The Missing Ink

him through the rest of his canvass-but I turned my attention back to Willis when I heard a shout. He’d collided with a family of four as he crossed the footbridge over the canal that ran past St. Mark’s Square. A gondola sailed under the bridge, the gondolier never missing a stroke.

I could never be fooled into thinking this was really Venice, but the tourists liked to believe the illusion.

Las Vegas is one big illusion.

I went back into the shop, thinking about that picture. It hadn’t fooled me, either.

There was no mistaking it: That girl had been in the shop two days ago. She had wanted a devotion tattoo.

Chapter 2

Bitsy was getting on my nerves. She was dragging her stool around the staff room as if it were a puppy on a leash, and the scraping against the floor echoed through the shop like fingernails on a blackboard.

“Do you have to do that?” I asked, wishing the sound of my machine would drown it out, but it was merely a soft whine butting up against a cyclone.

She poked her head into the room where I was trying to finish up the portrait of Jesus on a guy’s back, her face level with mine, even though I was sitting. Bitsy is a little person. The stool is her way of compensating. I was ready to compensate her just to get rid of the thing.

“I will pretend that you did not ask me that,” she said, tossing her blond curls back over her shoulder.

We were both a little on edge.

The guy draped over the chair in front of me ignored us. He’d been here before, actually a couple of times. A portrait of his daughter was on his upper arm, and his mother, who’d died the year before, was on his chest. Jesus was new to the party. It was his version of the Holy Trinity, and I was enabling him by permanently embedding it in ink on his body.

If Sister Mary Eucharista at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy School could see me now, she’d rap my hands five times with a ruler.

“Are you going to tell Tim?” Bitsy asked.

“Tell him what?”

“About the girl. What else?” Bitsy and Willis would tie in an irritation contest. I might come in a close second.

“I’ll tell him when I get home.”

“You could’ve told that cop about Tim.”

Bitsy didn’t get it. If I’d told Willis that Detective Tim Kavanaugh was my brother, it would seem like I was going over his head. Which was what I planned to do. However, he didn’t have to know that. We’d already established a tense relationship.

Anyway, he may have put two and two together when he’d heard my last name. How many Kavanaughs were there in Vegas anyway? That plus the fact that Tim and I were relative carbon copies of each other would’ve been even more of a clue. And clues were his business.

Bitsy and I had been over and over the girl’s visit the other night. She’d seemed a little skittish, but we’d chalked that up to it being her first time. She didn’t even get the ink. She just made an appointment and then never showed.

“You’re sure it was her in the picture?” Bitsy asked for the umpteenth time.

“Yes.” I felt like a broken record. It was a recent picture-I could tell that even though it was a photocopy. She was in her late twenties, the long dark hair pulled into a fashionably tousled knot, a pair of big, black Jackie O sunglasses outlined in rhinestones on top of her head, her face white and narrow with brilliant blue eyes that indicated colored contact lenses. I couldn’t tell what she wore for the snapshot, but when she showed up here, she was wearing a thin white lace baby-doll top with spaghetti straps, a black bra peeking through, and skinny jeans with strappy red sandals. At first glance, she could have been one of those rich girls partying in Vegas for the weekend-or a working girl. It was hard to tell, since the wardrobes were similar these days.

She said her name was Kelly Masters. She said the concierge at the Bellagio had recommended us.

She said she wanted to surprise her fiance on their wedding night. So much for the working-girl theory. The diamond on her hand could’ve been listed as one of the wonders of the world, the way it flashed like a strobe across the walls when the light hit it.

From the small bag over her shoulder, Kelly took a rather rudimentary drawing of a heart with what I supposed were two hands clasped underneath it.

“I want his name-Matthew-too,” she said.

I’m not big on devotion tats. Relationships might start out great, but statistics were against most people. And relationships that had any foothold in Vegas were dubious, in my opinion. What happens in Vegas may stay here, but tattoos didn’t have that option. They went home with you.

That said, a client is a client, and as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap noted, it’s a fine line between stupid and clever.

I was used to straddling that line myself, so I cut her a break.

We made an appointment for the next day. I told her I’d make a proper sketch, she could take a look, and I could make changes, if she wanted.

Then she left.

I carried out my part of the bargain-my sketch was much more elaborate than the simple one she’d handed me-but Bitsy doubted she’d come back. We’d even bet on it. My wallet was a hundred dollars lighter. They don’t say Vegas is for suckers for nothing.

“Wonder where she is,” Bitsy said thoughtfully.

“Maybe she and Matthew had a fight,” I suggested. I gave Jesus’ nose a little more shadow before lifting my foot off the pedal. The machine stopped whirring, and I assessed the Son of God before me.

Not bad, if I did say so myself.

“Cops don’t come looking for you unless something awful’s happened,” Bitsy said.

“You’re done,” I told the young man, handing him a small mirror so he could take a look at himself in the full- length one on the staff room door. As he went to see my handiwork, I shook my head at Bitsy. “He said she wasn’t dead.”

“He could’ve been lying.”

I mulled that over for a second. Willis didn’t seem like the type to lie. Then again, I didn’t know him well.

The young man came back and handed me the mirror. “It’s awesome,” he said.

Sister Mary Eucharista felt the same way, although she had her own descriptive adjectives.

I covered the ink with Saran Wrap, taping it down and going through the laundry list of how to take care of the tattoo. The skin was the color of bubble gum right now, but after it healed and peeled like sunburn, it would begin to look like his other tats. Not that he’d notice much, since it was on his back.

He paid Bitsy at the front table, the cash and credit card machine discreetly hidden in a drawer, and I went into the staff room. Joel and Ace had gone home at ten o’clock. It was eleven now, and Bitsy and I were going to call it a day. I could hear Bitsy’s stool sliding across the floor in the room I’d just vacated. She’d already taken care of the books for the day-usually my job, as boss, but she was capable and knew I’d be toast after hours with Jesus-and she was trashing the disposable needles, leftover ink, ink cups, and gloves. The needle bar would be put in the autoclave for sterilization.

I started sketching a design for the next day on the light table. Bitsy had turned off the sound system, and it was too quiet. I grabbed the remote for the small TV set in the corner.

I should’ve called Tim to tell him about Kelly right away, after Willis left.

Because her face was plastered across the screen on the local news.

But the anchor didn’t call her Kelly Masters.

Apparently, her real name was Elise Lyon.