We'll Always Have Parrots(87)

“You want to know if I killed her?” he said, stepping forward and gently brushing his blade against mine. “Well…if you really want to know…YES!”

As he shouted, he lunged, aiming for my throat. I parried easily and backed away again.

“Lucky you,” he sneered.

Lucky, my eye. Powerful lunge, well executed…but telegraphed. I’d known the answer to his question, of course, and I’d suspected he would lunge when he said it.

I managed to back up the stairs onto the stage, which was damned hard in long skirts. I resented the fact that Steele got to see where he was going when he bounded up the stairs after me.

Of course, if I’d known I’d be dueling a crazed killer, I’d have worn something more suitable than a low cut, full-skirted wench costume.

“Of course you killed her,” I said. “You must have gotten a good laugh, sitting there listening to me telling you all the reasons why Nate had to be the killer. But I was wondering why.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Isn’t it obvious?”

And again, he’d lunge on the words he wanted to emphasize. I was starting to like his fighting style. Predictable. Although I wished the monkeys overhead would stop chattering. They distracted me, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

“I mean, was it really just about the show and a bunch of comic books?”

“A bunch of comic books? Are you trying to tick me off?”

Actually I was. Make someone lose his temper and you have an advantage over him, my martial arts teacher always used to say. Of course, he wasn’t necessarily thinking of people waving yard-long sharpened broadswords.

Steele stopped for a moment, pulled his sword back, and took a breath.

“It was mine,” he said, “and she made a travesty of it.”

“You did sell her the rights, you know,” I said, as gently as I could.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a real sale,” he said. “I had these guys after me, trying to collect money I couldn’t possibly pay, and I had to disappear.”

“I figured your disappearance had something to do with the debt collectors,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, how did you get so far in debt? Your nephew thinks drugs.”

“Drugs,” he said, with a bitter laugh. “You can tell who raised him. Just what my brother would say.”

“So if it wasn’t drugs—”

“I paid for printing the last four issues of the comic,” he said.

He was getting caught up in what he was saying. Maybe if I kept him talking, he’d put down the sword, or at least give me a chance to knock it out of his hands.

“The publisher claimed he had cash-flow problems, so I borrowed the money,” he continued. “And then he disappeared, leaving me with all the bills. He never even printed the last issue.”

“The thirteenth issue,” I murmured.

“Exactly,” he said. “Tammy and I figured if we could get a bigger publisher to pick up the comics, I’d have more than enough to pay back the loan sharks. Or better yet, a movie deal. And once we had all that money, I could pay off my debts and resurface. But for the time being, I had to disappear, so I pretended to sell her the rights so she’d have legal authority to cut a deal.”

“And you didn’t have a backup plan in case she couldn’t cut the deal?”

He shook his head.

“I know it sounds stupid, but I never imagined it wouldn’t happen.”

“So you changed your name, faked your death under the old name, and waited for her to sell the comics and rescue you.”

“And she never did a damned thing,” he said. “The bitch!”

Predictably, he lunged on the last word, sending me scuttling backward again while overhead the monkeys shrieked and leaped about. Glad someone was enjoying the show. I wasn’t; this time he kept coming, testing my defenses again and again while I backed away, step by step. So much for distracting him.

“You never asked what happened?” I said.

“She never took my calls or answered my letters,” he said. “Didn’t want to admit she’d stopped trying.”

“Or maybe she didn’t want to admit she’d failed,” I said. “From what Nate says, she put a lot of work into it, over the years, but selling an idea for a movie or a TV series isn’t easy.”

“And when she sold it, look what happened. Crap. And you know what really ticked me off?”

I shook my head, and got ready, because I knew he’d strike when he snarled out whatever he was about to say.

“The credits!” he roared, and even though I was expecting it, I almost didn’t manage to parry. “She stole my creation, after thirty years she finally did something with it, and then she didn’t—even—mention—me—in the credits!”