Ink Flamingos (30 page)

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.

T
erri 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 late. 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.

Right. That kiss had driven me crazy.

He wasn’t my type. And he was too old. He had to be at least ten years older than me. He smoked. Or at least he had smoked. His lungs must be black from all that smoking. His nose was a little off-kilter, as though it had been broken at some point, his smile crooked, his eyes a bright blue. So maybe I’d noticed his eyes. How kind they could be. How they flashed when he was angry. How intense they’d been when I’d given him that tattoo under his bullet scar.

His fingers snapped in front of my face.

“I know I swept you off your feet, Kavanaugh, but you’ve got to stay with the program here.”

I made a face at him and swatted his hand away. “Get over yourself,” I said sharply, surprising myself—and him.

Something akin to hurt flooded those blue eyes, but they quickly cleared and he said, “Look over there.”

I looked where he was pointing, and my heart fell.

Terri was giving Ace a kiss on the cheek.

S
o maybe I hadn’t been so off on my original assessment that Ace had something to do with all this. He had access to me and my appointment book. He knew Daisy, how she’d only come to me for a tattoo. Except when she’d gone to Sylvia. Had he known about that, too? Is that why that stencil was tacked up to the wall at Murder Ink?

The question was why. And how was Terri caught up in it? Had he coerced her to do the things she did? Had he romanced her into it?

But why would he kill Daisy? Why would he kill Sherman Potter?

“He’s involved somehow,” Jeff said softly. “I’m sorry.”

I was sorry, too. “He quit, you know.”

Jeff’s head moved so fast, I thought he’d get whiplash. “Why?”

I shrugged. “Said the shop was impeding his creativity. Wants to get his paintings in a gallery.”

“He won’t sell those paintings,” Jeff said. “They’re weird.”

“But galleries like weird,” I countered. I knew that for a fact. From my college days, when I shopped my work around and was told it was too conventional, I should branch out more, experiment a little. That’s when I hooked up with Mickey over at the Ink Spot and started tattooing.

Jeff’s cell phone rang, and he plucked it out of his pocket. “Hello?” he asked, then listened. Finally, he said, “Okay,” and hung up.

“That was Joel. Ann hasn’t left the apartment. He said she’s cleaning it out, bringing stuff down to the Dumpster in the back.”

“So she’s clearing out her sister’s stuff,” I mused. “I wonder if I’ve been wrong about her from the start.”

“But she was with Sherman Potter in that hotel room,” Jeff argued. “And then he was dead. I don’t think she’s completely off the hook.”

It was all too much all of a sudden. My brain flashed on bits and pieces from the last couple of days, and I sank down to the ground, crossing my legs, my head in my hands. I felt Jeff Coleman’s fingers massaging my neck. I didn’t push him away.

“This is a touching scene.”

I lifted my head; Tim was walking toward us. I indicated Terri and Ace, who were now sitting on the edge of a chaise lounge down at the pool, facing away from us. Tim’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Ace?” he asked.

I nodded, wishing fervently it wasn’t so, but with it right there in front of me, I couldn’t deny it.

I scrambled back to my feet. “So what now?” I asked Tim.

“You really think Ace is involved?” he asked, his voice laced with doubt.

I sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want him involved. But the whole thing about clients saying I was canceling appointments, well, he has access to that.”

“He quit,” Jeff said.

Tim frowned. “What?”

I told him how Ace had quit, his reason.

“Those paintings are awful,” Tim said.

Everyone’s a critic.

I don’t know why, but I felt the need to defend Ace’s work. “He’s sold some,” I said.

Ace and Terri got up then. I could sense Tim and Jeff tense up.

“You’re sure that’s the girl you saw at Cleopatra’s Barge?” Tim asked Jeff. So far Terri and Ace were merely standing poolside.

“She came out of the ladies’ room like that. She had to be the one who was dolled up like Brett.”

He said my first name. I stared at him, but he just frowned back at me, like he didn’t realize.

The world was totally spinning in the wrong direction.

Tim took a step forward. “Stay back here,” he instructed. “I’m going to pretend I ran into them by accident. See what they’ve got to say for themselves.” He looked around. “You might want to hang out by those trees over there.”

Jeff and I sauntered over where he’d indicated as Tim went down to the pool. He approached Ace and Terri, who were clearly surprised to see him. He was good, though; his expression was just as surprised, his face animated with a grin as he shook Ace’s hand like guys tend to do sometimes and listened as Ace introduced him to Terri.

“When this is all over, what do you say, Kavanaugh?” Jeff asked, distracting me.

“About what?”

“You and me. Our thing.”

“We do not have a thing.”

“You’re back to that? That wasn’t just a peck on the cheek back there.”

“You said it was a ruse.”

“Ruse or not, well . . .” His voice trailed off.

“You caught me by surprise.” I hoped he couldn’t sense that I’d blushed.

“You caught
me
by surprise,” he whispered, moving closer.

I totally did not have time for this right now. I let my eyes drop, and when I lifted them, I meant to tell him that I wasn’t ready for this. That I didn’t know if I wanted a
thing
.

Instead, I heard a splash, and we both looked over to the pool. Ace and Terri were dashing toward us; Tim was flailing in the pool. Oops.

Jeff stepped out in front of Ace and Terri, who knocked him to the side, and he fell with an “oomph” at my feet. There was no time to say anything, though, before he jumped up and took off after them.

I stood still, uncertain which way to go. Should I go see how Tim was, or should I go with Jeff after Ace and Terri?

My instinct told me to go after Jeff and Ace. That was where the answers lay.