Ink Flamingos

by Karen E. Olson

  I’d started throwing away the ink pots and wiping down my counter when Bitsy appeared in the doorway.

  “He’s here,” she said, as if she were announcing the Prince of Wales.

  Detective Kevin Flanigan hovered behind her, and I was glad he couldn’t see the look of disdain on her face. I plastered a smile on mine.

  “Nice to see you again, Detective.”

  Flanigan had always been a dapper dresser, but it seemed that perhaps he’d gone even classier with the Armani suit that hugged his narrow shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back neatly, not a tendril out of place. A few wrinkles around his eyes proved that perhaps he did smile now and then, but usually not when he spoke to me.

  His mouth was set in a grim line, so I supposed he wasn’t going to break his record today.

  Patty tapped him on the shoulder, and Flanigan stepped aside to let her into the room. She handed me the mirror with a broad grin and said, “It’s fantastic.”

  I saw Flanigan’s eyes move down to her lower back. Her T-shirt was rolled up just under her breasts and her sweatpants had been lowered slightly so they wouldn’t smudge the tattoo. A flicker of a smile, just a flicker, and then it was gone. So he was human after all. Just not with me.

  I cocked my head toward him. “Can you wait just a few? I have to finish up here. Bitsy can show you the schedule; you know the drill.” He’d come around checking on me before.

  Without a word, Flanigan gave a short nod, and Bitsy led him to the front desk while I gave Patty her instructions for aftercare of the tattoo. I smoothed some Tattoo Goo on it, then covered it with a large bandage so her pants wouldn’t chafe it. When we were done, I followed her out to the sleek mahogany desk where Bitsy would take her payment.

  I indicated Flanigan should follow me back down the hall to the office across from the staff room. Once there, I shut the door and went around the less sleek desk and sat.

  “What do you need to know?” I asked bluntly.

  Flanigan sat in the uncomfortable metal folding chair across from me. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees, his expression blank.

  “Miss Hendricks showed me your schedule for today.”

  “I was here all day.”

  “So it seems.”

  “So that should be that, right?”

  “Not so fast.”

  I should’ve guessed. Flanigan wouldn’t have come all the way out here so soon after Daisy’s body was discovered just to find out whether I’d been in my shop all day. I had no idea what he was after, so I waited.

  “I understand Miss Carmichael was a client of yours.”

  I nodded. “For the last two years. I did all her tattoos.” When I realized what I’d said, I quickly added, “Except for that color on the flamingo. I did the black, but I never did color.”

  “Why not?”

  “She told me she was allergic to red dye. Found out when she took an ibuprofen when she was younger. She was really nervous about any sort of tattoo color, because she thought she’d have a bad reaction to it.” I remembered the first time Daisy had come in, adamant about not having any color. She had done her homework. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not regulate tattoo ink. Anything can be in it, and no one would be the wiser. There are a lot of metals and mercury, especially in red and yellow inks, and I always warn my clients that if they’ve got any sort of nickel allergy, they shouldn’t get red or yellow. We take an elaborate medical history, like they do at the doctor’s office, and make our clients sign a waiver so we’re covered just in case someone has a reaction and tries to come after us.

  “What would a reaction look like?” Flanigan asked, and I knew he wasn’t expressing mere curiosity from the way he asked.

  “It’s easier to show you,” I said. “Hold on.” I left the room and went into the staff room, where Joel was picking at a salad. He’d been on Weight Watchers, then the Atkins Diet, and was now trying the South Beach Diet on for size.

  “What’s up?” Joel put his fork down, and his expression said he hoped I would stick around and keep him company. Maybe eat the salad for him so he wouldn’t have to.

  I grabbed my laptop and swung it under my arm. “Have to get back to the detective,” I said apologetically.

  “Oh, right. What does he want now?”

  “He’s asking about reactions to tattoos and inks.” I indicated the laptop. “Figured I’d pull up some Google images for him.”

  “Have you ever thought about that citizens police academy?” He was totally serious.

  I made a face and rolled my eyes at him as I left. Flanigan hadn’t moved, or at least it looked as if he hadn’t. Nothing looked out of place, so I couldn’t tell if he’d snooped while I was gone. I put the laptop on the desk and powered it up, bringing up Google and my search. When the images popped up, I turned the laptop around and showed them to him.

  “Someone could get an infection because of the inks or because of a bad tattooist,” I explained as he examined an image of a tattoo that we couldn’t even identify because of the infection.

  “So you can’t tell which?” Flanigan asked, reaching into his breast pocket. He pulled out an iPhone and tapped the screen a couple times before holding it out toward me.

  It looked like what we were looking at on the laptop: a distorted tattoo that was bright red with little hivelike bumps.

  I frowned. “What’s this?”

  “This was a tattoo Miss Carmichael had.”

  Chapter 4

  She’d most definitely had a reaction—the reaction she’d feared.

  “This isn’t the flamingo,” I mused.

  Flanigan shook his head. “You can’t tell if this would be caused by the ink?”

  “Can I see it more closely?” I asked.

  He did one better than that. He zoomed in and showed me how to move the picture around so I could see all of it up close and personal-like. But all I knew was it was a reaction to the tattoo. I said as much as I handed him back the phone.

  “Where was it?” I asked.

  “Where was what?”

  “That tattoo.”

  “Where on her body, you mean?”

  I bit my lip before saying something smart-alecky. “That’s right.”

  “On her left breast.”

  I knew every tattoo on Daisy’s body, and as far as I knew, she didn’t have a tattoo on her breast. She had them on her arms, on her upper back and lower back, on her ankle, on her wrist, on the side of her torso. But none on her breast. And none in color. Except now the flamingo and this, well, it was an abomination. And any tattooist that did that should be stripped of his inks.

  Unless of course it was the ink.

  “Why do you think Miss Carmichael would go to another tattooist if she’d trusted you to do all her other tattoos?” Flanigan asked.

  It was a loaded question. I had to make sure I didn’t sound bitter about being usurped, even though I was feeling rather insecure about it at the moment. If she’d stuck with me, she wouldn’t have gotten such a botched tattoo. Maybe she would still be alive.

  The jury was still out on how she died, though. “Was she murdered?” I asked, ignoring his question.

  “Is it possible to have an allergic reaction to the colored inks any time?” he asked, ignoring mine.

  I understood what he was asking and nodded. “I’m not a medical expert on this or anything, but it’s possible that she wouldn’t have a reaction to the flamingo color and think that it would be okay to have another tattoo done with color but end up with a reaction on that one.” That had happened with one of Ace’s clients about a year ago, but he hadn’t died or anything.

  Flanigan put the phone back in his breast pocket. “I would appreciate some help, if you will.”

  Flanigan asking for my help? Had something gone askew in the world? Had the earth slipped off its axis?

  “I would ask you to keep your ear to the ground. If you hear of any tattoo artist who may have done this, I
would ask you to call me immediately.”

  I forced myself not to bristle at the insinuation that every tattooist knows every other tattooist in the city. It was like insinuating that I knew every other person of Irish descent in the city just because my last name happened to be Kavanaugh.

  And then I remembered Jeff Coleman. Jeff owned Murder Ink, a street shop up near Fremont Street. He did know everyone. He’d been working in this city his entire career and would be a better source for the cops than me. But I didn’t want to tell Flanigan that. It would be easier if I asked Jeff to help me.

  Jeff Coleman and I had a complicated relationship. It had morphed from totally disliking each other to grudgingly respecting each other to a weird sort of friendship. He gave me the koi tattoo on my arm, and I tattooed “That’s Amore” on his shoulder, below a scar from a bullet he’d taken for me.

  “I can do that,” I told Flanigan, escorting him back out to the front of the shop.

  He paused for a second, staring at the Odalisque.

  “It’s for sale,” Bitsy piped up, ever the saleswoman.

  Flanigan flashed a rare smile at her. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He turned to me. “We’ll be in touch.” And then he pushed the glass door open and went out, strolling along the canal, giving a short salute to the gondolier guiding a couple of tourists who were trying to forget that they couldn’t afford a trip to the real Venice and so were living vicariously through the Venetian’s illusion.

  “What was that about?” Bitsy asked.

  I told her about the conversation. “Neither he nor Tim would tell me how Daisy died, so I’m not sure what happened exactly. All they want to do is pick my brain about tattoos.”

  “Do you think that botched tattoo could’ve killed her? Do you think she died from the allergy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, although it had crossed my mind, too. “Remember Ace’s client? He had that reaction the second time, not the first.” I remembered my promise to Flanigan. “I’m going to give Jeff Coleman a call and see if he’s heard anything about this.”

  “Good idea.” Bitsy knew Jeff had connections. “But you might want to start a little closer to home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bitsy cocked her head toward Joel’s room, where we could hear his tattoo machine whirring. “He knows a lot of people, too. You know, Brett, I think he feels bad that you rely a lot on Jeff when you could just go to him.”

  Ouch.

  “I’ll do that,” I promised. I was making a lot of promises today, and it wasn’t much past noon.

  “Oh, and the good doctor called.”

  She was referring to Dr. Colin Bixby. We’d been dating pretty steadily for the last month. We had a little bit of a checkered history, what with me thinking he might be a murderer at one point and him deciding that I might be a bit crazy because of that. But we kept running into each other, so we decided we’d give it another go. He’d been getting a little more serious lately—clearly an indication that either he didn’t think I was crazy anymore or he did and didn’t care—but while I enjoyed his company and his extreme good looks, I wasn’t quite there yet.

  I shrugged nonchalantly and said, “I’ll call him later.”

  Bitsy shot me a look that told me she thought I should call him right now, but I pretended I didn’t notice.

  I had a couple of stencils to work on, but as I sat at the light table with my pencil in my hand, my brain started a little slide show of Daisy’s appearances here at the shop. She was a petite girl, with a mop of bleached blond hair and thick black mascara and eyeliner on a face that would’ve been too wholesome without it. She had a quick smile and a deep laugh that didn’t seem to fit with her size. When she asked me to tattoo the small flowers in the flamingo’s wings for each of her bandmates, she said she owed them everything, although personally, I didn’t think any of them had nearly as much talent as Daisy did.

  I had started to get a little too misty thinking about her when my cell phone rang. I picked it up off the light table and saw a familiar number.

  “Hey, Jeff.”

  “It’s all over the news. She’s your client, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, Kavanaugh.” Six months ago, I wouldn’t have heard the empathy in his voice; I’d only have heard how he never called me by my first name. Except once.

  “Thanks.” I thought about what Bitsy had said about Joel, but it wouldn’t matter if I had two people helping me, would it? “Someone gave her a pretty botched tattoo right before she died.”

  “I heard it was a tall redhead.”

  I froze. “How did you hear that?”

  Jeff chuckled. “Kavanaugh, you know better than to ask.”

  “Oh, that’s right: If you tell me, you’d have to kill me.”

  “Something like that.” He paused a second. “So I assume since you’re answering your cell phone that you’re not being held without bond. Or am I talking to you in your jail cell?”

  I snorted, and he laughed.

  “Okay, so you’re not getting tight with some prison cellmate. Too bad. That sort of fantasy could last me awhile.”

  I had to totally change the subject.

  “Do you know a blogger named Ainsley Wainwright?”

  “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

  “So you do know her?”

  “She e-mailed me about a month ago, wanted to take pictures of my mother.”

  Sylvia Coleman was one of the women pioneers in the tattooing business. She had retired and left Jeff the business, but she hung around all the time because she wasn’t exactly the knitting and traveling type. She was covered head to toe in tattoos; each one had its own story, and I’d heard them all.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said. “Your mother is the stuff legends are made of. Did she ever come by to take the pictures?”

  “No. My mother refused. How did she put it? Oh, yeah: I won’t let myself be exploited in that way.”

  Good for her.

  “So you’ve never met her?” Jeff was asking. “Ainsley Wainwright, that is.”

  “I never even saw her blog until today,” I admitted. “Why?”

  Jeff was quiet for a moment, and I waited. I started to have a bad feeling about this.

  “She’s got pictures of you. On her blog.”

  Chapter 5

  Pictures of me? On a blog?

  “You didn’t see them?” Jeff asked.

  “I only saw that picture of Daisy’s flamingo, which was the latest post. It threw me for a loop. I didn’t even look at anything else on the blog.” I’d left the laptop in the office when I’d been in there with Flanigan. I held the phone to my ear as I left the staff room and went out into the hall.

  Bitsy was sitting with her back to me at the front desk. Joel was still with a client, and Ace was who knew where. Probably at that oxygen bar, Breathe, a little ways down the walkway along the canal. He was addicted to the aromatherapy oxygen. But I supposed it could be worse.

  I went into the office and shut the door. A small lamp on the desk was the only light source. I flipped up the laptop and saw it was asleep. I hit the POWER button and the picture of the infected tattoo came up on the screen.

  “Have you ever heard of anyone dying from an infected tattoo?” I asked Jeff.

  “No. Is that how she died?”

  “I have no idea. No one would tell me how she died.” There. There was the blog. I scrolled down, but didn’t see any pictures of me. “Where are these pictures?” I asked.

  “You have to go back a couple weeks. I thought you knew.”

  “Do you check this blog regularly?” I asked, hitting the link for all the posts for the past month.

  “Never heard of it until she contacted my mother. It’s not exactly remarkable. There are others like it. Better, actually.”

  I agreed.

  “You haven’t found it yet?” Impatience laced his voice.

  “Keep your p
ants on,” I said without thinking. Uh-oh.

  “Are you sure about that, Kavanaugh?” Teasing replaced the impatience. “I could—”

  “I got it.” While I was glad I could interrupt Jeff, I was stunned by what I was seeing.

  Under a title that read “Sin City’s Famous Painted Lady,” Ainsley Wainwright had posted not one, not two, but about ten pictures of me in various locations. Walking along the canal outside my shop, looking in the window at a pair of shoes at Kenneth Cole, holding a cup of gelato in St. Mark’s Square, with Joel outside the Walgreens on the sidewalk.

  In every picture, my tattoos were prominent: the half sleeve with the Japanese koi wrapped in a sea of greens and blues; Monet’s water lily garden on the other arm; a close-up of Napoleon riding his horse up the Alps on my calf—an homage to Jacques-Louis David, my favorite painter; the Celtic cross on my upper back—why did I wear a halter top?—and she’d even zoomed in on the head of the dragon that came up over the low scoop neck of my tank top.

  I felt violated.

  I had not given this woman permission to take my picture and put it on this blog. I hadn’t been aware of any cameras in my vicinity at any time. I would not have given permission even if I’d known. I was a walking advertisement for my shop, but I did not like the idea of being exploited.

  Which was exactly why Sylvia had said no to her when Ainsley had asked to put pictures of her up on the blog.

  “You take a nice picture,” Jeff said, as though he knew what I was thinking and wanted to make it a little better.

  It didn’t work.

  “Do you think I can sue her?”

  “Probably not,” Jeff admitted.

  “Can I make her take down the pictures?”

  “Probably. But you realize once something’s on the Internet, it never really goes away.”

  “That’s not exactly reassuring,” I said.

  “It’s the truth. Listen, Kavanaugh, would love to shoot the crap with you all afternoon, but I’ve got a client coming in. Stop up later if you want to see how an expert really works.” He barked a short laugh and hung up.