Faking It - Crusie Jennifer - Страница 15

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THE LAST OF “you’re no good” tailed off, and Davy looked around to see what he’d gotten himself into. It was a medium-sized room filled to capacity by a huge old leather sofa and an equally huge old walnut desk that looked as though it might have once been valuable. They flanked the jukebox and a large round oak table with beat-up, mismatched chairs that didn’t look valuable at all, everything including Steve the dog sitting on a very beautiful and very worn Oriental rug.

“Cash flow problem?” Davy said to Tilda.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done for me,” Tilda said. “It’s that I think it’s creepy that you know where I live.” She frowned at him, her blue eyes cold behind her bug glasses, her Kewpie-doll mouth flattened to a tense line.

“I followed you home last night,” Davy said, and went over to a row of photos on the wall.

“I’m supposed to be reassured by that?” Tilda said as he looked at the array of school portraits and holiday snapshots. “You stalked me.”

“That’ll teach you to neck in closets,” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing something with files?”

She was quiet behind him for a minute and he tensed, but then he heard a chair scrape as if somebody had yanked it across the floor and then a file drawer open, and he went back to the pictures, fairly sure she wasn’t going to attack him.

The pictures must have been up in no particular order since there was one of an angelic-looking blonde baby next to one of three teenage girls in fifties bubble hair and big skirts, leaning together with their chins out, over a pen scrawl that said “The Rayons.” One looked like Eve, but that couldn’t be, she was much too young to have been a teen in the fifties, and on the other side-

“My God, you’re wearing a poodle skirt and big hair in this picture,” he said, turning to look at Tilda. “How old are you?”

“None of your business,” Tilda said, bent over a card catalog. Steve glared at Davy from her lap. “Get away from my family.”

“There’s no reason to be bitchy,” Davy said. “If you’d told me your name when I asked nicely, I wouldn’t have had to stalk you.”

“It was a high school talent show.” Tilda slammed the drawer and opened the next one. “Nineteen eighty-five. Retro kitsch.”

“And your talent was…”

“Singing. And no, I’m not very good at it.”

“The Rayons?”

She took a deep breath. “Gwennie raised us on girl group music like the Chiffons. You know, this is really creepy, having you here.”

“Vilma, you frenched me in the dark, and now you’re upset I followed you home?”

“You didn’t follow me home for that,” Tilda said, looking at him over her glasses. “You’re up to something.”

“You know me well.” Davy went back to the pictures. “Who’s the third girl? Louise?”

The silence behind him was deafening.

“Louise?” she said.

“Yeah,” Davy said. “Dorcas warned me about Louise. Who is she?”

“My… cousin,” Tilda said. “She works with Andrew at the Double Take. She’s not here very often. She doesn’t live here.” She was close to babbling, which meant she was lying. Again.

“What’s the Double Take?”

“Andrew’s club,” Tilda said. “The floor show is impersonators, all kinds, and people come dressed up like other people, and there’s a Karaoke Night on Tuesdays that really…” Her voice trailed off as if she’d realized she was talking too much. “You should go there sometime,” she finished. “Nobody there is what they seem to be, either.”

He turned back to the Rayons photo. “Louise doesn’t look much like you and Eve.”

“That’s not her,” Tilda said. “That’s Andrew.”

“No, the girl in the middle.” Davy looked closer. It was Andrew. A teenage Andrew in big hair and a puffy skirt, but still Andrew, looking prettier than either Eve or Tilda. “Oh. He makes a really good-looking girl.”

“He makes a really good-looking guy,” Tilda said.

“So, does your sister know you have a thing for her husband?” Davy asked.

“Had,” Tilda said.

“No, it’s still there.” Davy moved down to look at a more recent picture of Andrew, this time dressed as Marilyn Monroe.

“She had a husband,” Tilda was saying. “They’re divorced. And I had a thing, but it’s over.”

“I don’t think so,” Davy said, moving on to one of Na-dine’s grade-school pictures. Very cute. “Why’d they get divorced?” He went down the line of photographs until he found their wedding picture. “Did you get grabby?”

Tilda opened the last file drawer. “Andrew fell in love with somebody else.”

“Andrew has no brains,” Davy said, looking at Eve, smiling like a dewy angel, her face fresh and clean under her blonde curls.

“Andrew is gay,” Tilda said, “and Jeff is a great guy.”

“Andrew didn’t know this before he married Eve?”

“He says not. He says it was God’s way of making sure there was a Nadine.” She took a card out of the last drawer and tipped Steve gently to the floor as she stood up. “That’s it for here. I have to go downstairs. You are not invited, and you can’t stay here.”

“Tell me about this painting.” Davy swung around to confront her. “Why are we stealing it?”

“You do not need to know that,” Tilda said, starting past him.

“Oh, yes,” Davy said, catching her arm. “If I’m stealing it, I need some information. Who painted it?”

Tilda took a deep breath and then turned those eyes on him, glaring with intent.

“What?” he said.

“You know,” she said coldly, “there are people who are afraid to cross me.”

“And what a shame none of them are here,” Davy said. “Who painted it?”

She sighed. “Scarlet Hodge.”

Davy looked at her, dumbfounded. “Somebody named a helpless baby Scarlet Hodge?”

Tilda pulled her arm out of his grasp.

“Of course, Gwennie named you Matilda,” he said, reflecting.

“My father named me Matilda,” Tilda said. “After my great-grandmother, so show some respect.”

“Uh-huh. And your middle name?”

“Veronica.” When the silence stretched out, Tilda added, “After Ronnie Spector. ‘Be My Baby.’”

“You have my sympathies,” Davy said.

“It was almost Artemesia Dionne,” Tilda said. “You may keep your sympathies.”

“Okay,” Davy said. “So Scarlet painted them and Clea bought one. Where’d the other one come from?”

Tilda shrugged. “Mason Phipps, I guess.”

“So we take that one back.” He watched her stiffen. “Betty, you’re keeping things that don’t belong to you,” he said sternly. “That’s bad.”

Tilda stared back at him, unblinking, as Gwen came in radiating tension and said, “It’s set. They’ll be here at eight. Mason is thrilled?” She sounded not thrilled. “Did you get the files?”

“Going down after them now,” Tilda said, equally tense. They both looked miserable.

“Not used to crime, huh, girls?” Davy said.

“Good heavens, no,” Gwen said and went back out into the gallery.

“You may go now,” Tilda said to him, and he thought, I could be chasing divorced Eve right now. Then the light caught Tilda’s crazy blue eyes again, and she looked stubborn and difficult and exasperating and infinitely more interesting than Eve, if he could keep her from maiming him. And he already knew she could kiss.

“So,” he said, sliding down the door to sit on the floor. “Talk to me, Matilda Veronica. Tell me all about it.”

ACROSS TOWN, Clea sat at her bedroom vanity and fumed, mostly so she wouldn’t panic. Mason was besotted with that horrendous Goodnight woman.

If Gwen had been twenty, it would have made sense.

Clea looked in the vanity mirror. Forty-five years of taking exquisite care of herself couldn’t make her twenty. The way she’d squandered her youth appalled her. Rich men had wanted her, but she’d wanted to be an actress. She’d wanted to show everybody she was somebody.

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