Karen Olson: The Missing Ink

I took the pencil and sketched it out further, adding more details. When I was in school at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I’d dreamed of going to Paris and putting up an easel next to the Seine, painting on a stiff white canvas.

Instead, my canvas was alive, soft and moving, and my brush had turned into a machine with a needle on the end of it.

The first time I’d touched that needle to my own skin, I knew this was what I wanted to do.

My mother, who moved with my father to a retirement community in Port St. Lucie, Florida, right after I left for Vegas, said a Hail Mary for me every day.

I heard some sort of commotion out in the front of the shop. I pushed the sketch aside, put my pencil down, and got up. As I moved toward the door, I heard Bitsy arguing with a man.

“She’s busy. I can help you,” Bitsy said.

“I want to talk to the owner!”

For a second, I froze, wondering if it was the big tattooed guy who’d been watching me. I shrugged off the apprehension, telling myself that if it were, I’d at least know what he wanted now. Still, I tentatively pushed the door open.

The man Bitsy was arguing with didn’t have one tat. At least none that I could see. He was in his late twenties, early thirties maybe, as clean-cut as he could be, with a short, military-like haircut, nicely pressed button-down shirt, and jeans that looked like they’d been ironed.

I took another look at his face.

He was the spitting image of his father.

It was Chip Manning, jilted groom.

He saw me peeking out the staff room door, and within two strides he was standing in front of me. I had no choice but to stand tall and face him.

“Are you the owner?”

I nodded.

He held out his hand. “I’m Chip Manning.”

I took it, noting that his grip was a little slack. “Brett Kavanaugh. What can I help you with?”

“I understand you saw Elise. Elise Lyon. My fiancée.” His expression told me he expected something from me, but I wasn’t sure just what.

“She didn’t say much,” I tried.

“But you saw her.” His grief was etched across his face. “What did she say? How did she act?”

He obviously cared for the girl. Maybe she had been kidnapped. Or maybe she just left him because he smothered her.

Ace had stopped hanging his paintings and was blatantly listening to the conversation. Joel hovered near the front desk, fingering the orchid that didn’t look very healthy. I made a mental note to tell Bitsy to get us a new one.

“She was fine,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him about Matthew. “How did you find out about us? That she came in here? Only the police know.”

Chip gazed at me. “My father knows a lot of people in the police department.”

I didn’t doubt that. He probably got a call last night after Tim relayed the news that I’d seen Kelly/Elise. “Does he know you’re here?”

He got a deer-in-the-headlights look about him. “No. He wanted me to stay out of it; he’d take care of it.”

“So you sneaked out to come talk to us yourself?”

“Of course not.” He became defiant. “I’ve got my driver.”

His driver. Might have known. Bitsy rolled her eyes at me.

Chip noticed.

“He’s my best friend,” he said.

Sadly, that was probably true. Sounded like his father kept him on a pretty short leash. But I gave him credit for making an effort to do something on his own.

“Did she say why she was here?” Chip looked from me to Bitsy to Joel to Ace.

“She wanted a tattoo,” Bitsy said, her tone indicating that it was a stupid question. It was a tattoo shop.

Chip shoved his hands in his pockets, his eyes landing on me again after a second of assessing Bitsy. It was as if he’d just noticed she was a little person, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that.

“Why?” he asked me.

“Why what?” I could play stupid. And I didn’t like it that he’d glossed over Bitsy so easily.

“Didn’t she say why she wanted the tattoo? I mean, it wasn’t exactly something I thought Elise would ever do. She wasn’t like that.” He didn’t seem to realize that he was talking to people who were “like that.”

He also didn’t think Elise would leave him at the altar, either, but who was I to mention it?

“We don’t always know if there’s a specific reason a person wants a tattoo,” I said slowly, as if explaining something to a toddler. “It’s not our place to ask. Sometimes someone will volunteer the information, sometimes not.”

“So she didn’t say?”

“She said she wanted to surprise her fiancé on her wedding night.” Bitsy had a habit of just blurting things out.

Chip seemed startled that she spoke again, but I gave him extra credit when he directed his next question to her. “Why would she come to Vegas, then, for a tattoo? She could’ve gotten one at home.”

It was a rhetorical question, one that didn’t need an answer, but Bitsy could not be stopped.

“Maybe she just wanted one last fling before getting married,” she suggested.

Not the right thing to say.

Chip raised his head, and the confusion was replaced by anger. “She said it was over!” he muttered.

“What was over?” Joel asked.

Chip looked at Joel in a sort of male-solidarity way, like Joel would understand.

“She cheated on me. Three months ago. She tried to break off the engagement, but I knew she didn’t really mean it. Things were better after that.”

The groom was always the last to know.

“Maybe she needed a little more space,” Joel said. “So she came out here, was going to be a little wild, and then go home and marry you.”

His words hung in the air. I could see the little gears in Chip’s brain working overtime.

“Well, then, where is she, if that’s what she was going to do?” He stared down Joel, as if Joel had all the answers.

Joel just had a little pretzel salt on his chin. He wasn’t Dr. Phil.

I had to stop this.

“I’m sorry, Chip,” I said, “but we can’t really shed any more light on what happened to your fiancée than we already have. She came in here, she made an appointment for the next day, she left. She never came back. We didn’t know anything until we saw it on the news last night.”

His hands were back out of his pockets, and they dangled loosely by his sides. The hangdog look was back. He swung more wildly through emotions than a woman going through menopause.

“I’m sorry; I only wanted to know,” he said.

Joel walked around me and patted him on the back. “That’s all right; don’t worry about it.” He started steering him toward the door.

Chip stopped in the doorway. He looked at each of us and nodded. “Thanks for everything,” he said. “Thanks for telling the police that she was here. At least I know something.”

I wanted to throw him another bone. “She said she was staying at the Bellagio.”

He frowned. “No, no, she wasn’t.”

I tried to remember what she’d said. About being referred by the concierge there. I told Chip as much.

He still wore the frown. “No, we’ve checked all the hotels. There was no Elise Lyon registered anywhere.”

“She told us her name was Kelly Masters.”

He pursed his lips a little, his brows knit into a frown, and he blinked a few times. I was afraid he was going to cry. “No Kelly Masters, either,” he finally said, his voice catching on the name, like it was going down the wrong way.

I was about to ask how he knew about Kelly Masters, but then thought twice about it. He’d already indicated that his father had friends in high places and had information as it developed. At this point, I didn’t want to prolong the visit. I just wanted him out of my shop.