Pretty In Ink (14 page)

And here was Britney with her arm around none other than Rusty Abbott.

I still thought Rusty was pretty enough to do drag himself, but he was wearing a tuxedo and looking rather dashing. It was a lot better than the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing at the roulette table.

Thinking about Rusty Abbott prompted me to remember Jeff Coleman’s call about how Rusty warned that accidents happen. I jumped up and went to the front door to make sure Tim had locked it.

I should have known better than to doubt Tim. The door was locked, as was the one that led out to the garage.

I settled back in with my laptop and a fresh cup of coffee.

I clicked through to the next page. There were a lot of pictures from the ball, mixed in with images of queen-of-hearts playing cards.

Another one caught my eye, and I double clicked.

A drag queen I didn’t recognize. This one looked like she was Donna Summer’s twin, only white: a big bouffant of black hair, thick, bright blue eye makeup, a slinky white sequined dress, and high boots straight from the seventies. I clicked on the picture. It was the images page from the Queen of Hearts Ball Web site. I read the caption and held my breath.

Shanda Leer.

Otherwise known as Wesley Lambert.

And he was standing with his arm around Charlotte.

I
sat back and sipped my coffee, staring at the picture. So DeBurra was right: Charlotte knew Lambert, and they had both been at the ball with Trevor and Rusty Abbott. I asked myself just how well I knew Charlotte Sampson.

I hated that I was doubting her, but the police were looking for her and she refused to come out of hiding. Instinct, or maybe it was growing up with a dad who was a cop, told me that hiding meant guilt. Or maybe she was just truly afraid of something or someone.

I sighed and took another sip of my coffee, which had grown cold.

I clicked on the next picture, just to get this one off my screen.

I sat up a little straighter in my chair as I looked at the image. It was Rusty Abbott and Lester Fine. Obviously later in the evening. Rusty wasn’t wearing his tuxedo jacket; his shirtsleeves were pushed up to his elbows.

He didn’t have a tattoo.

I tried to remember when Jeff said Rusty had come in with the two drag queens. I didn’t think he’d said specifically, just maybe sometime last year. From the looks of this picture, it could have been after the Queen of Hearts Ball.

I thought about the other two tattoos Jeff had done. Who were those drag queens? I had to find out.

I was willing to bet one of the three was the champagne shooter, though. It just seemed like it should be connected. It had to be.

I put Rusty Abbott’s name into Google. I wanted to see whether I could find
his
address before he could find mine. I’d at least feel like I had the upper hand that way, and I could tell Tim. Maybe he could check Abbott out for me.

There was nothing on the guy. I found a couple of Rusty Abbotts, but they were obviously not the one I was looking for. One was a contractor in Texas and the other a park ranger in Alaska.

I did find a phone number through Lester Fine’s campaign Web site. I jotted it down on a pad we kept next to the phone in the kitchen.

Just as I was about to call the guy—might as well nip this in the bud—the phone rang, startling me. I picked up the receiver, absently going back to the laptop as I said, “Hello?”

“Brett?”

“Charlotte?”

“Brett, I’m in trouble.”

“No kidding.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I mentally slapped myself. I shouldn’t kick someone while they’re down. “Sorry,” I said when she didn’t respond. “What’s wrong?”

“I need you to help me.”

“Sure,” I said, thinking that maybe now I could talk her into talking to the police, especially since DeBurra said her life might be in danger.

“I need you to meet me.”

“Charlotte, before you go any further, why don’t I bring Tim along?” Tim would be more friendly than DeBurra.

“You can’t bring Tim. Just yourself. I need your help.”

This was the second time she’d said that, and I grew concerned. “What have you got yourself involved with, Charlotte?”

I heard a sob. “Don’t tell Ace, either, okay? I didn’t call him. He wouldn’t understand.”

This was getting more and more mysterious. But I was willing to give her a chance to explain herself. Before I called Tim.

“Calm down, okay? Where are you?”

She gave me an address. It was just off the Strip, one of the high-rise condominiums. “It’s number twelve thirty-two,” she said. “Just go into the lobby, and take the elevator to the twelfth floor. Can you come now?”

She sounded so desperate, I couldn’t say no. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes, okay? Can you hang tight?”

But she’d already hung up.

I put on a pair of jeans and a stretchy black T-shirt with a pink peace sign on it. The outfit covered up most of my ink, except the garden sleeve. Usually I liked to be a walking billboard for my shop, but I wasn’t sure I should bring that much attention to myself on this mission to help Charlotte.

What could she have gotten into?

As I climbed into the Mustang, I debated calling Tim anyway, then chided myself for being a tattletale. I’d talk her into letting me call him later. She was going to have to listen to reason.

It was nine o’clock, and I knew I had an eleven o’clock client, so I hoped this wasn’t going to take too long. Fortunately, I’d already done the stencil so I just needed to go in and do the ink.

The Windsor Palms condominium was one of myriad condo buildings that had gone up around the Strip a couple years back, sold mainly as second homes. The condos were not for the poor and hopeful. They were for the rich who had enough money socked away that they didn’t need to worry about the foundering economy. But still, because of the real estate bust and the high rate of foreclosure in Vegas, a lot of developers had scrapped plans to build even more condos. I couldn’t help but think that Vegas would survive and those plans would be revived at some point. Sin City was too popular a destination and the climate too desirable.

I turned down the private road that led to the Windsor Palms and noted the palm trees that lined the sidewalks, allowing it to live up to its name. When I reached the circular drive with a fountain in the center, a small, discreet sign pointed me in the direction of the parking garage.

I found a spot on the second level and continued to follow signs to the elevator and then out toward the building lobby. I pushed open a glass door and stepped into a spacious atrium with a waterfall and all sorts of lush greenery. It was sort of like those science museums where you can walk through different ecosystems. Humidity hung in the air, the kind that I hadn’t felt since leaving Jersey, the kind that clung to your skin in a clammy sort of way.

I liked it.

A security guard sat at a tall desk with a monitor in front of him. He was a big, heavyset black guy with an Afro from the seventies. His smile was warm.

“May I help you?” he asked.

I told him the condo number Charlotte had rattled off.

“You have to sign in.” He pushed a clipboard with a sign-in sheet on it toward me.

I noted that Charlotte’s name wasn’t on the sheet, but the time of the first visitor was eight a.m. Maybe she’d been here earlier, or even all night.

I printed my name neatly as the instructions indicated, wrote down the condo number and the time, and handed the clipboard back to the guard.

“Elevators are around the waterfall and to your right,” he said.

I thanked him and found them easily. As I went up in the mirrored elevator, I thought about how I might want to move out of Tim’s house at some point and get my own place. I made pretty good money, and housing prices had come down considerably. And if that sixty grand I’d just won at roulette was legit—I wasn’t too certain, since Rusty Abbott had given me that chip—it would make a nice down payment. I liked the idea of a security guard, although the waterfall was a colossal waste of water in a city where waterfalls were not a natural phenomenon, especially during a drought.

The elevator doors opened and I stepped into the hall. I found number twelve thirty-two with no problem and pressed the buzzer.

I pressed it a second time when about a minute passed and no one responded.

When I didn’t get an answer that time, I figured knocking on the door might be a good idea. Where was Charlotte?

The second I knocked, the door swung open by itself. It hadn’t been closed shut.

A funny smell hit my nose: a mixture of vomit and smoke.

I hesitated. I’d been in situations like this before, and I had a bad feeling. I should go right back downstairs and get that security guard.

First, though, I called out, “Charlotte? Charlotte, are you here?”

Silence.

I thought about how paranoid she’d been acting.

I was still in the hallway, and I made an executive decision. I stepped inside.

The room laid out before me must have been about sixteen hundred square feet by itself; floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the Strip. The space was split in two: a living room area and a kitchen. In the former, elegant furniture was scattered around the room; each wall was a different shade of blue and held gigantic oil abstracts that complemented the décor. The floor was a laminate, but plush throw rugs gave the room some warmth. A long, dark granite countertop separated the two areas. Top-end stainless-steel, state-of-the-art kitchen appliances, and cherry cupboards told me that no price was too high.

I took another couple of steps, calling for Charlotte as I went. I hoped I had the right condo.

A slider to a balcony that stretched along the other side of the windows was just around the kitchen. I walked toward it, not sure what I was looking for, but as I turned the corner, I saw something I couldn’t see from the front door.

A bedroom the size of the living room, with the same view.

And a man’s body on the floor.

T
he smell was stronger in here. I suspected that whoever this guy was, he was no longer among the living. His arms and legs were splayed at angles that weren’t normal. This room also was where the vomit odor came from. It looked like he’d been sick for days in here, so sick he couldn’t clean up after himself. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand, but it didn’t help much.

I scanned the room: a round king-sized bed, a dark walnut wardrobe, and, at the far side of the room where there were no windows, a workbench of sorts, with a couple of Bunsen burners and a tray of test tubes, like a do-it-yourself chemistry kit.

I couldn’t linger here anymore; the stench was too much. I didn’t see Charlotte anywhere. A door to the back of the bedroom probably led to a bathroom, but I wasn’t going to walk through this room to see whether she was in there. Instead I called, “Charlotte?” one more time before heading back out into the living room.

Who was that guy, and what had Charlotte gotten me into?

All I knew for sure was that I had to call the police, or, rather, Tim.

I hesitated, glancing back toward the bedroom. I wanted to go in and see who it was, but I couldn’t stand the smell any longer. He’d still be dead in ten minutes, so I went out into the hall, closing the door a little behind me. It didn’t do much good. The smell was wafting out here now.

I flipped open my phone and punched in Tim’s number.

“Busy, Brett.”

“I know, but I’m in a bit of a situation.”

Silence, then, “What is it now?” he asked, like I was always in trouble. It was only some of the time.

“I found a dead body.”

A quick intake of breath, then, “You making a habit of that?” He was referring to an incident a few months back.

“It’s not on purpose,” I said. “Do you want to hear about it or not?”

“Where?”

I told him.

“Do you know who this dead body is?”

“No.”

“Then how did you happen upon it?”

“Just get here, okay?” I said, ending the call because I really didn’t quite know how I was going to approach answering that question. I knew there would be another chance later, but later rather than sooner appealed to me at the moment.

I needed to let the security guard downstairs know that Tim and the cavalry were on their way.

I was just making excuses not to go back inside that condo, regardless of my curiosity about who that man was. But my gag reflex had kicked into full gear and I couldn’t stand the thought of it.

I punched the button for the elevator a few times, like it didn’t register the first time. Finally, I heard the whirring, and the doors opened a few seconds later. Within a minute, I was back among the plant life and humidity that was the lobby of the Windsor Palms.

The security guard was playing a game on an iPod.

“The police are coming,” I said.

His eyes grew wide. “Why?”

“That condo? The one I went up to? The guy in there is dead. Looks like he was pretty sick before he died, too.”

Alarm flooded his face. “Dead?”

As he said it, I heard the sirens getting closer. Tim didn’t waste any time.

The guard started toward the elevators, but my little knowledge of police procedure made me say, “You might want to hold off going up there until the cops arrive.”

He didn’t have to wait too long.

Four uniforms arrived with paramedics. I didn’t want to burst their bubble as they crowded into an elevator, guided by the security guard. I figured I’d wait down here for Tim, who arrived only about five minutes later.

He ran a hand through his short red hair, looking exasperated as I told him what I had found.