Ink Flamingos

by Karen E. Olson

  The light in the hall went on, and Bitsy’s shadow appeared.

  “What’s wrong, Brett? I heard something.”

  Couldn’t get anything past Bitsy.

  She came in and sat down on the edge of the bed. I cocked my head toward my phone where I’d tossed it, and she picked it up, hitting one of the buttons so that the display shone like a Christmas tree. She read the text, her eyes wide.

  “What is this? Who sent this?”

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “Did you call your brother? Someone’s got Daisy’s cell phone. I didn’t know she had your number.”

  We’d exchanged numbers at one point, and I keyed her number into my phone. I supposed she’d done the same thing.

  Joel lumbered out, wearing a big terrycloth bathrobe.

  “What’s up?” he asked, and Bitsy handed him the phone.

  When he read the message, he came around and sat in the armchair, leaning over to rub my back. He’d been doing that a lot lately.

  What was wrong with me? I was acting like some sort of victim. Which, of course, I was, but this was ridiculous. I pulled my arms away from my legs and reached for the phone, punching in Tim’s number.

  “You okay?” he asked when he answered.

  I told him about the text message.

  “You’re sure it’s from her number?”

  I was acutely aware of the four eyes watching me. “Yes. It’s her number.”

  “No one saw a cell phone in the hotel room where she was found,” Tim said thoughtfully.

  So whoever killed her and wanted to frame me could’ve taken it and planned this. Or taken it and decided just this very moment, hey, here’s another way to make Brett Kavanaugh insane. As if the blog pictures and Ink Flamingos weren’t enough already.

  This really was personal. But who on earth hated me this much?

  Or who wanted Tim and the cops to concentrate on who was harassing me and not on who actually killed the poor girl?

  I voiced my thoughts, and Tim grunted.

  “I need your cell phone.”

  Great. I’d had to give up my car in the past, but this was a first. “When?”

  “Morning. Can you drop it by for me at the station?”

  I thought about the hassle I would have with the wireless company about getting a new number, after all their promotions about how you can take your phone number with you whenever you get new service or a new phone.

  I said okay and hung up, Bitsy and Joel still watching me.

  “You’re creeping me out,” I said, irritation lacing my tone.

  “Like we’re any creepier than that,” Bitsy said, indicating the phone.

  “Okay,” I sighed. “Sorry. I’m on edge. I have to bring Tim the phone tomorrow, so I guess we can all get some sleep.” I picked up the phone and shut it off, so I wouldn’t get any more messages from the dead.

  They shuffled off to their respective beds, and I lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, not sleeping until about an hour before I had to get up.

  The three of us were in Bitsy’s car. This was not an easy feat. Bitsy was the only one who was comfortable in her Mini Cooper. Joel had squeezed himself into the front seat, “squeezed” being the operative word. I was in the back, all folded up across the backseat, my knees almost hitting the ceiling, my head grazing it.

  It was like a clown car.

  Bitsy had fed us bagels and coffee, and we were on our way to pick up more coffee before we dropped off my cell phone to Tim and then went to the shop. The text message from the night before seemed a long way away in the light of day. The only good thing about it was that it pushed Jeff Coleman’s kiss way to the back of my mind.

  The kiss. Right. Something else I’d have to deal with. Or not. Knowing Jeff, he wouldn’t mention it. But what if he decided to do it again?

  I noticed we weren’t headed in the right direction.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Bitsy and Joel had been mumbling something this morning when I’d gotten out of the shower, but I was afraid they were talking about me and I didn’t want to know. So I’d ignored it. Now, however, it seemed that maybe they’d been hatching a plan.

  “We’ve been doing a little thinking,” Bitsy said.

  Uh-oh. That might not be the best thing.

  “And we thought that we should try to find out a little more about this blogger, you know, the one who’s been . . .” Joel’s voice trailed off.

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence, because we all knew what Ainsley Wainwright had been up to. Except that she wasn’t the one doing it. I said as much.

  “That’s why it might be a good idea to poke around a little,” Bitsy said. “Go back to the beginning. See who might want to impersonate her, and then decide to impersonate you.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. I’d been so wrapped up in me that I hadn’t thought about her. It might be a good thing to concentrate on someone else for a little while. It would take the pressure off.

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “We go to her place. Start there.”

  “How do you know where to go?” I asked. Bitsy seemed very sure of the direction we were heading.

  “I did a Yahoo! People search. Gave me her address, so then I Google-Mapped her.”

  Always thorough, that was Bitsy. But it made me wonder why the cops hadn’t done that. Or maybe they had. Maybe that’s the way they finally found her. That’s right. Knocking on doors, Tim had said.

  Ainsley Wainwright lived in an apartment building off Fremont Street, in a rather run-down area. The white stucco, three-story building had faded to gray. The windows were covered with bars, even on the third floor. The parking lot was in the back, so Bitsy turned in and parked. We scrambled out of the car as well as we could, and I was happy to stretch my legs out.

  The entrance wasn’t locked, so we let ourselves in. The hallway smelled like old gym socks and cigarettes. I wrinkled my nose and said, “So which apartment?”

  Bitsy was already halfway up the stairs. Joel and I shrugged at each other and followed.

  The crime scene tape had been torn, and it hung in two pieces on either side of the door. Looked like we weren’t the only ones who were going in uninvited.

  Bitsy reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of latex gloves.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  “I thought we might need them,” she said, handing some to me and Joel as well before she put her hand to the doorknob and turned.

  To our surprise, the door easily swung open. Bitsy looked up at me, raised her eyebrows, and stepped inside.

  That’s when we heard the footsteps come up behind us.

  Chapter 35

  “I wish you people would go away,” a voice said.

  I turned around to see a young woman with short, spiked, bleached blond hair and wearing extremely short denim shorts and a tank top standing on the landing.

  It took me a second, but I finally figured “you people” meant she thought we were cops. Right. The latex gloves.

  “Didn’t you get everything already?” she continued. “And when are you going to catch her killer? I mean, on TV they catch the killers right away.” Her eyes flickered at me, narrowing slightly. I felt as though she recognized me, knew about the blog, that she, too, thought I was guilty.

  “This isn’t TV,” I heard myself saying, still keeping up the charade that I really was the cops. The girl’s expression changed a little then—maybe she was having second thoughts about me, maybe she wasn’t quite so sure about me now.

  Tim would totally kill me for this, and I wondered if they would cart him off to prison or decide it was justifiable homicide.

  “Did you know Miss Wainwright?” Joel asked her. Sadness crossed her face. “She was amazing. So nice to everyone.”

  Of course she was. All victims were saints after they were dead, weren’t they? Sister Mary Eucharista would say so.

  “She was beautiful, to
o,” she said. “She had red hair, like yours,” she added, looking at me. “But her hair was long.”

  I absently ran a hand through my short hair.

  The young woman was frowning. “You sort of look like her, though. Weird.”

  I knew I didn’t look like the Ainsley Wainwright I’d met in Sherman Potter’s hotel room. She was a lot more voluptuous and had that long horse face with those spectacular eyes. What had this Ainsley Wainwright looked like?

  Suddenly there seemed to be an overabundance of redheads in Vegas. And at least one other who wasn’t a redhead but wore a wig to pretend to be me.

  I had a real need to go inside now, see if I could find a picture or something of this Ainsley Wainwright, but I was unsure about leaving Joel out here alone with this girl. I mean, she was young, yes, but not stupid. She’d soon figure out that this large tattooed man with the long braid down his back and chains in his pockets wasn’t a cop. Unless she was more used to narcotics undercover officers. But then again, if they were undercover, she wouldn’t necessarily know they were cops.

  Oh, he’d figure out how to deal with her. I nodded at Joel in what I hoped looked like a very professional way and went through the door.

  The apartment was fairly Spartan but not very clean. Piles of newspapers were stacked in one corner; books spilled off shelves onto the floor. Kitschy little items lined the mantel of the faux fireplace: snow domes from the Flamingo and Caesars, shot glasses from the Bellagio, New York New York, and the MGM. You’d think because she lived here she wouldn’t buy the souvenir stuff.

  I didn’t see any photographs.

  Bitsy was in the bedroom, and I joined her in there. She wasn’t touching anything, just looking around.

  “The cops were here,” she said, indicating the fingerprint dust.

  “That’s their job,” I said, even though I didn’t have to. I was too distracted by the bed.

  The sheets had been taken off it, and the mattress lay bare on the frame. I’d had no idea how Ainsley Wainwright had died—Tim hadn’t felt compelled to tell me—but I had a bit of a clue now. A large red stain was in the middle of the mattress.

  “Do you think she was shot or stabbed?” Bitsy asked matter-of-factly.

  I shrugged, not really wanting to speculate.

  “I wish we could clean up,” Bitsy said. Sure she did. Bitsy liked everything in order, and this room was no less messy than the living room. A laundry basket was bleeding dirty clothes; the closet doors hung open to reveal scattered shoes and clothes hanging haphazardly on hangers; the two dressers were topped with stray costume jewelry.

  I went over to the closet and checked out the clothes. They were plain: T-shirts and jeans and longish skirts. Nothing flashy. I wondered out loud what Ainsley Wainwright did when she wasn’t blogging.

  “She worked for a dentist,” Bitsy said, holding up a piece of paper she’d taken off one of the dressers.

  Looking closely, I saw it was a pay stub from a local dental group.

  “Maybe we’d have better luck going there and talking to them,” Bitsy suggested. “Maybe you could get your teeth cleaned or something.”

  “Or maybe you could.”

  “Or maybe Joel could.”

  We both started cracking up a little over that, sending Joel to a dentist just to get information.

  “We’re grabbing at straws,” I said when I caught my breath. “And I’m doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do ever again. Why did you talk me into this?”

  “We have to clear your name.” She was totally serious.

  “But that’s for Tim and the cops to do.”

  “Well, they’re not doing a very good job of it, are they?” she asked.

  No, they weren’t. Couldn’t argue with that.

  I told her I was going back out to the living room. She nodded, staring at the bed.

  The books on the floor bothered me for some reason. I leaned down and sifted through them. She sure liked romances, historical and contemporary. The covers were adorned with bare-chested young men who needed haircuts and thin, willowy young women with their cleavage hanging out all over the place.

  I started stacking them in neat little piles next to the bookshelf. There, that looked better.

  I spotted a stray book that had fallen behind another one on the shelf and pulled it out, ready to stack it along with the rest. But something was stuck inside it.

  I yanked it out and turned it over.

  Here was the picture I’d been looking for. But it wasn’t what I expected.

  “What did you find there?” Bitsy asked, hovering over me as I sat on the floor.

  I held it up and she took it, a long, slow whistle leaving her lips. “You’re kidding me. Why didn’t the cops find it?”

  “It was stuck in this book.” I showed her how it had been crammed into the binding. “They might have gone through these, but maybe since it didn’t just fall out, they missed it.”

  I could still hear Joel talking to that young woman outside. Hmm. That was interesting. When I got closer to the doorway, I heard him say, “You know, I could do both of you.”

  Now that sounded a little too kinky for me, but I needed to talk to her, so I announced my presence by clearing my throat. They both looked up, and the girl grinned at me.

  “He says he can tattoo me and my girlfriend for a discount,” she said excitedly.

  The mystery of Joel’s predilection remained.

  While I wasn’t sure about the discount thing, I couldn’t worry about it now. I held out the photograph to the young woman. “Is that Ainsley Wainwright?” I asked.

  She stared at the picture for a second before saying, “Yes, with her twin sister.”

  Chapter 36

  I’d suspected as much. The two women in the picture were identical, and one was most definitely the Ainsley I had met in Sherman Potter’s hotel room. But since Tim said the dead girl in here was identified as Ainsley, and the paycheck stub Bitsy had shown me inside had indicated that the woman who lived here and worked for the dentist was, in fact, Ainsley, then for some reason her sister was using her name.

  “Do you know her sister’s name?” I asked the young woman.

  She shook her head. “No. I never met her.” But her eyes skittered around the hall, wouldn’t meet mine. She knew something she didn’t want to tell.

  “Ainsley never mentioned her?”

  She shrugged, still evasive.

  I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. I pocketed the picture.

  The young woman frowned. “That’s not yours,” she said with a pout.

  “Evidence,” I said, snapping off my gloves.

  Bitsy had come out now.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  She nodded, looking up at Joel, who was handing the girl one of his business cards. Great. Now she knew for sure that we weren’t cops.

  “I told her how I moonlight on the side,” Joel said with a wink.

  Oh, like that would make a difference when she showed up at the shop and we were all there, working.

  Whatever.

  I needed to get out of here and bring Tim my cell phone and now this picture. But wait. I hadn’t thought this through. Where would I tell him I got said picture? Now I was in a pickle. Because I couldn’t tell him I’d been here and found it in a book.

  For a nanosecond I thought I could tell him I got it from one of the girls in the band last night and had forgotten about it. But why would they have it? They didn’t even like Ainsley. Or whatever her real name was.

  There really was no place I could say I got it. Except here.

  And I had no idea how to bring up the fact that Ainsley Wainwright had a twin sister without showing him the picture.

  I was stuck between that rock and hard place.

  As we squeezed ourselves back into the little Mini Cooper for the ride to the police station, I told Bitsy and Joel my dilemma.

  Bitsy snorted. “Why don’t you just tell him that you found it in that
Hummer you and Jeff stole last night, and you forgot all about it because there was a flamingo with a tiara covered in red paint on your bed?”

  This was why I paid her the big bucks. Because she came up with ideas I would never have thought of. Granted, it was still a little weak, but if I played it right, Tim would be none the wiser.

  “Do you think for sure that she’s the one impersonating you?” Joel asked.

  I thought for a moment, not certain. While the young woman at the apartment building said I looked like Ainsley Wainwright, I knew I didn’t, but Jeff said the woman he met didn’t look at all like me. But that woman didn’t really have red hair, because she’d left it behind in the ladies’ room.

  “I’m not sure.” I thought about meeting the other Ainsley in Sherman Potter’s hotel room. Her sister must have been dead by then. Did she know?

  “I still don’t understand why someone would do this to you,” Joel said.

  That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Because even though this felt personal, I didn’t know Ainsley Wainwright. I had never met her. And it had been a fluke that I met her sister when she was with Sherman Potter. I’d never met him before, either, although Daisy had told me about him. So why? Why would anyone go to all that trouble to set me up? To set up that fake blog? To take my picture? To put a flamingo on my bed? To text me, pretending to be Daisy?

  I still had way more questions than answers. I wondered if Tim could help with the phone issue.

  “What are you going to do about Ace?” Joel asked.

  Now that was a tough one. We’d pretty much charged and convicted him last night, but in the light of day, it wasn’t quite so easy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  I shrugged. “I need to ask about the moonlighting.”

  “Do we have rules against that?”

  The way he asked made me wonder if Joel hadn’t been moonlighting, too. “No,” I said, “but if you want to, it might be best to tell me or Bitsy so at least we know.”