Pretty In Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “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.”
>
  “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.

  An old black rotary phone sat on the desk. Brought back memories as I dialed.

  “The Painted Lady.”

  “Bits, it’s me.”

  “Would you like to make an appointment?” Her voice was crisp, businesslike.

  “Someone’s there?”

  “Tuesday at three sounds fine.”

  This wasn’t very productive.

  “Is it the cops?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re looking for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you talked to Tim?”

  “Yes.”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how mad is he?”

  “Ten o’clock would be good, too.”

  Uh-oh.

  “I guess I shouldn’t go home for a while, huh?”

  “No.”

  “I’m at Chez Tango. With Kyle. He went with me to Trevor’s. Haven’t found Charlotte. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for everything. I really mean it.” I hung up. There was little more I could do.

  I sifted through some papers on the desk. Invoices for booze, electrical bills-those might go down if they had the new lightbulbs-a pawnshop ticket.

  I glanced quickly at the door to make sure Kyle wasn’t coming.

  The pawnshop ticket was from Pawned, the second place I’d visited yesterday and the place where Charlotte had gone. The item listed was a “jeweled pin.” The seller? Trevor McKay. The date on the ticket was two weeks ago. And according to this, he’d gotten a hundred bucks for the brooch.

  I turned the ticket over in my hand, looking for answers. But there was nothing there. I contemplated the office, which somehow seemed smaller today than it had the other night, when I did the drawing for Eduardo.

  Thinking about that sketch, I realized I hadn’t shown my drawing of Rusty Abbott to Kyle. I hadn’t even asked him whether he knew the guy. They may have met at that ball.

  Kyle didn’t have a queen-of-hearts tattoo, though, so he wasn’t one of the guys who’d gone with Abbott to Murder Ink.

  I was so engrossed in my thoughts that I didn’t hear him approach.

  “What do you have there?”

  I jumped. Not like a rabbit, but more like a little jolt. I shoved the pawnshop ticket under a stray piece of paper. “Do you know Rusty Abbott?” I asked.

  Kyle, who had truly morphed into MissTique now with the addition of fake boobs, said, “He works for Lester Fine.”

  “So you know him?”

  “I don’t know him well. I met him at the Queen of Hearts Ball. He came to the club a couple times.”

  “He came to see a show?”

  Kyle nodded.

  “Did he come with Lester Fine?”

  Kyle barked out a laugh. “Girl, Lester Fine wouldn’t be caught dead in my club. He’s running for public office. The headlines would tear him apart.”

  “Did you see Rusty Abbott around here the night Trevor got hit with the cork?”

  He hesitated a second, then said, “I don’t think so.” The light was too lousy to see any real change in his expression.

  “I think it was his truck that was outside earlier,” I said.

  He shrugged. “That was his truck? Then why did you ask me if I knew who it belonged to?” Suspicion crept into his tone.

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I had no idea what I was looking for.

  Kyle sighed. “Brett, you’ve had a long day. You’re tired and looking for conspiracies where they probably don’t exist. Maybe you should just go home now and fess up to your brother that you went out looking for Charlotte and couldn’t find her.”

  He was trying to get rid of me.

  I was ready to be gotten rid of.

  I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but I did know that I suddenly felt very alone here at Chez Tango, and that wasn’t a good thing.

  “You’re right,” I agreed.

  Before I left the dressing room, I turned around. Kyle had followed me out of the office and was standing with his hand on one hip.

  “Thanks for everything.”

  “Will you tell your brother about the money?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think I have to.”

  I started out again.

  “Be careful, Brett,” Kyle said to my back.

  “You, too.” I didn’t turn around. Just kept walking.

  The parking lot was still deserted except for the gold Pontiac and the Honda. As I walked toward Jeff’s car, the key in my hand, I knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  When it hit me, I stopped. Stared.

  All four tires were flat.

  And when I stooped down to check them out, I saw why.

  Someone had slashed them.

  Chapter 32

  I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone except a woman walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. A few cars passed, but no one paid any attention to me or Chez Tango. One guy in a Ferrari did honk his horn and shouted something at the woman, who was now passing the Bright Lights Motel. She gave him the finger, and he sped past.

  I caught her eye for a second, but she just shrugged and kept going. From the looks of her outfit-short, tight dress and stiletto heels-she was probably a working girl. If I asked her whether she’d seen anyone here, she’d most likely give me the finger, too.

  I turned back to the car. Jeff was going to kill me.

  I didn’t have my bag on me, which meant I didn’t have my AAA card. I didn’t have a phone, either.

  I had nothing. Except keys to a car that wasn’t going anywhere. And about fifty bucks, thanks to Bitsy.

  An inspection of Kyle’s Honda indicated that whoever had done this might have been sending me and only me a message. Because the Honda’s tires were intact. Who didn’t want me to leave? Or, more likely, who didn’t want me to keep moving forward with my little amateur investigation?

  I th
ought about asking Kyle if I could borrow his Honda, but considering the state of Jeff’s car, he might not think I was a safe bet. But I had to do something.

  I went back into Chez Tango, pushing open the metal door, hearing it slam behind me with a heavy thud.

  “Who is it?” I heard Kyle call out.

  “It’s just me,” I said loudly as I made my way toward the stage, where Kyle was practicing a dance step. “I need to use your phone again.”

  He curtsied, then shimmied across the stage, his fake bosom shaking.

  “Someone slashed my tires,” I said as I climbed the steps up to the stage floor.

  Kyle stopped short and pulled himself up straight, but his wig wasn’t on properly and it moved by itself into his forehead. He shoved it back. “What do you mean, someone slashed your tires?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “My car?”

  “Is fine,” I told him. “I just need to call a garage to come tow mine.”

  “Mi teléfono es su teléfono,” Kyle said in mangled Spanish. Eduardo should teach him a few phrases.

  I found myself back in the little office. I didn’t have a phone book, but I figured I should face the music, so I called Jeff to see where he’d like me tow his car to.

  “Murder Ink.”

  “Hi, Jeff,” I said, trying to sound casual, but it came out a little funny.

  “Kavanaugh? What’s wrong?” Concern laced his voice. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Well, there seems to be a little problem,” I started.

  “Don’t tell me you crashed my car. Please don’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t crash your car.”

  I heard a heavy sigh of relief. “That’s good.”

  “But someone slashed your tires.”

  A sharp intake of breath. “What?”

  “The car was parked at Chez Tango. I was inside for maybe fifteen minutes. When I went back out, the tires were slashed. I have no idea who did it. Of course I’ll pay for new tires. It was on my watch. So if you just tell me the name of the garage you want me to have it taken to, I’ll get that done right now. I’m really, really sorry about this, Jeff.” The words spilled out faster than water going over a New Orleans levee.