Ink Flamingos

Chapter 28

Jeff and I stared at each other.

“What’s up with this?” I asked, trying to pull the door open again. It was locked tight.

“It was her,” Jeff said.

I knew whom he meant. The woman he’d met who’d been impersonating me. But I didn’t think so. Ainsley Wainwright was supposed to sing tonight. Her debut as a Flamingo. But why would she be lurking around the arena rather than out on stage with the rest of the band? Maybe she’d shown up while Jeff and I were talking to everyone. It would make sense that she’d run from us; she probably recognized me. She probably managed to get the security guard to make sure we wouldn’t see her. Having met her, I could see how she’d be able to do that. I’d seen how she behaved with Harry. She was a vixen, that one.

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.