Fudge Brownies & Murder - Culinary Competition Mystery #4

Chapter 13

(Amy)

Amy jumped when the door thumped shut behind her. The electronic open sign was lit, but the only thing that greeted her inside Buzzy's Tattoos was silence. The lobby's color scheme was black as death. The floor, leather-upholstered couch, and checkout counter were all coal black. Sheets of paper depicting sample tattoos were hung in columns on the walls. Amy studied the nearest sample page. Did people really want severed heads dripping blood permanently drawn on their skin?

"Can I help you?"

The question rocketed Amy's heart into her throat. A man with dark, slicked-back hair that made him look as though he'd stepped out of the 1950s emerged from a room at the end of the hallway leading into the bowels of hell...tattoo studio.

"Um...I'm interested in possibly getting a tattoo?" She couldn't look him in the eye because she was too busy looking at the samples of all of the tattoos she absolutely didn't want to get. Did she sound as much like a child as she thought she did? She cleared her throat and went for a deeper, more mature voice octave. "Do you have any kind of culinary-themed art?"

While she had been trying to put two coherent sentences together, the man had made the journey up the hallway into the reception area. He stepped behind the counter. Amy jumped when he thumped a thick album on the countertop. He began flipping through the pages, "Do you mean like a hamburger or fried egg?"

Amy swallowed the lump in her throat. She should've thought out this clue-fishing expedition a little bit more. Visiting the tattoo parlor wasn't in her plans for the morning. She was just driving by to see what the business looked like so she could decide whether she had the courage to stop by at some later time. Or possibly never if Shepler found enough dirt on Shantelle to charge her with the murder. But when Amy saw the Open sign was lit in the window of the parlor, she figured there was no reason to wait to try to find out more about Miss Triple Eye. Split-second decision making at its finest and worst. She got in, but how was she going to get out without sounding like a delusional housewife? She rotated her left arm and tapped her pulse point with her fingertip. "I was thinking more of a whisk or maybe a chef's knife...to go on the inside of my wrist."

The James Dean look-alike stopped studying the art album and turned his attention to her. "You do realize these are permanent tattoos. They don't wash off. To be perfectly honest, I would suggest you try a henna tattoo first."

She smiled. To be perfectly honest, she didn't even want a henna tattoo. A freckle arrangement that looked like the Big Dipper on her right cheek was enough body art for her. "Do you often talk potential clients out of using your services?"

He nodded his head from side to side. "Trust me, spur of the moment tattoos can lead to unhappy customers. It's not fun to get bad reviews, not because your work is poor quality, but because someone blames you for not trying hard enough to talk them out of getting the tattoo in the first place. Feel free to look through my albums or bring in a picture of what you would like, but I can see you're nervous, so I would suggest thinking about it for a day or two before you schedule an appointment."

"I guess every kind of business has its own type of pitfalls." Like her unofficial murder detective job had brought her to a tattoo studio pretending she wanted someone to repeatedly jab her with a needle to force ink under her skin. Definitely a pitfall. "But you came highly recommended by Shantelle Applebee."

He squinted at her. "She recommended my shop? You're friends with Shantelle?"

"Small world, isn't it? Although, she's just an acquaintance. Not a friend."