Karen Olson - Driven to Ink

I nodded.

He leaned over and studied it so closely I could feel his warm breath on my skin. But it seemed as though I was the only one getting all hot and bothered. I was only a specimen to him.

“Are you going to get another?” Bitsy asked him.

His head snapped up so fast I thought he’d give himself whiplash.

“Another what?”

“Tattoo,” Bitsy said, exasperation lacing the word.

“No.” Colin Bixby might as well have been playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? because I knew that was his final answer.

But I also knew people should never say never.

A sound like thunder echoed through the hall, and at the very end, where the hall came to a T, a large stainless steel cart came into view. A person dressed in blue scrubs and a yellow smock was pushing it. The person-and I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman because of the white cap that looked like a shower cap and a surgical mask-rolled the cart, which had several steel shelves lined with cages, toward us.

When he-or she-saw us, the cart jerked to a stop.

“Who are you?”

Bixby stood a little taller, held out his ID card, and said, “Dr. Colin Bixby. These women are looking for…” He looked back at me, the question in his eyes.

“Dan Franklin,” I said.

“Dan Franklin,” he repeated.

“Do you know where we can find him?”

The person gripped the cart, and I noticed now that he or she was wearing rubber gloves. They matched the rubber boots.

What the heck was on that cart?

I took a step closer and peered at it.

Tiny quick movements and a few whiskers indicated rodents. But why would he or she be wearing all that stuff? Were they contagious with something? Maybe we shouldn’t have come down here. We had no idea what was going on behind those steel doors.

A glance at Bitsy told me she was thinking the same thing.

Dr. Bixby, however, looked more relaxed now that we had some company.

“Haven’t seen Dan today,” the person said. “You could check with Roz. She’s in room seven.” The person paused. “You know, they’re not authorized to be here.”

“I’ll take responsibility,” Bixby said, although from his tone, I could tell he was already regretting it.

We hadn’t even gone out. Okay, so we’d shared one kiss. And it was one fantastic kiss. But that was all. There had been no promises made. I’d jumped to a conclusion that wasn’t right, and he was making me pay for it.

He did live down the hall from his mother. Maybe it was better this way.

The cart rattled past us, and now we had a clear view of those cages. They were most definitely rodents, rats or mice or both. I didn’t much make a distinction. Rodents were rodents.

Bitsy started walking down the hall, and Bixby and I followed, noting all the numbers by the doors until we found number seven.

“Here it is,” Bitsy said, then pointed to a small metal box next to the door where someone would have to swipe an ID card. She looked at Bixby. “Can you get us in here?”

Colin Bixby looked as though it was the last thing he wanted to do. His mouth was set in a stern line as he gripped his ID card.

“Let me do the talking, okay?” he asked, looking from me to Bitsy and back to me.

We nodded, and he swiped his card.

As we heard the latch click, Bixby pushed the door open, and we stepped inside.

I’d thought a stainless steel cart full of rats in cages was bad.

This room was a hundred times creepier. Rows of cages were lined up on stainless steel shelves, which stood in three rows to our right. A stainless steel sink on steroids was in the center of the room. A row of steel cabinets hung above a shelf with boxes of latex gloves and wipes and other implements that looked like something out of Frankenstein.

I wanted to set all those rats free. They could all live in my trunk if they wanted.

Bixby read my mind.

“Brett, have you ever had a family member or friend with cancer?”

Immediately I thought about my grandmother in hospice, covered with the patchwork quilt she’d made when first married to my grandfather way back during the Depression, her bony, transparent fingers clutching my hand as she told me she was going to be okay, that I could let her go.

I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“These animals-the testing that’s done on them-they can help. They can help us find cures, treatments for all sorts of illness and disease. You have to look at it that way.”

I could see both sides.

“Excuse me?”

A woman had come around the corner of one of the banks of steel shelves. She wore the same scrubs and yellow smock as the guy in the hall, and as she pulled off her mask, I caught my breath.

Roz was Rosalie. Rosalie Applebaum Marino.

“Brett,” she said.“Do you have news about my father?” Her panic was evident in the tremble of her lips and the set of her jaw.

She thought I’d found her to tell her about Bernie and Sylvia. I shook my head.

“No. I’m sorry.”

Puzzlement crossed her face. “Then why are you here?” Her eyes slid toward Bitsy and then to Colin Bixby. She touched her cap as if she were brushing a hair away from her face. I thought about how stylish she’d been when she showed up at Jeff’s shop earlier.

“We’re looking for Dan Franklin,” I told Rosalie. “The wedding-chapel owner says he hasn’t been there in a couple days, and his phone’s no longer in service. Has he been here?”

Rosalie shook her head. “I haven’t seen him, either, but he’s not on the schedule until tomorrow. I didn’t know about his phone. Do you think something happened to him, too?”

“What’s going on?” Bixby interrupted, justifiably curious.

“My father and his new wife have disappeared, and we’re all trying to find them,” Rosalie said.

“And we’re trying to find out if that dead guy in Brett’s trunk had anything to do with it,” Bitsy piped up, eager to dispense as much information as she could. She couldn’t help herself.

“A dead body in your trunk?” Colin Bixby was legitimately confused.

“She found it yesterday,” Bitsy explained. “Sylvia and Bernie borrowed her car for their wedding, and then they brought it back to her, and then Brett went for a hike and found the dead Dean Martin impersonator in the trunk. With a dead rat,” she added.

Rosalie tensed up. “A dead rat?” Obviously, Jeff hadn’t told her about that.

“A dead Dean Martin impersonator?” Colin Bixby was having a really hard time wrapping his head around this. Admittedly, it wasn’t exactly something you heard every day, so I could cut him some slack.

“Because of the rat, you think Dan was involved?” Rosalie asked.

I nodded.

“How well do you know Dan Franklin?” Bitsy piped up.

Rosalie looked at her. “He’s a nice guy. He loves his job here, and he loves singing at the chapel. Lou did tell me no one over at the chapel has seen him. He thinks whoever killed Ray got to Dan, too. Until now, I thought that was a little crazy, but now I don’t know.” She paused. “Do you know Lou got mugged?”

I nodded. “Will Parker told me.”

“Will?” Rosalie asked. “When did you meet Will?”

“This morning,” I said, and since I didn’t want to explain how, I quickly added, “He said someone tried to run him down. Who would want to hurt those guys? What’s the motive?”

She bit her lip, and her cheeks grew pink as she mulled the question. Then, “All you have to do is look across the street at that other chapel. Sanderson’s been trying to put Tony out of business for years now.”

Interesting theory, but a little weak.