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going to be my personal bodyguard?”
    “What’s going on?” Bitsy didn’t know about the tattooed guy.
    I shook my head. “Tell you later. Hold down the fort.” I looked at Joel. “Okay, come on.”
    As we speed-walked, Joel asked, “Do you think this Matt’s the one she had the affair with three months ago?”
    “Seems likely,” I said. “It probably wasn’t really over.”
    “But then why agree to go through with the marriage?”
    Joel didn’t understand. Wedding plans are made, and sometimes it seems like it would just be easier to go through with it than to cancel and suffer the embarrassment and the questions.
    I didn’t have a problem with the latter.
    I just moved across the country.
    Paul hadn’t even tried to come after me. At least Chip was trying to find Elise.
    My family—with the exception of Tim—thought I was running away. Maybe I was, but not in the way they thought. I was running to a new life, a place where I’d have my own identity again. It was so easy with the wrong person to lose that.
    I didn’t even need therapy to figure all that out.
    I couldn’t walk down memory lane now. I wanted to find Matt and have a little private word with him. Getting Chip out of the way might be challenging, but between me and Joel, we could probably do it.
    We passed the Lime Ice Frozen Bar, glanced around at the Häagen-Dazs, Rice & Noodle Works, New York Pretzel, and finally Nathan’s. Joel’s mouth started watering at the sight of the ice cream, but I tugged on his arm and scanned the crowd.
    We didn’t see Chip anywhere.
    “Maybe Matt met up with him and they took off already,” Joel said.
    “You just want to go get some ice cream.” I sighed. “Okay, go, but get me something, too.” Nothing like ice cream before lunch. “I’m going to keep looking.”
    Joel scurried off as fast as a heavy man could.
    I ventured beyond the food court and went back out toward the Palazzo shops that extended just beyond the end of the Venetian’s canal. I took the escalator down, feeling the coolness from the waterfall that splashed into a large circular area at the bottom. I scanned the customers at the gelato place—there weren’t many, since it was still early, but a couple diehards were scooping the creamy Italian ice cream out of cups. I had issues with five-dollar scoops of gelato. Just like I had issues with that waterfall.
    I didn’t have time to get on my environmental soapbox. I looped around the back of the escalators to where the box office for the Blue Man Group squatted in the corner. Not a soul back here. A full circle later and I was going back up the escalator, conceding defeat.
    I felt deflated. I’d missed my chance to find out if Chip’s driver was the subject of Elise’s devotion ink.
    A nudge at my elbow, and I saw Joel’s extended hand offering me a mint-chip cone.
    “Thanks,” I said, absently licking it.
    “Did you see them?”
    “No.”
    My eyes skirted around the tourists as we went back toward the shop, but everyone just blended into everyone else and it became a blur.
    Bitsy was scribbling in the appointment book, the phone tucked against her cheek. Ace was in with Jonathan Roth berg, a client who was in the middle of getting a complicated Harry Potter sleeve—the entire cast with the Death Eater tat from the fifth movie at its center. Because there was so much to it, this was Jonathan’s second visit for the same ink. He had told us he was a rocket scientist, and we couldn’t tell if he was joking. Probably not. Everyone was getting tats these days.
    Joel and I went into the staff room.
    “What was she like?” Joel asked. He leaned against the wall next to me, slurping the ice cream out from the bottom of his cone. I knew he was asking about Kelly, or rather, Elise.
    “Rich girl,” I said simply. “You know the type.” They came to Vegas in droves, the twentysomethings who partied all night and brought their cocktails into the pool with them the next day