Faking It Read online

  As long as Davy didn’t arrest her.

  He sat down beside her. “Your drink, Celeste.”

  She took the glass and sipped. “Very good, Ralph.” She smiled at him, grateful for the paintings and the drink and that he was there in general. He really is a nice guy, she thought. Even if it turns out he is the FBI. “So your dad, what is it he does?”

  “He annoys people.” Davy relaxed into the leather next to her. “Speaking of parents, what is it with Gwennie and the teeth?”

  “Huh?” she said, not expecting that one.

  “The quilt in my room had teeth on it,” he said, “and so did the sampler. What is that?”

  “Oh,” Tilda said, regrouping. “Well, I think she had a lot of repressed anger when my dad was alive.” She frowned at him. “That’s a weird thing to ask.”

  “They’re weird to look at,” Davy said. “Repressed anger. This is not something you suffer from, Veronica.”

  “I’m not living with my dad,” Tilda said. “He was sort of domineering. She loved him, but she didn’t speak up much. And the older we got, the more he tried to control us and the madder she got, so she took up cross-stitch to relax. She did a couple of samplers the way the graphs showed and then she started changing things, and pretty soon there were all these little animals with teeth in them. Which I thought were neat.”

  “And the quilts?”

  “Toward the end the samplers weren’t helping her relax, so she switched to quilting. And for a while she did these beautiful nine-patch quilts, but then she started skewing the nine-patches and they turned into these crooked crazy quilts and then the teeth started showing up again, so she had to quit those, too.”

  “And that’s when she started the Double-Crostics,” Davy said.

  “No,” Tilda said, “that’s when she started the paint-by-numbers.”

  Davy choked on his drink. “What?”

  “Paint-by-number paintings,” Tilda said, grinning as she thought about it. “The kits. She’d paint them and hang them up in the office and he’d take them down. They drove him crazy. But then she started messing with those, too, and eventually—”

  “Let me guess,” Davy said. “Teeth.”

  “Yep.” Tilda took another drink and watched him. “We must have boxes of those things in the basement. Then she went to crossword puzzles, and when those got too easy, she moved on to Double-Crostics.”

  “Any teeth yet?”

  “Not so far,” Tilda said. “Actually, she stopped with the teeth right about the time I moved out, and that was seventeen years ago. And now my dad’s dead, so she’s not so mad anymore.”

  “Right,” Davy said, smiling at the photos on the opposite wall. He had a great profile, straight nose, strong chin. “You have an interesting family, Matilda.”

  He had a great smile, too. In fact, when you came right down to it, he had a great everything. And he’d been wonderful all day, working his butt off to get her painting back, offering to beat up Burton, giving Gwennie the muffin money. And all she’d done for him was screw up his chance to get his money back and fake an orgasm with him on the couch and get testy because he might be the law. She should be grateful that he was the law. Assuming he didn’t send her up the river. “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  “About what?” Davy said, looking confused. “Your family? I like them.”

  “About your money. And about Friday. You know.” She patted the couch. “Here.” She took another drink.

  “Get over it, Matilda,” Davy said.

  “That was an apology.” Tilda got up and poured more vodka into her glass, making the orange juice fade. “A sincere, heartfelt apology.”

  “Have you always had this drinking problem?” Davy said.

  “No.” Tilda took the bottle back to the couch, drank more of her vodka and orange juice, and then closed her eyes as the alcohol seeped into her bones. “You are great at that. Getting people to give you things.”

  “Thank you.” Davy took the bottle from her.

  “It’s because you’re in sales, right?” Tilda hit the vodka again. Come on, tell me the truth.

  “Sales?”

  “You said you were in sales.”

  “I said my father was in sales.”

  “So what are you in?”

  Davy looked at her for a moment. “Sales,” he said, and topped up her drink.

  Tilda sighed. “Like father, like son.”

  “Not even close.”

  She sipped again and waited. Okay, he wasn’t going to tell her about the FBI. She clearly did not have Louise’s skills. At least she was pretty sure she didn’t. “So here’s a question.”

  Davy waited, and she smiled at him again, feeling fairly loose in general.

  “Question,” he prompted.

  “Right.” She took another drink and steeled her nerve. “How bad was I?”

  “You were great.” He stretched to put the bottle on the table. Lovely arms, she thought. Lovely lines to his body. That was probably why the FBI hired him. “You have a real flair for reading people,” he said as he leaned back. “I think Mrs. Olafson—”

  “No,” Tilda said. “On this couch the other night. How bad was I?”

  “You were fine,” Davy said, suddenly cautious.

  “Hey,” Tilda said. “I deserve the truth. We’re partners now. Steve and Veronica. Ralph and Celeste. Whoever that was in the closet and Vilma. Tell me the truth.”

  Davy sighed. “Okay. You were terrible.”

  “Ow.” Tilda slugged back the rest of her glass. “I was hoping for mediocre. You know. Not so good.”

  Davy offered her the bottle.

  “Thank you.” Tilda held out her glass.

  “It was my fault, too.” Davy poured a quarter inch of vodka in her glass. “I was still on a rush from burgling Clea, and I didn’t—”

  “It’s me,” Tilda said.

  Davy shrugged. “Well, you know, sex isn’t for everybody. Maybe—”

  “I want it,” Tilda said. “I just don’t want it when there are guys in the room.”

  Davy lifted an eyebrow at her. “Louise looks like she might swing both ways.”

  “I don’t want women, either.”

  Davy nodded and took a drink. “Do you have it narrowed down to a species?”

  “When I’m alone,” Tilda said, “I’m very interested in men. Very interested.” She thought about Davy in the closet and thought, And sometimes, even with them right there. “I mean, sometimes I have thoughts that are really, well, wrong.”

  “These are the thoughts you should share with me,” Davy said, over his vodka.

  Like sometimes I have this incredible urge to walk up to you and say, “Fuck me,” just to get it out of my system. Except that would be wrong, not to mention difficult to explain, like the rest of her secrets. Besides, saying “Fuck me” to the FBI? That couldn’t be good.

  “No, really, you can tell me,” Davy said. “I’m very open-minded.”

  “No,” Tilda said. “There are some secrets you can never tell.” She sighed. “There are things I’m tempted to do, but when there’s another person in the room, there are so many other things to consider.”

  Davy shook his head. “Short of ‘Don’t forget the condom’ and ‘Try not to choke on your spit,’ I can’t think—”

  “Like how well do you really know this person?” Tilda said, giving him another opening. “Because I think you should know him pretty well before you let him inside you.”

  “I’m the one going in,” Davy said, relaxing back into the couch, “so I’m good with strangers.”

  “Right,” Tilda said. “It’s my space being invaded.”

  “You want a guy who won’t invade your space?”

  “Not in theory. In theory, I want a guy who’s all over my space. It’s just—”

  “In practice.”

  “In the real world,” Tilda agreed. “Space Invaders, not my game.”

  “Problem is,” Davy said,