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 fiancee 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.
I shrugged at Bitsy and was about to go finish my sketch when Chip ended his call.
“He’s at the food court. How do I find that?”
He was helpless.
“Which one?” Joel asked. “There are two.”
Chip sighed. He punched numbers into his phone. “Matt? Which food court?” He waited a few seconds, stuck his phone in his pocket, and said, “Wherever the Nathan’s hot dogs is.”
Joel gave him directions, but I wasn’t paying attention. My brain was buzzing.
His driver’s name was Matt?
Chapter 7
“Matt?”I said when Chip finally left, the door shutting behind him. “Matthew? Don’t you get it?”
“You think his driver is the guy from the devotion ink?” Bitsy asked.
“Why not?”
I wanted to ask him myself and started for the door. Joel beat me to it. “I’m coming with you,” he said.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d slow me down, but he knew.
“You had that guy watching you,” he reminded me.
“So you’re going to be my personal bodyguard?”
“What’s going on?” Bitsy didn’t know about the tattooed guy.
I shook my head. “Tell you later. Hold down the fort.” I looked at Joel. “Okay, come on.”
As we speed-walked, Joel asked, “Do you think this Matt’s the one she had the affair with three months ago?”
“Seems likely,” I said. “It probably wasn’t really over.”
“But then why agree to go through with the marriage?”
Joel didn’t understand. Wedding plans are made, and sometimes it seems like it would just be easier to go through with it than to cancel and suffer the embarrassment and the questions.
I didn’t have a problem with the latter.
I just moved across the country.
Paul hadn’t even tried to come after me. At least Chip was trying to find Elise.
My family-with the exception of Tim-thought I was running away. Maybe I was, but not in the way they thought. I was running to a new life, a place where I’d have my own identity again. It was so easy with the wrong person to lose that.
I didn’t even need therapy to figure all that out.
I couldn’t walk down memory lane now. I wanted to find Matt and have a little private word with him. Getting Chip out of the way might be challenging, but between me and Joel, we could probably do it.
We passed the Lime Ice Frozen Bar, glanced around at the Haagen-Dazs, Rice & Noodle Works, New York Pretzel, and finally Nathan’s. Joel’s mouth started watering at the sight of the ice cream, but I tugged on his arm and scanned the crowd.
We didn’t see Chip anywhere.
“Maybe Matt met up with him and they took off already,” Joel said.
“You just want to go get some ice cream.” I sighed. “Okay, go, but get me something, too.” Nothing like ice cream before lunch. “I’m going to keep looking.”
Joel scurried off as fast as a heavy man could.
I ventured beyond the food court and went back out toward the Palazzo shops that extended just beyond the end of the Venetian’s canal. I took the escalator down, feeling the coolness from the waterfall that splashed into a large circular area at the bottom. I scanned the customers at the gelato place-there weren’t many, since it was still early, but a couple diehards were scooping the creamy Italian ice cream out of cups. I had issues with five-dollar scoops of gelato. Just like I had issues with that waterfall.
I didn’t have time to get on my environmental soapbox. I looped around the back of the escalators to where the
