Ace ran out to get coffee for all of us, which was when I realized Joel wasn’t in the shop yet.
“Hey, Bits.” I poked my head into the office, where she was straightening up the file cabinets. “Where’s Joel?”
She shrugged. “Not my day to watch him.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “But he’s got a client in half an hour, so he’d better be back.”
I dialed his cell, but it just rang and rang, kicking into voice mail. I left a message.
I mulled over where he could be. He said he’d drop Sylvia back at Murder Ink. On a whim, I decided to call over there.
No one answered; there wasn’t even a machine pickup. That was odder than Joel not answering his phone. A business should always have a machine answer if no one was there. And why wasn’t anyone there? They were open till four a.m. Unless having Jeff on the lam was incentive for his staff to take a little vacation.
I mentally kicked myself for not finding out where Sylvia lived or hung out when she wasn’t in her son’s shop, even though there’d been no reason to until now. A walk through the phone book told me nothing. I pulled up a people search on the Internet, but nothing there, either.
I decided I should check e-mail while I was online, since Tim had said he’d send that picture.
He sent three.
The first was a close-up of the tat. So close so I couldn’t tell exactly where on the body it was; it could be the chest or the back, a place with little body fat and taut muscles. There was no hair, but if it had just been done, the hair would’ve been shaved beforehand. It did look professionally done, not by a scratcher-a disreputable tattooist or amateur. The heart was neatly outlined, the letters in careful calligraphy, the clasped hands incredibly well-drawn.
It was practically identical to the one I’d drawn for Elise, except her name was substituted for “Matthew” in this one.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that whoever did this ink had seen my drawing. But my drawing hadn’t been made public until that night, on 20/20.
I clicked on the second picture, the tat slanted and elongated by the angle. The skin looked otherworldly; it must be from the autopsy. I shivered and clicked quickly on the third picture.
It was of the crime scene, the bathroom at Versailles, but the body had been rolled back against the back of the tub, the shirt unbuttoned to reveal the tat in the center of Matt Powell’s chest.
Right in the same place Chip Manning had shown me on his own chest where he wanted the exact same ink.
It struck me then.
Chip must have seen my drawing.
Chapter 34
Because of the quality of the ink, Chip couldn’t possibly have done the job himself. And I couldn’t be sure whether the tat was done before Matt was killed or posthumously. If the skin was alive, it would be pink around the edges. I didn’t know what it would look like if a corpse was inked.
I heard heavy breathing.
Bitsy was looking over my shoulder at the screen. She tapped it with her finger a few times.
“That’s your drawing. Why does it say ‘Elise’?”
“Someone stole the idea.”
“Copycat.”
No kidding.
I twisted a little in the chair so I was at eye level with her. “You didn’t show this to anyone else, did you? I mean, besides 20/20 the other day.”
Bitsy’s chin went up in the air slightly, put out that I would even suggest that. “I didn’t.” It was the emphasis on the “I” that made me take notice.
“Who did, then?” My attempt to keep my tone light wasn’t very successful, and she frowned.
“Ace had a difficult client.”
“Difficult in what way?”
“Difficult in that the guy didn’t know what he wanted except he wanted his girlfriend’s name in a heart. You should be happy. Imitation is the purest form of flattery.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was the client?”
She sighed and went back to the file cabinet, dragging that stool after her. She climbed on top of it, pulled out the top drawer, and shuffled around in the papers until she held up a manila folder. “Here it is.” She hopped down off the stool and flipped through the file. A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “That’s right. After all the crap he put Ace through, he never did get the ink.”
“What’s his name?”
“Matthew Powell.”
I hung my head back and stared at the ceiling. “You’re kidding.”
“No, should I be?” She shoved the folder in front of me, on top of the computer keyboard.
I glanced at the page of notes Ace and Bitsy had both made, as well as the information Matt Powell had provided. “He had a pretty good memory,” I said, pointing at the screen. “He must have taken the design and had it done somewhere else.”
Bitsy’s eyes grew wide. “That’s him? That’s the guy?”
I nodded. “He’s the guy I found at Versailles. When did he come in for the tat?”
“It was a couple days ago.”
It could explain how Chip had seen it, but when I thought about it further, why would Matt have shown his devotion ink to his boss when he was messing around with his boss’s fiancée?
Maybe Chip had seen the ink and killed him. That would explain the blood on his shirt. But I was still stymied as to how he could’ve gotten the tattoo needles. They’re just not something that’s in everyone’s medicine chest or utility closet. Sure, you could order them off the Internet, but that took some thought, and it would take at least a day or two to get them.
I needed Elise. She held the key to all of this, since she was where it all started. But where was she? Had that actually been her blood in the trunk of Kelly Masters’s rental car? And if so, was she dead somewhere or had she escaped?
I was going at this all wrong. I kept focusing on the results of Elise’s actions, not on what made her run in the first place. That could tell me everything. And it just might stop these bodies from popping up.
I had half a mind to call Tim, but he’d just tell me again to mind my own business and stay out of his. Problem was, when I’m the last person to admit seeing a missing woman and I encounter a dead person who is somehow linked to that same missing woman, it becomes more of a personal quest to find out exactly what’s going on.
“Joel’s still not here,” Bitsy announced, her words interrupting my inner monologue. “What do I do with his client?”
I pushed back my chair and got up. “I’ll take him. But keep trying Joel’s cell. I don’t know what happened to him.”
Every time the phone rang, I jumped. Which wasn’t exactly comforting to the guy who was under my needle. He’d conceded to my replacing Joel, but there was that tinge of uncertainty, confirmed whenever I turned off the machine to see if I could hear whether it was Joel on the phone.
Bitsy wasn’t as concerned, but two hours later it was clear that Joel was most definitely missing.
“What is it about this place?” Ace muttered. “Are we all going to end up going missing? Is it going to be some weird thing, like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers or something?”
“If it was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there would be two of each of us,” Bitsy said matter-of-factly, as if this were a definite possibility. “There would be pods all over the place.”
“Listen, guys, I know I haven’t been around much the last couple of days, but I think I know where I can at least find out where Joel might be,” I said, planning to take a trip over to Murder Ink. I’d run into Sylvia over there before; why not tonight?
“He’s a big boy, Brett,” Ace said. “Don’t you think he can take care of himself?”
No, I didn’t. And the look on my face must have said it all, because they both nodded.
“Call us when you find him,” Bitsy made me promise as I went out the door.