Karen Olson - Pretty In Ink

“Do you think DeBurra killed Lambert?” I asked.

“There’s no evidence of that. Lambert died of ricin poisoning.”

I asked him the same question I’d asked DeBurra: “Was he ever investigating Lester Fine, or was that just a story he told Charlotte?”

Tim was quiet a second. “He didn’t lie about that. But there’s nothing that links Fine to the ricin lab. At least not that I know of.” And since Tim wasn’t with Metro Homeland Security, he might not be privy to that information.

“What about Rusty Abbott? Where is he? What’s his story?” I’d told him everything about Abbott, from the roulette game to his sudden appearances all over the place.

“He made the bomb DeBurra set off at the club. We found his fingerprints.”

“How did you tie DeBurra to it?”

“Abbott did. He left us DeBurra’s fingerprints, too, on a second device that didn’t detonate. It wasn’t ever live.” Tim paused. “DeBurra thought Charlotte had seen him at the apartment. He also thought she had Trevor’s laptop.”

“And she would put two and two together, which was why he wanted to get rid of her. And he thought I would figure it out, too,” I said. “He’s the one who called me pretending to be Kyle, right?”

Tim’s silence verified it.

I had another thought. “The call came from Chez Tango.”

“There’s such a thing as call forwarding. He thought you might try to call back.”

We were quiet a couple of seconds; then he said, “We can’t find Abbott.”

“What do you mean, you can’t find him?”

“Just what I said. We can’t find him. It’s like he disappeared or something. He’s gone.”

“People don’t just disappear.”

Tim chuckled. “People like Rusty Abbott do. You know that’s not his real name? He was using a dead guy’s social security number to get paid. Someone else is living in his apartment, claims she’s been there for five years, no one by the name of Rusty Abbott ever lived there. Lester Fine’s not talking, either, if he knows where Abbott went. He says he’s as surprised about all this as we are. All he asked about was that brooch. He wants it back.”

No kidding.

I remembered how I hadn’t been able to find Rusty Abbott when I Googled him, except listed on Lester Fine’s site.

“How did you get his fingerprints, then?”

“He was working for Lester Fine. All his employees are fingerprinted.”

“So he can’t really disappear then, can he?”

“As long as he stays out of trouble.”

I pondered that a few seconds; then Tim spoke again.

“The money in Ace’s account that disappeared? DeBurra did put it there, but before he could move it to his own account, it disappeared on him. We managed to trace it to another account with Abbott’s name on it. But it wasn’t there for long. Maybe a few minutes. Now it’s in the wind, just like Abbott.”

I mulled this over. I’d suspected Abbott of a lot of things, but being a ghost-a comfortably well-off ghost, thanks to Trevor’s money-was not one of them. Somehow I found it suitable justice that Abbott had taken DeBurra’s money after DeBurra had gone to all that trouble to retrieve it.

And even though Rusty Abbott did know how to make accidents happen, as Jeff Coleman so aptly put it, he’d actually tried to help me. He’d given me a clue by leaving that picture of DeBurra in drag for me in the makeup case. It was too bad he hadn’t taken out that picture of Lester Fine, because it threw me off completely. Abbott also warned me about the explosion, and he gave me that casino chip and I won all that money.

“What about Charlotte? Are you going to charge her with anything?”

“As soon as the doctor gives us the all clear on her, we’re going to be questioning her extensively. As far as I know, she didn’t do anything criminal except run, and that was to get away from DeBurra.”

“What’s going to happen to Shawna now?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Who knows?” Tim was still indifferent to her. He’d moved on. I just wish DeBurra had realized that and let his one-sided feud go.

We hung up, and I went back inside. Bitsy and Joel and Kyle were still in the same spot, only now Joel’s head was bobbing against Kyle’s shoulder as he slept. Kyle didn’t seem to mind.

I heard a swish as the frosted doors slid open across the room, and Bixby stood there, looking at me.

My Tevas felt like concrete weights. I wanted to go apologize while I had the chance, but I was uncertain how to do it.

I waited too long. He gave me a sad smile and touched his chest. Where his new Celtic knot was inked.

Then the doors were swishing closed again, with him behind them.

Jeff Coleman carefully pulled the stencil off my arm. I studied it, and even though I was looking at it upside down, it was spectacular.

Who knew?

The Japanese koi swam in a curve around my biceps; ocean waves and lotus flowers danced around it. I’d told Jeff I wanted the fish to be gold and white, the flowers yellow, red, and pink, and the waves different shades of blue and purple.

It was half a sleeve, enough to cover up the tiny scars from the windshield glass. Jeff had tried to talk me into a full sleeve, but I needed more time to think about what I wanted.

“It’s okay?”

Jeff’s hesitation made me pause. He was nervous about this. He hadn’t cracked a joke since he came to the shop, didn’t call me “Kavanaugh” once.

I made him come to The Painted Lady because, honestly, I wasn’t quite sure just how clean his shop was. I knew how clean mine was. He acted all put out at first when I said he could do my ink, only on my turf. But he was strangely quiet when he arrived with his case, explaining that he needed his own machine.

“It’s great,” I said, meaning it.

It wasn’t flash, either. He’d designed it. He hadn’t wanted to, but when I pointed out the brilliance of his Day of the Dead tattoo, he finally acquiesced.

“You know,” I said, “you could start doing custom designs.”

He snorted, then rolled his eyes. “I’m going to leave that to you, Kavanaugh. The drunks need a place to go at two a.m. I’m happy to provide that.”

The machine started whirring, and just before he touched it to my skin, he added, “And don’t tell anybody about this, all right? I don’t need that kind of reputation.”

I grinned. “Your secret is safe with me, Coleman.” Then I closed my eyes, feeling the first sting of the needle before it mellowed into the familiar and welcome pain.

The envelope arrived two days later. Bitsy handed it to me when I got in. I shoved it under my armpit as I went into the staff room. Dropping my messenger bag on a chair and taking a sip of my to-go coffee, I plucked it out from under my arm and saw there wasn’t a return address and the postmark was smudged so I couldn’t see where it had been mailed from.

It was one of those big yellow envelopes with the Bubble Wrap inside. I ripped it open and took out a sheet of paper.

“Luck didn’t have anything to do with it,” it read.

It was signed “Rusty.”

I peered into the darkness of the envelope, wondering what the note meant. Something was stuck in the bottom of the envelope, so I turned it upside down and shook it once.

A fifty-dollar casino chip dropped onto the table.