Pretty In Ink

by Karen Olson

  I continued along Las Vegas Boulevard, crossing over Fremont Street. The neon still flashed in the daytime, luring the tourists and the gamblers. It was that shiny object that tantalized and tempted. The city had turned this portion of Fremont into a pedestrian walkway, like it was some sort of family attraction. As if poker and slots and strip shows were child’s play.

  I left Fremont Street behind and continued a couple of blocks until I turned into Chez Tango’s parking lot.

  It was a little jarring to see Chez Tango in the bright light of day. It was a short, squat, stucco building that spread along half a block. At night, white and gold Christmas lights twinkled along the outline of the roof and around the entrance, making it festive and almost magical. Now the string of lights hung slackly, like an old woman’s breasts.

  I pulled in next to an old pickup truck.

  I’d seen that truck before.

  Outside Cash & Carry.

  I gripped the steering wheel. Rusty Abbott had gotten into that pickup yesterday. As he ran from me for the second time.

  I thought about what Jeff Coleman had said, that Rusty Abbott said accidents happen.

  Would he run again if I approached him here?

  I was tired of the game, but just as I figured I had nothing to lose, I thought about how it might be better to meet up with him in a public place. Certainly not a mostly deserted Chez Tango. My idea about going inside quickly disintegrated. I wasn’t going to be that stupid.

  The sound of a car pulling into the lot startled me. It was a dusty blue Honda CRV, and it came to a stop on the other side of the pickup, out of my line of sight.

  I heard a door slam; then a figure walked around the front of the pickup.

  Kyle Albrecht, aka MissTique.

  Ah, a friendly face.

  I got out of the car. “Hey, Kyle,” I said.

  When he saw who I was, he smiled. “Brett, what are you doing here?” Then the smile disappeared and he said somberly, “Awful about Trevor, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m so sorry.”

  “Is that why you’re here? About Trevor?” he asked, his curiosity obvious.

  “Sort of.” I glanced at the pickup. “Do you know the guy who owns this truck?”

  Kyle studied the truck, then shook his head. “No. Should I?”

  “No, guess not.” I paused. “I’m actually looking for Charlotte. She could be in trouble.”

  Concern flooded Kyle’s face. “What’s wrong?”

  I tried to make light of it. “Some police detective thinks she might be in some sort of danger.” I attempted a laugh, but it came out a little twittery and not all too human. “This morning she called me, said she needed my help. Asked me to meet her at a condo off the Strip. When I got there, Wesley Lambert was dead. Ricin poisoning. She was gone already, but I know she was there earlier. She might be sick.” I figured I would play on his sympathy.

  But he was still wrapping his head around the whole story and didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on one thing, until: “Wesley Lambert? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not kidding, Kyle.”

  “And Charlotte might be sick? How?”

  “Just by inhaling the ricin. It was spilled all over.”

  He gave me a long look. “You don’t think she killed him or anything, do you?”

  Bitsy had asked the same thing, and I gave him the same answer I gave her, although admittedly I couldn’t help wondering the same thing. “No.”

  “How do you know she was at Wesley’s?”

  I told him about the pink hoodie, which reminded me . . .

  “Did you ever find out who owned that gray sweatshirt we found at the club the other night?”

  Kyle nodded absently. “Yeah, it was Stephan’s. Where do you think she went?”

  “I thought maybe she might go to Trevor’s place to hang low, but I don’t know where Trevor lives.”

  Kyle cocked his head at the Pontiac. “That your ride?”

  I hated to admit it and nodded reluctantly.

  He walked around to the passenger side. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 29

  Trevor lived in an apartment complex on Charleston Boulevard, going west toward Red Rock. The gray mountains rose in the distance as I drove past office buildings, gas stations, hole-in-the-wall eateries, and condominiums.

  Kyle was asking about ricin.

  “It’s made from castor beans,” I said, one of the few things I knew about it myself.

  “How?”

  I had absolutely no idea. “I bet we could find out online.”

  “We can find out how to build a nuclear bomb online,” Kyle said.

  I thought about what Tim had said about ricin being a weapon of terrorists. “We’d probably get on some sort of government list if we looked it up,” I said.

  He laughed and batted his eyelashes. “Honey, we’re probably already on some government list.”

  He was right about that. I bet Frank DeBurra had the Secret Service out looking for me right this very second. It probably didn’t help that I was driving a car that the bad guys on Miami Vice would find cool. I just hoped that Jeff Coleman didn’t have any sort of outstanding traffic tickets that would alert the cops and get us stopped.

  I wasn’t one to speed and I rarely even ran yellow lights, so I knew my driving habits wouldn’t draw attention.

  Kyle pointed to an apartment building that looked like something out of Tudor England. It was out of place among the stucco and banana yuccas.

  “Turn here,” he instructed.

  I did as I was told, and I pulled around the building, which I saw now was raised, with parking spots underneath. Kyle directed me to a spot that he said was just under Trevor’s apartment.

  I made sure to lock up the Pontiac. Not that there was anything in it to steal, except maybe the car itself. This definitely looked like a gold Pontiac neighborhood.

  We climbed a staircase up to the walkway that ran along the perimeter of the building. The apartments were lined up along it like little wooden soldiers.

  Kyle stopped at the one closest to the stairway, took out a key, unlocked the door, and opened it.

  Trevor’s apartment was a mess. At first I thought maybe someone had tossed it on purpose, but Kyle didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

  “Charlotte?” I called, then turned to Kyle when no one answered. “Was he this messy?” I asked, noting the piles of beauty and celebrity magazines next to the flowered sofa and more cardboard boxes than I could count. “Or was he moving?”

  Kyle grinned. “Our Britney loved the QVC.” He pointed out the exercise equipment taking up the corner of the room and the wigs hung suspended from it. It looked like a character from some creepy Tim Burton movie.

  I stepped over piles of sequined clothing and stiletto shoes toward the galley kitchen. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, and it smelled like that Dumpster behind Murder Ink. I wrinkled my nose. “How did he live like this?” I asked.

  Kyle held up a pair of nylons. “These are in good shape,” he said, stuffing them in his front pocket. He picked a silk top up off the floor and held it up in front of his chest. “Is it my color?”

  “You know, Kyle, Trevor’s dead. Do you think he’d want you rifling through his things?”

  Kyle chuckled. “Trevor would be the first one to clean this place out, girl. Nothing should go to waste.”

  I pushed aside heavy curtains, letting the sun in, and opened a sliding glass door that led to a small balcony overlooking the front entrance to the complex. A small breeze wafted in, and I wondered whether it would be enough to air this place out.

  The bathroom was in worse shape than the kitchen: makeup everywhere. Kyle started pawing through it, picking up mascara and taking out the wand to make sure it was still fresh. He wiped some foundation on his face with a cotton ball and turned to me.

  “Too dark, right?”

  Kyle’s skin was very pale, as compared to Trevor’s darker, tanned complexion. I nodded, moving toward the bedroom.

  More of the same. I didn’t even
bother going farther than the doorway. It was starting to get to me, how sad it made Trevor’s life seem, living in this mess.

  “She’s not here,” I said as I passed the bathroom. Kyle was still playing with the makeup.

  I went back out onto the balcony to collect my thoughts. There was a white plastic chair there, with a matching table. I sat down and looked out at the street through the slats in the balcony wall.

  “Didn’t Charlotte say she was bringing Trevor’s makeup case here after the show the other night?” Kyle asked, startling me. He’d put on one of Trevor’s wigs, a dark, flowing mess of curls that actually looked pretty good on Kyle. The dress he’d donned was purple lamé, and it would be clingy in all the right places if there were any of those places to cling to. But Kyle was just playing dress-up and had forgone any semblance of breasts.

  Still, he was a fine-looking woman.

  “Isn’t his makeup case in there?” I asked, indicating the bathroom.

  “Not the one he used for shows. I can’t find it anywhere.”

  I frowned. That was funny. Charlotte had taken the case that night. And as I thought about the case, I remembered that Dr. Bixby had the brooch. He’d said it was the only item Trevor had on his person when he went to the hospital. Somehow the brooch had gone from the case to Trevor, but where was the case?

  I leaned over and put my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, closing my eyes. I needed to make sense of all this.

  Unfortunately, my brain was all mixed up right now.

  “What about this?”

  I looked up to see Kyle posing in a shimmery satin minidress and thigh-high white patent leather boots.

  “Very Donna Summer,” I said.

  Kyle grinned. “And this isn’t the best part.”

  I wondered what that would be: Another wig that would hit the ceiling? Huge round rhinestone sunglasses?

  “Guess what I found in the boots.”

  I didn’t want to know. From the state of Trevor’s apartment, there could be a family of small rodents playing house in those boots. There was certainly room enough in them.

  But when Kyle held out his hands, instead of mice, they were filled with bills. As in money. As in the most cash I’d ever seen in one place besides a casino.

  Chapter 30

  My mouth hung open as I stared. “How much?” I managed to stammer.

  Kyle chuckled. “This isn’t all of it. There’s money stashed in all the boots, and that girl loves her boots.”

  I followed him into the bedroom, which I’d dismissed before as just another room where a hurricane had blown through. Now, though, I watched as Kyle pulled boot after boot out from under the bed, sticking his hand inside each one and taking out wads of bills, dumping them on top of the unmade bed.

  I peered around the closet door. “Any in here?”

  “He seems to have kept all the boots under the bed, for some reason.”

  The boots were all thigh high and patent leather, and in all the colors of the rainbow. There were ten pairs, when all was said and done.

  “Didn’t Trevor believe in banks?” I asked.

  “These might be tips,” Kyle said, his tone matter-of-fact. “This is the cash we don’t want Uncle Sam to know about.”

  “What was he doing to get tips like this?” I asked, noting that most of the bills were either hundreds or fifties. I started counting.

  Kyle was counting on the other side of the bed. We were silent for a while as we kept the numbers in our heads. Finally, Kyle said, “I’ve got twenty grand.”

  Our eyes met. “I’ve got thirty grand.”

  Kyle blew a low whistle. “This ain’t tip money,” he said. “No one’s that good.”

  “I thought Trevor didn’t have any money. That’s why he kept pawning that brooch.”

  “If you listened to him, he never had any money.” Kyle surveyed the bills, which we’d arranged neatly in piles. “What a con.”

  “Maybe it’s not his,” I said softly.

  “It’s in his boots,” Kyle said.

  He had a point. But something was nagging at me. “It seems like a coincidence that Wesley Lambert was poking around Chez Tango the other night. Now Trevor’s dead, and Lambert is dead. Maybe it’s not so much a coincidence.”

  We mulled that a few minutes.

  “I wish I had my laptop,” I said. “I really want to go online and look up ricin.”

  “So use Trevor’s,” Kyle said. “It’s in the living room.”

  How he could spot things in this place was beyond me, but he disappeared and came back toting a laptop that was maybe a couple years old.

  I didn’t want to sit on the bed—who knew what was under those covers?—so I took the laptop out onto the balcony and set it on the small table. I flipped up the top and turned it on, keeping my fingers crossed that there was wireless.

  Trevor didn’t have it, but someone by the name of Priestly didn’t have a secure account. Fortunately, Priestly wasn’t online at the moment, so I accessed the account with no problem. I might not run yellow lights, but I have no scruples when it comes to stealing Internet connections.

  Priestly would think it was Trevor’s ghost anyway.

  I Googled ricin and found a slew of news stories, a few from right here in Vegas. Some guy making ricin in a hotel room a couple years back. He died, too. The stories gave the symptoms, just like Dr. Bixby had related them to me.

  I took a second to try to be aware of how I was feeling. I didn’t feel nauseated, and I was breathing just fine.

  A link caught my eye. Some guy in London in the seventies. Stabbed with the end of an umbrella, which was fitted with a small pellet of ricin. The guy died after exhibiting flulike symptoms.

  A thought started to form. I didn’t much like it, but it would explain things.

  Kyle was staring at me. “What?” he asked. “What did you find?” He’d found time to apply about three layers of fake eyelashes, and he batted them at me.

  “I think Trevor was poisoned,” I said slowly.

  He snorted. “How? At my club?”

  I nodded. “The champagne cork. I think it was laced with ricin.”

  Chapter 31

  We took Trevor’s laptop with us after stuffing the money back in the boots. Kyle wanted to take it, but I didn’t want to have that much cash on my person. I already had Rusty Abbott warning me about accidents, and with that kind of money on me, accidents could most definitely happen.

  I was also convinced now that Rusty Abbott was the champagne shooter and somehow he was involved with Wesley Lambert.

  It was the ink.

  Granted, Jeff Coleman had said two other men had gotten the tattoos the same night, too. But I hadn’t seen anyone else with one yet. So it was easy to place blame.

  I’d definitely have to ask Jeff for the other two names when I brought his car back.

  I hated to admit it, but it rode well. Not as well as my Mustang Bullitt, but well enough so I wasn’t uncomfortable like I was in Bitsy’s car. I’d been folded up like a pretzel in hers, but even when I wasn’t, my head hit the ceiling.

  “So you think someone put ricin on that cork and deliberately shot Trevor with it?” Kyle asked. He hadn’t taken off the dress, the wig, the boots, or the eyelashes, so I supposed I should address him as MissTique.

  Who knew I’d be driving a drag queen around in a gold Pontiac? Just call me Huggy Bear.

  I nodded. I remembered something else, too. How DeBurra had told me at the scene that no one could find the cork that hit Trevor. Maybe somehow the shooter had managed to get the cork before anyone else could touch it and get contaminated. That way it would seem like a coincidence when Trevor got sick.

  “Do you think Charlotte had something to do with it?” Kyle asked.

  I sighed. It all kept coming back to her. She was buzzing all over that stage after Trevor got hit. And she did know Wesley Lambert.

  “So where do you think she might be?” Kyle interrupted my thoughts.

  “I don’t know where to look now,” I admitted. “I really thought she’d be at Trevor’s.”
r />   “Maybe she was there, then left.”

  “But where’s Trevor’s makeup case? I’m more inclined to think she was never there in the first place.”

  We mulled that over a few seconds as we finally reached Chez Tango. The pickup truck was gone, Kyle’s Honda CRV the only vehicle in the lot.

  “Want to come in?” he asked.

  “I could use a phone,” I said, thinking I should call Bitsy at the shop and see how angry Tim was. And if Frank DeBurra was ready to lock me up and throw away the key. I still hadn’t answered his questions, and now I was AWOL.

  Kyle, or, rather, MissTique, sashayed across the parking lot to the back door at Chez Tango. He unlocked the dead bolt and held the door for me as I went inside.

  It was so dark, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me.

  “Lights?” I asked, and as I spoke, the hallway lit up like a chandelier.

  Kyle moved past me, and I followed him into the dressing room behind the stage. Racks of sequined and lamé dresses stood sentry next to the row of mirrored dressing tables. As opposed to the other night, the tables were neat and uncluttered, the floor swept and clean.

  “Is there a show tonight?” I asked.

  Kyle nodded, taking a couple of dresses off the rack. He held up a gold sequined halter dress in front of him, his eyebrows arched high. “What do you think? It was Trevor’s favorite. I think it’s fitting I wear it tonight. We’ll do a tribute to Britney.” He wiped his eye and smiled.

  “Trevor would love it,” I said.

  He sighed and pointed past the dressing tables. “The phone’s in the office.”

  “Thanks.” I left him trying on a wig of blond tresses similar to Britney’s.

  The office was dark, and I found a light switch. The dull yellow glow made me wonder when they had last changed the bulb. Or maybe it was one of those newfangled energy-saving bulbs. I’d gotten some for the house, and Tim kept complaining the light was too dim. I argued with him about it for the sake of energy conservation, but secretly I didn’t think they were as bright as the old ones, either.