The Missing Ink

“We might never know, will we?” Immediately I was sorry I’d been so flip, but sometimes I speak without thinking.

“I’ll probably be over there in an hour or so to talk to Bitsy. See if she noticed anything else.”

“She’ll be at the shop all day,” I said. “Anytime.”

“Okay, see you in a bit.” He ended the call.

I closed the phone and stared at it a second. Maybe Bitsy and I were the last ones to speak to Kelly/Elise.

A quick stop at the kiosk for a bottle of water, and I contemplated the two paths I could take to my shop.

The right one went past Kenneth Cole, so I took that one, stopping to check out a great pair of black patent- leather pumps with peep toes rimmed in red. I’d been eyeing them for days now. I could see myself in those shoes, already had an outfit picked out in my head.

As I was daydreaming, I suddenly had the feeling I was being watched. I didn’t turn around, but tried to see in the reflection in the store window if anyone was behind me. It was still early; the mall crowd was sparse.

I spotted him a few yards away, across the canal, the light hitting him just right so I could see him clearly.

He was taller than me-I put him at about six-four-and well built. The tattoos that bled down his face and under his T-shirt and onto his arms might have been considered uncomfortably excessive by someone not in the business. They didn’t bother me.

What bothered me was the way he was staring at me.

He saw me staring back. He raised his hand, making the sign of a gun with his thumb and forefinger. With a small pop movement of his lips, he moved his hand to make it look as though he shot at me.

And then he nodded and walked away.

Chapter 5

For a few seconds I was frozen as if my feet had grown roots, my Tevas clutching the mall floor so tightly I couldn’t let go.

He walked into St. Mark’s Square, along the other side of the canal.

I noticed little things, like how he was wearing a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off, a Harley logo on the back. His legs were slightly bowed, and he had an exaggerated cowboy saunter. He wasn’t in a hurry; his stride was slow, methodical. Like he was giving me a chance to come after him.

But truth be told, I didn’t really want to.

I waited until he passed the footbridge before I finally took my first step, gradually speeding up and power walking in the same direction he’d gone. By now, however, I was too far behind and I’d lost sight of him as he turned the corner.

Joel Sloane, one of my tattooists, was coming toward me. He was carrying a big soft pretzel and a coffee. Breakfast of champions.

I waved, a frantic, I’m a little crazy kind of wave. I was still creeped out, even though the guy had disappeared.

Joel saw me, grinned, and stopped, raising the pretzel in a greeting.

The woman walking behind Joel crashed into him. Not difficult, since Joel weighs about three hundred pounds and could stop a freight train, and the woman probably weighed ninety pounds wet.

I was close enough now to hear the woman telling Joel how rude he was, how could he just stop in the middle of a walkway? Joel’s face was red with embarrassment as he apologized profusely. When I reached him, I touched his arm in support, and he nodded at me.

The woman must have been in her sixties, according to the skin on her neck, chest, and hands, but her face was smooth as silk. Either exceptional Botox or a fantastic face-lift. Maybe both. Her hands clutched several shopping bags, and she flipped her hair back over her shoulder as she stared at my arm, taking in the whole garden scene, her expression showing disgust. She looked from me to Joel, noticing now the Betty Boop intertwined with a black-and-red geometric design on his left arm, the skeleton and hatchet prominent in the sleeve on his right, and the barbed-wire tat around his neck.

“Be more careful next time,” she said to Joel, flouncing past.

Joel chuckled. “She needs to loosen up,” he said when she was out of earshot.

“Maybe we should give her some tats on the house,” I suggested. “Hey, did you notice that big guy with all the ink? He was across the canal.” The canal wasn’t that wide; it was a mini-illusion. How else would it fit in a mall?

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 Haagen- 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.