The Missing Ink (11 page)

I moved through the bedroom and saw the open bathroom door. All the lights were on. I still didn’t hear anything, though.

I was going to see his naked butt anyway, so I decided against shyness and poked my head into the bathroom. I was tired of this and just wanted to get to work.

I realized, though, that my easy five hundred wasn’t going to be so easy.

He lay slumped over the edge of the Jacuzzi bathtub, his head lolled on its side, an eye staring up at the ceiling. There was no water in the tub, and I was pretty sure he was dead.

But it wasn’t the celebrity I’d been expecting to see.

I had no idea who it was.

Chapter 18

I didn’t want to put my fingerprints anywhere, so I hit the elevator button with my elbow. I had a minute or two before the doors opened, and I took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm down. I immediately thought of Jeff Coleman and how he’d sent me over here. Did he know about this? Had he set me up?

I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I was having a hard time with that.

The elevator finally arrived, and I again hit the lobby button with my elbow and felt the drop in my gut. When I stepped out, a footman—a different one this time—was waiting. He was frowning.

“Is there a problem, miss?”

“You might say that. There’s a body up there, in the bathroom, in the bathtub.” As I said it, I started to feel a little woozy.

I sank down on the floor, dropping my case at my side, and put my head between my knees.

“What’s the problem?”

It was a baritone, with an English accent.

“She says there’s a body in the Marie Antoinette Suite,” I heard the footman whisper.

“Who are you?” I felt his breath on my cheek, and I looked up into deep brown eyes that twinkled at me.

“Brett Kavanaugh. The Painted Lady.”

His mouth quivered slightly, as if he wanted to smile but stopped himself in time. I felt myself get warm all over as his eyes now moved to my arm and then across my chest to the dragon’s head, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling. In fact, just the opposite.

“Yes, Miss Kavanaugh, I see that. What were you doing in the Marie Antoinette Suite, and what did you see up there?”

I glanced behind him to see a crowd starting to form. I cocked my head and said, “Maybe we should just go up there and I can show you.”

His hand was under my elbow—sending a small electric shock through me that I told myself was just from the carpeting, but from the way he was looking at me, I wasn’t totally able to convince myself of that—and he gently helped me up, leaning down slightly to pick up my case with his other hand. “Let’s,” he said simply and nodded at the footman, who fetched the elevator for us.

Once inside and going up, my stomach doing more flip-flops, I noticed the stranger was slightly taller than I was and had a sort of rakish, Hugh Jackman look about him. His hair was blonder, streaked with natural highlights, brushed back to emphasize the angles of his face. I figured he was mid-thirties or so. He wore a navy suit with a red tie but carried it off better than the Young Republican I’d seen earlier.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He did smile then.

“Simon Chase. I’m the manager.”

“I thought everyone here had to be French.”

His eyebrows arched slightly. “It
is
a bit of a sacrilege to have an Englishman here, but Bruce Manning likes my résumé.”

“And I guess what Bruce Manning likes, Bruce Manning gets,” I said, happy to have a small distraction from what we were about to walk in on.

“Perhaps now that you know who I am, you can tell me why you’re here, Miss Kavanaugh.”

“I was here to give a guy a tattoo, but when I showed up, I didn’t see the guy I was supposed to see. Instead, I saw some other guy dead in the bathtub.”

“Are you sure he’s dead?”

“He didn’t look alive.” As I remembered, I took a deep breath and hoped I wouldn’t get woozy again.

The amusement disappeared off his face, and his mouth set in a grim line. “Well, we’ll see about that.”

I got the sense he didn’t believe me—like I would make something like that up—but before I could say anything further, the doors slid open and we were stepping back into the suite.

I smelled it then, the faint pungent scent that I hadn’t noticed the first time because I’d been too hopped up about my celebrity encounter. Simon Chase smelled it, too, and his nose wrinkled, leading him toward the bathroom. I followed, not only to make sure the body was there, like I’d said, but to keep an eye on my case, which he was still carrying.

Simon Chase turned at the door, his hand again taking my elbow and steering me back out into the living area. “I see what you mean.” He looked over at the footman, who was standing sentry at the elevator. “Please call nine-one-one. But we need to be discreet. Have them meet you at the loading dock entrance, and bring them up that way, please.”

The footman nodded and stepped backward into the elevator, the doors closing.

Simon Chase let go of me then, put my case on the floor, and sank down on the back of a plush sofa, facing me.

“So, Miss Kavanaugh, you were here for a job. To tattoo a gentleman. But not that gentleman in the loo?”

“No. Not him.” And I told him who was supposed to be the recipient of the Stones logo, without going into the intimate details of my assignment.

Simon Chase didn’t stop the smile this time, which spread from his lips up to his eyes. I was feeling slightly unnerved. It had been a long time since I’d felt an attraction like this, and if my radar was working properly—I wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was—it seemed he was reciprocating.

“That particular guest left yesterday, Miss Kavanaugh. I find it difficult to believe he would arrange this, since he knew he would be leaving.”

My mind was racing. Again I wondered if Jeff had set me up. Then again, maybe he’d been set up. He was the one who was supposed to be here, not me. He
had
told me that he thought someone was framing him in Kelly’s death.

“I’m actually covering for someone else, another tattooist,” I admitted.

“So he’s the one who arranged this?” I could tell that he, too, wondered if I’d been set up.

“I really think he thought it was his client who called and made the appointment,” I said, surprising myself by defending Jeff. But my gut told me Jeff wouldn’t set me up like this, despite our tenuous relationship. Would he? Seemed my gut was a little ambivalent.

“Who’s in there?” I asked.

“So you really don’t know?”

“No. Is it a big secret?”

“I suppose not.” Simon Chase got up and walked around to the window, his back to me for a second before he turned to face me.

“His name is Matt Powell. He’s Chip Manning’s driver.”

Chapter 19

Before I could react, a loud cacophony of cheering swept through the window from somewhere below. I must have looked puzzled, because Simon Chase beckoned me over.

A crowd of what looked like French peasants was racing toward the front of the building. If I wasn’t mistaken, they were waving sticks of French bread.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They’re storming the Bastille. Every afternoon at three. You’ve just missed Marie Antoinette telling them to eat cake.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“This is Versailles. Have you been in the casino?”

I shook my head, unable to rip my eyes away from the production going on outside.

“Guillotines.”

I looked at him then. “What?”

“The slot machines. When you hit a jackpot, the blade crashes down on top of the machine. It’s not real, of course, so no one will get hurt.”

Sometimes the illusions went too far. But he seemed rather proud of his guillotines, so I kept the thought to myself. Instead, I changed the subject.

“So why would Chip Manning’s driver be here?”

Simon Chase took a deep breath. “When your client left yesterday, Chip moved in here. He usually stays in this suite when he’s in town, but his visit this time was, well, unexpected.”

Because he was supposed to be on his honeymoon with Elise.

“You’re the woman on the telly, aren’t you?” Simon had finally made the connection.

“That’s right.”

“You saw Elise.”

“Yes.” I didn’t quite know what else to say. If he’d seen the bit on TV, then he already knew what I knew.

Fortunately, the conversation had to stop at that point, because the elevator doors opened and the footman led two detectives, a couple of crime scene forensics guys like the ones you see on TV, and two paramedics and a gurney into the room.

Simon Chase became all business. He showed them where the body was. One of the detectives tossed a glance back at me, and I recognized him as one of Tim’s buddies. Great.

“She found the body,” I heard Simon saying from the other room.

I felt my stomach drop with those words, and when I saw the detective—what was his name?—come out to talk to me, it got worse.

“What happened here, Brett?”

He was on a first-name basis with me, but I was in the dark about his.

“I was supposed to see someone else, a client, and when I got here, I saw this guy instead.” That was it in a nutshell.

He wanted more than that.

“So someone commissioned you to, well …” His voice trailed off as he tried to figure out just what it was I was supposed to do.

“It was a house call,” I filled in for him. “Someone who wanted a tat. But that client wasn’t here. The guy in the bathroom was.”

“Who was the client?”

I told him, and his eyebrows shot up, a grin dancing across his face. “Really?”

“But he wasn’t here,” I repeated. “So I went downstairs, and Mr. Chase came back up with me.”

The elevator doors opened again, and a big, white-haired man bounded into the room.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded, looking straight at Simon Chase.

I didn’t need anyone to tell me
his
name. He was Simon Chase’s boss, Bruce Manning. I’d seen him enough on TV myself to know that.

“I’m afraid there’s been an incident,” I heard Simon murmur, taking Manning’s elbow much like he did mine earlier and steering him toward the window, next to the piano, away from the activity.

Why is it that an English accent will make anything sound civilized—even death?

“We’re going to need to take your fingerprints,” the detective was saying to me.

Brian. That was it. That was his name.

“Sure, I guess so, but I didn’t touch anything. I used my elbow to push the elevator button.” I paused. “Does this mean he was murdered? He didn’t just keel over in the tub?”

Brian didn’t look too happy with me. “We’re going to need to take them, just in case.”

I knew what that meant: just in case I was lying about why I was here, who I was supposed to see. Just in case I happened to have killed that guy in there.

And as I was thinking that, Brian pointed to my case, which Simon had put on the floor next to the plush sofa.

“I need to check that out.”

I pulled it out and unlatched it, opening it to reveal my inks and needles wrapped nicely in their one-time-use packages and the tattoo machine. Brian poked around, lifting up the latex gloves, also in packages. The state of Nevada wouldn’t find any health violations with me or my shop.

Without saying anything, Brian took the latex gloves and needle packages and went into the other room. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of that, especially since I wasn’t sure what he was up to.

Bruce Manning’s voice filtered into my head.

“I want to know what that driver was doing in here.”

“Does it matter now?” Simon’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“He shouldn’t be in here without Chip.”

“Where is Chip?”

Good question. I tried not to be obvious, watching them out of the corner of my eye as they huddled in the far corner of the room.

“Why is that woman with the tattoos here?” Bruce Manning obviously didn’t feel compelled to answer Simon’s question; either that, or he didn’t know where Chip was. Maybe both.

“She says she was supposed to see the previous guest.” The whisper was a little louder now, and while Manning’s back was to me, Simon was looking in my direction—straight at me, actually. And he winked.

It was a tiny wink, but a wink all the same, and I got warm all over again, suppressing a smile.

“That’s ridiculous,” Manning said, swinging around now and spotting me hovering near the sofa. In three strides he was next to me, and I had no choice but to stand tall.

I was at least two inches taller than he was.

But what he lacked in height, he made up for in stature.

“Young lady, you had no business in this room.”

“On the contrary, sir, I did.”

His head swiveled to look at Simon Chase. “Is she telling the truth?”

Simon cocked his head at me, studying my face, and then said, “I believe so.”

“Well, then, you’ve got a security issue here, Chase, and I demand you take care of it. She should never have been allowed up here, regardless, without you knowing about it.”

“I’ll look into it, Mr. Manning,” Simon said, his voice measured.

“Is there a reason you’re still here?” Manning bellowed at me.

“There is.” Brian the detective was standing behind me, still holding the gloves, but now they were out of the package. I had a bad feeling about this.

“Did you put a pair of these gloves on earlier?” he asked.

All eyes were on me, and I shifted slightly.

“No. Why would I? I hadn’t even seen my client.”

Brian’s face was stonelike. I couldn’t read it. His words, though, came through loud and clear.

“A pair of gloves like this was in the tub. And a package exactly like the one you have in your case is in the trash can.”