The Missing Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  “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, d
ragging 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.”

  Bitsy said she’d bring a new orchid from home in the morning so it would be “fresh,” like one she’d get today would be too old by then. Right.

  I went back to Melinda, my head swirling as I drew that oak tree.

  I had time to kill after Melinda left, happy with her new tat. I was happy with the money that went into the till. I was still thinking about those Kenneth Cole peep-toe shoes. Tim didn’t show at six with my Double Double as promised, and when I tried to call him, I just got voice mail.

  Joel brought me a Johnny Rockets burger-not as good as In-N-Out-but I think it was less an act of kindness than a desire for one himself. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it, but he’d already had the pretzel and the ice cream, gone out for lunch and then some sort of snack after that-no one knew what-and now the burgers.

  Weight Watchers would make a load off him.

  He knew what I was thinking and batted his eyes at me, his mouth curled in a Cheshire-cat grin.

  “I don’t start counting points until next week.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  Joel and I had a weird sort of connection that usually only people who’d known each other for a lifetime had.

  “Sorry,” I said into my burger.

  Joel clicked on the TV.

  We were coming into the news late, halfway in, so we found out what the weather was going to be like for the next week-sunny and hot, more of the same-and that the Dodgers were preparing for their next game with the Diamondbacks.

  The pet of the week was a dog named Sasha.

  Just as I was about to shut it off, Leigh Holmes’s face filled the screen. The lights from the police cars behind her flashed red and white, and an airplane took off behind her. The “Breaking News” logo flashed at the bottom of the screen.

  “Police are investigating the body of a woman found in a car here at McCarran airport,” she said. “Sources tell us it could be Elise Lyon, the missing woman from Philadelphia.”

  Chapter 9

  “They couldn’t come up with some sort of ‘runaway bride’ name for her?” Joel asked as he wadded up the empty burger wrapper and tossed it in the trash can. “They’re so lame.”

  I shushed him.

  “The car was rented by a Kelly Masters, our sources tell us, which is the name Elise Lyon used when she went to a local tattoo parlor two days ago.”

  What had happened to Elise Lyon after she left the shop the other night? But I barely had time to think about that because the picture changed, and now, instead of Leigh Holmes’s, it was my face that flashed on the screen. I recognized it from when I walked out of the staff room this morning into their assault on me.

  “You look fabulous on TV!” Joel said. “The light picked up all the highlights you just got. And your red hair against the silver in your ears, well, it looks great.”

  I studied my face, trying to see what Joel did, but all I saw was what I imagined everyone else would: the short, chopped haircut, hoops that ran the length of my earlobes, the dragon on my chest, the water lilies on my arm.

  “Brett Kavanaugh, owner of The Painted Lady at the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, may have been one of the last people to have seen Elise Lyon alive.”

  Joel slapped my arm playfully. “That’s the best free advertising we could get!”

  I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. Between this and 20/20, we would undoubtedly attract some new clients, but for all the wrong reasons. They’d see what they would expect: the tattooed lady, the dwarf, and the fat man. Ace, with his movie-star good looks, would be the only “normal”-looking one among us. Wasn’t that a joke.

  “Brett Kavanaugh is the sister of Detective Tim Kavanaugh, who is in charge of the investigation.”

  They showed Tim come in the shop and make them turn off the camera.

  “Detective Kavanaugh was questioning his sister and her employees earlier today, but he had no comment for the record.”

  “Oh, don’t look so sad,” Joel said, his arm snaking over my shoulder. “You really do look great on TV. And we’ll get some business out of this.”

  I shrugged off his arm and, as I was about to turn off the TV, I saw something that made me stop short.

  I pointed. “There, do you see him?”

  Joel was too late; the picture had already changed back to Leigh Holmes at the airport.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “It was that guy, the bald, tattooed guy who was watching me this morning in the mall. He was outside the shop. I saw him in the window behind Tim.” My heart was pounding. Who was that guy?

  I turned off the TV.

  “Hey, she might have had more.”

  “She doesn’t have anything. Otherwise she would’ve said it right away. Anyway, I can’t concentrate on that now.”

  “Do you really think the guy is stalking you or something?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s really creeping me out.”

  Joel took his cell phone out of his breast pocket. “I’m going to call around, see if I can find out who he is, okay?”

  I nodded.

  He stood up and pecked my cheek. “I’ll take a walk outside.”

  While he tried to track down that ink, I punched Tim’s number into my cell phone.

  “Listen, I’m tied up right now,” he said without even saying “hello.”

  “Are you at the airport?”

  Heavy sigh. “You saw it on TV.”

  “Just now. Was the car really rented by Kelly Masters? Is it Kelly-I mean Elise Lyon-in the car?”

  “I can’t say anything right now. I’ll see you when I see you.” And he hung up.

  I hated it when he did that.

  And I hated it that I couldn’t just drive over to the airport and see what was going on.

  I had to ink four shoulders-four women who each wanted the same image of a book to commemorate their friendship and the fact that they’d met in a book club. They were in Vegas for a long weekend to celebrate twenty years together and didn’t want everything that happened in Vegas to stay here. I’d sketched a small red book with golden tassels and four blue stars, and they loved it.

  They brought a bottle of champagne, and while we didn’t exactly condone that, Bitsy conceded it was a special occasion, and between the four of them, they probably wouldn’t get drunk on one bottle.

  They cheered one another on as I worked, and I found myself thinking about Mickey and the rest of the gang at the Ink Spot, back home. I missed that camaraderie, and even though I was forming bonds here in Vegas, it wasn’t the same yet.

  When I was done, they insisted I share a glass with them.

  After they left, I went into the staff room. The light table was a mess of tracing papers and stencils. Bitsy would file everything at the end of the day, but I started to help by making piles. As I shuffled the bits around, I spotted the crude drawing Kelly Masters-or, rather, Elise Lyon-had handed me just a couple of nights ago.

  I ignored the rest and picked it up, studying it as if it would give me some sort of clue as to what her story really was.

  She couldn’t draw, that was for sure.

  I traced the outline with my finger, but the light from the table illuminated the paper, and I could see something was written on the back. I flipped it over to see an address written in pencil.

  It was a familiar address, a lot farther up on Las Vegas Boulevard. Near Fremont Street.

  It was Murder Ink.

  A tattoo shop. Our competition.

  Chapter 10

  Elise might have just gotten the names of other tattoo s
hops in Vegas and then picked one. The hole in that story, however, was that there was only one address written on the slip of paper. Unless she’d been there and decided not to stay.

  Not out of the realm of possibility. I knew Jeff Coleman, the shop owner. He specialized in flash, the stock designs that lined the walls of his shop. No originality to his work; his street shop located next to Goodfellas Bail Bonds catered to walk-ins, and he stayed open until four a.m. so anyone out partying who wanted a tattoo on the spur of the moment would wake up the next morning with one. He didn’t have a conscience about who or what he tattooed, as long as he put money in the till.

  He was everything I didn’t want our shop to become. So far, we’d succeeded.

  All bets were off once we were splashed all over 20/20.

  I put the drawing in my bag.

  “You okay?” Joel stuck his head through the door.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.” Not very convincing. “Any luck with the eagle tat?”

  “Seems like it’s pretty common flash. But I’ll keep asking around. And your nine o’clock is here.”

  I rummaged through the piles I’d just made and found the stencils of the matching derringers that would adorn the inside upper arms of a young woman who’d also recently gotten a boob job. Charlotte Sampson had just graduated from college with a degree in accounting, but I wasn’t convinced she really meant to actually work as an accountant. She’d given herself a rather bad tattoo of a heart on the inside of her wrist, and when she saw my work, she insisted that I fix her ink up. Since then, she’d been back for five tats.

  I mentioned that the derringers might sag a bit as she got older, but she shrugged it off.

  Bitsy was telling her about our impending fifteen minutes of fame on 20/20 when I emerged.

  “Brett, this is great news!” Charlotte threw her arms around me and air-kissed my cheek.

  “Sure,” I mumbled. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Charlotte frowned at Bitsy, who shook her head and rolled her eyes. I saw it, but I pretended not to notice.

  I led Charlotte to my room and showed her the stencils.