The Missing Ink

box office for the Blue Man Group squatted in the corner. Not a soul back here. A full circle later and I was going back up the escalator, conceding defeat.

I felt deflated. I’d missed my chance to find out if Chip’s driver was the subject of Elise’s devotion ink.

A nudge at my elbow, and I saw Joel’s extended hand offering me a mint-chip cone.

“Thanks,” I said, absently licking it.

“Did you see them?”

“No.”

My eyes skirted around the tourists as we went back toward the shop, but everyone just blended into everyone else and it became a blur.

Bitsy was scribbling in the appointment book, the phone tucked against her cheek. Ace was in with Jonathan Roth berg, a client who was in the middle of getting a complicated Harry Potter sleeve-the entire cast with the Death Eater tat from the fifth movie at its center. Because there was so much to it, this was Jonathan’s second visit for the same ink. He had told us he was a rocket scientist, and we couldn’t tell if he was joking. Probably not. Everyone was getting tats these days.

Joel and I went into the staff room.

“What was she like?” Joel asked. He leaned against the wall next to me, slurping the ice cream out from the bottom of his cone. I knew he was asking about Kelly, or rather, Elise.

“Rich girl,” I said simply. “You know the type.” They came to Vegas in droves, the twentysomethings who partied all night and brought their cocktails into the pool with them the next day after a few hours’ sleep. Hair of the dog and all that. But Elise wasn’t drunk; I wouldn’t have made the appointment with her if she had been. And she didn’t have the usual girl pack hanging around outside to see if she’d really go through with it. No, Elise was different. I think she really was going to surprise Matthew. Instead, the tables got turned somehow, and Chip was the one who was surprised.

“What if she’s dead?” Joel asked too loudly, interrupting my thoughts.

I put a finger to my lips. “Sssh,” I whispered.

He leaned toward me, folding his arms across his chest. “So what if she’s dead?” he repeated in a stage whisper.

“The cop yesterday told me she wasn’t.”

“How does he know?”

How did he know? She could be dead, or she could be in Los Angeles or Hawaii or New York now.

Another thought made me pause.

“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