Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked, ignoring him.

  DellaRocco looked startled for a second, as if he didn’t get that I was referring to the package. “Oh, you mean this,” he said, tapping it.

  “Did you make sure it’s not ticking?” Jeff asked; his tone was ominous, as if it might really be ticking.

  DellaRocco’s eyes widened, and he pushed back in his chair, away from the desk. “Didn’t even think to. You think it might have something to do with his murder?”

  I was the only one who knew what was in the package, and I knew that it didn’t, but I shrugged, as if it could be the bomb Jeff suggested.

  Jeff was leaning down, his ear now close to the box. He shook his head. “Don’t hear anything. You’re lucky,” he said to DellaRocco. “You know, you should tell the cops about this.” He cocked his head at me. “Her brother’s a detective. Why don’t we take this and she can give it to him?”

  DellaRocco’s eyes narrowed. “A detective?”

  “He’s with the Las Vegas police department,” I offered. “I’m sure he’d appreciate getting the package. It might be a clue to his murder. You might actually be responsible for solving it.” The last bit was a bit much, but he was nodding as though I was telling the truth.

  “I see what you mean.” He paused. “They wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t call them myself?”

  Jeff chuckled. “She’s practically a detective herself.”

  He didn’t see the dirty look I threw him.

  “And even if it’s not ticking,” Jeff added, “remember the anthrax that went through the mail and killed that woman in Connecticut after 9/11?”

  That did it. DellaRocco pushed the parcel over to Jeff. “Okay, fine. Get it out of here.”

  Jeff picked it up and swung it under his arm. He threw his other arm around my waist and started steering me out. “Thanks, Tony,” he said.

  “Thank you,” DellaRocco said.

  Jeff was pushing me so quickly out the door that I tripped over my feet. “What’s the hurry?” I said. “Do you really think there’s a bomb in that package?”

  “Maybe I want to get my fiancée home,” he said with a leer.

  I squirmed to get out of his grasp, but he was too strong.

  “A few more minutes, Kavanaugh, and you’ll be a free woman again.”

  “I’m already a free woman.”

  Jeff chuckled. “Why is it so easy to get to you?” His words were light, but there was something underneath his tone that made me take pause.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer. He pulled me over to the Pontiac.

  “I’ve got the Jeep,” I said.

  “Just get in, okay?”

  We’d barely gotten into the car before Jeff started opening the package.

  “Why are you opening it?” I asked.

  “Because I’ve done business with Tattoo Inc. And this isn’t their logo, even though it’s got their name on it.” As he spoke, he ripped the cardboard box open.

  I peered over the top to see what was inside.

  It was the biggest gun I’d ever seen.

  Chapter 32

  “Smith and Wesson .45,”Jeff said,picking it up out of its packing material and studying it.

  “Put it back,” I said, leaning far enough away so my back was plastered against the door behind me. “You don’t know if it’s loaded.”

  “It’s not loaded.”

  I gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes at me. “I know a little bit about guns, and it’s not loaded. Okay?”

  That’s right. Jeff had done a stint in the Marines.

  I’d always had guns in the house, since my dad and brother both were cops. But I’d always kept my distance, not wanting to get too close to one. They made me uncomfortable. All those accidental shootings you read about in the paper. I didn’t want to be a statistic.

  “What would Ray Lucci want with a gun?” I said, more to myself than to Jeff.

  But Jeff answered. “He was an ex-con,” he said, as if that explained everything, and he put the gun back in the box and folded over the top flaps.

  I studied the logo. It was the one on the Web site. But this certainly wasn’t tattoo machine parts.

  “You’ve ordered from Tattoo Inc.?” I asked.

  Jeff nodded. “They’ve got great prices.”

  “But this isn’t their logo?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  I reached over my shoulder and pulled my messenger bag into my lap. Rummaging around, my fingers finally landed on the Tattoo Inc. receipt. I took it out and waved it at Jeff. “Something’s going on,” I said.

  Jeff plucked the receipt out of my hand and studied it before looking up at me, his eyes quizzical. “How did you get this?”

  I’d forgotten that Sylvia came to me privately this morning. I had to think fast. “I can’t tell you.” So lame.

  A smile tugged at his mouth. “You can’t tell me?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter how I got it. All that matters is, something’s up with this order. It says tattoo-machine parts, but it’s a gun. And they’re using Tattoo Inc.’s name. That’s fraud.”

  I had no idea what I was babbling about. I couldn’t tell Jeff that Sylvia gave it to me. Because then he’d ask why and I’d be stuck. It wasn’t my place to tell him about Ray Lucci.

  Why hadn’t Sylvia told him yet?

  “Do you think this order has anything to do with Lucci’s murder?” I asked, grasping at straws, trying to make sure Jeff was distracted enough to keep from asking me questions. “Do you think he thought he was in danger and needed the gun?”

  “If so, it came too late,” Jeff said, handing me back the receipt. “You didn’t seem surprised to see the package on his desk.”

  “I wasn’t. I used the account number off this receipt and tracked it. I knew it came in yesterday.”

  “So that’s why you showed up here?” Jeff grinned.

  “He also ordered a clip cord,” I said, ignoring him. “He got that a couple weeks ago.”

  “But if the tattoo-machine parts weren’t actually tattoo-machine parts, and they were really a gun, who’s to say the clip cord was really a clip cord?”

  He had a point.

  We sat for a few minutes pondering that until Jeff broke the silence by saying, “Do you have time to follow me to my shop?”

  I glanced at my watch. “Guess so. What are you going to do?”

  He gently picked up the box and leaned over, putting it on the floor behind the passenger seat. “I’ll meet you there,” he said, indicating I should get out. So I did.

  The whole way to Murder Ink, I wondered how that box of tattoo-machine parts became a gun. I also wondered how long it would take Sylvia to tell Jeff about Ray Lucci.

  Jeff parked in the alley behind the strip mall where his shop was, but I preferred the Bright Lights Motel lot across the way. He met me at the front door, opening it for me and leading me back to his office.

  He’d put the box with the gun in it on his desk, next to another one about the same size. That one had a logo for Tattoo Inc. that did look different, but not so much so that it was noticeable at first glance.

  He pointed to it. “See?”

  I nodded, not that he paid attention. He sat behind the desk and moved his laptop around in front of him. I came around the desk so I could look over his shoulder.

  Jeff clicked on a bookmark named Tattoo Inc. A Web site popped up, and it looked like the one I’d seen. “That’s it,” I said.

  “Give me the receipt.”

  I took it out of my bag and handed it to him. Jeff typed in the account number. We waited a couple of minutes, and finally, a box popped up saying it wasn’t a valid account number.

  Jeff picked up the receipt again and studied it. After a second, he leaned back and grinned at me. “Did you Google Tattoo Inc. or type in this URL on this receipt?” He waved the receipt at me.

  “I typed in the URL,”
I said.

  “That’s what’s wrong,” he said, stabbing his finger at the screen where the URL for the real Tattoo Inc. was.

  The URL on the receipt was a “.com” URL. I hadn’t thought anything of it. But the real Tattoo Inc. was in England. With a “.co.uk” URL.

  “But it looked like tattoo parts,” I started. “Go to the site.”

  Jeff Coleman and I skimmed pages for the fake Tattoo Inc. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. We found Ray Lucci’s account again, and it was as I’d seen it earlier. But then I remembered something Jeff had said.

  “I wonder what it was that he got instead of a clip cord,” I said.

  “Another gun, maybe.”

  So now we were back to Joel’s clip cord as possibly the murder weapon. I didn’t much like the idea of that.

  Jeff was clicking all over the Tattoo Inc. site. “There’s no place here where you can place an order online,” he said, “but there’s a phone number.” He grabbed his cell and punched in the number.

  “Yes, I understand I can place a special order,” he said, then paused as he listened to the response. “Yes, I have an account.” He rattled off Ray Lucci’s account number. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

  I went around the desk and sat in an old metal chair in the corner, tapping my fingers on the armrest as I watched Jeff Coleman. After a few seconds, he said, “Yes, I did receive my order. . . . Yes, it’s just as you said. . . . Yes, I’m happy with it. . . .” He was absently clicking around the Tattoo Inc. Web site as he spoke.

  But then he sat up straight and said, “Yes, yes, I know where it is. Thank you.” And he flipped his phone shut.

  Jeff’s eyes were wide as he looked up at me. “Kavanaugh, there’s more than murder going on. Check it out.”

  I got up and came around the desk. The tattoo equipment I’d seen had been replaced by guns. All different shapes and sizes.

  “How’d you find that?” I asked.

  “I clicked on the logo, and it popped up.” He twisted around to look up at me. “Ray Lucci was buying illegal guns.”

  Chapter 33

  “Do you think this had anything to do with his murder?” I asked.

  Jeff rolled his eyes at me. “Is the pope Catholic?”

  Smart aleck.

  “But then what about Lou? And the attempt on Will Parker? And where’s Dan Franklin? What about that rat?”

  “So we’ve got a few loose ends.”

  “A few loose ends? The whole freaking thing is barely held together.”

  Jeff chuckled. “You know, you’re cute when you get mad.”

  I felt my face flush. I so didn’t need him making fun of me right now.

  Jeff leaned back in his chair and pointed at the guns on the screen. “You probably should tell your brother about this.”

  I probably should, even though he’d get mad at me for “getting involved” again. I hadn’t asked Sylvia to give me that receipt. It seemed innocent enough, I suppose, if you looked past the clip cord. But now we’d gone into unchartered waters. And this was best left for the police to look at.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that this might not have anything to with what had been going on.

  “Where did you get the receipt?” Jeff asked, interrupting my thoughts, his voice soft, his eyes searching mine.

  I stepped away from the desk. “I told you, I can’t tell you.”

  “Okay, fine, be that way.” He pointed at the Tattoo Inc. box. “You should take that to your brother.”

  I didn’t want to be that close to the gun, much less driving around with it.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “What if I get stopped or something? I could be arrested.”

  Jeff laughed out loud. “Stopped or something? Kavanaugh, you drive slower than my grandmother. You stop at every yellow light.”

  “So what if I’m a careful driver?”

  Jeff slowly shook his head from side to side. “Okay, fine. I’ll follow you to the police station, you can call your brother, and we’ll hand this over. Is that a plan?”

  Jeff’s face was twitching with amusement. He knew if he came with me, then he’d find out how I got the receipt.

  Sylvia had to tell him about Ray.

  “Where’s your mother?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, as if it were a casual question. “Just wondering. Usually she’s here when you’re not.”

  “She and Bernie are at Rosalie’s.”

  “Can we stop there first? I really would like to give my condolences to Rosalie.”

  “She already got that note. The one that doctor delivered last night.” The way he said “doctor” made me hesitate. “I thought you and he were all over. I mean, you did think he was going to kill you.”

  I wished people would stop rubbing that in. I’d said I was sorry, and I really needed to move on.

  “Can we stop at Rosalie’s first?”

  “You know, Kavanaugh, you need to get over yourself.”

  A bell jingled from somewhere in the distance.

  Jeff pushed away from the desk and stood up. I followed him out into the front of his shop.

  A young man with a big grin and a mop of dark curls held out his hand. “Bobby Douglas. Am I on time?”

  From the look on Jeff’s face, I knew he’d forgotten about his client. As he pointed Bobby to a workstation, he turned to me.

  “You have to go on your own. Take the box. No one will stop you.”

  He saw me hesitate and chuckled. “It’s not loaded,” he said, reading my mind. “You’ll be fine.”

  That’s what he thought.

  “I still want to stop at Rosalie’s. Where does she live?” I asked.

  Jeff took a deep breath, told Bobby to hang tight, and grabbed a piece of tracing paper and a pencil. He scribbled directions and handed them to me. “She’s out in Summerlin. On the way to Red Rock.”

  I put the paper with the directions on top of the box. Granted, Rosalie’s was in the total opposite direction than the police station, but I wasn’t exactly relishing the idea of turning over this gun and explaining everything to Tim right away. The box would be safe in the Jeep. After all, if you looked at it, you’d think it had something to do with tattoos.

  As I balanced the box in my arms, Jeff opened the door for me.

  “You’ll be fine, Kavanaugh,” were the last words I heard before the door shut behind me.

  I put the box on the floor under the passenger seat and found myself looking at it every few seconds. As if it were going to do magic tricks or something and I didn’t want to miss it.

  I drove up Charleston, the mountains coming closer and closer as I drove. Despite my trepidation about the parcel I was traveling with, I could feel the muscles in my shoulders and back relaxing instinctively as I gazed at the red-and-brown rocks that pierced the deep blue sky. I wanted to chuck it all—forget about Sylvia and Jeff and Ray Lucci and the other Dinos and that gun—and put my boots on and feel the hard desert under my feet.

  The longer I thought about it, the more I wanted to play hooky.

  The Red Rock Casino Resort Spa came up on my left. It was out here off the beaten path, away from the Strip and its craziness, almost at the foot of its namesake.

  The light was red, and it was a long one. I tapped the steering wheel impatiently. No one was behind or in front of me. On the other side of the four-lane road, a lone blue car sat like I did, just waiting.

  That other blue car, the one that came too close for comfort at the university, flashed in my brain. The cars were similar, but I couldn’t say for sure what model the sinister one was. It had gone past so quickly, and I was too busy trying to get out of the way to take notice. This one was a Ford Taurus. Fords and Chevies sometimes have the same sort of body. They’re probably all made on the same chassis.

  And then I remembered. Dan Franklin’s blue Taurus. In his driveway.

  I leaned forward a little, squinting to see the driver. A shadow w
as cast across the windshield, obscuring my view.

  I knew I was being paranoid, but almost getting run down gave me a pass on that. I might always have a problem with blue cars now. Good thing my car was red. If I ever got it back. If I ever wanted to drive it again after it had been used as a coffin.

  My phone rang in my bag, and I leaned over and pulled it out.

  “You’ve got a client in an hour,” Bitsy reminded me before I could even say hello.

  “I know. I’m on my way,” I lied, my eye on the blue car as my thoughts swirled around in a stream of consciousness.

  “Why is Colin Bixby coming in later?”

  I stopped paying attention to the blue car.

  “Bixby?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “He called and made an appointment for later. I made sure he and that Dean Martin guy weren’t coming in at the same time.”

  I was barely comprehending. “Does he want another tattoo?” I asked. “And what’s this about a Dean Martin guy?”

  “Who? Oh, the doctor. I don’t know. The Dean Martin guy’s getting a touch-up.”

  “Which Dean Martin?” I asked, but then I remembered I’d offered to touch up Will Parker’s tattoo. Bitsy confirmed that it was him.

  The light turned green. As I put my foot to the accelerator, the blue car sped through the intersection.

  And a police cruiser with its lights flashing came up behind me and indicated I should pull over.

  Chapter 34

  I hung up on Bitsy, tossed the phone onto the passenger seat, eased the Jeep over to the curb, and cut the engine. I leaned over and opened the glove box. A flashlight and a couple of CDs. I didn’t see the registration. Where did Tim keep it?

  A glance in the rearview mirror told me the cop was almost to the door. I sat up straighter, looking around for some other hiding place but not seeing anything.

  Except the box on the floor. The one that had the big gun in it.

  My heart started flip-flopping inside my chest, and I was having a hard time breathing. Especially when I saw who the cop was.

  Willis. The fireplug cop who showed up at my house when I found Ray Lucci in my trunk.