Karen Olson - Ink Flamingos

“We needed a key to get in,” he said matter-of-factly. “We couldn’t have if we didn’t have a key.”

Just as he slipped the key card into the slot on the business center door, I heard a voice from behind us.

“What are you doing?”

We’d forgotten all about Sylvia. We’d left her with her pie and coffee and said we’d be right back. We’d lied.

Jeff shuffled her into the room with us. “Sorry,” he said, “but something came up.”

“I would hope so, otherwise why would you leave an old lady alone?” she said.

No one else was in the business center, and Jeff ignored Sylvia as he slipped into a chair in front of an old PC and clicked on the Internet icon.

“What are we doing in here?” Sylvia asked.

“Checking a blog,” Jeff said. I was glad he kept it simple; I wasn’t quite sure just how much to tell her.

“You can’t do that at home or at the shop?” she demanded.

Jeff waved his hand to shush her as the Skin Deep blog popped up on the screen. I peered over his shoulder, but no pictures had been posted since the ones of me and Harry. I looked away. I didn’t want to be reminded.

“What were you doing, kissing that boy?” Sylvia asked me.

I shrugged. “Momentary lapse.”

“Induced by absinthe,” Jeff added.

“You were drunk?” Sylvia frowned. “My dear, never kiss a boy when you’re drunk. He’ll get the wrong idea.”

No kidding.

Jeff was typing, and then another page came up on the screen. I cringed slightly, because it was “my” blog, Ink Flamingos.

And there it was: Sherman Potter’s flamingo tattoo.

I hate it when I’m right about the wrong things.

Jeff scrolled down to see if there was any text, but there wasn’t. It was like on Skin Deep, just a picture with no title. Just like the one of Daisy’s tattoo on Skin Deep.

“At least she didn’t have pictures of us up there,” Jeff mused.

“Maybe she doesn’t know he’s dead,” I suggested. “She could’ve taken it any time.”

Jeff pointed at the time on the screen. It had been uploaded fifteen minutes ago. “And what was it the text said? That you keep giving her good reasons to blog? Like the first dead body, and now this one?”

He didn’t have to rub it in.

“Let’s go back upstairs,” I said. “We have to meet Tim.” Somehow it seemed more urgent right now.

“If he doesn’t see us up there, he’ll probably call your cell,” Jeff said absently. He was back to Skin Deep, now looking at the picture of Daisy’s flamingo. He’d clicked on the picture and it came up in a separate window, much larger than it was on the blog.

I still couldn’t figure out why Daisy agreed to have color, although from what Flanigan said, it wasn’t this particular tattoo that killed her. It was that second time she was exposed to the allergen. But it still nagged at me that she’d gone somewhere else, to another tattooist, for this work, and not to me. Yeah, it was an ego thing.

“Are you looking for something in particular?” I asked.

“This is interesting,” he said softly.

“Interesting how?” I asked.

He turned to Sylvia. “What do you know about this?”

“What do you think?” she asked belligerently.

“I didn’t notice this before. Maybe because it was smaller, but I can see it now,” Jeff said. “And maybe you should explain.” He was still talking to Sylvia.

“What didn’t you notice? What needs explaining?” I asked.

Both sets of eyes turned to me.

“Do you want to tell her?” Jeff asked Sylvia.

“Someone better tell me, and fast,” I said.

Sylvia patted my arm and smiled as though I were a moron for not picking up on whatever it was they saw.

“I started a tradition a long time ago that in every tattoo I’d hide a little ‘mi’ for the name of the shop within the tattoo. You know, my signature,” Sylvia said. “No one knows,” she added with a little smirk, “but it’s the way we can keep track of our tattoos. When I turned the shop over to Jeff, he continued with it.”

Clever.

Sylvia’s finger moved on the screen, and suddenly I saw it. The initials were there. In the pink plumes of the flamingo.

“What?” I asked, turning to Jeff. “ You colored her flamingo?” I hadn’t seen the initials the first time because I hadn’t been looking for them, and they were so small I wouldn’t have noticed them if they hadn’t been pointed out. Like the flowers in the tips of the wings that I’d done.

Jeff shook his head. “Not me.” He looked at Sylvia, who’d puffed up her chest proudly.

“It was a nice tattoo,” she said, “but it needed that color.”

Sylvia did it. I took a deep breath and counted to ten.

“Didn’t she tell you she was allergic?” I finally asked.

Sylvia made a face at me. “Look at me, a hundred tattoos and I never keeled over, did I?”

It stung a little that Sylvia had been able to talk Daisy into the color, and I hadn’t even been successful in the discussion about organic inks. I turned to Jeff. “Didn’t you know about this?”

“Don’t go blaming him for any of this,” Sylvia admonished. “He went away for a weekend, remember that?” She turned to Jeff. “You and that nice girl, you said you needed a weekend away. So I opened the shop while you were gone. No big deal.”

I had never seen Jeff Coleman blush before. I should take note of the date and time, so I could tease him about it occasionally. In fact, it would be very nice ammunition for when he decided to pick on me.

And then I wondered who the “nice girl” was.

I shook the thought aside. Sylvia had done Daisy’s color. Without asking about her allergy. But she was right, at least about this one. Daisy didn’t keel over from it.

“She came to your shop?” I asked.

Sylvia nodded. “She said you’d done the flamingo, but she’d seen the koi that Jeff did on your arm and she loved the colors and the design. She was disappointed he wasn’t there, but I convinced her that an old lady could do just as good a job.”

Looking at the picture, I had to agree. The color was impeccable.

“So you didn’t know about this?” I asked Jeff.

“Not till right this moment,” he said. “Not till I saw the initials. I hadn’t looked that closely before.”

I remembered how Flanigan had asked if I could ask around to see if anyone I knew would know anything about Daisy’s tattoos. And how I hadn’t, because I’d been too distracted by my own problems.

“We should tell Tim and Flanigan about this,” I said, turning to Sylvia. “You’ve got paperwork, right, to prove when you did this?”

The look on her face made me realize that maybe they weren’t exactly up to date on their paperwork over at Murder Ink. And the look on Jeff’s face told me that he’d been having issues with that.

“Let’s go,” I said, not wanting to get into it.

Jeff logged off the computer, and the three of us went back through the glass doors.

A flash blinded me as we rounded the corner.

Ihad a flashback from the other night with Harry, when all those flashes kept going off. My heart leaped into my throat as I blinked, trying to see who had the camera. Jeff was one step ahead of me, though. He grabbed a woman’s arm and whirled her around.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Melanie?” It was Melanie Black, Daisy’s bandmate, the one who’d invited me to the concert last night.

She held a small camera, and she did not look happy with Jeff.

“Let go of me,” she demanded; then she saw me and tried an awkward smile on for size. “Brett, can you tell him to let go of me, tell him who I am?”