Pretty In Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  Pretty In Ink

  Karen E. Olson

  Murder in the city of sin…

  Brett Kavanaugh is a tattoo artist and owner of Vegas's hottest tattoo shop, The Painted Lady. And in her spare time, she does some sleuthing. After Brett and company ink Sin City's newest drag queens, they're invited to opening night at the strip's glamorous Nylon and Tattoos show-which ends in disaster when a stranger with a Queen of Hearts tattoo fatally injures Britney Brassieres with a champagne cork. And when another drag queen is found poisoned, it looks like someone's targeting Vegas's fabulous femmes…

  Karen E. Olson

  Pretty In Ink

  The second book in the Tattoo Shop Mystery series, 2010

  To my niece Anna Corr,who truly is pretty in ink

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank Alison Gaylin, Cheryl Violante, and Angelo Pompano for their help with the manuscript. Brett Wilson and Kevin Martino were invaluable sources, letting me in on all their secrets. The First Offenders (Alison Gaylin, Lori Armstrong, Jeff Shelby, and Anthony Neil Smith) are incredibly supportive, as is the whole FO community. Abram Katz can always be counted on to come up with the perfect poison. Craig Phillips is a fantastic illustrator, and his cover art is spot on. Jack Scovil is agent extraordinaire. My editor, Becky Vinter, with her cheery enthusiasm and eye for detail, helped me push the envelope and make this a better book. Kristen Weber, who started me on this journey, is missed but left me in good hands. Thanks to all the staff at NAL, every bookseller, every reader. Finally, I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the love and support from my wonderful husband, Chris, and daughter, Julia.

  Chapter 1

  If your name is Britney Brassieres, being taken down by a tsunami of champagne might seem only fitting.

  One minute she was belting out ‘Oops!… I Did It Again,” the next she was on the floor, her arms flailing as the Moët-not the really expensive kind, but that White Star you can get at a discount if you look hard enough-showered her.

  I know it was Moët because I saw the guy with the bottle. He’d come up to the edge of the stage near my table as Britney was singing, shook the bottle, then popped the cork, which was as loud as a gunshot as it went airborne and slammed right into Britney’s chest.

  Bull’s-eye.

  It wasn’t an accident, either. He’d aimed it at her.

  I jumped up on a gut reflex and impulsively shouted at the guy. “Hey!”

  After successfully hitting his target, he turned the bottle on me-confirming that he’d actually heard me-and everyone else in my vicinity.

  Unfortunately, it still had some oomph left, and liquid splashed across my face, getting into my eyes and dripping down my face onto my chest. I tried to blink, but it hurt, so I kept my eyes closed and listened to the pandemonium around me: chairs scraping as people scrambled to their feet, glass shattering. The vibration moved through my legs as the floor shook with the weight, the hurry to escape. I wanted to shout out that it was just champagne, but that cork explosion freaked everyone out, and when they saw Britney fall, they figured the worst.

  Bodies jostled me as they shoved past, and I struggled to keep my balance, holding out my arms like a trapeze walker and hitting someone who grunted but didn’t stop.

  “Joel?” I shouted above the din. “Joel?”

  An arm snaked around my waist. “I’m here, Brett. You okay?” His voice was soothing as his big belly pressed into my side, and for a second I relaxed before tensing up again.

  “Yeah, just got some champagne in my eyes. Is Britney okay?” I asked, trying to open my eyes, but they still stung and I shut them again.

  “She’s moving,” Joel said. “I think she’s okay. What happened?”

  “Guy with a champagne bottle. Where’d he go?” This time I forced my eyes open, blinking quickly a few times, clearing the fog. I scanned the dimly lit nightclub. There had been about a hundred people here for the show; most of them now were pushing one another toward the door; someone was screaming, someone else wailing.

  The scene on the stage looked like something from a Shakespearean tragedy: Britney, in her blue and white schoolgirl outfit and long blond tresses, was splayed across the floor as her fellow performers hovered over her, clucking like the mother hens they were. I spotted Charlotte with them, kneeling and stroking Britney’s forehead. Britney’s lips were moving, and her eyes were open.

  MissTique, who ran all the shows here at Chez Tango, flailed her arms as she teetered on six-inch clear plastic stilettos on the edge of the stage, not because she was going to fall, but because she was trying to calm everyone down. She shouted, “All right,” “Everything’s fine,” and “Get me a cocktail.” The last was to a young man with a remarkable physique who’d been dancing shirtless behind Britney before the champagne attack.

  “Where’s Bitsy?” I had to lean in toward Joel so he’d hear me as we took a couple of steps toward the stage.

  Bitsy is a little person, and it was easy to lose her in a crowd.

  Or bump into her.

  “Watch it!” I heard her say and looked down to see her rubbing her arm where I’d collided with her.

  I was about to apologize when it grew darker, sort of like a solar eclipse. But instead of the electricity going out, it was merely Miranda Rites blocking the light behind her. She looked like someone had dumped a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on her: a vision in pink sequins and a high bouffant of pink-accented orange hair, the multicolored butterfly tattoo I’d given her just a few weeks ago stretched between her shoulders just above the ample bosom. It was fake, of course. The bosom, I mean, not the ink.

  “She’s okay, right?” I asked Miranda, shouting, cocking my head toward the stage.

  The dark concrete walls didn’t swallow the din; it just bounced off them into my ears with a sort of echo effect.

  “I think she’s in shock.” To compensate for the noise, Miranda’s voice had reverted back to its husky tenor, giving her that Sybil split-personality thing: Is she a woman? Is she a man? Can she be both? “She hit her head, though. I saw it from backstage.”

  “Did you call an ambulance?”

  “They’re on their way. Cops, too.”

  I thought about my brother, Detective Tim Kavanaugh. I wondered whether he’d show up. He might be a little surprised to find me here at Chez Tango.

  It was opening night of MissTique’s new Nylons and Tattoos show, featuring Britney, Miranda, Lola LaTuche, and Marva Luss.

  Drag queens.

  They’d chosen The Painted Lady, my tattoo shop, as the one they’d entrusted with designing their new ink, because Charlotte Sampson, our trainee, knew Britney, who was Trevor McKay when he wasn’t dolled up. In Charlotte ’s other life, as an accountant, she’d done Trevor’s taxes the past couple of years. When Trevor found out Charlotte had ditched her former career choice to be a tattoo artist, he said it must be karma.

  Because of our contribution to the show, Charlotte; my shop manager, Bitsy Hendricks; my friend and tattooist Joel Sloane; and I had been given the VIP treatment: free drinks, a great table, a backstage tour. The only one in our shop who had chosen not to come was Ace van Nes, who had issues with the idea of a drag show-but he had issues with a lot of things. I’d been a little leery at first, too, for different reasons than Ace, but I easily caved to peer pressure when Charlotte, Bitsy, and Joel said we just had to be there.

  So that’s how we ended up covered in champagne, the music blasting, a strobe light cutting across Britney’s body as she lay sprawled on the stage, her five-inch red platform heels pointing toward the ceiling and looking oddly like the Wicked Witch of the West’s just after the house fell on her.

  My eyes were still smarting from the bubbly, and I closed them again for a s
econd. When I did, my memory kicked back to the guy who’d sprayed me. I hadn’t seen his face. The strobe had created a cutout image, his outline flashing light, then dark too fast for me to remember many details, especially with the oversized hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans that hung precariously low from his hips, with bunched-up boxers protruding from the top as though he was some urban kid.

  But he’d had his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. Maybe he didn’t want to get any of the Moët on himself. By doing that, however, he’d given me something I could share with my brother the detective. Something that I would never miss.

  He had a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm. A rather distinctive one.

  It was a queen-of-hearts playing card.

  Chapter 2

  Someone finally shut off the strobe when the cops showed up, and replaced the dim lights with bright ones that accentuated the weariness of the night: spilled booze, smudged martini glasses, a couple of shoeless heels. Even the hunky background dancers looked a bit worse for the wear. And while the champagne was spilled only halfway through the show, there had been enough cocktails beforehand to get a third world country drunk.

  I didn’t see my brother with the two uniforms who’d escorted the paramedics onstage to tend to Britney. Then again, it didn’t seem logical that a detective would be sent here. While it was clear to me that the guy who shot the cork at Britney was aiming for her, she may have gotten only a bump on the back of the head when she fell.

  But I remembered that actress who’d had what everyone initially thought was a minor bump on the head, too. She died just hours later. Maybe I should tell those uniformed cops that the cork was shot on purpose. I could at least give them a description of the tattoo, even though I hadn’t seen the guy’s face.

  I felt something tug on my foot as I started toward them. I glanced down. My shoe was stuck to some spirit gum and sporting a curly blond wig that had somehow lost its drag queen.

  “You know you’re dragging something that looks like a dead cat, don’t you?” Joel asked.

  I was one step ahead of him. I leaned against his arm and lifted my foot, pulling the wig off my shoe with a yank. I waved it in front of him, accidentally hitting Bitsy with it. I hadn’t seen her come around the other side of him.

  She made a face at me and brushed at the wig. “Where’d you get that?”

  I tossed it on one of the large speakers next to the stage, where male dancers had been performing as Britney lipsynched. “I saw him,” I said simply.

  Bitsy looked at me as if I had three heads. “What?”

  “I saw the guy with the champagne. The cork-it hit her. He aimed it at her.”

  Joel tugged my arm. “You have to tell them.” He indicated the cops. So even Joel thought it was a good idea.

  We made our way over to the stage. Joel is good in a crowd. He weighs about three hundred pounds and few people can get past him. Bitsy, however, was again missing.

  As we approached, I did see a detective, after all, near the edge of the stage. I could tell he was a detective because of the cheap-looking green sport jacket and gray Dockers frayed at the bottoms. His hair was cropped short and his ears stuck out, giving him the appearance of an impish Santa’s elf. And he had that look about him. That cop look. The one my dad had. The one my brother has.

  “Excuse me?” I said loudly, trying to get his attention.

  He didn’t hear me.

  “Excuse me!” I said more loudly.

  He turned and looked right through me.

  “Excuse me!” The third time is said to be a charm, but he hardly looked charmed. He frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “I saw the guy who hit her with the cork,” I said.

  He leaned over and whispered something to one of the uniforms before turning back to me, rolling his eyes and sighing. I didn’t hear the sigh, but I could see his chest rise and fall. I thought maybe he should think about asking MissTique for a job. He obviously had a flair for the dramatic. I wondered what he’d look like in a dress, then immediately tried to erase the image from my head. It wasn’t pretty.

  As he jumped down off the stage to join me and Joel-Bitsy had somehow scrambled up onstage and was talking to Charlotte now-I noticed that he was older than I’d originally thought. Or maybe it was the lighting that showed off the wrinkles around his eyes and the sag of his jaw. I wondered what I looked like in this dreadful light.

  Sister Mary Eucharista, my teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy School, would’ve said I shouldn’t be so vain while Britney was being moved onto a gurney.

  A gurney?

  “Are they taking her to the hospital? I thought she was okay.”

  The cop shrugged. “Hit her head pretty hard on the floor. Paramedics want to make sure she doesn’t have a concussion.” He was distracted, checking out my tattoos. His eyes followed the Monet water lily garden up my arm to the dragon poking its head up through the low neckline of my silk blouse, which was sticking to me because it was wet from the champagne. Fortunately, it was black, so he couldn’t see the rest of the dragon curling around my torso, meeting up with the tiger lily that slinked down from my breast to my hip. My jeans hid Napoleon riding his horse up the Alps on my right calf, the ink so new it still had a bubblegum pinkish hue, and my blouse also covered the Celtic cross on my upper back.

  In a moment of solidarity, the cop moved his sleeve up to show a snake curled around his left arm just above his wrist.

  “Nice,” I said politely, although it was probably flash, a stock tattoo. At The Painted Lady, we do only custom ink.

  He grinned. “So, what happened here? We can’t get a real answer out of any of those fags.”

  My own smile disappeared. “They’re drag queens,” I said coldly. “Performers.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he said, not seeming to notice it had gotten frosty in here. “What’s your name?”

  “Brett Kavanaugh.” I watched him write it down in his little cop notebook, an eyebrow rising as he took a better look at me, not my tattoos this time.

  “Kavanaugh?”

  “You probably know my brother.” Tim and I are carbon copies of each other, except he shaves and has freckles. Sort of natural ink as opposed to my self-imposed ink. A lot of people think we’re twins, with our red hair and thin frames, although he’s got more muscles while I’ve got more angles. At six feet, he’s taller than I am by three inches, but most people don’t notice because I don’t shy away from wearing heels.

  The cop’s expression changed slightly, the corners of his mouth tightening, and he nodded in that way people do when they’re just being polite. I wondered whether there was bad blood between him and Tim. Which reminded me…

  “I didn’t get your name.”

  He gave me a smirk. “So, tell me what happened here.”

  Definitely bad blood.

  I stood up a little straighter, forcing myself not to pay attention to my wet blouse. “There was a guy standing next to the stage. He had a champagne bottle, Moët White Star, I think. He pointed it at Trevor and hit him with the cork.”

  “Trevor?”

  “You do know his name is Trevor McKay?” I indicated the gurney, which was now being wheeled across the floor toward the door.

  He blinked at me a couple of times, then asked, “What did this guy look like?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t see his features. He had a big gray hooded sweatshirt on, and baggy jeans.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t even a guy; maybe it was a woman.”

  “No, it was a guy. He had his sleeves pushed up. Definitely man’s arms.”

  “But these guys”-the cop waved his hand, indicating the stage-“all look like women. Maybe it was a woman who looks like a guy.”

  I stared at him to see whether he was joking. He was dead serious.

  “No, it was a guy,” I insisted. “He had a tattoo,” I added.

  The pencil paused over the pad. “What sort of tattoo?”

  “A que
en-of-hearts playing card. On his inner forearm. His right arm.”

  “So you can’t tell me anything else about this guy, but you’re sure about the tattoo?”

  “I own a tattoo shop. The Painted Lady.”

  The eyebrows went back up again, and his arms fell to his sides. “At the Venetian?”

  He seemed to know it. “Yeah,” I said.

  “Pricey place.”

  I didn’t know whether he was referring to the upscale shops that made up the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes or my custom tattoos.

  “You can get cheaper ink on Fremont.”

  Sure. I should’ve known. He was determined to take me down a notch. I had to ask Tim about this guy who wouldn’t give me his name.

  “There’s no cork,” he said curtly.

  I frowned. “What?”

  “No one has seen the cork that you say hit him. You’re sure it was a cork?”

  “No, a frog flew out of that bottle.” I rolled my eyes at him, irritated that he was questioning everything I was telling him. As if I would lie.

  “No frogs, either,” he said humorlessly as he stuffed the notebook in his jacket pocket. “Do you have a card or something? In case I need to ask you more questions?”

  “Maybe you can give me your card,” I suggested.

  I thought it might work. And for a second, he considered it. But then he grinned and said, “I know where to find you,” before heading back to the stage.

  Chapter 3

  “That was smooth,” Joel said.

  “You could’ve helped me out here.”

  “You seemed to have it under control.”

  I was going to say something snarky, but I was distracted as I glanced around the club. The pandemonium had quieted down with the arrival of the police and paramedics, who were now rolling Trevor out on the gurney. He’d propped himself up on one elbow and was batting his eyes at the guy holding a blood pressure cuff but who seemed interested in what Trevor was saying. Maybe he’d get a date out of this. Seemed only right, since the rest of the night was a bust.