We’ll Always Have Parrots (9 page)

I fumbled, and nearly dropped the camera onto the cheering crowds below. Apparently I’d failed to notice the arrival of the Amblyopian Minstrels. Walker strutted up and down the front of the stage, belting out the lyrics to the ancient Troggs hit, while his fellow minstrels blasted an accompaniment on guitar, bass, and drums.

They weren’t bad, actually. Walker had a decent voice, and more than enough stage presence to carry off the act. The other musicians were pretty good. Actually, they were damned good, and I had the sneaking suspicion that they weren’t old buddies of Walker’s but the three best studio musicians he could afford to hire. Still, they seemed to enjoy themselves, and the crowd went wild.

The volume of sound made coherent thought difficult, but it did occur to me that if the police had turned Walker loose, maybe the other members of the cast and crew would follow. I scanned the crowd for Michael.

Of course, odds were he’d find a place backstage. And I really ought to cruise by the front desk and ask about our new room before going backstage to look for Michael.

Though I found myself staring, fascinated, at the stage. Walker had been so despondent earlier in the day, and now he was positively exuberant. Yeah, he was an actor, making a professional appearance, but he wasn’t that good. His happiness looked genuine. Understandable.

But dammit, didn’t he realize how bad it looked?

Would look, anyway, when the fans found out tomorrow about the QB’s death. Assuming word had leaked out about his firing.

Or if the police saw him tonight. And they would see him, one way or the other. If they weren’t watching live, odds were the con would videotape the concert, like everything else this weekend.

Were they? Yes. Apparently the cameras pretty much ran themselves. One pointed at the stage and the other at the dance floor, and the techs only glanced over now and then—more at the readout that showed how much tape remained than at the monitor.

Did Walker realize this? Probably not. Or if he did, he probably hadn’t thought through the implications.

For that matter, Maggie, now dancing exuberantly in the middle of the floor, was going to look pretty happy on the videotapes—though I wasn’t as worried about Maggie. She was up front about the QB being her enemy. If anyone taxed her with insensitivity for dancing away the night of the QB’s murder, she could simply shrug and say, “I didn’t like her, and I wasn’t that broken up.”

After all, she hadn’t gone around all day weeping and wailing to everyone about all the horrible things the QB was doing and then, when the QB actually appeared, doing an abrupt about face and sucking up to her. Like Walker.

But still, even Maggie’s exuberance might seem a little insensitive in the cold light of day.

And what if it’s not just exuberance, a small voice inside me kept asking. What if one of them really has a reason to celebrate?

Their problem, I told myself. I scanned the floor one more time. I didn’t spot Michael, but Chris Blair was standing at the side of the stage, looking a lot less exuberant than Walker and Maggie. Just then he glanced up, saw me, and waved. I waved back, and continued scanning for Michael.

Not there. Actually, a good thing; I’d have time to check with the front desk about our new room.

But on my way down the stairs from the balcony, I ran into Chris.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. “Let’s not stand here blocking the stairs.”

Not that the stairs were a high traffic area, but I could tell from his unsteady posture that the beer he held wasn’t his first. The sooner he got back on level ground the better. I didn’t believe in the old superstition that deaths came in threes, but just in case I was wrong, I’d rather see two more aging starlets buy the farm than two more members of the Porfiria cast and crew.

“I can’t believe it,” he said, breathing hops into my face. “Is she really dead?”

“Did you think it was some kind of publicity stunt? Yes, she’s dead. Didn’t the cops interrogate you about it?”

“Yeah, but I figured maybe they were just trying to scare us, you know? You’re sure? She couldn’t have just been unconscious?”

“Chris, I saw her,” I said. “I’ve seen dead people. I know what dead looks like. She was dead.”

“Damn,” he said. He stared into space, shaking his head slightly. Then he took another long pull on his beer.

“You seem pretty upset,” I said.

“I am, kind of,” Chris said. “Upset. Feeling a little guilty.”

“Guilty?” I echoed.

“Yeah, guilty,” he said. “Because I can’t help feeling…well, not exactly happy. But definitely…relieved. I guess that sounds pretty terrible.”

“Actually, it sounds fairly normal,” I said. “At least where the QB was concerned. You’re probably not the only one who doesn’t feel heartbroken.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I bet she wasn’t trashing anyone else’s life as badly as mine, but I’m not the only one. Look at this.”

He opened his mouth, pulled his lower lip down with one hand, and tapped a tooth with his index finger.

“You see?” he said, his words slightly garbled.

“See what?” I asked. Chris had nice, even, white teeth. I couldn’t see anything in particular about the one he’d indicated.

“It’s a crown,” he said. He shifted his head slightly and paused for a moment, so I could get a better look before he took his hand away and gulped his beer.

“That’s nice,” I said. But I felt puzzled—had the QB knocked one of his teeth out? Seemed extreme, even for her.

“She’s got me so stressed that I grind my teeth at night,” he said. “I actually broke this one. I have to wear this mouth guard thing to bed if I want to have any left. She’s trashing my career; she’s trashing my love life; now she’s even trashing my teeth.”

“Well, not any more,” I said.

“No, not any more,” he echoed. “So I don’t see how anyone could expect me to feel all grief-stricken.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” I said. “Although it might be wise to postpone any actual celebration until after the cops catch the murderer. To avoid confusing them.”

It took a second, but he laughed.

“I get it,” he said. “That’s good. That’s what I like about you, Meg. You have this great sense of…sense of, um…”

“Sense of humor,” I said, backing away slightly, thinking that if he breathed on me one more time, I’d absorb enough beer fumes to skew a breathalyzer test. “Thanks. Look, I have to—”

“No, not just a sense of humor,” Chris said. “You have a sense of…life! The sense that life goes on. I mean, even at a time like this…especially at a time like this, with death all around us, you have to affirm life! And grab it with both hands.”

“That’s not life you’re grabbing, Chris, it’s me,” I said, pulling away from his hands. “I’m not available for affirming. Go back to the ballroom; I’m sure you’ll find any number of nice women who’d love to affirm with you.”

“But Meg,” he protested.

“Chris,” I said, “I’m serious. Go away.”

Something in my tone got through to him, and he stumbled away, still mumbling protests and casting hurt glances back at me.

I straightened the bits of my costume that Chris’s roving hands had knocked askew, and then tried to remember where I’d been going when he intercepted me. Ah, right. To check with the front desk about the new room.

Or more likely, do battle with the front desk. The way they’d handled things so far this weekend didn’t exactly inspire confidence. For example, the way they’d failed to do anything useful about the parrots and monkeys until the health department showed up. And speaking of the health department, they weren’t going to be happy if they returned to check on the progress of the cleanup. The parrots and monkeys had returned to the lobby with a vengeance. While I waited my turn at the desk, I overheard a bellhop giving instructions to a coworker who seemed to be starting his first shift. Or at least his first shift since the hotel’s transformation.

“Those are blue and gold macaws,” he said, pointing to two birds perched near the entrance to the hotel’s restaurant. “They talk a lot. Don’t say anything around them you don’t want the brass to hear; they already got Jerry in trouble.”

The junior bellhop nodded solemnly.

“Red-vented parrot,” the senior said, pointing to a red, blue, and green bird that seemed to be sleeping in a chandelier. “They’re pretty quiet, thank God. And you see the one over by the elevators? Gray and white, except for the red tail feathers?”

The junior bellhop nodded again.

“African Grey. Biggest troublemakers of the lot, the African Greys. Watch that one a minute.”

I watched, too, as several costumed fans strolled up to the bank of three elevators. I heard the ding of an arriving elevator. The fans also heard it and began looking from elevator to elevator, and then at each other, puzzled.

The African Grey dinged again. The fans never did figure out where the dinging came from—eventually the elevator did arrive, and they got in, complaining loudly about what a lousy hotel this was.

The junior bellhop was giggling. I could tell the senior bellhop wanted to, but he kept a stern face.

“Yeah, go ahead and laugh,” he said. “Just wait until they pull the same thing on you.”

At that point, they spotted some late arriving guests and hurried off to pounce on the luggage. I had to smile when I saw that the new arrivals were a just-married twenty-something couple, the bride still improbably wearing her wedding dress and the groom in his tuxedo.

Had they been in such a hurry for the wedding night that they’d forgotten to change into their going-away outfits? And clearly the hotel hadn’t warned them about who’d be sharing their honeymoon hideaway, I realized, as I stood in line behind them.

“I thought you said this was a
nice
hotel,” the bride hissed through clenched teeth.

The groom shrugged, and pretended to be totally unaware of the group of Amblyopian belly dancers rehearsing in the middle of the lobby, although the bride seemed more disconcerted by the people bedded down for the night under the fake foliage. Evidently the hotel had given up trying to control the convention. Apart from the night cleaning crew, deliberately vacuuming as close as possible to the sleepers’ heads, no one was taking any steps to relocate the squatters.

Well, better the lobby than our balcony, assuming our new room even had a balcony.

Just as long as we had a room. The lobby wasn’t an option. The cleaning crew departed, but the scarlet-clad musicians returned and appeared to be succeeding where the vacuums had failed. Though it was less the quality of their performance that evicted the squatters than the fact that they were trying to compose a sentimental eulogy to the QB, set to the tune of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy.”

The newlyweds finally made it through registration and disappeared down a corridor, earning the bellhops’ visible scorn by dragging their own matching wheeled suitcases behind them. My turn at the desk. Though the clerk initially seemed intent on ignoring my request that he find a new room for one of the convention’s guests of honor, my eloquence charmed the steadily growing crowd of monkeys who suspended themselves from the ceiling as close behind me as they could manage, and who added a chorus of hoots, grunts, and shrieks to the end of every sentence I uttered.

“I’d like to speak to the manager,” I said, finally.

“She’s not here,” the desk clerk said.

“What about the assistant manager?”

“They were both fired yesterday,” the desk clerk said. “Their replacements are supposed to be here Monday. I’m acting manager, but if you want to wait and speak to the new manager…”

“No,” I said, pounding my fist on the desk. “I want a room, now!”

The monkeys went wild at that. Several of them jumped down onto the registration desk and began pounding on it with their tiny furry fists. Inspired by their presence the desk clerk suddenly remembered an unoccupied room and managed, with trembling hands, to convince his computer that Michael and I should have it. I breathed more easily when he finally handed over a pair of card keys.

As I headed off to liberate our luggage from police custody, I passed the bridal party returning to the lobby. This time the husband was dragging both suitcases.

“‘Oh, no!’” the bride was saying, in a voice clearly intended to mimic her groom. “‘They’re not heavy; we can carry them ourselves.’”

“I’m sure it’ll be down that corridor,” her husband replied.

She stopped in the lobby, hands on hips, looking round and nodding, as if the scene before her summed up some long-festering doubt about the wisdom of the day’s proceedings.

“I’ll get directions,” her husband said, and began picking his way through the squatters. “Pardon me. Oh, sorry, sir; I didn’t mean to step on your light saber.”

His wife suddenly spotted something that made her jaw drop. Since I had paused to eavesdrop anyway, I sidled to a new vantage point where I could see what she was staring at.

A convention poster, with giant photos of Michael, Walker, and the QB arched across the top.

I frowned, and then realized, with a combination of relief and indignation, that she was gaping at Walker’s photo, not Michael’s. Well, to each her own. As I watched, she picked up her skirt at both sides and began sprinting down the corridor toward the ballroom.

“Jen?”

I turned to see the husband, still trailing the suitcases, looking around with a tired, puzzled expression on his face.

I shrugged, and continued on to our former room. Or the neighborhood of our former room, anyway. The
POLICE LINE
—
DO NOT CROSS
tape blocked the door. I stuck my head in one of the two nearby rooms that the police had commandeered for their operations center. The good-natured sergeant who seemed to be in charge told me that they’d packed our stuff and had it ready in the next room.

“Check it over,” he said, waving to the connecting door. “Let me know if you see anything we’ve missed.”

More useful to let me search our old room, I thought, but presumably that was against the rules.

While I was checking the luggage, as ordered, I heard voices in the other room: Detective Foley and his partner. Okay, I’m nosey. I stopped rummaging through the suitcases, kept very still, and strained to hear.

“—but I’m still in charge of this investigation,” Foley was saying, “and that’s not the way I think it should be handled.”

The partner, whose voice was less penetrating, said something I couldn’t decipher.

“Then he’s an ass,” Foley said.

I could hear the partner’s chuckle, but not what he said next.

“No, not at all,” Foley said. “If we make an arrest and the suspect still has it, it’ll be a nice little bit of circumstantial evidence. But odds are it’s history already. Or will be, pretty damned quick, if word gets out that we’re looking for it.”

Looking for what? Foley had the sort of nice, booming voice that’s every eavesdropper’s delight, but his attention to detail left much to be desired.

The partner rumbled again. Voice and diction lessons for that one, I fumed.

“You can tell him that I’m very suspicious of watches that stop at the time of death, convenient deathbed confessions, killers’ names scrawled in blood on the walls, and especially critical bits of evidence found clutched in the victim’s hand,” Foley said.

Ah. The comic book scrap.

“Anyway, we’re out of here,” Foley said. “I want to get an early start here tomorrow.”

I could hear him as he walked down the hall, complaining about how long it would take him to get home, and how much longer to get back here on Saturday morning. When he was safely out of earshot, I stuck my head in the other room.

“If there’s anything you missed, I’m too tired to notice,” I said. “Any chance you could call down for a bellhop to help me move the stuff?”

He not only called the desk for me, but when they told him it would take a while—maybe the bellhops were still in parrot awareness training—he offered to have the luggage moved. I left one of our new room key cards with him and went off with the other to find Michael.

Back in the ballroom, the concert was still in full swing. Up on stage, Walker was doing his best Mick Jagger impression, strutting and leaping about with manic energy. Several dozen women clung to the edge of the stage; including, I noticed with a sigh, one slender figure in a bridal gown whose trailing hem was getting a little ragged.

Maggie was still dancing with the energy of a teenager in the center of the dance floor. The Amazon security guard recognized me and passed me into the backstage area, which drew hisses and venomous stares from the women clustered near the stage.

Thank goodness, the police had finally released Michael.

“There you are,” he said, spotting me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I only just finished bullying the front desk into handing over the keys to the promised new room.”

“Great. Let’s go. Not that way,” he said, as I headed for the way I’d come in. “We’d never make it though the crowd. We can go the back way.”

“Will the back way lead us past the front desk?” I asked, yawning. “It just dawned on me that I have no idea where the new room is.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered,” Michael said. “Just tell me the room number.”

Since when had Michael become good at finding his way around this maze? But I didn’t have the energy to protest, so I just handed him the card key folder so he could see the room number.

Michael’s back way led through a narrow, shabby corridor into the kitchen, where Michael and the few employees on graveyard shift greeted each other like old friends. Another utilitarian hall led to a room where two middle-aged maids stood in front of a pair of washing machines, arguing in machine-gun Spanish. Michael asked directions in his slower but capable Spanish and one of the maids ended up escorting us to our new room, fuming the whole way at how
estupidos
the front desk staff were for assigning us a room that was so
pequeño y asqueroso
. I didn’t know what
pequeño y asqueroso
meant, but I suspected it referred to the room’s minuscule size, its shabby furnishings, and perhaps the faint smell of cooked cabbage that seemed to cling to the walls. But I didn’t want to ask.

“It doesn’t have a balcony, and it’s not a crime scene, and odds are we won’t be awake long enough to care,” Michael said, as if he’d read my mind.

While Michael brushed his teeth, I copied the photos from the camera onto my laptop. I wasted some time trying to find a program that would let me look at them in larger than thumbnail size, but evidently my nephew Kevin hadn’t expected that I’d want to do anything with photos but send them to him. So that’s what I did. I managed to attach the two photos of the torn comic to an e-mail, telling Kevin enough about them to pique his interest without getting so graphic that my sister would object if she looked over his shoulder, and asking him to figure out a way for me to get some printed blowups.

Michael was asleep before I logged off, and I didn’t plan to be far behind him. Still, it was past 2:00
A.M.
before I fell asleep. Thank goodness Michael didn’t have any panels until 11:00
A.M.
Saturday, I thought, as I drifted off. I had to be in the dealers’ room at ten, but I needed much less prep time. So we could actually sleep in until nine. Which wasn’t all that great, considering how late we’d stayed up. Still, it was better than Friday morning.

The phone woke us up a little before eight.