Ink Flamingos

by Karen E. Olson

  I set the phone down next to the computer as I stared at the picture of me and Joel outside Walgreens. I was in the foreground, in sharp focus; Joel was behind me, a little fuzzy. I tried to think about where the person with the camera would be to get this particular shot. Maybe the palm tree-laden median between the lanes on the Strip. How could I not notice someone with a camera? Because cameras aren’t exactly a rarity on the Strip. All those tourists taking pictures of each other in front of the Duomo at the Venetian; the Eiffel Tower at Paris; the fountains at the Bellagio; the Roman columns at Caesars.

  A soft knock on the door.

  “Come in,” I said, feeling totally deflated.

  Joel’s head peeked around the doorjamb.

  “Are you okay?”

  Was I? First I find out my friend died, and then this.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, moving the laptop around so Joel could see for himself.

  He stepped inside and moved to the desk, leaning over so he could see the laptop screen. His brows knit into a frown, and he looked up at me. “What’s this?”

  “Apparently this blogger took pictures of me and put them up on her blog. Without my permission.” The more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Should I call Tim and report this? The cops were bound to look for Ainsley Wainwright anyway, since she took the picture of Daisy’s tattoo and then Daisy was found dead. And the room Daisy was found in was booked by Ainsley Wainwright.

  “This is me,” Joel said, noticing the Walgreens shot. I nodded, putting my head down on the desk. “This morning I didn’t even know this thing existed. It was better that way.”

  I felt Joel’s hand on my back, rubbing in a circular motion. “It’s not so bad, Brett. At least you’re all dressed and stuff. And she didn’t take any pictures of you eating. That could be really embarrassing.”

  Got to hand it to Joel to see the silver lining in this. Another tap on the door.

  “Come in,” Joel and I said together.

  Bitsy’s eyebrows rose high on her forehead when she saw me with my head down, Joel rubbing my back.

  “Are you okay?” she asked me. “Are you sick? Do you need some aspirin?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, although not exactly confidently.

  “Someone took pictures of her,” Joel said, pointing at the laptop.

  Bitsy came over to the desk and pulled the laptop to the edge so she could see.

  “At least there are no pictures of you picking your nose or anything,” she said. Okay, another silver lining. “It’s really not so bad, is it?”

  How to explain the feeling of violation?

  “You know,” Bitsy added, “this is a pretty interesting blog. These tattoos are really good.”

  She turned the laptop so we could see the tattoos she was talking about. Elaborate designs, detailed portraits, work I would be proud of if I’d done it.

  “You’re in good company,” Joel said.

  My cell phone rang. Jeff Coleman again.

  “I thought you had a client,” I said without any other greeting.

  “Nice to talk to you again, too, Kavanaugh,” he said sarcastically, then, “I forgot to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “To read the comments.”

  “What comments?” A butterfly started flittering around in my stomach.

  “The comments on the blog post about you. Figured you should know.” He hung up.

  I didn’t really want to look at them. But I couldn’t help myself. I reached over to the laptop and scrolled back up to the post about me and looked at the link for the comments. There were three.

  I glanced up at Joel and Bitsy and then clicked on the link.

  The first comment was from someone called MeganB: “Where is her shop?”

  SkinDeep: “At the Venetian.”

  But the clincher was from TitforTat: “I’d stay away from there. She gave Dee Carmichael a botched tattoo that killed her.”

  Chapter 6

  The time on the third comment indicated that it was made an hour ago, despite the fact that the pictures had been posted a couple of weeks ago. Who was TitforTat? There was no link attached to the name, which meant that the person was posting practically anonymously. Usually, though, anyone who commented had to fill out a form with an e-mail address that wasn’t published.

  I reached again for my cell phone. Tim had to know about this. He had to find this person who was accusing me of killing Daisy. Maybe this person was the redhead seen at the Golden Palace, the one who really did kill her.

  Granted, I still didn’t know how Daisy had died, but that was another thing to press Tim about.

  “What is it, Brett?” Tim’s voice was curt. He was working, and I was interrupting.

  But he needed to know about this. I told him about the blog, the pictures of me, and the comment left.

  “I already saw it.”

  “You did?”

  “Don’t worry about it, okay? We’re on top of it.”

  “Have you found her yet—Ainsley Wainwright?”

  “Listen, Brett, I have to go. I’m working. I’ll see you at home later, okay, and I’ll fill you in then.” He hung up on me without saying good-bye, much like Jeff Coleman had. If I were more insecure, I might start to get a complex or something.

  “He says they’re working on it,” I told Bitsy and Joel.

  They exchanged a look, and Joel nodded. “That’s all we can do for now. I say we get some gelato. Make us feel better.”

  “You’re not supposed to have sugar,” I reminded him.

  “It’s a special occasion.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s always a special occasion,” I said. “But not this time. I won’t be responsible for you going off your diet.” I didn’t want to point out that he’d been doing a fine job of it by himself, without any help from me.

  Bitsy, however, didn’t have the same sort of tact.

  “I saw you going into Godiva earlier,” she scolded. “Chocolate and gelato in the same day? And you expect to lose weight? That’s ridiculous.”

  Joel sighed. He’d lost some weight on the Atkins Diet, but he’d gained it all back and then some. The Weight Watchers had been worse. He hadn’t even lost anything on that, just gained.

  “I’m thinking about that diet where you have to buy your food. You know, the one those celebrities do those commercials for? Hey, maybe I can do one of those commercials.” His face lit up as he thought about it. “I’m a regular person. If I lose weight, then regular people everywhere will feel they can, too.”

  I smiled. Joel, a regular person? There wasn’t a more irregular person anywhere, and I mean that in the most affectionate way. Joel was large, but his heart was bigger than his body, although anyone who hadn’t met him might be a little frightened. He looked like a biker, with a long blond braid hanging halfway to his waist, a barbed wire tattoo around his neck, tattoo sleeves running down both arms, and chains holding his keys dangling from his jeans pockets. When he opened his mouth, though, his voice was as soft as his personality. We weren’t quite sure which way Joel swung, since we’d never heard him talk about a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but it didn’t much matter. He was Joel, and we loved him just the way he was.

  A bell rang out in the front of the shop, indicating that someone had come in. Bitsy scurried out the door to see who it was.

  Joel squeezed my arm. “It’ll be okay, Brett. Don’t worry.”

  We followed Bitsy out to see Harry leaning against the front desk. Harry Desmond had discovered us one night when he was trying to find the Mexican restaurant here in the Grand Canal Shoppes. Since then, he’d been hanging around. He was a victim of the recession, told us he’d gotten laid off from his job as a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos, so he had a lot of time on his hands.

  Today he was dressed in his usual uniform of shorts and a bright Hawaiian shirt. He was about twenty-five, I’d say, with a college degree in philosophy and eighteenth-century En
glish poetry. He wasn’t qualified to do much of anything, which was why the casino had seemed like a good way to go. Until the layoff. Somehow he was managing to live off his unemployment checks.

  Harry always seemed to be a little stoned. Not totally, just a little. Maybe it was the way his bright blue eyes fixated on me as if he were seeing me for the first time. Or the languid way he spoke, drawing out all his words like a Faulkner novel. Or how he used his hands when he talked, in long, slow lines, to emphasize what he was saying.

  Every tattoo shop has at least one Harry, someone who stops in and seems to become a fixture. We hadn’t had one before, probably because we were mixed in with all the upscale shops, and until Harry arrived, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that particular eccentricity of a tattoo shop.

  Oddly enough, Harry didn’t have any tattoos. He kept saying when he got a little cash in his pocket, he’d have one of us tattoo him. So far, though, no extra cash. At least not that we knew of.

  As we approached the front desk, Harry looked up and grinned.

  “It’s the beautiful Brett Kavanaugh, the delightful Bitsy Hendricks, and the esteemed Joel Sloane,” he said, bowing at the waist. “I was wondering if you’d heard about Dee Carmichael.”

  “We did,” I said.

  “I know the Flamingos’ band manager,” Harry said. “He’s an old buddy of mine from way back.”

  I thought about the man Daisy referred to as The Pincher. Apparently, every time she saw him, he pinched her—either on her arm or her waist or her butt. I asked her why she kept him on, and she said she could stand a little pinching if he kept getting them gigs that continued to catapult their careers. It seemed a little much, but the guy had done wonders for Daisy and the Flamingos, so who was I to question?

  “Way back when?” I probed, since Harry was fairly young to have any sort of relationship that went too far back.

  “He dated my sister for a couple years when they were in high school. She’s about your age, I’d say, Brett.” It was the way he said it that made me feel about a hundred years old, rather than my actual thirty-two. My expression must have indicated my thoughts, because he quickly added, “I didn’t mean it that way, Brett, really. I mean, you’re not exactly a cougar or anything, not like Bitsy here.” He flashed a quick grin at Bitsy, who was beaming, as though being called a cougar was the best thing she’d heard in a long time.

  I actually thought Bitsy had a crush on Harry, but if they ever did go out, it would definitely be a December/ May sort of thing.

  “In fact,” Harry continued, now that he was back in everyone’s good graces, “I saw Sherman last night. At Caesars. Cleopatra’s Barge.”

  Cleopatra’s Barge was a bar designed like an actual Egyptian barge. It sat in a pool of water, oars pretending to push it along as it gently rocked its customers while they sipped their cocktails and listened to whatever band had been booked that night.

  Harry was still talking. “I was surprised to see him there, since, you know, the Flamingos are playing the East Coast.”

  He didn’t seem to realize what he was saying. If the Flamingos were on the East Coast, then what was their manager doing here in Vegas? And, more importantly, what was Daisy doing here, too? She should have been safe in New York or New Jersey or wherever, rather than in the Golden Palace getting a tattoo from someone who didn’t seem to know what she was doing.

  Bitsy caught my eye. She’d picked up on that, too. “So did you talk to Sherman, uh . . .” I couldn’t remember the guy’s last name. Like I said, he was just The Pincher to me.

  “Potter,” Harry said. “Sherman Potter. Sure, I talked to him. Nice guy, really nice guy.”

  “Did you ask him why he was here and not with the band?” Bitsy asked, eager to get to the point.

  Harry looked perplexed for a moment; then the grin spread across his face again. “He said he was finalizing a deal with the Golden Palace.”

  Chapter 7

  Bitsy and I shared a look. The Golden Palace? Where Daisy’s body was found? And why would he book the Flamingos into that scummy place anyway? That wasn’t exactly the kind of venue the band was used to playing these days. Maybe two years ago when they were just starting out, but not now. They’d played the Bellagio on New Year’s Eve; that was more their speed.

  “That’s where they found Daisy,” Joel piped up.

  “Where?” Harry wasn’t too quick on the upswing sometimes. Like I said, sort of perpetually stoned.

  “The Golden Palace,” Joel said.

  “That’s right,” Harry said thoughtfully as he ran a hand through his mop of brown hair, finally putting two and two together.

  “Is he staying there?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I took a deep breath and counted to ten. Although it wasn’t as though if we drove Harry away we’d be losing a client. What was I thinking? Harry wasn’t going to leave.

  “Sherman Potter. The Flamingos’ manager.”

  Harry’s right eyebrow rose slightly higher than his left. “Oh, right. No, Sherman always stays in the Venetian.”

  He didn’t seem to realize that we were in the Venetian right this very minute. But I did. And I got that little flutter of excitement that always started in my gut and spread out through my body. That little flutter that always showed up when I started asking questions Tim wouldn’t want me asking. That little flutter I told myself I was going to ignore from now on.

  So I didn’t have much self-control.

  “He stays here?” I asked.

  Bitsy and Joel’s heads swiveled around so fast that they looked like that girl’s in The Exorcist.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You promised,” Joel said.

  “Not to get involved again,” Bitsy added. “Wasn’t it bad enough the last time?”

  I didn’t need reminding. It had been pretty awful, and I’d thought I was cured.

  “What are you talking about?” Harry was understandably confused. I couldn’t blame it on the weed this time.

  Bitsy pursed her lips, then said, “Brett has this, well, um, habit.”

  For a second, Harry looked at me with happy anticipation. As though my habit were the same as his and maybe we could party together.

  Not.

  I shrugged. “So I like to snoop a little.”

  Joel snorted. “You’re worse than Nancy Drew.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t go looking for these things, they just seem to fall into my lap.” Which was totally true, thank you very much.

  “You’re some sort of detective?” Harry asked, his eyes brighter than usual. “You mean, you’re like a private eye or something?”

  “Or something,” Bitsy muttered.

  I ignored her. “I’m not a detective,” I said scornfully, wishing I had a client coming in so I could walk away from this conversation. No such luck, however. I had at least an hour to try to explain how I managed to get myself all tangled up in things I had no business being tangled up in.

  Lucky me.

  “Do you want to meet him?” Harry asked me.

  “Who?”

  “Sherman Potter.”

  That flutter I mentioned accelerated.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Bitsy said sternly.

  I made a face at her. “What would it hurt?” I asked. “I mean, I did know Daisy, and I’d like to find out how to contact her family to express my condolences.” As I spoke, I realized I had a perfectly legitimate reason to go talk to Sherman Potter. And from the look on Bitsy’s face, she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  She sighed—a deep, heavy sigh that told me I was being ridiculous.

  Harry straightened himself up and put out his arm for me to take. I gave Bitsy and Joel a little shrug as I hooked my hand into the crook of Harry’s elbow.

  “Don’t wait up,” I teased as Harry and I went out the door.

  They were so not happy with me. But I couldn’t help thinking Sherman Potter’s appearance in Vegas wasn’t a coincidence.r />
  Between Harry’s outfit and my tattoos, we drew a few stares as we walked past the gondolas and tourists. Harry was a little taller than me, maybe even a little taller than Tim, who stood six feet. And as I studied his profile, I realized that because he was so much younger than me—not to mention the glassy eyes—I hadn’t noticed before how good-looking he was.

  A little bit of guilt bubbled up as I remembered how I’d blown off Colin Bixby’s phone call earlier. Not because I thought Harry was good-looking, but one of the reasons why I’d sworn off any sort of crime entanglement was because of Bixby. What I was doing right now might not set too well with the good doctor.

  He didn’t have to know, did he? I mean, I really was just going to see Sherman Potter about how to reach Daisy’s family.

  I kept telling myself that.

  Harry and I walked through the marble hallway toward the Venetian’s lobby. We’d have to find out Sherman Potter’s room number from the desk staff. That might not be easy.

  Except I hadn’t counted on Harry to come through. He stepped up to the front desk and flashed his wide smile at a dark-haired woman who truly may have been a cougar from the way she checked him out. I stayed in the background, pretending I was waiting for a free desk clerk, so Harry could work his magic.

  In moments, he had taken my arm and was steering me toward the hotel elevators.

  “Ninth floor,” he said.

  “Not the penthouse?” It slipped out before I could stop it.

  Harry laughed. “Sherman likes it here, but he gets comped. So he only gets the ninth floor.”

  “He must lose a lot of money in the casino here,” I noted as we went into the elevator. Anyone who’s comped usually gambles way too much and loses way too much. That way the resort can keep him around, because they’re making money off him.

  The elevator doors slid open on the ninth floor, and a valet pushing a luggage cart moved into the elevator as we stepped off.

  “Where to now?” I asked Harry.

  He led the way down the hall, past many doors and around and around. I would get lost if I stayed here. Finally, we stopped in front of a door. Harry knocked, and we waited. He knocked again.