Karen Olson - The Missing Ink

Jeff gave me a wan smile. “Younger than me, right, Kavanaugh? Sure, she was twenty-two when we hooked up. We were married five years. You do the math.”

The look on my face elicited a smirk.

“You’re wondering what she was doing with me.”

I was, but I tried to be nonchalant. “None of my business.”

“I pulled her out of a hole. She was a mess when we met-drugs, hooking. I helped her; she straightened out.” He paused, took another drag on his butt. “And then she left.”

Interesting.

“Did you do the tat on her neck?”

The question threw him. He was still trying to digest the fact that Kelly was dead. “The eagle, you mean?”

“Yeah,” I said, like I’d seen more of it than just the corner in the picture on my cell phone.

He nodded.

“Did you do another one like it?”

“What?”

“Have you done others like it?”

Jeff frowned, not knowing where I was going with this. “I don’t see how it matters, does it?”

I couldn’t get the image of that big guy out of my head. “Might, might not,” I said, hopefully with enough mystery in my voice so he’d think it really was relevant.

“Sure, I’ve done the eagle at least a dozen times. Probably more.”

“How about a big guy, at least six-four, looks like a biker, shaved head? He’s got a face full of tats.”

It was the second time I’d rocked Jeff’s world. He caught his breath, the smoke moving slowly out through his nose as he pulled the cigarette from his lips.

“What does Kelly’s brother have to do with this?”

Her brother? Why would Kelly’s brother be following me at the mall and watching my shop?

“Did he have something to do with Kelly’s death?” Jeff asked.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t know.”

Jeff suddenly caught wind that I might be asking questions I shouldn’t.

“Cops don’t know about me, do they?” he asked.

“I just found your address on the paper a couple hours ago. I haven’t told anyone.” I paused. “You don’t have any reason not to want the cops to come around, do you? Because they’ll probably find out you’re Kelly’s ex-husband. That’s their job.”

“You really didn’t know?” Jeff took another drag off the cigarette.

“No. I was just looking for a connection with Elise Lyon.”

As I said it, I realized I’d found another connection between the two women. The first was that Elise was using Kelly’s name; the second was Jeff Coleman’s shop, if not Jeff himself.

“So you never saw Elise Lyon here?”

Jeff took a deep breath. “No.”

“Did Kelly ever mention a friend named Elise?”

“You think Kelly knew her?”

I shrugged.

The Star Trek kid poked his head out the door.

“Jeff?” The booze was starting to wear off; I recognized the weariness in his voice.

“Be right there, Scottie.” The door shut again.

Jeff tossed the butt into the street, and we watched the glow from its tip for a second before he said, “Listen, Kavanaugh, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to your cop brother about me. They’ll figure it out eventually, but I’d rather it was later rather than sooner.”

“Why?” I blurted it out before I could stop myself.

Jeff chuckled. “Kelly and I didn’t have the most friendly of divorces. But I really didn’t know she was in town, and I didn’t have anything to do with her murder. The cops will think I did. Ex-husband, always the first suspect.”

He had a point, but how did I know he didn’t kill her?

My hesitation must have told him I had doubts.

“Trust me, Kavanaugh. I loved her; I wouldn’t hurt her. She left me .” I could tell he was confused by that.

For a second, I flashed back to Paul, asking me, Why ? He really had no clue. Asking me to quit my job at the Ink Spot, follow his career by giving up mine. I shook off the memory.

Jeff was still talking. “I want to do a little look-see into this myself, and if I don’t have the cops breathing down my neck, I’ll be able to do it a lot easier.”

I couldn’t resist. “If you find out anything, can you let me know?”

Jeff cocked his head to one side and studied me for a second. “Why?”

“Maybe I just want to find out what happened to Elise Lyon, and I’ve got a hunch there’s a connection.”

“A hunch? Who are you, Nancy Drew?”

Okay, maybe I deserved that. But it didn’t deter me. “Elise showed up at my shop and told me her name was Kelly Masters.”

I couldn’t read his expression.

“So maybe there is something there after all,” he said thoughtfully. “Sure, Kavanaugh, I’ll play Starsky and Hutch with you, as long as you promise not to blab my name prematurely to that brother of yours. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” I shifted my messenger bag to my other shoulder, crossing my fingers behind it so he wouldn’t see, and asked, “So who would want her dead?”

He laughed, opened the door to his shop, put one foot inside. “The best question would be, who wouldn’t want her dead?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me worry about that right now.”

“So Kelly had a lot of enemies?”

“Let’s just say she would never be voted Miss Conge niality.”

Again, the link between Kelly Masters and Elise Lyon seemed really remote.

He started to go inside, but I grabbed the door before it shut, causing him to stop in the doorway. “What is it, Kavanaugh?”

“Kelly’s brother. What’s his story?”

“I don’t know where you met him, Kavanaugh, but my advice? Just stay away from him.” He paused, and when he spoke again, his tone was soft, like he actually had a heart. “Matthew’s bad news. You don’t want to mess with him.”

Matthew?

So now I had two Matthews, or rather, a Matt and a Matthew.

Jeff Coleman’s words floated around in my head, interrupted every second or so by the fact that Kelly Masters’s brother, Matthew, was the guy watching me.

Matthew.

The object of Elise Lyon’s devotion?

Maybe.

Or was it Chip Manning’s driver Matt?

I had a hard time connecting Elise-from a well-to-do family in Philadelphia, about to marry one of the richest heirs in the world-with someone like Kelly’s brother.

Where would she meet him? Did she hop a plane to Vegas, meet him in a casino or a bar here, decide she couldn’t marry Chip but had to marry Matthew instead?

Something inside me wouldn’t let me believe that. It just didn’t fit.

Then there was Matt, the driver. That made the most sense. She would obviously have known him through Chip. Maybe Matt drove her around, too. Maybe he started her engine a few times. Maybe that was enough for her to realize Chip was never in the driver’s seat.

My car analogies were getting out of hand.

Now I knew how Tim felt when he was working a case and didn’t have all the answers.

It sucked.

Tim. He wouldn’t be happy with me once he found out about my trip to Murder Ink to see Jeff Coleman. I thought about my promise to Jeff that I wouldn’t tell Tim. It let me off the hook, but only temporarily. Even though no one knew I’d come here tonight-except for Scottie the Star Trek fan-Tim would find out Jeff was Kelly Masters’s ex-husband and since Jeff was a tattooist and I was a tattooist, Tim was smart enough to figure that we might know each other and ask me about him.

It shouldn’t be a difficult decision. Jeff Coleman was my sworn enemy; we hated each other. This was the first almost-civil conversation I’d ever had with him, and still he’d peppered it with constant reminders that he only ever called me by my last name. Like he was some sort of tough guy.