The Missing Ink

Chapter 23

He was gone by the time I went back with a security guard, who proceeded to give me the riot act about how I shouldn’t cry wolf, because he didn’t have time to run around looking for big, bald, tattooed guys who weren’t there.

I thanked him for his time and gave the valet my ticket for my car.

What was this guy watching me for? If he was Kelly’s brother, as I imagined he was, it also brought up another question that kept circulating in my head: What was the connection between Kelly and Elise Lyon? I found it hard to believe that Elise had come here to abandon Chip, met up with Kelly, and they decided on a lark to switch identities.

Well, then again, it was Vegas. Weirder things had happened.

But I wasn’t sold on the idea.

I needed to find Jeff Coleman. In addition to wanting to find out if he’d set me up, or, as he’d told me, someone was framing him, I also wanted to quiz him a little more about Kelly Masters. He might know something he wasn’t aware of.

Unlike the tattooed guy, I wasn’t afraid of Jeff Coleman. Even if logic told me maybe I should be a little warier than I was. But it was Jeff. His bark was worse than his bite.

I’d told Tim I would go home. And I would.

After I went over to Murder Ink to interrogate Jeff’s staff about his whereabouts.

Just call me Miss Marple.

I climbed into my Mustang after tipping the valet a dollar. He stared at it with pursed lips, and I had the sense that I might not get great service the next time around. Maybe I should’ve played one of those slots and tried for a couple extra bucks.

I’m just not that into gambling.

I kept looking in my rearview mirror to see if I was being followed. I wasn’t quite sure what to look for, since I was being followed-by a lot of other cars that weren’t familiar to me. Matthew could be in any one of them, and I wouldn’t be the wiser.

I hooked my cell phone into my hands-free and called the shop.

“Everything okay?” I asked when Joel answered. “Where’s Bitsy?”

“She ran out for some takeout for dinner.”

On cue, my stomach growled.

“Where are you?” Joel’s voice was full of worry.

I told him about what had happened, now that I was out of earshot of anyone but my own self. He had appropriate “ohs” and “ahs” and caught his breath when I described Matt Powell’s body and then Simon Chase.

“He sounds dashing,” Joel said of the latter.

“Dashing” was a good word. I had to remember that one.

“So where are you heading now?” Joel asked when I was finished with my story.

I was halfway to Murder Ink. I didn’t really want to tell him I was going to try to track down Jeff Coleman. If Tim happened to call and ask where I was, then Joel would be completely in the dark and he couldn’t be called a liar.

“I’m going to get something to eat and head home,” I said, spotting one of my favorite Mexican spots in a strip mall. So much for my civilized dinner. No time for that when I didn’t have much time. I made a sharp turn, irritating the guy behind me, who laid on his horn like there was no tomorrow.

I just waved at him, a little finger waggle.

“Listen, Joel, I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Tell Bitsy she’s doing a great job.”

“And Ace and I are not?” He was teasing me.

“Sure, you know you are,” I said, hitting END on the phone and getting out of the car.

I still glanced around furtively, like Matthew was going to jump out of the shadows from behind a car, but besides a family of four and a young couple who were also heading into the restaurant, there was no one else.

The flaky white fish accented with cilantro and wrapped in soft tortillas were to die for. I scooped up a generous bit of the salsa in crunchy chips that were obviously not store-bought. Throwing caution to the wind, I drank a Corona. I justified it by telling myself I’d been through a lot. Even with the beer, my meal didn’t cost ten dollars. Gotta love it.

Jeff Coleman’s shop was closed when I walked over from the motel parking lot. The sign in the window advertised that it was open, but the door was locked. I hooked my hands around my eyes and peered inside, seeing nothing but shadows.

“He’s out of town.”

The voice made me jump, and an elderly woman, tiny, maybe five feet tall but no taller, with her white hair piled on top of her head in a loose bun, stood behind me. Her sleeveless dress showed off swirls of ink on her arms, tattoo sleeves extending to her wrists, an elaborate design across her chest, and even more tats on her legs. She wasn’t blind to my scrutiny.

“Taught him everything he knows,” she said, indicating the shop.

“Jeff Coleman, you mean?”

She nodded, holding out her hand. “Sylvia Coleman.”

Coleman?

A slow smile spread across her face. “Yes, dear,” she said, answering my unasked question. “He inherited the business from me when I retired.” She pulled a key out of her pocket and stuck it in the door. “Might as well come in. It’s hotter than hell.”

We stepped inside, the air-conditioning making the hairs on my skin stand tall, but not in a bad way. Sylvia indicated I should follow her to the back of the shop, where she pushed back a curtain so I could go through. It was Jeff Coleman’s office, cluttered with stencils, flash, piles of boxes of baby wipes, latex gloves, and disposable needles. My eyes lingered on the latter. Maybe I should swipe some of them, see if they matched the one sticking in Matt Powell’s neck. A closer look, however, told me that they were the same brand I used, the same ones the cops had in my case. Figured.

“Sit,” Sylvia said as she plopped into a swivel chair behind the desk.

I obeyed her, balancing on the edge of a metal folding chair.

“I’m Brett-” I started.

“Oh, I know who you are. I keep tabs on everyone in this business in this town.” She may have been petite, but her voice was big. Like Bitsy’s. Maybe all little women felt they had to compensate. “Jeff said you probably would be coming around, which is why I’ve been keeping an eye out.”

Jeff knew I’d try to find him? Did that implicate him in any way? I still had more questions than answers.

Sylvia was still talking. “I’d tell you where he is, but we don’t know if we can trust you.”

When a second passed and she hadn’t said anything more, I felt it was safe to respond. “I’m not sure I can trust him.”

She snorted. “Of course you can, dear. Why wouldn’t you?”

A mother’s love can go so far and be so blind.

“I just need to talk to him,” I tried.

“We’ve heard about what happened over there at that big new place,” Sylvia said. “Jeff’s trying to figure out who’s setting him up.”

Word traveled fast. Must be that “source” who told Jeff there was a warrant out for his arrest.

“It’s got to have something to do with Kelly,” I suggested.

Sylvia gave me a look that indicated she thought I might be a few clowns short of a circus. “Well, of course it has something to do with her.”

“I’ve been seeing her brother around.”

She waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Oh, him.”

“He’s been following me. Jeff said I should watch out for him. That he’s bad news.”

Sylvia leveled her gaze at me, studying my face for a few seconds before her eyes slid to the dragon’s head. “You need more ink,” she said flatly. “How can you run a shop if you don’t even have tats yourself?”

I glanced down at my arm, then at the dragon, knowing how it curved around my torso to my back, its tail touching the lilies on my side. I’d been thinking the same thing, but hadn’t figured out just what I wanted. It had to be perfect.

Sylvia was reaching under the desk. “I can do it now. Only two hundred.” Her words were muffled, but her tone came through loud and clear.

I stood up. “I’m not here for that. I just wanted to talk to Jeff.”

Sylvia put a tattoo machine on the desk and smiled serenely. “You’re a nice girl. But I can’t tell you where he is.”

“Can you tell me about Kelly, then?”

The change of subject startled her.

“What about her?”

“What was she like?”

Sylvia stared at a spot somewhere on the ceiling before answering. “She had some troubles.”

“Jeff told me she had a drug problem.”

“That wasn’t the only thing. She was a hooker. I told Jeff he should be careful. Sometimes you can’t change a leopard’s spots.”

“Is that what happened? Did she go back to hooking?”

Sylvia leveled her eyes at me, trying to figure out what to tell me. “You could say that.”

Could say what? On one hand, Sylvia seemed like she had all her balls in the air. On the other, her cryptic answers made me wonder if she had a touch of dementia. When I didn’t say anything, she continued.

“Jeff pulled her out of the gutter. She did clean up nice, have to give her that. Pretty girl. Maybe a little too pretty.” Sylvia snorted. “He trained her here, teaching her how to tattoo; she was pretty good. That’s how women got started, you know.”

I knew. I knew about the circus women who ended up marrying the men who’d tattooed them. How their husbands trained them as tattooists so they’d have help in their shops and they didn’t have to pay them. I wondered if Sylvia Coleman had learned the trade from her husband.

“So she worked here?” I asked instead, my curiosity stronger about Kelly right now.

“This”-Sylvia waved her arm around in the air, indicating the shop-“wasn’t in her plans. Even if it was in his. He wanted to spend his life with her. He wanted kids with her. They tried for two years. But she couldn’t. She had a condition.” I hoped she wasn’t going to start going into medical explanations. That was all the information I needed.

“Did they get divorced because of that?”

Sylvia smiled sadly. “She just left him one day.”

“So you didn’t hear from her again, either, after the divorce?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t exactly close to her. But I wasn’t surprised when she left. Once she got straightened out, once Jeff gave her back her life, she was antsy. He thought a baby would change things, but she got tired of waiting for that. I couldn’t talk sense to my boy-had to just let it play out.”

Go figure, but I actually felt sorry for the guy.

A creaking sound made me catch my breath. The curtain began to move, and I saw a pair of black cowboy boots. Sylvia stood expectantly, and my heart hammered in my chest.