Karen Olson: Ink Flamingos

“Where was it?” I asked.

“Where was what?”

“That tattoo.”

“Where on her body, you mean?”

I bit my lip before saying something smart-alecky. “That’s right.”

“On her left breast.”

I knew every tattoo on Daisy’s body, and as far as I knew, she didn’t have a tattoo on her breast. She had them on her arms, on her upper back and lower back, on her ankle, on her wrist, on the side of her torso. But none on her breast. And none in color. Except now the flamingo and this, well, it was an abomination. And any tattooist that did that should be stripped of his inks.

Unless of course it was the ink.

“Why do you think Miss Carmichael would go to another tattooist if she’d trusted you to do all her other tattoos?” Flanigan asked.

It was a loaded question. I had to make sure I didn’t sound bitter about being usurped, even though I was feeling rather insecure about it at the moment. If she’d stuck with me, she wouldn’t have gotten such a botched tattoo. Maybe she would still be alive.

The jury was still out on how she died, though. “Was she murdered?” I asked, ignoring his question.

“Is it possible to have an allergic reaction to the colored inks any time?” he asked, ignoring mine.

I understood what he was asking and nodded. “I’m not a medical expert on this or anything, but it’s possible that she wouldn’t have a reaction to the flamingo color and think that it would be okay to have another tattoo done with color but end up with a reaction on that one.” That had happened with one of Ace’s clients about a year ago, but he hadn’t died or anything.

Flanigan put the phone back in his breast pocket. “I would appreciate some help, if you will.”

Flanigan asking for my help? Had something gone askew in the world? Had the earth slipped off its axis?

“I would ask you to keep your ear to the ground. If you hear of any tattoo artist who may have done this, I would ask you to call me immediately.”

I forced myself not to bristle at the insinuation that every tattooist knows every other tattooist in the city. It was like insinuating that I knew every other person of Irish descent in the city just because my last name happened to be Kavanaugh.

And then I remembered Jeff Coleman. Jeff owned Murder Ink, a street shop up near Fremont Street. He did know everyone. He’d been working in this city his entire career and would be a better source for the cops than me. But I didn’t want to tell Flanigan that. It would be easier if I asked Jeff to help me.

Jeff Coleman and I had a complicated relationship. It had morphed from totally disliking each other to grudgingly respecting each other to a weird sort of friendship. He gave me the koi tattoo on my arm, and I tattooed “That’s Amore” on his shoulder, below a scar from a bullet he’d taken for me.

“I can do that,” I told Flanigan, escorting him back out to the front of the shop.

He paused for a second, staring at the Odalisque .

“It’s for sale,” Bitsy piped up, ever the saleswoman.

Flanigan flashed a rare smile at her. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He turned to me. “We’ll be in touch.” And then he pushed the glass door open and went out, strolling along the canal, giving a short salute to the gondolier guiding a couple of tourists who were trying to forget that they couldn’t afford a trip to the real Venice and so were living vicariously through the Venetian’s illusion.

“What was that about?” Bitsy asked.

I told her about the conversation. “Neither he nor Tim would tell me how Daisy died, so I’m not sure what happened exactly. All they want to do is pick my brain about tattoos.”

“Do you think that botched tattoo could’ve killed her? Do you think she died from the allergy?”

“I don’t know,” I said, although it had crossed my mind, too. “Remember Ace’s client? He had that reaction the second time, not the first.” I remembered my promise to Flanigan. “I’m going to give Jeff Coleman a call and see if he’s heard anything about this.”

“Good idea.” Bitsy knew Jeff had connections. “But you might want to start a little closer to home.”

“What do you mean?”

Bitsy cocked her head toward Joel’s room, where we could hear his tattoo machine whirring. “He knows a lot of people, too. You know, Brett, I think he feels bad that you rely a lot on Jeff when you could just go to him.”

Ouch.

“I’ll do that,” I promised. I was making a lot of promises today, and it wasn’t much past noon.

“Oh, and the good doctor called.”

She was referring to Dr. Colin Bixby. We’d been dating pretty steadily for the last month. We had a little bit of a checkered history, what with me thinking he might be a murderer at one point and him deciding that I might be a bit crazy because of that. But we kept running into each other, so we decided we’d give it another go. He’d been getting a little more serious lately-clearly an indication that either he didn’t think I was crazy anymore or he did and didn’t care-but while I enjoyed his company and his extreme good looks, I wasn’t quite there yet.

I shrugged nonchalantly and said, “I’ll call him later.”

Bitsy shot me a look that told me she thought I should call him right now, but I pretended I didn’t notice.

I had a couple of stencils to work on, but as I sat at the light table with my pencil in my hand, my brain started a little slide show of Daisy’s appearances here at the shop. She was a petite girl, with a mop of bleached blond hair and thick black mascara and eyeliner on a face that would’ve been too wholesome without it. She had a quick smile and a deep laugh that didn’t seem to fit with her size. When she asked me to tattoo the small flowers in the flamingo’s wings for each of her bandmates, she said she owed them everything, although personally, I didn’t think any of them had nearly as much talent as Daisy did.

I had started to get a little too misty thinking about her when my cell phone rang. I picked it up off the light table and saw a familiar number.

“Hey, Jeff.”

“It’s all over the news. She’s your client, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Kavanaugh.” Six months ago, I wouldn’t have heard the empathy in his voice; I’d only have heard how he never called me by my first name. Except once.

“Thanks.” I thought about what Bitsy had said about Joel, but it wouldn’t matter if I had two people helping me, would it? “Someone gave her a pretty botched tattoo right before she died.”

“I heard it was a tall redhead.”

I froze. “How did you hear that?”

Jeff chuckled. “Kavanaugh, you know better than to ask.”

“Oh, that’s right: If you tell me, you’d have to kill me.”

“Something like that.” He paused a second. “So I assume since you’re answering your cell phone that you’re not being held without bond. Or am I talking to you in your jail cell?”

I snorted, and he laughed.

“Okay, so you’re not getting tight with some prison cellmate. Too bad. That sort of fantasy could last me awhile.”

I had to totally change the subject.

“Do you know a blogger named Ainsley Wainwright?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

“So you do know her?”

“She e-mailed me about a month ago, wanted to take pictures of my mother.”

Sylvia Coleman was one of the women pioneers in the tattooing business. She had retired and left Jeff the business, but she hung around all the time because she wasn’t exactly the knitting and traveling type. She was covered head to toe in tattoos; each one had its own story, and I’d heard them all.