Finding one fan out of the thousand attending the convention wasn’t easy, but I finally caught up with Concubine Aimee in the hallway.
Of course, she was ensconced in a nest of friends. Not the right environment for the kind of interrogation I had in mind. And she might be a little suspicious if I tried to lure her away.
Just then I felt a hand curl around my waist.
“Even the monkeys like you,” Chris said.
“So this isn’t a serious pass, just a case of monkey see; monkey do,” I said, disentangling myself.
“I’m serious,” Chris said, pointing up. “Look at them.”
I glanced up. The perpetually solemn faces of half a dozen monkeys gazed down at me.
“Of course there are monkeys up there,” I said. “There are monkeys everywhere.”
“Yeah, but these are following you up and down the hallway,” Chris said.
“It is possible, you know,” said another voice.
I turned to see Brad, Salome’s keeper, carrying two McDonald’s bags.
“They often form attachments to individual humans,” Brad went on. “Especially ones they perceive as dominant within their social group.”
With that, he turned and strolled down the hall toward the entrance to Salome’s lair, nearly invisible under its covering of vines.
“Very perceptive, these monkeys,” Chris said, suppressing a grin, “and delightfully uninhibited.”
He pointed to a pair of monkeys who appeared to be mating, oblivious to the chaos around them.
“You would notice that,” I said. “I always thought that if you put an infinite number of monkeys in a room, they were supposed to rewrite Shakespeare. These monkeys are not performing up to expectations.”
“Someone forgot the infinite number of typewriters,” Chris said.
“Look, do me a favor, will you?” I asked.
“Will I earn your eternal gratitude?” he asked.
“I don’t know about eternal,” I said, “but you will make me grateful enough to significantly increase the odds that I show up for tonight’s Blazing Sabers performance.”
“Ask away, O Dominant One,” Chris said.
“What are the odds that you can cut one fan out of the herd and lure her into the tiger’s lair?” I asked.
“My kind of assignment,” he said. “I assume you mean a particular one?”
“The blonde over there,” I said, trying to point discreetly, “standing in the middle of that group of decoratively if scantily attired young ladies.”
“The one with the red rhinestone in her navel?”
“That’s her.”
“One blond groupie, coming up,” Chris said. “Meet you in the lair.”
“Just shove her in and wait outside.”
Chapter 35
While Chris went to hijack Amy, I walked down the hall, glancing upward from time to time. Was Chris right? Were some of the monkeys following me? It was hard to tell, because if you looked up in the hall, the whole ceiling appeared to be in vague motion, between the monkeys, the parrots, and the vines. Still, several monkeys did seem to be swinging purposefully along behind me.
Maybe we were just going in the same direction.
Several monkeys did pop into Salome’s lair shortly after I finished crawling through the doorway.
“We’re—”
“Closed, I know,” I said. “If you’re not going to let anyone see Salome, why not just take her home?”
“I’m trying to,” Brad said. “I’ve been trying to reach Mrs. Willner all day.”
“Why don’t you try again?”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
“Go use a pay phone,” I said. “I’ll guard the door until you get back.”
Brad hesitated.
“You let my father do it,” I pointed out. “Trust me, I’m at least as responsible as he is.”
He nodded, and disappeared through the vine-covered opening.
Spike and Salome had already inspected and decided to ignore me. I untied Spike’s leash and led him over to stand with me just inside the opening. He growled a little, but once he saw I wasn’t taking him away from Salome, he calmed down.
A few minutes later, Concubine Aimee crawled out from under the vines, giggling.
“I don’t see why we can’t—” she was saying, as she emerged from the opening. She stopped, still on her hands and knees, when she saw me, but she didn’t know quite how to react until she heard the door slam behind her.
“What’s going on?” she said.
Her voice must have disturbed Spike’s rapt contemplation of Salome. He whirled and snapped at her, growling. She backed away, hastily, still on her knees.
“You can stand up if you like,” I said, tying Spike to a sturdy vine. “You’d be more comfortable.”
“What’s going on here?” she said, looking from me to Salome as if she wasn’t sure which made her most nervous.
“Just a little friendly conversation,” I said. “I overheard you talking to Walker Morris just now, and I’m—”
“If you think you can bully me into talking to the police, you’re wrong,” she said, sticking her chin out in a stubborn gesture.
“Nobody’s trying to bully you,” I said.
Not yet, anyway.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“I understand perfectly,” I said. “Walker only wants you to tell the police the truth. Which I gather is that you and he were together when the QB’s murder took place. Is that true?”
She crossed her arms.
“Is it true that you and Walker can alibi each other?”
“I don’t need an alibi,” she said, startled.
“How do you know?” I said. “The police are still investigating.”
She looked a little less smug, and crossed her arms a little tighter, which made her look more defensive than defiant.
“And that’s why it’s so important for you to talk to the police now—while they’re still looking for the killer.”
“My boyfriend would kill me.”
“If you tell the police that, they’ll try to keep it quiet. But what happens if you don’t tell them and they arrest Walker?”
“He’ll find another way to prove his innocence,” she said.
“Maybe. But first he’ll tell the police he was with you, and they’ll interrogate you. And when you tell different stories, the police will start looking for evidence to see which of you lied. They’ll ask everyone in the hotel if they saw the two of you together. They could even look for DNA evidence in whatever room you were in. And even if they don’t find witnesses or DNA, the press will find out about it, and they’ll put it all over the front page—the whole world will know they’re looking. Including, of course, your boyfriend.”
She looked a little stricken. I also noticed that she was holding her nametag so I couldn’t see it. And she’d started to glance around as if looking for an escape. Evidently she still thought she could vanish into the crowd. Time to enlighten her.
“Imagine the headlines,” I said. “‘Local Woman Denies Affair with TV Star. Loudoun County Police continue to investigate allegations that Ms. Amy Goldman of Fribble Lane, Alexandria, is actually the mystery woman named as Walker Morris’s alibi in the—’”
“How do you know—” she began, and then her hands flew over her mouth.
“It was easy,” I said. “And if you think it’s easy for me, imagine what a snap it would be for the police.”
I’d produced a change in attitude, but frozen panic wasn’t necessarily an improvement over her previous stubbornness.
“Go and talk to the police,” I said, as gently as I could. “Tell them why you were afraid to talk. They’ll understand, and they’ll try to protect your secret.”