We'll Always Have Parrots(28)

Lying between the dresser and the bed was a body. The QB’s body. Her dead body, given the wide open yet unseeing eyes. We needed the police—

And I needed to make sure I didn’t join her. She’d been talking to someone, only a few seconds ago.

I heard a slight noise in the bathroom. I wished I’d brought the dagger with me. I settled for grabbing an empty wine bottle that was sitting on a nearby table. Holding it above my head, I tiptoed over to the bathroom.

Which was stupid, I realized. I should go to the door, unlock it, and send those persistent idiots outside for the police.

I was about to do so when they knocked again.

“Go away!” shrieked the QB’s voice from the bathroom.

I lowered the wine bottle and used the base of it to shove the door open.

A gray parrot. I should have known.

“Miss Wynncliffe-Jones?” someone outside the door shouted.

“Go away!” the parrot screeched, fluttering into the shower stall. “Go away! I want to be left alone!”

“Stupid bird,” I muttered.

“Same to you and twice on Sunday!” the bird cackled.

Maybe the bird was right, I thought. I saw a small red stain on the door, where I’d touched it with the bottle. I looked at the bottle. Around the base, I could see a few hairs stuck in something damp. Jet black hairs, with gray roots just barely showing.

Great. I’d not only found the body; I’d managed to pick up the murder weapon. I set it down on the dresser again, resisting the temptation to compound my idiocy by wiping it clean of fingerprints.

Instead, I walked over, unhooked the security latch, and opened the door.

“Miss Wynncliffe-Jones, it’s nearly—what are you doing in there?” The pink-clad priestess stood at the door, her hand raised to knock again.

A small bevy of costumed convention staff stood around her, their faces set in worried frowns.

“She’s dead,” I said. “Call the police.”

“Dead?”

“Dead, as in murdered,” I said. “Don’t come in here, unless you want to become suspects like me. Call the police. Oh, and another thing,” I added, glancing at my watch. “Send someone down to tell them to start the look-alike contest without her.”

I closed the door to shut out their questions. I figured since I was already in the room, I should wait here for the police. I didn’t fancy standing there, staring at the QB’s body, so I returned to the bathroom.

“Go away! I want to be left alone! Go away!” the parrot shrieked.

How odd, I thought. The parrot’s voice sounded eerily like the QB’s. Her words, her voice, even her angry, imperious tone.

But the parrot’s body language belied the confident tone of the words. It seemed terrified, fluttering wildly around the shower stall.

Was it terrified of me? Or still terrified by something that happened before I arrived? Would the bird be terrified if it had witnessed the murder? Possibly, I supposed. But I thought it more likely the bird wouldn’t react this way unless the killer had tried to attack it, too.

I moved a little closer, to see if the bird was injured. I wouldn’t have thought the bird could get more frantic but it did, and called out something else in the QB’s voice.

“I can do anything. I own them; I can—”

And then the voice broke off into a sound that chilled me. A death rattle. Not that I’d ever heard a real, live person make that sound. Other than Dad, of course, who’d heard it plenty of times during his medical career, and had been known to demonstrate it at the dinner table for the edification of his children and grandchildren. So I knew this sounded like the real thing, and I wondered if the parrot had just repeated the QB’s last words.

Figuring I shouldn’t scare the only eyewitness, I left the bathroom and found a spot reasonably close to the door where I didn’t have to look at the QB.

And then, the minute it crossed my mind that I didn’t have to look at her, the temptation to look became irresistible. I craned my neck in a couple of different ways before giving up and stepping closer.

Not a pretty sight, I thought, feeling queasy. I couldn’t decide if her face was angry or terrified.

No sign of a wound on the front of her head. Or the sides. Odd. If she’d been hit on the back of the head, why had she landed face up? Maybe I was wrong—I’d have to ask Dad—but I had the distinct impression that if you coshed someone on the back of the head, they keeled over face first. Had someone moved her?

I inched forward, trying to see if there was anything that could explain this apparent discrepancy. From my new angle, I could see her right hand—before, the bed had blocked my view.