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

“Okay.” Nadine ran upstairs and came back with her computer.

“Get me online,” Davy said.

Nadine plugged in the phone line and tapped a few keys. “Anything else?”

“Nope,” Davy said, sitting down. “How’s it going out there?”

“Your dad is amazing,” Nadine said. “Mason is a horse’s ass.”

“I’ll help tomorrow night,” Davy said. “I lied, there is one more thing. Where does Gwennie keep the bankbooks?”

“What are you doing?”

“Embezzling your college fund.”

“Right,” Nadine said. “Like I have one. They’re in the top left-hand drawer.”

“Thank you. Go play.” When the door closed behind her, Davy logged on to his account and looked at the balance. Two point five million, a nice round number. There had been a little more in Clea’s account but he liked round numbers.

For some reason, this one wasn’t much fun. Not as much fun as being without had been. Some people aren’t meant to be rich, he thought. Some people need the edge.

And some people need college funds.

He grinned to himself and began to move money.

“HOW’S IT going?” Tilda said to Gwen when she’d finished selling a chair covered in ducks to a woman who seemed thrilled with it.

“Except for Mason, pretty well,” Gwen said. “We’re not mobbed but…” Her voice trailed off as she saw the painting Tilda held up. “Where’d you get that?”

“Mason’s storeroom,” Tilda said. “Look familiar?”

“Of course,” Gwen said. “It’s a Homer Hodge.”

“No, it’s a Gwen Goodnight,” Tilda said.

“No,” Gwen said. “I painted the kits. Homer painted those.”

“Gwennie, I know…” Tilda said and then stopped as light dawned. “Oh, hell, Homer was your Louise.”

“Not really, dear,” Gwen said. “Homer never had sex.”

“Davy was right,” Tilda said. “Group therapy. Now.”

“He was like the Double-Crostics,” Gwen said. “A different place to go, away from reality. And then I got tired of him, and I quit.”

“Dad must have been upset.”

“Yes,” Gwen said, smiling.

“You didn’t tell me,” Tilda said. “You let me move out thinking Homer was real.”

“I wasn’t too proud of him,” Gwen said. “It was those damn paint-by-numbers. Once I started to mess with them, Tony decided I was a great primitive painter, but that wasn’t enough, he had to be Brigido Lara and create his own art dynasty. He kept saying it would be Grandpa Moses and he’d have exclusive rights.” She sighed. “He wouldn’t even let Homer be female, damn him.”

“What happened?” Tilda said. “He told me that he and Homer had a fight.”

“They did,” Gwen said. “He came up with the child-of-Homer idea, and I could see him roping you into the fraud, too, and he was already making your life miserable with that damn Goodnight legacy. I kept saying, ‘Why can’t we just tell people the truth?’ and he’d say, ‘Because the truth won’t make us rich, Gwennie.’ He was getting damn good money for those Homers, but it wasn’t enough. He had to have Scarlets, too.”

“So you stopped and I started,” Tilda said. “That’s why he told me not to tell you.”

“I didn’t know until you left,” Gwen said. “I didn’t know until I went downstairs and saw that last smeared painting. He signed that one for you, you know. He sold it anyway.”

“I can’t believe you never told me you were Homer. You sent me money so I didn’t have to come back home, but you never told me you were Homer.”

“I wasn’t,” Gwen said. “He was just a mask. Bad drag, as Andrew would say. He didn’t fit very well. I’m just not male.”

“Yeah, but that’s not why you didn’t tell me. You knew I’d stay if I knew. I’d have gone on painting the Scarlets if I’d known you’d painted the Homers.”

“Don’t give me more credit than I deserve,” Gwen said. “I didn’t protect you. You painted those beautiful paintings and he made you put somebody else’s name on them and I didn’t see it, I didn’t stop him. Just another part of the Goodnight nightmare.”

“It’s not all a nightmare,” Tilda said.

Gwen lifted her chin. “Are you going to teach your children to paint?”

“Yes,” Tilda said. “But I’m not going to teach them to forge. That’s done. That ended with me.”

“So you’re leaving again,” Gwen said.

“No,” Tilda said. “I’m staying. That’s one of the many things Davy has done for me. He gave me back the gallery. We can do some good things here. And I want to start painting again, my paintings. I’m going to try to get more mural commissions close to home. I want to stay home.”

“I don’t,” Gwen said. “I want to leave.”

“Oh,” Tilda said. “Okay.”

“I’ve been here for thirty-five years,” Gwen said.

“Definitely time to leave.”

“I’ll come back.”

“It’s okay, Mama,” Tilda said. “It really is.”

“I don’t know where I’m going, of course,” Gwen said.

“I think it’s someplace with a boat.”

“The boat’s like Homer,” Gwen said, turning away. “Not real. This is real.” She smiled at a woman who was approaching with a painting, and Tilda widened her eyes, when she saw what it was.

“We’re selling Finsters?” she said to Gwen.

“Michael’s selling Finsters,” Gwen said. “I’m just taking the money. Those Dempseys can sell anything.”

“Right,” Tilda said. Davy had her Scarlet somewhere. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“Oh, let’s not,” Gwen said, and rang up the Finster.

DAVY CROSSED the wide, white echoing space of the half empty storeroom, feeling pretty damn good about the world in general. He flipped back the quilt on the Temptation Bed. Five paintings, the sixth one in his hand, finally together again. He took the one he had out of the box and leaned it against the wall, and propped the other five up beside it, one long row of Scarlet Hodges. Then he stepped back.

Cows, flowers, butterflies, mermaids, dancers, and the new one, the apartment building in the city. He looked again and realized that the paintings fit together in sequence, the cows flowing into the flowers that blew into the butterflies. The only one out of place was the city, that belonged at the beginning, and when he picked it up to move it, he looked at it closer.

It was the Goodnight building. All the furniture that he’d been hauling for the past week came back to him, and all the joy and light in them now before him in the Scarlet paintings.

“You are kidding me,” he said and put it down at the beginning of the sequence, watching the progression from city to country to sea to night sky, and wondering how in hell he had missed it before that Tilda had painted them.

He sat down on the bed and thought, She’s a crook and a liar and she’s played me for two solid weeks. Jesus.

He’d never wanted her more.

He heard her step on the stair and sat back on the bed waiting for her, and when she came through the doorway, wearing that beat-up Chinese jacket, her eyes pale behind her bug glasses, her curls standing up like little horns, she took his breath away.

Then she caught sight of the paintings, all lined up in a row.

“Hello, Scarlet,” he said.

UPSTAIRS, CLEA was having a miserable time.

First, Mason was not paying any attention to her. He was wearing that ridiculous blue brocade vest that she’d hunted all over Columbus to find for him, and he was acting like a circus ringmaster. He’d even bought her an ugly chair painted with sunflowers and birds, and what the hell was she supposed to do with that? She was ready to put up with a lot from the men who married her, but she did expect some dignity. Cyril had had dignity, she thought now with regret. If only he’d had money, too, he would have been the perfect husband.

Plus Thomas the Caterer was acting strangely. He kept glaring at her across the canape‘s. He’d never been friendly, but that was okay, he was the help. Maybe he had indigestion; the buffet was a little greasy. Maybe he had a headache; those bruises didn’t look good. Maybe she didn’t care, she just really wished he’d stop giving her the evil eye. It was distracting.