Faking It - Crusie Jennifer (читать книги бесплатно полностью .txt) 📗

“This yahoo I met in Clea’s closet.” Tilda took the painting from Eve and propped it up against the wall on her father’s old mahogany desk. “He stole it for me.”

“Somebody else knows about this?” Gwen said. “Somebody else stole this?”

“He was already burglarizing the place.” Tilda touched the painting, remembering the fun she’d had painting the fat blocky cows and their impossibly fine wings, the thin strokes of gold paint looking like lace on the checkerboard sky. They’d been difficult, but they’d been such joy.

“Where is he now?” Gwen said. “Is he going to talk?”

“No.” Tilda turned away from the cows. “He’s history. Focus on the real problem.”

“He stole the wrong painting,” Andrew said. “That can’t be good. That’s a felony or something. I’ll ask Jeff.”

“No you won’t,” Tilda said, back in charge again. “This is one of the many things Jeff will not want to know about. Not until I get arrested and I need him to defend me, then we tell him.” She looked at the cows, winging their way home, and resisted them. “This one’s a Scarlet, too.”

Gwen sat back. “I thought so. It’s Mason’s. He said he was collecting them.”

“Then he’s going to be really mad when he finds this one gone,” Andrew said.

“It’s okay, Andrew,” Tilda said. “You got a Get Out of Jail Free card with the divorce. You don’t have to play with the rest of us.”

Eve said, “Andrew?” and he went over and sat down beside her.

“I’m here, honey,” he said, putting his arm around her. “Always will be. Tilda knows that, she’s just being cranky.”

Yeah, Tilda thought. That’s probably why nobody puts an arm around me.

Andrew frowned a little. “I can’t speak for Jeff, though. You know lawyers.”

“Jeff will stick,” Gwen told him. “He loves you. You don’t leave the people you love.” She made it sound like a life sentence.

“Don’t worry,” Tilda said. “I’ll figure something out. I will fix this.” She picked up the painting.

“Maybe you can get that guy in the closet to steal again,” Eve said.

Right, that guy who’d called her Vilma. She turned to her mother. “Gwennie, have you ever heard of Vilma Kaplan? Somebody from the late movie?”

“Sure,” Gwen said. “Vilma Kaplan, Bundle of Lust. It’s from an old Mel Brooks movie.”

Tilda closed her eyes. Oh, good. Along with everything else that she’d screwed up, she’d necked with a comedian. “I am never going to see that guy again,” she said to Eve, and went downstairs to bury the cows with the rest of her past.

LEANING AGAINST the wall in one of the Brewery District’s upscale pubs, Davy punched numbers into his cell phone while the mark he’d been playing pool with gloated over the twenty bucks he’d just won. “I may need help,” he said when his best friend answered.

“Beating up Rabbit?” Simon said, his faint British accent slurring over the line.

“No. Rabbit is no longer the problem.”

“He’s not dead, is he?” Simon said, not sounding as though he cared.

“No, just terminally stupid. He gave all my money to a woman.”

“Fair enough. Didn’t you take it from a woman in the first place?”

“That’s the woman he gave it to.”

“Which explains why he robbed you and not me,” Simon said. “He thought he was righting a wrong. Good old Rabbit. The blockhead. What is it you need? I’m in the middle of something here.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Rebecca.”

“Brunettes,” Davy said. “You need a twelve-step program.”

“Whereas your fetish for blondes is-”

“Just good taste. I convinced Rabbit to give me Clea’s account numbers. Now I need her password, which I can get from her laptop.”

“I know nothing about computers.”

“But you know everything about theft,” Davy said.

There was a long silence, and then Simon said, with barely suppressed envy, “You’re going to steal her computer?”

“No,” Davy said. “I just want some time alone with it. Clea’s staying with her next husband, so I went into his place and looked-”

“What do you mean, you went in?” Simon asked, his accent flattening as his voice went tense. “You went in when there were people there?”

“That’s why I got in,” Davy said patiently. “If there hadn’t been people there, the place would have been locked.”

“This is why amateurs should never turn to crime,” Simon said. “You just confessed to aggravated burglary. Are you on a land line or your cell phone?”

“Cell,” Davy said. “And I didn’t steal anything.” Much.

“You were a burglar the moment you entered uninvited. And the presence of people there made it aggravated. Normally that would put you in real trouble, but since you didn’t attack anyone, a good lawyer could probably get you off with only a couple of years.”

Davy thought about bouncing Betty on the carpet and decided not to share.

“The problem is,” Simon was saying, “you’d have to spend those years in prison, you fool. Tell me you wore gloves.”

“It was a spur-of-the-moment deal.”

“AFIS has your prints. Imagine how thrilled the Bureau will be to know their freelance fraud consultant has turned to second-story work. Tell me where you are and I’ll come consult in person.”

“No. You’re on the wagon. What I need to know-”

“I’m not leaving the wagon,” Simon said. “But I’d rather give advice in person than over a bloody cell phone. Besides, I want to meet Clea. If she managed to seduce both you and Rabbit, she has a wide range. Exactly how good is she?”

“In bed?” Davy conjured up the memory again. “Phenomenal. But then you die.”

“You lived. Where are you staying?”

Davy thought about the apartment for rent sign. Maybe it was time to trust in fate. “Right now, nowhere. Tomorrow, over an art gallery, a couple blocks from Clea. German Village.”

“Why there?”

“Strangely enough, there’s a brunette I need to know better. Looks like Betty Boop.”

“Really.” Simon sounded amused. “Perhaps I can help with that, too.”

“No. You’re bored out of your mind and burglary is the only high that does it for you.”

“Whereas you followed Rabbit to Ohio because you have no interest in crime.”

“I came to get my money back,” Davy said virtuously.

“If you wanted your money, you’d have called the Bureau. You’re there because you want the rush. Completely understandable. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“No you will not,” Davy said. “Stay there and tell me how to get into this damn house.”

“Does it have an alarm?”

“I don’t think so. No stickers.”

“Break a basement window at the back of the house,”

Simon said. “They’ll find it eventually but by then the crime scene will be so old, it’ll be useless. Wear gloves. And make sure the apartment you rent has two bedrooms.”

“No,” Davy said, but Simon had already hung up.

Davy jammed his phone in his jacket pocket.

“You gonna play this second game or not, son?” his mark called to him from the pool table.

“Oh, yeah, I’m coming,” Davy said, feigning reluctance. “But I gotta win my money back here. How about upping the stakes?”

“You bet,” the guy said, happily clueless, and Davy tried to ignore the surge in his blood. Hustling pool was not illegal. He was still on the straight and narrow. There was no reason for excitement.

“Your break,” the mark said, and Davy felt his pulse leap and picked up his cue.

DEEP IN the cool basement of the Goodnight Gallery, Tilda stopped at the locked door to her father’s old studio, Spot snuffling anxiously at her feet. She looked at her cows again and heard her father say, “Well, it’s not real painting, but the idiots who liked Homer’s work will buy it.”

Somehow the thought of locking her cows in there seemed wrong. Her father had been right, it hadn’t been real painting, but still…

She crossed the hall, Spot close behind, and opened the door to the storeroom that filled the other half of the spotlessly white basement. When she flipped on the light, there were dustsheets everywhere but no dust; Nadine had been thorough and the air cleaner was doing the rest. She pulled on the nearest sheet and uncovered a wing chair painted with undulating snakes that made funky green and purple and blue stripes across the frame and upholstery. Their hot little eyes winked at her and their tongues curled around their little snakey cheeks, and Tilda grinned back, charmed in spite of herself. She went from dustcover to dustcover, peeking under them to find all of her pre-Scarlet work: a table painted with red dogs with floppy ears, a chest of drawers scrolled with chartreuse snails, several mismatched chairs painted with conga lines of yellow and orange butterflies that flirted at her with pale blue eyes. Spot followed her patiently while she looked under the rest of the covers, finding a different animal batting its eyes at her, daring her to laugh, and she told herself it was just a kid’s junk while she smiled.