Matilda Goodnight stepped back from her latest mural and
realized that of all the crimes she'd committed in her
thirty-four years, painting the floor-to-ceiling
reproduction of van Gogh's sunflowers on Clarissa
Donnelly's dining room wall was the one that was going to
send her to hell. God might forgive her the Botticelli
Venus she'd painted in the bathroom in Iowa, the Uccello
battle scene she'd done for the boardroom in New Jersey,
even the Bosch orgy she'd painted in the bedroom in Utah,
but these giant, glaring sunflowers were going to be His
Last Straw. "I gave you a nice talent," He was going to
say to her on Judgment Day, "and this is what you did with
it."
Tilda felt her lungs tighten and stuck her hand in her
pocket to make sure she had her inhaler.
Beside her, Clarissa wrapped her thin little arms around
her size two chenille sweater and squinted at the brownish-
yellow flowers. "It's just like his, isn't it?"
"Yes," Tilda said with regret and handed her the museum
print of the original.
"The flowers look so ... angry," Clarissa said.
"Well." Tilda closed her paint box. "He was nuts."
Clarissa nodded. "I heard about that. The ear."
"Yeah, that got a lot of press." Tilda shrugged off her
paint shirt. "So I'll take my completion check—"
"Did you sign it?" Clarissa said. "You need to sign it. I
want everybody to know it's a real Matilda Veronica mural."
"I signed it." Tilda pointed the toe of her paint-stained
canvas shoe at the bottom where she'd scrawled "Matilda
Veronica." "Right there. Now I have to be going—"
"You didn't sign it `van Gogh,' did you?" Clarissa bent
down. "Wouldn't that be forgery?"
"Not unless he had a Kentucky mural period we don't know
about." Tilda tried to take a deep breath. "So I'll take
that check—"
"Write your name bigger," Clarissa said, straightening. "I
want everybody to know you painted this. I'm going to keep
the magazine right here, too. So they know that it's a
real Matilda Veronica—"
Clarissa's enthusiasm for her as a brand name had lost its
appeal many days before, so Tilda changed the
subject. "Well, Spot was certainly a champ about the whole
thing." She nodded at Clarissa's elongated little dog on
the theory that people were always pleased when you talked
about their animals.
"His tail is almost hiding your name," Clarissa said.
Tilda let her glasses slide down her nose a little and
looked over the rims at Spot, quivering at her feet. She'd
done some dog face-lifting in the mural since Spot's beady
eyes almost met over his long knife-edged nose. She'd
softened the gray that streaked his dark, shaggy coat,
too, so he didn't look so much like a very small, mutant
wolf.
"You have to sign it again," Clarissa said. "Sign it up at
the top. Bigger."
"No," Tilda said. "Everyone will see it because they'll be
comparing Spot to the painting. People always do that,
look at the dog and then look at the painting—"
"No they won't," Clarissa said, triumphant. "He goes back
to the pound today."
"You're taking your dog to the pound?" At Tilda's feet,
Spot pressed against her, shedding on her jeans.
"He's not my dog," Clarissa said. "You always put dogs in
your murals—"
"No I don't," Tilda said.
"—it said so in the magazine, so I had to have one, too,
or people wouldn't think it was a real Matilda Veronica,
so I went and got the only purebred they had."
"Spot's a purebred?"
"Silver dapple, longhaired dachshund," Clarissa
said. "He'll be fine back at the pound. He's used to it.
I'm the third person who's adopted him."
Tilda pulled out her inhaler and inhaled.
It made sense when she thought about it. Clarissa was
exactly the kind of woman who'd go to Rent-A-Dog and get a
designer second for fake warmth in her faux
Postimpressionist wall painting. Spot looked up at her
now, shaking, almost as pathetic as he was ugly.
I am not going to rescue you, Tilda thought, capping her
inhaler. I can't save everybody, I'm asthmatic, and I
don't want a dog, especially not one who acts like he
snorts coke and looks like he rolls in it.
"Sign it again up here," Clarissa said. "I'll get you a
Sharpie."
"No," Tilda said. "I signed it. It's done. And I'll take
the completion check now, thank you."
"Well, I don't know, that signature—" Clarissa began, and
Tilda pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and
turned steely eyes on her. Clarissa nodded. "I'll go get
that check, then."
Left alone with Spot—a hell of a name for a dog that had
none—Tilda tried to think of something besides the pound.
There was the mural, another success, another chunk of
money off the family debt, another two weeks painted from
her life by ripping off art history—
Her cell phone rang and cut short her stab at optimism.
Tilda flipped open the cover. "Hell-o."
"Tilda," her mother said, "we have a problem."
"Really," Tilda said, staring at the sunflowers. "Who'd
have guessed?"
"It's bad," Gwen said, and Tilda stopped, taken aback by
the seriousness in her mother's voice. Gwennie did muffins
and Double-Crostics, not serious.
"Okay, so whatever it is, we'll fix it." She looked down
at the dog again, and he gazed back at her, desperation in
his eyes. "What is it?"
"Nadine sold a Scarlet."
Tilda jerked her head up as her stomach cramped. In the
background on the phone, she heard her sixteen-year-old
niece say, "I still don't get what I did wrong," and she
went cold all over.
"There aren't any Scarlets." Tilda tried to draw a deep
breath while not throwing up. "Dad sold them all."
"Not the first one," Gwen said. "Remember? He couldn't
because it was of our building. Nadine found it in the
basement. And the woman who bought it won't give it back.
I asked."
Clarissa came back with the check and Tilda took
it. "Thank you," she said to Clarissa and then spoke into
the phone. "Ask again."
"I tried. She hung up on me and I called again and Mason
Phipps answered. She's staying with him." Gwen's voice
grew slower. "Mason was an old friend of your father's.
He's the one who told her about Scarlet and the gallery.
And he invited me to dinner tonight."
"Oh, good. One of us will have a hearty meal."
"So I thought I'd go and distract them and you could sneak
in and steal it," Gwen said. "And then we can bury it in
the basement again."
Tilda turned away from Clarissa and whispered into the
phone. "You do realize you don't get muffins in prison?"
She tried again for a deep breath, fighting back the
nausea. "And when we get it back, we're burning it. If I'd
known it was down th—"
"Something wrong?" Clarissa said from behind her.
"No," Tilda said to her. "Everything is peachy." She spoke
into the phone. "I'm coming home. I'll be there in four
hours. Do not do anything until I get there."
"We never do," Gwen said and hung up.
"I certainly hope everything's okay," Clarissa said,
looking avid.
"Everything is always okay," Tilda said bitterly. "That's
what I do. I make everything okay." She stuffed the check
in her shirt pocket and looked down at Spot, trembling on
her foot. "Which is why I'm taking your dog."
"What?" Clarissa said, but Tilda had already scooped Spot
up, his long body drooping over her arm while his feet
tried for purchase on her hip.
"Just saving you a trip to the pound," Tilda said. "Have a
lovely day."
She carted her paint box and the dog out to her beat-up
yellow van, simmering with exasperation and another
emotion she didn't quite recognize but thought might be
fear. It put an acrid taste in her mouth, and she didn't
like it. Once on the passenger seat, Spot simmered,
too. "Oh, calm down," she said to him, as she put the van
in gear. "Anything's better than jail." Spot looked at her
strangely. "The pound. I meant the pound." She talked to
him all the way home, and by the time she pulled into the
fenced lot behind the Goodnight Gallery, Spot was asleep
and she was calmer. When she shut off the motor, he jerked
awake, his eyes like marbles, and she carried him, now
heaving with anxiety, into the shabby gallery office and
deposited him on the floor in front of her mother and
niece, both of them looking blonde and blue-eyed and cute.
So not like me, Tilda thought. Behind them, Gwennie's
bubbler jukebox played "No, No, Not Again," by the Three
Degrees.
"This is Spot," she said to Gwen and Nadine. "I'm finding
him a home where people will treat him with dignity and
not sell him down the river while his back is turned."
"Well, I'm sorry," Nadine said, her pretty face defiant
under her mop of pale curls. She was wearing a black T-
shirt that said BITE ME in Gothic letters, but she still
looked like Shirley Temple in a snit. "Nobody told me we
couldn't sell paintings. We're an art gallery, for cripe's
sake." She crouched down on the worn Oriental rug to pet
Spot, who backed away, still heaving, his eyes peeled for
a getaway. "What is wrong with this dog?"
"So many things," Tilda said. "About the painting?"
"While you were in Iowa," Gwen said to her, "Nadine broke
curfew and Andrew sent her down to clean the basement as a
punishment."
Tilda took a deep breath and thought of a few choice
things to say to her ex-brother-in-law.
"You can stop looking so mad," Nadine said "Dad didn't let
me in the locked part. I still don't know what's in
there."
"Storage," Tilda said.
"Right." Nadine rolled her eyes.
"Nadine." Tilda pushed her glasses up the bridge of her
nose and looked down at her, and Nadine swallowed and sat
up a little straighter. "You are not in a position to push
your luck here. The painting."
"Dad made me clean the back storeroom," Nadine said. "It
was full of furniture painted with animals. Dad said you
did it when you were my age. It was pretty cool,
especially the bed when we'd cleaned it off and set it up—
"
"We?" Tilda said.
"Ethan and me," Nadine said. "You didn't think I cleaned
that whole place out by myself?"
"So Ethan knows." Tilda consigned Andrew to the lowest
circle of hell for criminal stupidity, in sending not only
his daughter down there but also her nonfamily best friend.
"Well, he knows there's furniture down there, yeah,"
Nadine said. "What is it with you and the basement? It's
furniture."
"Right." Tilda realized her lungs were closing up again
and got her inhaler out. "Are we close to the painting
yet?"
"It was in there," Nadine said. "It was wrapped in paper
and stuck in a cabinet, the one with the turquoise monkeys
on it. Did you really paint all those animals?"
"It's junk. I was going through a phase." Tilda hit the
inhaler. "So you pulled the painting out and then what?"
"We thought it was good," Nadine said.
"So you sold it," Tilda said.
"No. We put it back in the cabinet and put dustsheets on
everything and went to Cup O' Joe's. And then today,
Grandma had to go to the bank, and this Mrs. Lewis came in
and asked if we had any paintings by somebody named
Scarlet, and I said no, all we had was Dorcas Finsters."
Nadine turned to Gwen. "Are we ever going to get rid of
those? I know she lives here, but they're really
depressing, and I think we could—"
"Nadine," Tilda said.
"Okay." Nadine crossed her arms. "And Mrs. Lewis said no,
she wanted paintings that looked like a kid had painted
them, and she started talking about checkerboard skies and
stars, and Ethan was here and he said, `That's like the
one we found in your basement,' and she would not leave
until we showed it to her."
"Ethan said that," Tilda said.
"Or maybe me." Nadine squinted at the ceiling. "I'm not
sure. Ask Ethan."
"Like Ethan wouldn't lie down on burning coals for you,"
Tilda said. "So you went and got the painting ..."
"And she offered me a hundred dollars for it and I said
no," Nadine said virtuously.
"And yet, the painting is not here," Tilda said.
"She kept offering and I kept saying no and when she got
to a thousand I caved," Nadine said. "Now will somebody
tell me why that was bad?"
"No." Gwen sank down on the couch next to her
granddaughter, looking much like Nadine was going to look
in forty years, pale-eyed, graying, and gamine.
"Where's your mom?" Tilda asked Nadine. She turned to
Gwen. "Why wasn't Eve watching the gallery?"
"She had a teacher's meeting," Gwen said. "Summer school.
She's aiding again. Look, this Lewis woman is not going to
return it. And the more fuss we make, the more suspicious
we look."
"Suspicious about what?" Nadine said. "Nobody tells me
anything." She reached down and scooped Spot off the faded
rug, and his tremors picked up again. "If you don't tell
me stuff, you can't blame me when I screw up."
She stuck her chin out at Tilda, defiant as she patted the
dog, and Tilda thought, She's right. She pulled out the
ancient desk chair so it was facing Nadine and sat down,
wincing as it creaked. "Okay, here it is."
"No," Gwen said. "She's sixteen."
"Yeah, and how old was I?" Tilda said. "I can't remember a
time I didn't know."
"Hello?" Nadine waved. "I'm right here. Know what?"
"Do you remember how successful the gallery used to be,
when Grandpa ran it?" Tilda said.
"No," Nadine said. "I was a kid when he died. I wasn't
really into the gallery thing then." She relaxed her hold
on Spot, who struggled out of her lap, hit the rug with a
splat, and recovered by putting his paws up on Tilda.
"Well, one of the reasons we were successful was that
Grandpa sometimes sold fakes," Tilda said flatly.
"Oh," Nadine said.
"That's good," Gwen said, her hands gripped together in
her lap. "The more people who know that the better."
"I won't tell," Nadine said.
"Some of the paintings that were real were by a man named
Homer Hodge," Tilda plowed on, "and Grandpa made a lot of
money off him legally. But then he and Homer had a fight,
and Homer stopped sending him paintings, so your grandpa
got the bright idea of inventing a daughter for Homer
named Scarlet, and he sold five paintings by her, making a
big deal out of the fact that she was a Hodge."
Gwen slumped back against the couch and stared at the
ceiling, shaking her head.
"Invented a daughter?" Nadine said. "Cool."
"No, not cool." Tilda picked up Spot, needing something to
hold on to for the next part, and Spot sighed and curled
his long, furry body to fit her lap. "The painting you
sold was the first Scarlet, a fake painting by a fake
artist. And that's fraud and we could go to jail. And
people are going to realize it's a fake because Homer was
from a farm in southern Ohio, and the painting you sold is
of this building."
"I thought it looked familiar," Nadine said.
"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,
semichinless, 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?"