The Missing Ink

“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 shops 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.

“They’re perfect!” she said.

After pulling on my gloves, I applied the stencil, assessed the outline of the first derringer, arranged the ink caps, dipped the needle, and pressed the foot pedal. A tattoo machine is like a sewing machine; it’s all in the foot action.

I ran the needle along the lines of the stencil, feeling Charlotte flinch only as the needle first touched her skin.

Getting a tattoo feels like a hundred bee stings all at once. It hurts for the first few minutes, and then the endorphins kick in and the excitement pushes away the pain.

It was a quick job, just an hour and a half for both tats.

“Fantastic,” Charlotte said as she surveyed her arms in the mirror.

I wrapped her up in Saran Wrap; she knew the drill. Just before she left, though, she asked to see me privately.

Bitsy, who was in the midst of cleaning up for the night, raised her eyebrows at me, but I shrugged back. I had no idea what Charlotte wanted.

Once back in my room, Charlotte hesitated.