Ink Flamingos

Chapter 21

I sat, my heart back in my throat. It should just have been permanently lodged there, because it was popping up there all the time lately.

“I didn’t call you,” I said, forcing the words out. “Tell me exactly what the message said.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t call me?”

Couldn’t accuse Harry of being a Rhodes scholar. “I didn’t call you. Some woman is impersonating me. I bet it was her who called you. What was the number she called from?”

“Someone’s impersonating you?”

Was there an echo in here? I tried not to be impatient. I needed that phone number.

“Please, Harry, the number?”

“Okay, okay, hold on.” He was quiet a second; then he rattled off a number as I grabbed a pencil from Joel and jotted it down on top of one of the file folders on the table.

“Thanks,” I said. “What did the message say?”

“I told you. You said it was important. I should call you right away.”

“She sounded like me?” It was one thing to make herself up like me, but to mimic my voice?

“There were a lot of sounds in the background, like she was in a car or on a bus or something, but it sounded like you, I guess.” He was having doubts now. “Why do you think someone’s impersonating you?”

I told him about the Ink Flamingos blog and the pictures of the two of us. “She obviously was following us around last night,” I finished.

Bitsy was standing in the doorway, waving her arms around. Oh, shoot. I’d forgotten about Katie.

“Listen, Harry, why don’t you stop by later and we can talk about it. I’ve got a client.” And I hung up.

“Katie’s waiting,” Bitsy said.

“I know. I need to give Tim a quick call.” I grabbed Katie’s folder with the stencil in it as I hit the speed dial number for Tim.

“Kavanaugh.”

I quickly told him about my conversation with Harry and gave him the number for the mysterious impostor as well as Harry’s number, which I now had because he’d called me and it was in my phone.

“I’ll get on it,” Tim said, hanging up.

Katie accepted my apology for being away too long, and I pressed the stencil against her back and peeled it off carefully, leaving the markings behind that I would trace with the tattoo machine. I showed her what it looked like with a hand mirror, and she was thrilled. I told her to lie down as I pulled on a pair of blue gloves, slid a needle into the machine, and dipped it into a small pot of black ink. I spun my chair around so I had a good angle, put my foot against the pedal on the ground, and heard the machine whir to life.

As I worked, I felt my worries slip away, the tension in my shoulders ease. I lost myself in the zone, creating my art on someone’s skin, carefully moving the machine with the contours of her body. When I was in art school, I’d had no idea I’d trade a stiff, white canvas for this malleable one. The black heart on the inside of my wrist, which I gave myself when I was sixteen, had been only the beginning, and I should have known then, with each painstaking and painful stab of that needle, that this was what I was meant to create.

I had someone ask me once whether I’d get into other forms of body modification, but besides the tattoos and the piercings in my ears, I hadn’t considered it. Putting more holes in my body or stretching my earlobes or splitting my tongue just weren’t the same to me as using my body as a canvas. I was a walking art gallery, as much a gallery as Ace’s was out in the front of the shop. That’s not to say I judged anyone else who might want to pursue other types of modification. That was their business and their own journey. It just wasn’t mine.

I was finishing up Katie’s tattoo when something else hit me about what had been going on the last couple days. Daisy was the one who’d lost her life, but somehow this had become all about me. It was wrong.

Or maybe that’s what whoever did this had meant to do. Steer all speculation toward me. Did my impostor know about Tim, how he was a police detective? That Tim would probably focus on whoever was blogging about me rather than Daisy’s death? Granted, Flanigan was on the case, too, as well as other police. But if it became about me, and not Daisy, then maybe she’d get away with it.

She? Had I pinned this on the woman impersonating me? What about Sherman Potter? He said he’d already replaced Daisy, saying she’d planned to leave the band. I wondered what the other band members thought about that.

As soon as Katie left with her aftercare instructions, I knew what I had to do. See where the Flamingos were playing and see if I couldn’t talk to them about Daisy. If I could figure out what she was doing at the Golden Palace, then maybe I’d be a step closer to finding my impersonator.

Joel was on the laptop when I finally went into the staff room. He was in the middle of designing a tattoo. A while back, we’d had an intern who taught him how to design in Photoshop and Illustrator and he took to it easily. Ace and I had a little bit more trouble. Ace because, well, he really wanted to be a painter, and me, I didn’t do so well on the computer. I liked having a pencil in my hand-or a tattoo machine.

Joel looked up as I came in.

“Done with Katie?” he asked.

I nodded, sticking my head in the fridge to see if there was anything to munch on. I pulled out a brick of cheddar cheese and a box of crackers. I cut off a little cheese and put it on a cracker and stuck it in my mouth.

“Can I have one?” Joel asked, his eyes focused on the cheese.

I made him a couple crackers and put them on a paper plate, setting it down next to him. “Going to be long?”

“Just got started,” he said, indicating the screen.

The outline of a snake was weaving its way through the eye sockets of a skull. I shivered involuntarily. Despite his newfound love of computer graphics, Joel was a traditional tattooist and did mainly old-school tattoos with a slightly modern twist. So far, this one was still just old-school.

“I’ll go in the office, then,” I said, going down the hall. We had an old iMac desktop that had been replaced by the laptop, and I hoisted it up from its new home on the floor to the top of the desk. I had to hook it all up, which was why when Flanigan had been here yesterday I didn’t bother with it, just used the laptop. I fumbled with the wires, making sure the keyboard and mouse were attached and plugging it into the socket. When I had everything where it should be, I hit the power switch.

The wireless still worked on this, and when it booted up, I went to the Internet and did a Google search for the Flamingos Web site. I wanted to find out where the band was playing next, so I could track them down and see if I couldn’t get some answers out of them.

When I clicked on the first link, a page I’d never seen before popped up. It was a dedication to Daisy, her picture and her date of birth and death, with RIP under her picture and a small button at the bottom of the page that indicated I could get to the band’s Web site through that portal.

It was a touching tribute, considering that Daisy was leaving the band and had already been replaced.

But when I clicked through, I didn’t get the Flamingos Web site after all.

It was the Ink Flamingos blog.