The Missing Ink (4 page)

Joel frowned. “Yeah, I saw him.”

“Look familiar?”

“It’s not my work, but that eagle that wrapped around his neck was pretty cool.”

Now that he mentioned it, my memory flashed on it. It
was
cool, but that didn’t mean the overall package wasn’t creepy.

Joel started walking toward the shop, and I fell into step beside him. “So, who is he?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But he was watching me, and it was uncomfortable.”

Joel immediately looked concerned. “In what way?”

I told him about how he aimed his finger at me and pretended to shoot.

His concern deepened. “I can call a couple of people and see if they know who he is. It was enough ink so someone should be able to identify him just on a description.”

Joel knew everyone in the tattoo business in Las Vegas.

“That would be great. I don’t want to run into him again.” Major understatement.

Joel started to breathe a little more heavily. All that weight was a chore to carry around.

“Pretzel for breakfast?” I asked.

Joel took a bite. “I’m going to start Weight Watchers next week.”

I nodded, like he really would this time, instead of going out after a couple hours and sneaking some Häagen-Dazs or gelato or Godiva chocolate on his break. It wasn’t my place to say anything.

“That woman was pretty rude,” I said to change the subject.

“I shouldn’t have stopped short.”

“So what? She didn’t have to talk to you that way.”

“You’re right, but she’d had some
fabulous
work done. And she’d been shopping at Privilege. They’ve got gorgeous stuff.”

Joel’s tats belied his nature. The ink, his size, the blond braid that hung down his back, and the hoop earring—as well as the long chain looped into his jeans pocket that kept him from losing his keys—indicated a brawny, tough guy. His tone told a whole different story. He’d never talked about a boyfriend, but he never talked about women, either, unless it was to comment on their clothes or shoes or plastic surgery. It made Ace uncomfortable, but Ace had his own problems, so he kept his mouth shut.

“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.