Ink Flamingos

Chapter 3

If I didn’t get to Patty now, I’d have to reschedule her. I stored away what Joel said and went back to my room, where Patty was texting someone, iPod earbuds in her ears, clearly not missing me very much at all.

I’d finished outlining the American flag around the heart and needed to start with the colors. Patty was an Iraq war veteran, just twenty-nine, and she’d seen more in two years than I’d seen in my entire life. The flag was her homage to her service, the heart reminding her of humanity and the fragility of life.

She glanced up at me as I came in.

“Thought you ran away.”

I sat down and pulled on my gloves. “Don’t worry about me,” I said, picking up the tattoo machine and dipping the needles into the red ink. I swiveled around and settled my foot on the pedal on the floor. The machine kicked in with a whir, and I put the needles to Patty’s skin. She flinched slightly, then relaxed. Sometimes they can’t stop flinching. Makes my job harder.

As I worked, I thought about Daisy Carmichael. Obviously, she wasn’t Ainsley Wainwright. Maybe Ainsley had checked into the room and then Daisy came to visit her. Maybe Ainsley did the tattoo color. And then somehow Daisy died. Had she been murdered? It seemed a possibility. She was a young woman, younger than me by a couple of years, which would put her around thirty, maybe.

Had she killed herself? No. I couldn’t buy that. Why get color in a tattoo and then kill yourself? Wouldn’t you want to enjoy the tattoo for a while? Plus, she was at the top of her game, the top of her career. She always seemed like a happy person, someone who didn’t take her fame for granted.

And then I had another thought. The picture on the blog was taken before the body was found, on the Strip, outside. Had she had the tattoo colored in and then gone out for a stroll on the Strip, where Ainsley snapped her picture, then back to the hotel and died?

Seemed doubtful. The sequence of events didn’t make sense. And it also wouldn’t explain the inks and needles in the hotel room.

I thought about the questions Tim had asked. Sounded like there might definitely be another tattoo. Maybe the flamingo had been colored in a while back, and someone gave her a new tattoo in the hotel room.

I was doing it again. I was getting way too interested in something that wasn’t my business. But I couldn’t help it. I was sort of involved. Tim’s phone call and Flanigan’s impending visit were indications that I wasn’t totally out of the clear on this one.

It was possible Ainsley Wainwright was a redhead. There hadn’t been a picture of her with her bio on the blog site. Thus the confusion about her gender.

I had to stop thinking about it. I pushed all thoughts aside and began to concentrate more closely on Patty’s tattoo. My hand was curled around the tattoo machine, its weight familiar and comfortable. My professors at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia would probably shake their heads with disapproval that this machine had taken the place of my traditional paintbrush.

It wouldn’t be such a bad idea, though, to actually teach a class in body art. Tattoos have become so mainstream, and the art has a long history that would be worth studying.

Who was I kidding? Tattooists wouldn’t be considered serious artists, which was why my employee Ace van Nes felt so frustrated. He’d never felt that he was being appreciated and considered his time at the shop temporary, even though he’d been here five years now. He painted comic book versions of classic paintings, and we sold them in the shop-yet another frustration for him because he wanted to show his work in a real gallery. Right now we had Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, and Millet’s The Gleaners on the walls out front. Since we weren’t allowed to have the word “tattoo” anywhere on our door-a little concession to having a tattoo shop in such an upscale place-many people wandered in thinking we really were a gallery, a point that Bitsy, Joel, and I kept trying to hammer home to Ace.

Although you’d be surprised how many of those people actually made appointments for tattoos once they stepped through the door, something that did not go unnoticed by Ace and didn’t help our cause.

The intricacies of Patty’s tattoo meant that when I was finally done, over an hour had passed. I set down the machine, wiped the last of the ink and blood off Patty’s lower back, gave her a hand mirror, and sent her off to the full-length mirror in the back of the shop so she could admire her new tattoo.

I’d started throwing away the ink pots and wiping down my counter when Bitsy appeared in the doorway.

“He’s here,” she said, as if she were announcing the Prince of Wales.

Detective Kevin Flanigan hovered behind her, and I was glad he couldn’t see the look of disdain on her face. I plastered a smile on mine.

“Nice to see you again, Detective.”

Flanigan had always been a dapper dresser, but it seemed that perhaps he’d gone even classier with the Armani suit that hugged his narrow shoulders. His salt-and-pepper hair was slicked back neatly, not a tendril out of place. A few wrinkles around his eyes proved that perhaps he did smile now and then, but usually not when he spoke to me.

His mouth was set in a grim line, so I supposed he wasn’t going to break his record today.

Patty tapped him on the shoulder, and Flanigan stepped aside to let her into the room. She handed me the mirror with a broad grin and said, “It’s fantastic.”

I saw Flanigan’s eyes move down to her lower back. Her T-shirt was rolled up just under her breasts and her sweatpants had been lowered slightly so they wouldn’t smudge the tattoo. A flicker of a smile, just a flicker, and then it was gone. So he was human after all. Just not with me.

I cocked my head toward him. “Can you wait just a few? I have to finish up here. Bitsy can show you the schedule; you know the drill.” He’d come around checking on me before.

Without a word, Flanigan gave a short nod, and Bitsy led him to the front desk while I gave Patty her instructions for aftercare of the tattoo. I smoothed some Tattoo Goo on it, then covered it with a large bandage so her pants wouldn’t chafe it. When we were done, I followed her out to the sleek mahogany desk where Bitsy would take her payment.

I indicated Flanigan should follow me back down the hall to the office across from the staff room. Once there, I shut the door and went around the less sleek desk and sat.

“What do you need to know?” I asked bluntly.

Flanigan sat in the uncomfortable metal folding chair across from me. He leaned forward, setting his elbows on his knees, his expression blank.

“Miss Hendricks showed me your schedule for today.”

“I was here all day.”

“So it seems.”

“So that should be that, right?”

“Not so fast.”

I should’ve guessed. Flanigan wouldn’t have come all the way out here so soon after Daisy’s body was discovered just to find out whether I’d been in my shop all day. I had no idea what he was after, so I waited.

“I understand Miss Carmichael was a client of yours.”

I nodded. “For the last two years. I did all her tattoos.” When I realized what I’d said, I quickly added, “Except for that color on the flamingo. I did the black, but I never did color.”

“Why not?”

“She told me she was allergic to red dye. Found out when she took an ibuprofen when she was younger. She was really nervous about any sort of tattoo color, because she thought she’d have a bad reaction to it.” I remembered the first time Daisy had come in, adamant about not having any color. She had done her homework. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not regulate tattoo ink. Anything can be in it, and no one would be the wiser. There are a lot of metals and mercury, especially in red and yellow inks, and I always warn my clients that if they’ve got any sort of nickel allergy, they shouldn’t get red or yellow. We take an elaborate medical history, like they do at the doctor’s office, and make our clients sign a waiver so we’re covered just in case someone has a reaction and tries to come after us.

“What would a reaction look like?” Flanigan asked, and I knew he wasn’t expressing mere curiosity from the way he asked.

“It’s easier to show you,” I said. “Hold on.” I left the room and went into the staff room, where Joel was picking at a salad. He’d been on Weight Watchers, then the Atkins Diet, and was now trying the South Beach Diet on for size.

“What’s up?” Joel put his fork down, and his expression said he hoped I would stick around and keep him company. Maybe eat the salad for him so he wouldn’t have to.

I grabbed my laptop and swung it under my arm. “Have to get back to the detective,” I said apologetically.

“Oh, right. What does he want now?”

“He’s asking about reactions to tattoos and inks.” I indicated the laptop. “Figured I’d pull up some Google images for him.”

“Have you ever thought about that citizens police academy?” He was totally serious.

I made a face and rolled my eyes at him as I left. Flanigan hadn’t moved, or at least it looked as if he hadn’t. Nothing looked out of place, so I couldn’t tell if he’d snooped while I was gone. I put the laptop on the desk and powered it up, bringing up Google and my search. When the images popped up, I turned the laptop around and showed them to him.

“Someone could get an infection because of the inks or because of a bad tattooist,” I explained as he examined an image of a tattoo that we couldn’t even identify because of the infection.

“So you can’t tell which?” Flanigan asked, reaching into his breast pocket. He pulled out an iPhone and tapped the screen a couple times before holding it out toward me.

It looked like what we were looking at on the laptop: a distorted tattoo that was bright red with little hivelike bumps.

I frowned. “What’s this?”

“This was a tattoo Miss Carmichael had.”