Driven to Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “How did you get out?” I asked. “Out of the chapel back there?”

  He chuckled, the rumbling vibrating against my ear. “I was gone before the cops got there. Those couples were convinced, though, that I was still in there and told the cops that.”

  Great. No one would be looking here, across the parking lot and then across the street. He’d taken his arm away from my chest but held on to my upper arm, the gun stuck in the center of my back, where my Celtic cross tattoo was. He was walking so close to me that no one would be able to see the gun or that I was being forced to go.

  “How’s your friend?” he asked.

  “Fighting for his life,” I said, trying to choke back a sob. I hadn’t signed on for any of this, and I was making promises to Sister Mary Eucharista that I would never get involved in this sort of thing ever again as long as she let me live.

  The bigger-than-life Elvis hovered overhead, the Love Shack sign flashing its neon. Anyone watching us would think we were just another couple going in to get married.

  I needed to stall for more time.

  “So I think I know what happened,” I said. “Bernie paid Lucci to kill his son-in-law, who was beating up his daughter. You didn’t think Lucci worked fast enough; you had some sort of fight—that’s where those bruises on your hand came from—you ended up killing him and putting him in my trunk; then you sat back and waited until the time was right to kill Lou.” I paused. “How did you know where to return my car after you killed Lucci?”

  “I was with him when he stole it.”

  Okay, that made sense in a weird sort of way. “So how come your prints weren’t found in the car, but Lucci’s were?”

  He snorted. “Gloves.”

  People wear gloves only when they know they’re going to have to cover something up. “You stole the clip cord; you had gloves; you were waiting for that moment, weren’t you?” I asked.

  “Always be prepared, right?” His voice was so cold it sent shivers down my spine.

  “Lucci didn’t really try to run you down, did he?”

  “I wish you’d stop with the stupid act.”

  He was giving me a lot of credit.

  I had another question. “Why the rat?”

  “I hated that rat.”

  “Dan said Lucci killed it.”

  “I did. And I figured what better way to send off Dean Martin than with a rat. Rat Pack, right?” He chuckled at his own joke.

  “But you didn’t kill Lou, did you?”

  He stopped laughing, and he shoved the gun hard into my back. “What do you mean?”

  “Bernie killed him. With the Gremlin. But you still wanted money, didn’t you? It wasn’t enough to have Rosalie. That’s why you had him meet you at Murder Ink. To try to get money out of him.”

  He wasn’t arguing with me, so I figured I was on the right track. I wished I had a tape recorder or something so I could prove all this to Tim later. If I had the chance.

  We were going toward the door of the Love Shack now. It was a twenty-four-hour wedding chapel, and it bled light out onto the parking lot. If he was going to kill me, it seemed pretty risky to do it here.

  And then I remembered Martin Sanderson.

  “You’re driving Sanderson’s car,” I said. “Why?”

  “It’s my car,” he said. “Martin doesn’t know I switched the plates.”

  He wouldn’t be telling me all this if he was going to let me live.

  Maybe I could yank myself away from him. Try to kick up backward and get him in the groin or the shin. Spin around and push him away and run.

  As I was going through scenarios in my head, I didn’t hear the roar of the engine until it was almost upon us.

  The car made the decision for me.

  Will Parker threw me aside as the Impala sideswiped him, throwing him up over the hood in a total déjà vu moment.

  Chapter 62

  I’d lost my balance and ended up on the ground. When I rolled slightly to get up, I saw the gun near my feet. I stood and picked it up. It was big, like that Smith & Wesson that came in the mail for Ray Lucci. Had Lucci been waiting for the gun to kill Lou? Is that why it took so long that Parker felt he had to take matters into his own hands?

  “Dear, are you all right?” Sylvia climbed out of the Impala and came toward me. She took the gun out of my hand as though it weighed next to nothing and went over to Will Parker, who lay on the ground, his leg twitching slightly.

  Sylvia pointed the gun at him.

  “Who do you think you are?” she demanded.

  Her white hair was piled on top of her head and held in place with those little butterfly clips; she wore cotton pants and a fleece pullover. If it weren’t for the big gun locked between her hands, she’d look like someone’s grandmother on her way back from book group or knitting club.

  Movement caught my eye. I turned to see Tim running across the intersection, his face grim.

  When he caught sight of Sylvia holding the gun on Will Parker, he stopped short, and a big grin crossed his face. He hid it quickly, though, and strode over to her, putting his hand over hers and carefully taking the gun. He tossed a “How are you?” back at me.

  I nodded to indicate I was okay.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Tim demanded of Sylvia as he leaned down and turned Parker over, slapping handcuffs on his wrists.

  “I tried to tell you, but you weren’t paying attention,” Sylvia said. “I saw him”—she cocked her head at Parker—“taking Brett over here and it didn’t look like anything friendly. Someone had to do something,”

  “That’s the last time I leave my keys in the car,” Tim muttered, pulling Parker to his feet.

  “If you didn’t keep the keys in the car, then who knows what would’ve happened to your sister,” Sylvia said sharply. She was almost a foot shorter than he was, but she looked a lot taller as she stood with her hands on her hips, admonishing him.

  I stifled a chuckle.

  Parker glared at me. “It’s your word against mine,” he growled.

  Tim shoved him. “Somehow I think her word is worth more,” he said.

  A cruiser skidded to a stop behind the Impala, and Tim opened the back door and pushed Parker in, closing it behind him. He turned to me.

  “Hate to tell you, but we’ve got to take a statement.”

  Story of my life.

  I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to get myself to the shop by eleven the next morning. I was sitting with my coffee and a bagel when Bitsy and Joel came in. They were laughing about something as they pushed the door open, but when they saw me, their faces froze.

  “What happened to you?” Bitsy demanded, her voice stern, although I could tell I was totally off the hook for abandoning everyone yesterday.

  Joel came over and gently touched my face. “Sweetheart, you look terrible.”

  “Thanks,” I said, making a face at him. I’d looked in the mirror exactly once that morning and decided I wouldn’t do that for the rest of the day.

  I’d spent most of the night at the hospital with Sylvia, waiting for Jeff to wake up. When he did, he gave me a small smile and raised his eyebrows as he assessed my bruises and scrubs, but he didn’t say anything. They wouldn’t let me stay, because I wasn’t family. Tim took me home after I gave my statement about Parker, and I got exactly two hours of sleep. But at least I’d gotten another shower and I could put on clean clothes.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said. “I went out for chocolate, and the next thing I knew, I was riding the Monorail and going to Summerlin and getting shot at. And Jeff’s in the hospital, and Will Parker tried to kill me a second time and—”

  “Jeff? What’s wrong with Jeff?” Joel asked, concern etched in a frown across his forehead.

  “Parker shot him after he ran us off the road. But he’s okay,” I added. “He’s out of surgery, and they say he’s going to be fine.”

  Bitsy held her hand up. “Stop. You know you have to tell us
everything from the beginning, but you’ve got a client coming in about two minutes. Is that enough time?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not nearly enough.”

  As I spoke, my client came in. I was a little worried I’d be too tired, but turns out there’s a little thing called autopilot. I didn’t want to tell the client that I could do this in my sleep, because I practically was.

  Bitsy plied me with more coffee after my client left, and I went over the story piece by piece. She and Joel and Ace, who’d come in while I was with my client, hung on every word and didn’t even interrupt.

  I’d gotten pretty much all of it right. When Tim took me home to get a little sleep, he told me Rosalie admitted she and Parker had had an affair; she was protecting Parker by telling me that Lou killed Lucci. Bernie admitted—after the blood type found on the Gremlin matched Lou Marino’s—that he’d contracted to have his daughter’s husband killed, and when it didn’t work out, he took matters into his own hands.

  And the thing that Parker thought I found in the locker room? The reason why he’d tried to run me and Bitsy down at the university and then Tim and me in the parking garage? And why he’d shot at Jeff and me?

  A love letter from Rosalie.

  “Are you sure?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

  Jeff sat in my chair, in my room at The Painted Lady. His shirt was off, showcasing his tattoos. My eyes lingered on the Day of the Dead tattoo that he’d designed himself—a skeleton in a big sombrero, playing a guitar—before moving up to the ugly red wound that was still healing near his clavicle.

  “I know you think I’m good-looking, Kavanaugh, but let’s get to it,” he quipped. He’d been out of the hospital for two weeks. So far we hadn’t talked about anything that had happened. I tried, but every time I did, he changed the subject. Like now.

  “Bitsy says you’re having dinner with that Dr. Sexy tonight.”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “That’s not really your business.” I’d had a long conversation with Colin Bixby and asked him why he’d pointed me in the direction of Dan Franklin, who clearly had only an unrequited relationship with Rosalie. But the rumor around the university lab, however, had them having a heated relationship, and Bixby felt Franklin was suspect.

  “Bitsy says you have a hard time with commitment,” Jeff was saying. “But I don’t think so.”

  I frowned. What would Jeff Coleman know about that? I secretly thought Bitsy was right. I’d had a series of relationships in the last ten years, and none of them had lasted.

  “You don’t get it, do you, Kavanaugh?”

  “I guess I don’t,” I said, slipping a new needle into my tattoo machine.

  He watched me for a second, then said, “Every time you mark your body, you’re making a commitment. A lifelong commitment. One of these days it won’t be just a tattoo.”

  What? Was Jeff Coleman becoming profound? Who knew?

  But then he ruined it. “Maybe it’ll be Dr. Sexy. Tonight. Should I tell your brother not to wait up?” He winked.

  I dipped the needle in black ink. Despite his attempt to distract me, the question remained. “Are you sure?” I asked again, the machine poised.

  Jeff pointed to a small space of bare skin just above where his wound was. “Right there. And I’ve never been so sure in my life.”

  “You and Sylvia have talked about it?”

  “That’s between me and her, Kavanaugh. Don’t worry your little head about it.”

  But I did worry about it. This wasn’t just another tattoo.

  I sighed and pressed the foot pedal, and the machine began to whir. I touched the needle to his skin.

  There was no stencil. I didn’t need one.

  It took fifteen minutes.

  I wiped the last of the ink and blood away with a soft cloth and took my foot off the pedal. I handed him the small mirror so he could see it.

  Jeff took the mirror and gazed at the tattoo.

  “You know, Kavanaugh, you could have a good career for yourself if you play your cards right.”

  I turned to put the machine on the shelf.

  I felt his hand on the back of my neck. “Thanks,” he whispered, all teasing gone now.

  I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see that I’d teared up. I nodded as I heard him slide off the chair. I reached over and grabbed a tube of ointment.

  He stood, shrugging on his shirt.

  “You better put this on first,” I said, indicating the salve.

  He grinned and winked. “You do it.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, ran my fingers through the ointment, and touched it to the new tattoo, red around the edges, slightly inflamed.

  “That’s Amore.”

  Read on for an excerpt from

  Karen E. Olson’s next Tattoo Shop Mystery

  Ink Hlamingos

  Coming in June 2011 from Obsidian

  The picture of the flamingo tattoo was on the blog an hour before they found the body. In retrospect, I probably should’ve called the cops immediately.

  I was working on an elaborate tattoo of a heart wrapped in the American flag when Joel Sloane, one of my tattooists, stuck his head through the door. At The Painted Lady, where we do only custom ink, we’ve got four private rooms for tattooing, unlike street shops, which merely have stations out in the open.

  “Brett,” Joel said, nodding to my client, “sorry, but you have to see this.”

  I set my tattoo machine down on the counter and slipped off the blue latex gloves as I rose. “I’ll be a minute,” I told my client as I followed Joel toward the staff room. “What is it?” I asked his back.

  Bitsy Hendricks, our shop manager, was standing in front of the small TV set in the corner of the staff room. When we came in, she whirled around, her eyes wide.

  She pointed at the TV. Red and blue flashing lights lit up the screen, which was filled with a sea of police cruisers and at least one ambulance. Something bad had happened.

  At first I was relieved it was a crime scene I wasn’t witnessing personally. I’d gotten into a few situations in the last several months that had had me up close and personal with dead bodies, and I hoped that was all behind me now.

  Until I saw the picture of Daisy Carmichael on the screen, the reporter’s voice-over telling me that her body had been found in a hotel room.

  My knees buckled a little, and Joel’s arm snaked around my shoulders.

  “Are they sure it’s her?” I asked no one in particular. My voice sounded far away, like I was talking into a tunnel.

  “Yes,” Bitsy said flatly. “It’s on every channel.” And in case I didn’t believe her, she aimed the remote at the set and clicked through all the local channels.

  She was right. It was on every channel.

  “Did they say what happened?” I asked.

  “No, just that they found her body.”

  “Who found her?” I couldn’t help myself. My curiosity was too strong.

  “Think they said the room service guy.”

  As she spoke, a gurney rolled into view on the screen, a white sheet over what could have only been a body. I caught my breath.

  Joel tightened his grip on my shoulder, and he put his other hand on Bitsy’s.

  Daisy, or Dee as she was known to her fans, was the lead singer of the band the Flamingos. They were a bit like the Go-Go’s or the Bangles, but with a definite edge to their videos despite the wholesome pop sound. It wasn’t Lady Gaga edgy, but more of an early-1980s punk look. Daisy, which was the name I knew her by, had come in to The Painted Lady two years ago for the first time. She’d stumbled onto it by accident as she window-shopped at the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, the upscale stores that surrounded my shop. While tattoo shops weren’t exactly strangers to Las Vegas, aka Sin City, this location was the result of a little blackmail by the former owner, Flip Armstrong. My clientele was a little more high-class because of it, and dropping Daisy’s name now and then didn’t hurt, either. When she’d first stepped foot
through the door, the Flamingos was just a dream. A YouTube-video discovery and two years later, they were at the top of the charts.

  None of us had ever seen Daisy Carmichael socially. We’d never had dinner or drinks or even lunch with her. But she had come only here for her tattoos, and since she’d been here so frequently, we felt as though we had known her forever. Despite the edgy persona she portrayed to the public, Daisy was just a girl from Gardiner, Maine, a quiet little town where everything was within walking distance.

  “. . . an overnight sensation on YouTube,” the reporter was saying about the Flamingos as a video of the band playing at the Bellagio on New Year’s Eve just weeks ago lit up the screen.

  That’s right. They’d performed at the Bellagio. I frowned as I thought about it.

  “She didn’t call for an appointment in December?” I asked Bitsy, who kept track of all our appointments and schedules.

  She flipped back her blond bob and narrowed her eyes at me. She knew what I was after.

  “She didn’t call. But we can’t expect her to get a tattoo every time she’s here,” Bitsy said.

  Okay, I could buy that. But I was thinking about that picture of the flamingo tattoo on that blog.

  Since I’d had a little time to kill earlier, I’d been playing around on the Internet when I found a blog called Skin Deep—not very original—by clicking on a link from another one.

  Skin Deep’s latest post featured a tattoo of a flamingo. It was beautiful: long black lines with reds and pinks and oranges. It was one of the best I’d ever designed.

  Except when I’d tattooed it on Daisy, there had been no colors.

  I had scrolled up to the “About Me” section and read that blogger Ainsley Wainwright admired body art and the history of scarification and felt compelled to take photographs of tattoos seen on the Vegas Strip and post them so everyone could see their beauty. Other blogs were similar, but most added the stories surrounding the tattoos and where the person had gotten them. Skin Deep just show-cased the art and let that tell the story. Too bad. I could’ve used the publicity. Or at least a link to The Painted Lady’s Web site.