The Missing Ink: A Tattoo Shop Mystery

by Karen E. Olson

  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.”

  Chapter 9

  “They couldn’t come up with some sort of ‘runaway bride’ name for her?” Joel asked as he wadded up the empty burger wrapper and tossed it in the trash can. “They’re so lame.”

  I shushed him.

  “The car was rented by a Kelly Masters, our sources tell us, which is the name Elise Lyon used when she went to a local tattoo parlor two days ago.”

  What had happened to Elise Lyon after she left the shop the other night? But I barely had time to think about that because the picture changed, and now, instead of Leigh Holmes’s, it was my face that flashed on the screen. I recognized it from when I walked out of the staff room this morning into their assault on me.

  “You look fabulous on TV!” Joel said. “The light picked up all the highlights you just got. And your red hair against the silver in your ears, well, it looks great.”

  I studied my face, trying to see what Joel did, but all I saw was what I imagined everyone else would: the short, chopped haircut, hoops that ran the length of my earlobes, the dragon on my chest, the water lilies on my arm.

  “Brett Kavanaugh, owner of The Painted Lady at the Venetian Grand Canal Shoppes, may have been one of the last people to have seen Elise Lyon alive.”

  Joel slapped my arm playfully. “That’s the best free advertising we could get!”

  I wasn’t sure it was a good thing. Between this and 20/20, we would undoubtedly attract some new clients, but for all the wrong reasons. They’d see what they would expect: the tattooed lady, the dwarf, and the fat man. Ace, with his movie-star good looks, would be the only “normal”-looking one among us. Wasn’t that a joke.

  “Brett Kavanaugh is the sister of Detective Tim Kavanaugh, who is in charge of the investigation.”

  They showed Tim come in the shop and make them turn off the camera.

  “Detective Kavanaugh was questioning his sister and her employees earlier today, but he had no comment for the record.”

  “Oh, don’t look so sad,” Joel said, his arm snaking over my shoulder. “You really do look great on TV. And we’ll get some business out of this.”

  I shrugged off his arm and, as I was about to turn off the TV, I saw something that made me stop short.

  I pointed. “There, do you see him?”

  Joel was too late; the picture had already changed back to Leigh Holmes at the airport.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “It was that guy, the bald, tattooed guy who was watching me this morning in the mall. He was outside the shop. I saw him in the window behind Tim.” My heart was pounding. Who was that guy?

  I turned off the TV.

  “Hey, she might have had more.”

  “She doesn’t have anything. Otherwise she would’ve said it right away. Anyway, I can’t concentrate on that now.”

  “Do you really think the guy is stalking you or something?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s really creeping me out.”

  Joel took his cell phone out of his breast pocket. “I’m going to call around, see if I can find out who he is, okay?”

  I nodded.

  He stood up and pecked my cheek. “I’ll take a walk outside.”

  While he tried to track down that ink, I punched Tim’s number into my cell phone.

  “Listen, I’m tied up right now,” he said without even saying “hello.”

  “Are you at the airport?”

  Heavy sigh. “You saw it on TV.”

  “Just now. Was the car really rented by Kelly Masters? Is it Kelly—I mean Elise Lyon—in the car?”

  “I can’t say anything right now. I’ll see you when I see you.” And he hung up.

  I hated it when he did that.

  And I hated it that I couldn’t just drive over to the airport and see what was going on.

  I had to ink four shoulders—four women who each wanted the same image of a book to commemorate their friendship and the fact that they’d met in a book club. They were in Vegas for a long weekend to celebrate twenty years together and didn’t want everything that happened in Vegas to stay here. I’d sketched a small red book with golden tassels and four blue stars, and they loved it.

  They brought a bottle of champagne, and while we didn’t exactly condone that, Bitsy conceded it was a special occasion, and between the four of them, they probably wouldn’t get drunk on one bottle.

  They cheered one another on as I worked, and I found myself thinking about Mickey and the rest of the gang at the Ink Spot, back home. I missed that camaraderie, and even though I was forming bonds here in Vegas, it wasn’t the same yet.

  When I was done, they insisted I share a glass with them.

  After they left, I went into the staff room. The light table was a mess of tracing papers and stencils. Bitsy would file everything at the end of the day, but I started to help by making piles. As I shuffled the bits around, I spotted the crude drawing Kelly Masters—or, rather, Elise Lyon—had handed me just a couple of nights ago.

  I ignored the rest and picked it up, studying it as if it would give me some sort of clue as to what her story really was.

  She couldn’t draw, that was for sure.

  I traced the outline with my finger, but the light from the table illuminated the paper, and I could see something was written on the back. I flipped it over to see an address written in pencil.

  It was a familiar address, a lot farther up on Las Vegas Boulevard. Near Fremont Street.

  It was Murder Ink.

  A tattoo shop. Our competition.

  Chapter 10

  Elise might have just gotten the names of other tattoo shops in Vegas and then picked one. The hole in that story, however, was that there was only one address written on the slip of paper. Unless she’d been there and decided not to stay.

  Not out of the realm of possibility. I knew Jeff Coleman, the shop owner. He specialized in flash, the stock designs that lined the walls of his shop. No originality to his work; his street shop located next to Goodfellas Bail Bonds catered to walk-ins, and he stayed open until four a.m. so anyone out partying who wanted a tattoo on the spur
of the moment would wake up the next morning with one. He didn’t have a conscience about who or what he tattooed, as long as he put money in the till.

  He was everything I didn’t want our shop to become. So far, we’d succeeded.

  All bets were off once we were splashed all over 20/20.

  I put the drawing in my bag.

  “You okay?” Joel stuck his head through the door.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.” Not very convincing. “Any luck with the eagle tat?”

  “Seems like it’s pretty common flash. But I’ll keep asking around. And your nine o’clock is here.”

  I rummaged through the piles I’d just made and found the stencils of the matching derringers that would adorn the inside upper arms of a young woman who’d also recently gotten a boob job. Charlotte Sampson had just graduated from college with a degree in accounting, but I wasn’t convinced she really meant to actually work as an accountant. She’d given herself a rather bad tattoo of a heart on the inside of her wrist, and when she saw my work, she insisted that I fix her ink up. Since then, she’d been back for five tats.

  I mentioned that the derringers might sag a bit as she got older, but she shrugged it off.

  Bitsy was telling her about our impending fifteen minutes of fame on 20/20 when I emerged.

  “Brett, this is great news!” Charlotte threw her arms around me and air-kissed my cheek.

  “Sure,” I mumbled. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Charlotte frowned at Bitsy, who shook her head and rolled her eyes. I saw it, but I pretended not to notice.

  I led Charlotte to my room and showed her the stencils.

  “They’re perfect!” she said.

  After pulling on my gloves, I applied the stencil, assessed the outline of the first derringer, arranged the ink caps, dipped the needle, and pressed the foot pedal. A tattoo machine is like a sewing machine; it’s all in the foot action.

  I ran the needle along the lines of the stencil, feeling Charlotte flinch only as the needle first touched her skin.

  Getting a tattoo feels like a hundred bee stings all at once. It hurts for the first few minutes, and then the endorphins kick in and the excitement pushes away the pain.

  It was a quick job, just an hour and a half for both tats.

  “Fantastic,” Charlotte said as she surveyed her arms in the mirror.

  I wrapped her up in Saran Wrap; she knew the drill. Just before she left, though, she asked to see me privately.

  Bitsy, who was in the midst of cleaning up for the night, raised her eyebrows at me, but I shrugged back. I had no idea what Charlotte wanted.

  Once back in my room, Charlotte hesitated.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She was a pretty girl, with sleek black hair and green eyes that sparkled. “I was wondering, well, if you ever, well, you know . . .”

  “Spit it out,” I said.

  She smiled shyly. “I was wondering if you would be willing to take me on here, like an intern or something.”

  “What about being an accountant?”

  She sighed. “I don’t think it’s in my cards. I bought my own machine, and I’ve been tattooing my friends.”

  I caught my breath. “Not a good idea, Charlotte.”

  “I know, but I just want to do this.”

  I had to stop her, and the only way was to agree to have her come in and talk it over with the rest of the staff. We hadn’t had a trainee since I took over, but we’d all been starting out ourselves at one point. If Mickey hadn’t taken a chance on me, I don’t know where I’d be today.

  Since I didn’t want her to overlap with the TV crew, Bitsy scheduled her for the next week.

  “What do you think?” I asked Bitsy as we watched Charlotte skip out of the shop.

  Bitsy shrugged. “It’s not like we don’t have work we can give her. And she’s a nice kid.”

  I was preoccupied, however, with the Murder Ink address on Elise’s drawing. I didn’t tell anyone about it. If I did, it could end up all over national TV, and I wanted to talk to Jeff Coleman about it first. It was conceivable that Elise had never shown up there, that she’d come to our shop first, but I figured some well-placed questions to Jeff would get me the answers I needed.

  Since he was open until four, I’d head over there now.

  Joel and Bitsy told me to go ahead home, they’d finish closing up. They’d decided I was a “gloomy Gus” and felt I was raining on their 20/20 parade.

  It was more like a monsoon.

  Sure, I should probably feel guilty about that, but they were out of control, talking about outfits and Joel wishing he’d started Weight Watchers last week because he’d surely lose at least ten pounds right away, and you know how the camera puts weight on people.

  Joel had completely forgotten about the creepy tattooed guy by now, but I didn’t see anyone suspicious as I left the mall and went to the parking garage. I started the Bullitt up and headed out into the night.

  The lights of the Strip sliced across my windshield, and I thought about putting the roof down, but decided against it. It was still pretty hot, and the air-conditioning felt good as it blasted against my face.

  I was halfway up the Strip when my cell phone rang inside my bag. I dug it out and flipped it open, noting Tim’s number on the screen.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “Brett? You on your way home?”

  I didn’t want to tell him about Murder Ink unless I knew Elise had been there or had some contact with them, so I sidestepped the question by asking one of my own: “Why?”

  “You said that the picture of Elise Lyon on TV was definitely the woman who came into your shop?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  Something was up. “Why are you asking?”

  “If I send you a picture on your phone, can you confirm or deny whether it was the woman who was in your shop the other night?”

  “This is about that body in the car at the airport, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t comment at the moment.”

  By his not commenting, I knew it was.

  “What about Chip Manning? Why can’t he identify her? What about her parents?” Yeah, what about them? Weren’t the parents the ones who were always plastered all over the TV screens begging for information about their lost girl?

  “Her father is on his way to Vegas now, but her mother’s staying behind just in case she goes home.”

  For the wedding. If she still wanted to get married, she’d be there now. “So why me? I only talked to her for, like, ten minutes.”

  He sighed. “I’d rather not get her mother all upset—”

  “Just in case it’s not her, right?” I finished for him.

  “Just do it, Brett, okay?”

  “Okay, okay, keep your pants on.”

  “I’m sending it now.”

  I pulled over so I wouldn’t get stopped by the cops for paying more attention to my phone than to the road.

  I waited a couple of seconds, and a picture popped up on the screen. It wasn’t a great picture, but I knew one thing: Elise Lyon’s mother wouldn’t be upset.

  Because it wasn’t the woman who’d come into The Painted Lady.

  Chapter 11

  “It’s not Kelly Masters,” I said.

  “But it is,” Tim said.

  “What?”

  “Her name is Kelly Masters. She’s got ID on her; the rental car agreement is in her name. She’s from L.A.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I really can’t say.”

  I was ready to smack him. He couldn’t tease me like this. “But you’ve already told me plenty. And I might find out on the news anyway.”

  “You might.”

  Something in his voice told me I might not. “You’re not releasing anything about this, are you?”

  “We need to find out the connection between Kelly Masters and Elise Lyon—”

 
“Because there is a connection, isn’t there?” I interrupted. “Why else would Elise use Kelly’s name?”

  He was quiet a second, then, “You can’t tell anyone about this. Promise?”

  “A 20/20 camera crew is coming to the shop tomorrow to interview us about Elise Lyon,” I said.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No. Wish I were.”

  “So there’s even more of a reason to keep the lid on this, okay?”

  “No problem.” Not like I was ready to spill the beans to the media. And it was a good thing Bitsy didn’t know about this. Or Joel. Ace wouldn’t care, because Ace rarely paid attention to anything that didn’t directly involve him.

  I toyed with the idea of telling Tim where I was heading. Just as I decided to, he said, “Listen, I’ve got to run. I probably won’t be home tonight.” And he ended the call.

  I stared at my phone, the picture of Kelly Masters staring back at me. Kelly was a pretty girl, too, but now that I paid attention to more than her face, I saw there was another big difference between Kelly and Elise.

  Kelly had a tattoo on the side of her neck. I couldn’t make out what it was, but it was definitely ink.

  I punched Tim’s number into my phone.

  “What?” he asked, annoyed.

  “Quick question about this picture.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Kelly Masters has a tat on her neck, right?”

  He was quiet a second. Then, “You can see that?”

  “It’s my business, Tim.” My turn to be annoyed. “What’s it of?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t make out what it is.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “You never know. It might actually tell you a lot.”

  “Come on, Brett.”

  “Just humor me, okay?”

  Tim sighed. “Will it get you off the phone?”

  “Yes,” I promised.

  “It’s an eagle. It’s actually on the back of her neck, and what you see are the wings that come out on either side.”

  A shiver ran through me.

  “Why does this matter?” Tim asked.