Jennifer Crusie - Faking It

Right. She stepped sideways, and he eased down the wall with her, his hand now warm on her back as the closet door opened.

She heard Clea shove the clothes aside where they’d been standing, and her entire life passed before her eyes: faked paintings and forged murals interspersed with glimpses of family. She moved her head a fraction of an inch toward the man standing between her and ruin, just enough that her forehead touched his shoulder in the dark. She was always the one who rescued, but tonight, he could do it. He was as bad as she was, probably worse, he needed the good karma points, he could get them out.

Clea stopped pawing through her clothes and shut the closet door, and Tilda inhaled in shuddery relief, smelled soap and cotton, and tried not to shake. When she heard the door close outside, he said, “Here,” and opened the closet door. But it’s so safe in here, she thought, and followed him out.

“Well,” she whispered when they were out in Clea’s bedroom again, “I really apprec-”

“Fuck,” he said, and she followed his eyes to the desk. The laptop was gone. “Sorry,” he said to her, keeping his voice low this time.

“Are you kidding?” Tilda said. “I’ve been wanting to scream that for the past eight hours.” She drew a deep breath. He was wearing her black baseball cap, the one she’d borrowed from Andrew, the one embroidered with bitch on the front in white. That was okay, he could have it to remember her by. “Well, it’s been great, but-”

“There’s a diner three blocks east of here,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

“What?” Tilda whispered. “Why? Listen, if this is about the kiss, I apologize, I-”

“The painting,” he whispered back, trying to push her toward the door.

“You know,” Tilda said, resisting the push, “I was wrong. This is not your problem. I’ll-”

He leaned closer, large in the dim light, and she stopped. “Vilma, I don’t know what you do for a living, but it’s not theft. Go wait in the diner.”

“No, really.”

“You want to stay and search the place?”

The darkness closed in around her, and she felt her lungs start to tighten. She was such a geek. “No.”

“Then go away.” He steered her toward the door. “And if you get caught? You never met me.”

“I wish,” Tilda said, and slipped out the door, feeling like a fool and a failure.

❖ ❖ ❖

WHEN GWEN got back to the gallery, she went straight to the cabinet above the counter and pulled out the vodka bottle. It was empty.

“Damn,” she said and dropped it in the trash, prepared to savage whoever had finished it. It wouldn’t be Andrew or Jeff; they kept their booze in their apartment. Eve wouldn’t have finished off the bottle. And Nadine knew better.

Must have been me, Gwen thought. Good, just what I always wanted to be, a middle-aged amnesiac drunk. She looked for something soothing on the jukebox and settled for “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Dionne was always good. San Jose would be good, too. Anywhere but here.

She sank down on the leather couch and tried not to think about Tilda trapped in that damn house. She needed a vacation, although it was going to be a while before she could leave. A year before Eve finished her teaching degree. Three years before Nadine went to college.

Andrew came in holding a glass, Spot on his heels.

Twelve years before the dog died.

“There you are,” Andrew said, putting the glass on the counter.

It had about half an inch of clear liquid in it, and Gwen said, “Is that vodka?”

Andrew smiled at her and said, “Yep,” missing the hint. He looked like one of those blond movie hunks from the sixties, although that may have been due to the eye makeup. “Nadine says Tilda’s back and she brought this.” He gestured to Spot, who gave a shuddery little whine and collapsed on the carpet. “Did she leave again?” He opened up the below-counter refrigerator and took out a carton of orange-pineapple juice. “Oh, and the bank called.”

Twenty-six years before the mortgages were paid off. That meant she’d be seventy-nine, probably not in the mood to leave anymore. It also meant she was going to need about three hundred Double-Crostic books to pass the time before death. There probably weren’t that many. Well, she was not going to descend to word searches no matter how bad it got. She had standards, damn it.

“Gwennie?” Andrew said, pouring juice into his glass.

“You still have mascara on.”

Andrew nodded. “Work was hell. Eve decided to leave the Double Take while she was still Louise, and I had to pry her off a guy on the way out. Louise has no taste in men.”

“No, she just doesn’t have your taste in men,” Gwen said.

Andrew sat down beside Gwen on the couch. “God, it’s good to be home. Hey, Nadine told me she sold a painting for a thousand dollars. Some kid we raised, huh? She sells about six hundred more, Eve can stop being Louise four nights a week and you’ll be safe here forever.”

“Eve likes being Louise,” Gwen said. “And it was a Scarlet. Tilda’s at Mason Phipps’s house, stealing it back now.”

“Oh, crap, Gwennie.” Andrew looked exasperated. “I thought Louise was our major problem.”

“Louise is not a problem,” Gwen said. “And if you’re not going to drink that screwdriver, give it to me. I’ve had a terrible night and it’s getting worse. Tilda’s still in that house, and for all I know, they’ve caught her. And it’s going to be hard to explain why she’s there without pulling this whole life down around us.” She looked around the ancient office. “I’d be okay with that if it didn’t mean I’d go to jail.”

Andrew handed over the screwdriver.

“You’re a good boy, Andrew,” Gwen said. “Now go get the bottle.”

TILDA SAT in the diner, drumming her fingers on the table next to her coffee cup until the guy in the booth next to her asked her to stop. She turned her head to look at the clock on the back wall. It had been over an hour. Maybe Clea Lewis had caught him. Maybe he was telling her that a woman had tried to steal the painting. Maybe he had given the police her baseball cap. Maybe-

“Hello, Vilma,” he said, sliding into the booth across from her. “Miss me?”

TILDA PULLED HER FOOT from under the duffel bag he dropped under the table. “Do I know you?”

“Yep.” He settled into the booth. “You stuck your tongue down my throat about an hour ago. Did I thank you for that?”

She squinted at him through her glasses. At first glance, he was average looking, a mild-mannered, dark-haired, Clark Kent kind of guy with horn-rimmed glasses in a beat-up nothing-colored jacket; the only notable thing about him was Andrew’s “Bitch” baseball cap that he’d swiped from her back at Clea’s.

On second glance, the glint in his eye and the set of his jaw made her twitch.

“Did you want this?” he said and she felt something bump her leg under the table.

When she reached down, she felt paper wrapping and under that, the edge of a painting, and the relief that rolled over her was so intense that she closed her eyes. “Thank you. I forgive you for everything.”

“Everything what?” he said. “Saving your butt?”

“For mugging me in a closet.” One corner of the paper was torn back, and Tilda could see the stars in the checkerboard sky beneath it. Definitely her stars. Thank you, thank you.

“You jumped me,” he was saying. “I was there first. Technically, it was my closet, Vilma.”

“Who’s Vilma?” Tilda said, her interest in his glint diminishing.

“Nobody watches the late movies anymore. I blame cable.”

Oh, good, he was colorful. Tilda smiled at him brightly. “Well, gee, this has been great. Thanks for all your help.” She started to slide out of the booth and he put his foot on the bench, trapping her.

“Hold it,” he said. “You owe me. Who are you and why were you hitting Clea’s closet?”

“No,” Tilda said and pushed at his foot.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his foot where it was.

“If I create a scene,” she began and then stopped as she saw the problem. She was sitting in a booth with a hot painting. She couldn’t afford a scene. Somebody would come up and say, “What is that?” and then she’d have to explain, and anything was better than talking about the Scarlets, anything, even this yahoo and his glint.

“There you go,” he said. “The good news is, I don’t care what you’re up to, I just want information. Who are you and-”

The waitress came by with the coffeepot, and he shrank into his jacket a little more. “Hamburger?” he said to her, and she took out her pad without even looking at him. If anybody asked tomorrow, she wouldn’t remember a thing about him, which was amazing because he really was a piece of work. “Coffee,” he said. The waitress nodded, put her pad back in her apron pocket, topped up Tilda’s cup and left, still not looking at him.

“Now,” he said to Tilda. “Your name.”

Tilda sat back and thought fast. “Call me Vilma. The painting is mine. Mrs. Lewis took it and wouldn’t give it back, so I had to go in and get it.”

“She stole it?” he said. “That doesn’t sound like her.”

“She bought it,” Tilda said, “but she didn’t pay for it.”

“That sounds like her,” he said and Tilda thought, You know her well. Her thoughts of Clea, never warm to begin with, grew colder.

“So who are you?” she said. “And what were you doing there?”

“I’m a consultant for an elite law enforcement agency,” he said, looking at her over the top of his horn-rims. “Call me Bond. James -”

“Funny,” Tilda said.

The waitress brought his coffee, and when she was gone, he said, “So why didn’t you call the police?”

“That would be so unpleasant.” Tilda lifted her chin. “And she could say she had the painting on approval.”

“So you turned to B and E to avoid the unpleasantness.” He nodded. “We’ll come back to that. Who taped the door for you?”

“What?” Tilda said, widening her eyes the way Gwen and Eve always did when they wanted to look innocent.

He snapped his fingers. “Betty Boop.”

“What?” Tilda said again, this time for real.

“That’s who you remind me of. Curly hair, bug eyes, Kewpie-doll mouth. My sister dressed up like her for Halloween once.”

“Fascinating,” Tilda said, her eyebrows snapping together over the “bug eyes” part. “Can I go now?”

“No, Betty, you can’t. When I got to Clea’s, I tried the doors and they were all locked except one at the side. The latch was taped down so it wouldn’t lock. Who did that for you?”

“I have no idea what-”

“Betty, you can stop lying. I just want to know who you know on the inside so I can know him, too.”

The waitress brought his hamburger and slapped the check on the table and then wandered off again.

“I don’t know anybody inside,” Tilda said as he began to work his way through the sandwich at the speed of light. “I went in during the day and taped it.”

He looked at her over the top of his glasses and she stopped. “Here’s some advice,” he said, threat palpable in his tone. “Don’t lie to me. It’s a waste of your time and my patience.”

“Oh, please,” Tilda said, unimpressed.

He nodded and bit into the hamburger again. “That tough stuff never works for me,” he said when he’d swallowed, his voice light again. “Which is odd because I really can be a bastard.”

He smiled at her, and Tilda saw menace in his eyes and felt her throat close up.

“Want to push your luck?” he said.

“No,” Tilda said. “Okay, here’s the truth. Somebody taped it for me but that person does not work inside. I don’t think anybody works there. I think it’s just Mason Phipps and Clea Lewis, and I don’t think there’s any time when the house is empty for sure.”

He sat back and regarded her with something that might have passed for approval. “So you set up a dinner party. Not stupid.”

“Thank you.” Tilda tapped his shoe. “May I go now?”

“No,” he said, not moving his foot. “Clea bought the painting from you. Why?”

“No idea,” Tilda said. “I guess she liked it.”

“Why do you have to have it back?”

“No,” Tilda said. “That will not help you.”

“And yet I feel sure it would.” He pushed his empty plate away, and Tilda blinked her surprise. He must have been starving to inhale a hamburger like that. “Let’s take this from the top.”