Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  She turned her face up to meet his, but I slid out from under his hand. I didn’t want him to think I’d welcome a kiss, too. Our relationship had moved forward, but not that much.

  He gave me a wink, and I told myself it wasn’t because he was reading my mind but because he was happy to see his mother.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Bernie shook his head. “In a minute.”

  I tugged on Jeff’s sleeve and pulled him away from the table, out of earshot.

  “Your mother says you’re taking them to Rosalie’s? What’s up with that? They need to talk to Detective Flanigan. With a little prodding, maybe they’ll remember something that could help solve Ray Lucci’s murder. And I thought Rosalie was at work, anyway.” I wasn’t in the mood to tell him about my little visit to the university yet.

  Jeff sighed and ran a hand across his salt-and-pepper buzz cut. “I get it, Kavanaugh. You want me to do the right thing. But I am doing the right thing. Trust me.”

  “I don’t see how it’s the right thing,” I argued.

  Jeff hesitated a second, looking toward his mother and then back to me.

  “I’m taking them to Rosalie. Not her place. She’s at the hospital. Her husband got clipped by a car. Not sure if he’s going to pull through.”

  Chapter 27

  I could barely concentrate on work. I felt the machine in my hand as I tattooed a young man’s calf with the image of his pet dog, but I was on autopilot. The dog was one of those little ones, the ones that look like hairless rats, which didn’t help my state of mind because I kept thinking about Dan Franklin and that dead rat in my car and Lou Marino getting hit by a car and being almost run over myself in the parking lot at the university.

  I wondered whether he’d gotten hit while Bitsy and I were over there talking to Rosalie.

  There had to be a connection with what was going on with the That’s Amore Dean Martins, and as soon as I got home, I’d talk to Tim about it. For about a nanosecond I considered calling Flanigan, but then it would’ve been all official and everything, and I might’ve not been able to get that good night’s sleep I was hoping for.

  It had been a long day.

  But before I went home, I wanted to stop by the hospital to check on Lou Marino and see how Rosalie was holding up.

  Granted, considering her black eye, I supposed I shouldn’t be concerned about her husband, but it was the right thing to do. Sister Mary Eucharista was urging me on.

  And sure, I could’ve called Jeff Coleman instead, but when I tried, his phone just rang and rang.

  Bitsy was wiping down Joel’s room. Joel had left half an hour ago; his last client hadn’t taken as long as mine. Ace was long gone.

  “Are you almost done?” I asked.

  Bitsy looked up. She was standing on her stool, the one she dragged around with her to reach those places she couldn’t, as she cleaned up Joel’s ink pots.

  “Just your room left,” she said.

  “I already did it,” I said, and a grateful smile crossed her face. She’d had as long a day as I’d had, and I wanted to give her a break.

  I surveyed how much she had left to do in here and silently joined her, putting the needle bar in the autoclave, wiping down Joel’s client chair, collecting the trash and putting a new liner in the can. The room was, as Mary Pop-pins would say, spit spot in no time.

  We got our stuff from the staff room and went out front, where I locked the glass front doors, then pulled the gate down and locked that, too. The rest of the mall shops were locking up, as well. Time to turn into a pumpkin.

  I left Bitsy at her MINI Cooper, which she’d had outfitted to accommodate her size. I wished I could fit into one of those comfortably, but it was a lost cause.

  We said our good-byes. I could see the weariness in the lines around her eyes. Mine probably looked the same, and I wondered whether I shouldn’t head straight home, but once I got into the Jeep and pulled out onto the Strip, the lights flashing across the windshield, I got a second wind.

  Jeff had said Lou Marino had been taken to University Medical Center, so I pointed the Jeep in that direction.

  I told myself I wasn’t going over there hoping for a glimpse of Colin Bixby.

  He worked in the emergency room there, when he wasn’t teaching classes at the university.

  He probably wasn’t working tonight anyway.

  The parking garage was all lit up like a Christmas tree. I found a space and parked, heading down to the hospital entrance, where I pushed my way in through the heavy doors and stepped up to the information desk.

  An older woman with bright white hair and too much makeup scowled at me. “May I help you?” She so obviously did not want to help me.

  “I understand a friend”—okay, he wasn’t my friend, but his wife was a client and his in-laws were friends—“was brought in here earlier. Lou Marino. He got hit by a car.”

  Her fingers were already moving on her computer keyboard. After a second, she looked up at me. “Are you family?”

  I was too tired to lie. “A friend of the family. I really want to say hello to them. See how they’re doing. See if they need anything.”

  “I can’t let anyone up who’s not family,” she said curtly, turning back to her computer.

  I stood there, shifting from one foot to the next. I didn’t want to leave yet, and it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that I would still have to pay five dollars for an hour of parking even if I was here only ten minutes.

  Well, maybe that did have something to do with it.

  “Is there any way I can get word to them?” I persisted.

  The woman rolled her eyes at me. She didn’t even pretend to hide it.

  “You’re not family,” she said flatly.

  I tried the only other thing I could think of. “Dr. Colin Bixby, is he on shift tonight?” I kicked myself for even asking, but he might be able to actually tell me something if he was here.

  She rolled her eyes again. I pretended not to notice.

  After a minute, she picked up the phone and spoke so softly I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I didn’t want to know what she was saying. Finally, she put her hand over the receiver and asked brusquely, “Name?”

  “Brett Kavanaugh.”

  She went back to her phone, then hung it up and pointed behind me. “He’ll meet you outside the emergency room.”

  Which was all the way around the building. I trudged along the sidewalk and finally saw the bright lights streaming out onto the pavement. Colin Bixby stepped out from behind a shadow.

  “Twice in one day? And you’re now harassing the staff?”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was teasing me.

  “I could file a restraining order against you, you know.” I saw the smile then, the one he tried not to show.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said. “I didn’t know what else to do.” I told him about trying to see how Lou Marino was doing and wanting to see Rosalie.

  “They told me you were asking about a patient,” he said. “But I don’t know why you asked to see me.”

  “You’re the only doctor I know over here. I didn’t know if you’d be here.”

  “So you figured dropping my name would get you in?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  He ran a hand through his dark, spiky hair. Even in the shadows he was hot. I felt I needed to say something.

  “I’m sorry, you know, about before.”

  He gave a short laugh. “You mean when you thought I was going to kill you?”

  “I was sort of a mess then,” I said.

  “No kidding.” From his tone, I could tell he thought I was still a mess.

  “A lot had gone on.”

  He nodded, his hands in the pockets of his white lab coat now. “So tell me what you were doing over there at the lab this afternoon. Really.”

  “It’s like I said. A guy’s body was found in my car along with a dead rat. I thought maybe it could be tr
aced to Dan Franklin. I wanted to talk to the guy. But now he’s missing, and someone tried to run me and Bitsy over when we were out in the parking lot, so maybe someone doesn’t want me asking questions.”

  “What? Someone tried to run you over?” Concern laced his voice.

  “It was a blue car; that’s all I know.”

  “Maybe you should stop asking questions,” he suggested.

  No kidding.

  Before I could stop it, I yawned.

  “And maybe you need to go home,” he added.

  “I want to find out about Lou Marino,” I said. “And see Rosalie. Then I’ll go.”

  “Promise?”

  I couldn’t see through the shadows whether he was kidding me or really did want me to leave. Bitsy was right. I did screw it up with him. And I had no idea how to put it right.

  “Scout’s promise,” I said, holding up my hand and forming a “V” with my fingers.

  “That’s the Vulcan sign,” he chided.

  “So sue me,” I said.

  He laughed. Really laughed. “Why is it I like you?”

  He liked me? Could’ve fooled me.

  But then he stopped laughing.

  “I can’t let you in to see Lou Marino’s family,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Lou Marino died half an hour ago.”

  Chapter 28

  I wrote a note to Rosalie saying I was sorry and to please tell Jeff I’d call him in the morning. I gave it to Bixby, and he said he’d deliver it.

  And then he kissed me good-bye.

  Not like the fireworks kiss we’d shared a few months back, but his lips lingered on the corner of mine a tad longer than I thought they would. I felt a spark. It was small, but it was there. I swear.

  He didn’t say he’d call me.

  Baby steps.

  I pulled into my driveway at the same time Tim did.

  We met in the kitchen, where I slung my messenger bag over a chair and shrugged off my jean jacket. He slipped off his sport jacket and tossed it on another chair.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  I thought about the question and how I’d answer it. I finally said, “Well, interesting.”

  “Interesting how?” He took two beers out of the fridge, took the caps off them, and handed me one. I don’t normally drink beer—I prefer wine—but it seemed like the thing to do right now.

  “I’m not sure where to start.”

  He took a slug of his beer and set it down. “So start at the beginning.”

  With all that had happened, I’d lost track of the time line. When I rewound my memory, it landed at the wedding chapel with Jeff Coleman. I didn’t want to tell Tim about that little adventure. And then there was the visit to the university lab. Another thing Tim didn’t need to know about.

  Although, leaving those two things out meant that a lot of other things had to be omitted, and suddenly there wasn’t much to tell at all.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this again.” Tim’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.

  “Doing what again?” I asked as innocently as I could.

  “Sticking your nose into police business.”

  “I haven’t even said anything.”

  “But I can tell. What have you been up to?”

  “I don’t know why you think I’m doing anything.”

  Tim snorted. “It’s not all about you, Brett.”

  I knew that, but why did it feel like it sometimes?

  “I think something might have happened to this guy Dan Franklin. Ray Lucci used his name when he came into my shop for a tattoo. He’s another Dean Martin impersonator. He also works at the university. He’s an animal-lab technician. He works with rats.”

  Tim sighed. “How did you find out he worked at the lab?”

  I couldn’t very well tell him I’d seen Dan Franklin’s wallet and his university ID, so even though I’d dismissed trying to pull a fast one and telling Tim that I’d forgotten Franklin told me on the phone yesterday, I reconsidered and said, “He told me. When he called me back after we left a message because we didn’t know Ray Lucci had used his name.”

  “Why have you made Franklin your own personal crusade?”

  I shrugged. “Considering what’s going on with all those Dean Martin impersonators, it seems like we need to find him soon. Someone might be gunning for him, too.”

  Tim closed his eyes and sighed, then opened them again. “We? We need to find him?”

  So I felt as if I had a personal stake in this. But I didn’t say anything because Tim was looking pretty angry at the moment, and the last time I’d seen him like that was the time I told his girlfriend that he was out with another girl. It wasn’t malicious. I was just a kid and didn’t realize it was a no-no. But it hadn’t mattered to him. I’d screwed up.

  And it looked as though I did again.

  But I couldn’t let it go.

  “You know Lou Marino died after getting hit by a car tonight, right?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “He’s another Dean Martin. He’s married to Rosalie, Bernie Applebaum’s daughter.” I paused a second while Tim absorbed this last bit of information, and then said, “You know, I found Sylvia and Bernie.”

  Tim looked as though his head were going to explode.

  I quickly told him about seeing Sylvia at the Palazzo shops, her story about how they took a bus trip to Sedona and ended up back at the Venetian. “Jeff came to take them to the hospital to see Rosalie, because of Lou Marino’s accident.”

  Tim didn’t say anything, but he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He walked out to the living room, slid open the glass door to the outside patio, and stepped outside. As I drank my beer, I tried to hear what he was saying, but his voice was muffled. He was probably calling Flanigan to find out whether he knew about Sylvia and Bernie.

  I’d left out the little bit about how Bitsy and I were almost run over. I wasn’t quite sure how to broach that, since he was already pretty upset with me and my amateur sleuthing and he didn’t know about our little trip to the university. But if I didn’t tell him, he’d be even angrier. As I rinsed out my empty beer bottle and put it in the recycling bin under the sink, I tried to figure out what I should say that would have the least impact.

  Right.

  Tim was closing his phone, coming back inside.

  “Flanigan?” I asked, indicating the phone.

  He nodded. “He saw them at the hospital.”

  “So he knew about Lou Marino?”

  Tim took a deep breath and nodded again. “He’s been keeping tabs on those wedding chapel guys. Guess this isn’t the first attempt on Lou Marino.”

  “He got mugged and cut up,” I said without thinking.

  “And how do you know that?” he asked, leaning toward me, his hands gripping the edge of the granite island countertop.

  Uh-oh. But I couldn’t back out now.

  “I met one of the other impersonators. Guy named Will Parker. He stopped in the shop.” I thought quickly and decided I had to lie. It was too bad I’d gotten rid of my rosary beads years ago. “He also told me someone tried to run him over. With my car.” I put a lot of emphasis on the last words. “Although he doesn’t know it was my car. But it seems pretty likely it was.”

  Tim was nodding. I kept talking.

  “This guy Parker said Ray Lucci had been a car thief and he was eyeing my car when Sylvia and Bernie drove up in it.”

  He didn’t seem all that surprised for some reason with my revelations. He just kept nodding.

  “This is why you can’t get involved in any of this,” he chided.

  “But I did get involved,” I said, deciding now to come clean. “And someone knows it.” I was whispering now. “Someone tried to run me and Bitsy down in the parking lot at the university.”

  Tim’s face grew red with anger. “And you didn’t think to tell me that first? What’s wrong with you? And what were
you doing over at the university? No, let me guess. You were trying to find out about Dan Franklin. And then someone tries to run you down. Can’t you see this is dangerous? You need to let the police do their job and stay out of it.”

  I sighed. He was right. Then something struck me. “Did you know about my car? That it almost ran over Parker? Did Flanigan tell you that?”

  “I know you’ve got a personal stake in all this, Brett,” Tim said. He was trying to pull himself together, stay in control. “But you really have to stay out of it. There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  All my muscles tensed. What more could there be?

  “Ray Lucci’s fingerprints were found in your car.”

  I blinked a couple of times. “Why wouldn’t his fingerprints be there? I mean, he was in my trunk.”

  “No, Brett. His fingerprints were found on the gearshift, steering wheel, window controls, radio, and air-conditioning buttons. Flanigan thinks Lucci really did steal your car.”

  Chapter 29

  “Do you think he was the one who tried to run down Will Parker?” I asked when it all sunk in. “Possibly.” He wanted to say something else, but stopped himself.

  I didn’t have that much self-control. “So how did he end up strangled with a clip cord and in the trunk?” I asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Flanigan is, I mean.”

  “Anyone else’s fingerprints in the car?”

  “Only yours.”

  The words swirled around in my head. “Flanigan doesn’t think I had anything to do with it, does he?”

  “No.”

  “But?” I sensed that there was a “but” in there somewhere.

  “I am not happy you’re interfering with the investigation. Someone has already threatened you.”

  “I don’t know anything, though. I didn’t find out anything.”

  “Maybe you did and you don’t realize it.”

  I pondered that a few seconds.

  While I was pondering, Tim kept talking. “You’re not to do anything else pertaining to this case,” he said. “You are to go to work and come home, and that’s it. Understand?”

  “You’re not my mother.”