We’ll Always Have Parrots

Chapter 37

“Sorry,” I said to Steele, as I slipped behind the table. “Please tell me you’ve been getting along just fine without me.”

“I was until he showed up,” Steele said, jerking his thumb toward where Walker was standing at my end of the booth, fiddling with things and trying to pretend not to have noticed my arrival. “And I could continue getting along fine if you’d take him somewhere and patch him up.”

“Patch him up?” I echoed. “What happened?”

“Hey, Meg, how’s it going?” Walker said, waving one hand at me in a casual greeting that would have looked a lot more natural if he hadn’t had a wad of bloody paper napkins wrapped around his fingers.

“Playing with the merchandise,” Steele said, rather contemptuously. “Actors.”

“You keep some of this stuff sharpened,” Walker said, his tone more hurt than accusing.

“Yeah, some of the customers want it that way,” I said. “Come on; I think I know where to find a first aid kit. Alaric, see if someone can find my father in case Walker needs more patching up than I know how to do. I’ll be in the convention office; it’s off the green room.”

“Right,” Steele said and began scanning the ceiling. Apparently he’d noticed Dad’s parrot project.

“Meg,” Walker said, as he followed me through the room. “Did you get her to—”

“Not here,” I muttered, and he got the message and shut up until we reached the convention organizers’ room.

They did, indeed, have a first aid kit. I’d have let the two volunteers do the honors of patching him up, but Walker’s presence seemed to reduce one to paralysis and the other to silly giggles, so I took charge of the bandaging. He’d sliced open three fingers on his left hand and gouged the base of his right thumb rather badly.

“Ow,” he said, as I took the napkins off. “Not so rough.”

“The thumb looks pretty ghastly,” I said. “It might be a good idea to go to the emergency room in case it needs stitches.”

“No, no,” he said, curling his hand back protectively. “I really hate hospitals.”

Probably because he spent so much time in them, I thought.

“So how did it go?” he stage-whispered.

“She’s with the police now,” I said.

“Yeah, but what is she telling them?”

“I think I managed to convince her that she’d get in less trouble telling the truth to the police herself than having you tell the newspapers.”

“Wow!” Walker exclaimed. “You’re incredible! I can’t believe you actually—Meg? Is something wrong?”

I realized that I’d been staring at him.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just realized something.”

“Something about the murder?”

I shook my head, and went back to washing his cuts. I’d suddenly realized why I’d been spending so much energy worrying about Walker. He reminded me, uncannily, of my kid brother who, though far from stupid, seemed content to cruise through life on looks and charm, letting other people take care of him. Sometimes I got tired of being one of the other people, but he was my brother.

Walker was just a friend. More Michael’s friend than mine. And yet here I was, cleaning up after him.

Evidently I’d made less progress than I thought in conquering my tendency to take care of the world.

Just then, fortunately for Walker, Dad arrived, and they both forgot all about me. Dad had partially retired from practicing medicine, which meant that he only saw patients with interesting diseases or injuries. His joy at having a nice gory injury to treat was matched only by Walker’s hypochondriac delight at having a doctor fussing over him.

I stayed long enough to ask the two volunteers if they knew who had arranged Ichabod Dilley’s appearance.

“Todd chaired the program committee,” one of them said.

“Great,” I said. “Where is he?”

“Home,” the volunteer said.

“He’s not here?” I asked. I probably sounded critical. Well, I felt critical. “Doesn’t someone have to keep the program lurching along? Rearranging it when necessary due to deaths, interrogations, and arrests?”

“Well, not Todd,” the volunteer said, as if I ought to know better. “He doesn’t cope well with change. We gave him a Valium and sent him home. Sandra’s doing all that.”

Sandra, it turned out, was the diminutive Amazon who’d been acting as a combination emcee, stage manager, and baby-sitter for the events taking place in the ballroom, where she was currently running the trivia contest.

So I’d have to wait to interrogate her until the contest ended. By now, any resemblance between what was happening around the hotel and what was printed in the program would be purely coincidental. Still, it gave me a guideline. The trivia contest was supposed to last from three to four. Sometime between four and seven, it would end, and I could interrogate Sandra. And perhaps later the sedated and calmer Todd.

“Will Todd be back?” I asked.

“He said he’d come in for the costume contest,” the first volunteer said.

“He’d better,” the other volunteer muttered. “If he flakes out like last year…”

“We managed last year,” the first volunteer said.

“We didn’t have all these animals last year,” the second volunteer muttered.

“Oh, is Todd in charge of the animals?” I asked.

The two looked at each other.

“I suppose so,” the first said.

“He’s the one who found them,” the second volunteer said. “Which means he’s the only one who knows what we’re supposed to do with them when the convention is over.”

“And I suppose he’s the one who managed to get permits to have them here in the first place,” I said.

“Permits?” the first volunteer said.

“Oh, great, you mean he should have gotten permits?” the second volunteer said.

“You know Todd,” the first one said. “Easier to beg forgiveness later than get permission beforehand. Sandra can take care of any problems, like she did last year.”

“Yeah, and I bet by the time we’re finished, last year’s fire and water damage will look cheap,” the second volunteer said.

I decided I’d rather not know what had happened at last year’s convention.

“Rounding up the monkeys and parrots seems to be going rather slowly,” I said instead.

“Someone kept letting them go again,” the first volunteer said.

“You should have had someone guarding them,” I said.

“We did, of course,” the volunteer said. “It was the guards who were letting them go.”

“We’ve got better guards now,” the other said.

“Well, different guards, anyway,” the first muttered.

“We’re going to have to change our name again to get a hotel for next year,” the second volunteer said.

“Three years in a row?” the first said. “We’re running out of names.”

On that note, I decided to return to the dealers’ room. The more I learned about the inner workings of the convention, the more anxious I felt.

“What is this crap, anyway?” Steele said, when I slipped behind the table. “Part of your sleuthing?”

He’d gotten into the stash of fan fic and spurious Porfiria comics I’d stuck under the table.

“Just some stuff I found,” I said. “I was thinking of pulling Michael’s leg with some of it. He gets so embarrassed by all the action figures and fan fic.”

“You might want to check it out first,” he said. “Some of this stuff is pretty…raw.”

He was holding one of the fake comics by one corner, as if it were a loathsome object. Which it was, actually; I recalled that particular comic as an unpleasantly lewd parody without even the saving grace of any humor.

“Good idea,” I said.

I noticed that the receipt from the booth where I’d bought the spurious comics had fallen out of the stack and lay on the floor. I faked dropping my pen and managed to snag the receipt and stuff it in my skirt pocket while Steele was still shaking his head over the offensive comic. Silly, but I hated to admit paying good money for the stuff.

But before long, neither of us had time to worry about the fan fic. Either Harry’s efforts as an improvised sandwich man had helped or the convention-goers had gotten tired of watching the police and the press. More of them started coming into the dealers’ room, and for a while I had enough to do to keep me from fretting.

Steele and I each made a few more sales. Actually, I made more than a few sales, about half of them of Steele’s merchandise. Without discussing it, we’d fallen into a comfortable pattern. Steele kept an eye on the stock, packed and unpacked, cleaned and polished things, filled out sales forms, wrapped purchases, and generally took care of all the mundane and routine work, while I charmed swords and daggers into the hands of customers. Even without counting the savings on the booth rental, we were doing much better as a team than either of us would have solo.

Steele kept giving me approving glances, and I decided it was lucky I hadn’t worked with him like this a few years ago, before I met Michael. Under the right—or wrong—circumstances, I’d have assumed that because we worked together so well, we were meant for each other. I might have found his brusqueness with customers strangely appealing. After all, he obviously didn’t dislike me. He found me useful. You could even say he needed me. Once, that, combined with my innate compulsion to take care of people and his attractiveness, would have spelled trouble. The kind of trouble that’s hard to avoid because even when you spot it a mile off, part of you still wants to walk right in.

Thank God I’d learned better. Or maybe just thank God for Michael.

“Meg?”

I looked up to see Typhani standing in front of the booth.

“A messenger just dropped this off for you at the front desk,” she said, holding up a nine-by twelve-inch Kinko’s envelope. “I said I’d deliver it.”

Finally!

“Thanks,” I said, trying not to look too eager as I took the envelope out of her hand.

I grabbed a dagger from the table display and slit the envelope open. I peeked in, and was glad I hadn’t just fished the pictures out in plain view. Apparently Dad had reached Kevin to ask for blowups of my photos of the QB’s body. They were on the top of the stack, and I didn’t exactly want anyone seeing those.

Anyone included Typhani, who seemed to be hovering.

“Yes?” I said.

“It’s okay?” she said. “The desk clerk can describe the guy who dropped it off if you like.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I mean, unless you think there’s something I ought to know about the guy who dropped it off.”

“Well, you know, if it’s some kind of hate mail…”

“No,” I said. “Kinko’s and I are on reasonably friendly terms these days. Did Miss Wynncliffe-Jones get her hate mail in envelopes like this?”

“Yeah, some of them,” she said, nodding. “Well, not in Kinko’s envelopes. They came in the mail. But in envelopes like that.”

“Big, flat envelopes with cardboard inside to keep the contents from bending?”

She nodded.

“The first time she yelled at me for throwing away the envelope,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, how stupid can you get? Like whoever sent it would put a return address!”

I nodded. Typhani seemed to find that satisfactory and went off after fluttering her fingertips at me, the way a child would wave bye-bye.

So whoever sent the QB’s hate mail was taking some pains to make sure the contents arrived in good condition.

Not hate mail at all. Hate comics; I’d bet anything. And the shred of paper she’d been holding had probably been part of one of them.

I sat back a little—far enough that I could still keep an eye on the booth, but where passing customers couldn’t see what I was holding—and pulled out the photos.