Ink Flamingos

by Karen E. Olson

  Willis jotted a few notes down, then turned to Jeff. “You can pick up the report tomorrow afternoon.” He handed him a card. “The case report number’s on that. Just go to records and ask for it. Maybe you can get your insurance to pay for the damage.” And with that, he took off out the door and into the street without even a nod in my direction.

  We watched as the police cruiser slid away from the curb and down the street. When it was out of sight, Jeff stuck the card in his front breast pocket and said, “What a jerk.”

  I could think of more colorful words than that, but “jerk” would do, too.

  We didn’t have much time.

  “We’ll get out of your hair now,” I said quickly, tugging on Joel’s sleeve.

  Jeff frowned and held up his hand. “What’s your hurry?” He looked from me to Joel. He knew we were up to something.

  I wasn’t going to tell him. I didn’t need him tagging along everywhere I went. I had Joel; he was enough. But Jeff didn’t seem to agree. He stared Joel down, until Joel broke down.

  “We’re going to check out that dentist office where Ainsley Wainwright worked. See if they knew anything about her sister.”

  “Your car or mine?” he asked, adding, “Oh, we’d better take mine. More room.” And without waiting for a response, he went toward the back of the shop.

  Joel gave a short shrug. It was a lost cause. I wouldn’t be able to talk Jeff out of coming with us. I’d just have to resign myself to the fact that he was.

  The back of the shop was covered in fingerprint dust. I didn’t much blame Jeff for wanting to take off right now; it would take a little work to clean up. I felt as though there should be a white chalk outline where the flamingo had been.

  Jeff slammed the door shut after us and went over to the back door of the Chinese place. A Hispanic man wearing an apron came out, and they talked for a couple of minutes before Jeff came back over.

  “They’re going to watch the back. Make sure no one else shows up and tries to get in,” he said.

  “Did they see anyone here before?” I asked, kicking myself for not thinking about asking them in the first place.

  Jeff shook his head. “No.”

  “Did the cops talk to them?” Joel asked.

  “You kidding? That Willis guy wanted out of here right away.” He chuckled. “You are not his favorite person, Kavanaugh.”

  Tell me something I didn’t already know.

  “What about your shop?” I asked. “Can you afford to shut down?”

  Jeff snickered. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about me, Kavanaugh.” And he opened his car door and climbed in.

  We followed suit. I let Joel sit in the front because of his size, and I squeezed my long legs in the back, angling them so I wouldn’t feel too squished. Joel told Jeff where we were headed.

  “Dentist, huh?”

  Joel just grunted, clearly put out that Bitsy had put it on him to handle this unpleasant undercover operation.

  We drove in silence. My head was spinning with everything that was going on: flamingos, pictures of me and Harry, Sherman Potter dead, Colin Bixby. Hey, how did he end up there? Oh, right. He broke up with me. And that led right into thinking about that kiss again. The one Jeff and I shared.

  I felt the car slow, and I forced everything out of my head. I needed to be at the top of my game, because I was sure that there would have to be some fancy footwork to find out anything about Ainsley Wainwright at her former place of employment.

  But as the car turned into the parking lot, it became obvious that this was not going to be our final destination after all, even though my suspicions about the office staying open late were on target.

  Ann Wainwright was scurrying out of the building and through the parking lot, the lights of a nondescript white Toyota flashing as she hit the key fob.

  Jeff slowed to a stop. I held my breath as we watched her get into the car and pull out. If she’d seen us sitting in this bright orange car, there was no outward sign. The Toyota moved out of the exit on the other side of the lot.

  I told myself the metallic orange wasn’t obvious because it was dark now, and we wouldn’t stand out unless we were under a streetlight. Jeff really needed to get a car that was more incognito, although I couldn’t talk, since I owned a bright red Mustang Bullitt convertible.

  Blame it on living in the desert. We needed those splashes of color amongst all the desert browns.

  Slowly, the Pontiac moved forward until we were on the street, a couple of cars back.

  “You won’t lose her?” Joel asked.

  “Jeff was in the Marines,” I said.

  Joel nodded, the answer satisfying him.

  Jeff said nothing as his hands tightened around the steering wheel. I saw his biceps flex, the skull tattoo looking as though it was clenching its jaw. I absently touched my chest, where my Chinese dragon poked out of my shirt.

  Ann turned down a couple of side roads and then came back up to the main drag, and I started to wonder if she didn’t know we were behind her, but then she maneuvered around again, and I realized she’d pulled into the parking lot at her sister’s apartment house. Jeff eased the Pontiac against the curb on the street, and we watched as Ann got out of the Toyota and went toward the building, disappearing inside.

  I thought about the picture I’d found. Something was gnawing at me. What if this really was Ainsley, and it was her sister who was murdered instead? I mean, she had been at the dentist office where she worked and then gone to her apartment. What if the murder had been a case of mistaken identity? What if whoever killed her sister had meant to kill her instead?

  But that would mean that the Ainsley I met was leading some sort of double life. Dental hygienist by day, sex kitten for Sherman Potter by night. But maybe she’d had a dream. A dream to sing with the Flamingos. A dream she couldn’t pass up.

  I was grabbing at straws. Or was I?

  We sat and watched the building for any kind of movement, until another car swung into the lot. A woman got out, staring at the Toyota, which was bathed in light from the streetlamp. She moved toward it, her head down as she tried the driver’s side door. It was locked. She lifted her face toward the light, and I recognized Terri.

  Jeff sat up a little straighter in his seat.

  “That’s her neighbor,” I explained. “The one we talked to this morning. Her name’s Terri. She’s having Joel do a tattoo for her.”

  Jeff didn’t seem to hear me.

  “That’s the girl I saw at Cleopatra’s Barge,” Jeff said. “The one who was pretending to be you.”

  Chapter 51

  All my senses were on overload. “How do you know?” I asked. “She was in disguise, right?”

  Jeff nodded, his eyes still glued to Terri, who was now holding a cell phone to her ear and watching the building, her face totally illuminated.

  “She’s the one. I saw her come out of that ladies’ room without the disguise,” he said. “I noticed her. It was her.”

  My brain was somehow stuck on the words “I noticed her.”

  Terri stuck the cell phone back in her pocket and went toward her car. She climbed in, and the brake lights came on before she started to pull out.

  “Okay, guys, here’s the problem. She’s still in there,” Jeff indicated the apartment house. “But she”—he indicated the neighbor—“is leaving. What do we want to do?”

  “Follow Terri,” Joel said without thinking.

  Jeff sensed my hesitation. I wanted to see what both of them were up to.

  “You want to stay here and confront that chick yourself, Kavanaugh? Because I agree with Joel. Let’s follow that girl who pretended to be you.”

  They both needed to be watched. But we only had one car, even though there were three of us. I said as much.

  “I can stay here if you want to drive,” Jeff offered.

  “I can’t follow anyone like you can,” I admitted.

  “I can stay,” Joel said. “I’ve got
a phone; I can call if anything happens. If she goes anywhere.”

  “But you don’t have a car.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll think of something.” Joel scrambled out of the car. “You better get going.” He indicated Terri’s car stopped at the light at the next block before stepping onto the sidewalk.

  I barely got out a “thanks” when Jeff peeled away from the curb. I fell back against the backseat, the passenger door shutting on its own with the force of the car.

  “Hey!” I said.

  We took a couple of turns, and I peered out the front window to see that we were only three cars away from Terri. How did he do that? I looked out the back window to see Joel lumbering along the sidewalk toward the apartment house. I hoped he was going to be okay. But there are definite positives to being his size and looking the way he did. He also knew a lot of people in this city, and I knew he’d have people to call on if he got into a jam.

  I didn’t want to sit in the backseat like a kid.

  I folded myself up and squeezed my way into the front seat, shifting a little so at one point I felt Jeff Coleman’s hand on my butt, steering me in the right direction. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

  As I settled into my seat, though, I didn’t have time to ruminate about where his hand had been. Because Terri was slowing down. In front of Murder Ink.

  “Do you think she’s the one who left the flamingo?” I asked.

  Jeff shrugged, said nothing. When Terri started to move again, he made sure we were well behind her but close enough so he wouldn’t lose her.

  I didn’t want to boost his ego by telling him how good he was at this. He knew it, anyway, didn’t need me to tell him, and if I did, he’d take that as more proof of our alleged thing.

  “What if she’s the one who’s behind all this?” I asked, unable to shut up. I couldn’t explain my sudden need to voice my thoughts. But the silence was killing me. Not to mention the intense way Jeff was watching that car. I’d never seen that expression before, and it scared me a little. Made me wonder if I shouldn’t have been the one staying behind with Ann rather than Joel.

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” I now said, disgusted with myself.

  Jeff’s head snapped around and he barked, “Kavanaugh, I get it. You’re jealous. Okay. But if this is the chick who’s been impersonating you and leaving flamingos all over the place, then maybe you need to refocus.”

  It was a really good thing it was dark, because he couldn’t see the deep flush I felt move through my face and down my neck. Jealous? Is that what he thought?

  “I’m just nervous,” I tried.

  “And I’m just going to throw you out of the car if you say anything else.”

  Was this our first fight? We’d never really fought. He teased, and I got upset, and then we went back to our familiar banter.

  But before I could think about that further, I realized something. He really did think this girl was the one behind it all. And he was angry. Really angry. Probably more angry than I’d ever seen him.

  I settled back in my seat. I thought about the rather benign conversation we’d had with Terri earlier, how Joel had offered to tattoo her at a discount. How she’d stayed outside the apartment while Bitsy and I were poking around inside. How she’d then shown up at the shop and given me the once-over that was so intimate I thought maybe she was coming on to me. Now I knew. She was studying me. Seeing how accurate she’d been when pretending to be me.

  We never actually saw her go into or come out of an apartment, either. Maybe she didn’t really live there. I had an idea.

  “What’s her license plate number?” I asked Jeff, my voice tearing into the silence, and I worried he’d blow up at me again.

  But without question, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone and handed it to me before reciting the plate number. He knew I was calling Tim. That was the eerie thing about us. I decided to stop reflecting on it as I punched in Tim’s number.

  “Tim, it’s me,” I said when he answered. “I’ve got a license plate you need to run down.” I gave it to him, and then I told him what was going on.

  Instead of scolding me for not “staying put” at Murder Ink, he merely asked, “Where are you?”

  We were on the Strip, and Terri’s car suddenly swerved. I saw now where we were going, and the irony didn’t escape me.

  “We’re at the Flamingo,” I said.

  Chapter 52

  Terri pulled up into the circular drive under the tiny white lights in the ceiling of the entryway. Jeff had pulled the Pontiac over to the side of the driveway, just out of sight, but we could see the front of her car.

  “Should we follow her?” I asked Tim.

  “Yes. I’ll be right over there.” He hung up.

  I wasn’t quite sure how he’d find us; it was a big place. But he was a detective, after all, and it was his job to find people, so I was sure he would, eventually. And then it struck me: He’d given me permission to follow her. Had aliens taken over my brother?

  When the valet drove her car past us, Jeff pulled the Pontiac into the driveway.

  “Where do you think she went?” I asked. She had at least five minutes on us and could be anywhere by now.

  “Keep the faith, Kavanaugh,” he said, but his voice was tight.

  I didn’t like it that we were handing over the keys to the valet. What if we needed to get to the car quickly? This was why I liked the self-parking so much better. The only comfort was that she’d also left her car with the valet, so she wasn’t making any sort of quick escape, either.

  Jeff was already at the door. I scrambled up to him, and he held the glass door wide. We went up the escalator.

  We scooted around the hotel “lobby,” which was really just a long counter, passing a few people waiting in line with their suitcases. We stopped next to the familiar bronze flamingo statue—I didn’t want to see any more flamingos, but it was inevitable here—as we scanned the casino, and I spotted her, over on the far side, near the doors that led out to the aviary and gardens.

  “There she is,” I said, pointing.

  Jeff grabbed my hand, and we moved through the casino, bypassing the slots and the table games and cocktail waitresses balancing trays of drinks. As we slowed a little, I yanked my hand out of Jeff’s. He glanced back at me with a sly smile. I rolled my eyes at him, because I knew what he was thinking. About that thing again.

  She’d pushed the glass door open, stepping outside.

  We’d been here before: when we’d seen Harry and Ace meeting before their tattoo party. There had been a girl here then, too. Was it the same one?

  “Remember, we couldn’t see her. There were too many people,” Jeff said when I asked the question out loud.

  Everything had started to blur into one big memory. It was all happening so fast that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make any sense of any of it after all, even though there had been so many times over the last couple days that I’d thought I’d figured it out.

  Should’ve known better.

  She was walking briskly through the gardens, not even paying attention to the flamingos, ducks, and other birds that wandered freely along the pathways. The waterfall backdrop for wedding pictures was straight ahead, but she didn’t stop there.

  She veered around the path and went underneath a fuchsia canopy, some sort of statue or something at the end.

  “What’s that?” I asked out loud.

  “Bugsy Siegel,” Jeff said. “You do know who that was, right?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. Of course I did. Bugsy Siegel was the mobster who built the Flamingo back in the 1940s.

  “When they renovated in the early nineties, they tore down Bugsy’s suite and put up this plaque instead,” Jeff said flatly.

  We’d stopped just beyond the start of the canopy. Terri was pacing in front of the plaque, like she was waiting for someone. I remembered her on her cell outside the apartment building. Apparently her date was lat
e. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone.

  I felt like a voyeur. Spying on her like this, hiding behind this silly canopy.

  I hadn’t noticed how close Jeff had come toward me until I felt his hand on my arm and I was suddenly facing him, his other hand on the back of my neck, and he was leaning toward me and again he kissed me. This time it wasn’t as tentative as it had been before; from the start it was as though he wanted to consume me. I let him. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t do anything except lose myself in that kiss. I forgot about Terri, about Ann Wainwright, about flamingos. I forgot everything except how I wanted that kiss to go on forever.

  When he let me go, I couldn’t catch my breath at first. My face was flush with heat, my heart racing, my lips bruised.

  For a second, he smiled, his eyes full of smoky passion; then it was gone. “Let’s go.”

  I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Go where? What were we doing? Oh, right, following the girl who’d pretended to be me. Where was she? She was no longer standing by the plaque. No one was there. Except us.

  And then I saw her, walking across the grass.

  “Stop gawking, Kavanaugh,” Jeff said. “Come on.”

  How could he kiss me like that and then act as though it never happened?

  He’d gone a few steps before he realized I was still planted right where he’d left me.

  “You can analyze it later,” he said. “But for now, we’ve got to see where she’s going.”

  Okay, right. My feet seemed detached from my body somehow, but I was moving forward.

  “You did that on purpose,” I scolded when we fell into step together, Terri heading toward the pool area.

  “That’s right,” he said, grinning. “She almost saw us.”

  I felt like he’d hit me in the gut. “It was so she wouldn’t see us?” I asked.

  Jeff chuckled. “You really don’t think it’s because we’ve got a thing?” he teased. “Because we don’t. You said so.”

  So maybe I was wrong, but I started to seethe. This was totally why we couldn’t have a thing. Because I hated him. Because he drove me crazy.