The Missing Ink

Chapter 24

“The sign says closed, but your door was unlocked.” He was about twenty, baby-faced, with tattoo sleeves running down both arms.

Sylvia stood, shaking her head. “I keep forgetting things,” she mumbled, indicating that I should follow her out into the shop.

I watched as she began preparing the young man’s calf for ink, shaving it carefully as she talked to him about what he wanted: a basic cross with a crown of thorns wrapped around its top. She found the flash hanging on the wall and noted its number, shuffling through a pile until she pulled it out, a ready-made stencil.

“I don’t know how much more I can help you,” she said to me as she transferred the stencil onto his calf, leaving its outline that she would trace with her machine’s needle.

I wanted to stay, to talk to her more. Not necessarily about Jeff-she wasn’t going to tell me where he was-but just to watch her, a previous generation of tattooist, a woman tattooist who’d had to suffer far more discrimination than I ever did. Those women who came before me were pioneers, breaking into a male-dominated profession and breaking all the rules. Women like Sylvia gave me an option after I held that somewhat useless art degree.

She was concentrating, her reading glasses perched on her nose so she could more clearly see the lines she had to follow. I needed to head home before Tim got there, so he wouldn’t have another reason to be upset with me.

I was also tired; it’d been a long day.

I thanked Sylvia for her time, and as I turned to leave, I heard her call my name, so I looked back.

“Come back and I’ll find something nice for your other arm,” she said. “A garden should be balanced.”

I promised her I’d call.

The tinkle of a small bell rang in the distance as I pulled the door open and stepped outside into the heat. The sun was starting to go down, but the air still wrapped itself around me, suffocating me. The car took just a few minutes to cool off, and I eased the Mustang out of the lot and into the street, heading for home.

The white Dodge Dakota stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb behind me. Every time I looked in the rearview or side mirrors, there it was, looming large behind me. If I stopped short, he’d run right into me.

After about five miles, I knew for sure I was being followed. And he wanted me to know that, staying close, not hanging back behind any other cars. I tried to make out the driver, but couldn’t. Only a shadow.

My cell phone was still hooked into the hands-free device, and I stuck it on my head, dialing Joel.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Have you ever met Jeff Coleman’s mother, Sylvia?”

“Did you meet her? Isn’t she fabulous?”

“So you do know her.”

“Everyone in the business in Vegas knows Sylvia.” He paused. “Hey, how did you meet her? I heard she retired.”

“She was at Jeff’s shop.”

“You went there?”

I quickly told him about the visit, keeping an eye on the Dakota behind me.

“Interesting about Jeff and Kelly,” he said. “I knew he’d been married, but didn’t know more than that.”

I told him that I was suspicious Jeff had set me up at Versailles.

He pointed out the other side of that coin: that whoever had killed Matt might have been setting Jeff up.

Neither of us could decide which was right.

“I’m being followed,” I finally conceded.

“What?”

I’d turned off the highway and the Dakota was close enough so I could smell its exhaust. “A Dodge Dakota. Followed me all the way from Jeff’s shop. But not exactly trying to keep it from me.”

“Do you think it’s that guy who was following you before?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Why don’t you just stop and find out what he wants?”

It was a simple question, and one I’d been considering. It wasn’t like I was alone on the road; there were plenty of other cars.

“Okay,” I said, tired of the game. “But stay on the line, okay?”

“I’ve got my hand on the landline. I’ll call the cops if I hear something.”

I pulled over, easing the Mustang off to the side of the road, but as I opened the door and started to step out, the Dakota sped past me, so close I thought he’d take my door off, so fast I couldn’t read the license plate.

I watched the taillights as the truck slowed for a light and made an executive decision. I closed the door and put my foot on the accelerator-the mouse now following the cat.

“What’s going on?” Joel asked in my ear, and I told him. “Don’t lose him!” he said.

I was trying not to, but I’d gotten stuck behind a couple of elderly drivers who decided the speed limit was way overrated. The Dakota turned a corner, but by the time I got there, it was gone.

I sighed. “Lost him,” I said to Joel.

“Want to come back to the shop and we’ll get a drink?” he asked.

The idea was tempting, but my heart was racing. “I just want to go home and lock the doors and put on my sweats,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“If you need to talk again, just call,” Joel said before hanging up.

The Dakota didn’t reappear, and I managed to make it home without any more drama. Tim’s car was absent from the garage, so I let myself into the empty house, savoring its familiarity.

Cheese and crackers beckoned from the fridge, and the bottle of Malbec was still half-full. I poured a glass before settling down in front of the TV. The clock reminded me that it was just about time for 20/20 and the exposé about Elise Lyon.

Alison Cho was giving the introduction just as I hit the remote.

“Elise Lyon had it all: youth, beauty, money, and she was going to marry the son of one of the richest men in the country. But she threw it all away, running from her fiancé to Las Vegas a week before her wedding, where she was last seen in a tattoo shop asking for a tattoo with the name of a man no one had ever heard of.”

The screen filled with a close-up of the devotion ink I’d drawn, “Matthew” prominent, larger than life.

“Who is Matthew?” Alison’s voice-over emphasized. “Is she with him now? No one knows, because after visiting The Painted Lady, Elise Lyon was never seen again.”

The commercial was for Viagra. I muted the TV, mulling the dramatics, the mystery perpetuated by the media. Granted, I had a personal interest in Elise Lyon and Kelly Masters, but most of the country wouldn’t even know about her if the media hadn’t pounced on the story, like they had so many stories like this one. She was, as Jeff Coleman had insensitively put it, “a rich bitch,” but she was also, in a sense, the princess who threw it all away to go slumming in Vegas. The public would eat it up.

I went into my bedroom and found my laptop, bringing it into the living room, turning it on, and logging into the wireless Internet-another post-Shawna splurge for Tim. Too bad he couldn’t break up with her twice; maybe I could get him to buy us both iPhones and GPSs.

I Googled Elise Lyon.

A wedding announcement from the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section popped up in the search, and I clicked on it.

Elise Lyon, 26, daughter of the world-renowned architect Richard Lyon and his wife, Madeline, of Philadelphia, will marry Bruce “Chip” Manning Jr., 31, of New York City, son of developer and entrepreneur Bruce Manning Sr. and his wife, Helene, on June 29. Richard Lyon most recently designed Versailles, Bruce Manning’s new resort in Las Vegas. The couple met through their parents at a cocktail party in Manhattan.

Elise Lyon attended Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, studying psychology, and Chip Manning is vice president of marketing for his father’s holdings in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, based in his father’s offices in New York City.

Doing the math, I quickly deduced that if Elise Lyon had gone to college when most high school graduates did and then graduated on time, it seemed unlikely she had pursued any sort of career path, otherwise the story would’ve said so. These stories were big on pointing out the high-powered jobs that the brides and grooms held. Maybe marrying Chip Manning, who was most definitely on a career path with his father’s empire, was her calling.

I didn’t get it. But I’d been working since I was sixteen.

I knew enough about Bruce Manning Sr. to skip the rest.

The voice on the TV tugged at me. I looked up from the laptop to see Alison Cho asking me questions. Joel had been right about the outfit. It totally worked, but I didn’t look like me. At least not the me I knew. I heard my voice and wondered if I really sounded like that.

The phone rang.

“Brett? Brett? Why didn’t you tell me you were on TV?” My sister’s soft, hurried voice echoed in my ear.

I’d conveniently forgotten she was obsessed with the news shows. “It happened so fast, Cathleen,” I tried.

Cathleen was the first to leave the nest-and the East Coast. Her husband was a software engineer, and they moved to Southern California ten years ago, right after they got married. Even though they were just a few hours away, we never saw each other. Cathleen thought I was a bad influence on her six-year-old daughter, who’d decided after my last visit that she wanted a tattoo of Tinker Bell on her arm.

“You should’ve called. Where’s Tim? Why didn’t he call? You were the last to see her? What was she like?”

I wanted to tell her to just hang up and let me finish watching the show, but she wouldn’t stop asking questions. To shut her up, I told her everything that was being said, at about the same time.

Except for one thing.

“A man named Matthew Powell was found murdered in Chip Manning’s suite at Versailles earlier today. Police will not say whether Matthew Powell, who was Chip Manning’s driver, was Elise Lyon’s Matthew.”

But by saying that, Alison Cho certainly implied it.

My sister was still babbling. I ignored her, my eyes trained on the TV.

I wasn’t prepared for the next statement.

“Police have confirmed that they have brought Versailles manager Simon Chase in for questioning.”