“I give her two hundred,” Tilda said.
“Good girl.”
“Why?”
“Because once she has the money in her hand, it’s going to be really hard to give it back. If you hand it over while you’re looking for the second bill, she’ll take it automatically and we’ll have her.”
“We can’t just offer her the money?”
“Yes,” Davy said. “We can. That’s what I will do. If that doesn’t work, you come up.”
“Okay.” Tilda looked a little uneasy. “One. Betty. Ditz. Money.”
“Two is I look at my watch. You come up and tell me we’re running late and we have to go.”
Tilda nodded. “Am I nice?”
“Take your cue from me. If I call you Veronica and act like I’m afraid of you, be a bitch.” Tilda sighed. “If I call you Betty and snarl, you grovel. We’re putting a time lock on the deal, and if the mark doesn’t hurry up, he’ll lose it.”
“Time lock. Okay. What’s three?”
“I put my hands behind my back, and you come up and be the enemy.”
“The enemy,” Tilda said.
“If I can’t get the mark on my own, I’m going to have to give him a reason to bond with me,” Davy said. “The fastest way to do that is for the mark and me to confront an enemy together. That’s you.”
“Okay,” Tilda said. “What do I do?”
“Take your cue from me again. If I call you Veronica and cringe, say I couldn’t get the painting, whatever, bitch me out. Say you knew I couldn’t do it. Bully me.”
“And that works how?” Tilda said, frowning at him.
“If the person at the door lives with a bully, he’ll side with me. Now if the person at the door is the bully, I’ll call you Betty and you come up whining.”
“I didn’t whine in the closet.”
“No, you didn’t. Be as annoying as you can be without challenging me. Put me in a position where the guy at the door thinks I should be bullying you. Whine that we don’t need the dumb painting, that we should be spending that money on you.”
“Okay, I think I’ve got it.” Tilda sat frowning for a minute and then nodded. “So Betty’s a ditz, and Veronica’s a bitch, and Vilma’s a slut. I had no idea you thought so much of me.”
“You’re not concentrating, Matilda,” Davy said. “I’m going to try to work it so that you don’t have to come up at all. It’s better if we can just buy the damn things. And no matter how we do it, the fewer recognizable faces associated with this mess, the better.” He looked into her pale blue eyes and lost his train of thought for a minute. “You are memorable, Celeste.”
“Oh,” Tilda said. “I can fix that, Ralph. Wait a minute.”
She got out of the car, and Davy slid down in his seat and thought, Now what? When she still wasn’t back fifteen minutes later, he opened the door to go find her and there she was.
She’d slicked her curls down into a smooth bob and taken off her glasses. She was wearing a pink sweater that fit very well and a green dotted scarf around her neck and she looked neat and respectable and sort of Yuppie and completely unlike herself.
“I’m impressed,” Davy said. “What did you do?”
Tilda slid back into the front seat. “Mousse, eye makeup, dark contacts, Eve’s sweater, scarf, and skirt. Now can I go up to the door with you?”
“No,” Davy said. “You still stay in the car. But I am really impressed.” And turned on. Hello, Vilma.
“Easy,” Tilda said, and picked up her bag and pulled out the first card. “Let’s go see Mrs. Susan Frost. She has a lovely Scarlet of butterflies for which she paid five hundred dollars. She’s in Gahanna. Take 670 east.”
TWENTY MINUTES later, Davy pulled up in front of a tidy little ranch house in Gahanna. “Okay. Got the money?”
Tilda opened her billfold and picked out ten very crisp hundred-dollar bills. “Simon isn’t a counterfeiter, is he?”
“No,” Davy said. “He doesn’t have that much concentration. Why?”
“Because these are his,” Tilda said. “From your rent.”
“His rent,” Davy said. “I haven’t seen that room since he got here. Give me five of them in case I can do this without you.”
“It’s a painting of butterflies,” Tilda said, handing over the bills. “You sure you don’t want me to come up with you?”
“Nope.” Davy opened the door. “Stay in the car and watch me. If you come up, I’m your husband Steve.”
“Okay,” Tilda said, clearly humoring him.
A tight-lipped woman about Gwennie’s age answered the door, and Davy smiled at her and discarded the idea of asking for donations of paintings. This one would want money and she’d gouge them for all she could get. “Mrs. Frost?”
“Yes,” she said suspiciously.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Steve Foster. You don’t know me but my wife’s aunt used to visit you here with a friend.” He shook his head. “I can’t remember the friend’s name.”
“So?” Mrs. Frost said.
“I’m sorry, I’m telling this so badly.” Davy stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled at her, his best I’m-an-idiot smile. “I guess I’m nervous.”
“What is it you want?” she said, but her mouth relaxed a little.
“My wife’s aunt’s coming into town today,” Davy said, going earnest on her. “It’s her sixtieth birthday and she’s been really good to Betty, and, when she was here years ago, she saw this butterfly painting, and she told Betty all about it, a big checkerboard sky and lots of beautiful butterflies. She said she looked at it the whole visit and she used to dream about it at night. She really loved it.”
“I think I remember her,” Mrs. Frost said, the suspicion easing from her face a little. “Was her friend Bernadette Lowell?”
“Maybe,” Davy said, watching her face, smiling. “That sounds about right. Betty would really like to buy that painting for her aunt, but she’s really shy, that’s Betty down in the car…” He turned and waved at Tilda. “It would make her so happy, and it’d make me so happy to make her so happy-”
“I don’t even know what happened to that painting,” Mrs. Frost said, distracted, looking behind him.
“Hi,” Tilda said, coming to stand beside him, smiling and confident, and he put his arm around her.
“Don’t be shy, Betty,” he said, and Tilda hunched her shoulders under his arm. “Mrs. Frost isn’t even sure she has the painting. She hasn’t seen it in a year-”
“Oh, but we’ll pay for it,” Tilda said, looking slightly goony as she dug in her bag. “I know we’re interrupting you-” She came up with a hundred-dollar bill and Mrs. Frost’s eyes swiveled right to it. “That’s not enough.” She jabbed it at Mrs. Frost, who took it, and then went back to her bag. “I’m so sorry, I know I have the other one in here…”
“Hey.” Davy squeezed her shoulder a little. “She’s not even sure she has it. Maybe-”
The vague look on Mrs. Frost’s face had sheared off into avarice as she looked at the hundred in her hand. “Let me look upstairs in the attic,” she said and was gone, taking the money with her.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” Tilda said, her head practically in her bag.
“It’s okay, honey.” Davy patted her shoulder and wondered how she knew to stay in character when he hadn’t told her to. Maybe he’d been wrong about Tilda. Maybe Michael Dempsey could have turned her into a crook. Damn good thing she hadn’t been born a Dempsey. “Don’t worry, she’s looking for it,” he said and Tilda turned her face to his and smiled, as open as the sun, and he tightened his arm around her and was even more grateful that she hadn’t been born a Dempsey.
“Oh, I hope she finds it.” Tilda dug in her bag again. “Wait, here it is.” She held up another hundred.
“That’s good,” Davy said. “You hold on to it and try to calm down.”
They sat down on the top step and Tilda talked about her aunt and how happy she’d be to see the painting, and Davy left his arm a
round her and let the sun seep into his bones and thought, Damn, I’m happy.
“This it?” Mrs. Frost said from behind them about fifteen minutes later, and Davy looked up to see a dusty eighteen-inch painting, full of the wickedest-looking butterflies he’d ever seen.
“That’s it!” Tilda sprang up. “Oh, that’s exactly the way Aunt Gwen described it. Oh, this is so wonderful. And look…” She held the second hundred out. “I found the other hundred.” She pressed it into Mrs. Frost’s hand.
“You know, we paid over a thousand dollars for this painting,” Mrs. Frost lied through her teeth.
“Oh.” Tilda looked devastated as she turned to face him. “Steve, we can’t…”
“Well, now, wait a minute, honey,” Davy said, and got out his wallet. He counted out a twenty, a ten, and four ones. “We can go up to two thirty-four,” he said, offering Mrs. Frost the bills. He looked apologetically at Tilda. “We can just eat at home instead of taking Aunt Gwen out to Bob Evans. Your cooking’s better than eating out anyway.”
“Oh, Steve,” Tilda said, putting her head down. Davy could have sworn she blushed.
“Okay,” Mrs. Frost said, taking the bills out of his hand, probably to get the two of them off her front porch before they got any ickier. “Here you go.”
“Oh, thank you!” Tilda said, grabbing the painting. “Oh, my aunt is going to be-”
Mrs. Frost shut the door in her face.
“-so happy,” Tilda finished, still sweetness and light.
“Come on, honey,” Davy said, taking her arm. “Let’s go get Aunt Gwen.”
When they were in the car, Tilda said, “She did not pay a thousand dollars for this.”
“That’s okay. Neither did you.” Davy handed the five hundreds she’d given him back to her and started the engine. “About those butterflies.”
“Boy.” Tilda angled the painting to catch some of the sunlight from the window. “I haven’t seen this for fifteen years.”
“Scarlet must have been a little annoyed when she painted them,” Davy said, pulling out into the street. “They look like they could strip a cow faster than piranha.”
“Oh.” Tilda looked at them closer. “They are sort of edgy, aren’t they? Well, Scarlet had issues.”
“You still want to try the next one right away?” Davy said.
“No,” Tilda said. “My heart should be out of my throat by tomorrow. That is possibly the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”
Davy looked over at her, surprised. “I couldn’t tell. You were really good.”
“Really?” Tilda said.
“Quite an actress.”
“That’s Gwennie,” Tilda said, looking back at the butterflies. “Eve and I could both do Lady Macbeth in kindergarten. Nadine could do it even earlier. You should hear ‘All the perfumes of Arabia ’ with a lisp. She was so cute.”
“Yeah.” Davy stole a glance at her profile as she studied the painting. “Runs in the family.”
She turned to him. “You were damn good yourself. Gwennie couldn’t do a character better. You were amazing.”
You haven’t seen anything yet, Velma, Davy thought.
“I really am grateful,” she told him.
“My pleasure,” he said and kept his eyes on the road.
❖ ❖ ❖
TILDA HAD braced herself for another pass that night, but Davy left with Simon to do God knew what and she felt oddly bereft. They should have celebrated or something. Nadine showed up shortly after they were gone, on her way to sing with Burton ’s band, and handed over Steve, who had a bleeding gash across his nose.
“What happened?” Tilda said, appalled.
“He met Ariadne on the way up the stairs,” Nadine said, shaking her head at him.
“And she attacked you, poor baby?” Tilda cuddled Steve’s little furry body.
“No,” Nadine said. “He jumped her and tried to, uh, well, hump her.”
Tilda stopped cuddling to look into his beady, clueless eyes. “Steve, she’s a cat.”
“And he’s a guy,” Nadine said. “Which reminds me, I’m late to meet Burton. Where’s Davy?”
“He and Simon went out,” Tilda said, still not sure what to do about Steve. “They’ll be back soon.”
When Louise got home at midnight, Steve’s nose was better, and Simon and Davy were still gone, but five minutes later, they turned up, as if on cue. “That was lucky,” Tilda said as Simon and Louise faded upstairs. “Lucky, my ass,” Davy said. “He had one eye on the clock all night. She must have told him when she was getting off work.” He went upstairs then, and when she followed an hour later with Steve, he was fast asleep, looking like a fallen angel in her bed.
Right, Tilda thought. Lucifer, right here in my sheets. He did not learn to scam people in heaven. But the next morning, after she’d taken Steve out for his morning Dumpster encounter, she found out Davy might be on the side of the angels after all.
“Good morning,” she said to Gwen and Eve when she got to the office. “What’s new?” She poured a glass of pineapple-orange juice as Steve attacked his food bowl, and then she turned to find them watching her. “What?”
“Louise had a talk with Simon last night,” Gwen said.
“You talked?” Tilda said, raising her eyebrows at Eve.
“He’s with the FBI,” Eve said, and Tilda sat down hard in the desk chair, gripping her juice glass like death.
“What’s he here for?” she said.
“He’s here because he’s working with Davy,” Eve said.
Tilda swallowed. “Davy’s FBI?”
Eve nodded. “Louise found that exciting. Then I woke up this morning and realized what it meant.”
“Tell me you’re being nice to Davy,” Gwen said to Tilda. “Don’t make him mad.”
“I’m not making him mad.” Tilda bit her lip. “Well, I haven’t made him mad lately. You know, that would explain why he was so good at scamming that painting. If he’s FBI, he probably knows all there is to know about crime.”
“How is he on art fraud?” Gwen said grimly.
“He was asking a lot of questions about it,” Tilda said. “But I think it was general information. I don’t think he’s here for… me.” She swallowed. “I mean, we met burgling Clea’s closet, he couldn’t have planned that.”
“So what was he doing in Clea’s closet?” Eve said. “The FBI is investigating Clea?”
“I don’t think so,” Tilda said. “He told me she’d made his financial manager embezzle all his money and he’s here to get it back. It sounded personal, not professional.”
“If he’s FBI, why doesn’t he have her arrested?” Eve said.
“I don’t know, Eve,” Tilda said, still trying to wrap her mind around the new information. “Maybe it’s part of a plan. He’s a devious son of a bitch.”
“Don’t get angry with him,” Gwen said. “We need him to like us.”
“Well, hell, I slept with him,” Tilda said. “You’d think someplace in there he’d have mentioned something like the FB-fucking-I. Are we sure Simon wasn’t just trying to impress Louise into bed?”
“Louise was in bed,” Eve said, looking at the ceiling. “There were handcuffs. Nice ones. Louise asked him where he’d gotten them.”
“Great,” Tilda said. “Tonight have Louise ask him what he’s here for.”
“She can’t,” Eve said. “It’s Sunday. She doesn’t exist again until Wednesday.”
“She’s not supposed to exist here at all,” Tilda said. “Are you going to tell him who you are?”
“No. It turns out he has a thing about sleeping with women who are mothers. If I tell him, he’ll be furious.” She sighed. “I’m thinking maybe Louise won’t be back on Wednesday. I’ll leave her at the Double Take.”
“Well, figure out where the hell she is tonight because Simon’s going to want to know.” Tilda put her juice glass down, not thirsty anymore. “Men tend to miss women who get to the handcuff stage by the second night
.”
“I’m going to miss him, too,” Eve said miserably, and Tilda thought, You’re going to? Not Louise?
“Miss who?” Nadine said, coming in from the hall. “Steve, baby, poochie, how’s the nose?”
Steve lifted his head from his food bowl, barked once, and went back to eating.
“Doesn’t he have a beautiful voice?” Nadine picked up the orange juice carton. “So who’s leaving?”
“Nobody’s leaving, baby,” Eve said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “How was singing with Burton last night?”
“The singing part was good,” Nadine said, pouring her juice. “The Burton part, not so. He wants to see me today, though, so maybe he’s sorry.”
“What did he do?” Eve said, moving into dangerous mother mode.
“Well,” Nadine said, sitting down at the table. “He acts like he’s this big rebel, walks on the wild side, but it turns out he’s pretty conservative after all. He didn’t like the Lucy dress at all.”
“What a fool,” Eve said. “You look great in the Lucy dress.”
“I know.” Nadine sounded perplexed. “I think I may have misjudged him. Men are so seldom what they seem to be.”
“Tell me about it,” Tilda said, thinking of Davy upstairs, asleep in the security of federal employment. She picked up her orange juice glass, “I have to go work. I start that Monet in New Albany tomorrow.”
She went down to the basement, Steve with her in case Ariadne decided to come down to the gallery. She really didn’t think Davy was going to arrest her, she wasn’t even sure he was really FBI, but he was still a danger. She locked herself in her dad’s studio, cut a piece of foam core board to dimensions in ratio with the wall in New Albany, and began to lay in the colors for the bathroom lilies while she obsessed on the question. “You’d think he would have told me,” she said to Steve, who lay with his chin on his paws, gazing patiently up at her. “I told him I painted murals. But is he honest with me? No, he says he’s in sales. He consults. What the hell is that, consults!” She was still obsessing when somebody knocked on the door two hours later.
“What?” she said when she opened the door, and was only marginally relieved to see it was Andrew. “Oh. Hi.”
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