Driven to Ink (2 page)

W
hen 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.

He looked uncannily like Dean Martin.

I didn’t have time to ponder that further, because I could also see the side of his neck, below his ear.

He had a tattoo of a spiderweb.

I told Tim, who made a sort of
mmm
sound. I knew what he was thinking: Spiderweb tattoos were popular in prison. And from the looks of this ink, it could’ve been a prison tat: a sort of blue-black with rough edges that bled into the skin.

And what was that? I leaned in even farther, my finger precariously close to pulling back the white shirt collar.

Tim was warning me not to touch anything.

I yanked my hand back.

“No kidding,” I said, eager not to give myself away. “Although I did open the trunk, so my fingerprints are on that.”

“I should be there shortly,” he said, then added, “The forensics team and a cruiser are on their way. Stay where you are and wait for them.”

Where I was, was in the driveway. I was just back from Red Rock. I wanted to change out of my grubby jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt, and hiking boots, and, most of all, I wanted something to eat. I’d had some toast before I left at seven, but that was four hours ago. I also needed to get to the shop by noon, because I had a client scheduled.

“Do I have time for a shower?” I asked hopefully.

“No.” Tim hung up.

Without thinking, I leaned against the back of the car. Immediately I felt it bounce a little—not that I’m that heavy; I’m actually pretty skinny—and Mr. That’s Amore shifted slightly with the movement. I jumped away from the Mustang as I stared at the body, which rocked for a second and then rested again.

There it was. Poking out slightly through the collar of the shirt.

I couldn’t help myself. I reached in and moved the fabric so I could see it better.

It was the end of a cord.

A clip cord.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

A clip cord is used to attach a tattoo machine to its power source.

M
y eyes strayed from the cord back to the spiderweb, noticing now a dark line running across the base of Mr. That’s Amore’s neck. A dark line that had nothing to do with tattoos but probably everything to do with that cord.

A clip cord can be six feet long. The part that attaches to the tattoo machine has L-shaped ends that clip onto the binding posts, and the other end sticks into the power source, which looks sort of like an amplifier because it’s got dials with numbers on them that show how high the power can go. Although it doesn’t go up to eleven.

There’s another cord that goes from the power source to the foot pedal. A tattoo machine runs like a sewing machine, in that I put pressure on the pedal with my foot, sending power to the source, which sends power to the machine, causing the needles to puncture the skin and push the ink into the skin’s second layer, where it stays forever.

It’s a pretty simple process and one that hasn’t needed to be improved upon much since the late 1800s, when it was first invented.

The tattoo machine can’t run without the clip cord.

I hadn’t really been aware that I was holding my breath until I let it out.

A look around told me the police were not considering my situation an emergency.

I kept my eye on the end of the cord as I punched a few numbers into my phone and heard Bitsy’s voice.

“Hey, there,” I said to my shop manager. “I’m going to be a little late.”

“What? Did you fall off some mountain or cliff or something?” Bitsy didn’t understand why anyone would want to go hiking. She’s a city girl. Her idea of wilderness is the buffet bar at Caesars.

“No, I’m waiting for the police to arrive—”

“What did you do now?”

“Why do you assume that
I
did something?”

“You’re always getting into trouble.”

Okay, so maybe my reputation has preceded me.

“There’s a body in my car trunk,” I said, explaining about Mr. That’s Amore and the clip cord.

Bitsy made a sort of snorting sound.

“That Sylvia Coleman’s a whackjob.”

“Why does everyone think that?”

“Because she is. Do you think she killed him?”

For a split second, I wondered whether she had. I wouldn’t put it past Sylvia. If this guy had crossed her in some way, who knew what she’d do to him. I pushed the thought out of my head.

“Just because the body’s from the place where she and Bernie got married, it doesn’t mean she killed him,” I said.

“But she does have access to clip cords.”

“So do you.”

“You tell me how I’d get a guy in someone’s trunk.” Bitsy’s tone was matter-of-fact, and she was right. Bitsy is a little person. Unless the body was only four feet tall, it would be pretty tough for her to hoist it into a car trunk. “So who do you think put him there?” she asked.

“Maybe he climbed in there himself,” I suggested.

Bitsy snorted. “Like a cat who knows it’s going to die, so it crawls into some dark corner somewhere? Give me a break.”

Okay, she had a point.

I told her I’d give her a call as soon as I could get on the road. She mumbled something about rescheduling my first client before she hung up.

I stuck the phone in my jeans pocket and again leaned into the trunk. I wanted to take another look at that cord and the guy’s neck.

My hand was hovering over him when the cruiser careened into my driveway. I pulled back faster than you could say “That’s Amore” and straightened up some, slamming the back of my head into the lid of the trunk.

Sister Mary Eucharista, my teacher at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy School, would have said I deserved that.

The uniformed cop who stepped out of the cruiser looked like a fireplug. I recognized him immediately. His name was Willis, and I’d had a couple of brief encounters with him a few months earlier when he was looking for a missing woman.

Let’s just say that we hadn’t gotten off on the right foot.

And from the way his mouth was set in a grim line, I figured I could easily bet that hadn’t changed.

In Vegas, sure things are hard to come by.

Willis took a couple steps toward me, but before either of us could say anything, another car swung into the street behind the cruiser. Tim. And then a big black SUV pulled up to the curb. Two burly guys got out from either side. One held a big case, the other, a camera.

If I’d known they were going to take pictures, I would have washed my car on the way back from Red Rock.

A third car, one that looked identical to Tim’s Impala, drove up and parked behind the SUV. An older man with salt-and-pepper hair cropped close and wearing a charcoal pin-striped suit climbed out.

It was like a party. Mr. That’s Amore was even dressed for the occasion.

Me, on the other hand, well, I was sweating bullets in my long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans. Not because it was hot outside. It was December in Vegas, when the temperatures actually meant a sweater or even a jacket at night.

The nattily dressed man walked around his car and met up with Tim. They both stopped a second to greet Willis before coming over to my car. Willis forced a smile, but it didn’t extend to his eyes. The two guys with the equipment gave curt nods to everyone.

“Brett, this is Detective Flanigan,” Tim said, introducing me to his companion. “Kevin, this is my sister, Brett.”

Even though I sensed he must be another detective, he didn’t dress like any of the cops I knew. He was too neat, and that suit must have set him back about five hundred bucks, if not more. But I’m not a fashionista—preferring jeans and cotton skirts and T-shirts—so I don’t know much about men’s suits.