Karen Olson - Ink Flamingos

I glanced up at Joel and Bitsy and then clicked on the link.

The first comment was from someone called MeganB: “Where is her shop?”

SkinDeep: “At the Venetian.”

But the clincher was from TitforTat: “I’d stay away from there. She gave Dee Carmichael a botched tattoo that killed her.”

The time on the third comment indicated that it was made an hour ago, despite the fact that the pictures had been posted a couple of weeks ago. Who was TitforTat? There was no link attached to the name, which meant that the person was posting practically anonymously. Usually, though, anyone who commented had to fill out a form with an e-mail address that wasn’t published.

I reached again for my cell phone. Tim had to know about this. He had to find this person who was accusing me of killing Daisy. Maybe this person was the redhead seen at the Golden Palace, the one who really did kill her.

Granted, I still didn’t know how Daisy had died, but that was another thing to press Tim about.

“What is it, Brett?” Tim’s voice was curt. He was working, and I was interrupting.

But he needed to know about this. I told him about the blog, the pictures of me, and the comment left.

“I already saw it.”

“You did?”

“Don’t worry about it, okay? We’re on top of it.”

“Have you found her yet-Ainsley Wainwright?”

“Listen, Brett, I have to go. I’m working. I’ll see you at home later, okay, and I’ll fill you in then.” He hung up on me without saying good-bye, much like Jeff Coleman had. If I were more insecure, I might start to get a complex or something.

“He says they’re working on it,” I told Bitsy and Joel.

They exchanged a look, and Joel nodded. “That’s all we can do for now. I say we get some gelato. Make us feel better.”

“You’re not supposed to have sugar,” I reminded him.

“It’s a special occasion.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “It’s always a special occasion,” I said. “But not this time. I won’t be responsible for you going off your diet.” I didn’t want to point out that he’d been doing a fine job of it by himself, without any help from me.

Bitsy, however, didn’t have the same sort of tact.

“I saw you going into Godiva earlier,” she scolded. “Chocolate and gelato in the same day? And you expect to lose weight? That’s ridiculous.”

Joel sighed. He’d lost some weight on the Atkins Diet, but he’d gained it all back and then some. The Weight Watchers had been worse. He hadn’t even lost anything on that, just gained.

“I’m thinking about that diet where you have to buy your food. You know, the one those celebrities do those commercials for? Hey, maybe I can do one of those commercials.” His face lit up as he thought about it. “I’m a regular person. If I lose weight, then regular people everywhere will feel they can, too.”

I smiled. Joel, a regular person? There wasn’t a more irregular person anywhere, and I mean that in the most affectionate way. Joel was large, but his heart was bigger than his body, although anyone who hadn’t met him might be a little frightened. He looked like a biker, with a long blond braid hanging halfway to his waist, a barbed wire tattoo around his neck, tattoo sleeves running down both arms, and chains holding his keys dangling from his jeans pockets. When he opened his mouth, though, his voice was as soft as his personality. We weren’t quite sure which way Joel swung, since we’d never heard him talk about a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but it didn’t much matter. He was Joel, and we loved him just the way he was.

A bell rang out in the front of the shop, indicating that someone had come in. Bitsy scurried out the door to see who it was.

Joel squeezed my arm. “It’ll be okay, Brett. Don’t worry.”

We followed Bitsy out to see Harry leaning against the front desk. Harry Desmond had discovered us one night when he was trying to find the Mexican restaurant here in the Grand Canal Shoppes. Since then, he’d been hanging around. He was a victim of the recession, told us he’d gotten laid off from his job as a blackjack dealer at one of the casinos, so he had a lot of time on his hands.

Today he was dressed in his usual uniform of shorts and a bright Hawaiian shirt. He was about twenty-five, I’d say, with a college degree in philosophy and eighteenth-century English poetry. He wasn’t qualified to do much of anything, which was why the casino had seemed like a good way to go. Until the layoff. Somehow he was managing to live off his unemployment checks.

Harry always seemed to be a little stoned. Not totally, just a little. Maybe it was the way his bright blue eyes fixated on me as if he were seeing me for the first time. Or the languid way he spoke, drawing out all his words like a Faulkner novel. Or how he used his hands when he talked, in long, slow lines, to emphasize what he was saying.

Every tattoo shop has at least one Harry, someone who stops in and seems to become a fixture. We hadn’t had one before, probably because we were mixed in with all the upscale shops, and until Harry arrived, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that particular eccentricity of a tattoo shop.

Oddly enough, Harry didn’t have any tattoos. He kept saying when he got a little cash in his pocket, he’d have one of us tattoo him. So far, though, no extra cash. At least not that we knew of.

As we approached the front desk, Harry looked up and grinned.

“It’s the beautiful Brett Kavanaugh, the delightful Bitsy Hendricks, and the esteemed Joel Sloane,” he said, bowing at the waist. “I was wondering if you’d heard about Dee Carmichael.”

“We did,” I said.

“I know the Flamingos’ band manager,” Harry said. “He’s an old buddy of mine from way back.”

I thought about the man Daisy referred to as The Pincher. Apparently, every time she saw him, he pinched her-either on her arm or her waist or her butt. I asked her why she kept him on, and she said she could stand a little pinching if he kept getting them gigs that continued to catapult their careers. It seemed a little much, but the guy had done wonders for Daisy and the Flamingos, so who was I to question?

“Way back when?” I probed, since Harry was fairly young to have any sort of relationship that went too far back.

“He dated my sister for a couple years when they were in high school. She’s about your age, I’d say, Brett.” It was the way he said it that made me feel about a hundred years old, rather than my actual thirty-two. My expression must have indicated my thoughts, because he quickly added, “I didn’t mean it that way, Brett, really. I mean, you’re not exactly a cougar or anything, not like Bitsy here.” He flashed a quick grin at Bitsy, who was beaming, as though being called a cougar was the best thing she’d heard in a long time.

I actually thought Bitsy had a crush on Harry, but if they ever did go out, it would definitely be a December/ May sort of thing.

“In fact,” Harry continued, now that he was back in everyone’s good graces, “I saw Sherman last night. At Caesars. Cleopatra’s Barge.”

Cleopatra’s Barge was a bar designed like an actual Egyptian barge. It sat in a pool of water, oars pretending to push it along as it gently rocked its customers while they sipped their cocktails and listened to whatever band had been booked that night.

Harry was still talking. “I was surprised to see him there, since, you know, the Flamingos are playing the East Coast.”

He didn’t seem to realize what he was saying. If the Flamingos were on the East Coast, then what was their manager doing here in Vegas? And, more importantly, what was Daisy doing here, too? She should have been safe in New York or New Jersey or wherever, rather than in the Golden Palace getting a tattoo from someone who didn’t seem to know what she was doing.