Faking It Read online

  “I’m sorry.” Clea pushed the cup away and smiled brightly. “So what are we going to do today?”

  “Well, I’m going to work on my Scarlet Hodge research,” Mason said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do.”

  “Oh.” Clea tried to sound bright and independent. “I think I’ll go to the museum and look at their primitives. I want to see how they compare to Cyril’s collection.”

  “Very well,” Mason said dryly. “Cyril’s collection wasn’t exactly museum quality.”

  “He thought it was,” Clea said, maintaining her smile at great cost. At least, Ronald had told Cyril it was before his death. Ronald had probably gotten that wrong, too, not that they’d ever know with the insurance company dragging its feet.

  “Yes, and after he died, nobody else thought much of what was left, did they?” Mason pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’m sorry, Clea, I don’t mean to be disrespectful of your late husband, but he really wasn’t a good collector.”

  “He was a good man,” Clea said, surprising herself and Mason at the same time.

  “Yes, he was,” Mason said, smiling at her for the first time that morning.

  “Let me know if I can help you.” Clea leaned forward a little, projecting wifeliness and giving Mason a nice view down the front of her blouse.

  “You know what would be a help?” Mason said.

  Clea leaned forward a little more.

  “If you could make breakfast,” Mason said. “We’ve been making do with toast and coffee for a week now. Can you make omelets?”

  Clea felt her smile freeze on her face. “Omelets?”

  “Never mind.” Mason turned away. “Maybe we should get that caterer in full time. What was his name?”

  “Thomas,” Clea said, her smile still locked in place.

  “Maybe Thomas does breakfasts,” Mason said and went upstairs.

  Clea sat back in her chair. Breakfast. He wanted her to cook. She had flawless skin, she wore a size four, she knew every sexual position that a man over fifty could want, she was unfailingly cheerful, supportive, complimentary, and passionate on demand, and now he wanted breakfast!

  Honest to God, if she had enough money, she’d give up men forever.

  The doorbell rang, and Clea got up to answer it. Maybe it was Thomas, looking for work again. If they kept him full time, he could answer the door, too.

  She opened the heavy oak door and blinked at the man on the step. Tall, weather-beaten, black hair graying at the temples, wintry gray eyes, angular jaw, shoulders a woman could lean on ... not Thomas. It would be so nice if you had money, Clea thought, and then took the rest of her inventory: beat-up tweed jacket, worn jeans, boots that had seen better days ... not rich. She let her eyes go back to his face. “We’re not buying anything.”

  She started to close the door, but he put his foot in the way. “Clea Lewis?”

  “Yes,” Clea said, feeling a chill. She was positive she hadn’t seen this man before, but—

  “Ronald Abbott sent me,” he said. “About your problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “It would be better if I came in,” the man said slowly. “The longer your neighbors watch me on your porch, the better witnesses they’ll make.”

  “Witnesses?” Clea said faintly. Oh, God, I told Ronald to get rid of Davy.

  The man smiled at her. It wasn’t pleasant. “If anything goes wrong,” he said.

  I do not deserve this, Clea thought. This is not the way my life is supposed to be.

  “Mrs. Lewis?” the man said.

  Clea opened the door.

  DAVY WOKE UP feeling cheerful. It was a feeling he hadn’t had in months, and it persisted even when he rolled over and remembered where he was: broke and alone and about to go looking for four paintings he didn’t care about. He found Tilda’s bathroom, showered, shaved, and dressed at full speed, stopping only once, on his way out the door, when he caught sight of a sampler hung over Tilda’s white desk. He looked closer and saw a naked Adam and a naked Eve standing under a spreading cross-stitch tree surrounded by tiny animals with tiny teeth, and under them a verse:

  When Eve ate the apple

  Her knowledge increased

  But God liked dumb women

  So Paradise ceased.

  Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.

  Remember to be nice to Gwennie, he thought, and then he took the stairs two at a time to find Tilda and breakfast, not necessarily in that order.

  Instead he found Nadine drinking juice in the office, dressed in a vintage housedress printed with little red teapots. She had a red ribbon threaded through her blonde curls and red lipstick on her Kewpie-doll mouth, and she was wearing bobby socks with red heels. Steve sat at her feet, fascinated by the bows on her shoes, nudging them with his nose, clearly thinking about chomping one.

  “You’re looking very Donna Reed today,” he said. “Where’s your aunt Tilda?”

  “Working in the basement,” Nadine said. “Steve, stop it. She said the notes you wanted about some paintings are in the top desk drawer. And I was going for Lucy Ricardo. Donna wasn’t much for prints. Want some juice? It’s orange-pineapple. Grandma’s very big on Vitamin C.”

  “Wise woman,” Davy said. “Pour, please.” Nadine got a glass out of the cupboard, and Davy had to grin, she looked so fifties housewife. “So you’re dressed for... ?”

  “The dentist,” Nadine said, pouring. “Dr. Mark likes all things retro. He has the coolest neon and all these old dental ads. Lucy is for him.”

  “A retro dentist.” Davy detoured around the table to get to the desk drawer. “Of course.”

  “He’s also a painless dentist,” Nadine said. “First things first. Goodnights are very practical.”

  Davy looked around at the stills from the Rayons and the Double Take. “Yeah, I can see that.” He pulled open the desk drawer and found six cards, banded together, the top one headed “Scarlet Hodge.”

  Nadine slid his juice to him across the table. “As Grandma says, don’t confuse flair with impracticality.” She looked at him severely over the juice glass. “Very different things.”

  Davy picked up the cards and shut the desk drawer. “So basically, you’re a forty-year-old masquerading as a sixteen-year-old.”

  Nadine shook her head. “I am a free spirit. Don’t judge me by conventional standards.”

  “That would be a mistake.” He stuck the cards in his shirt pocket and tasted his juice. It was sweet but with a kick. Sort of like Tilda.

  Andrew came in and nodded at Davy, clearly not happy to see him. He dropped a bakery bag in front of Nadine. “When’s your appointment?”

  “Half an hour,” Nadine said. “I’m walking. Fresh air. Very healthy.”

  Andrew nodded and gestured toward her dress. “Nice Lucy.”

  “Thank you,” Nadine said, beaming at him.

  Good dad, Davy thought,

  “Want to rehearse that Peggy Lee medley with me tonight?” Andrew went on.

  “No,” Nadine said, developing a sudden interest in the ceiling.

  “Date with the doughnut, huh?” Andrew shook his head at Davy. “Wait until you have a daughter and she starts bringing home boys. All you can think of is ‘Where did I go wrong?’”

  Maybe when you dressed up like Marilyn, Davy thought and then felt ashamed even as Andrew threw him a patient look.

  “You didn’t go wrong at all,” Davy said to make up for it. “She’s a great kid.”

  “Wait'll you meet the doughnut,” Andrew said.

  “This is Burton?” Davy said and Andrew nodded. “Met him. You have my sympathies.”

  “Make yourself some whole wheat toast,” Andrew said to Nadine as he headed out the door again. “You need fiber.”

  “I had a piece with Aunt Tilda. And he’s not a doughnut,” Nadine said to her father’s back, sounding like a teenager for the first time since Davy had met her.

  “Doughnut?” Davy said.

  Nadine sighed and