Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “Because if I tell him I’ve got a gut instinct based on your gut instinct, he’ll tell me to stay out of it.”

  I grinned. “And that doesn’t appeal to you, does it?”

  “Just call Coleman, okay?”

  I didn’t see any way out of it. As I reached into my bag, I saw another Monorail approaching. That didn’t take too long.

  I flipped my phone open and punched in Jeff’s number.

  “Kavanaugh?”

  “Hey there, what are you doing right now?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I’m not kidding. Are you free now?”

  “For what? Phone sex?”

  I snorted. “No. Not phone sex.”

  Tim shot me a look, and I waved him off as the Monorail came to a stop in front of us. The doors slid open, and we stepped inside. It was like the monorail in Disney World. Clean and bright. Except that no one else was in this car, and as I remembered, the monorail at Disney was usually full of screaming kids and at least one balloon.

  Jeff was talking. “Okay, so no phone sex. Maybe next time.”

  I ignored him. “Can you meet Tim and me over at That’s Amore? We need a ride.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “It’s in the parking garage at the Venetian.”

  “So how are you getting to the wedding chapel? Are you taking a cab?”

  “We’re on the Monorail.”

  “The what? Kavanaugh, you do know that no one but tourists use that thing.”

  He was right. Although, looking around me, I didn’t think even the tourists were taking advantage of it.

  “So can you meet us?”

  “What do I get if I do?”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten before I spoke again. “You get the satisfaction of possibly catching a killer.”

  “I told you I didn’t care if the cops ever caught the guy who killed Rosalie’s husband.”

  “But what about Ray Lucci?”

  He was quiet a second, then said, “That’s a little complicated right now.” His voice was unusually soft.

  “Sylvia told you, didn’t she?” I asked.

  I heard a short inhale, then, “Yeah. She told me you knew, too. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Not my place. Are you okay?”

  “It’s not the kind of news I was expecting.”

  I wanted to talk to him more about it, how he was handling knowing he had a half brother whom he’d never get to know, but sitting here on the Monorail with Tim watching me didn’t seem like the right time. Jeff was the first to change the subject, though.

  “So why are you heading to the wedding chapel?”

  “I think you were right when you said you thought Dan Franklin was the killer. I ran into him a little while ago, and he ended up taking off. We’re following him. We think he’s heading to the chapel.”

  “You think?”

  While the Monorail glided along its track, I managed to put the story in a nutshell by the time we reached the Convention Center station.

  I was so immersed in my conversation that when Tim yanked me by the arm and pulled me up, I shrugged him off at first. But then I saw the look on his face and where he was looking. Outside the Monorail window.

  Dan Franklin was striding across the parking lot at the Convention Center.

  Chapter 47

  “Change of plans,” I said quickly to Jeff as Tim and I got off the Monorail. “He got off at the Convention Center. We’re following him now.”

  We went through the automatic glass doors and spotted the escalators that would take us down to the first level and the parking lot.

  “I’m just about there,” Jeff said.

  “What?”

  “While we’ve been talking, I’ve been driving. I wasn’t too far away. I was heading to my mother’s; she’s staying over at Rosalie’s, and she needs a change of clothes.”

  I didn’t much care about Sylvia’s wardrobe at the moment.

  “I’ll see you in a minute.” And Jeff ended the call.

  Tim and I were running now. Dan Franklin was over near the Courtyard by Marriott, on East Desert Inn Road. So far I didn’t think he’d seen us. I shoved my phone in my bag, which was slapping against my hip as I ran.

  A blue car swung around into the Marriott lot near Franklin, parking sideways. Something was wrong with the car on the side facing away from us, but I saw it only a split second, and it hadn’t totally registered.

  Franklin waved at the driver, who climbed out.

  As Tim and I drew closer, I could see who it was.

  Will Parker.

  And I remembered that Joel said Will Parker had been in the shop with Ray or Dan that day. So that song and dance Will told me about him and Dan having a tiff over Snowball the Rat might have been fabricated. Otherwise, why would Parker be here now?

  Will Parker spotted us, and he must have said something because Dan Franklin turned around. We were gaining on them. But then Parker got back in the car, and it shot off, leaving Franklin in the wake of its exhaust. So maybe they weren’t best friends after all.

  Franklin didn’t even try to run this time. In seconds, Tim had Franklin’s arms pinned behind him.

  “Call Flanigan,” Tim said to me in his best cop voice, reciting the number so I could punch it in my cell. He held his free hand out and took the phone. “Kevin? I’ve got Dan Franklin.” Silence, then, “We’re at the entrance to the Courtyard by Marriott parking lot.” He handed me back the phone.

  “You can’t hold me,” Franklin said. “Who do you think you are?”

  “You’re wanted for questioning in Ray Lucci’s murder,” Tim said.

  “What are you charging me with? I want to call my lawyer.”

  “We’re not charging you,” Tim said calmly. “We want to find out what you know about Ray Lucci. Ask you some questions.”

  Franklin sighed and hung his head. “I should’ve known he’d get at me, even after he was dead.”

  “Get at you how?” I asked.

  Franklin’s head snapped up. “You have no authority to ask me anything.”

  Ouch.

  “Where did Parker go?” Tim asked, taking over.

  “Parker?”

  “Don’t play stupid. That won’t help you.”

  “He was here to take me to work.”

  “To the chapel?” I asked.

  Franklin nodded. “I’ve got a shift in about half an hour. I called Will, and he said he could pick me up here and take me over.”

  “Where’s your car?” I asked.

  “It’s in the shop.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Just answer,” Tim ordered.

  “Timing belt,” he said. “Supposed to pick it up tomorrow.”

  “We’ll need to know which garage,” Tim said.

  As he spoke, Jeff’s familiar gold Pontiac swung in next to us and he climbed out. He assessed the situation and asked Tim, “Need any help?”

  As if on cue, a police cruiser turned in. And just my luck, Willis was the cop on call. He glared at me, as if he was expecting to find another big gun on my person.

  “Take Brett back to her shop,” Tim instructed Jeff. “And I’ll need to talk to you later.”

  Jeff’s expression didn’t change, but his eyelids flickered slightly.

  I jumped in. “Won’t Flanigan need to talk to me about my conversation with Dan?”

  Tim nodded. “Later. But for now, he’ll have other questions for him. And if you’re right about that one issue”—I knew he meant the money—“we can verify that pretty quickly.”

  Sure they could. They were the cops.

  “But aren’t you supposed to keep watch over me?” I asked, unwilling to leave because I didn’t want to miss anything.

  “Take her,” Tim told Jeff, “back to her shop.”

  “Come on, Brett,” Jeff said, taking my elbow and indicating I should follow him.

 
; “Tell Rosalie I’m sorry,” Franklin said then.

  We all stared at him.

  “About Lou,” he added quickly. “Tell her I’m sorry about Lou.”

  He certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors saying anything like that.

  Jeff held the door to the Pontiac open for me, and I settled into the seat, watching Tim and Willis and Franklin. As Jeff got into the car and started the engine, I asked, “Do you really think he did it?”

  He didn’t answer as the car moved out of the lot, passing a Chevy Impala that looked remarkably like Tim’s, Detective Kevin Flanigan at the wheel. Flanigan caught my eye, and I could see that he might not have been too happy about Tim taking over this whole Dan Franklin thing. Maybe we should’ve called Flanigan from the get-go, when we were following Franklin on the Monorail.

  “You’re really under lock and key, aren’t you?” Jeff asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, looking out the window. We were across the street from the Stardust, and I could see the Circus Circus big top a block or so up to the right.

  Jeff was about to turn left onto the Strip, but I put my hand on the steering wheel.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Let’s make a stop,” I said.

  His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile. “I told your brother I’d take you to your shop. He won’t trust me ever again if I don’t do that. And what is it he wants to talk to me about?”

  I sighed. “I had to tell him about the ten-thousand-dollar withdrawal.”

  “You told him we stole his mail?”

  I shook my head. “No, no, I sort of glossed over the details.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “Glossed over them how?”

  “He knows you were involved.”

  He chewed on his lip for a second, then said, “But you left out most of the details, didn’t you?”

  “Does it matter? They’ll check his account, and then they won’t need us,” I said, trying to convince myself. “But for now, I think we should go to the wedding chapel.”

  He grinned.

  “Kavanaugh, I didn’t think you cared.”

  I slugged him on the shoulder. “I don’t mean we should get married or anything.”

  “I’m crushed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Give me a break. There’s something there I want to check out.” I was thinking about Will Parker coming by to pick up Dan Franklin—in a blue car. Something about that car still tugged at my brain. Plus, Will Parker giving us an address for an In-N-Out burger joint stuck in my craw.

  “Something or someone?” Jeff asked. “I’m not the kind of guy who drops a girl off to see another guy.”

  I leaned back in my seat and sighed. “Okay, fine, take me back to my shop.”

  But he’d already turned right. In the direction of the wedding chapel. I didn’t say anything, just let him drive.

  But when we approached the intersection—That’s Amore on our right and the Love Shack on our left—Jeff took an unexpected turn to the left.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  And then I saw it. A blue car sat in the front lot at the Love Shack. A blue car with the right headlight smashed in and the bumper a little bit askew.

  Chapter 48

  Jeff Coleman blew a long, low whistle.

  “Looks like a bad one,” he said.

  “That’s the car,” I said. “Will Parker came to pick up Dan Franklin in that car. I thought something looked a little off, but the way he parked, I couldn’t really tell until now.”

  “Do you think this was the car that hit Lou?”

  I shrugged. “Could be.”

  “But you said it’s Parker’s car, not Franklin’s. So what’s up with him? And why is it over here and not across the street?”

  I had no freaking idea. My head was a jumbled-up mess of thoughts all knocking into one another like kids in one of those Moonwalks.

  “Maybe they’re in on it together,” I suggested. “There were some hints that Sanderson, the guy who owns this wedding chapel, might have been involved, too.”

  “I didn’t take you as a conspiracy theorist, Kavanaugh.”

  “I’m grabbing at straws here,” I admitted.

  “Playing devil’s advocate for a moment,” Jeff said. “Why would Will Parker leave his smashed-up blue car so everyone can see it? If he used this car to run down Lou, then you’d think he’d hide it.”

  “But maybe he thinks no one will notice if it’s parked over here. Then again, Dan Franklin’s car is allegedly being serviced,” I said.

  Jeff fished a cigarette out of his front breast pocket. He put it in his mouth but didn’t light it. He saw me watching him. “What? I’m not going to smoke it. I just think better with it.”

  Now there were so many ways to respond to that that I couldn’t figure out which one to throw out at him. He noticed and grinned, the cigarette bobbing between his lips.

  “No cracks, Kavanaugh.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. But before I could say anything, the door to the Love Shack swung open and Will Parker sauntered out.

  Jeff and I ducked down in our seats, and I could only hope that Parker hadn’t seen the Pontiac when Jeff and I were at That’s Amore the other day. He didn’t seem to pay any attention, though, as he got into his car, started the engine, and pulled out of the lot.

  After a few seconds, Jeff eased the Pontiac out after it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Following him,” Jeff said, now taking the cigarette out of his mouth and balancing it on the empty ashtray in the center console. “I figured that’s what you wanted, right?”

  I hadn’t really thought about it, but it seemed like a good idea, so I let him think that. I nodded. “Maybe now we’ll find out where he really lives.”

  “If he goes home,” Jeff said.

  We were about two cars behind Parker, heading north on Las Vegas Boulevard. The Stratosphere tower was hovering over us; I twisted my neck to try to see the rides up at the top. There’s something called the Big Shot, in which you get strapped in and shot a hundred sixty feet up at forty miles an hour, and then it drops you. Fast. And craziest of all was Insanity, which is totally insane because it’s a huge claw extending sixty-four feet from the Stratosphere Tower, dangling you more than nine hundred feet above the Strip. And then it spins. Not that I’d ever want to ride it, but it sort of fascinated me: a ride spinning around that high in the air. Vegas was also big on roller coasters. Circus Circus had one in its Adventuredome, New York-New York sported a coaster that spun around its skyline, and the Sahara had one, too. MGM used to have a roller coaster, back in the day when it was trying to compete with Disney and Universal as a family attraction, but it failed miserably, and now the coaster was just a memory. In its place was the Monorail track. Not exactly an exciting thrill ride, as I could attest.

  “Be careful he doesn’t spot us,” I warned. “This car sticks out like a sore thumb.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Jeff said, and the way he said it made me take pause.

  Jeff’s stint in the Marines intrigued me. He knew how to pick locks, break into houses without breaking into them, covertly follow cars in traffic. I also had learned a few months back that he “knew” people who could give him information. While I was curious, I hadn’t pried into his business. I was afraid if I did, he might think I was far more interested in him than I wanted him to think. Although the more I got to know him, the more intrigued I was.

  “I wasn’t a spy, Kavanaugh,” he said, reading my mind. “I served my country like a lot of these kids these days. But it’s worse now, over there.”

  “You were in the Gulf War.”

  “I never shot my gun in combat. It was a very short war.”

  “But you were in the Marines for how long?”

  “Four years.”

  “So what did you do the rest of the time?”

  Jeff grinned as he maneuvered the car so w
e were now three cars behind Parker.

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said.

  It wasn’t worth trying to have a serious conversation with the man. I focused on Parker’s car, which suddenly swerved and turned right down a side road, before the Little White Chapel. You could get married almost anywhere in Vegas.

  Jeff immediately slowed down, but he didn’t turn. As we passed the road, we could see there were no other cars behind Parker. We kept going straight.

  “We’re going to lose him,” I warned.

  “Too risky. He’d notice us.”

  “Do you think he already spotted us and did that to shake us off his trail?”

  Jeff laughed out loud. “Shake us off his trail? I think you need to stick to tattooing, Kavanaugh. You’re not very good at spy stuff.”

  No kidding.

  “You need to call your brother, though.”

  “Why?”

  “To give him the license plate of that car.”

  I hadn’t even thought about doing that. Jeff was right. I’d make a lousy spy.

  I punched Tim’s number into my phone.

  “What?” he barked.

  “I’ve got a license plate number,” I said. “Will Parker’s blue car. Do you want it?”

  He didn’t even ask how I got it after I rattled it off; he just hung up.

  I noticed that we were also going down a side street now, and Jeff made a quick turn to the right. Will Parker’s car was two cars up. A white Bronco was between us.

  I stared at Jeff. “How did you do that?”

  He grinned and tapped the side of his head. “Leave it to me, Kavanaugh.”

  I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a high five or anything, so I rolled my eyes.

  “You’re just jealous that you can’t do this,” he teased.

  Parker turned left, and we were on Charleston. He turned right onto Las Vegas Boulevard. We were heading toward Fremont Street, close to where Jeff’s shop was.

  Parker’s brake lights went on as we approached Murder Ink, and I caught my breath. Did Parker know we were following him? Was he baiting us?

  He slid the blue car into a spot in front of Goodfellas Bail Bonds. Jeff eased the Pontiac into one two spaces away.

  Parker climbed out of the car. But instead of going into Goodfellas, as I expected, he sauntered down the sidewalk and stopped in front of Jeff’s shop.