The Missing Ink

Chapter 44

The flashlight in my eyes blinded me, and I put my hand up to cover them.

“Yes, Officer?” I asked, ready to drop Tim’s name so I could get out of here as soon as I could.

“Do you have any idea why I pulled you over?”

I shook my head, the light still keeping me from seeing anything but his silhouette.

He dropped the flashlight to his side, and in the headlights from his cruiser I could make out his shape. He looked remarkably like a fireplug.

Willis?

I flashed a smile. “Fancy seeing you here,” I tried. Better here than outside my shop again.

He scowled. “One of your taillights is out,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he didn’t recognize me.

Not that I wasn’t recognizable with the tats. So that was the way he was going to play it.

“I had no idea,” I said. “I’ll bring it in to get serviced first thing in the morning.”

He flipped out a pad. “Have to give you a citation.”

“Not just a warning? I mean, I didn’t know.” I was not above tears in situations like this, so I made my voice go all trembly in anticipation of my next move.

“You have to realize that just because your brother is a detective we can’t give you any special treatment.” His voice was still flat, but at least he acknowledged me now.

“I didn’t ask for any,” I said belligerently, knowing it was not the right tone, but it was late and my emotions were all over the place like Mexican jumping beans.

He scribbled on his pad, then ripped off the page and handed it to me. “You’ll have to go to court.”

“Court? For a taillight?”

“You were also driving very recklessly. So I’ve got you down for that, too.”

Reckless driving? Me? Give me a break.

“Listen, Willis,” I said. “This is a load of crap.”

“Do you want me to add any other charges?”

I shut up, took the ticket, and nodded. “Okay, fine.”

“Be a little safer on the road next time,” he said, his words butting up against a harder edge.

I didn’t want to push my luck, so I just nodded again and reached for the stick shift. But before I could put it in gear, he slammed his hand down on the windowsill.

“Next time, when someone asks you a question and you know the answer, you should just be honest,” he said, an edge in his voice.

“And maybe when you’re asking about something, you might want to give more of an explanation,” I said defiantly.

He stared at me a second, and I wondered whether he would give me another ticket for talking back, but then he surprised me by sighing, shaking his head, and turning away.

I watched him in the side-view mirror as he walked back to his cruiser, his shoulders straight despite the heavy chip that obviously sat on them.

I crumpled up the ticket and tossed it in the glove box. I’d give it to Tim when I got home.

Speak of the devil, Tim was making scrambled eggs and toast.

“Breakfast for dinner?” I asked, slinging my bag over the back of a kitchen chair.

“Most important meal of the day,” he said.

“In the morning,” I reminded him. I threw the ticket I’d gotten from Willis on the counter in front of him. “Met up with that cop who was looking for Elise that first day, and it seems he’s making my personal life his own personal business.”

Tim uncrumpled the ticket and read it. “Reckless driving? You?”

“Hard to believe, but Willis seems to think that staying within the speed limit is reckless.”

Tim shoved it in the pocket of his trousers. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”

“He said I shouldn’t rely on you.”

Tim grinned.

“He’s holding a grudge. Because I didn’t answer his questions.”

Tim’s eyebrows popped up into his forehead. “Don’t blame the guy,” Tim said, scooping the eggs onto a plate. He cocked his head and frowned. “Speaking of guys, what’s up with you and Simon Chase?”

“What do you mean?”

“I called the shop and Bitsy said you were out to lunch with him. What’s going on?”

“Don’t play big brother with me.”

“Hey, who took care of Zack Turner for you?”

I smiled involuntarily. When we were in middle school, Zack Turner grabbed my science report out of my backpack and threw it out the school bus window. The bus driver wouldn’t stop. I cried all day, and after school, Tim went to Zack’s house, brought him to where my papers were still littering the side of the road, and made him collect them and come and apologize to me. I never knew exactly what Tim said to him, and no one ever mentioned the bruise on Zack’s cheek, but after that, Zack Turner left me alone.

I took off my red heels. My feet immediately expanded and began to throb. I plopped down into a chair at the table. Tim grabbed another plate and gave me some of the eggs. I dug in, giving myself a few minutes to formulate what I was going to say.

“I don’t know what’s going on with Simon Chase,” I said when I finished the eggs. “We had lunch, but then he got a call from Elise to meet her at that bar, and I went over there, and he saw me and made me sing karaoke; then we talked in the parking lot, but then he disappeared. And I saw him get into a Dodge Dakota.”

Tim’s confusion was clear. “What does his truck have to do with this?”

I told him about the white Dakota following me around.

Tim immediately became concerned. “Have you gotten a plate number?”

I shook my head, biting into a piece of toast. “No.”

“Why would Chase be following you?”

Matthew had been following me, too. Or at least watching me. I told him how I’d seen Chase and Matthew talking at Versailles. “Maybe he and Matthew think I know something I don’t.”

Tim rubbed his chin. “Possibly. Did Elise say anything to you that night she was in the shop, anything at all that they might think would implicate them in something?”

I’d been over it a hundred times, with Bitsy, too. “No. I’ve got nothing.”

“What about that tattoo on Matt Powell?” Tim asked. “Any idea who might have done that?”

“No.” I almost told him I’d seen Jeff Coleman, too, but decided to keep that out of this conversation. “Elise looked scared tonight. I don’t know where she is, but she’s definitely alive. Have you found any other connection between her and Kelly Masters other than that they both dated Simon Chase?”

Tim pursed his lips in a way that told me he very well might have found something. And that he certainly wasn’t going to tell me.

But I can be a pit bull when I want to be.

“Come on, Tim. I’ve got people following me around. Maybe knowing what the connection is might help me figure out why.”

He was wavering.

“If you tell me, I might have some information about Jeff Coleman.”

That got his attention.

“Do you know where he is?”

“Not at the moment,” I said. That was true. I didn’t know when or where Jeff might actually show up, either, so I’d be useless on that front as well.

“What do you know?” He could be a pit bull, too. It was in the genes.

“If I tell you, you’ll tell me what you’ve got, too, right?”

Tim sighed. “Okay, fine, but you have to promise to stay out of it.”

“As much as I can,” I said, crossing my fingers underneath the table so he wouldn’t see.

“You first,” he instructed.

I didn’t think I had a choice. I told him how Jeff showed up at Circus Circus, how I saw him tonight at Versailles, how he was as baffled as I was, that I believed he didn’t kill Matt Powell or Kelly Masters.

Tim snorted when I got to that last part.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Your friend Jeff Coleman, who tells you he’s so innocent? That he hadn’t seen his ex-wife in years?” He paused.

“We did a DNA test. Kelly Masters’s baby was Jeff Coleman’s baby.”