I confess, at the last minute, I waffled, and didn’t indict Nate as definitively as I’d originally intended. After all, if I was wrong, Michael still had to work with him. Probably a mistake. It weakened my argument, so all you had left was an impassioned but confusing plea that Foley look a lot more deeply into Ichabod Dilley’s death, his relationship with the other members of the cast of Acid Vision, and the real identity of every fifty-something person in the hotel.
“That’s very interesting,” Detective Foley, said, glancing at his silent partner.
“You don’t believe me,” I said. He could probably tell from my voice that I wasn’t pleased.
“Oh, actually we believe you,” he said. “We’ll be talking to Ms. West and others to develop the information you’ve given us. It dovetails very nicely with our theory of the case.”
“Your theory?” I said.
The other detective gave him a baleful look, as if to suggest that he was talking a little too much to a civilian, but Detective Foley was on a roll.
“Yes,” he said, tucking his thumbs in his pants pockets and rocking back on his heels. “We happen to agree with your basic assumption. We think Ichabod Dilley is very much alive. And we can’t find any trace of our mild-mannered suspect over there before around 1970.”
He was pointing across the lobby, to where Nate was standing, talking to Francis and Walker.
My brain reeled. Okay, I had pointed the finger at Nate. But maybe I wanted to be wrong. I liked Nate, and I certainly hadn’t expected the police to confirm my suspicions quite this readily. As I watched, Walker clapped Nate on the shoulder and strolled off.
“If you’re finished showing off, maybe we can arrest the guy now?” Foley’s partner suggested.
Foley nodded, and the two of them headed across the lobby with a firm, purposeful air.
Nate and Francis looked up. Nate looked alarmed. Of course, so did Francis, but that was his normal expression.
Detective Foley reached into his inside jacket pocket for something. His badge, maybe.
Nate and Francis could see it, too. Nate looked anxious.
Francis turned and ran.
Francis? Wait a minute. I thought they were after Nate—but he just stood there with a puzzled look on his face. Francis was the one running away.
The detectives followed. Because he was the one they were after, or just because he was running?
No matter. They followed him. So did I. At a safe distance. My Renaissance wench costume slowed me down, but then I didn’t want to overtake the police, just see what happened when they caught Francis.
Glancing up, I saw a growing number of monkeys, always curious about new human antics, swinging along above us, chattering eagerly. The half-dozen parrots currently infesting the hallway merely squawked as the monkeys shoved them aside.
The crowd grew thinner, and I could see that Francis’s flight was destined to end shortly. The detectives were gaining on him, and the path ahead was blocked by an unexpected obstacle. Apparently Brad, Salome’s keeper, had gotten permission to pack up and bring her home. Under his direction, several nervous bellhops were pulling her cage along the hall toward the open double doors leading to the parking lot.
Francis crashed into the cage. Salome roared and began flinging herself from side to side. The bellhops fled, knocking Brad down on their way.
Francis looked startled for a moment, and then he reached out and jerked aside the latch holding the cage door closed.
“Stand back or I’ll turn her loose!” he yelled.
People started leaving. Fast.
“Power to the people!” Francis shrieked. “Free the Pasadena Pair!”
Just then, Salome hit the cage door, which popped open, sending her sprawling ten feet out into the middle of the hallway floor.
She lay there for a few moments, as if stunned—or perhaps feeling the same sense of acute embarrassment domestic housecats suffer when they do something clumsy.
I flattened myself against a wall, convinced that I’d be trampled by the panic-stricken mob. But I had to hand it to this crowd. For a panic-stricken mob, they did an astonishingly efficient job of emptying the hallway. By the time Salome shook her head and bounded to her feet with a roar, only a dozen people remained.
I decided it was stupid to be one of them and began backing slowly down the hall, feeling behind me for a doorway.
Salome lashed her tail and looked around.
I saw Brad, the keeper, slipping out through a doorway.
I felt a doorframe behind me. I backed up, hard, pushing the door open. I could see tile floor. I was in a bathroom. Okay. I kept on backing, staring at the door, until I hit something hard, and grabbed onto it. I kept expecting Salome to burst in. As seconds passed and nothing happened, I could feel my heart slow and my brain start working again.
I glanced back and decided to let go of the urinal.
Chapter 40
“Hello?” I said, not too loudly. “Anyone in here?”
No answer, just the usual hollow bathroom echo.
And I didn’t hear any roars outside, or any screams of terror or anguish.
But I didn’t hear any reassuring sounds of the convention resuming, either.
Great. I was trapped in the men’s room.
At least if I’d found an exit door, I could mill around outside with the rest of the evacuees. Find out if the police had caught Francis, or if his diversionary tactic had worked and, more important, find out when they’d caught Salome. As it was, I could either stick my head out and risk having it bitten off or lurk around here until someone came in and found me crouching among the urinals. I’d be a long time living that down.
Also a long time getting over the ick factor of fondling a urinal. I washed my hands, twice, and then realized the bathroom was out of paper towels.
Typical of this dump, I thought, drying my hands on my skirt.
Something crackled in my pocket.
I reached in and found the folded piece of paper. My fingertips rasped over the rough, pebbly texture. I pulled it out and stared at it. Off-white with little flecks of color.
“I know who killed her,” I said, half-aloud. I’d been wrong. And the cops were wrong. And I knew how to prove it. Provided the killer didn’t do away with the evidence before I could get it to the police.
I opened the bathroom door a crack and peered out. Nothing. No Salome. No people, either, which probably meant she was still on the loose.
The only sane thing to do was to stay in the bathroom.
Of course, sanity has never been my strong point.
I slipped out into the hall. Still nothing. I crept quietly across the hall, and then along the opposite wall, until I got to the small side door that led into the dealers’ room. I opened it as quietly as I could.
Of course, all this silent creeping might prove useless. Maybe tigers relied more on smell than hearing. If I’d known I’d be trying to elude one, I could have looked it up before coming to the convention.
I glanced into the dealers’ room. No sign of Salome.
Of course there were things she could hide behind. Just a few, but still.
I heard a faint noise in the hall. Monkeys, chattering softly.
Chattering at what?
I slipped inside quickly and closed the door. I’d have felt better if some idiot hadn’t left a door at the other end of the room hanging wide open.
I half-ran over to the booth and grabbed a sword—one of the ones I’d sharpened because, crazy as it had always seemed to me, some customers wanted them that way.
Not so crazy now. I felt suddenly, though quite irrationally, safer. Stupid; what could I really do with a sword if Salome came at me? But I didn’t put it down, even though it hampered me a bit when I searched the booth.