Ink Flamingos

Chapter 45

I had a flashback from the other night with Harry, when all those flashes kept going off. My heart leaped into my throat as I blinked, trying to see who had the camera. Jeff was one step ahead of me, though. He grabbed a woman’s arm and whirled her around.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Melanie?” It was Melanie Black, Daisy’s bandmate, the one who’d invited me to the concert last night.

She held a small camera, and she did not look happy with Jeff.

“Let go of me,” she demanded; then she saw me and tried an awkward smile on for size. “Brett, can you tell him to let go of me, tell him who I am?”

“Did you just take my picture?” I asked, ignoring her question.

Melanie seemed surprised to see she was holding a camera. “I was taking pictures,” she admitted. “I don’t think I took one of you.” But her blush told a different story.

“Let’s see,” Jeff held out his hand for the camera, and she frowned, but she handed it over.

He had to let her go to look at the last picture she took, but she stayed put. Probably because she didn’t want him to keep her camera. Jeff studied the camera screen and then held it up for me to see.

It was a picture of me. Jeff and Sylvia flanked me, but they were partially cut off.

I looked up at Melanie. “Why did you take my picture?” She couldn’t deny that she had now.

Her face clouded over for a second; then she forced a smile. “I didn’t realize. But it’s a good picture.”

“Good enough for your blog?” I sneered.

Melanie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

This could not be a coincidence. Melanie had been the one to invite me to the arena last night. She had invited me backstage. I had wanted answers about Daisy, and then Jeff and I found ourselves locked out. She had fed me the story about Sherman Potter and Daisy. Maybe it was to deflect any possible suspicion from her.

Although I hadn’t thought any of the girls in the band would be suspect. Daisy was their bread and butter. Why would any of them kill her?

And then I knew. Because Daisy wanted out. Because she was leaving the band. Because she was their bread and butter, that wouldn’t set well.

Melanie knew about me. Knew about the tattoos. Knew Daisy was allergic. Anyone could get a tattoo machine and all the equipment online for a do-it-yourselfer. The picture of the tattoo that Flanigan had showed me indicated it was the work of a scratcher, someone who didn’t know what she was doing. It would be easy to set up a real tattooist, too.

Melanie was almost as tall as me. With a wig, she could impersonate me. She could be the woman who’d left that hotel room. She could be the woman Jeff met in the bar.

Now she was here. At the Golden Palace. Where Sherman Potter’s body lay upstairs. And she was taking pictures of me.

Maybe she killed Sherman Potter because he figured it out.

Like me.

Jeff was toying with the camera. “There aren’t any other pictures,” he said, then looked at Melanie. “If you were being a tourist and taking pictures, then why is this one of Brett the only one you’ve got in the camera? And why are you taking pictures here? It’s a hotel front desk. Not exactly something for the photo album, is it?”

She looked decidedly uncomfortable. Good. But before she could respond, I heard a familiar voice.

“Brett?”

I turned to see Tim walking toward us, confusion crossing his face. He had a couple of uniforms and crime scene investigators behind him. They all stopped when he did.

I went over to him, knowing Jeff would hold on to Melanie so she couldn’t get away.

“I think this is her,” I said softly to Tim when I reached him. I told him about the picture and my theories about her.

“Did Jeff ID her as the woman he met?” Tim asked as he checked Melanie out.

Like I said, she was almost as tall as me, and her hair was short, too, but it had been dyed midnight black and the ends were purple. Her face was round and she had an upturned nose and pouty lips. Her eyes were on the small side, but she attempted to make them look larger with dark eye shadow and thick mascara and black eyeliner. It was a sort of goth look but fit the Flamingos’ updated punk look to a T.

“She’s not exactly incognito,” Tim pointed out, and I grudgingly agreed. She would be noticeable in a crowd. But maybe she didn’t wear all that makeup all the time. I said as much.

“If her purpose was to come here, kill Sherman Potter, then take your picture, why would she make herself up like that? And how did she even know you’d be here?” Tim was playing devil’s advocate, and I couldn’t blame him. He had unraveled my theory with that last question. “How did you come to be here and find Sherman Potter, anyway?” he asked.

I told him how Jeff had followed Potter and how the room had been reserved in the name Wainwright.

“But she’s dead,” Tim said, his expression telling me he thought I might have gone over the deep end on this one.

“It’s got to be her twin sister, Ann.” It was like on those soap operas, when someone ended up having an evil twin.

“How do you know her sister’s name?” Tim’s face grew dark.

I quickly explained how the woman at the hotel desk had said that the Flamingos’ new lead singer’s name was Ann Wainwright, not Ainsley, as she’d presented herself.

Tim’s frown deepened, but he turned and approached Melanie. Jeff wasn’t holding on to her, and she hadn’t tried to take off.

“My sister says you took her picture. What for?”

I could now see Melanie assessing Tim, deciding what she should say.

“Someone asked me to.”

She could’ve just told me that before. At least she was coming clean with the cops.

“Who?” Tim prompted.

Melanie shrugged. “She asked me for an autograph, I gave it to her, and then she gave me her camera, asked if I could do her a favor. She said Brett Kavanaugh was in the business center, could I get a picture of her. When I said she should do it herself, she said because I knew her, it would be better if I did it. She said she wanted a candid shot, so I should be discreet, not let on what I was doing.”

Sounded plausible, but I still wasn’t willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Neither was Jeff.

“How did she know you knew Brett?” he asked before Tim could. “Did you ask her how she knew Brett?”

Melanie seemed confused by the questions, by the fact that someone other than Tim was asking.

“What did she look like?” I asked, throwing her off a little more.

But she recovered enough to say, “She looked a little like you. Red hair, tall. Maybe not as thin as you, though.”

My impostor strikes again. And the description could easily fit Ann Wainwright.

“Where did she go?” I asked, looking around and not seeing anyone matching the description.

Melanie shrugged.

“Maybe you should come with me and answer some questions,” Tim said to her.

“Kavanaugh?”

Tim and I both turned to see Detective Kevin Flanigan coming toward us. The uniforms and CSIs parted like the Red Sea to let him through.

“What’s going on?” Flanigan asked.

Tim gave it to him in a nutshell. Flanigan was nodding. “You take her and talk to her,” he said, meaning Melanie. “Get a description of the woman who asked her to take the picture. I’ll go upstairs.”

“Where should we go?” I asked.

All eyes landed on me. It was not a comfortable feeling.

“You found the body?” Flanigan asked.

Jeff and I both nodded.

“Then you come with me.”

Sylvia stepped forward, her cheetah-print bag swinging from her shoulder. “And where do I go?”

Flanigan’s mouth twitched, as if he wanted to smile. “Mrs. Coleman. I remember you.” From a couple of months before. “You might as well come with us, too.”

I was glad we didn’t have to leave Sylvia behind again, and Tim looked relieved that she wasn’t going to be his responsibility.

Flanigan took me, Jeff, and Sylvia up in the elevator with him, along with the hotel manager, who had to let us in the room, and sent the others up in a separate elevator. No one said anything as we went up.

We arrived at the same time the uniforms and CSIs did. Guess there wasn’t too much elevator traffic today.

We all made our way down the hallway maze to Sherman Potter’s room.

We watched as the manager slipped the key card into the door, and it swung open. Flanigan went in first.

I knew we were in trouble by the look on his face when he came back out right away.

“There’s no body in here. Can someone tell me what’s going on?”