The Missing Ink (5 page)

I shrugged at Bitsy and was about to go finish my sketch when Chip ended his call.

“He’s at the food court. How do I find that?”

He was helpless.

“Which one?” Joel asked. “There are two.”

Chip sighed. He punched numbers into his phone. “Matt? Which food court?” He waited a few seconds, stuck his phone in his pocket, and said, “Wherever the Nathan’s hot dogs is.”

Joel gave him directions, but I wasn’t paying attention. My brain was buzzing.

His driver’s name was Matt?

Chapter 7

“Matt?”I said when Chip finally left, the door shutting behind him. “Matthew? Don’t you get it?”

“You think his driver is the guy from the devotion ink?” Bitsy asked.

“Why not?”

I wanted to ask him myself and started for the door. Joel beat me to it. “I’m coming with you,” he said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d slow me down, but he knew.

“You had that guy watching you,” he reminded me.

“So you’re going to be my personal bodyguard?”

“What’s going on?” Bitsy didn’t know about the tattooed guy.

I shook my head. “Tell you later. Hold down the fort.” I looked at Joel. “Okay, come on.”

As we speed-walked, Joel asked, “Do you think this Matt’s the one she had the affair with three months ago?”

“Seems likely,” I said. “It probably wasn’t really over.”

“But then why agree to go through with the marriage?”

Joel didn’t understand. Wedding plans are made, and sometimes it seems like it would just be easier to go through with it than to cancel and suffer the embarrassment and the questions.

I didn’t have a problem with the latter.

I just moved across the country.

Paul hadn’t even tried to come after me. At least Chip was trying to find Elise.

My family—with the exception of Tim—thought I was running away. Maybe I was, but not in the way they thought. I was running to a new life, a place where I’d have my own identity again. It was so easy with the wrong person to lose that.

I didn’t even need therapy to figure all that out.

I couldn’t walk down memory lane now. I wanted to find Matt and have a little private word with him. Getting Chip out of the way might be challenging, but between me and Joel, we could probably do it.

We passed the Lime Ice Frozen Bar, glanced around at the Häagen-Dazs, Rice & Noodle Works, New York Pretzel, and finally Nathan’s. Joel’s mouth started watering at the sight of the ice cream, but I tugged on his arm and scanned the crowd.

We didn’t see Chip anywhere.

“Maybe Matt met up with him and they took off already,” Joel said.

“You just want to go get some ice cream.” I sighed. “Okay, go, but get me something, too.” Nothing like ice cream before lunch. “I’m going to keep looking.”

Joel scurried off as fast as a heavy man could.

I ventured beyond the food court and went back out toward the Palazzo shops that extended just beyond the end of the Venetian’s canal. I took the escalator down, feeling the coolness from the waterfall that splashed into a large circular area at the bottom. I scanned the customers at the gelato place—there weren’t many, since it was still early, but a couple diehards were scooping the creamy Italian ice cream out of cups. I had issues with five-dollar scoops of gelato. Just like I had issues with that waterfall.

I didn’t have time to get on my environmental soapbox. I looped around the back of the escalators to where the box office for the Blue Man Group squatted in the corner. Not a soul back here. A full circle later and I was going back up the escalator, conceding defeat.

I felt deflated. I’d missed my chance to find out if Chip’s driver was the subject of Elise’s devotion ink.

A nudge at my elbow, and I saw Joel’s extended hand offering me a mint-chip cone.

“Thanks,” I said, absently licking it.

“Did you see them?”

“No.”

My eyes skirted around the tourists as we went back toward the shop, but everyone just blended into everyone else and it became a blur.

Bitsy was scribbling in the appointment book, the phone tucked against her cheek. Ace was in with Jonathan Roth berg, a client who was in the middle of getting a complicated Harry Potter sleeve—the entire cast with the Death Eater tat from the fifth movie at its center. Because there was so much to it, this was Jonathan’s second visit for the same ink. He had told us he was a rocket scientist, and we couldn’t tell if he was joking. Probably not. Everyone was getting tats these days.

Joel and I went into the staff room.

“What was she like?” Joel asked. He leaned against the wall next to me, slurping the ice cream out from the bottom of his cone. I knew he was asking about Kelly, or rather, Elise.

“Rich girl,” I said simply. “You know the type.” They came to Vegas in droves, the twentysomethings who partied all night and brought their cocktails into the pool with them the next day after a few hours’ sleep. Hair of the dog and all that. But Elise wasn’t drunk; I wouldn’t have made the appointment with her if she had been. And she didn’t have the usual girl pack hanging around outside to see if she’d really go through with it. No, Elise was different. I think she really
was
going to surprise Matthew. Instead, the tables got turned somehow, and Chip was the one who was surprised.

“What if she’s dead?” Joel asked too loudly, interrupting my thoughts.

I put a finger to my lips. “Sssh,” I whispered.

He leaned toward me, folding his arms across his chest. “So what if she’s dead?” he repeated in a stage whisper.

“The cop yesterday told me she wasn’t.”

“How does he know?”

How
did
he know? She could be dead, or she could be in Los Angeles or Hawaii or New York now.

Another thought made me pause.

“She could be married to Matthew by now,” I said.

“What?”

“Maybe after she left here, she and Matthew got married.”

“But you said she wanted the tat for her wedding night.”

“Maybe she couldn’t wait. Maybe she found out Chip had found her here, and she and Matthew took off.”

It was all speculation. And if Chip’s driver Matt was Kelly’s Matthew, it seemed unlikely, since Matt was with Chip. I had no clue what happened to Elise. I just hoped that wherever she was, she was alive and happy. She obviously had her reasons to leave Chip at the altar, and it wasn’t for me to make judgments about that.

Voices echoed from the front of the shop, and Joel and I instinctively both reached for the door at the same time. Bitsy pushed it open and peered around it, blinking a couple of times before focusing on me.

“Brett? You might want to come out here.”

I’d had enough disruptions for one day and it was still early. But it might be Tim.

Bitsy’s face was animated. Not in a good way.

“Who is it?” I asked as I took a step.

She didn’t answer, just let me go past her.

A light blinded me, and the lens of a TV camera was shoved in front of my face.

Chapter 8

Someone had alerted the media.

Someone “Miss Kavanaugh, can you tell us about Elise Lyon’s state of mind when she was here the other day?” She wasn’t as tall as I was, blond, with that fake, stiff smile worn by every TV reporter.

“How do you—”

“She has no comment.” Tim had arrived simultaneously, coming in behind them, holding his hand up in front of the camera lens.

“Detective—”

“No one has any comment,” Tim said firmly, now attempting to steer them backward and out the door.

“But, Detective, Elise Lyon was last seen here, at your sister’s shop.” The reporter wouldn’t give up. I recognized her now as Leigh Holmes, Channel Six. “We’d like to get her impression of the missing woman.” For the noon news, no doubt.

“And I said, no one has any comment.” Tim’s voice echoed through the shop.

Joel and Bitsy stood staring, their mouths half-open.

With one more push, Tim got the camera guy out the door, and he held it for Leigh Holmes as she walked through, tossing him a dirty look.

They had a one-night stand a while back. She sings opera during her orgasms. I called Joel in desperation during an aria from
Tosca
because I couldn’t take it anymore, and he was kind enough to let me sleep on his couch. I’m not sure she knows we live together, because I hadn’t been home when she arrived or when she left.

Tim was asking Bitsy if they could talk in the staff room for more privacy. As they walked by me, he said, “You’re next.”

“What? Didn’t I answer all your questions?”

“I need to get an official statement from you. I need to get all the information I can.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward me. “As you can tell by the media, the fact that this is Bruce Manning’s future daughter-in-law is putting a lot of pressure on the department to find the girl. And there’s a lot of pressure on me, because you’re my sister, and because you and Bitsy probably were the last two people to speak to her the other night. No one else has come forward. We can’t trace her steps any further.”

“How did Leigh Holmes find out about us, anyway? Aren’t you policemen supposed to keep some things secret or something?”

Annoyance crossed his face, but I couldn’t tell whether it was at me or at Leigh Holmes.

“I don’t know how she found out,” he said.

Maybe she’d exchanged a little aria for some information from one of Tim’s colleagues.

I parked myself at the front desk until Melinda Butter-field walked in a few minutes later. My oak tree. I sent her into my room, and I grabbed the sketch off the light table. She loved it.

I flattened the chair so she could lie down and be more comfortable before putting the design stencil on her chest, pulling the tracing paper back carefully to see the outline on her skin. I’d done three or four tats over scars like this already. The first time had played with my head a little, because I knew that the woman underneath my fingers had had cancer and had to have a breast removed. Each of the women I’d worked on had expressed eloquently their desire not to have plastic surgery but something beautiful to illustrate their survival.

It made me take pause about how it was so easy to take life for granted.

Many people who came into the shop had a story, a deeply personal story.

But then there were the morons.

Can’t have one without the other. It’s what keeps the world balanced.

After Melinda approved of the placement, I dipped the machine’s needle into the cap of black ink and began to draw.

I hadn’t been at it too long when a knock came at the door. I peeled off my gloves and told Melinda I’d just be a minute.

“When will you be done?” Tim asked.

“It could be three hours or so.”

He glanced at his watch. “Can I come back? Let’s say six o’clock.”

“Only if you bring something to eat.”

“What do you want?”

That was too easy, but I wasn’t going to argue.

“In-N-Out Burger. Double-Double with fries and a chocolate shake.” They didn’t have In-N-Out back east. It was one of the perks of living here.

“Okay.” He gave me a peck on the cheek—highly unprofessional, but my mother would approve—and left.

 

I’d been working on Melinda’s ink for an hour when I heard Bitsy squealing outside. It sounded like good squealing, not bad. My hand was a little crampy, so I turned off the machine.

“Do you want to take a short break?” I asked Melinda.

She nodded. I put a piece of plastic wrap over the tat so she could put on a robe and go to the bathroom. I followed her out into the hall, turning to see Bitsy’s grin spread from ear to ear as she spoke on the phone. When she saw me watching her, she put her hand over the receiver and whispered, “It’s Diane Sawyer’s people.”

“Who?”

Bitsy rolled her eyes. “
Good Morning America
?
Prime-Time
?
20/20
? You
are
familiar with those, right?” She picked up a pen and started scribbling. “Yes, that’s fine, yes, thank you.” And she hung up, her face glowing.

It was like she’d finally found the Emerald City.

I, on the other hand, was trying out for the part of the Wicked Witch of the West.

“You didn’t set up some sort of interview, did you?” I asked, visions of Leigh Holmes on a national stage dancing in my head.

Bitsy couldn’t wipe the smile off her face, even in the face of my obvious displeasure.

“Bitsy, this is like all those other awful missing-women stories. The media’s playing on everyone’s grief.”

Bitsy shook her head. “I don’t care. All I know is, I have to figure out what to wear tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? They’re coming tomorrow?”

“Diane is in L.A. doing something about something,” Bitsy said, now on a first-name basis with someone she’d never met. “They’ll be here around noon. They want it for
20/20
tomorrow night.”

“It’s not so bad, is it?” Joel asked as he came out of his room, having overheard. I could see Bitsy’s enthusiasm was rubbing off on him.

I could only hope Ace would be on my side.

He wasn’t.

He took one look in the mirror and immediately made a hair appointment for first thing in the morning. He asked Bitsy if she could move a couple of his paintings to the waiting area at the back of the shop, which they figured was the best place for the interview.

“We need some more flowers,” Joel said. “More orchids.”

Bitsy canceled the next day’s morning and early afternoon appointments. We couldn’t possibly work with a camera crew and Diane Sawyer in the shop. Bitsy ran around, dragging that stool along with her, cleaning like I’d never seen her clean before. She took the almost-dead orchid into the staff room, planning to take it home with her and nurse it back to health. She had a sunroom at her house that doubled as a greenhouse for wayward orchids. She frequently rotated the flowers out, claiming our indoor lights weren’t conducive to keeping orchids “happy.”