“It is.” Mrs. Olafson shook her head. “It’s vile.”
“Boy, if you could sell it to me, you’d never have to look at it again, and I wouldn’t have to…” Davy looked back at the car, and Tilda reached over and hit the horn. I love you, Veronica, Davy thought. “And he’d have the money, too. That’d be good, right?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Olafson said thoughtfully. “He’s been wanting to get the driveway cleaned.”
Davy looked over at the spotless cement. Mr. Olafson’s obsession with cleanliness, control, and disgusting mermaids was not making him someone Davy wanted to meet. “You wouldn’t get in trouble, would you?” he said, suddenly feeling guilty about Mrs. Olafson.
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Olafson said.
Davy got out his wallet and began to count through the bills. “I have an extra ten here and a five and two ones. That would make it two sixty-seven. Do you think-”
Down in the street, Tilda slammed the car door as she got out and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Just a minute, honey,” Davy called, panic in his voice.
“I’ll get it,” Mrs. Olafson said and went inside.
“Really, just another minute,” Davy said, going to the edge of the porch to look beseechingly at Tilda.
Tilda started the car and gunned the motor, and Davy began to picture her in leather again.
Mrs. Olafson came back to the door and handed Davy the painting, and he handed over the bills.
“You can count it,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at Tilda.
“I trust you,” Mrs. Olafson said. “Go.”
“Thank you,” Davy said and ran down the steps to give Tilda the painting. “Here you go, honey,” he said, loud enough to carry back to Mrs. Olafson. “Just one more thing.”
Tilda opened the door and took the painting, and Davy started back up the drive. “Where the hell are you going?” she said, her voice like a knife.
“Just a minute, sweetie.” Davy picked up the tire and waved to Mrs. Olafson who beamed at him in return. Then he headed back to his shrew of a wife, who popped the trunk open for the tire.
Damn, I married well, he thought and got in the car.
WHEN THEY WERE almost to the highway, Davy said, “Pull over up here,” and Tilda obliged. An obedient woman, he thought. God, she’s hot.
“Okay, what-” she said, and he leaned over and kissed her hard, and she clutched at him and kissed him back, and for a minute, Davy forgot his own name. “Oh,” she said, coming up for air. “You’re really good at that. What was it for?”
“You are magnificent,” he said, trying to get his breath back.
“I am?” She hit him with that crooked grin again.
“You do a beautiful bitch,” Davy said. “You got any chains in the attic?”
“You’re disgusting,” Tilda said cheerfully.
“That reminds me.” Davy dragged the painting out of the back seat. It was full of round-bodied, sloe-eyed, rosy-breasted mermaids who swam in a checkered sea, looking inviting and edgy but not unwholesome.
“What?” Tilda said, looking at the painting.
“Mrs. Olafson thought this painting was disgusting,” Davy said, imagining the mermaids bobbing in the sea. “I’m not seeing it.”
“Bare breasts. And they’re not ashamed.”
“My kind of women. They do look a little…” Davy searched for the word. “Aggressive. But in a good way.”
“Poor Mr. Olafson,” Tilda said. “He lost his mermaids for a lousy two-fifty.”
“I went to two sixty-seven,” Davy said, now imagining Tilda bouncing in the sea. “You know, these mermaids kind of look like you.”
Tilda took the painting from him. “You’re projecting, Dempsey. Keep your mind on the job.” She traced one of the foamy waves with her fingertip, looking a little sad.
“You okay?” he said.
“I am magnificent,” she said and put the painting in the back seat again.
When they got back to the gallery, they heard voices in the office. Davy followed Tilda in and saw Eve and Gwen and a rotund younger guy he’d never seen before gathered around a tearful Nadine.
“Oh, no,” Tilda said, and went straight to her niece.
“What happened?” Davy said, looking for blood or broken bones.
“It’s a Poor Baby,” Tilda said, not turning around.
“That miserable little tick Burton dumped her,” Eve said, standing militant in front of her daughter. “I think he should be castrated.”
“Later for that,” the new guy said, his arm around Nadine. “Poor Baby first, revenge later.”
That’s got to be Jeff, Davy thought.
“He was just wrong for you, Poor Baby,” Gwen said from Nadine’s other side. “He had no soul.”
“He was a vampire. Pasty little bastard,” Jeff said. “Poor Baby.”
“But he was so cute,” Nadine wailed.
“This is true,” Tilda said.
Gwen glared at Tilda. “You’re not helping.”
“Poor Baby,” Tilda said obediently. “The thing is, Dine, the good-looking ones are always doughnuts. They’re so pretty they don’t have to develop fiber. Look at Davy. Perfect example.”
“Hey,” Davy said, faking outrage. “I’m full of fiber.”
Nadine sniffed but she stopped dripping tears to look at him.
“I,” he went on, “am clearly a muffin.”
“As in ‘stud’?” Tilda said. “No.”
“Hopeless doughnut,” Gwen said, and Nadine gave Davy a watery smile.
“Muffin,” Davy said, “and to prove it, I’m willing to go find Burton and beat the crap out of him.”
“Absolute doughnut,” Tilda said, turning her back on him. “So what did this Davy-in-training give as his miserable excuse? Poor Baby.”
“Who cares?” Jeff said. “He’s scum. You deserve better. Poor Baby.”
“He said I was too weird,” Nadine said, wincing, and Davy felt like beating up the kid for real.
“Okay,” Tilda said to Davy. “Go get him.”
“No,” Nadine said, sniffing, “I mean, really, that was it for me. I wore the Lucy dress to his gig, and he told me today that I had to stop wearing such weird stuff or it was all over.”
“And you said it was all over?” Tilda said.
Nadine nodded, and Eve said, “Oh, that’s my girl,” while Jeff pounded her on the back and said, “Way to go, kid.”
“Clearly not the kind of guy who deserves a Goodnight,” Davy said.
“He was only a speed bump,” Tilda agreed, “on the great highway of love.”
“I know,” Nadine said, sniffing again. “I’m not really crying for him. I just needed to get it out, you know?”
“Of course,” Gwen said, “you should always get it out,” and Davy wondered if there had ever been any emotion that any Goodnight had ever left unexpressed.
Except for Tilda. He watched her comfort Nadine and wondered what she’d been like when she’d been part of the Rayons, when she’d been singing and laughing with Eve and Andrew. If she’d ever smiled all the time like she’d smiled at him today.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Gwen was saying to Nadine. “I can stay.”
“Where are you going?” Tilda said.
“She’s having a late lunch with Mason Phipps,” Eve said, raising her eyebrows to her hairline. “It’s a day-yate.”
Uh-oh, Davy thought. Clea was not going to be happy about that.
“No it is not,” Gwen said. “He wants to talk about the gallery. And I get free food.” She turned back to Nadine. “Unless you want me to stay.”
Nadine sniffed. “Bring me your dessert if you don’t eat all of it.”
“Good enough,” Gwen said and went out into the gallery.
“Ice cream,” Eve said to Nadine. “I’m thinking Jeff drives and we all go to Grater’s.”
“That would be good,” Nadine said, and sniffed again, but Davy got th
e distinct impression that she was now enjoying herself. Well, good for her.
Jeff stopped by Davy on his way out the door. “Welcome to the family,” he said, offering Davy his hand. “Andrew says you’re helping Tilda with a problem.”
“Family?” Davy said as he shook Jeff’s hand.
“Anybody the Goodnights rope into problem-solving is family,” Jeff said. “Not that I want to know what the problem is until you need bail.”
“Jeff’s a lawyer,” Tilda said.
“Handy guy to have around,” Davy said.
“Hey,” Jeff said. “Tonight we play poker. It’s our standard Sunday-night family bonding. Do you gamble?”
“Why am I sure he gambles?” Tilda said to the ceiling.
Davy looked down into her weird light eyes, and said, “Yes.”
“I play rough,” she warned. “Don’t bet anything you’re not ready to lose.”
“Not a problem,” he said. “I don’t have anything to lose.”
She grinned that crooked grin at him again, her eyes connecting with his, and he felt dizzy for a moment. There was a possibility that he could lose his shirt to this woman. With a great deal of enthusiasm.
But later that night, sitting around a poker table with Tilda, Eve, Gwen, Jeff, Andrew, and Mason, who had somehow escaped from Clea for an hour, Davy felt back in control. Poker was second only to pool in Michael Dempsey’s list of skills his children should have. It clearly hadn’t been on Tony Goodnight’s or Father Phipps’s list at all. The first deal said it all. They picked up cards and sorted them, and every one of them had faces like billboards: Gwen’s face fell when she looked at her hand, Eve smiled and then frowned to hide it, Jeff sighed and shook his head and pulled his money in a little, Andrew tried to keep a stone face but was clearly delighted, Mason leaned back and folded his arms because he thought he had something, and Tilda-
Tilda was looking right at him.
She shook her head and picked up her cards, the only other person at the table smart enough to know that poker was about the people you were playing with, not about the cards you were dealt. That’s my girl, he thought, and watched her play, bluffing nervelessly, losing and winning without batting an eye, and always, always watching the others.
Nadine joined them later and played almost as well as Tilda, but she also had an unfortunate tendency to buy into bluffs. After Davy had taken her for the third time, he said, “Dine, if it seems too good to be true, get out.”
“I’m optimistic,” she said, her chin in the air.
“Smart is better,” Davy said.
The last hand ended when everyone but Eve and Davy were out, even Mason, whose ironclad optimism had been nothing short of astonishing as he lost hand after hand, making a nice match for Gwen, who didn’t even try to hide her reactions to her cards. Eve tried to bluff Davy out of a pot with nothing, which he knew because when Eve had nothing, she tapped her worst card three times and sighed. It was one of the most blatant tells he’d ever seen, and when she did it this time, he saw Tilda close her eyes in sympathy, and he wondered what it must have been like being the sharp one in the family, the one who watched everybody else and played the smart game while the rest went on their feckless way, having fun.
Maybe it was time she had fun, he thought as he raked in the last pot. In fact, maybe it was his duty as a guest to make sure she had fun.
It was only the polite thing to do.
“SO YOU’RE a cardsharp,” Tilda said to Davy after he’d turned all his winnings over to Gwen “for the muffins and orange juice I’ve been bumming off you.” Mason had gone home to Clea, and the rest of the family had drifted off to bed. “A real Cool Hand Luke.”
“Cool Hand Luke was a convict,” Davy said, opening the refrigerator. “Get your allusions right.”
“Okay, you’re whoever was a really sharp poker player.” Tilda tried to think of one. “Maverick.”
“Very good,” Davy said. “When Gwennie was teaching you to stay in character in kindergarten, my daddy, like Maverick’s, was teaching me not to draw to an inside straight.” He held out the orange juice carton. “Drink?”
“Yes,” Tilda said. “Your daddy sounds like an interesting person.”
“With vodka or without?”
“With, please.” She went over to the couch and stretched her legs out in front of her. She had four of her paintings back, thanks to Davy. It was almost a miracle, and when she had all six, she’d build a bonfire and wipe out her past entirely. Onward into the future. No more mistakes.
As long as Davy didn’t arrest her.
He sat down beside her. “Your drink, Celeste.”
She took the glass and sipped. “Very good, Ralph.” She smiled at him, grateful for the paintings and the drink and that he was there in general. He really is a nice guy, she thought. Even if it turns out he is the FBI. “So your dad, what is it he does?”
“He annoys people.” Davy relaxed into the leather next to her. “Speaking of parents, what is it with Gwennie and the teeth?”
“Huh?” she said, not expecting that one.
“The quilt in my room had teeth on it,” he said, “and so did the sampler. What is that?”
“Oh,” Tilda said, regrouping. “Well, I think she had a lot of repressed anger when my dad was alive.” She frowned at him. “That’s a weird thing to ask.”
“They’re weird to look at,” Davy said. “Repressed anger. This is not something you suffer from, Veronica.”
“I’m not living with my dad,” Tilda said. “He was sort of domineering. She loved him, but she didn’t speak up much. And the older we got, the more he tried to control us and the madder she got, so she took up cross-stitch to relax. She did a couple of samplers the way the graphs showed and then she started changing things, and pretty soon there were all these little animals with teeth in them. Which I thought were neat.”
“And the quilts?”
“Toward the end the samplers weren’t helping her relax, so she switched to quilting. And for a while she did these beautiful nine-patch quilts, but then she started skewing the nine-patches and they turned into these crooked crazy quilts and then the teeth started showing up again, so she had to quit those, too.”
“And that’s when she started the Double-Crostics,” Davy said.
“No,” Tilda said, “that’s when she started the paint-by-numbers.”
Davy choked on his drink. “What?”
“Paint-by-number paintings,” Tilda said, grinning as she thought about it. “The kits. She’d paint them and hang them up in the office and he’d take them down. They drove him crazy. But then she started messing with those, too, and eventually-”
“Let me guess,” Davy said. “Teeth.”
“Yep.” Tilda took another drink and watched him. “We must have boxes of those things in the basement. Then she went to crossword puzzles, and when those got too easy, she moved on to Double-Crostics.”
“Any teeth yet?”
“Not so far,” Tilda said. “Actually, she stopped with the teeth right about the time I moved out, and that was seventeen years ago. And now my dad’s dead, so she’s not so mad anymore.”
“Right,” Davy said, smiling at the photos on the opposite wall. He had a great profile, straight nose, strong chin. “You have an interesting family, Matilda.”
He had a great smile, too. In fact, when you came right down to it, he had a great everything. And he’d been wonderful all day, working his butt off to get her painting back, offering to beat up Burton, giving Gwennie the muffin money. And all she’d done for him was screw up his chance to get his money back and fake an orgasm with him on the couch and get testy because he might be the law. She should be grateful that he was the law. Assuming he didn’t send her up the river. “I’m really sorry,” she said.
“About what?” Davy said, looking confused. “Your family? I like them.”
“About your money. And about Friday. You know.” She patted the couch. “Here.” She
took another drink.
“Get over it, Matilda,” Davy said.
“That was an apology.” Tilda got up and poured more vodka into her glass, making the orange juice fade. “A sincere, heartfelt apology.”
“Have you always had this drinking problem?” Davy said.
“No.” Tilda took the bottle back to the couch, drank more of her vodka and orange juice, and then closed her eyes as the alcohol seeped into her bones. “You are great at that. Getting people to give you things.”
“Thank you.” Davy took the bottle from her.
“It’s because you’re in sales, right?” Tilda hit the vodka again. Come on, tell me the truth.
“Sales?”
“You said you were in sales.”
“I said my father was in sales.”
“So what are you in?”
Davy looked at her for a moment. “Sales,” he said, and topped up her drink.
Tilda sighed. “Like father, like son.”
“Not even close.”
She sipped again and waited. Okay, he wasn’t going to tell her about the FBI. She clearly did not have Louise’s skills. At least she was pretty sure she didn’t. “So here’s a question.”
Davy waited, and she smiled at him again, feeling fairly loose in general.
“Question,” he prompted.
“Right.” She took another drink and steeled her nerve. “How bad was I?”
“You were great.” He stretched to put the bottle on the table. Lovely arms, she thought. Lovely lines to his body. That was probably why the FBI hired him. “You have a real flair for reading people,” he said as he leaned back. “I think Mrs. Olafson-”
“No,” Tilda said. “On this couch the other night. How bad was I?”
“You were fine,” Davy said, suddenly cautious.
“Hey,” Tilda said. “I deserve the truth. We’re partners now. Steve and Veronica. Ralph and Celeste. Whoever that was in the closet and Vilma. Tell me the truth.”
Davy sighed. “Okay. You were terrible.”
“Ow.” Tilda slugged back the rest of her glass. “I was hoping for mediocre. You know. Not so good.”
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