The Missing Ink Read online

  “So, what are you going to do about that guy?” Joel asked as we reached the shop.

  I pushed the door open. I tried to be nonchalant. “Unless I see him again, nothing. I mean, I could’ve been overreacting.” I knew I wasn’t, and Joel was onto me.

  He shook his head. “Don’t underestimate it. You knew he was watching you, and you don’t know why.”

  Bitsy was standing on her stool, helping Ace straighten a new painting over the front desk. Ace’s most recent artwork was a rip-off of Ingres’s Odalisque-he’d taken to doing his own comic-book versions of classic paintings that also included da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night (although it could invariably be argued that it’s already a cartoon), and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (which I dubbed Venus on a Half Shell). The Degas on the far wall was one of his. Because we looked like a gallery, he actually sold some of his work on a fairly regular basis.

  The people who wandered in here by mistake were relieved they could buy something other than a tat.

  Generally, we were by appointment only, no walk-ins, and we got a lot of referrals from the hotel concierges.

  “Bitsy says that missing woman was here.” Ace ran his hands through his abundantly thick dark hair, which fell gracefully just above his shoulders. It was a gesture meant to draw attention to himself; Ace was all about attention. He had those chiseled good looks that indicated possible plastic surgery-because what man could be so striking without it?-and clear blue eyes that seemed somehow reflective, like a pool. Even his tats were perfectly aligned on either arm, dipping ever so slightly onto the backs of his hands into fleurs-de-lis. He was a true artiste, lamenting his plight as a tattooist, unable to pursue his art as he wished, frustrated-but not enough to cut off an ear for anyone.

  It was enough to make us all roll our eyes in unison.

  “Tim needs to talk to you,” I told Bitsy.

  The stool still didn’t take her to eye level with me, but it was close. I noticed she had on a new pair of khaki trousers and a white eyelet blouse. Bitsy was rather conservative in her style, wearing no makeup except for a little mascara, but she didn’t really need any. She had flawless skin any woman would kill for. She was the only one in the shop without ink. I’d asked her once why she didn’t have a tat, and she said she just didn’t want one. I’m not into peer pressure, so I let it alone.

  “He called. He should be here soon.”

  I knew he was doing his job, but wasn’t it enough that he’d already told me he’d be by? Like he didn’t trust that I’d relay his message to Bitsy. Sometimes he still treated me like his little sister. If the rent weren’t so good, I’d move out and get my own place.

  I put my bag in the staff room. I’d left a design only partly done on the light table the night before. An older woman wanted “something special” to cover her mastectomy scar, something that indicated emotional growth and physical strength. I’d started drawing an oak tree, delicate leaves at the ends of thin branches that gradually grew thicker into the trunk and ended in a mass of roots.

  I took the pencil and sketched it out further, adding more details. When I was in school at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I’d dreamed of going to Paris and putting up an easel next to the Seine, painting on a stiff white canvas.

  Instead, my canvas was alive, soft and moving, and my brush had turned into a machine with a needle on the end of it.

  The first time I’d touched that needle to my own skin, I knew this was what I wanted to do.

  My mother, who moved with my father to a retirement community in Port St. Lucie, Florida, right after I left for Vegas, said a Hail Mary for me every day.

  I heard some sort of commotion out in the front of the shop. I pushed the sketch aside, put my pencil down, and got up. As I moved toward the door, I heard Bitsy arguing with a man.

  “She’s busy. I can help you,” Bitsy said.

  “I want to talk to the owner!”

  For a second, I froze, wondering if it was the big tattooed guy who’d been watching me. I shrugged off the apprehension, telling myself that if it were, I’d at least know what he wanted now. Still, I tentatively pushed the door open.

  The man Bitsy was arguing with didn’t have one tat. At least none that I could see. He was in his late twenties, early thirties maybe, as clean-cut as he could be, with a short, military-like haircut, nicely pressed button-down shirt, and jeans that looked like they’d been ironed.

  I took another look at his face.

  He was the spitting image of his father.

  It was Chip Manning, jilted groom.

  Chapter 6

  He saw me peeking out the staff room door, and within two strides he was standing in front of me. I had no choice but to stand tall and face him.

  “Are you the owner?”

  I nodded.

  He held out his hand. “I’m Chip Manning.”

  I took it, noting that his grip was a little slack. “Brett Kavanaugh. What can I help you with?”

  “I understand you saw Elise. Elise Lyon. My fiancée.” His expression told me he expected something from me, but I wasn’t sure just what.

  “She didn’t say much,” I tried.

  “But you saw her.” His grief was etched across his face. “What did she say? How did she act?”

  He obviously cared for the girl. Maybe she had been kidnapped. Or maybe she just left him because he smothered her.

  Ace had stopped hanging his paintings and was blatantly listening to the conversation. Joel hovered near the front desk, fingering the orchid that didn’t look very healthy. I made a mental note to tell Bitsy to get us a new one.

  “She was fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him about Matthew. “How did you find out about us? That she came in here? Only the police know.”

  Chip gazed at me. “My father knows a lot of people in the police department.”

  I didn’t doubt that. He probably got a call last night after Tim relayed the news that I’d seen Kelly/Elise. “Does he know you’re here?”

  He got a deer-in-the-headlights look about him. “No. He wanted me to stay out of it; he’d take care of it.”

  “So you sneaked out to come talk to us yourself?”

  “Of course not.” He became defiant. “I’ve got my driver.”

  His driver. Might have known. Bitsy rolled her eyes at me.

  Chip noticed.

  “He’s my best friend,” he said.

  Sadly, that was probably true. Sounded like his father kept him on a pretty short leash. But I gave him credit for making an effort to do something on his own.

  “Did she say why she was here?” Chip looked from me to Bitsy to Joel to Ace.

  “She wanted a tattoo,” Bitsy said, her tone indicating that it was a stupid question. It was a tattoo shop.

  Chip shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes landing on me again after a second of assessing Bitsy. It was as if he’d just noticed she was a little person, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that.

  “Why?” he asked me.

  “Why what?” I could play stupid. And I didn’t like it that he’d glossed over Bitsy so easily.

  “Didn’t she say why she wanted the tattoo? I mean, it wasn’t exactly something I thought Elise would ever do. She wasn’t like that.” He didn’t seem to realize that he was talking to people who were “like that.”

  He also didn’t think Elise would leave him at the altar, either, but who was I to mention it?

  “We don’t always know if there’s a specific reason a person wants a tattoo,” I said slowly, as if explaining something to a toddler. “It’s not our place to ask. Sometimes someone will volunteer the information, sometimes not.”

  “So she didn’t say?”

  “She said she wanted to surprise her fiancé on her wedding night.” Bitsy had a habit of just blurting things out.

  Chip seemed startled that she spoke again, but I gave him extra credit when he directed his next question to her.
“Why would she come to Vegas, then, for a tattoo? She could’ve gotten one at home.”

  It was a rhetorical question, one that didn’t need an answer, but Bitsy could not be stopped.

  “Maybe she just wanted one last fling before getting married,” she suggested.

  Not the right thing to say.

  Chip raised his head, and the confusion was replaced by anger. “She said it was over!” he muttered.

  “What was over?” Joel asked.

  Chip looked at Joel in a sort of male-solidarity way, like Joel would understand.

  “She cheated on me. Three months ago. She tried to break off the engagement, but I knew she didn’t really mean it. Things were better after that.”

  The groom was always the last to know.

  “Maybe she needed a little more space,” Joel said. “So she came out here, was going to be a little wild, and then go home and marry you.”

  His words hung in the air. I could see the little gears in Chip’s brain working overtime.

  “Well, then, where is she, if that’s what she was going to do?” He stared down Joel, as if Joel had all the answers.

  Joel just had a little pretzel salt on his chin. He wasn’t Dr. Phil.

  I had to stop this.

  “I’m sorry, Chip,” I said, “but we can’t really shed any more light on what happened to your fiancée than we already have. She came in here, she made an appointment for the next day, she left. She never came back. We didn’t know anything until we saw it on the news last night.”

  His hands were back out of his pockets, and they dangled loosely by his sides. The hangdog look was back. He swung more wildly through emotions than a woman going through menopause.

  “I’m sorry; I only wanted to know,” he said.

  Joel walked around me and patted him on the back. “That’s all right; don’t worry about it.” He started steering him toward the door.

  Chip stopped in the doorway. He looked at each of us and nodded. “Thanks for everything,” he said. “Thanks for telling the police that she was here. At least I know something.”

  I wanted to throw him another bone. “She said she was staying at the Bellagio.”

  He frowned. “No, no, she wasn’t.”

  I tried to remember what she’d said. About being referred by the concierge there. I told Chip as much.

  He still wore the frown. “No, we’ve checked all the hotels. There was no Elise Lyon registered anywhere.”

  “She told us her name was Kelly Masters.”

  He pursed his lips a little, his brows knit into a frown, and he blinked a few times. I was afraid he was going to cry. “No Kelly Masters, either,” he finally said, his voice catching on the name, like it was going down the wrong way.

  I was about to ask how he knew about Kelly Masters, but then thought twice about it. He’d already indicated that his father had friends in high places and had information as it developed. At this point, I didn’t want to prolong the visit. I just wanted him out of my shop.

  Despite my first impression that he was devoted to Elise, it now seemed that Chip was more like a spoiled little boy who was just trying to get a possession back. He was more petulant than passionate about trying to find Elise. That affair she had still bothered him; that was clear.

  The door was wide open now. I willed him to walk through it.

  “Thank you, everyone,” he said, but stopped short of leaving.

  “Is there something else?” I asked, trying to keep impatience out of my voice.

  He looked up and down the walkway, shaking his head. “He’s not here.”

  “Who?”

  “My driver.”

  For being his “best friend,” Chip didn’t seem to be on a first-name basis with the guy.

  “Maybe he’s window-shopping,” Ace suggested.

  Chip pulled a cell phone off his belt and punched in some numbers. “Where are you?” he asked, still half in, half out of the shop.

  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.