Faking It d-2 Read online

  The walk back to the gallery didn’t help, and when he was standing in the downstairs hall, going up to Tilda didn’t appeal, either. What the hell was her problem, anyway?

  He looked at the basement door. There was something down there that she kept locked up. Well, that was Matilda for you, nobody got in below. “Except me,” Davy said and went upstairs to bang on the door of the room he’d rented.

  “What?” Simon said when he finally answered, looking sleepy.

  “Take a break,” Davy said. “I need you to open a lock. Louise can spare you for five minutes.”

  “Louise isn’t here,” Simon said. “I have high hopes for tomorrow, however. What do you want unlocked?”

  “Basement door.”

  “Not a problem,” Simon said and went back inside the room.

  When he came back with his tools, it took him longer to walk down the two flights to the ground floor than it did to open the basement door.

  “It really is a shame you’re retired,” Davy said. “You’re an artist.”

  “I know,” Simon said. “But I really dislike prison. So you’re expecting to find something interesting down there?”

  “I have no idea,” Davy said. “Let’s go.”

  He flipped on the light at the head of the stairs, prepared to encounter one of those pit-of-hell basements that are usually under very old buildings, and saw white cement steps leading down to an immaculate hallway, so brightly lit the place glowed.

  “There is definitely something interesting down there,” Simon said.

  Davy frowned. “Already you know?”

  “Somebody spent money,” Simon said. “Not on this lock, but…” He pushed past Davy and went down the steps and Davy followed him. The stairs ended in a short hall painted as white as Tilda’s bedroom, and Simon stopped to listen. “Air cleaner.”

  “It’s cool.” Davy looked around. There were two doors facing each other across the hall and a row of empty bookcases at the end but otherwise the place was empty.

  “Temperature controlled,” Simon said. “They’re storing something valuable down here.”

  “Paintings?”

  “That’s the obvious guess,” Simon said, looking at the door on the left. “Hello.”

  “Hello what?” Davy said. “This was supposed to be my good time.”

  “This lock they spent money on,” Simon said, bending down.

  “Can you get in?”

  “Given enough time and enough motive, yes,” Simon said. “I don’t have either. It’d be a bugger. Go seduce the combination out of Tilda. It’ll be a lot faster.”

  “You don’t know Tilda.” Davy turned to the other door. “How about this one? Can you pick it?”

  Simon reached over and turned the doorknob, and it opened. “The first rule of B and E. See if it’s unlocked.”

  “Is there a reason everybody’s busting my chops tonight?” Davy said, and shoved the door the rest of the way open. He flipped on the light and the big room glared back at him, stretching half the length of the building, full of white sheets draped over God knows what, the walls, floor, and ceiling all the same flat white. “This family’s aversion to color is downright scary.”

  Simon nodded. “Louise wears red. I think. It’s hard to see color in the dark.”

  Davy raised his eyebrows. “Louise doesn’t like the lights on?”

  “It’s the only thing she doesn’t like,” Simon said. “Considering everything else she’s said yes to, it’s not much to ask.”

  “You’re an accommodating man.” Davy pulled on the first dustcover. “Jesus.”

  Snake eyes stared back at him from a blue and green wing chair. What he first took for stripes were snake bodies, undulating over the wings and down the seat, each body striped again in more colors, purple and silver, their little snaky heads turned toward him, grinning at him dark-eyed with evil intent.

  “Reminds me of Louise,” Simon said.

  Davy pulled the next sheet off and found a chest of drawers painted pink with blue-eyed daisies lined up innocently across the drawers, their curly yellow petals making them look like happy little suns.

  “Reminds me of Eve,” Davy said.

  He lifted the next sheet and found a table painted with sly-looking blue flamingos while Simon uncovered several chairs from different dining sets covered in campy yellow and orange butterflies. They moved through the room, finding a table painted with red spotted beagles, a chest of drawers slathered with lime-green snails, at least a dozen footstools painted with frogs and fish and mice, one perversely decorated piece of furniture after another until they reached the back wall and flipped back the last and largest dustcover and found a bed with a tree painted on the headboard, its spreading branches framing two human figures, one blond, one brunette.

  Davy started to laugh. “Okay, I’m getting this bed for my sister.”

  “Why?” Simon said.

  “Because that’s her and the stuffed shirt she married,” he said. “She’ll love it and he’ll hate it. It’s perfect.”

  “I don’t think that’s Sophie,” Simon said. “I think that’s Tilda. And Andrew.”

  Davy stopped laughing. “Oh.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t think it’s anybody, but it’s going to be Sophie and Phin.”

  “Handpainted bed,” Simon said. “That’s about a thousand bucks you don’t have.”

  “What?” Davy said, suddenly alert.

  “Handpainted furniture,” Simon said. “It’s expensive.”

  “How expensive?” Davy said.

  Simon shrugged. “It’s labor intensive. I’m sure they’ll give you a break on the price… What?”

  Davy scanned the room, trying to count while his thoughts climbed all over each other to reach the same conclusion. “How many pieces of furniture are down here?”

  Simon shrugged. “Forty. Fifty. Why?”

  “I think the Finster Era is over,” Davy said and headed for the door.

  TILDA WAS deep asleep when Davy turned on the light and said, “Rise and shine, Snow White, we need to talk.”

  “No,” she said, half-asleep, putting her pillow over her head to shut out the light. “No, I don’t want to have sex, no.”

  “Surprisingly, neither do I.” He sat on the bed and pulled the pillow away. “Wake up, Judy, we’re gonna put on a show in the barn.”

  Chapter 13

  “D AVY, I HAVE to work tomorrow.” Tilda squinted at the clock. “Oh, hell. I have to work today. It’s past midnight.”

  “The furniture in the basement,” Davy said and she sat up, awake and breathless.

  “What were you doing in the basement?”

  “We’re going to sell the furniture down there,” Davy said, as Steve poked his nose out from under the quilt to see what was going on.

  Tilda tried to take a deep breath. “How did you get in the basement?”

  “Door was unlocked. Pay attention. You have a lot of furniture down there.”

  “It was not unlocked,” Tilda said, wheezing a little on “was,” and he bent over her and covered her mouth with his hand.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” he said. “We are going to have a show of that furniture very soon. And we are going to invite Mason to host it. And Clea will come with him. And…”

  Tilda pushed his hand away. “And we can go steal our stuff back. Why can’t we just invite them to dinner?”

  “Because they now have staff,” Davy said. “In fact, you’ve met the staff. You kicked its head in.”

  “Oh.” Tilda sat up a little more, making Steve shift over, trying for deeper breaths. “But what-”

  “You’re going to need a caterer for the opening. You’ll hire him.”

  Tilda shook her head. “There’s got to be an easier way-”

  The wheeze was more pronounced on “easier,” and Davy opened her bedside table drawer and got out her inhaler. “Not one that will also make you money,” he said, handing it to her. “You’ve got a small fort