The Missing Ink

by Karen E. Olson

  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.

  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.”

  Chapter 25

  I told my sister I would have to call her back. I hung up even as she was arguing with me about it.

  I sat on the couch and took a drink of wine. I wished I liked something stronger, but the wine was going to have to do.

  Simon Chase? What did that mean, they were questioning him? Did the police think he had something to do with Matt Powell’s murder? I thought about how he’d brought me up to the suite to see what I’d seen. If he’d already been there, he certainly hadn’t shown it.

  He’d egged me on about inking Chip’s chest. Maybe he did know more about this than he was letting on.

  I shivered, thinking about how he’d flirted with me.

  My brain started going backward, like a video in rewind, through the events of the last couple of days, trying to get Simon Chase out of my head.

  I thought again about Jeff Coleman. And Kelly Masters. I wanted to find the connection between Kelly and Elise. They seemed separate, but they weren’t. They couldn’t be.

  I pulled my laptop out again and Googled Kelly Masters this time. I found a MySpace page, but it wasn’t her. It was a Kelly Masters at NYU who was advertising her Wiccan religion. An accomplished harpist named Kelly Masters had gone to Juilliard and now played with the Boston Symphony. And then there was the Scientologist named Kelly Masters who had a YouTube video, preaching L. Ron Hub-bard’s words much in the same way Tom Cruise did, but to her credit she didn’t jump on anyone’s sofa. I shuddered and hit the button to go back to the previous screen.

  A small item in Entertainment Weekly from a year and a half ago caught my eye. A picture of a woman whose features were similar to the picture on my cell phone-without being dead, obviously-accompanied two paragraphs about a Kelly Masters from Los Angeles who’d won a modeling contract with a top agency after some reality program on an obscure channel no one watched. Alive, she was very pretty in that skinny-model sort of way.

  I couldn’t see a tat on her neck.

  I couldn’t be sure if it was the same Kelly Masters. Jeff had said she’d been living in L.A. the last he knew, so it was possible. But he also said he hadn’t seen her for a long time, so she could’ve been anywhere.

  Except when I went to the next page, another small item popped out at me. Kelly Masters had been stripped of her modeling contract because she’d lied about her age during the competition. She was too old.

  It was just a segue into the next hit. A tattoo shop site. Planet Tattoo. I clicked on it.

  The shop was in Malibu; it advertised that all the hot celebrities had gotten tats there, prominently featuring the one I was supposed to ink earlier today.

  And in the center of the screen was a photo of their star tattooist: K-C, who wore a wide, sexy smile, a black bustier, black leather pants, and eagle wings spread across her neck. A short bio said that K-C had trained in Las Vegas-but there was no credit for her ex-husband-and that she
had won a modeling contest previously.

  She should’ve been stripped of her title solely for choosing the moniker “K-C.” Those TV tattoo shows were creating monsters.

  Did Jeff Coleman know his wife was the Tattooist to the Stars? He certainly hadn’t indicated that, and neither had Sylvia. Kelly Masters had truly moved on, but it didn’t answer my original question: What was she doing in Las Vegas with Elise Lyon?

  I stared at the Google search bar for a few seconds.

  I couldn’t put it off any longer.

  Googling Simon Chase brought up a slew of hits. Lots of news stories about Versailles, how Chase had been working for Manning in his Atlantic City casino before coming to Vegas.

  I read through as much as I could, piecing together Chase’s history.

  He’d grown up outside London, but not too much information was available about his life until he came to the United States, where he got his master’s in business administration from Harvard, hooking up with Bruce Manning early in his professional career. Not a bad star to hitch a ride on if you were ambitious.

  And he was as ambitious in his off hours as he was on the job. He was a playboy, always with a different beautiful woman on his arm. I clicked on “Images” and saw him with celebrities, actresses and musicians and pop artists.

  I picked one at random, clicking on the picture to make it larger.

  The picture was taken on a beach, with palm trees and white sand. Chase was wearing a pair of khaki Bermuda shorts and a flowing cotton button-down shirt that was unbuttoned, revealing the physique I’d suspected when I met him. He had his arm slung over the shoulder of a woman wearing the scantiest of bikinis, her long dark hair pulled up and off her face, her features stunning and pink with sunburn.

  Her body was turned to his, her neck swiveled in such a way that I could see it.

  Eagle wings spread across her neck.

  It was Kelly Masters.

  My breath caught in my throat and my fingers froze above the keyboard.

  Did he know Kelly Masters was dead? She was in Vegas; so was he. Had they hooked up here? Jeff said he’d heard she was getting married. Could it have been to Simon Chase?