Ink Flamingos

by Karen E. Olson

  “They’re known for that here,” Jeff said as if he saw that sort of thing every day.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, the hostess—a tall, painfully thin woman wearing a little slip of a dress—surveyed us with pursed lips.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have any tables available,” she said haughtily.

  I took a glance around. I saw three tables that were vacant. It was most likely our jeans and tattoos that were turning her off.

  Jeff wasn’t about to be turned away, however.

  “Tell the chef Jeff Coleman is here,” he snapped.

  She stood there, uncertain what to do.

  “Now,” Jeff growled.

  She scurried off.

  “Do you really know the chef?” I asked, impressed. If I’d been alone or with anyone else, I would’ve been back climbing those stairs and looking for another place to eat.

  “Did all his tattoos,” Jeff said flatly.

  We watched the woman rappelling down the wine case until we heard the hostess’s heels clicking on the wood floor, a fake smile spread across her face now.

  “Mr. Coleman, we have a table ready right over here,” she said, picking up two menus and leading the way. When we were seated, she said in a tight voice, “Richard will be out shortly.” The chef, I guess.

  I realized I was famished. So I didn’t get to see the Flamingos, but this was much better. My mouth watered as I perused the menu. Jeff reached over and took it out of my hands before I was finished, though.

  “Hey!”

  He put the menus down. “I know what you’ll like.”

  “Really?” I asked, my back up.

  He chucked. “Really,” he said. “You know, Kavanaugh, you need to lighten up.”

  “I’ve got mobs chasing me, wanting my head for something I didn’t do,” I said grumpily. “I think I can be wound a little tight.”

  “Which is why we need some wine.”

  The waiter hovered, and Jeff ordered an Australian Malbec and a French chardonnay. And then he said, “The chef knows what I want.” The waiter nodded and shuffled off.

  “I thought you didn’t like wine,” I said, still a little snippy but not quite as much.

  “It’s got its place,” he said. “Now you need to call Tim and tell him what happened.”

  Obediently, I pulled out my phone. The hostess gave me a dirty look. “Maybe I should take it outside,” I said, scrambling to my feet and spotting an elevator. Much better than those stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

  I left him just as the waiter came with the wine. Watching Jeff Coleman taste wine was an image I figured I could live without. Too sophisticated, somehow.

  Once I emerged from the elevator, I stood in the little alcove and punched in Tim’s number. This time he did pick up.

  “You stole a Hummer?” he asked loudly,incredulously.

  “A Hummer limo,” I corrected.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  I told him about the mob of people coming after me. The broken beer bottle. The limo driver who lunged at me, and how Jeff had flipped him. I told him about the security guard locking us out after we’d seen a tall redhead. I went through the story backward, until I got to the beginning.

  “You arrested Sherman Potter?” I asked. “So he really did it?”

  “Where are you now?” he asked, totally ignoring me.

  “Having dinner with Jeff.”

  “So you steal a Hummer—excuse me, Hummer limo—and leave it at the Excalibur and then go out to dinner? You’re not having that medieval meal, are you?”

  “No. We were hungry. What’s this about Sherman Potter? He killed her, right? Tell me that it’ll be in the papers and no one will come after me again about Daisy.” I really needed this to be over.

  “We found his fingerprints at the scene.”

  I smiled. Outwardly. A woman walking by smiled back. Maybe I’d be able to have a nice dinner after all.

  “Problem is, Brett, the limo driver wants to press charges against you and Jeff. It would be better if you came in now and we could settle this.”

  Chapter 30

  I didn’t want to. Turn myself in, that is. And I was pretty sure I could speak for Jeff, too.

  “He came after me,” I said. “Those kids can tell you that.”

  “They said you went after him.”

  “You talked to them?”

  “We got statements, yes. The limo driver called 911 immediately.”

  This wasn’t good.

  “If we come in, do you think we’ll get thrown in the slammer or will we be able to walk out after giving our own statements?” I asked.

  “Thrown in the slammer?” I could hear the amusement in Tim’s voice. “Brett, if you and Jeff come in now, we can see if we can smooth this out.”

  “Can we have dinner first?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get Jeff to agree to this so easily.”

  “Get a doggie bag, Brett, and get over here.”

  I closed my phone as I made my way back down the stairs, eschewing the elevator for a little more time to think about how to get Jeff out of here and over to the station. When I reached the table, the chef was sitting with Jeff, a plate full of assorted appetizers in front of them. Both looked up, smiling, when I approached. Jeff’s smile faded when he saw my expression.

  I didn’t want to say anything in front of the chef, so I shook his hand and listened to his description of the appetizers. When he came to the foie gras, I pushed Tim’s admonishing voice out of my head and reached for it, savoring its smoothness and washing it down with a little Malbec. Jeff watched me with a touch of a smile at the corner of his lips. I made a face at him and finished the foie gras, noticing that he’d already had a piece.

  When the chef went on to make his rounds among the other diners, I leaned forward and whispered, “We have to go to the police station.”

  “Why?”

  I told him about the limo driver. “Tim seems to think that we can settle this quickly, if we go right now.”

  Jeff indicated the appetizers. “But we’ve just started dinner.”

  “I tried that excuse, but he wasn’t buying it.”

  He leaned back in his chair and studied me a second. “I’ll meet you there, if you really want to go now.”

  There was no use in trying to talk to him about this. I’d told Tim.

  “Dinner could be at least two hours,” I said, aware that my resolve had lost a lot of steam. “I really don’t want to end up getting arrested or anything.”

  Jeff grinned. “Your brother is an LVPD detective. You really think you’ll get arrested?”

  I felt my face flush as anger rose in my chest. “You think that’s some sort of GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card? Having a detective for a brother? He’d be so quick to throw me in jail, you have no idea.”

  Jeff’s eyes settled on my face, and I squirmed a little. Then he said, “Okay.” He motioned for the waiter. “Can you wrap up our meals for us? We have to go. Please tell the chef we’re sorry.”

  The waiter looked a little flustered, but scurried off.

  “Thanks,” I said softly.

  “You’ll thank me when you can finally eat your dinner,” he said.

  We only waited a few minutes before the waiter came out carrying fancy to-go bags tied with ribbons. They looked like Christmas packages, not a five-star meal. I poured myself another quick glass of Malbec and downed it. Jeff grinned. “We could take that, too.”

  Vegas, home of the open container.

  We left the bottles on the table. Somehow showing up at police headquarters with open bottles of wine didn’t really seem like the right thing to do.

  Once we reached Mandalay Bay’s entrance, we realized something. We didn’t have a car. Sure, we could take the monorail back to the Excalibur, walk the footbridge over Tropicana Boulevard to New York New York, walk the other footbridge to the MGM, then take the monorail from there up to Harrah’s and fetch Jeff�
��s car from the Venetian valet, but it would probably take us longer to do that than it would’ve to finish our dinner.

  So we had the doorman get us a cab.

  I was reminded a little of last night, when Harry and I had gotten that cab, and that flash going off. But there were no flashes tonight, I was with Jeff Coleman, we weren’t drunk on absinthe, and I was pretty sure he was going to keep his hands to himself.

  He was looking at me with an amused smile. “Taking a trip down memory lane, Kavanaugh?”

  I wished he couldn’t read my mind quite so well. The bags with the food were tucked at our feet, the smell wafting up. That piece of foie gras hadn’t been enough. My stomach growled, and Jeff reached over and pulled out a container, opening it to reveal perfectly cooked rack of lamb. He pulled one out by its bone and handed it to me.

  “Bon appetit.”

  We munched on the lamb.

  “Your friend’s a great cook,” I said, my mouth half full.

  “I know.”

  The police station came up a lot faster than I expected. The cabdriver, to his credit, made no comment about our destination or the fact that we were having a gourmet meal in the back. We shoved the empty container back in the fancy bag and scrambled out; Jeff handed the cabbie some money. I tried to pay him for my half, but he waved me off.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “But I didn’t pay for dinner, either,” I said, realizing then that I hadn’t seen a check come to the table.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said again, pushing the door to the station open and letting me go through first.

  Once we identified ourselves, we were led upstairs by a uniformed cop. He’d done a quick double take when he saw me—Tim and I were virtual carbon copies of each other—but then basically ignored me.

  Tim was waiting in an interrogation room. His eyebrows rose high in his forehead when he saw the bags. Jeff put them on the stainless steel table and opened them, taking out one of the plastic containers.

  “Steak?” he asked, lifting the top off.

  The scent of charred meat drifted into the air, and my stomach growled again, despite the rack of lamb. Tim’s stomach didn’t growl, but he looked longingly at the steak.

  “Maybe later,” he said, having much more self control than I did.

  Jeff sat, pulled out a plastic fork and knife, and began to cut up the steak and eat it as though we weren’t in a police department interrogation room but back at that fancy restaurant. Tim looked at me, and I shrugged. I wasn’t Jeff Coleman’s keeper, regardless of what Tim thought.

  “So what’s going on with that limo driver?” I asked. “Is he really pressing charges?”

  “He says Jeff assaulted him.”

  Jeff kept on eating.

  “Only after the guy started coming after me,” I said, recounting the scene, explaining how the driver had said I was a murderer.

  Something in Tim’s expression made me take pause.

  “Have you been on a computer since I talked to you on the phone?”

  I frowned. “What, are you kidding me? I was at the restaurant. Jeff and I caught a cab and came over here. Why would you think I was on a computer?”

  Tim sighed. “Someone posted on that Ink Flamingos blog. The one that you’re supposedly writing.”

  I caught my breath. This was not going to be good.

  “It said you’re going to get away with murder, because you planted Sherman Potter’s fingerprints at the scene.”

  Chapter 31

  It was possible that whoever was impersonating me actually had planted those fingerprints. But it certainly wasn’t me. I said as much to Tim.

  “I know that, but it throws a wrench into everything. Because now Potter’s lawyer is shouting about how he was framed, and this blogger is saying she did it, and now he’s demanding that Potter be released immediately because he’s falsely accused.”

  “The fingerprints are his, though, right?”

  Tim nodded. “But that doesn’t matter. There’s someone out there implying that he was framed.”

  And that someone was me. Or someone posing as me.

  I started to worry that I was going to end up arrested for all this. “Am I in trouble, Tim?” I asked, my voice so soft I could barely hear it myself.

  Jeff’s head shot up, and he put down his fork. The steak was history.

  “She was with me the whole time,” he told Tim. “She didn’t post anything on any blog.”

  Tim nodded. “I know that. But it’s possible Potter will get released based on that.”

  “So we’ll have the real murderer wandering around,” I muttered, “but everyone will still think it’s me.” I had another thought. “Do you think Potter has an accomplice? Someone who posted that blog while he was in here just so he could get out?”

  Tim ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. “It’s possible. Or whoever’s writing that blog really is the murderer and is setting Potter up.”

  “Can’t you trace that blog back to whoever is posting ?” Jeff asked.

  “I’m not a computer guy,” Tim said. “But we’ve got people on it.”

  Which basically meant: I have no idea. That was not reassuring. At least, though, I didn’t seem to be a suspect, but I didn’t like that someone was out there, impersonating me.

  Which reminded me . . .

  “What about Ainsley Wainwright?” I asked.

  “She’s dead, Brett,” Tim reminded me.

  I made a face at him. “I know that, but this new lead singer for the Flamingos, well, the band told me her last name is Wainwright, too. And I’m almost positive I saw her at the arena. She’s a redhead, too. What if she’s the one posting on the blog? What if she picked up the slack for the dead Ainsley Wainwright?”

  “You saw her?”

  I closed my eyes and could see the red hair. “Yes,” I said, although I wasn’t a hundred percent sure.

  “Potter said he hasn’t seen her since this morning. Said she never showed for the concert tonight.”

  “That’s right. That’s what the girls said, too. But then when we were leaving, I’m pretty sure I saw her. And then that security guard led us outside and shut the door behind us.” The more I thought about it, the more I thought it had to have been Ainsley. And she was probably in on it with Potter. She’d been on intimate terms with him. Which made me think of something else. I quickly told him about what the girls in the band had told us, how Sherman Potter had threatened to take Daisy for all she was worth and how Daisy had come out here early because she was going to confront Sherman about that.

  Tim was jotting it all down in a little notebook. Jeff was strangely quiet, just listening and watching. The food containers were packed neatly into the bags again.

  A small knock sounded. Tim reached over and pulled the door open to let Detective Kevin Flanigan in. Flanigan nodded at Jeff and me and indicated he wanted to talk to Tim. Outside. Out of earshot.

  They left the room and shut the door behind them. Jeff leaned back in his chair and swung his legs up on top of the table, like he owned the place.

  “I saw her, too,” he said.

  That’s right. He’d said so earlier.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to Tim? Back me up?” I asked.

  “Because you wouldn’t shut up,” he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  I made a face at him. “You could’ve interrupted. It’s not like you haven’t done that before.”

  “You are so easy to get to,” he said, chuckling.

  Tim and Flanigan came back in, saving me from having to say something I might regret.

  “You’re free to go,” Flanigan said.

  “The limo driver won’t press charges?” I asked.

  “No, but you’d better get out of here before he changes his mind.”

  Jeff pushed his seat back and stood up. I started for the door, then turned around. “We don’t have a car. We took a cab over here. Our cars are at the Ven
etian.”

  Flanigan nodded at Tim, who said, “Okay, I’ll take you over there. I’m off shift anyway.” From the way he said it, I wasn’t so sure about that. I remembered how Flanigan wanted me to keep my ear to the ground. Tim could grill me further at home. I was tired, though, so he wouldn’t get too much out of me. Not that I knew anything more anyway.

  I was so exhausted I nodded off in the car. Jeff nudged me a little when we got to the Venetian, and I realized my car was up in the garage and it was late and I didn’t want to go up there alone. Tim was one step ahead of me.

  “I’ll take you up to your car, and you can follow me home,” he said.

  Jeff took his packages, even though I didn’t think there was any food left, and got out of the car. He leaned in the window and said, “I’ll check in with you tomorrow,” and went off to find the valet who’d bring him his car.

  Even though the food was gone, the scent lingered. My stomach growled.

  “Jeff ate all our food,” I muttered as Tim drove his Jeep into the self-parking garage. “Fourth level,” I directed.

  It was after midnight now, but there were still plenty of cars in the garage. They probably belonged to the gamblers who were trying their hands at the tables and slot machines. I spotted my red Mustang Bullitt up ahead. I’d been a little leery of driving the car after I found the body of Jeff Coleman’s half brother in the trunk. But my love for my car superseded any creepy feeling I might have—that, and the fact that I didn’t want to spend any money on a new car right now. Unbeknownst to Tim, I was trying to save up for my own place.

  I’d been living with him for two years now, and I’d started to think that it was time. Time to grow up and be a little more independent. I’d been checking out condos and townhouses up in Summerlin near Red Rock Canyon; if I were going to live anywhere, it would have to be at the foot of those magnificent mountains. But so far, I hadn’t told anyone of my plans. My mother would say it was silly—why not just stay with my brother, unless I was going to get married. Tim would get those little lines next to his eyes as he stressed out about how he’d pay the mortgage. But I knew something. I knew that he really didn’t need me to help with that. He was just being cheap. Jeff would say something smart-alecky, and I didn’t want to deal with him. Bitsy and Joel, well, I should tell them, but I was settled into the idea of just doing it and then springing it on everyone like a surprise.