Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  Tim and Flanigan exchanged a look, and I could see they knew something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The timing is convenient,” Tim said to Flanigan, ignoring me.

  Flanigan put his notebook and pen into the breast pocket of his pin-striped suit. He looked dapper, even when interrogating accident witnesses.

  “What timing?” I asked.

  “Let me see if we can locate him,” Flanigan said, nodding a good-bye to me and disappearing around the curtain.

  I turned my gaze on Tim. “You have to tell me. What timing is right?”

  “Dan Franklin. We let him go about two hours ago.”

  Chapter 54

  Tim’s words sunk in slowly.

  “You let him go?” I finally asked.

  “We didn’t have anything to hold him on. His car really had been at the garage, getting a timing belt like he said. Nothing about it indicated it had been in a crash lately. He told us about that rat, but there’s no evidence that he put it in your trunk or killed Ray Lucci. He confessed to being in love with Rosalie Marino but swears she doesn’t know.”

  Tim ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

  The back of my bed was up, so I leaned against it, closing my eyes for a few seconds. I could see that body tossed up against the hood of the Pontiac like a rag doll. I opened my eyes again to get rid of the sight.

  “Can we find out about Jeff?” I asked.

  “He’s in surgery,” Tim said again. “We won’t know anything for a little while.” He paused. “We’ll need to talk to him when he wakes up.” He meant Flanigan. Of course Flanigan would have to talk to Jeff. Probably to make sure Jeff and I had the same story.

  “He’s tough,” I said, mostly to myself. “He’ll be okay. He was in the Marines. He was in a war. And he came home okay.”

  “Flanigan will probably need to ask you more questions, too.”

  I nodded and sighed. I knew that, but I wasn’t in the mood to be interrogated again. Tim noticed and rubbed my shoulder. I winced as pain shot through my back. He jerked his hand back. “Maybe you’re not okay,” he said.

  “We got into a crash. I might be sore for a couple days.”

  He cocked his head at my face. “You might want to wear a veil or something.”

  “It looks that bad?”

  “It’ll look worse tomorrow.”

  Great.

  I wanted to close my eyes again, but I was afraid of what I’d see. The curtain moved, and Bixby stepped in. He looked at Tim.

  “How is she?”

  “She is fine,” I replied, before Tim could. “She would love to take a shower.” I didn’t add that I wanted to wash off Jeff’s blood, but I didn’t think I had to.

  Tim’s phone started to ring, and Bixby frowned.

  “I’ll be back,” Tim said, putting his phone to his ear and walking out.

  “You really are fine?” Bixby asked.

  “How is Jeff?”

  “He’s in surgery.”

  Same answer as Tim. Totally wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “You’re the doctor here. Can’t you find out how it’s going?” I asked.

  “You care a great deal for him, don’t you?” Bixby asked, his eyes probing my face.

  I knew what he was looking for. “He’s my friend,” I said softly. “Nothing else.” Although as I said it, I remembered how Jeff had held my hand, how he’d called me by my first name, not Kavanaugh. “He’s a very good friend,” I added.

  “Oh.” Bixby turned his face slightly, and I could see disappointment.

  “We’re not a couple,” I said. “It’s not like that. It’s different.” I struggled with how to describe my relationship with Jeff Coleman. He was a royal pain in my butt, but he had helped me out on more than one occasion, and he created the koi tattoo on my arm, something that was permanent, that would never go away.

  As I sat there and thought about him, I knew. I knew that if something happened to him, my life would be a little bit emptier.

  I’d never admit that to him, though. He’d get some sort of stupid idea that it meant more than it did. Just as Bixby was having that stupid idea now. I could see it.

  I crooked my finger at him and said, “Come here.”

  He did, and I sat up so our faces were mere inches apart. And then I kissed him. Gently, because my face hurt more than getting a hundred tattoos at the same time.

  It seemed to pacify him, because when he pulled away, Dr. Colin Bixby wore a lopsided grin.

  “I’ll go check on Coleman’s status,” he said and went through the curtain, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

  Sister Mary Eucharista wouldn’t have been happy with me. I’d kissed the man to make him stop asking me whether I had feelings for Jeff. Don’t get me wrong—I found the guy incredibly sexy. But kissing him to get him to stop asking questions wasn’t exactly right.

  I looked at my shirt and the bloodstains and decided I couldn’t stay here like that. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the shooting pain that moved through my body. My neck felt as though there were a vise on it. I moved toward the curtain, slowly, because now my muscles had decided to revolt. They’d been resting, they’d been happy, and now I was making them work after way too much trauma.

  The curtain swung open just as I reached it. Tim frowned.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded.

  “I need a shower. Please tell Bixby to find me a shower.” Tears sprung into my eyes, and Tim put his arm around me.

  “Okay, okay. We’ll find you a shower.” He twisted his head and called over to one of the nurses. “Can my sister get a shower somewhere?” To me, he said, “I can call Bitsy, see if she can bring a change of clothes.”

  I’d forgotten about Bitsy. I’d told her she could go home early, and I’d said I’d open up tomorrow. How was I going to manage that now?

  A nurse in baby blue scrubs and green Crocs came over to me and smiled kindly. “Do you want to come with me?”

  I nodded and followed her down the hall and out a door. She led me to another door and pushed it open. It was a full bath, hospital style, with plain fixtures and handicap rails. The shower had no tub, but a small plastic seat and more rails, in case I couldn’t hold myself up. I might end up making use of them.

  The nurse pointed to a soap dispenser.

  “We don’t have shampoo,” she apologized.

  “I’ll use the soap,” I said.

  She shut the door behind her as she left. I locked it and stripped off my clothes. The blood had soaked through my shirt, and the skin around the dragon tattoo was pink. My heart began to pound, and I sat, naked, on the plastic chair, my head in my hands, and I began to sob softly. Somewhere in this building, Jeff was fighting for his life. I vowed to be nicer to him when he got better. I wouldn’t get as annoyed with him.

  After a few minutes, I pulled myself together and turned on the faucet, the hot water crashing down around me, beating into my skin and washing away the blood.

  The nurse had left me some scrubs, and when I was done, I put them on and found Tim waiting for me.

  “Better?” he asked casually, although I could see from his expression that something else was going on.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Cops found the scene. Couldn’t really miss it. Pieces of car all over the place, lots of skid marks. A dent in that light pole you must have hit.”

  He was holding something back, though.

  “What?” I asked again. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s nothing else there. No car, no injured person. No one at all.”

  Chapter 55

  “So you think we ran ourselves off the road? That Jeff shot himself?” I asked indignantly. “Or maybe you think I shot him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Brett.”

  “Am I being ridiculous? You say that there was no body, no car, like I was lying or something. Like maybe it was all a figment of my imagination.”r />
  “I know you’re not lying,” he argued. “But obviously you didn’t hurt the guy as bad as you thought.”

  “There was blood on the hood of the car,” I said, shivering with the memory and looking around. “Where’s Flanigan? Doesn’t he want to take me in or something?”

  “You’re being unreasonable,” Tim said, his voice full of exasperation. “Can you remember anything else that could help us?”

  I didn’t want to remember anything. I wished I didn’t remember anything.

  “Jeff said he saw the car in the side-view mirror. But he didn’t tell me what kind of car it was.”

  It had been a little while from the time Jeff and I left to the time I called Tim. If the guy wasn’t hurt too bad, he probably drove away. It had felt as if we’d slammed into the other car pretty hard, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt.

  “Do you really think it could’ve been Dan Franklin?” I asked.

  “He came after you this afternoon. He ran from us. He seemed a little squirrelly when we questioned him, although he had answers for everything.”

  “Did he pick up his car from the shop after getting his timing belt?” I asked, emphasizing the words “timing belt” as though that was just a cover. Because it might have been.

  I remembered something else. “What about Will Parker? He met Franklin at the Convention Center, right?”

  “Franklin says he called him to pick him up and take him to work.”

  I vaguely remembered him telling us that.

  I thought about Parker and how Jeff and I had followed him from the Convention Center.

  “Sanderson. Martin Sanderson. The owner of the Love Shack, that wedding chapel across from That’s Amore,” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “Parker went there from the Convention Center.”

  Tim frowned. Oops. He didn’t know Jeff and I had followed Parker. But considering where Jeff was now, I wasn’t going to worry about it.

  “Remember I asked you about that license plate number? Will Parker was driving the car registered to Martin Sanderson.”

  I filled him in on how Jeff had followed Parker, adding that Parker ended up at Murder Ink, where we found him with Bernie.

  Tim scratched his chin. “He said he was there for a tattoo?”

  “That’s what Bernie said.” As I spoke, I realized how stupid that sounded. Parker had been to my shop earlier for a tattoo touch-up. He hinted he might want more ink, but it seemed too soon to head to another shop for another tattoo. But what other reason would he have to go to Murder Ink?

  “Maybe I need to talk to Bernie,” Tim said. “See exactly what Parker wanted.”

  “Maybe you do. But keep in mind he’s over eighty.”

  “Which means his memory might not be as good.”

  “Right.”

  “He’s at his daughter’s house?”

  “That’s where we left them.” And then I realized I hadn’t called Sylvia to tell her about Jeff. She had no idea her son was in surgery at the moment, shot in the shoulder by a crazy person. Considering that she’d lost one son, this would be terrible news. “I need to call Sylvia,” I said softly. “She doesn’t know yet, about Jeff.”

  But then I had another thought. I debated with myself for a second, then said, “Sylvia withdrew ten thousand dollars from her account the day before her wedding.”

  “How do you know that?” Tim’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates.

  I told him about the quilted bag and how I’d come to be in possession of it. “It was all pretty innocent,” I added, “until I looked inside the bag and saw the bank receipt.”

  “So you think she’s the one who gave the money to Lucci?”

  “She says she didn’t. When I asked her about it later, she said to mind my own business.” I paused. “I guess it could’ve been for anything.”

  “Except that her son left a duffel bag with exactly that amount in his locker.”

  “But what about Dan Franklin’s money? The money he withdrew?”

  “I see where you might connect the dots, but that one’s a dead end. Franklin did take the money out, but what you didn’t see was that he put it right back into a CD. His bank was offering a pretty good rate. We verified it all with the bank.”

  Back to square one.

  “So what about Sanderson? His assistant told me that Ray Lucci had been around threatening them,” I said. “Maybe Sanderson wanted to get rid of Lucci. Parker was with Lucci at my shop—” I stopped. What about that tattoo that Dan Franklin had?

  Tim read my mind. “It really was Lucci. We verified the shop where Franklin got his tattoo.”

  And then it came back to me in a flash. What had bothered me about Franklin’s tattoo. Joel told me he’d tattooed “That’s Amore” around Lucci’s bicep. Franklin’s tattoo was on his forearm. So much for that theory. But it didn’t mean Franklin was off the hook completely. He had run from us for some reason.

  “Going back to Parker—he was with Lucci at my shop. He was messing around with Joel’s clip cord. He could’ve taken it and then killed Lucci with it later. Since Parker was driving Sanderson’s car and he went over to the Love Shack today, maybe he and Sanderson were in on it together.”

  “And you think Sanderson hired him to do it?”

  I shrugged. “You got any better ideas?”

  He agreed. “It would make sense.”

  “Parker did say someone tried to run him down in my car. Maybe Lucci tried to kill him first.”

  “Or maybe he made that up.”

  Definite possibility.

  “Why would he kill Marino?” Tim asked.

  There were still too many questions. And Parker was in the wind, so we couldn’t ask him.

  “I’m going to take you home,” Tim said.

  “What about Flanigan?”

  “He agreed that you could go home, as long as I was with you.” He paused. “Of course he’s not completely trusting me right now, either, because of the Monorail thing, but I managed to convince him we’d go straight to the house.”

  “I’m staying. I need to stay until Jeff’s out of surgery.” I heard a tinge of hysteria in my voice.

  “There’s nothing you can do.” Tim sighed, then tried another tack. “You don’t have any proper clothes.”

  “I thought you said you’d call Bitsy.”

  “I couldn’t reach her.”

  I nodded, remembering. “I told her she could leave early. She’s probably on a date or something. You know, you could go get me some clothes.”

  “Or you could come home, change, get a couple hours of sleep, and then I can bring you back when Jeff’s in recovery.” He stared me down. This was not unlike some of our childhood power plays, and fortunately for him, I was worn down enough by the night’s events to give in.

  I got off the bed and felt it in every muscle. Tim noticed. He took my arm as he pulled back the curtain with his other hand. Bixby was on the other side.

  “Can you call me the minute Jeff is out of surgery?” I asked him.

  “Sure,” he said, and while I’d done my best to assure him that Jeff was no more than a friend, he still looked a little uncertain.

  I was too exhausted, worried, and in pain to care now.

  “Thanks.”

  Bixby leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  Tim put his arm around me as we walked out the sliding doors and into the night. I shivered; the cotton scrubs weren’t exactly warm, and it had gotten pretty chilly out. Tim shrugged out of his tweed sport jacket and handed it to me. I put it on, and between the warmth from Tim’s body and the tweed, I felt a lot better.

  When we were settled into the Impala, I turned to him and said, “I forgot to call Sylvia.” I took my phone out of my bag, and as I flipped it open, I realized I didn’t have Rosalie’s number. I called information and was put through.

  No one answered. The phone rang and rang.

  “That’s weird,” I said as I closed
my phone. “Sylvia was staying over with her.”

  “Maybe they’re very sound sleepers,” Tim suggested.

  Maybe. But it felt as though something wasn’t right. It was possible they wouldn’t have heard the first ring, but I let it ring at least ten times.

  “Unless they had the ringer turned off,” Tim said when I expressed my concern.

  Okay, so maybe I was seeing trouble where there wasn’t any. But I hadn’t expected the boogeyman to jump out in the desert, either.

  Tim’s phone rang. He scooted up in the seat and took it off his belt. “Kavanaugh,” he said.

  I could hear the other person talking but couldn’t make out the words. Finally, Tim said, “Okay. Thanks.” And he hung up. He turned to me, his mouth set in a grim line.

  “It was definitely someone from that wedding chapel who ran you off the road and shot at you.”

  Before I could ask how he knew that, he spoke again.

  “They found a torn piece of a jacket at side of the road. It had the words ‘That’s Amore’ on it.”

  Chapter 56

  I didn’t think I could ever hear that song title again without having a panic attack. I closed my eyes and let the movie play in my head: the car ramming into the light pole, the gunshots, the body slamming into the windshield.

  I looked at Tim. “Do you think it was Dan Franklin?”

  “Could have been.”

  “Why would he have changed into his Dean Martin tux, though?” I asked.

  We sat for a few minutes pondering that. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Will Parker?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  Or maybe it was someone totally unrelated to anything that had been going on tonight. Some guy with road rage who came after us.

  No. It had to have something to do with everything that had been going on the last few days. Someone who felt threatened enough to try to kill Jeff and me.

  Which reminded me, “We need to tell Sylvia about Jeff.”

  “So what do you propose to do? Go over and wake them up?”

  I nodded. “Exactly.”

  “Why don’t I get a uniform out there?” Tim said. “Then you don’t have to worry. He’ll tell Sylvia about Jeff and take her to the hospital to be with him.”