Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

"NO, BUT I SAW ELVIS AT PIZZA HUT LAST WEEK."

Jay was beginning to understand why the police hauled people in for questioning: so that they could hit them. He ignored this last bit of baiting and waited for serious replies. What did he need to know about Malone, anyway? He made notations on one of his data sheets:

"Malone's hometown?" Get Marion to find out.

"Cupertino, Ca-Ethel Malone-Verify." Beside that he wrote: Kenny.

"If dead, what happened to his possessions." He scratched that one out. The book in the dead man's suitcase had belonged to Curtis Phillips. Malone had only autographed it. Jay put in a new item: "Compare handwriting samples."

"Mississippi-Malone's death-Verify."

"Richard Spivey?"

"Malone-Physical description."

"Cause of death."-Marion working on it.

"Elavil." Ditto.

"Washington Med School. Body donated?"

He glanced back at the computer screen. Three messages were waiting for him. One said: "MOONFIRE SPEAKING, I THOUGHT PAT MALONE WAS AN IRISH PINK ROCK GROUP-ALL FEMALE."Another respondent had shot back: "NO! HE WAS THE SALMAN RUSHDIE OF FANDOM" The third note was from Kenny: " ETHEL IS IN THE PHONE BOOK. NOW WHAT?"

It helped that the desk clerk had become convinced that everyone connected with science fiction was crazy. After the barrage of requests she had endured that day (pickle jar cover, corpse removal, indefinite use of a telephone line), Marion's request for a list of all the Lanthanides' room numbers seemed positively reasonable to her. She copied them out on the back of a Sunday Buffet flier and handed it over with a weary sigh. What would they be wanting next? Electric soap? She closed her eyes to check out her headache on the Richter scale. At least she was now psychologically ready for the Tennessee war gamers' convention coming up in September.

Armed with this guide to the other guests' whereabouts, Marion first checked the restaurant to see who was there: nobody she recognized. Either they went to dinner early, or they had called down for room service. As she studied the diners in the restaurant, though, she realized that there was a familiar look about at least a dozen of them. Many of them were bespectacled and heavyset, and they wore T-shirts with slogans on them and hairdos that had never been fashionable. Several of them were reading paperbacks while they ate; the others appeared to be arguing. Fans! Marion backed slowly toward the door before she turned and fled.

"Well," she said to herself as she waited for the elevator, "at least it will give me a pretext for dropping in on people. I can warn them that the fen have arrived." Waving, she caught the attention of the long-suffering desk clerk. "Yoo hoo!" she called as the doors were closing. "Will you please not give out these room numbers to anyone else?"

"Sure," said the desk clerk to the closed elevator doors. "Everybody except you is a crank, right?"

Marion tapped gently on the door to the Conyers' room, hoping that they weren't the sort of people who went to bed ridiculously early and were smug about it.

Barbara answered the door, and Marion could see that the room's television was on, tuned to Star Trek: The Next Genera tion. "Hi!" said Marion brightly. "Can I come in? By the way, you want to be careful about opening the door without asking who it is. There's a contingent of fans in the building."

Barbara looked at her husband and smiled. "I'm not used to the idea of Jim having fans."

Marion sighed. "You never get used to it."

Jim Conyers motioned for her to sit down in the armchair by the worktable. "We brought snacks from home," he grinned. "Because Barbara's a skinflint. Want a beer? Diet Coke? Autograph your forehead?"

"Diet Coke," said Marion. "Unless you really need to practice the autograph. Seriously, though, I'm here to talk to you about Pat Malone."

Jim and Barbara looked at each other. "It was a sad business," he said quietly.

"I know," she said. "We also thought it was a very convenient coincidence. Pat Malone shows up, threatening, from what I hear, to do a new Fandango, and suddenly he dies."

"I thought of that," said Conyers, scooping ice into a glass and pouring Marion her drink. "But our secrets are pretty small potatoes."

Marion shook her head. "Not with all those reporters hanging around. And the hotel restaurant is full of fans. Any little indiscretion on anybody's part could-just this one week of your lives- easily make the AP, the Enquirer, and Time magazine. But, of course, that's just idle speculation, until we know how Pat Malone died."

"Presumably we'll find out sooner or later."

"It had better be sooner," said Marion. "Unless you want this to leak to the press. We thought that since you are a local attorney, you might be able to tap some inside sources and find out. We really need to know."

Jim Conyers thought it over carefully. "All right," he said. "I can't see any harm in it. I'll do what I can. I'll call your room when I've found out anything."

Marion gave him a helpless smile. "Could you please call now? Our phone line is kind of tied up."

She sipped her Diet Coke and chatted quietly with Barbara while Jim Conyers consulted the telephone directory and began to make his calls.

"I think it went rather well today, don't you?" asked Barbara. "I was awfully afraid they wouldn't find anything. They weren't terribly organized, you know."

"They'd never misplace their manuscripts," Marion assured her.

"Well, I hope the New York editors like what they read." She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I want to remodel the kitchen."

Jim Conyers was oblivious of his wife's conversation. "Well, that was fast work, Dennis," he was saying into the phone. "Guess we're lucky it's the slow season, huh? Say that again, will you? I need to write it down. How do you spell that? Oh, just like it sounds. M.A.O. And what are you calling it?-Think so, huh?- Okay, Dennis. Keep me posted. Yeah, if I can help you out, I will. Thanks again."

The two women looked up at him expectantly. Conyers set down the phone. His face was grave. He picked up the note pad and held it at arm's length. "According to the medical examiner, he died of having something called an MAO inhibitor mixed with his medication. And they think it was murder, so they'll be back in the morning to talk to all of us." He looked sternly at Marion. "Another thing. According to them, the deceased was one Richard Spivey. Now who the hell was Richard Spivey?"

Marion shook her head. "I wish I knew."

Brendan Surn was quiet now. For nearly an hour Angela Ar-broath had sat with him, held his hand, and talked soothingly of times gone by. At last her soft Southern voice had seemed to penetrate his anger, and tears drifted down his cheeks. Now he was sitting on his bed, clutching his silver NASA jacket, and staring off into nothingness.

Angela patted his hand and eased away from him. "I think he'll be all right for now," she told Lorien Williams.

The girl summoned a grateful smile. "Thank you. I've never been able to calm him down as quickly as that. Mostly when he gets into rages at home, I just leave him alone until he tires himself out." She sat huddled on her twin bed, in a black T-shirt and slacks, looking very small and lost. Dark circles shadowed her eyes.