Nate if he does a script based on this weekend. But the idea that someone who had always suspected the QB of murder might make a deliberate effort to surprise and disconcert her and watch her reaction—very possible.”

“Might be worth finding out whether the convention organizing committee thought of hunting down Ichabod Dilley all by themselves or whether they had help,” Michael suggested.

“Good point. And even if no one deliberately engineered Ichabod Dilley’s apparent return from the dead—even if it really was only a comedy of errors—it could have rattled her. Enough, perhaps, that she’d say or do something that gave her away as the murderer. And inspired someone to murder her.”

“So if you like the scenario that someone killed the QB because he or she knew she killed Dilley—” Michael began.

“Or set him up to be killed,” I said. “I like it a lot.”

“That whittles the suspect field down enormously. Mainly Nate, Maggie, and Francis.”

“Or some less-well-known person who knew Dilley,” I suggested. “Or for that matter, Ichabod junior. We only have his word that he first learned of his uncle’s existence here at the convention. What if his family has been obsessed for years with tracking down the person who murdered his uncle?”

“They could even have suspected the QB,” Michael said, “but not had a way to prove it—until the convention invitation fell into young Ichabod’s lap.”

“Or until he engineered his invitation,” I said. “I definitely need to talk to someone on the organizing committee. Find out just how the idea of hunting for Dilley came about.”

“And I definitely need to get back downstairs,” Michael said, looking at his watch. “I have a panel that should be starting almost immediately, assuming things are still running more or less on time, which I doubt.”

“And I should make at least a token appearance at the booth,” I said.