Karen Olson - Driven to Ink

The third book in the Tattoo Shop Mystery series, 2010

I have to thank Clair Lamb and Cheryl Violante for their help with the manuscript and for not letting our friendship get in the way of a firm critique. The First Offenders (Alison Gaylin, Jeff Shelby, Lori Armstrong, and Anthony Neil Smith) are, as usual, a wonderful sounding board and great friends. Thanks to my favorite book bloggers (Wendy, Christina, Alice, and Iliana) for being so supportive, and to Ania, who helped me see beyond the tattoos. Special thanks to Molly Weston, who went above and beyond to make me, Julie Hyzy, and Hank Phillippi Ryan feel like celebrities. Thanks to Rachel Kristina Jones for her generosity and such a great name. My agent, Jack Scovil, continues to be enthusiastic and always puts things in perspective. My editor, Sandy Harding, and publicist, Megan Swartz, are a pleasure to work with. Thanks to all my readers who e-mail me to tell me they love Brett and her world. It keeps a writer going to know you’re out there. And a final shout out to my husband, Chris, and daughter, Julia, who are everything to me.

When Sylvia and Bernie came back from That’s Amore Drive-Through Wedding Chapel with my car, it would’ve been nice if they’d taken the body out of the trunk.

As it was, I didn’t discover it until a day later, when I hit a bump and heard a thump that made me curious about what I might have forgotten to unload on my last trip to the grocery store. By that time, the newly married Sylvia Coleman and Bernie Applebaum-Sylvia said at her age she wasn’t about to take on any new names-were at the Grand Canyon on their honeymoon, and I was in my driveway staring at the corpse of a man in a tuxedo-as if he’d expected death would be a black-tie affair.

Being both the daughter and sister of police officers, I did the first thing that came to mind: I called Sylvia’s son, Jeff Coleman, to find out whether he knew anything about this.

“Murder Ink.” Jeff’s voice bellowed through my ear. Murder Ink was his business, a tattoo shop up near Fremont Street, next door to Goodfellas Bail Bonds. He specialized in flash, the stock tattoos that lined the walls of his shop, even though I knew firsthand that he was an amazing artist when he put his mind to it.

Despite the flash, Jeff was one of my main competitors in Vegas. I own The Painted Lady, where we do only custom designs. We cater to a classier client, and my shop is in the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes on the Strip, a high-end themed mall that would never have allowed a tattoo shop to sully its image without a little blackmail by the shop’s former owner.

“It’s Brett.”

“Kavanaugh?”

“Your mother seems to have left me a little something for the use of my car yesterday.” Sylvia had asked me nicely if she and Bernie could use my red Mustang Bullitt convertible for their drive-through wedding. She said it was preferable to Bernie’s blue 1989 Buick and her thirty-five-year-old purple Gremlin, which looked like a lizard with its tail cut off.

“What about Jeff’s Pontiac?” I’d asked her.

“It’s bright yellow. It looks like a pimp’s car.”

I couldn’t argue with that. It did look like a pimp’s car. I told Sylvia that she was welcome to use my Mustang, but she had to drive. Bernie’s cataract surgery wasn’t scheduled for another six weeks, and even though Sylvia said she “watched the road” for him, it didn’t inspire much confidence.

“What are you talking about, Kavanaugh?” Jeff was asking.

“There’s a man in my trunk.”

A low chuckle told me that perhaps I hadn’t described the situation properly.

“A dead man. In a tuxedo.”

“And you’re sure my mother left it there for you?”

“I certainly don’t remember it being there before she borrowed my car.”

“So let me play devil’s advocate a minute. Maybe he climbed into your trunk and died after my mother and Bernie returned the car.”

Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. I recounted where the car had been since they dropped it off for me at the Venetian, and it had only been there and here, in my driveway overnight, and then at Red Rock Canyon this morning when I went for a hike. I leaned farther in toward the body. On the right breast pocket I could see something stitched in red thread: “That’s Amore.”

“He’s from the wedding chapel, Jeff. His tux is an advertisement. It’s got the name sewn on it.”

“Is your brother home? Has he seen the body?”

My brother, Detective Tim Kavanaugh, hadn’t been home all night. I could only surmise that either he was catching bad guys or he’d had a late date that spilled over into morning.

“No.”

“Have you called the cops, then?”

“Doing it now.” I punched END on my cell and sent Jeff Coleman into oblivion as I now entered 911. But as I was about to hit SEND, I realized I should try to reach Tim first, before he came home to a driveway full of police cruisers and the coroner’s van.

He answered on the first ring.

“What do you want, Brett?”

His tone was cold, but the fact that he’d actually answered his phone meant that he was probably doing police stuff and not with a woman. A good thing for me, but perhaps not for him.

“You remember how I let Sylvia and Bernie borrow my car? For their wedding the other day?”

A heavy sigh told me he wasn’t into tripping down memory lane and I should get on with it.

“Well, they left me a body. In the trunk.”

A second of silence, then, “What are you talking about?”

I told him about Mr. That’s Amore. “He’s from the chapel. The drive-through.” I explained about the stitching on his pocket.

“Brett, how do you get yourself into these messes?” He was referring to a couple of other incidence in the last six months, incidence that were completely out of my control, thank you very much.

“I told you not to let that wacko borrow your car,” he said.

“She’s not a wacko,” I said, although not with much confidence. Sylvia had her moments. I didn’t know exactly how old she was, but I guessed she was in her seventies or possibly early eighties. She and her former husband had owned Murder Ink before he died and she retired, handing over the business to Jeff. She spent a lot of time at the tattoo shop and had actually inked my calf: Napoleon going up the Alps. It was one of my favorite Jacques-Louis David paintings, and I did the stencil. Sylvia, as far as I knew, didn’t do any original designs-and sometimes I wondered whether she hadn’t a touch of dementia. But I was happy she and Bernie had hooked up. They started swimming together at the Henderson pool a few months back, and it developed into a late-in-life romance.

“So you don’t recognize this man?” Tim asked, completely reversing the conversation and throwing me off balance for a second.

“You mean the guy in the trunk?”

“Yes, Brett, the guy in the trunk.” Exasperation had seeped into Tim’s tone, and I totally didn’t need that right now.

I counted to ten as I leaned a little farther into the trunk and peered at Mr. That’s Amore. His face was whiter than that zinc stuff you put on your nose so you won’t get sunburn. His eyes were closed, but his mouth hung open slackly, as if he didn’t have the energy to close it. With only a few spots of dust and dirt, the tux was remarkably neat, considering he was stuffed in my trunk.