Driven to Ink

Chapter 28

I wrote a note to Rosalie saying I was sorry and to please tell Jeff I’d call him in the morning. I gave it to Bixby, and he said he’d deliver it.

And then he kissed me good-bye.

Not like the fireworks kiss we’d shared a few months back, but his lips lingered on the corner of mine a tad longer than I thought they would. I felt a spark. It was small, but it was there. I swear.

He didn’t say he’d call me.

Baby steps.

I pulled into my driveway at the same time Tim did.

We met in the kitchen, where I slung my messenger bag over a chair and shrugged off my jean jacket. He slipped off his sport jacket and tossed it on another chair.

“How was your day?” he asked.

I thought about the question and how I’d answer it. I finally said, “Well, interesting.”

“Interesting how?” He took two beers out of the fridge, took the caps off them, and handed me one. I don’t normally drink beer-I prefer wine-but it seemed like the thing to do right now.

“I’m not sure where to start.”

He took a slug of his beer and set it down. “So start at the beginning.”

With all that had happened, I’d lost track of the time line. When I rewound my memory, it landed at the wedding chapel with Jeff Coleman. I didn’t want to tell Tim about that little adventure. And then there was the visit to the university lab. Another thing Tim didn’t need to know about.

Although, leaving those two things out meant that a lot of other things had to be omitted, and suddenly there wasn’t much to tell at all.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this again.” Tim’s voice shook me out of my thoughts.

“Doing what again?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“Sticking your nose into police business.”

“I haven’t even said anything.”

“But I can tell. What have you been up to?”

“I don’t know why you think I’m doing anything.”

Tim snorted. “It’s not all about you, Brett.”

I knew that, but why did it feel like it sometimes?

“I think something might have happened to this guy Dan Franklin. Ray Lucci used his name when he came into my shop for a tattoo. He’s another Dean Martin impersonator. He also works at the university. He’s an animal-lab technician. He works with rats.”

Tim sighed. “How did you find out he worked at the lab?”

I couldn’t very well tell him I’d seen Dan Franklin’s wallet and his university ID, so even though I’d dismissed trying to pull a fast one and telling Tim that I’d forgotten Franklin told me on the phone yesterday, I reconsidered and said, “He told me. When he called me back after we left a message because we didn’t know Ray Lucci had used his name.”

“Why have you made Franklin your own personal crusade?”

I shrugged. “Considering what’s going on with all those Dean Martin impersonators, it seems like we need to find him soon. Someone might be gunning for him, too.”

Tim closed his eyes and sighed, then opened them again. “We? We need to find him?”

So I felt as if I had a personal stake in this. But I didn’t say anything because Tim was looking pretty angry at the moment, and the last time I’d seen him like that was the time I told his girlfriend that he was out with another girl. It wasn’t malicious. I was just a kid and didn’t realize it was a no-no. But it hadn’t mattered to him. I’d screwed up.

And it looked as though I did again.

But I couldn’t let it go.

“You know Lou Marino died after getting hit by a car tonight, right?” I asked.

“Who?”

“He’s another Dean Martin. He’s married to Rosalie, Bernie Applebaum’s daughter.” I paused a second while Tim absorbed this last bit of information, and then said, “You know, I found Sylvia and Bernie.”

Tim looked as though his head were going to explode.

I quickly told him about seeing Sylvia at the Palazzo shops, her story about how they took a bus trip to Sedona and ended up back at the Venetian. “Jeff came to take them to the hospital to see Rosalie, because of Lou Marino’s accident.”

Tim didn’t say anything, but he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number. He walked out to the living room, slid open the glass door to the outside patio, and stepped outside. As I drank my beer, I tried to hear what he was saying, but his voice was muffled. He was probably calling Flanigan to find out whether he knew about Sylvia and Bernie.

I’d left out the little bit about how Bitsy and I were almost run over. I wasn’t quite sure how to broach that, since he was already pretty upset with me and my amateur sleuthing and he didn’t know about our little trip to the university. But if I didn’t tell him, he’d be even angrier. As I rinsed out my empty beer bottle and put it in the recycling bin under the sink, I tried to figure out what I should say that would have the least impact.

Right.

Tim was closing his phone, coming back inside.

“Flanigan?” I asked, indicating the phone.

He nodded. “He saw them at the hospital.”

“So he knew about Lou Marino?”

Tim took a deep breath and nodded again. “He’s been keeping tabs on those wedding chapel guys. Guess this isn’t the first attempt on Lou Marino.”

“He got mugged and cut up,” I said without thinking.

“And how do you know that?” he asked, leaning toward me, his hands gripping the edge of the granite island countertop.

Uh-oh. But I couldn’t back out now.

“I met one of the other impersonators. Guy named Will Parker. He stopped in the shop.” I thought quickly and decided I had to lie. It was too bad I’d gotten rid of my rosary beads years ago. “He also told me someone tried to run him over. With my car.” I put a lot of emphasis on the last words. “Although he doesn’t know it was my car. But it seems pretty likely it was.”

Tim was nodding. I kept talking.

“This guy Parker said Ray Lucci had been a car thief and he was eyeing my car when Sylvia and Bernie drove up in it.”

He didn’t seem all that surprised for some reason with my revelations. He just kept nodding.

“This is why you can’t get involved in any of this,” he chided.

“But I did get involved,” I said, deciding now to come clean. “And someone knows it.” I was whispering now. “Someone tried to run me and Bitsy down in the parking lot at the university.”

Tim’s face grew red with anger. “And you didn’t think to tell me that first? What’s wrong with you? And what were you doing over at the university? No, let me guess. You were trying to find out about Dan Franklin. And then someone tries to run you down. Can’t you see this is dangerous? You need to let the police do their job and stay out of it.”

I sighed. He was right. Then something struck me. “Did you know about my car? That it almost ran over Parker? Did Flanigan tell you that?”

“I know you’ve got a personal stake in all this, Brett,” Tim said. He was trying to pull himself together, stay in control. “But you really have to stay out of it. There’s something I haven’t told you.”

All my muscles tensed. What more could there be?

“Ray Lucci’s fingerprints were found in your car.”

I blinked a couple of times. “Why wouldn’t his fingerprints be there? I mean, he was in my trunk.”

“No, Brett. His fingerprints were found on the gearshift, steering wheel, window controls, radio, and air-conditioning buttons. Flanigan thinks Lucci really did steal your car.”