Pretty In Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  I came out onto the circular drive, the fountain spouting all that water, but I didn’t have time to lament it. I ran along the roadway and out to the Strip. I thought I heard someone shout my name, but I couldn’t stop to turn around. It would slow me down.

  When I hit the sidewalk, I almost crashed into two Hispanic guys who tried to hand me those little cards advertising the ladies who would do anything for a price. Like I’d be interested. I waved them off as I picked up speed and dashed between the tourists who were gazing at the Venetian, which was just across the street.

  I wanted to go to the shop in the worst way. I wanted to sit in my room and close my eyes and smell the ink and feel the machine in my hand.

  But I couldn’t. DeBurra would track me down and cart me off to police headquarters again. Or worse, Bixby would show up. I had no idea what his agenda was, and I didn’t want to find out.

  The light had turned, and the walk signal indicated I could cross the street. Glancing left and right as I did so, wondering where Jeff Coleman had gone-I could have used a ride-my legs feeling more leaden with each step, I dug into my bag and pulled out my phone, hitting speed dial.

  Three rings, then, “Brett, where are you?”

  I sighed with relief. “Joel, I need a car.”

  “Where’s yours?”

  “No time for that now,” I said, knowing if I told him what had happened at Chez Tango it would take way too long to answer his questions. “Can I borrow the Prius?” Not exactly a getaway car, but it would have to do in a pinch.

  “Sure, but-”

  “I’m going to the parking garage now. I’ll meet you at the elevator, okay?”

  “Sure, but-”

  I hung up and went through the hotel doors into the Venetian lobby, this time not even paying attention to the décor. I was on a mission. I had no idea where I would go once I had Joel’s car, but I’d figure it out. I still needed to track Charlotte down.

  I rode up in the elevator. I eyed the passageway that led to the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, waiting for Joel. I paced a little, making a woman loaded down with shopping bags a bit nervous; I could tell from the way she kept hitting the elevator button.

  Finally, Joel came through the glass doors. Instantly he enveloped me in a hug. Now, as I’ve said before, I’m not a hugger, but it did feel good.

  I pulled away, and Joel was smiling at me.

  “Can you give it to me in a nutshell?” he asked, holding the keys out.

  I took them. “Okay, Charlotte wasn’t at Chez Tango, but half the building exploded while I was there, Frank DeBurra showed up and wanted to take me in for another marathon interrogation, and then Bixby picked me up and took me to his place. Which so happens to be at the Windsor Palms, where Wesley Lambert had his little ricin-making lab. So I took off. I need to find out how Tim is, because he and DeBurra beat the crap out of each other over Shawna. And I need to find Charlotte.” I clutched the keys, hoping he’d be okay with me taking the car now. It all sounded a little crazy, and I’m not sure I would have offered my car for the cause.

  But Joel just nodded. “You don’t have to go far for that.”

  “For what?”

  “To find Charlotte.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s inside. At the shop.”

  Chapter 55

  Still holding the keys to the Prius, I said, “Let’s go,” and went through the doors and into the walkway that led to the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. Joel lumbered along-to side me, every few steps patting my back. If I hadn’t needed it, it might have been annoying.

  “Has she said anything?” I asked.

  “She looks like hell. That drag queen is with her.”

  “Kyle?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s the one who called me. Told me she was sick.”

  “He says he didn’t.”

  We’d reached the small kiosk at the entrance to the Shoppes, and I stopped. “What?”

  Joel shrugged. “I told him you said you talked to him, but he’s denying it.”

  If I hadn’t spoken to Kyle, then who had called me?

  I started walking again, not even looking in the window at Kenneth Cole, which meant I was really distracted. I always look in the window at Kenneth Cole.

  Ace was sitting at Breathe, the oxygen bar, a tube in his nose, his eyes closed as he leaned back in the tall chair, a look of absolute serenity on his face.

  “Look at that,” I said, cocking my head toward him.

  “He didn’t want to be in the shop with Charlotte,” Joel said. “She broke up with him.”

  Bitsy had said that earlier. This wasn’t good. I couldn’t have two of my tattooists not speaking to each other, or not able to be in the same room together. But that would mean I’d want to keep Charlotte around after all this. And the jury was definitely out on that one.

  “This is why you never sleep with someone you work with,” I muttered.

  Ace didn’t even open his eyes as we passed.

  Bitsy was at the front desk, and her eyes widened when she saw me. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded, indicating my arm. “Just a few scratches.”

  She jumped up to get a closer look, and she and Joel shook their heads over my injury.

  “It could’ve been worse,” I said.

  They nodded in unison.

  “Where’s Charlotte?” I asked.

  “In your room,” Bitsy said.

  “Kyle with her?”

  She nodded.

  I didn’t say anything else, just walked back and opened the door. Charlotte was in the middle of inking something on Kyle’s hand. As I took another step toward them, I saw it was a Chinese character. The character for strength. They both looked up, and the machine stopped whirring but Charlotte still held it over Kyle’s hand.

  “Are you back to work?” I asked Charlotte, aware of a sharp edge in my voice. I tried to tell myself that I needed an explanation before judging her, but I was having a hard time convincing myself.

  She shrugged.

  I waved my hand. “Might as well finish. You’re almost done anyway.”

  She gave me a funny look, then went back to the tattoo.

  “I didn’t call you,” Kyle said without any prompting.

  “So who did? And how did Rusty Abbott know that building was going to explode?”

  Charlotte glanced up at Kyle and they exchanged a look.

  The machine stopped again; Charlotte sighed. “We were in the club. But we decided to go for something to eat. We were about two blocks away when it blew.”

  I looked at Kyle. “Your SUV was still in the parking lot.”

  “We had my car,” Charlotte said.

  I took a long look at her. Her face was paler than usual, but it could’ve been the lighting in here. The overhead light was off, and she had the desk lamp aimed right at Kyle’s hand, its beam illuminating her work.

  She had already gone back to finishing the ink. I watched as she filled in the last part, wondering what to ask first.

  Charlotte turned the machine off again and put it down, pulling off her gloves. But before I could even speak, she gave a little sigh, and said, “It all started that night at the Queen of Hearts Ball.”

  She exchanged a look with Kyle, who nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “That’s the night Trevor and Lester met each other.”

  Charlotte put some ointment on Kyle’s tattoo, which was pink around the edges. He was admiring it.

  “Nice work,” I said absently.

  “Thanks,” Charlotte said. She patted Kyle’s arm. “Why don’t you go out and see what Bitsy’s up to, okay?”

  Kyle looked from her to me and back to her again. “Sure, honey,” he said, standing. He knew she was trying to get rid of him.

  When he was gone and the door shut, I said, “So tell me what happened that night.”

  “What didn’t happen that night?” she said. “You’ve never seen such a party. Lots
of champagne, dancing, gorgeous queens. Anyway, fast-forward to a few months later.”

  “What happened then?”

  “That’s when DeBurra showed up. Even though I’d already figured out there was something funny going on.”

  “Funny like what?”

  She took a deep breath and smiled sadly. “I was pretty sure Trevor was blackmailing someone.”

  Chapter 56

  “Blackmail?”

  “I found some of that money in his apartment. He said boots were better than a bank. But he did have a spreadsheet for it. I saw it when I was doing his taxes, but he said it wasn’t going to be reported. I should ignore it. He wouldn’t tell me any more than that.”

  “But if he had all that money, and the money from Lester Fine, why would he need to pawn that brooch?”

  “Lester gave him the brooch, and whenever they had a fight, Trevor would pawn it but then he’d regret it and buy it back. It’s real, you know. Diamonds and rubies. It was Lester’s; his wife had it made for him before the ball,” Charlotte said, then frowned. “How do you know about the money from Lester?”

  I admitted to having Trevor’s laptop and looking at his documents.

  “So that’s where it is. That day you saw me on the balcony? I dropped off the makeup case and figured I’d grab the laptop while I was there. But I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  The mention of the makeup case reminded me… “So the pin really belonged to Trevor? Then what was the mistake Wesley Lambert told Eduardo about that day?”

  “Trevor and Lester had another falling out, but this time, Lester wanted the pin back. Trevor told him he’d pawned it, which he had, but then he went and bought it back.”

  “So Lester Fine sicced Lambert on him? He went to the club to find out where the pin was?”

  Charlotte nodded. “Trevor got a message from the pawnbroker that they’d had a complaint that the brooch was stolen, and he wanted me to go see if I could find out what was going on.”

  “Why you? Why didn’t he go?”

  Charlotte took a deep breath. “He was afraid they’d arrest him on the spot.”

  It was likely, especially if it was Lester Fine filing the complaint.

  “So Lambert was part of this, right?” I asked. “When he showed up at the pawnshop and knocked you around?”

  Charlotte looked puzzled. “Lambert? At the pawnshop? No, Brett. That wasn’t Lambert. It was Frank DeBurra.”

  A few days after the Queen of Hearts Ball, DeBurra showed up at Charlotte’s door. He said he knew about Trevor and his “freelance work” for Lester Fine. It wasn’t Trevor he was after, but Lester Fine. He knew she’d done Trevor’s taxes and wanted to look at Trevor’s finances, which verified Trevor’s “work” for Lester. She handed over everything. Except Trevor’s spreadsheet with the fifty thousand dollars noted on it.

  “The 1099s from Lester were legit, but this wasn’t,” Charlotte said. “There was no proof that it was tied to Lester, and I didn’t want to get Trevor into trouble.”

  “I heard, too, that you were giving DeBurra information about Lambert and that militia in the desert.”

  She gave me a funny look, then said, “That’s right. I ran into Lambert at a club one night, and we were catching up. He was wasted and started telling me about making poison. I didn’t believe him, but I told DeBurra anyway.” She paused. “Who knew it was true?”

  “So how did you end up in Lambert’s condo?”

  Charlotte took a deep breath. “I had a message on my voice mail from him asking me to come. He said he knew something about Trevor and that champagne cork. But he was dead when I got there. I couldn’t risk calling the cops and having DeBurra find me there.”

  “Why has DeBurra been after you? Why did he show up at the pawnshop?” I asked.

  “He said he knew I was holding something back and if I didn’t tell him, he’d have me arrested for stealing that brooch. He’s a cop. Who’d believe me?” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Why would you agree to do this at all?” I asked Charlotte. “Work for DeBurra, I mean?”

  A band of flush moved up Charlotte’s neck and into her face.

  “What did DeBurra have on you?” I asked, suspicious.

  She shrugged, but her face got redder.

  “Charlotte, it’s okay,” I said, although I was remembering Tim’s advice about background checks on all employees.

  When she spoke, her voice was so low, I had to lean forward to hear her.

  “I got caught tattooing a fifteen-year-old girl. She was the sister of a friend. Her parents weren’t supposed to come home that early. They called the police.”

  I took a deep breath. I totally was going to be changing my hiring policies.

  I wanted to be able to tell her it was all right, but I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t.

  She could tell. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she blinked a few times. “I’m fired, aren’t I?”

  I nodded without thinking.

  She jumped out of her chair and swung the door open, dashing out. I took a deep breath as I got up. I kept forgetting that she was ten years younger than me, that I might have reacted the exact same way if Mickey had threatened to fire me when I was just a trainee.

  The front glass door was already closing when I emerged, and I saw a flash of her as she ran, Bitsy and Joel staring.

  “What happened?” I heard Joel ask. I shook my head and sped past him after Charlotte.

  She was fast. She was running along the canal, dodging shoppers and tourists. I had about five inches on her, but I’d had a slow start and wasn’t gaining much. I kept my eye on her, bumping into a few people because I wasn’t watching where I was going, and when I finally thought I’d catch up, someone stepped out from around a turn up ahead that made me stop short and caused my heart to beat even faster, but not for the right reason.

  Colin Bixby.

  He took two steps toward Charlotte, who was careening toward him.

  She grabbed onto the top of the small railing that ran along the length of the canal and stopped short. She looked first at Bixby, then back at me. An expression of terror crossed her face, and before I had a chance to even shout out her name, she catapulted over the railing and splashed into the water.

  A gondola sailed under the footbridge at just that moment and slammed into her.

  I held my breath, considering my options. Should I jump in after her? I did have my lifesaving certificate from when I was fourteen.

  But Bixby was seconds ahead of me. He was already in the water. Just as I was about to pull myself up over the railing to join him, a hand clamped down on my shoulder.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Chapter 57

  As I stared into Frank DeBurra’s eyes, which were black with hate, something popped into my head that was sort of a non sequitur, considering.

  How had he known there should’ve been two bodies inside Chez Tango after the explosion?

  No one had told him this. I knew only because “Kyle” had called me. Bixby knew, but he had been somewhere in traffic, supposedly. Jeff Coleman and Tim knew because I’d told them.

  No one had gotten around to telling DeBurra, yet even before he’d spoken to any of us, he was telling the firemen to look for two bodies. A man and a woman, he’d said.

  Why hadn’t this occurred to me before? When I might have been in a better position to actually raise that red flag with Tim. Because at this moment, the prospects of talking to my brother seemed a bit bleak.

  A crowd had formed around the canal, everyone angling to see the girl who’d jumped in and gotten hit by the gondola. The gondolier was in the water now, too; Bixby was cradling Charlotte’s head in his arms and shouting that someone should call 911.

  No one was paying attention to me, or the fact that I was being herded out of the mall by a scruffy cop who was taking advantage of the situation. He had my right arm twisted up behind my back, and to hide that, he was walking so close we might be
mistaken for lovers.

  So didn’t want to go there.

  Blood still caked DeBurra’s nose where my brother had hit him, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. “You shouldn’t run from the cops, Miss Kavanaugh.” His voice was low and menacing, his breath hot against my neck.

  My throat and mouth were so dry, I could barely swallow. I licked my lips, but it was like licking the desert sand.

  “Where are you taking me?” I managed to croak.

  “Where we won’t be bothered.”

  “Why?”

  “You and I have some things to settle.”

  “Like what?”

  He snorted, his one good eye shifting back and forth as he pushed me forward toward the exit.

  So he was no Chatty Kathy. Normally that would’ve suited me just fine, but I didn’t like it that he was taking me to an undisclosed location.

  We’d reached the end of the canal and entered the circular area that was the entrance to the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. The ceiling was painted with elaborate Renaissance frescoes, gold accenting everything. In a way, I preferred this area to the one where the ceiling was painted as if we were supposed to be outside. The illusion was less theme park-like.

  The vestibule was remarkably free of people, most likely because they’d heard the splash and the screams and had gone to see what the fuss was all about. Maybe they thought it was another one of those little plays or dances performed periodically for entertainment.

  My hand, the one twisted around, had fallen asleep. I tried to wiggle my fingers to wake it up, but he only gripped harder, like a vise on my wrist.

  His other hand, the one not holding on to me, swung jauntily by his side.

  He probably didn’t expect me to try to wrench free, so that’s exactly what I did.

  I twirled around and yanked my arm down, pulling it from his grasp. I was free. Who knew those self-defense classes in high school would pay off someday?

  But that’s when I noticed that his sleeve had gotten pushed halfway up to his elbow. I hesitated.

  He had ink.

  Familiar-looking ink.

  It was the bottom half of a queen-of-hearts playing card.