“Now is not the time to get all chivalrous,” I said.
“I’m not being chivalrous,” he said. “I already threatened to tell, and she said if I did, she’d deny it.”
“Walker, you can get her to tell the truth,” I said. “All you have to do is—”
And then I paused. What were the odds that Walker could talk Concubine Aimee into anything? About the same as the odds he could get through a fight scene without hurting himself. Which was why Chris was his stunt double. At the moment, apparently, Walker needed a brain double.
“Let me talk to her,” I finished.
“You really think you can talk her into it?”
I shrugged.
“Worth a try,” I said. “Just lie low for a while.”
I crawled out of the lair and reconnoitered. Concubine Aimee had disappeared, but that was okay. I didn’t want to talk to her until I had a little more information about her, and I thought I knew where to look. I remembered seeing the Amazon security guards and the guest of honor escorts disappear into a room off the green room. I headed there.
Sure enough, when I walked into the room in question, I found two convention volunteers doing something with laptops.
When in doubt, pretend you know just what you’re doing and have every right to do it, I told myself. It always worked for Mother.
“Hi,” I said, going up to one of the computer users and flashing my badge, with its vendor ribbon. “I need to check an attendee out.”
“Is there a problem of some kind?”
“Probably not, but I’d like to keep it that way,” I said. “Can you look up someone by badge name and see if they’re really registered?”
“Oh, God,” the other computer volunteer groaned. “They’re not faking the badges again, are they?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It may just have been the light that made it look funny, but with all these reporters around, trying to sneak in—”
“What’s the badge name?” the first volunteer asked.
“Concubine Aimee,” I said, sidling around so I could look over her shoulder. “No, with a double ‘ee’—that’s right.”
“Looks like she’s legit,” the woman said.
“Unless there are multiple Concubine Aimees running around,” the other volunteer said. “One color copier and bingo! You’ve got clones.”
“I know someone who probably took a check from this one,” I said. “Let me see if the address and other stuff you have matches what’s on the check she has in her cash box, and if there’s a problem, I’ll come back and let you know.”
They liked that idea, so I copied down the relevant information on a While You Were Out slip, stuffed it in my pocket, and left before someone more security-conscious showed up.
Okay, it was convenient that they let me take down Aimee’s personal information that easily, but not reassuring. Did they have information about Michael and me in the same computers, guarded by the same bozos?
I’d worry about that later. I set out to look for Aimee—whose real name was Amy Goldman. I also had a local address and a phone number.
But as I walked through the green room, I noticed Nate sitting in a corner. Quite apart from the fact that I wanted to tackle him on why he’d lied about knowing Ichabod Dilley, I wanted to know the reason for the singularly glum look on his face. Concubine Aimee could wait a few more minutes.
Chapter 34
“How’s it going?” I asked, slipping into the seat across from Nate.
Nate shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Walker missed a panel,” he said in an ominous monotone.
Damn. Was this my fault? When I told him to lie low, I had only meant that he should avoid Concubine Aimee. I should have known that you needed to be a lot more specific with Walker.
“Why?” I said aloud. “Did he forget? Has someone gone to look for him? I might know where he is if there’s still time to go get him.”
“No, the panel started an hour and a half ago,” Nate said. “And I know exactly where he was then—the police were interviewing him.”
“Damn.”
“They probably still are. They’re closing in.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “They’ve interviewed all of us.”
“They wouldn’t disrupt the convention this way if they weren’t looking pretty seriously at him.”
“I don’t actually think making the convention run smoothly ranks very high on Detective Foley’s priority list.”
“God,” Nate moaned. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s talk about Ichabod Dilley.”
“What about him?”
“You never told me you knew him,” I said.
“Didn’t I? Well, you never really asked,” Nate said. “I don’t recall denying that I knew him.”
I wanted to tell him that he’d implied it, but I suspected that would bog the conversation down into a long discussion of semantics, instead of letting me find out anything useful.
“How well did you know him?” I asked instead.
“How well did I know anyone in those days?” he said. “Especially from that side of my life. The private side.”
“Private in what way?”
“Nothing…sinister, if that’s what you mean,” Nate said, looking alarmed. “Weekdays I was a hard-working, buttoned-down little writer. Very corporate. Nothing to alarm the studio execs. Weekends, I’d drive up to San Francisco and hang around Haight Ashbury. Go to concerts. Get stoned.”
“I see,” I said
“Don’t laugh,” he added, although I could have sworn I hadn’t let any sign of amusement cross my face. “I wasn’t always the staid, boring guy you probably think I am from seeing me on the job.”
Actually, you were, I felt like saying. In fact, you used to be worse. I’ve seen the photo. Aloud, I decided to stick to vague platitudes.
“People change.”
“Life changes them,” Nate said. “Professional responsibilities.”
Professional responsibilities like creating the Metatarsal Knights, I thought, but I nodded solemnly.
“So you met Ichabod Dilley while you were slumming in Haight Ashbury,” I said.
“My script called for a psychedelic artist,” he said. “You know—like a Grateful Dead poster. The studio hack kept bringing in things that looked like you’d smeared lime green paint on a Renoir. So I said I’d find someone.”
“Dilley.”
“I put him up in my own apartment the whole time he was working on those damned paintings,” Nate said, with sudden heat. “The whole time he was supposed to be working on them. I found out later, he’d done the first Porfiria comic book—maybe the first several—while I was down on the set, making excuses for why the rest of the paintings weren’t ready yet. And then, when he finally finished the damned things, I let him stay in case they decided at the last minute that they needed changes, or maybe another painting. When the movie was finally over, I
