Ink Flamingos (17 page)

I put my phone back to my ear. I’d lost the call, but I redialed. It was quiet out here, so I could actually hear.

No answer.

I tossed the phone back in my bag. Jeff was surveying the door, his expression blank.

I checked out where we were: in a back parking lot. A Hummer limousine sat about fifty yards away. A chain-link fence surrounded the whole lot, probably to keep the riffraff out. Since we were on this side of the fence, I’d like to consider us anything but riffraff.

But then I saw the riffraff. And heard them. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. Young girls and guys, having a sort of tailgate party just beyond the fence. A portable iPod speaker blasted music—the Flamingos—into the still night; they danced with their arms high in the air, hands holding beer bottles that sloshed liquid as they moved. Stuck in the ground were five plastic pink flamingos, dressed up with Hawaiian leis and pink boas. One even wore a rhinestone tiara.

Fans. Who probably couldn’t get tickets to the concert so they were hanging out back here, waiting for it to be over and for a possible glimpse of their favorite band as they headed to the limo.

Jeff didn’t pay any attention to them as he started toward the limo.

“Where are you going?” I asked after him.

He shook his head and continued walking. I jogged to catch up with him.

“Aren’t we going to try to get back in?” I asked.

He shrugged me off as we reached the limo. He knocked on the driver’s side window. It came down a few inches. A pair of eyes stared out at us.

“I can’t help you,” a disembodied voice said ominously.

“We need to get back inside,” Jeff said.

“Yeah, they all say that.” His eyes flicked to the right, toward the party that was going on.

I didn’t want to be mixed up in the company of those kids. And I was willing to bet Jeff really didn’t want to be mistaken for a crazy Flamingo fan, either. Although if they were really fans, they would’ve gotten themselves tickets one way or another. I had not been above sleeping overnight on the sidewalk for a Springsteen ticket.

I shook off the thoughts. We needed to get back inside. Someone didn’t want us in there for some reason, and I wanted to find out why.

Jeff was talking to the limo driver, who had let the window down another couple of inches but not enough to show his entire face yet.

“Just give them a call and say you’ve got trouble back here,” Jeff said. He cocked his head toward the groupies outside the fence. “Maybe you could insinuate that they’re storming the limo.”

I could tell the guy wasn’t quite sure what “insinuate” meant.

“Hey!”

The shout came from the party. Jeff and I turned to see a girl in a tight shirt and even tighter jeans holding up a camera. The flash blinded me for a second, giving me a panic attack as I thought about the flashes that had gone off the night before when I was out with Harry. If they were taking pictures, would those end up on a blog, too?

Jeff touched my arm. “It’s okay, Kavanaugh. It’s just a bunch of kids,” he said softly.

I’d tried not to react outwardly, but I guess I was more jumpy than I’d thought.

“It’s her!” This shout came from another one of the kids, a pimply, white teenager who was dressed like a wannabe rapper, like the kid on the monorail earlier.

What did he mean: It’s her?

I had a bad feeling about this.

“You killed her!”

Every muscle in my body was so tight I felt like I would snap in half. They’d seen the blog. Or blogs. The ones that had me pinned as Daisy’s murderer.

The limo door started to open now, and I saw a foot clad in a black patent leather shoe emerge.

“I thought you looked familiar,” the limo driver said as his whole body materialized. He was tall, muscular, his fists clenched in tight balls, his jaw set firmly as his eyes narrowed at me.

I glanced around for an escape, but there didn’t seem to be one. That chain-link fence surrounded us, no discernible exit. The door to the arena was still shut and locked. The fence provided a barrier between us and those kids, but this limo driver looked like he wanted a piece of me.

Jeff got in between us, shielding me.

“She’s not who you think she is,” he tried.

The limo driver was not to be deterred. “That’s her,” he said, taking another step toward us.

The kids began to chant, “Get her, get her, get her.”

My heart began to pound so loudly, their voices faded. I felt dizzy, and I reached out toward Jeff to balance myself, but he brushed me off and took a step toward the limo driver, who took a swing at him.

Before I could blink, Jeff had slung the guy over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and slammed him into the hard pavement.

The guy landed with a thud, the wind knocked out of him, his eyes circling the sky as if they didn’t have a place to land.

I suppressed an urge to give Jeff a high five. He was looking down at the guy, whose feet were twitching, and then he looked up at me. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, his tone urgent. His eyes moved toward the fence.

The kids were scaling it, screaming now that we were murderers. They clearly hadn’t heard that the police had arrested Sherman Potter, and with this limo driver limp on the ground, they probably thought we were serial killers.

Weren’t there any security guards around here? I mean, it was the MGM’s arena. You’d think there would be some sort of security. I guess they figured they wouldn’t need it because the door was locked and the celebrities were inside.

Sadly, though, I had become a celebrity, too, it seemed. But for the wrong reasons.

“Come on, Kavanaugh!” Jeff yanked open the door to the limo. The driver was starting to get up.

I ran around the front of the limo and opened the passenger side. I knew what Jeff was going to do, and while I wasn’t sure I liked it, I didn’t think we had much choice. The first kid had already landed on this side of the fence, and he was waving a pink flamingo. The one with the tiara. The kid behind him had a broken beer bottle.

Okay, time to leave.

Jeff turned over the engine and put his foot to the accelerator.

“Strap yourself in!” he shouted.

I struggled for a second with the seat belt as I watched the fence come up fast. I’d just latched the belt when I felt the impact of the Hummer against the fence. But because of its size, the limo sailed right through.

Jeff drove the Hummer along the long driveway that spit us out onto Koval Lane at Tropicana. His hands relaxed on the steering wheel as we sat at the light.

“You do know that we stick out like a sore thumb?” I asked. “Hummer limo carjacked by tattooed killer. It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow. While we’re sitting in jail.”

“You’re so pessimistic, Kavanaugh,” Jeff said, and the way he said it meant he had a plan.

When the light changed, the Hummer veered right. That’s when I heard the sirens.

“How are we going to dump this thing and not be seen?” I asked.

It seemed like a logical question, but Jeff just grunted something that vaguely sounded like “Trust me.”

The Hummer went through the next set of lights and we turned left. And into the driveway at Excalibur.

E
xcalibur is one of the Strip’s oldest resort casinos, built like a castle, but a really fake one. It didn’t even pretend to look like a real one, just a cartoon version of a castle, the kind of castle Ace would paint. It was a place to go if you wanted a cheap room or if you had a family, because kids loved the place.

“Get out,” Jeff said when the valet came over. Jeff shoved the keys in the guy’s hand, came around to my side, and shuffled me off into the resort.

“You’re just leaving it here?” I asked.

“Why not?”

We went up the escalator to the next level. It was more fake castle in here, with fake stonework and fake balconies. A kiosk selling kitschy souvenirs was at the top of the escalators. They had a restaurant here that was supposed to be like Henry VIII’s court, where you ate big turkey legs and pounded on the table for more mead. I hoped Jeff didn’t want to have dinner. I didn’t think I could deal with that right now.

Instead, however, he was leading me outside and toward the monorail that ran between Excalibur, the Luxor, which was shaped like an Egyptian pyramid, and Mandalay Bay, whose gold tower shimmered over the Strip. I hoped we weren’t going to the Luxor, because that place creeped me out even more than Excalibur. It was way too dark inside.

“Where are we going?” I asked when the monorail began to move.

Jeff wasn’t paying attention. He was leaning over me, looking down at the Hummer in the driveway at the Excalibur. It was surrounded by three police cars.

“They’re going to know it was us,” I said. “I mean, those kids can identify me. So can the driver. We might as well give ourselves up.” Easy to say when we were gliding along the rail, passing the Luxor—much to my relief—and on toward Mandalay Bay.

“When we’re having dinner, you can call your brother,” Jeff said. “Explain.”

I frowned. Dinner?

“I’m hungry, and I’m glad we’re not at that concert.” Jeff stood up as the monorail slid into the station.

The doors opened, and I followed Jeff out.

We walked down the stairs and toward the casino. As we turned another corner, a glassed-in shop distracted us. It was a tattoo shop.

“Do you know them?” I asked Jeff. I had met the owner once.

Jeff nodded, then put his arm around me to steer me away. “We don’t have time to stop in.”

I hadn’t really wanted to “stop in.” If we did, we’d have to pretend that we were out like everyone else, that we hadn’t stolen a Hummer limo and abandoned it in front of Excalibur. We’d have to make small talk—oh, yes, business is quite good, how’s yours—and it would be way too much effort.

No, it was better we were winding our way through the casino toward the restaurants and shops.

Jeff stopped at one of the restaurant entrances, but when I looked into yet another dark hallway, I pulled back and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

“Trust me,” he said for the second time that night and led me to a staircase leading down.

We were pretty high up, and to our right was what looked like a wine cellar encased in glass that stretched from the high ceiling down two stories to the bottom floor. A woman who looked remarkably like a Bond girl, wearing some sort of rappelling equipment, was scaling the glass wall as she held a bottle of wine.

“They’re known for that here,” Jeff said as if he saw that sort of thing every day.

When we reached the bottom of the stairs, the hostess—a tall, painfully thin woman wearing a little slip of a dress—surveyed us with pursed lips.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any tables available,” she said haughtily.

I took a glance around. I saw three tables that were vacant. It was most likely our jeans and tattoos that were turning her off.

Jeff wasn’t about to be turned away, however.

“Tell the chef Jeff Coleman is here,” he snapped.

She stood there, uncertain what to do.

“Now,” Jeff growled.

She scurried off.

“Do you really know the chef?” I asked, impressed. If I’d been alone or with anyone else, I would’ve been back climbing those stairs and looking for another place to eat.

“Did all his tattoos,” Jeff said flatly.

We watched the woman rappelling down the wine case until we heard the hostess’s heels clicking on the wood floor, a fake smile spread across her face now.

“Mr. Coleman, we have a table ready right over here,” she said, picking up two menus and leading the way. When we were seated, she said in a tight voice, “Richard will be out shortly.” The chef, I guess.

I realized I was famished. So I didn’t get to see the Flamingos, but this was much better. My mouth watered as I perused the menu. Jeff reached over and took it out of my hands before I was finished, though.

“Hey!”

He put the menus down. “I know what you’ll like.”

“Really?” I asked, my back up.

He chucked. “Really,” he said. “You know, Kavanaugh, you need to lighten up.”

“I’ve got mobs chasing me, wanting my head for something I didn’t do,” I said grumpily. “I think I can be wound a little tight.”

“Which is why we need some wine.”

The waiter hovered, and Jeff ordered an Australian Malbec and a French chardonnay. And then he said, “The chef knows what I want.” The waiter nodded and shuffled off.

“I thought you didn’t like wine,” I said, still a little snippy but not quite as much.

“It’s got its place,” he said. “Now you need to call Tim and tell him what happened.”

Obediently, I pulled out my phone. The hostess gave me a dirty look. “Maybe I should take it outside,” I said, scrambling to my feet and spotting an elevator. Much better than those stairs. “I’ll be right back.”

I left him just as the waiter came with the wine. Watching Jeff Coleman taste wine was an image I figured I could live without. Too sophisticated, somehow.

Once I emerged from the elevator, I stood in the little alcove and punched in Tim’s number. This time he did pick up.

“You stole a Hummer?” he asked loudly,incredulously.

“A Hummer limo,” I corrected.

“What’s wrong with you?”

I told him about the mob of people coming after me. The broken beer bottle. The limo driver who lunged at me, and how Jeff had flipped him. I told him about the security guard locking us out after we’d seen a tall redhead. I went through the story backward, until I got to the beginning.

“You arrested Sherman Potter?” I asked. “So he really did it?”

“Where are you now?” he asked, totally ignoring me.