Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “You need to tell him,” she said, tossing her head toward the back of the shop. “You know, maybe Dan Franklin really killed that guy and is trying to throw you off the trail by pretending to cooperate.”

  The thought had crossed my mind.

  “Should I interrupt?”

  Bitsy shrugged. “Depends how important you think it is.”

  I thought about my car again. It was pretty important.

  I went to the back of the shop and tapped on the office door.

  Flanigan opened it as if he owned the place. Did not endear me to him.

  “Yes?” he asked, his tone frosty.

  “I talked to Dan Franklin,” I said, launching into the phone conversation before Flanigan could stop me.

  When I was done, he scratched his chin and frowned. “Thank you for this information. I appreciate you sharing it with me.” He said it as though he didn’t think I’d share anything. I hoped Willis wasn’t dissing me behind my back.

  I started to close the door, but Flanigan moved toward me, holding up a finger to Joel to indicate he’d be but a second. A few steps outside the office, Flanigan stopped.

  “Miss Kavanaugh, I understand you’re friends with Jeff Coleman, Sylvia Coleman’s son?”

  I nodded, unsure where this was going.

  “I spoke with Mr. Coleman earlier, and he wasn’t forthcoming with any information about his mother and her new husband. I did, however, speak to Mr. Applebaum’s daughter, who is very concerned, as she should be. She was very helpful in giving us the make and model and license plate number of the car her father was driving.”

  He paused for a second, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what he was going to say.

  “We found Mr. Applebaum’s car. Outside the Grand Canyon entrance. It was abandoned.”

  Chapter 9

  It took a few minutes to sink in. Sylvia and Bernie’s car? Abandoned? That wasn’t good. I thought about Jeff, on his mission to find them.

  Flanigan was looking at me as if he could read my mind.

  “Do you have another number where I could reach Mr. Coleman?” he asked, and from the way he said it, he knew I did.

  “I might be able to find out,” I said.

  Flanigan gave me a smile, as if I were a puppy that had passed obedience training. “Thank you.” And then he turned and went back into the office. In the second before he closed the door, I caught Joel’s eye and gave him a small smile. He smiled back, although I could see how nervous he was.

  I ducked into the staff room and got my phone. I punched in Jeff’s number.

  “What’s up, Kavanaugh?” he asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “Some little hole in the wall. No sign of them.”

  “Well, the police found their car.”

  Silence, then, “Where?”

  I told him what Flanigan had said.

  More silence.

  “Jeff?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “He wants to talk to you.”

  “I bet he does.”

  “Listen, Jeff, now is not the time to be some sort of renegade. Your mother might be in trouble.”

  “She might be.”

  “So call Flanigan.”

  “I’m not far from the canyon. I’ll get in touch with the rangers. They’ll tell me what’s going on.”

  “Why don’t you want to talk to this cop?”

  “Because he thinks my mother had something to do with that guy in your trunk.”

  I suppressed a chuckle. “I doubt that.”

  “He sure as hell indicated that when I talked to him before.”

  “That’s his job.”

  “Trust my instincts on this, Kavanaugh. I’ll be back tonight. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  And the call ended.

  I heard a small cough.

  Flanigan was standing in the doorway.

  “Was that Mr. Coleman?”

  I put my phone back in my bag. “Yes.”

  “Is he going to take my call?”

  “No.”

  We stared each other down.

  “There’s just so much I can do,” I finally said. “I told him you needed to talk to him. I told him about finding their car. He said he’s going to see the rangers at the canyon.”

  “They won’t be able to help.” Flanigan started picking at imaginary lint on his suit. “The state police have already taken the car away.”

  “Well, then he’ll find that out, and he’ll come home.”

  “Did Mr. Coleman know Mr. Lucci?”

  The question came out from left field.

  “I—uh—I don’t know,” I sputtered.

  “His mother knew him,” Flanigan said. “She requested he sing a solo at their wedding.”

  “Maybe she just liked the way he sang.”

  “She requested him by phone before she and Mr. Applebaum arrived. She requested him by name.”

  I sighed. “So because of that, you suspect a little old lady who’s got to be pushing eighty of killing him and stuffing him in my trunk?”

  “She had access to clip cords, too.”

  True enough.

  “What about the rat?” I asked, suddenly remembering it. “Why the rat?”

  Flanigan’s eyebrows rose slightly. “We need to talk to her.”

  “But she’s missing. Maybe whoever killed Lucci did something to her, too.” As I said it, I saw something cross his face, and I couldn’t breathe for a second. He thought that, too. He wasn’t trying to find Sylvia because he thought she and Bernie killed Lucci. He wanted to find them because he thought something had happened to them.

  “You think they saw something, don’t you?” I asked softly. “You think they’re witnesses and that’s why they’re missing.”

  From his expression, I could tell I was right.

  “Mr. Sloane has identified a picture of Mr. Lucci as the person who posed as Dan Franklin,” Flanigan said. “And Miss Hendricks concurred. Miss Hendricks also gave me Mr. Franklin’s phone number. If you hear from Mr. Coleman again, I’d appreciate you emphasizing to him how important it is that he contact me.”

  I nodded, and he stood there, staring at me.

  “Is there something else?” I asked, his gaze unnerving me, as if he thought I was holding back on something. Which now, I really wasn’t.

  “According to the time line you gave me yesterday, the Applebaums returned your car at three o’clock, and it was in the parking garage here until you left work. What time did you leave?”

  We’d been over this, but I made a point to look at the appointment book so I could tell him the exact times of my clients and that I’d left an hour after my last one, at midnight.

  “Were Miss Hendricks and Mr. Sloane still here?”

  I’d cleaned up myself because they’d both left early. I told him so. “Ace left about half an hour before I did.”

  “Ace?”

  “Ace van Nes, my other tattooist.”

  “And when you left, you took your car right home?”

  I nodded.

  “Can you show me where it was parked?”

  I frowned. This seemed a bit odd. But who was I to tell the detective how to do his job? Bitsy was in the staff room, and I told her where I was going. She seemed curious, too, but didn’t say anything.

  I usually parked on the sixth level, and that’s where Sylvia and Bernie left the car. Three spaces away from where I had parked the Jeep today.

  “You’re sure about this location?” Flanigan asked, circling the Mercedes that was occupying the spot now.

  I pointed to the row and level sign on the concrete post in front of the Mercedes. “This was it—I know from the sign,” I said.

  Flanigan took out his little notebook and began to make notations. He stooped down, checked the ground, stuck his finger in a spot of oil, and then wiped it off on a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket.

  “Does anyone else have a key to your car?�
� he asked as he went around the front of the Mercedes, inspecting the concrete barrier in front of it.

  “My brother has one,” I said. “But no one else.”

  Finally, he closed the notebook and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He stood, facing me. “I appreciate your time, Miss Kavanaugh.”

  “Brett. You can call me Brett.”

  “Thank you, Miss Kavanaugh.” So much for that. “I’ll be in touch.”

  And he walked over to the elevator, which had just opened, got in, and disappeared as the doors closed on him. What was that all about?

  Considering how the day had started, it ended on a quiet note. I tried Jeff again, but now he wasn’t answering my calls, either. Joel brought back a huge burger from Johnny Rockets and ate it sans bun. I let Bitsy go home early and closed up the shop at eleven. The rest of the mall was shutting down, too—the gates pulled down over the store entrances, the gondolas docked and rocking slowly on the canal.

  I didn’t much like driving Tim’s Jeep. The gearshift was stiff, and I had to press all the way down on the brakes to stop. The air-conditioning wasn’t all that great, either, although tonight it was cool, and I hugged my jean jacket around me as I got out of the Jeep and scurried up the steps to the house.

  It was dark; I didn’t see any sign of Tim’s Impala, so I figured he was off doing cop stuff. I wanted to pick his brain about Flanigan, but it would have to wait.

  I stuck the key in the door and pushed it open. Tim had left the screen door open to the back porch and the air inside was cooler than out. I shed my jacket, threw it over one of the kitchen chairs, and opened the refrigerator, looking for some seltzer and maybe a late-night snack. The Johnny Rockets burger was hours ago now.

  I leaned into the fridge to grab the seltzer off the bottom shelf. As I stood back up, a hand reached around me and shut the door, trapping me against the counter.

  Chapter 10

  I caught my breath and twisted around.

  Jeff Coleman took the bottle from me.

  “Nothing stronger, Kavanaugh?” he teased as he pulled a couple of glasses out of the cupboard.

  “What are you doing in here? How did you get in?”

  He handed me a glass of seltzer. “I have my ways.”

  A few months ago he was going to pick a lock, but we got interrupted so I never saw him actually do it. But because I lived with a cop, I wouldn’t think it would be quite so easy for him to get into our house.

  “What did you really do in the Marines?” I asked. “Were you some sort of covert operative?”

  “You’ve been watching too many movies,” he said, taking a long drink from his own glass. He put it on the counter, then said, “You really don’t have anything stronger?”

  “We’ve got some red wine.”

  He snorted and made a face. “I knew I should’ve brought my own bottle.”

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the Grand Canyon. You couldn’t have made it there and back in the time since I talked to you.”

  We walked over to the living room, where I plopped down on the leather couch and he settled into Tim’s leather recliner.

  “I didn’t go after all,” he said. “After I talked to you, I called the park, and they said the state cops had taken the car. I knew I wouldn’t get anything from them, just some more grief about where I thought my mother was, so I came back.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Maybe I wanted to pick your brain. And I knew you wouldn’t come to me.”

  He had that right.

  “Who’s in your shop?” Jeff’s shop, Murder Ink, was open ’til four a.m.

  “I closed down. I didn’t want the distraction of thinking about it.”

  I studied his face. If he’d closed his shop, then he was seriously concerned about his mother, but his expression didn’t reveal his worry. Jeff Coleman was about ten years older than me, I guessed, in his early forties. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, and the lines in his face told me he’d lived hard. He was a little shorter than me, and wiry. Although in the last months I’d noticed he’d started to bulk up slightly, as if he had started working out. I wasn’t going to ask, though. He’d probably give me grief for noticing.

  So instead I leaned back and told him about Dan Franklin and that I suspected Flanigan thought Sylvia and Bernie might have been witnesses to Lucci’s murder.

  “He said Sylvia asked specifically for Lucci at the wedding chapel,” I said. “Did she ever mention him?”

  Jeff chuckled. “My mother knew a lot of people. She had that shop for a long time and met a lot of crazy characters. So maybe she did know him. Did he have any tattoos other than the spiderweb and the one Joel did?”

  “I don’t know.” But it was worth asking Flanigan. I made a mental note to remember.

  Jeff had closed his eyes, and for a second, I thought he was drifting off to sleep, but then he sat up straight and stared at me.

  “I’ve got an idea, and I hope you’ll keep an open mind.”

  Immediately, I knew I shouldn’t agree to anything.

  “Listen, Kavanaugh, it’s a good idea. So hear me out, okay, before you make up your mind?”

  I didn’t have much choice, so I nodded.

  “Tomorrow, you and I should go over to that wedding chapel.”

  On the surface, it didn’t sound like a horrible idea. I’d toyed with the very same thing all day since talking to Dan Franklin. But I wasn’t prepared for the next proposal.

  “We can pretend we’re getting married. We can ask specific questions, then, maybe meet this Dan Franklin. Find out more about Ray Lucci.”

  My brain was still two sentences behind. “Pretend we’re getting married?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “They’d probably be more willing to talk if we pretend we’re giving them business,” he argued.

  “And Dan Franklin? I already talked to him.”

  “But you never met him, right? He doesn’t know what you look like.”

  I held out my arms, decorated with Monet’s garden and a koi pond. “I’m the painted lady, remember? He may have heard about my tattoos. He may have seen the Web site.”

  Bitsy had set up a Web site for the shop in the last month. I hadn’t been totally on board with it. I liked that we were more exclusive. Bitsy argued that we’d get more business, and since we were in a recession, it wouldn’t hurt. Business hadn’t slacked off at all, but she was hedging her bets. I told her she couldn’t put an e-mail address on the site, just a phone number, because I didn’t want to have to keep checking e-mail. She’d set up a page with some of our designs and photos of Ace, Joel, and me to “give the shop a face.” I hated to admit it, though, Bitsy was right: We had gotten some clients who’d found us on the Internet.

  “It’s not the best picture of you,” Jeff said flatly. “It doesn’t show those glints of gold in your hair.”

  He was teasing me, and I rolled my eyes at him.

  Jeff gave me a sly smile. “If Franklin figures out who you are, say you were intrigued by the idea of getting married there after you talked to him. I’ll go along with it.”

  “So now it’s my idea we’re getting married?” I asked.

  He snickered. “It doesn’t matter whose idea it is, as long as it works.”

  Despite my better judgment, the idea was growing on me. Not marrying Jeff Coleman, but going to That’s Amore to poke around a little. I knew Tim was on the outside on this case, and Flanigan certainly wasn’t going to be very forthcoming. I told myself I was helping a friend find his missing mother. Sylvia was my friend, too, and didn’t I owe her that?

  I stood up and took our empty glasses into the kitchen.

  Jeff followed. “So, Kavanaugh, what do you think?”

  “I think we’d better do this before I change my mind.”

  “You want to go tonight?”

  I looked at the clock. It was one in the morning. While the chapel was probably still open,
I figured I needed a good night’s sleep before I took on this ruse.

  “No. In the morning. I don’t have to be at the shop until noon. Maybe we should meet at ten?” Now that I was on board, I was even organizing our adventure. Go figure.

  Jeff opened his mouth to say something, but the door swung open, and Tim came in. The look of surprise on his face probably matched mine.

  “Hey, well, what do you say?” he asked as he shook Jeff’s hand. Tim looked at me, his eyes asking me what was going on.

  “Jeff has been looking for his mother,” I said. “He came by to see if I’d heard from her.”

  While I’m not usually a good liar, this lie slipped easily off my tongue. I figured I’d rather lie than have Tim think something was going on.

  But from his expression, he knew we were up to no good.

  “Don’t mess in police business,” he said sternly, his eyes moving from me to Jeff. “The best thing you can do for your mother is to let the cops take care of everything.”

  Jeff opened his mouth to say something, then had second thoughts and shut it again, nodding. I took his arm and started steering him toward the door.

  “He was just leaving anyway,” I said.

  Standing in the doorway, Jeff leaned in, whispered, “My shop at ten,” and shuffled out into the darkness.

  I watched him a few seconds, wondering where he’d parked, when Tim came up behind me.

  “Don’t do it,” he said.

  “Do what?” I asked, stepping back and closing the door.

  “Whatever it is he’s planning and has asked you to do.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, busying myself with putting the empty glasses in the dishwasher so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “He doesn’t know where his mother is, does he, Brett?”

  That one I could answer truthfully. I stood up straight and looked him in the eye. “No, he doesn’t. And he’s worried.”

  “He should be,” Tim said, turning away. But I saw something in his face before he did.

  “What do you know?” I asked his back. “You know something.”

  Tim turned around slowly. “You cannot tell Jeff Coleman.”

  “I won’t.”

  “No, really, I mean it. You can’t tell him. Because I don’t think he knows.”