Ink Flamingos

Chapter 30

I didn’t want to. Turn myself in, that is. And I was pretty sure I could speak for Jeff, too.

“He came after me,” I said. “Those kids can tell you that.”

“They said you went after him.”

“You talked to them?”

“We got statements, yes. The limo driver called 911 immediately.”

This wasn’t good.

“If we come in, do you think we’ll get thrown in the slammer or will we be able to walk out after giving our own statements?” I asked.

“Thrown in the slammer?” I could hear the amusement in Tim’s voice. “Brett, if you and Jeff come in now, we can see if we can smooth this out.”

“Can we have dinner first?” I asked. “I mean, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get Jeff to agree to this so easily.”

“Get a doggie bag, Brett, and get over here.”

I closed my phone as I made my way back down the stairs, eschewing the elevator for a little more time to think about how to get Jeff out of here and over to the station. When I reached the table, the chef was sitting with Jeff, a plate full of assorted appetizers in front of them. Both looked up, smiling, when I approached. Jeff’s smile faded when he saw my expression.

I didn’t want to say anything in front of the chef, so I shook his hand and listened to his description of the appetizers. When he came to the foie gras, I pushed Tim’s admonishing voice out of my head and reached for it, savoring its smoothness and washing it down with a little Malbec. Jeff watched me with a touch of a smile at the corner of his lips. I made a face at him and finished the foie gras, noticing that he’d already had a piece.

When the chef went on to make his rounds among the other diners, I leaned forward and whispered, “We have to go to the police station.”

“Why?”

I told him about the limo driver. “Tim seems to think that we can settle this quickly, if we go right now.”

Jeff indicated the appetizers. “But we’ve just started dinner.”

“I tried that excuse, but he wasn’t buying it.”

He leaned back in his chair and studied me a second. “I’ll meet you there, if you really want to go now.”

There was no use in trying to talk to him about this. I’d told Tim.

“Dinner could be at least two hours,” I said, aware that my resolve had lost a lot of steam. “I really don’t want to end up getting arrested or anything.”

Jeff grinned. “Your brother is an LVPD detective. You really think you’ll get arrested?”

I felt my face flush as anger rose in my chest. “You think that’s some sort of GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card? Having a detective for a brother? He’d be so quick to throw me in jail, you have no idea.”

Jeff’s eyes settled on my face, and I squirmed a little. Then he said, “Okay.” He motioned for the waiter. “Can you wrap up our meals for us? We have to go. Please tell the chef we’re sorry.”

The waiter looked a little flustered, but scurried off.

“Thanks,” I said softly.

“You’ll thank me when you can finally eat your dinner,” he said.

We only waited a few minutes before the waiter came out carrying fancy to-go bags tied with ribbons. They looked like Christmas packages, not a five-star meal. I poured myself another quick glass of Malbec and downed it. Jeff grinned. “We could take that, too.”

Vegas, home of the open container.

We left the bottles on the table. Somehow showing up at police headquarters with open bottles of wine didn’t really seem like the right thing to do.

Once we reached Mandalay Bay’s entrance, we realized something. We didn’t have a car. Sure, we could take the monorail back to the Excalibur, walk the footbridge over Tropicana Boulevard to New York New York, walk the other footbridge to the MGM, then take the monorail from there up to Harrah’s and fetch Jeff’s car from the Venetian valet, but it would probably take us longer to do that than it would’ve to finish our dinner.

So we had the doorman get us a cab.

I was reminded a little of last night, when Harry and I had gotten that cab, and that flash going off. But there were no flashes tonight, I was with Jeff Coleman, we weren’t drunk on absinthe, and I was pretty sure he was going to keep his hands to himself.

He was looking at me with an amused smile. “Taking a trip down memory lane, Kavanaugh?”

I wished he couldn’t read my mind quite so well. The bags with the food were tucked at our feet, the smell wafting up. That piece of foie gras hadn’t been enough. My stomach growled, and Jeff reached over and pulled out a container, opening it to reveal perfectly cooked rack of lamb. He pulled one out by its bone and handed it to me.

“Bon appetit.”

We munched on the lamb.

“Your friend’s a great cook,” I said, my mouth half full.

“I know.”

The police station came up a lot faster than I expected. The cabdriver, to his credit, made no comment about our destination or the fact that we were having a gourmet meal in the back. We shoved the empty container back in the fancy bag and scrambled out; Jeff handed the cabbie some money. I tried to pay him for my half, but he waved me off.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But I didn’t pay for dinner, either,” I said, realizing then that I hadn’t seen a check come to the table.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said again, pushing the door to the station open and letting me go through first.

Once we identified ourselves, we were led upstairs by a uniformed cop. He’d done a quick double take when he saw me-Tim and I were virtual carbon copies of each other-but then basically ignored me.

Tim was waiting in an interrogation room. His eyebrows rose high in his forehead when he saw the bags. Jeff put them on the stainless steel table and opened them, taking out one of the plastic containers.

“Steak?” he asked, lifting the top off.

The scent of charred meat drifted into the air, and my stomach growled again, despite the rack of lamb. Tim’s stomach didn’t growl, but he looked longingly at the steak.

“Maybe later,” he said, having much more self control than I did.

Jeff sat, pulled out a plastic fork and knife, and began to cut up the steak and eat it as though we weren’t in a police department interrogation room but back at that fancy restaurant. Tim looked at me, and I shrugged. I wasn’t Jeff Coleman’s keeper, regardless of what Tim thought.

“So what’s going on with that limo driver?” I asked. “Is he really pressing charges?”

“He says Jeff assaulted him.”

Jeff kept on eating.

“Only after the guy started coming after me,” I said, recounting the scene, explaining how the driver had said I was a murderer.

Something in Tim’s expression made me take pause.

“Have you been on a computer since I talked to you on the phone?”

I frowned. “What, are you kidding me? I was at the restaurant. Jeff and I caught a cab and came over here. Why would you think I was on a computer?”

Tim sighed. “Someone posted on that Ink Flamingos blog. The one that you’re supposedly writing.”

I caught my breath. This was not going to be good.

“It said you’re going to get away with murder, because you planted Sherman Potter’s fingerprints at the scene.”