a minute.
“When will you be done?” Tim asked.
“It could be three hours or so.”
He glanced at his watch. “Can I come back? Let’s say six o’clock.”
“Only if you bring something to eat.”
“What do you want?”
That was too easy, but I wasn’t going to argue.
“In-N-Out Burger. Double-Double with fries and a chocolate shake.” They didn’t have In-N-Out back east. It was one of the perks of living here.
“Okay.” He gave me a peck on the cheek-highly unprofessional, but my mother would approve-and left.
I’d been working on Melinda’s ink for an hour when I heard Bitsy squealing outside. It sounded like good squealing, not bad. My hand was a little crampy, so I turned off the machine.
“Do you want to take a short break?” I asked Melinda.
She nodded. I put a piece of plastic wrap over the tat so she could put on a robe and go to the bathroom. I followed her out into the hall, turning to see Bitsy’s grin spread from ear to ear as she spoke on the phone. When she saw me watching her, she put her hand over the receiver and whispered, “It’s Diane Sawyer’s people.”
“Who?”
Bitsy rolled her eyes. “
It was like she’d finally found the Emerald City.
I, on the other hand, was trying out for the part of the Wicked Witch of the West.
“You didn’t set up some sort of interview, did you?” I asked, visions of Leigh Holmes on a national stage dancing in my head.
Bitsy couldn’t wipe the smile off her face, even in the face of my obvious displeasure.
“Bitsy, this is like all those other awful missing-women stories. The media’s playing on everyone’s grief.”
Bitsy shook her head. “I don’t care. All I know is, I have to figure out what to wear tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? They’re coming tomorrow?”
“Diane is in L.A. doing something about something,” Bitsy said, now on a first-name basis with someone she’d never met. “They’ll be here around noon. They want it for
“It’s not so bad, is it?” Joel asked as he came out of his room, having overheard. I could see Bitsy’s enthusiasm was rubbing off on him.
I could only hope Ace would be on my side.
He wasn’t.
He took one look in the mirror and immediately made a hair appointment for first thing in the morning. He asked Bitsy if she could move a couple of his paintings to the waiting area at the back of the shop, which they figured was the best place for the interview.
“We need some more flowers,” Joel said. “More orchids.”
Bitsy canceled the next day’s morning and early afternoon appointments. We couldn’t possibly work with a camera crew and Diane Sawyer in the shop. Bitsy ran around, dragging that stool along with her, cleaning like I’d never seen her clean before. She took the almost-dead orchid into the staff room, planning to take it home with her and nurse it back to health. She had a sunroom at her house that doubled as a greenhouse for wayward orchids. She frequently rotated the flowers out, claiming our indoor lights weren’t conducive to keeping orchids “happy.”
Bitsy said she’d bring a new orchid from home in the morning so it would be “fresh,” like one she’d get today would be too old by then. Right.
I went back to Melinda, my head swirling as I drew that oak tree.
I had time to kill after Melinda left, happy with her new tat. I was happy with the money that went into the till. I was still thinking about those Kenneth Cole peep-toe shoes. Tim didn’t show at six with my Double Double as promised, and when I tried to call him, I just got voice mail.
Joel brought me a Johnny Rockets burger-not as good as In-N-Out-but I think it was less an act of kindness than a desire for one himself. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate it, but he’d already had the pretzel and the ice cream, gone out for lunch and then some sort of snack after that-no one knew what-and now the burgers.
Weight Watchers would make a load off him.
He knew what I was thinking and batted his eyes at me, his mouth curled in a Cheshire-cat grin.
“I don’t start counting points until next week.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Joel and I had a weird sort of connection that usually only people who’d known each other for a lifetime had.
“Sorry,” I said into my burger.
Joel clicked on the TV.
We were coming into the news late, halfway in, so we found out what the weather was going to be like for the next week-sunny and hot, more of the same-and that the Dodgers were preparing for their next game with the Diamondbacks.
The pet of the week was a dog named Sasha.
Just as I was about to shut it off, Leigh Holmes’s face filled the screen. The lights from the police cars behind her flashed red and white, and an airplane took off behind her. The “Breaking News” logo flashed at the bottom of the screen.
“Police are investigating the body of a woman found in a car here at McCarran airport,” she said. “Sources tell us it could be Elise Lyon, the missing woman from Philadelphia.”
Chapter 9
“They couldn’t come up with some sort of ‘runaway bride’ name for her?” Joel asked as he wadded up the empty burger wrapper and tossed it in the trash can. “They’re so lame.”
I shushed him.
“The car was rented by a Kelly Masters, our sources tell us, which is the name Elise Lyon used when she went to a local tattoo parlor two days ago.”
What had happened to Elise Lyon after she left the shop the other night? But I barely had time to think about that because the picture changed, and now, instead of Leigh Holmes’s, it was my face that flashed on the screen. I recognized it from when I walked out of the staff room this morning into their assault on me.
“You look fabulous on TV!” Joel said. “The light picked up all the highlights you just got. And your red hair against the silver in your ears, well, it looks great.”
I studied my face, trying to see what Joel did, but all I saw was what I imagined everyone else would: the short, chopped haircut, hoops that ran the length of my earlobes, the dragon on my chest, the water lilies on my arm.
“Brett Kavanaugh, owner of The Painted Lady at the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, may have been one of the last people to have seen Elise Lyon alive.”
Joel slapped my arm playfully. “That’s the best free advertising we could get!”
I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. Between this and
