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.
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.
