
“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?”
