Jennifer Crusie - Faking It

“So once they figure out that one’s a fake, they’re going to come back to the gallery and ask questions.” Tilda felt her stomach twist again. “They might look at all the paintings Grandpa sold them for thousands of dollars and find out that some of them are fakes, and they’re going to want their money back, and we don’t have it. And we could go to jail for that, too, and lose the gallery and this whole building which means we’d all be out on the street.”

“Wait a minute,” Nadine said, perking up, evidently undeterred by the news her grandpa was a crook and she might soon be living in the gutter. “I didn’t know it was a fake. The only person who knew it was a fake was Grandpa. So we’re off the hook. We can blame him. He’s dead!”

“That’s been pretty much my plan for the past five years,” Gwen said, still staring at the ceiling.

“Nice try, but no,” Tilda said, feeling sicker. “The gallery as a business is still liable. And there’s one other person who knew and could go to jail. The person who painted them.”

“Oh.” Nadine grew still. “Who painted them?”

“I did, of course,” Tilda said, and got out her inhaler again.

IT HAD taken Davy Dempsey four days to track his ex-financial adviser from Miami, Florida, to Columbus, Ohio, and now he leaned in the doorway of a little diner and watched his prey pick up his water glass, survey the rim, and then wipe it with his napkin. Ronald Abbott,-aka Rabbit, was born to be the perfect mark: pale, semi-chinless, and so smug about his superiority in all things having to do with money, art, and life in general that he was a sure thing to con. Which made it doubly annoying that he had taken all of Davy’s money.

Davy crossed the diner and slid into the booth, and Ronald looked up in mid-sip and then inhaled his water in one horrified gasp.

“Hello, Rabbit,” Davy said, enjoying the gargle. “Where the hell is my three million dollars?”

Ronald continued to choke, strangling on tap water, guilt, and terror.

“You know, a life of crime is not for everybody,” Davy said, taking one of Ronald’s French fries. “You have to enjoy the risk. You’re not enjoying the risk, are you, Rabbit?”

Ronald swallowed some air. “It’s your own fault.”

“Because I shouldn’t have trusted you?” Davy nodded as he chewed. “Good point. I won’t do that again. But I want it back, Rabbit. The whole three million. And change.” He took another fry. The diner didn’t look like much, but the cook clearly knew his way around a potato.

“It wasn’t your money. You stole it.” Ronald looked around, apprehensive. “Where’s Simon? Is he here?”

“Simon is in Miami. I will be beating you up on my own. And you know it was my money, you saw me make it playing the same stocks you did-”

“The million you started with wasn’t yours,” Ronald said, and Davy grew still, struck by the three-year-old memory of a beautiful, enraged blonde.

“Clea.” Davy shook his head. “Did you have a good time, Rabbit?”

“See, you don’t even deny it.” Ronald was virtuous in his indignation. “You stole that poor woman’s inheritance from her father-”

Davy sighed and reached for the salt. If Rabbit had embezzled in the heat of Clea, it was going to be difficult to cool him down again. “That woman is not poor, she’s greedy. She inherited a chunk of change from her first husband and the last I heard she’d married some rich old guy in the Bahamas.”

“You stole her money,” Ronald said, sticking to the high ground. “She’s innocent.”

Davy pulled Ronald’s plate over to his side of the booth and reached for the ketchup. “Rabbit, I know she’s a great lay, but not even you could believe that.”

Ronald drew himself up. “You’re talking about the woman I love.”

“Clea is not the kind of woman you love,” Davy said grimly. “She’s the kind of woman you think you love, but then it turns out you were just renting her until somebody else came along with an option to buy.” He dumped ketchup on Ronald’s remaining fries.

“I believe in her,” Ronald said.

“You also believed the tech ride was going to last forever,” Davy said. “Like my daddy always says, if it seems too good to be true-”

“We’re not talking about money,” Rabbit said. “She loves me.”

“If you’re talking about Clea, you’re talking about money. It’s all she cares about.”

“She cares about her art,” Ronald said.

“Her art? That’s what she calls one cult movie and two porn flicks? Art?”

“No,” Ronald said, looking confused. “Her art. That’s how I met her, at her family’s art museum when I was helping value her late husband’s collection.”

“ Late husband?” Davy laughed. “Imagine my surprise. Rabbit, her family doesn’t have an art museum, and she turned to you when she found out you had access to my accounts. What’d the last guy die of?” He held up a fry. “No, wait, let me guess. Heart attack.”

“It was very sudden,” Ronald said.

“Yeah, it always is with Clea’s husbands,” Davy said. “Word of advice: don’t marry her. She looks really good in black.”

Ronald stuck out what little chin he had. “She said you’d speak badly of her. She said you’d threatened her, and that you’d spread lies about her past. You lie for a living, Davy, why should I believe-”

Davy shook his head. “I don’t have to lie on this one. The truth is grim enough. Look, if you want to commit suicide, dying in Clea’s bed is as good a way to go as any, but first I need my money back. I don’t like being poor. It limits my scope.”

“I don’t have it,” Ronald said, looking affronted. “I returned it to its rightful owner.”

Davy sat back and looked at him with pity laced with exasperation. “You already gave it to her. So when was the last time you saw her?”

Ronald flushed. “Four days ago. She’s very busy.”

“You gave her the money as soon as you got it, and then she got busy.”

“No,” Ronald said. “She’s collecting, too. It’s part of our plan, to build a collection-”

“Clea’s collecting art ?”

“See,” Ronald said smugly. “I knew you didn’t understand her.”

“There’s not enough fast money in art.” Davy frowned as he pushed away Ronald’s empty plate and picked up Ronald’s coffee cup. “Plus it’s a bigger gamble than tech stocks. Art is not a good way to make money unless you’re a dealer without morals, which entails working.” The coffee was lukewarm and did not go well with the fries. Rabbit had no taste.

“It’s not about the money,” Ronald was saying. “She fell in love with folk paintings.”

“Clea doesn’t fall in love,” Davy said. “Clea follows money. Somewhere in this there is a guy with money. And a bad heart. How’s your heart, Rabbit? You in good health?”

“Excellent,” Ronald said acidly.

“Another reason for her to dump you,” Davy said. “You lost your fortune in the tech slump and you’re not going to be easy to kill. So who’s the guy she’s spending time with? The guy with a lot of money, a weak heart, and a big art collection?”

Ronald sat very still.

“You know,” Davy said. “I’d feel sorry for you if you hadn’t ripped me off for three million. Who is it?”

“Mason Phipps,” Ronald said. “He was Cyril’s financial manager. Clea saw his folk art at a party at his house in Miami.”

“And shortly after that she saw the rest of him.” Davy sat back in the booth, his low opinion of humanity in general, and Clea in particular, once again confirmed. “What a gal. She’s learning about art so she can dazzle him into marriage and an early grave.”