As I suspected, Mandy was pressed against the reception desk and Peter. What surprised me were the other two women-Cheryl and Janet-also as close as they could get to our new employee. Cheryl, maybe, but Janet?
“Slow morning?” I asked, my tone dry.
Four heads popped up to stare at me, only Janet had the grace to look embarrassed.
“What? You can’t stay away, Janet?”
Her hand went up to rub her close-cropped head. “I remembered I left my…pen here last night.”
Uh-huh. I shot a look at Cheryl. I’d thought she was the only one who’d known about Peter-wonder who else she had told? Anger swelled momentarily, but I forced the emotional uprising down. What did I care? It saved me from making the announcement. I turned to the gossip queen.
“How about you, Cheryl? You searching for a paper clip or something?”
Never one to be intimidated by me, Cheryl grinned. “We were just helping Peter pick what to put in his flash.”
Mandy reached across the chest-high desk to slide a sheet of paper toward her. Her upper arm brushed Peter’s chest in the process. A simple accident, I was sure.
“I love this one,” Mandy gushed.
“There’s a lot of nice work there.” Eyes twinkling, Cheryl looked at me behind Peter’s bowed head, her hand pointing to his muscled backside. “What about you, Mel? You see anything you like?”
At that moment, a forty-something man dressed in a suit and wearing a no-nonsense expression stepped out of the men’s restroom. His hair matched the suit, short and conservative, but his face was too rugged for a complete fit. He didn’t look like my typical client. I frowned and looked for another clue that would tell me his purpose here. His stance said he was physically fit and used to being in charge. And while his hands hung casually at his side, there was nothing casual about the expression in his blue eyes or the way his gaze worked its way around the room.
Glancing from the group clustered around the desk to me, he took a step forward. “Are you Mel Saka?”
I looked over my shoulder at my office manager. Mandy had the sense to look sheepish. “Sorry. There’s somebody here to see you. I told him you were with a client and he said he’d-”
“Yeah, I can figure out the rest.” I waved a hand at her and turned back to the man. “I’m Mel.”
He stared at me, checking me over as if he could learn some secret I held simply by looking. I shook off a shiver of disquiet and squared my shoulders. “May I help you?”
He stood there another beat or two, then reached into his jacket. He brought out a leather wallet, flipping it open to display his ID.
“Detective Reynolds. Milwaukee Police Department. I was wondering if I could speak with you for a few moments.”
I could feel the curious eyes of the group behind me pressing into my back. I resisted the urge to glance back at them. The bodies. Could he have traced them to me? I’d been careful-leaving the corpses in unpopulated areas, making sure nothing of mine touched them. I was confident no one had seen me anywhere near the bodies and any evidence left on them was from the killer, not me.
But if not that, what?
My mind flicked to Bubbe, the squirming rabbit grasped in her fist, the soccer mom’s wide eyes on me when I stormed in on them. I glanced from his badge to him. “Milwaukee?”
“Yes.” His gaze shot to the cluster of employees behind me. A frown lowering his brow, he shoved his ID back into his pocket. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Some ancient part of me reacted to his discomfort, made me want to refuse and force him to state his purpose there in the open. But the more modern, smart me realized there was no benefit to that track. Besides, careful as I had been, there was still the chance someone had reported something “odd” about me or my family to the police. If so, I didn’t really want it broadcast to the entire staff. With a nod, I turned and led him into my office.
Once the door was closed, he straightened, walking around the room with a relaxed nonchalance that told me he was cataloging the contents. Back to being the confident cop, a man in charge. I bit back a flare of annoyance. “So what brings you to Madison, Detective?” With my arms folded over my chest, I slid into my chair.
“Strange place for a tattoo shop.” He placed a finger into the metal blinds that covered the window overlooking the old school grounds and separate gym/lunchroom.
“It serves our purposes.”
“Tattooing…and…?” He turned until he faced me.
I smiled and leaned back against the hard wood of my chair. “Why are you here, Detective? Not to get a tattoo, I’m guessing.”
“How long have you been tattooing, Ms. Saka?”
“Long enough.”
“Ever tattoo someone under eighteen?”
I arched a brow. “That’s illegal in Wisconsin.”
“And you’d never break the law?” He strolled closer to my desk, slipping into a chair with misleading disinterest.
“If you’re looking to bust me for tattooing someone underage, you wasted a lot of gas, Detective.”
He gave me a look that was hard to read, then slipped his hand back into his jacket. This time to retrieve a stack of photos. He slid one across the desk to me. “This look familiar?”
Something in my gut tightened. Keeping my face blank, I looked down.
My worst fear rushed up and smacked me in the face. The photo showed the tattoo on the small of a woman’s back-a bear, paws outstretched and teeth flashing.
My first early morning gift.
“Nice work,” I commented, my throat dry, but my tone noncommittal.
He slid a second photo toward me.
I didn’t really have to look, but I did-the leopard. I picked it up, stared at it for a second. Anxiety sliced through me. I lowered my hand to rest on my desktop, the photo still pinched between my fingers.
Keeping my eyes cast down until I was sure I was under control, I dropped the picture, then looked up. “Also nice. Is there a point here? You going to tell me why you’re bringing these pictures to me?”
He made no move to pick up the photos, just snapped the ones still in his hand against the edge of my desk. “We took them to some artists in Milwaukee. Consensus was, they look like your work.”
That startled me. Every artist has a signature style, something that even when they are copying another’s work shines through. But to me, neither of the tattoos looked anything like mine. I picked up the second one, the leopard, and tried to look at it dispassionately, as just a tattoo, not a piece of a once-living girl.
“Are there more?” I nodded to the pictures still in his hand. There were twelve main tribes, each with a totem. He’d only shown me two. I’d only found and deposited two bodies. Were there more? Had the killer left bodies on someone else’s doorstep?
He gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. “Just dupes.”
I accepted his words with solemn resolve-not that I wanted there to be more dead girls, but if there had been others, not left on my doorstep…I shook the thought from my head. There hadn’t been. I was the target.
I could feel his gaze on me. I looked up, meeting his eyes. “Where’d you say you got these?” I asked, not that I didn’t know, but it seemed like the logical question.
He tapped the photos in his hand another time. “Is it your work?”
“I already said it wasn’t.”
“Did you?” An emotion glimmered in his eyes, determined, dangerous. Like the glint of steel before you see the actual knife slicing toward you.
“If it were my work, I’d tell you.”
“Would you?” His expression said he didn’t believe me.
Smart guy.
I shrugged. “Okay, maybe I wouldn’t, if I had a reason not to, but I didn’t lie. The work isn’t mine.”
This time he nodded in quiet acceptance. “There’s something, though. You know who did it?”
“No idea.”
A short laugh escaped his lips. “And just when I thought we were becoming friends.” Leaning forward, he placed both palms flat on the top of my desk. He was so close I could smell his toothpaste-cinnamon.