The Missing Ink

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 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. “Good Morning America? Prime-Time? 20/20? You are familiar with those, right?” She picked up a pen and started scribbling. “Yes, that’s fine, yes, thank you.” And she hung up, her face glowing.

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 20/20 tomorrow night.”

“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.”