He fumbled with the tape recorder’s VOLUME knob, somewhat hampered by the parrot’s insistence on running its beak through what remained of his hair. He then proceeded to play twenty minutes of recorded parrot vocalizations.
If he’d made the tape as a testimonial for parrots’ uncanny powers of mimicry, I’d have applauded his efforts. I heard parrots dinging like elevators, whooshing like vacuum cleaners, ringing like telephones, grinding like blenders, tinkling bits of classical music in the tinny tones used by cell phones, and, of course, flushing like toilets.
Unless, of course, Dad had taped real elevators, vacuum cleaners, blenders, and so on, to pull my leg. Always a possibility with Dad.
The parrots mimicked human voices brilliantly, though they were remarkably undiscriminating in what they chose to imitate. I heard a few phrases from our friend the Monty Python parrot. A lot of commercials, mostly the loud, repetitive, annoying kind I hated most. I was rather pleased to see that they appealed, quite literally, to bird brains. Dad had even caught a performance from two parrots that had learned the Porfiria theme song, although unfortunately, instead of singing it in unison, they interrupted each other and tried to drown each other out.
If I hadn’t felt impatient to do something useful, I might have enjoyed the performance. Although I did enjoy the look on Alaric Steele’s face when he returned to the booth to find us solemnly listening to a parrot sing a pizza commercial.
“Here it comes,” Dad whispered shortly afterward.
“You’ve double-crossed me for the last time,” came Maggie’s voice, sounding ragged with emotion. “Prepare to die, you—whoops!”
Dad stopped the tape recorder after that and looked at me.
“Prepare to die, you—whoops?” I repeated.
“Suspicious, isn’t it?” Dad said,
“The prepare to die part, yes,” I said. “But whoops? Not that I have a lot of personal experience with the matter, but I really don’t think many people say ‘whoops’ after coshing someone on the head with a blunt instrument.”
“Could be evidence that it was an accident,” Dad said. “If they were quarrelling and Miss Wynncliffe-Jones slipped and fell, for example. And hit her head on the wine bottle.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Still seems odd.”
“You can hang onto it and study it for a while if you like,” Dad said.
“Taking a break from sleuthing?”
“Not really,” he said. “I may have found someone who has an in with the medical examiner, and then I’m supposed to get together with your friend the scriptwriter. So I’ll be pretty tied up all afternoon—why don’t you keep the tape recorder for now?”
“Thanks,” I said, as he turned to leave.
Perhaps my voice betrayed my lack of enthusiasm for his ornithological investigations. Or perhaps I just sounded tired and discouraged.
“Is there anything else you need?” he asked, pausing and turning back to give me a look that was part doctor and part worried Dad.
“I need a time machine,” I said, this time aloud. The parrot tape had distracted me briefly from my frustration at how little I knew. I couldn’t go back thirty years and find out the real story about Ichabod Dilley’s death. I couldn’t even go back thirty hours and try to get the QB to tell me what she knew. I’d studied the original Porfiria comics, picked Cordelia’s brain—I wanted another window to the past.
“Well, there are probably a few time machines around here,” Dad said, “but I’m afraid I don’t know where. You probably have a better idea than I do. Good luck!”
And with that he dashed off.
“Is he pulling your leg, or did he just not hear what you said?” Steele asked.
“With Dad, who knows?” I said.
Actually, I did, but I didn’t really want to go into a long explanation. Dad always referred to Great-Aunt Zelda, who was now over a hundred, as the family time machine. Despite her age, she was as sharp-tongued and clear-witted as ever. And if you wanted to settle some question about the past, Great-Aunt Zelda was usually as reliable as any reference book, and a whole lot easier to consult.
So all I had to do was find someone who had been around Ichabod Dilley or the QB back in 1972. Or failing that, at least someone who had been around the QB enough that he might have heard her talk about old times.
Why couldn’t she have had a faithful retainer? If we were living in one of Nate’s scripts, she would certainly have had one—perhaps a chain-smoking dragon lady who had looked after her wardrobe since they were both ingénues, and was the only person who dared to argue with her. And who, after initially seeming cynically unaffected by her employer’s death, would eventually break down in tears and reveal the critical clue—whatever that was.