The Missing Ink: A Tattoo Shop Mystery

by Karen E. Olson

  If Sister Mary Eucharista at Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy School could see me now, she’d rap my hands five times with a ruler.

  “Are you going to tell Tim?” Bitsy asked.

  “Tell him what?”

  “About the girl. What else?” Bitsy and Willis would tie in an irritation contest. I might come in a close second.

  “I’ll tell him when I get home.”

  “You could’ve told that cop about Tim.”

  Bitsy didn’t get it. If I’d told Willis that Detective Tim Kavanaugh was my brother, it would seem like I was going over his head. Which was what I planned to do. However, he didn’t have to know that. We’d already established a tense relationship.

  Anyway, he may have put two and two together when he’d heard my last name. How many Kavanaughs were there in Vegas anyway? That plus the fact that Tim and I were relative carbon copies of each other would’ve been even more of a clue. And clues were his business.

  Bitsy and I had been over and over the girl’s visit the other night. She’d seemed a little skittish, but we’d chalked that up to it being her first time. She didn’t even get the ink. She just made an appointment and then never showed.

  “You’re sure it was her in the picture?” Bitsy asked for the umpteenth time.

  “Yes.” I felt like a broken record. It was a recent picture—I could tell that even though it was a photocopy. She was in her late twenties, the long dark hair pulled into a fashionably tousled knot, a pair of big, black Jackie O sunglasses outlined in rhinestones on top of her head, her face white and narrow with brilliant blue eyes that indicated colored contact lenses. I couldn’t tell what she wore for the snapshot, but when she showed up here, she was wearing a thin white lace baby-doll top with spaghetti straps, a black bra peeking through, and skinny jeans with strappy red sandals. At first glance, she could have been one of those rich girls partying in Vegas for the weekend—or a working girl. It was hard to tell, since the wardrobes were similar these days.

  She said her name was Kelly Masters. She said the concierge at the Bellagio had recommended us.

  She said she wanted to surprise her fiancé on their wedding night. So much for the working-girl theory. The diamond on her hand could’ve been listed as one of the wonders of the world, the way it flashed like a strobe across the walls when the light hit it.

  From the small bag over her shoulder, Kelly took a rather rudimentary drawing of a heart with what I supposed were two hands clasped underneath it.

  “I want his name—Matthew—too,” she said.

  I’m not big on devotion tats. Relationships might start out great, but statistics were against most people. And relationships that had any foothold in Vegas were dubious, in my opinion. What happens in Vegas may stay here, but tattoos didn’t have that option. They went home with you.

  That said, a client is a client, and as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap noted, it’s a fine line between stupid and clever.

  I was used to straddling that line myself, so I cut her a break.

  We made an appointment for the next day. I told her I’d make a proper sketch, she could take a look, and I could make changes, if she wanted.

  Then she left.

  I carried out my part of the bargain—my sketch was much more elaborate than the simple one she’d handed me—but Bitsy doubted she’d come back. We’d even bet on it. My wallet was a hundred dollars lighter. They don’t say Vegas is for suckers for nothing.

  “Wonder where she is,” Bitsy said thoughtfully.

  “Maybe she and Matthew had a fight,” I suggested. I gave Jesus’ nose a little more shadow before lifting my foot off the pedal. The machine stopped whirring, and I assessed the Son of God before me.

  Not bad, if I did say so myself.

  “Cops don’t come looking for you unless something awful’s happened,” Bitsy said.

  “You’re done,” I told the young man, handing him a small mirror so he could take a look at himself in the full-length one on the staff room door. As he went to see my handiwork, I shook my head at Bitsy. “He said she wasn’t dead.”

  “He could’ve been lying.”

  I mulled that over for a second. Willis didn’t seem like the type to lie. Then again, I didn’t know him well.

  The young man came back and handed me the mirror. “It’s awesome,” he said.

  Sister Mary Eucharista felt the same way, although she had her own descriptive adjectives.

  I covered the ink with Saran Wrap, taping it down and going through the laundry list of how to take care of the tattoo. The skin was the color of bubble gum right now, but after it healed and peeled like sunburn, it would begin to look like his other tats. Not that he’d notice much, since it was on his back.

  He paid Bitsy at the front table, the cash and credit card machine discreetly hidden in a drawer, and I went into the staff room. Joel and Ace had gone home at ten o’clock. It was eleven now, and Bitsy and I were going to call it a day. I could hear Bitsy’s stool sliding across the floor in the room I’d just vacated. She’d already taken care of the books for the day—usually my job, as boss, but she was capable and knew I’d be toast after hours with Jesus—and she was trashing the disposable needles, leftover ink, ink cups, and gloves. The needle bar would be put in the autoclave for sterilization.

  I started sketching a design for the next day on the light table. Bitsy had turned off the sound system, and it was too quiet. I grabbed the remote for the small TV set in the corner.

  I should’ve called Tim to tell him about Kelly right away, after Willis left.

  Because her face was plastered across the screen on the local news.

  But the anchor didn’t call her Kelly Masters.

  Apparently, her real name was Elise Lyon.

  Chapter 3

  Tim waited until after he got off the phone with his people at the police department before interrogating me. “You didn’t think to call?”

  I knew Tim would be upset. We were standing in the kitchen; I still had my messenger bag over my shoulder, but Tim had been home for a while and was wearing a pair of sweats and a T-shirt touting the Mets.

  “I got busy. I spent four hours on this Jesus tat. There wasn’t time to call. I figured I’d tell you when I got home.”

  It was a lame excuse. I’d had twenty minutes before the kid showed, and I spent the time gossiping about Kelly Masters with everyone in the shop.

  “I didn’t know why the cops were looking for her,” I said when he didn’t say anything. The TV reporter hadn’t said much either, except that anyone who’d seen her should call the police. “That cop didn’t tell me anything. Just wanted to know if I recognized her. I’m not clairvoyant.”

  I was babbling over my guilt. I knew something was amiss the minute he showed me the picture. It didn’t matter how much I tried to talk myself out of it, with Bitsy or with Tim. Kelly, or Elise, was in trouble, and Bitsy and I had seen her. But being a tattooist is sort of like being a psychiatrist. Some people come to us discreetly, and they expect discretion in return. I had to tread that line carefully.

  Tim reached into the fridge, grabbed the milk, and poured himself a glass. He was drawing this out.

  “So what’s her story?” I tried to sound nonchalant, shrugging the bag over my head and slinging it on one of the chairs at the table.

  “Nothing you need to worry about, as long as you’re telling me everything.” He took a long drink, leaving a milk mustache. He didn’t wipe it away.

  “I am.”

  “We’ll need to talk to Bitsy, too.”

  “Of course.” Bitsy was already anticipating that. She’d come up with more possibilities as we locked up the shop: rape, domestic violence, maybe Kelly was a terrorist. A little extreme, but I had to admit it might not be out of the realm of possibility. Especially since Tim was being just as closemouthed about it as Willis had been. I thought I’d have been a shoo-in to find out the whole story once I got home. Should’ve known better.

  Ti
m and I had been living together for two years now. He’d left our childhood home in northern New Jersey and moved to Vegas ten years ago, getting a job as a blackjack dealer. A year of that was enough, and he ended up at the police academy, training to be a cop like our father. It’s in the DNA.

  He bought the house in Henderson three years ago, when he and his ex-girlfriend, Shawna, had toyed with the idea of getting married. Well, he’d been toying with the idea, but she was dead serious. After a year, when she finally realized there was no diamond in her future, she moved out and he was stuck with the mortgage, so he got on the phone, trying to convince me that living in the desert would be heaven compared to scraping ice off my windshield in Jersey.

  No kidding.

  He also had a friend, Flip, who was selling his business. I had some money saved up, and Mickey said it was time for me to move on. I’d worked at the Ink Spot for eight years, starting as a trainee right out of college. Mickey taught me everything he could, and I was getting too comfortable. I needed a challenge. Buying Flip’s shop seemed like a plan.

  So here I was, a woman who owned her own business, and I was about to start whining like a kid on the playground because my brother wouldn’t share information with me.

  Contradictions are what make people interesting.

  “Can’t you give me a little hint? Did she do something? Is she hiding? Is she like that crazy runaway bride?” The moment I said it, I wondered if that was it. She’d been wearing that huge rock, she wanted devotion ink, but she never came back. Trouble in paradise.

  From the flush that crawled up Tim’s neck, I knew I was right. He could be as stoic as the next cop among his own and with real criminals, but with his sister, he caved every time.

  I grinned. “That’s it, isn’t it? She was supposed to get married, but she took off. Couldn’t handle it or something, right?”

  Tim put his glass in the sink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, which he then wiped on his sweats. “You can think what you like,” he said. “I’m going to bed. I have to get up early.” He brushed past me, his eyes on the floor.

  He paused before turning toward his room. “Oh, Willis asked a lot of questions about you.”

  Willis? “That cop?” I asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Tim chuckled. “He couldn’t understand why you would do what you do.”

  “Did you enlighten him?”

  “Not my place.”

  I thought a second. “I never mentioned that you were my brother.”

  “Brett, you’re almost as tall as I am, you’ve got red hair like me, and our faces look almost exactly the same except I shave and you don’t have my freckles. When he heard your last name, he put it together. Good night.” He disappeared into his bedroom.

  Willis wasn’t the first to express curiosity about my career choice. My mother still grabbed for the smelling salts when someone put the word “tattoo” in front of “artist” to describe me.

  Granted, I’d started out as a painter, but I liked to eat, earn money. Tattoos were profitable. Profitable enough to buy a business.

  People should just mind their own business.

  I rummaged through the fridge and found some leftover fried rice and a small bottle of Pellegrino. Taking them over to the long brown leather couch in the living room, I picked up the remote and turned on the fifty-two-inch flat-screen TV that hung on the far wall—Tim had done some serious electronics shopping after Shawna left; besides the TV, a surround-sound audio system had been wired throughout the house. I dropped a few grains of rice on the leather and wiped them up with my finger before starting to channel surf.

  I couldn’t decide what I wanted to watch, so I ended up on CNN. The volume was low, so I wouldn’t bother Tim, and Lou Dobbs was going on about illegal immigration for the umpteenth time. It was white noise while I ate.

  I was about to bring my empty dish to the sink when the top news stories of the day flashed on the screen.

  One of them caught my eye.

  Missing woman traced to Las Vegas.

  I put my plate back on the coffee table and turned the sound up as the two anchors began their reports. I had to wait until after a story about a tornado somewhere in Arkansas and another about the housing crisis.

  Finally: “A woman reported missing three days ago by her fiancé was spotted in a Las Vegas casino. Elise Lyon of Philadelphia had an airline ticket to Los Angeles on Tuesday, but she never boarded the plane. Her car was found in long-term parking at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.”

  Somehow she’d gotten to Las Vegas, and if she flew any sort of commercial airline it was likely she used the same name she’d given me—Kelly Masters—rather than her own; otherwise they would’ve tracked her down by now.

  It was hard these days to get through airport security, however. They checked photo IDs against boarding passes. I wondered about fake IDs. With technology available today to anyone, it wouldn’t be hard to produce something passable.

  Or maybe she chartered a flight. Or took the train. Or a bus. Scratch that. The chartered flight, maybe, but totally not a bus. She didn’t have that look about her.

  Tim’s call to the department about her name obviously wasn’t on the media’s radar yet.

  “The wedding is scheduled for tomorrow in Philadelphia at her parents’ estate, but it looks as if the bride will leave the groom at the altar.”

  That was harsh. I felt for Matthew—I could only be on a first-name basis with him, because that was all I knew of him.

  “Elise Lyon’s parents are not speaking to the media, but we have her future father-in-law, developer Bruce Manning, via satellite.”

  Bruce Manning? Wow. Now that was a household name. He made Donald Trump look like a bag person. Manning owned properties all over the country, and he’d just opened a swanky new resort and casino on the Strip. He called it Versailles, and having been to the real one, I could vouch for how authentic it looked. It was that Vegas illusion again.

  “What do you think happened to your future daughter-in-law, Mr. Manning?”

  “We just want to make sure she’s safe.” Manning’s bright white hair was perfectly coiffed, his tie perfectly knotted. He looked directly at the camera as he spoke, his words measured and firm.

  I leaned forward in my seat as if I’d miss something if I didn’t.

  “My son has been devastated by Elise’s disappearance. None of us believes she would leave of her own accord.”

  “Do you believe foul play is involved?”

  “You have to talk to the police about that.”

  “But you believe she was taken to Las Vegas against her will?”

  This was better than the soaps. Although my encounter with Kelly, or Elise, or whatever she was calling herself today, didn’t indicate she was someone who’d been kidnapped. She’d been a little nervous, but no one else was hovering around. She was alone. And if someone had kidnapped her, why would she be allowed to go to a tattoo parlor for devotion ink? She’d said it was a surprise for her fiancé.

  Maybe she just took a quick trip here before the wedding to unwind, get the tat, go home, and get hitched. She could easily turn up tomorrow in Philadelphia in her white dress and pearls.

  I wondered why her parents weren’t going public. Did they think that having Bruce Manning on the air would be enough to generate interest and, thus, lead police to their daughter? And what about the groom? Where was he?

  I’d been so engrossed in my own thoughts that I didn’t hear the rest of the interview with Bruce Manning. But I was paying attention when the two anchors grimly discussed the report afterward:

  “Bruce Manning has just opened Versailles, the newest, most extravagant Las Vegas resort. His son, Bruce Manning Jr., who goes by the nickname Chip, is dividing his time between his father’s New York City development offices and the new resort. He and Elise Lyon have planned to move into a penthouse in one of his father’s buildings on the Upper West Side in Manhattan
after their wedding. We can only hope Elise Lyon is found safe. Anyone with any information about her should contact the local police department immediately.”

  I saw right through the picture of Kelly/Elise as it popped up on the screen. My brain was a few sentences back.

  Kelly/Elise had wanted her devotion tat to say “Matthew.”

  Her fiancé’s name was Chip, or Bruce.

  Who was Matthew?

  Chapter 4

  Tim was gone when I got up, but the note I’d left him saying Kelly wanted her ink to say “Matthew” was no longer on the kitchen table. As I fired up the engine in my Mustang Bullitt—I’ve got a thing for Steve McQueen; what woman doesn’t?—I was a little resentful that I was doing his job for him and he still wouldn’t tell me anything.

  I was getting obsessed with Kelly/Elise. It was the most interesting thing that had happened for a while.

  I slipped on my sunglasses and pulled out of the driveway.

  Henderson to the Strip isn’t too far, just a straight shot on 215. But there’s traffic. Always traffic. Vegas has grown even in the short time I’ve been here, and between the residential population and the tourists and gas prices, well, it made me start thinking seriously about public transportation. The only thing I didn’t like was that I worked until midnight most nights, and taking a bus that late meant dealing with a lot more than just greenhouse gases.

  Anyway, if I took the bus, I wouldn’t be able to crank Springsteen, who was singing about the Badlands.

  I wasn’t putting the top down today, though. The desert in June is like an oven, and don’t get me started on that “it’s a dry heat” crap. Heat is heat, whether it’s wet or dry. The sun is searing, and even after only three years, the red tile roof on our house had faded to a pale pink.

  In the distance, the mountains beckoned me. A hike at Red Rock Canyon, just outside the city and a world away, would balance my chi, but with the temperature hovering above a hundred, I’d risk more than just a bad mood. I didn’t much believe in Chinese hocus-pocus—the sisters had instilled a lifetime of the fear of God in me—but I knew when I was feeling a little off.