negative to repeat.
If I could just drag the conversation back to the show.
“Oh, was that Nate?” I said, pretending to spot him behind her.
“Was it?” she said, turning to look. “Well, he must have gone out again.”
“Now he’s been with the show a long time, hasn’t he?” I asked.
“Since the first episode,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing? He’s the only one, apart from Walker and Miss Wynncliffe-Jones herself.”
“Makes you wonder what he’s got on her,” I said.
She blinked, and then decided to assume I was kidding.
“Oh, you,” she said, giving my shoulder a gentle, playful shove. “No, if you ask me, he’s sweet on her.”
“Nate?” I exclaimed.
“Of course,” she said. “He’s been with her for ever so long—since they were much younger. Why else would he stick with her through all the…difficult times.”
Yes, difficult would pretty much describe any times spent in the QB’s company. But Nate and the QB? Why did I suddenly have the picture of an ordinary housecat yearning after Salome?
I pleaded the need to mind my booth, and headed back to the dealers’ room, still pondering what the costumer had said. I took a long way round, though—deliberately—a way that took me past Salome’s lair.
I ducked under the vines that screened the room’s doorway—had they gotten thicker since yesterday? I was pretty sure they had, and I doubted the convention decorating committee had time to make the changes. Someone definitely wanted the room’s doorway to be hard to find. I could think of only one person who would care.
Salome lifted her head and inspected me briefly before closing her eyes and returning to her nap. That was more reaction than I got from her keeper.
“Didn’t I just see you in the lobby?” I asked.
He looked up, puzzled. He was holding a coffee cup that he hadn’t had earlier.
“I went for breakfast,” he said.
“Leaving Salome all alone apparently. Not that your choice of cat sitters is exactly inspired—do you really think my father is the right person to look after Salome while you’re off doing whatever you were doing yesterday afternoon?”
“I have to eat, don’t I?” he said, “and go to the bathroom occasionally? Besides, I’m not really worrying about anyone going near her with him around.”
I glanced over and saw Spike. Someone had tied his leash around a pillar, and he had pulled the leash taut, straining to get closer to Salome’s cage. He seemed oblivious to anyone else in the room.
“Anyone goes near her, he barks his head off,” the keeper said. “Freakin’ weird if you ask me, but not my problem.”
Salome lifted her head again, and when he saw her move, Spike began straining even harder and whining pathetically.
“And what happens if the knot slips, or he breaks the leash?” I asked.
“Beats me,” the keeper shrugged. “This wouldn’t be a problem if you had had him fixed.”
“He’s been fixed,” I said. “This is as good as it gets.”
“She probably wouldn’t eat him, anyway,” he said. “Too much fur. She hates getting fur stuck in her teeth, especially for so little meat. So, I hear you found the old dragon’s body. Why didn’t you tell me when you were here earlier?”
“Is it just me?” I said. “Am I too hung up on appearances? Or doesn’t anyone else think maybe it might be a good idea not to seem all that cheerful about Miss Wynncliffe-Jones’s death? Just while the police are hanging around looking for a murderer and all.”
The keeper shrugged.
“Way I see it, they’re probably more apt to find it suspicious if you walk around moping as if you’d just lost your best friend,” he said. “Nobody liked her; some of us are just as happy she’s dead; and the rest aren’t all that upset.”
He might have a point, I thought. But I felt like playing devil’s advocate.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Do you mean to say you don’t think anyone will be upset by her death?”
“Well, Caroline Willner, my boss. She won’t be pleased, but it’s not as if you could call it upset. And I’m definitely not upset. At least now Salome is safe.”
“Safe? How?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not likely a dead person’s going to buy her, is it?”
“The QB was the private owner buying Salome?”
“Yes,” he said. “Can you imagine?”
I made a noncommittal noise and wondered if he realized he had just added himself to the suspect list. My suspect list, anyway.
“The woman had no understanding of what’s involved in keeping a big cat,” he went on. “No real interest in Salome. She just wanted to keep her in a cage in her garden to impress her guests. You can’t do that with an animal that’s been socialized by humans. If you suddenly deprive them of any real contact with people, it traumatizes them. The mental anguish can make them psychotic and violent.”
Way to the top of my suspect list. But I had to admit, as Salome turned her inscrutable golden gaze in my direction, that if he turned out to be the murderer, I’d feel a lot more sympathy for him than I would for some of the others.
I had a hard time believing that anyone would have killed the QB because of creative differences over Porfiria scripts, comic books, or even the whole TV show. Not that I doubted that it might have happened, but if it did, I’d never really understand the murderer. Financial motives I could understand a little more easily—misguided people often killed for gain, or in a desperate attempt to prevent a loss. But if Salome’s keeper genuinely believed that she would be mistreated in the QB’s hands, and could find no other way to stop the sale—that I could understand. Maybe not condone, but understand.
I heard a voice from the doorway. Maggie West.
“I just want to look in here for a minute,” she was saying, popping out from the tangle of vines.
“Miss West!” the keeper exclaimed.
“Hello, Brad,” she said. “How’s she doing today?”
“Just fine,” he said.
“So you like tigers, too?” she said to me, smiling.
“From a respectful distance, yes,” I said.
She laughed, and walked up to Salome’s cage. Salome padded eagerly over to meet her and began rubbing her head against the bars. Spike barked a couple of times, and then returned to whining. Some watchdog.
“Oh, that’s a pretty little girl,” Maggie cooed.
“Little?” I echoed.
Maggie laughed.
“She’s on the small side for an Amur, even for a female,” she said. “What does she weigh, Brad? Maybe two hundred and fifteen pounds?”
“Only a little over two hundred,” he said.
“There, you see?” Maggie said. “I’ve got two big boys at home who are easily three times that.”
“You have two tigers?” I said, looking at Brad to see how he felt about this revelation.
“Eleven, actually,” she said. She reached in and began scratching Salome’s head.
“Miss West runs an animal sanctuary,” Brad explained, “Jungle West.”
“Miss West!”
An Amazon guard was peering into the room, apparently unwilling to enter.
“Yes, I’m coming,” Maggie said.
Brad, the keeper, watched with adoring eyes as Maggie ducked under the trailing vines and left the room.
He didn’t seem to notice when I followed her example—after first checking the knots holding Spike’s leash and reassuring myself that he was in no danger of getting loose.
