In fact, if he’d gotten a little wild and crazy, it might improve his image.
“It’s nothing I did,” he said, looking horrified. “It’s something I learned about my uncle.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
He frowned, and stared at me for a few moments, as if unsure whether to trust me. Then the need to unburden himself won out.
“Remember what I told you yesterday?” he said. “About my parents paying off my uncle’s debts?”
I nodded.
“It’s worse than I thought,” he said. “After he died, some very unsavory people came to see my parents and claimed my uncle had borrowed a lot of money from them. Thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Drugs, obviously,” he said. “What else could it be?”
“A lot of things,” I said. “Maybe he gambled. Maybe he had some kind of medical expenses. Who knows? I have an aunt who practically went bankrupt buying stuff on eBay.”
“They didn’t have eBay in the seventies,” Dilley said.
“No, but buying stuff you don’t need and can’t afford has been around for centuries,” I said.
“Would anyone other than drug dealers send thugs to collect their money?” he asked.
“You’ve obviously never met any loan sharks,” I said. “Don’t automatically assume the worst about your uncle.”
“I suppose you’re right,” he said. “But even so—what am I going to say to his fans?”
“The truth,” I said. “Just not the whole truth. And put a positive spin on it.”
“How?” he asked.
“Your uncle died impoverished and unknown, thanks to a world that failed to appreciate his genius,” I improvised. “And only the love of a few far-seeing and dedicated fans like those attending this convention kept his work alive until the television show could bring it to a wider audience.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I can work with that. Died impoverished and unknown. Yes.”
He wandered off, muttering to himself. He looked much more cheerful. Perhaps I could count cheering him up as my good deed for the day.
And perhaps he’d solved the mystery of why his uncle had sold the rights to his work to the QB for such a low price. He’d been desperate for money.
But did that get me any closer to finding out who killed the QB? Not that I could tell.
I whiled away a little time trying to close a tough sale. Okay, it was for one of Steele’s swords, but considering how much I’d left him to his own devices, maybe it was only fair.
Steele gave up as soon as a customer expressed the slightest reservations about a sword. Usually about the price tag. But while he was talking to another customer, a prosperous-looking fan in an Amblyopian ranger costume asked the price of one of Steele’s swords and gulped at the answer. So I went into full sales mode. Described all the steps that went into making the blade and then the hilt. Showed him some of the finer points of construction that you wouldn’t find on cheap, mass-produced swords. Opened up a couple of reference books to prove how historically accurate it was. And as a grand finale, I dragged out a similar sword that I’d gotten from an inexpensive mail order catalogue, let him see the two, side-by-side, and let him pick them both up.
“You see,” I said, as he hefted the two appreciatively, “the handmade one’s at least a pound heavier, but the balance is so good it actually feels much lighter.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said, nodding.
Of course, you’d notice the extra pound quick enough, if you actually tried to fight with the thing for a few minutes, but I doubted if this particular ranger would ever take it off his wall.
I confess: I was showing off for Steele’s benefit. Nice of him not to laugh when my would-be customer said he’d have to think about it, and slipped away, his body language clearly telling me that he wasn’t coming back.
“Now I know why you had that piece of junk around,” was all Steele said.
So much for my superior sales skills.
“Hey, Meg!”
I turned to see Eric standing in front of the booth.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Are you all by yourself?”
“No, Grandpa is over there talking to another parrot,” he said. Dad had acquired a stepladder from somewhere, and was perched atop it, holding the tape recorder out toward a pair of blue and yellow birds.
“Great,” I said. At least Eric didn’t seem bored or unhappy. He was watching Dad’s latest antics with the same bemused interest all the grandchildren felt before they got old enough to be embarrassed by them.
“Where’s Grandma?”
“She went to a fabric store.”
I winced. Mother didn’t sew; she only went to fabric stores when she got the decorating bug.
“Oh, Eric,” I said. “I got the rest of the signatures on your program. All except Andrea; she didn’t come at all this weekend.”
“Wow,” Eric said. “You mean, you even got…
“Piece of cake,” I said, flipping to the QB’s picture. “Nobody’s tougher than your Aunt Meg; you remember that.”
“Cool,” Eric said. “I was going to get her to sign the big photo at the beginning, but this is probably better. It all matches.”
Big photo at the beginning?
“Can I see that for a second?” I asked.
Eric obediently handed back the program.
The guest biographies were arranged, three to a page, in a section toward the middle of the program book. Arranged alphabetically. The fourth page, where I’d had the QB sign, contained Michael Waterston, Maggie West, and Tamerlaine Wynncliffe-Jones. I flipped forward one page and saw that the middle spread included Walker Morris, Andrea and Harry from Blazing Sabers, the elderly character actor who played Porfiria’s chief counselor, Karen the costumer, and the professor I’d seen holding forth on Jungian archetypes in Amblyopia: The guests whose last names fell between
Flipping forward again, I saw a full page portrait of the QB occupying the page opposite the first three guests: Nate Abrams, Chris Blair, and Ichabod Dilley. Eric had already gotten signatures from all three before tackling the QB.
“This was where you were asking her to sign?” I said. “When she said that funny thing to you?”
“That she wasn’t going to sign on the same page as that imposter,” Eric said, nodding. “I guess she meant Ichabod Dilley, since he was only the nephew of the real guy.”
“That must be it,” I said.
I handed the program back, and Eric trotted away holding it.
Yes, she probably did mean Ichabod Dilley. But how had she known he was an imposter? I’d probably found out before anyone at the convention, but that was still only a few minutes before one. When we’d gone to her room at two, she hadn’t called him an imposter. She’d sounded worried about what he would say. And I doubted the subject had come up during her panel. When did she find out?
Maybe there was no particular mystery about it. Maybe someone had told her between the time she left her room and the time Eric went through the autograph line. Or maybe she already knew. Even if she didn’t know him well enough to keep in touch after she bought the comic book rights from him, thirty years was time enough for her to have heard about his death somehow.
But if the QB already knew Dilley was dead, why hadn’t she said something when she saw his name on the program?
And if she didn’t know he was dead, how did she know Dilley the younger was an imposter, sight unseen?
And, in either case, why had she been so worried about what Ichabod Dilley, real or fake, had to say?
“Something wrong?” Steele asked, interrupting my reverie.
“Long story,” I said, slightly distracted. I’d spotted Nate cutting through the dealers’ room. He looked upset about something—news about the show perhaps?
“Mind if I run out for a minute?” I asked. “I need to ask Nate something.”
