No. Michael would sell everything they had including Steve and then leave with the money. Sweet man, but completely immoral.
Across the room, Nadine was smiling and laughing, too, and selling furniture, and for a moment, Gwen could see Tony in her, or at least his charm. Then the woman Nadine was laughing with came over and paid a hundred dollars for a footstool painted with dancing cats and Gwen thought, She got his gift for selling damn near anything, too.
She smiled at the woman and took her money and looked around for Mason. He was talking to a graying man in a suit about a table covered in red beagles. Gwen could have sworn she heard him say “investment” clear across the room.
It was going to be a long night. My gallery for a piña colada, she thought, and went to rescue another customer.
THE BASEMENT window was still broken so Tilda and Davy got in without a problem, and it was like old times, climbing the stair to Clea’s closet in the dark.
“Very nostalgic,” Davy said, echoing Tilda’s thoughts. “Go on upstairs to the room with the paintings and find your Scarlet. I’ll hit Clea’s bedroom for the laptop.”
“Okay.” Tilda looked up the next dark staircase with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
“Unless you want to search the closet with me,” Davy said. “That’s always interesting for us.”
“Upstairs it is,” Tilda said, and spent the next hour on the next floor with a penlight, flipping through dozens of wrapped paintings looking for eighteen-inch-square paintings or something that might be an eighteen-inch square framed. Some of the paintings had been clumsily unwrapped, and she gave in to curiosity and looked.
There were some nice pieces, but nothing startling. As a collector, Mason didn’t have much flair, which was pretty much in line with the rest of Mason, poor man. Maybe Gwennie could liven him up some.
She found the last square painting, carefully unwrapped a corner of it, and saw a checkered night sky, but not one of hers. What the hell? she thought and unwrapped it completely. It was eighteen inches square with a blue checked sky, but it was a forest scene, and she’d never painted a forest. She moved the penlight to the corner to make out the name, printed in block letters in the lower right corner: Hodge.
Huh, she thought. Homer. I never saw this one. She’d forgotten that she’d copied the checkerboard skies from Homer, maybe because she’d liked doing them. Well, that made sense. She was a forger. She moved the penlight over the painting to see what else she might have copied. The trees certainly weren’t anything she’d have done, but in between the trunks were little animals, and she’d always liked painting animals, although not like these, they were too small and they had…
Tiny sharp white teeth.
Chapter 16
“O H, GOD,” TILDA SAID, and sat down on the floor. It couldn’t be. It was a coincidence. Maybe Gwennie had gotten the idea for the teeth from Homer. Except that Gwennie had been embroidering teeth long before Homer showed up. Now we’re going to have to steal back all the Homers, she thought and then realized the impossibility of it. Homer had painted dozens and dozens of paintings. No, Gwennie had painted dozens and dozens. Some were in museums. There was no way she could get them all back.
Gwennie was Homer. That was enough of a mind-bender right there, even without the museums. Tilda shoved herself up off the floor and rewrapped the painting to take it with her. One floor down, she found Davy waiting for her. “I couldn’t find-” she began and then she saw what he was holding, a package about twenty inches square.
“This it?” he whispered, handing it to her. “Believe it or not, it was actually in her closet this time.”
She pulled the painting out of the frame-store package by its cheap new frame and saw the Goodnight building. “This is it,” she said, sadness seeping into her bones. The first Scarlet, the start of the whole mess. Except not, because there was Gwennie.
“Are you okay?” Davy whispered.
She stuffed the painting back into the box before Davy noticed that Scarlet had painted the gallery building. “Boy, what a relief,” she whispered, trying to fake happiness. “I can’t thank you enough. And now you’ve got your money and you can go.” When he didn’t say anything, she said, “You did get your money, didn’t you?”
He looked down at her, his face hard to read in the dark hall. “No. I’ll have to think of something else.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it. “I’ll help you. Whatever it takes.”
“Good,” Davy said. “What’s in the other package?”
“A souvenir for Gwennie,” Tilda said. “Let’s go home.”
WHEN THEY got back to the gallery, Davy carried the wrapped Scarlet into the office behind Tilda. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with her, but something had happened, and it wasn’t good. It had to be the painting she was carrying, another wrapped square, so maybe she’d found a seventh Scarlet, maybe there were more to steal. Maybe it wasn’t time for him to go yet.
That was not as annoying as it should have been.
Tilda went out to Gwennie, and across the room, Nadine saw Davy and waved. He motioned her over.
“Did you get the painting?” she said when she came in. “Is that it?”
“Yes,” Davy said, watching Tilda. “I need your laptop.”
“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 canapé‘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.
And then Ronald had shown up and tried to take her arm. Honest to God, men. She’d whispered, “Not here,” to him and shot a glance at Mason, but fortunately he’d been all caught up in his own circus and wasn’t paying any attention to her.
“I found out something about the gallery,” Ronald whispered to her, and she let him steer her toward the canapés.
“There’s something funny about the Scarlet Hodge paintings,” Ronald told her when he had a plate full of finger food. “It isn’t just that somebody’s buying them, it’s that there’s no information on them at all. One newspaper article and then nothing. Tony Goodnight sold them off and never mentioned her again.”
“She died,” Clea said, exasperated with him.
“No death certificate,” Ronald said, and bit into a shrimp.
“So?” Clea caught Thomas glaring at her again and said, “Stop that,” to him. When he’d smoothed his face out again, she turned back to Ronald. “That’s it?”
“If there’s no death certificate,” Ronald said, “she didn’t die.”
“Maybe she died someplace else,” Clea said. “Maybe-”
“I don’t think she exists,” Ronald said. “These shrimp things are really-”
“What do you mean,” Clea said, “she doesn’t exist?”
“No birth certificate, either. Not for Homer or Scarlet.”
“Who’s Homer?” Clea said, losing patience.
“Scarlet’s father,” Ronald said. “The Goodnight Gallery made a killing with Homer, but then they stopped and switched to Scarlet and then they stopped that. And the gallery pretty much went downhill from there. You were right, there’s something going on here.”
“There is?” Clea looked at him with complete approval for the first time since he’d stolen her money back. “Ronald, you are wonderful.” Ronald flushed and forgot the shrimp. “Clea, I-”
She pressed his arm. “Find out what you can and come see me tomorrow morning at ten.” She looked up at him under her lashes. “In my bedroom.”
“Right,” Ronald said, almost dropping his plate. “I’ll get right on it. I-”
He kept talking but Clea looked past him and saw Mason with Gwen again.
“I have to go talk to people, Ronald,” she said, patting him on the arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Clea,” he said, sounding
angry, but that was his problem. She drifted toward Mason, a smile plastered on her face. He was going to propose by the weekend, or she was going to take steps. And if this damn gallery got in her way, well, she’d take it down with whatever Ronald was digging up.
And she’d take Gwen Goodnight down with it.
DAVY WATCHED as Tilda stayed frozen in the doorway, staring at him.
“Figured it out, did you?” she said finally, sounding grim.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier,” Davy said, hoping to make her smile. “I was really thick. It was obvious.”
“It is now,” Tilda said. “It’s like Louise. Once you know the truth, it’s always obvious.” She sounded miserable, which was a lousy aphrodisiac.
He patted the bed beside him. “Stop looking like death and come here.”
Tilda sighed and crossed the room to sit beside him. She held up her wrists. “Okay. Put me in jail.”
Davy stared at her wrists, distracted. “If that’s for handcuffs, thank you, I’ll run right out and get some, but jail is not where I’ll be taking you.”
Tilda shook her head. “I know you have some. Your cover’s blown, too. Simon told Louise you work for the FBI.”
Davy closed his eyes and thought about strangling Simon.
She let her hands drop. “And I brought you here. That’s how good I am. I brought the Feds to my own crime scene.”
Davy took a deep breath. “Could that possibly have been the reason you’ve been saying no to me for the past two weeks?”
“Well, it didn’t help,” Tilda said. “I kept thinking I’d say something and you’d-”
“Do what? Arrest you on the spot? Coitus apprehendus? I’m going to kill Simon.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve been carrying this secret,” Tilda said, looking at the Scarlets.
“Sure I do. Seventeen years.” Davy shook his head. “Look, you can relax. Louise got it wrong. We are not Feds. They wouldn’t have us as a gift. Every now and then they call and ask for some input, but we are not agents. We don’t arrest people. Your secret is safe.”
Faking It d-2 Page 27
