Alaric Steele’s side of the booth.
I might be risking my neck for nothing. He might have already gotten rid of the sketchpad, the one containing the off-white paper with the colored flecks. Of course, I still had the sheet of paper in my pocket, the paper on which Steele had done his estimates for the producer on making armor and swords for his TV show. Neat, legible letters and numbers—his printing had an almost calligraphic elegance. Several very deft sketches—I wished I could draw designs for potential customers that well. It looked quite good on that sheet of pebbly, color-flecked drawing paper. More like fine art than a craftsman’s sketch. But he could always claim he’d found the paper somewhere. It would be so much more satisfactory to find…
The pad. He’d hidden it among the packing materials, sandwiched in between several sheets of cardboard at the bottom of a box filled with Styrofoam peanuts.
Inside, I found pages of the same rough-toothed paper, covered with sketches. I hadn’t seen him sketching at the booth, but suddenly I could see him sitting alone in his room, drawing. Just him and the sketch pad.
He was good. Hell, he’d been good thirty years ago. He was brilliant now. His figures, always strong, were cleaner, simpler—now but just as subtle and lifelike, as if he’d learned to achieve the same results with fewer lines.
The first few pages contained small sketches of various people at the convention. You could tell at a glance how he felt about each subject. He mocked the costumed fans, but gently, as if their antics amused him. He wasn’t quite so kind to the bearded professor or Walker. I was relieved that he hadn’t drawn Michael.
He liked Maggie. He didn’t idealize her, didn’t remove any lines or gray hairs, and yet the sketch of her had a warmth and vibrancy that made you smile just to look at it. It wasn’t unlike the glow Porfiria had in those early comics. Yeah, he liked Maggie.
He liked me, too. The sketches of me didn’t quite have Maggie’s warmth, but they did have their own kind of heat. I didn’t think my Renaissance wench costume was quite as low cut as he’d drawn it, and I knew perfectly well he’d exaggerated my figure. Nice to know I retain my appeal to the criminal element.
But the QB—he’d sketched her, more than anyone, and the pictures radiated a cold hatred that made me hesitate to touch the page. And they made her look startlingly ugly and repulsive. The more startling because they didn’t seem distorted. More like photo-realism, and yet through some subtle alchemy, he’d made the seemingly straightforward lines and curves reveal not only the outer shell but the cruel soul inside. I found myself staring into the eyes of one sketch and thinking that Medusa must have looked just like this, to turn her viewers into stone. I certainly stood staring down at the page for far too long.
A monkey chattered overhead, and I snapped out of it.
“I need to get out of here,” I muttered.
But which way? Back the way I’d come, or out the other side of the dealers’ room?
I should have paid more attention to which way Salome was going. Or, for that matter, where Steele went when he left the dealers’ room a few minutes before Francis turned Salome loose.
“Lady killer or tiger?” I muttered, looking back and forth between the two escape routes. Though for all I knew, if I chose the wrong path, they’d both be lying in wait.
Maybe I could sneak out the back way while they were fighting over who got to finish me off.
“Chill,” I told myself. Odds were Steele was outside, with the rest, waiting to hear that Salome had been recaptured. The last time we’d talked, I’d been busy explaining why I suspected Nate. He had no way of knowing that his producer friend had just handed me the clue that gave him away.
“Just move,” I muttered. I decided that if I were Salome, I’d steer for the lobby, so I headed toward the opposite side of the dealers’ room, where the back exit would take me near the ballroom and the green room. It would have taken Salome longer to reach those.
Though between the time I’d spent cowering in the men’s room and the time it had taken me to search the booth, she could have strolled halfway downtown.
I walked as quickly and quietly as possible to the other end of the room and peered out the open door. Quiet out there.
Possibly too quiet? Would the parrots and monkeys shut up if they knew Salome was nearby?
No way to tell. I peered around the doorway, carefully. Nothing. I slipped out and headed toward the ballroom door. My plan, to the extent I had a plan, was to slip into the ballroom and then out again through the back door Michael and I had used the night before. Odds were few people at the convention knew that route, and Salome would have trouble with the door handles.
Halfway down the hall, I heard a noise. From the ballroom.
Or was it my imagination?
I crept into the ballroom. Definitely a real noise, and coming from a utility closet. Which was locked, from the outside. Perhaps someone had taken refuge in the closet, as I had in the bathroom, and been locked in.
I opened the door and found the bound, gagged figure of the man from the health department.
“Ah, so that’s where you went,” I said.
He wriggled frantically, and made a lot of loud umphing noises that didn’t really need translation.
“Yes, I can untie you if you like,” I said, “but it really might be better to wait until they catch the tiger, and besides—”
Just then, I felt the point of a sword at my back.
Chapter 41
I react quickly in moments of crisis. Not always usefully, but quickly. This time, I managed to whirl and meet Steele’s sword with mine, slamming the closet door along the way.
Which would have made me feel better if the smile on Steele’s face didn’t suggest that he wanted me to fight back, and if I hadn’t realized, a second too late, that slamming the door might be a bad idea. Now Steele didn’t have to worry about a possible eyewitness if he slit my throat.
“I’d like my sketchpad back,” he said, with a token thrust of his sword by way of emphasis.
I shook my head. I tried to think of something suitably cutting to say, but the brain wasn’t cooperating, so I settled for parrying and returning to my best on-guard pose.
“Yeah, you’re one tough dame,” he said, with a sneer. “But I never bothered with that pretty, choreographed stage combat you and Chris like. I learned to use this thing as a weapon.”
“I should have known the name was too good to be true,” I said. “A blacksmith named Steele.”
“Well, I got to choose,” he said.
“I think Ichabod Dilley suits you better, though,” I said. “Mind if I call you Ichabod?”
“Yes, I mind,” he said, taking a step forward—not quite a lunge, but enough to make me scramble back a few steps as I parried. “Alaric Steele is my legal name now. Ichabod Dilley is that little twerp in the cheap suit.”
“Your call,” I said.
“Give me the damned sketchbook,” he said.
“Just for the sake of argument, what if I do give you the sketchbook?” I asked. “You’re going to say, ‘Gee, thanks,’ sheathe the sword, and go away quietly?”
“No, but I’ll make it quick and painless,” he said.
“Like I’ve been meaning to tell you all weekend, you’re a lousy salesman,” I said.
“But a damn fine swordsman,” he said, lunging forward, and for a few terrifying moments, I parried frantically and backed up as fast as I could, Steele following, until we reached the open area in front of the stage. Then Steele’s attack eased off and we went back to circling each other warily.