Karen Olson: Ink Flamingos

“So who do you think was impersonating you?”

“Huh? Oh, right, the redhead. I’m not the only tall redhead in this city,” I said. “There are a lot of tall redheaded showgirls in Vegas.”

“True, true. But who else travels with tattoo ink?”

This conversation was getting old, and I had a client.

“Listen, Tim, unless you need something official from me, I’ve got to get back to work. I need to pay my rent.” A not-so-subtle reference to the fact that I paid him rent for sharing his house in Henderson.

“That’s just it, though, Brett, we might need to follow up officially. Everyone here knows about you. They know you’re a tattoo artist. They know you’re a tall redhead. We might need proof you weren’t anywhere near the Golden Palace earlier.”

The Golden Palace?

“That’s where she was found?” I asked. “I couldn’t tell from the TV; we came into the report late. What a scummy place to die.” I felt awful for the pretty girl who had more talent in her little finger than most people had all over. The Golden Palace was off the Strip. Not too far, but even a block away put you in dicey company. It was gorgeous from the outside, all reds and golds and Chinese dragon statues, but I’d wandered in there one day to see if the inside matched the outside. Absolutely not. The carpet was worn and frayed; even the slot machines were the old-fashioned kind you could still get a pot of coins out of. But no one in the Golden Palace was a winner. The gamblers were older people who came in with their Social Security checks every month and lost. They were the down-and-out who came to Vegas and stayed in the only place they could afford, and even that couldn’t support their dreams.

“Daisy didn’t have to stay there,” I said, stating the obvious. “Did she really have a room there?”

“I’ll send someone over to verify your alibi,” Tim said, ignoring me, which piqued my curiosity further.

I quickly beat it down. I’d promised myself a couple of months ago that I wouldn’t get involved in police business anymore, that I would curb my curiosity about things that didn’t involve me.

I reminded myself, though, that this did involve me, if the police had to check out my whereabouts when a girl died.

There was one question, though, that was still nagging at me: “So if there were ink pots and tattoo needles, did she have a new tattoo or was it just the color in the flamingo that you think might be new?”

“How could we tell if a tattoo is new?”

She did have a new tattoo.

“Whatever is new will have a pinkish hue to it, sort of like a bubblegum color. And it might be a little inflamed.” I couldn’t help myself. “Was she murdered, Tim?”

“It’s just routine, the questions,” Tim said, ignoring me again. “Like I said, to make a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t you in that hotel room.”

“Do the police think this redhead killed her?”

“None of your business, Brett,” Tim said sternly. “Remember?”

Okay, so it wasn’t enough I had to remind myself that I wasn’t going to get involved. Now my brother had jumped on that bandwagon.

I didn’t have time for a snappy retort, though, before he threw me another question.

“Have you seen this blog before, Brett?”

I glanced down at the laptop screen, which had grown dark. I moved my finger on the pad, and the colors of Daisy’s flamingo flashed bright.

“I found it through a link from another blog,” I admitted. “I don’t know why I didn’t know about it before, because apparently they take pictures of people’s tattoos on the Strip.”

“So you don’t know this Ainsley Wainwright?”

“No. Never heard of her. Or him. Joel and I couldn’t figure out if it was a man or a woman.”

“Woman,” Tim said automatically.

My little nondetective antennae went up. “How do you know it’s a woman?” I asked slyly.

“Never mind,” he said sharply. “Don’t you have a client to get back to?”

I knew when I was being dismissed, even on the phone.

“I’m sending Flanigan over to talk to Bitsy. She’s got your schedule, right?”

“Flanigan? Does it have to be Flanigan?” Detective Kevin Flanigan and I had crossed paths not long ago, and it was not a pleasant experience. He always looked at me as though I were guilty of something. Even when I wasn’t.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said and hung up.

I stared at the phone a second before setting it down. The TV was still on; Joel had stopped paying attention to me and was watching the coverage of the breaking news about Dee Carmichael. I didn’t have time to join him, so I started for the door. Patty was probably wondering whether I’d ever come back.

“Brett, I know how he knew Ainsley Wainwright is a woman.” Joel’s voice stopped me, and I turned around.

“How?”

He pointed at the TV. “They just reported that Daisy checked into her room at the Golden Palace using the name Ainsley Wainwright.”

If I didn’t get to Patty now, I’d have to reschedule her. I stored away what Joel said and went back to my room, where Patty was texting someone, iPod earbuds in her ears, clearly not missing me very much at all.

I’d finished outlining the American flag around the heart and needed to start with the colors. Patty was an Iraq war veteran, just twenty-nine, and she’d seen more in two years than I’d seen in my entire life. The flag was her homage to her service, the heart reminding her of humanity and the fragility of life.

She glanced up at me as I came in.

“Thought you ran away.”

I sat down and pulled on my gloves. “Don’t worry about me,” I said, picking up the tattoo machine and dipping the needles into the red ink. I swiveled around and settled my foot on the pedal on the floor. The machine kicked in with a whir, and I put the needles to Patty’s skin. She flinched slightly, then relaxed. Sometimes they can’t stop flinching. Makes my job harder.

As I worked, I thought about Daisy Carmichael. Obviously, she wasn’t Ainsley Wainwright. Maybe Ainsley had checked into the room and then Daisy came to visit her. Maybe Ainsley did the tattoo color. And then somehow Daisy died. Had she been murdered? It seemed a possibility. She was a young woman, younger than me by a couple of years, which would put her around thirty, maybe.

Had she killed herself? No. I couldn’t buy that. Why get color in a tattoo and then kill yourself? Wouldn’t you want to enjoy the tattoo for a while? Plus, she was at the top of her game, the top of her career. She always seemed like a happy person, someone who didn’t take her fame for granted.

And then I had another thought. The picture on the blog was taken before the body was found, on the Strip, outside. Had she had the tattoo colored in and then gone out for a stroll on the Strip, where Ainsley snapped her picture, then back to the hotel and died?

Seemed doubtful. The sequence of events didn’t make sense. And it also wouldn’t explain the inks and needles in the hotel room.

I thought about the questions Tim had asked. Sounded like there might definitely be another tattoo. Maybe the flamingo had been colored in a while back, and someone gave her a new tattoo in the hotel room.

I was doing it again. I was getting way too interested in something that wasn’t my business. But I couldn’t help it. I was sort of involved. Tim’s phone call and Flanigan’s impending visit were indications that I wasn’t totally out of the clear on this one.

It was possible Ainsley Wainwright was a redhead. There hadn’t been a picture of her with her bio on the blog site. Thus the confusion about her gender.