Karen Olson: The Missing Ink

He didn’t seem to notice the apology. He reached for the door latch, and the look on his face told me that while I might have escaped Matthew relatively unscathed, I might not be so lucky now.

I hightailed it back to my car and spun it around and down the street, leaving yet another angry man in my wake. I hoped this wasn’t going to be a trend.

The diamond flashed like a white laser across Tim’s desk.

“You’re wearing it?” Tim was doing his hunt-and-peck typing as he wrote up the report of my kidnapping.

“I didn’t want to lose it,” I said.

“Just give me the ring,” he said, holding out his hand.

Reluctantly, I slipped it off my finger. “You realize I’ll never wear anything like that ever again.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Tim said, turning it over and over, watching the prisms of color that slashed through it as the fluorescent overhead light hit it.

“See?” I asked. “It’s got powers.”

“But are they good or evil?” he asked, sticking the ring on his desk next to his computer.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“I’ll call Bruce Manning about it.”

“What if Manning is lying about it being stolen? I mean, she was engaged to his son; it’s an engagement ring. If Chip gave it to her, then it’s hers, right? She can’t steal what’s hers, right?”

Tim looked like he wasn’t paying attention to me as he studied the computer screen. After a few seconds, he looked up at me. “Oh, by the way, just thought you’d like to know there was no big, bald, tattooed guy walking around Summerlin. Two cruisers were out looking.”

My chest constricted. They hadn’t found him? Where had he gone without a vehicle?

“What about the motorcycle? The one at the In-N-Out?”

“Brett, you really have to tell me every detail so I can cover all the bases.”

Right. He’d just turned this around so I was at fault. And I’d been the one to get kidnapped.

We went over everything about three times, and he finally got it all typed up.

“You should go straight home,” he advised as he walked me to my car. “Don’t stop anywhere; just go home and lock the doors, and I’ll be there in a couple hours.”

My watch told me it was almost time to meet Simon Chase. I told Tim as much. “I didn’t cancel,” I added.

“Call him and cancel, then,” he said.

I made a sort of nodding motion with my head, but it wasn’t really a commitment. “I’ll go home,” I said, giving him a hug and a little wave good-bye.

As I started the engine, I knew Tim was right. I should just go home, even though my head was toying with the idea of meeting Simon Chase anyway. But how stupid was that? He might have been the one to rescue Matthew from Summerlin, and he might decide to bring him to my shop.

I turned down Las Vegas Boulevard. It wasn’t the most direct route home, but it was going in the general direction. I saw Goodfellas Bail Bonds on my left, Murder Ink next door. Sylvia was walking down the sidewalk.

The Bright Lights Motel’s parking lot beckoned, so I pulled in and parked. I honked the horn just as I climbed out, but Sylvia didn’t turn around.

I jogged down the sidewalk, jaywalking when I caught up with her. I reached over and tapped her on the shoulder.

“Hey, Sylvia,” I said, panting from the heat, not the jog.

She turned, her smile bright. “It’s good to see you, dear. How’s your big friend?”

“Fine,” I said, figuring she was referring to Joel. “How’s Jeff?”

Her face clouded. “He’s not happy with me. He said it’s my fault things are being stolen from the shop.” She leaned toward me, whispering conspiratorially, “I told him he could take the gun. He didn’t steal it.”

I stiffened. “Who?”

“Your big friend.”

Dementia rears its ugly head again. I wondered if Jeff had thought about assisted living. This could only get worse.

“Why would Joel want Jeff’s gun?” I asked.

Confusion crossed her face. “Oh, dear, I didn’t mean your homo friend.”

Okay, so she had dementia and she was politically incorrect at the same time. I guess when you get old, you can be whatever you want to be. Halfway through that thought, it dawned on me: If it wasn’t Joel, who did she think was my “big” friend?

“Sylvia,” I said, “who exactly are we talking about?”

Her smile was so pure, her face shining.

“Why, dear, Matthew, of course.”

I felt like someone had punched me in the gut.

“Sylvia, Matthew isn’t my friend.” It was all I could do to keep my voice from shaking. Post-traumatic stress, and all that. I could end up worse than Pavlov’s dogs; just mention the name Matthew and I’d crumble into a million little pieces. At least the dogs got to ring a bell and then forget about it. “When did he take the gun? And why would he set Jeff up for Kelly’s murder?”

“Oh, he didn’t set Jeff up. He just took the gun.”

“But the gun was found in Kelly’s car. So how did it end up there?”

Her smile turned a little sad, like she thought I’d become too dim-witted for this conversation. “Why, he gave it to Kelly, of course.”

I thought my head would explode.

“What for?”

“She never liked having the gun in the shop, you know.”

We were on a carousel, going round and round but heading nowhere except on Sylvia’s own little Magical Mystery Tour. I didn’t think it would do any good to pound my head against the wall.

“How do you know that Matthew gave the gun to his sister?”

“That’s what he told me he wanted to do.”

Just when you think there’s no logic in anything, something coherent pops up.

“Any reason why?”

She patted my forearm. “He said Kelly had gotten into a little trouble.”

That coincided with what Matt Powell had told Jeff. But if her brother gave her a gun, that might indicate something a little worse than just deciding to be a single parent and not bothering to tell Jeff that she was confiscating their embryos for her own use.

We’d walked all the way down to the courthouse, and Sylvia abruptly turned on her heel and started walking back.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Oh, I just like to walk now and then.” She hooked her arm around mine, patting my hand. She was so little; I towered over her. But her hand was warm, comforting. After the day I had, I didn’t mind having a little TLC, even if Sylvia was a little nuts.

“You should let me ink your arm,” she said after a two-block silence as we approached Murder Ink.

I thought about Napoleon. “I’m going to do a stencil,” I said. “I’d love it if you could do it.” I told her what I planned.

She snorted. “Dear, you’re a six-foot-tall woman. You don’t want a five-foot-two man on your arm. Let me do something more appropriate.”

I didn’t want to argue the issue. I wasn’t in the mood. I let her reel off the possibilities as I wondered why Kelly Masters would need a gun.

“I’m going to close up the shop now, dear,” Sylvia was saying as we stood in front of Murder Ink. She unhooked her arm. “Thank you for walking with me. You’re a nice girl.”

“How’s Jeff?”

“He’s fine. I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon.”

I was sure of it, too. He’d become my new best friend. Well, except for Sylvia.

I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, her skin thin and transparent, her wrinkles rippling across her cheeks. Her face was the only place that wasn’t inked.

I glanced back at the shop when I reached my car and watched Sylvia pull open the door.

I was concentrating so much on her that I didn’t see it until it swerved into the Bright Lights Motel lot. The Dakota spun around my car faster than I could move, blocking me from the door so I was trapped.