Ink Flamingos (21 page)

The sheets had been taken off it, and the mattress lay bare on the frame. I’d had no idea how Ainsley Wainwright had died—Tim hadn’t felt compelled to tell me—but I had a bit of a clue now. A large red stain was in the middle of the mattress.

“Do you think she was shot or stabbed?” Bitsy asked matter-of-factly.

I shrugged, not really wanting to speculate.

“I wish we could clean up,” Bitsy said. Sure she did. Bitsy liked everything in order, and this room was no less messy than the living room. A laundry basket was bleeding dirty clothes; the closet doors hung open to reveal scattered shoes and clothes hanging haphazardly on hangers; the two dressers were topped with stray costume jewelry.

I went over to the closet and checked out the clothes. They were plain: T-shirts and jeans and longish skirts. Nothing flashy. I wondered out loud what Ainsley Wainwright did when she wasn’t blogging.

“She worked for a dentist,” Bitsy said, holding up a piece of paper she’d taken off one of the dressers.

Looking closely, I saw it was a pay stub from a local dental group.

“Maybe we’d have better luck going there and talking to them,” Bitsy suggested. “Maybe you could get your teeth cleaned or something.”

“Or maybe you could.”

“Or maybe Joel could.”

We both started cracking up a little over that, sending Joel to a dentist just to get information.

“We’re grabbing at straws,” I said when I caught my breath. “And I’m doing exactly what I said I wouldn’t do ever again. Why did you talk me into this?”

“We have to clear your name.” She was totally serious.

“But that’s for Tim and the cops to do.”

“Well, they’re not doing a very good job of it, are they?” she asked.

No, they weren’t. Couldn’t argue with that.

I told her I was going back out to the living room. She nodded, staring at the bed.

The books on the floor bothered me for some reason. I leaned down and sifted through them. She sure liked romances, historical and contemporary. The covers were adorned with bare-chested young men who needed haircuts and thin, willowy young women with their cleavage hanging out all over the place.

I started stacking them in neat little piles next to the bookshelf. There, that looked better.

I spotted a stray book that had fallen behind another one on the shelf and pulled it out, ready to stack it along with the rest. But something was stuck inside it.

I yanked it out and turned it over.

Here was the picture I’d been looking for. But it wasn’t what I expected.

“What did you find there?” Bitsy asked, hovering over me as I sat on the floor.

I held it up and she took it, a long, slow whistle leaving her lips. “You’re kidding me. Why didn’t the cops find it?”

“It was stuck in this book.” I showed her how it had been crammed into the binding. “They might have gone through these, but maybe since it didn’t just fall out, they missed it.”

I could still hear Joel talking to that young woman outside. Hmm. That was interesting. When I got closer to the doorway, I heard him say, “You know, I could do both of you.”

Now that sounded a little too kinky for me, but I needed to talk to her, so I announced my presence by clearing my throat. They both looked up, and the girl grinned at me.

“He says he can tattoo me and my girlfriend for a discount,” she said excitedly.

The mystery of Joel’s predilection remained.

While I wasn’t sure about the discount thing, I couldn’t worry about it now. I held out the photograph to the young woman. “Is that Ainsley Wainwright?” I asked.

She stared at the picture for a second before saying, “Yes, with her twin sister.”

I
’d suspected as much. The two women in the picture were identical, and one was most definitely the Ainsley I had met in Sherman Potter’s hotel room. But since Tim said the dead girl in here was identified as Ainsley, and the paycheck stub Bitsy had shown me inside had indicated that the woman who lived here and worked for the dentist was, in fact, Ainsley, then for some reason her sister was using her name.

“Do you know her sister’s name?” I asked the young woman.

She shook her head. “No. I never met her.” But her eyes skittered around the hall, wouldn’t meet mine. She knew something she didn’t want to tell.

“Ainsley never mentioned her?”

She shrugged, still evasive.

I wasn’t going to get anywhere with her. I pocketed the picture.

The young woman frowned. “That’s not yours,” she said with a pout.

“Evidence,” I said, snapping off my gloves.

Bitsy had come out now.

“Ready?” I asked.

She nodded, looking up at Joel, who was handing the girl one of his business cards. Great. Now she knew for sure that we weren’t cops.

“I told her how I moonlight on the side,” Joel said with a wink.

Oh, like that would make a difference when she showed up at the shop and we were all there, working.

Whatever.

I needed to get out of here and bring Tim my cell phone and now this picture. But wait. I hadn’t thought this through. Where would I tell him I got said picture? Now I was in a pickle. Because I couldn’t tell him I’d been here and found it in a book.

For a nanosecond I thought I could tell him I got it from one of the girls in the band last night and had forgotten about it. But why would they have it? They didn’t even like Ainsley. Or whatever her real name was.

There really was no place I could say I got it. Except here.

And I had no idea how to bring up the fact that Ainsley Wainwright had a twin sister without showing him the picture.

I was stuck between that rock and hard place.

As we squeezed ourselves back into the little Mini Cooper for the ride to the police station, I told Bitsy and Joel my dilemma.

Bitsy snorted. “Why don’t you just tell him that you found it in that Hummer you and Jeff stole last night, and you forgot all about it because there was a flamingo with a tiara covered in red paint on your bed?”

This was why I paid her the big bucks. Because she came up with ideas I would never have thought of. Granted, it was still a little weak, but if I played it right, Tim would be none the wiser.

“Do you think for sure that she’s the one impersonating you?” Joel asked.

I thought for a moment, not certain. While the young woman at the apartment building said I looked like Ainsley Wainwright, I knew I didn’t, but Jeff said the woman he met didn’t look at all like me. But that woman didn’t really have red hair, because she’d left it behind in the ladies’ room.

“I’m not sure.” I thought about meeting the other Ainsley in Sherman Potter’s hotel room. Her sister must have been dead by then. Did she know?

“I still don’t understand why someone would do this to you,” Joel said.

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Because even though this felt personal, I didn’t know Ainsley Wainwright. I had never met her. And it had been a fluke that I met her sister when she was with Sherman Potter. I’d never met him before, either, although Daisy had told me about him. So why? Why would anyone go to all that trouble to set me up? To set up that fake blog? To take my picture? To put a flamingo on my bed? To text me, pretending to be Daisy?

I still had way more questions than answers. I wondered if Tim could help with the phone issue.

“What are you going to do about Ace?” Joel asked.

Now that was a tough one. We’d pretty much charged and convicted him last night, but in the light of day, it wasn’t quite so easy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I shrugged. “I need to ask about the moonlighting.”

“Do we have rules against that?”

The way he asked made me wonder if Joel hadn’t been moonlighting, too. “No,” I said, “but if you want to, it might be best to tell me or Bitsy so at least we know.”

That seemed to satisfy Joel, who was probably having the same issues with our discussion last night as I was. Bitsy, I noticed, was oddly silent.

Tim wasn’t at the police station, and no one would tell me where he was. Flanigan wasn’t there, either. I could assume they were out somewhere together, since they’d seemed a bit joined at the hip lately. Maybe they had a lead on the case.

Listen to me. I sound like I watch too much TV.

I didn’t leave my cell phone with the sergeant, like he suggested. There was way too much possibility that it would get lost or something, so I took it with me when we left for the shop.

Ace was hanging around out front when we showed up. He was holding a white box that caught Joel’s eye. The gate was still down over the glass door.

“Lost my key,” he said apologetically.

I didn’t like the sound of that. If he’d lost it, then someone could find it and get into the shop. Since my house had already been broken into, I didn’t want the shop suffering the same fate.

“You’d better find it,” I snapped sharply.

“I’ll launch a full-blown search in my apartment later,” Ace said, an edge to his tone that indicated I might have held back a little. I’d never talked to him like that before, and immediately I could hear Sister Mary Eucharista reminding me that everyone’s innocent until proven guilty.

I unlocked the gate and pulled it up and out of sight, then unlocked the door and let everyone in. We all headed to the staff room, where Bitsy and I stashed our bags and Ace put the box on the table, breaking the tape that held it shut.

“Pastries,” he announced.

We all leaned over to check them out. They were from Bouchon, a bakery downstairs that was affiliated with the fancy Thomas Keller restaurant of the same name up on the eighth level of the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes. Bouchon pastries were something special. I peered over at Ace, feeling even guiltier. He had taken one but hadn’t started nibbling on it yet.

Joel hadn’t waited that long. His was already half gone.

My pastry would have to wait. I needed to talk to Ace now. I gave Bitsy and Joel a look, and they got the message so they filtered out. Ace was following them when I said, “Ace, can I talk to you a minute?”

He paused at the door, flipping back his dark hair. He was incredibly handsome in a Greek god sort of way. Everything was symmetrical, even his tattoos, down to the fleur-de-lis on the tops of his hands.

“What’s up? I told you I’d look for the key.”

“It’s not about that. I know you’ll find it.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. “Are you moonlighting?” Might as well get it out in the open right away. Didn’t want to pull any punches.

Confusion crossed his face, then dismay. But he didn’t want to admit it. “What are you talking about?”

I might as well come clean. “I saw you last night. At the Flamingo. You were there with Harry Desmond. You had your case.”

He frowned. “So what of it?” A little more belligerent now.

I sighed. “I know Harry does parties. He used to work for Jeff; do you know that? And Jeff fired him.”

All pretense left his face. “He shouldn’t have, you know. Fired him, I mean. Harry’s a good tattooist. I told him he should ask for a job here.”

Like I’d hire him after what Jeff told me. After the other night. I felt myself blush a little as I thought about those kisses, how I’d almost gone home with him. And then out of the blue I thought about Jeff. I struggled to push the thoughts away and keep my focus on the matter at hand.

“Jeff fired him for a reason,” I said, making my voice all professional-like, the blush gone now. “I’m not sure you want your name associated with his, considering. And he never even told me that he’s a tattooist. So how could I hire him? He lied to us, said he got laid off at one of the casinos. It was all one big fabrication.”

Ace slumped a little, running a hand through that perfect hair. I could see he was debating something with himself, then finally he spoke.

“Today’s my last day.”

I
didn’t think I heard him right. “What?”

Ace sighed. “I’m quitting.”

I hadn’t meant for this to happen. “Why?” I managed to sputter, totally thrown off. “Not because of this?”

“I need more time to devote to my painting,” he said. “And I can make a lot of money at those tattoo parties.”

A lot? How much? I wanted to ask, wondering if this wasn’t a ploy. “Do you want a raise?” I asked, worried about what he’d demand. He made less than Joel, which was only right, because he hadn’t been with the shop as long, starting only a year before I bought Flip out, whereas Joel had been with Flip from the start, about ten years. I couldn’t possibly give Ace more and have it all be fair. And while business was still good, the recession had hit us a little, and I didn’t want to overextend and have to give everyone raises.

Ace shook his head. “No. I just want to leave. This isn’t my thing anyway; you know that. I really need to concentrate on my art.”

I thought about his comic book renditions of famous paintings. We’d sold a few, but not enough to warrant a full-time gig.

“I’m going to try to set up an exhibit,” he continued. “I need to establish myself, and I can’t do it here. Harry says—”

Little red lights went off in my head. “Harry? What does Harry have to say about this?”

“He says he knows someone who owns a gallery, who might want to set up something for me.”

Harry certainly knew a lot of people, didn’t he? First, it was Sherman Potter. Now it was some gallery owner. He’d infiltrated himself into our lives here at The Painted Lady in more ways than one. Maybe it was time to tell him to stop coming around. We were doing better before he showed up on our doorstep.

Bitsy popped into the staff room door. She cocked her head at Ace. “Your client’s here.”