“You know, this is the only time that I have actually ever been glad Muse in the House was stolen,” Verie said. “At least it won’t end up gracing Button Lipscomb’s cabana.”
Abruptly, Steve grinned, his good humor completely restored. He hadn’t given a thought to Muse in the House for a while now. The only satisfaction he’d derived from his divorce from Fabulousa was knowing that the one sculpture she wanted the most was the one she couldn’t have. At least, that was one part of his past that wasn’t for sale. And, presumably, never would be.
The Muse in the House theft had joined the ranks of art mythology along with the Chagall theft and the Nazis’ Art Train. Steve rather liked it that way. He liked even more knowing exactly where Muse was even though he could never touch it because he no longer had the key to the vault that contained it. He did have some regrets, however; he wished he could display it in his studio and have the pleasure of telling Fabulousa as much.
He’d thought about how to recover Muse. He couldn’t ask Fabulousa to get it for him. He’d considered hiring people to break in but not only did that feel a little, well, wrong, but the cemetery where the Muse was hidden was one of the most well guarded in the country, and he couldn’t afford a thief of that caliber (the Timmys of the world only came along once in a blue moon). Nope. Steve had come to the conclusion that the only way in was the key, and God alone knew where the only key to the crypt was.
The last he’d known of it, it had been encased in a one-hundred-pound block of butter and was being shipped off to a Lutheran Brotherhood corn-on-the-cob feed held in some Minnesota field. The story had been carried on the local news more than twenty years ago. He’d watched the broadcast in his cell in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he’d been awaiting extradition to New York.
Nope, for all intents and purposes, the Muse was lost to him.
But at least, he thought with another grin, it was lost to Fabulousa, too.
Chapter Nine
4:25 p.m.
The blond guy who’d been bidding for Medusa ambushed Steve three feet from the door. “Mr. Jaax? This is a real pleasure. Let me introduce myself. Bob Reynolds.”
He stuck out his hand, and Steve, a sucker for good manners and not adverse to making nice with someone who’d been about to drop sixty-five thousand on a piece of crap—now that it was cabana fodder, it had been relegated to the realms of “crap”—took it. “Hi, Bob.”
“I’m sure you don’t recognize the name. Heck. You probably get a hundred letters a week, but I’m the guy who’s been hounding you about going to Minnesota to act as grand marshal in that little town’s sesquicentennial.”
Oddly enough, this was actually ringing a bell. Something to do with a parade and snow and—Oh, yeah!
“Verie,” Steve said, as his agent, having finished licking some society columnist’s fingers, sidled up, “this is Bob. Bob, Verie. Bob wants me to go to Minnesota and sit on a snowmobile—”
“An ATV, actually.” Bob smiled at Steve’s blank look. “All-terrain vehicle.”
Steve nodded sanguinely. “An ATV at the head of a parade. In December.”
Verie, bless him, knew his part. Which was to make Steve look gracious. “That sounds very nice. Why don’t you drop us a line with all the particulars?”
“I have!” Bob said and blushed. “I mean, the town has. I’m here representing AMS. American Media Services? We’re interested in doing a segment up there and your inclusion would frankly just make the piece.”
Steve could practically see Verie’s pointy little ears twitch. Even Steve, who was arguably one of the least political creatures around, knew about AMS and its owner, Dwight Davies.
So did Verie. “Really? I would imagine Mr. Davies would be more interested in the taxidermist’s arts than that of someone like Mr. Jaax.”
Oh, yeah. Dwight Davies was a known homophobe. Point for Verie.
“But perhaps with the expansion of his empire, Mr. Davies has decided to begin a corporate collection?” Point having been scored, Verie decided to play nice and dropped the offensive. Corporate collections were meat and potatoes to Verie Meuwissen.
Handsome Bob, who didn’t look the least homophobic but did look horribly embarrassed, eagerly grabbed the lifeline. “Oh, yes! Yes. Of course. I was bidding on behalf of … ah … Mr. Davies. And as future investors in Mr. Jaax’s works”—he let that comment linger a second—”we at AMS are, of course, very excited about the promotional possibilities of having him attend Fawn Creek’s sesquicentennial.” He chuckled.
“They have those for towns?” Steve asked.
“Oh, yes. They’re very popular.”
Steve’s knowledge of small towns, medium towns, hell, anything less than a city, was severely limited despite his propensity, when in his cups, to expound upon his youthful adventures in the Great American Heartland.
“Cool,” said Steve.
“Then you’ll come?”
“No.”
“Steve! Dear boy!” exclaimed Verie, grabbing his forearm and half spinning him away. “A moment please!”
Verie dragged him a few feet away, smoothed his jacket sleeve, and rumbled in a dramatically sotto voce voice, “One oughtn’t piss off the representative of a major media mogul. Besides, a nice feature on some AMS show might just be the thing to jump-start your career.”
“Maybe putting a show together would help that,” Steve suggested, but without too much rancor. Verie and he had done very well over the years. It wasn’t Verie’s fault Steve Was feeling a little itchy lately.
“Listen, Verie. I understand and I appreciate the promo potential here, but lately, I really just want to … Well … work. You know? And I think I oughta do just that While the feeling lasts.”
Verie’s face fell. “Steve—”
“Really.”
With a deep sigh, Verie turned to face Bob, who was hovering eagerly in the background trying not to look like he Was eavesdropping.
“Tell you what, dear boy,” Verie told him. “Send along the information and we’ll see if we can possibly fit it in to Mr. Jaax’s schedule. But I must in all fairness inform you, it doesn’t seem likely. He’s preparing for a show.”
“I understand.” Bob nodded eagerly. “But we’d make all the arrangements and make sure everything went as smoothly as possible for you. Mr. Davies could send his private jet.”
“I don’t like to fly,” Steve said, smiling politely. As far as he was concerned, the conversation was over. His gaze drifted over the top of Bob’s head and stopped dead.
She emerged from the crowd at the door, stomping toward them with her signature runway walk, an oddly sexy jackhammer jolt of foot and heel and hip. Fabulousa.
And she looked, Steve was forced to admit, fabulous. Her hair was still a straight glossy waterfall of tar, her hip bones still jutted like architecture through a peach-colored silk slip, and her skin was still the exultant dead white of an alabaster doll—or an underfed vampire.
Steve looked at Verie. His agent had seen her, too. Steve looked at Fabulousa. Her face had lit with feline pleasure. Steve looked at Bob; he was babbling happily on about making travel arrangements—and then he wasn’t.
With a graceful thrust of her hand—Fabulousa had always been much stronger than she looked—the onetime supermodel straight-armed Bob to the side and planted herself directly in front of Steve. Sitting comfortably atop four-inch matchstick heels she was eye level.
He was amazed he didn’t feel more of a reaction: hands clenching, skin crawling, at least a gag reflex. But he had nuthin’. Huh.
“Steve.” Her full lower lip—and as much as Steve wanted to believe it had been collagen enhanced, he knew it to be completely natural—curved into the sullen-sexy semblance of a smile. “Dar-link boy.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “You picked that up from Verie!”
Fabulousa drew back. Frowned. “What? What is you are talking aboot?”
Her accent, Steve noted, had grown notably thicker with t
he years. But he wasn’t sure it was identifiable as East European anymore. It was weird. Oddly familiar … Wait a minute…. He almost had it….
“‘Darling boy,”’ Steve said slowly, trying to suss it out. “You never used that expression before you met Verie. Verie, you old dog”—he turned and waggled a finger under Verie’s nose—”you didn’t tell me you’d become an NYC pop culture icon.”
Fabulousa’s brilliant green eyes narrowed to kohl-rimmed slits. “You are having a leetle joke. Still, I am pleased to see you. Is good of you to come after so long—”
He had it! “Boris Badenov.”
Verie blinked at him.
“You know,” he said, “from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show?”
“Oh, yeah!” Bob chimed in from where he was disentangling himself from the Louis XV chair Fabulousa had tipped him into. “Boris and Natasha, the Russian spies.”
Verie, raised without the delights of a Rocky and Bull-winkle childhood, scowled and turned to Fabulousa, who, for similar reasons, was also scowling at Bob and Steve, who were smiling at each other in sympathetic accord.
“You look well, Fabulousa,” Verie said, stiffly polite.
It was an understatement. She looked spectacular, as leggy and buff and mean as she had when she’d prowled the pages of Esquire and W and Vogue twenty years ago.
“Sank you,” she purred. “And you, too. You”—she pinned Steve with a smoldering look—”are appearing … not unhealthy.”
The silence drew out a little longer than was comfortable. For her.
“I gave up drinking and smoking,” Steve finally announced, as though he’d just recalled this fact. He nodded. “Years ago.”
Verie stared. He ignored him, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back and forth. An expression of unwilling admiration flickered across Fabulousa’s generally inexpressive face. She coughed it away.
“Really?” She flicked a satiny panel of black hair back with her hand, seeking to recoup her momentary lapse into approval with cold indifference.
But it was too late. She’d already been impressed, and Steve, ever quick to pick up on the subtleties, knew it. That he was lying through his teeth would never have occurred to her, and he knew that, too. Not that Fabulousa would have ever realized this. A major problem in their marriage—aside from money, goals, friends, jealousy, work, fidelity, and money—had been his imagination and Fabulousa’s utter lack of one.
“Well, zen, everything they say about the healthy lifestyle must be true. You look much better than last time I saw you.”
“You mean in your boyfriend the judge’s quarters twenty years ago?” Okay, now he felt an old familiar surge of anger.
“Was it so long ago?” She tapped a perfectly manicured nail against his chest and pouted. “Naughty boy to remind me of my age. But yes, I believe it is.”
He refused to look down at the nail that had begun innocently enough by tapping but was quickly becoming a spirited stabbing.
“Yeah. Well. I wasn’t myself that day.” Steve shrugged. “I feel better now. I sleep better.”
“Really? Yet they say a guilty conscience kept one awake,” Fabulousa purred. “Thieves, for example, must have a terrible time sleeping. How glad I am that you seem to be the exception that proves the rule.”
He turned to Bob, who was looking confused again. “My former wife, the former supermodel Fabulousa, is implying that I oughtn’t to sleep well because she thinks I stole the statue she was holding hostage in her house. It was my seminal work.”
Fabulousa turned a five-hundred-watt smile on Bob. “This is why he tries to run away to Minnesota. Tries and fails.”
Steve continued providing his interpretative services. “It is beyond my former wife’s ability to conceive of anyone escaping her clutches. You will note that I did not say ‘beyond her ability to conceive of anyone wanting to escape her.’ This is because even my former wife, even in that deluded state of self-adoration in which she exists, can’t quite ignore the fact that many people”—he paused, tipped his head, and mused a second—”in fact, most people, want to escape her. Few, however, do.
“I did, though. For a few short weeks and”—he smiled at Fabulousa, who was wavering uncertainly between flying into a rage and laughing derisively—”and it was there, away from … well … her, that I was finally able to find myself, rediscover my talent, and see the new direction my art would take.”
“The Butter Head?” Bob whispered.
Steve smiled approvingly. So the kid really was an art lover. “Yes. The Butter Head.”
“I thought it was lard,” Fabulousa said.
“No”—Steve swung around—”that would be your—”
“Steve has been asked to return to Minnesota!” Verie broke in. “To be grand marshal of a parade.”
“Actually,” Bob said, “it’s as co-grand marshal.”
He wasn’t the main attraction? Well, that hurt.
“Excuse me,” Verie huffed. “If you think Mr. Jaax is sharing the limelight with—”
“With The Butter Head.”
Whatever words any of the trio had been about to say faded away in a moment of unorchestrated wonder.
“The Butter Head,” Steve repeated, staring at Bob. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, joke about something like that, could he? The butter head, the key, the Muse … the last point in the Big Game.
“But they said … they said it had been melted down and used for corn on the cob.”
“I know! I know!” Bob couldn’t have looked any more like a golden retriever if he grew a tail and wagged it. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “Jenn’s mom saved it.”
“Who is Jenn?” Fabulousa demanded.
“Jenn Lind,” Bob said. “The model for the butter head. You might have heard of her?”
The three of them glanced at one another before shaking their heads in unison.
Bob looked a little offended. “That’s okay.” Clearly not. “She’s like the Next Big Thing on cable.”
Fabulousa laughed. “Cable? Are you selling your work on the QVC now, Steve?”
Verie’s breath caught, even Bob paled, but Steve didn’t care. The Butter Head. If he got the key inside it, he could retrieve the Muse. It had been stolen before the judge had divided their property. He could get it adjudged his and, even more important, not hers.
Verie was watching him, paralyzed in morbid fascination.
Fabulousa continued. “But you must go, darling boy! Just t’ink of the promotional possibilities! The Next Big Thing and the Last Big Thing. There is a certain … how is zis? Poetry? No. Symmetry. You always did love symmetry.”
Her words had no meaning. He couldn’t even hear her. All he could hear was her imagined shriek sometime in the near future when he would send her the cell phone picture of him holding Muse in the House. He turned to Bob. “Just tell me where and when, and I’ll be there, Bob.”
Bob’s eyes popped wide. “Really?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He shifted his gaze to Fabulousa, who was shivering with either silent laughter or fury at being ignored. It was hard to tell with Fabulousa. “Well, it’s been great seeing you again after all these years, Fabulousa. Just great. What you’re doing here for charity …” He waved his hand at the room which had begun filling back up. “Special. Really special.”
Verie knew a cue when he heard it.
“Look, the Ackermans! They’ve been pestering me for months to introduce you.” He pointed vaguely into the corner of the room, grabbed Steve’s arm, and pulled him away, the ploy allowing Steve to shrug regretfully as he was forced into the arms of his adoring fans, muttering under his breath, “God, I hate that woman.”
“I know,” Verie said sympathetically.
He smiled. “But I love Minnesota.”
Chapter Ten
4:40 p.m.
December 5, Tuesday
Fawn Creek Town Hall
Fawn Creek, Minnesota
“Well, now, you know,” began Ken Holmberg, leaning back in his chair and knitting his fingers together over his little round belly, “I spoke to the Rapella people this afternoon, and they’re pretty sure they’re going to donate one of those new clamshell ice houses for the winner of the fishing contest.”
Paul LeDuc, newly elected mayor of Fawn Creek, tipped back in his office chair. In actuality, he’d spoken to the Rapella people last week to secure their donation. Ken was blowing smoke and they both knew it. But Ken was one of those guys who had to lift his leg on every idea another guy had and take ownership of it, and because he was the biggest deal in Fawn Creek, people let him.
“Why, that’s real good news, Ken.” He guessed he probably shouldn’t have gushed by adding “real.” He knew better than to overdo the applause but sometimes he still made the outsider’s mistake of using an adjective when none would do.
He’d have to watch his step if he wanted the continued support of the rest of the city council, and in Fawn Creek, town council and Ken Holmberg, owner of Minnesota Hockey Stix, were synonymous. The primary reasons Paul had been voted into office were because he was originally from Canada, and thus had a similar accent, and that he’d once played right wing for the Minnesota North Stars and thus had Ken’s blessing. His most effective campaign promise had been that if elected he’d play in the men’s senior league.
He’d yet to prove himself either on the ice or off. But he would. Ken and he had been the force behind the sesquicentennial, which they were going to use to introduce the rest of the state to the golden opportunities awaiting them here for investment, retirement, and recreation. Fawn Creek was at a crossroads—either people would have to commit themselves to pulling this town from the brink of extinction, or they would have to pull up stakes and let it fade into footnotedom. And among those leaving would be Ken and his hockey stick company.
Ken had been holding on for some time now, ever since the plant expansion he’d thought would bring new prosperity to his little company had failed to produce the anticipated profits. Rumors, coming direct through Paul’s wife, Dottie, who was best friends with one of the officers’ wives over at the bank, were that the company’s pension wasn’t fully funded, the money earmarked for the pension having been used to finance the expansion. It was only a rumor, but it was a rumor that had that pension around ninety thousand dollars shy of what it ought to have had. And while ninety thousand dollars didn’t exactly put Minnesota Hockey Stix in dire straits, any further disappointments or financial troubles and Paul could see Ken saying, “To hell with it.”
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