Finding the Forger (22 page)

I did as she said, but hated it. “A gift for me? You
are
nuts! Or maybe just unusually cruel!”

“It was going to be a gag gift, silly. Don’t worry, I already picked out a real gift.” She slammed on the brakes at a red light, and my flowered hat nearly flew off my head, which would have been okay with me.

I put on sunglasses, too, so no one would recognize me. To heck with Neville. I didn’t want
anyone
I knew to see me in this get-up.

“He’s getting away from us!” As soon as the light turned green, Connie took off down the road, quickly turning right to find a back street that paralleled York Road, and checking at each intersection to see if she could find Neville’s car in the traffic. He was heading into town, and there weren’t many places there he could be going.

“I’m thinking the museum. What do you think?” she asked me.

“Uh . . . I think so,” I said, even though I had no idea where he was headed.

“Yup. The museum. He’s probably headed there.”

I didn’t feel this was the right time to tell her that Sarah and I had already done this follow-Neville-to-the-museum-and-home routine. I’d left out the details of that trip when I’d given her my Neville information. It didn’t matter. Connie was intently staring at the road.

She eased off the accelerator and turned back to York Road. She was going to let him get ahead of her and meet him at the museum. Okay, I’d go along for this ride.

“Poor Neville,” I said, suddenly feeling sorry for the guy.

“Yeah, it’s sad. Kid’s caught in the middle of a divorce. Mother’s trying to get ahead in the art world but isn’t doing the stuff that’s in vogue right now. Kid’s shipped off to Dad. Kid decides to make parents enter a world of hurt, and what better way than this? Embarrass Daddy on his home turf. Show Mommy how much he loves her . . .”

“You’re freaking me out here, Connie. You sound like a psychiatrist or something.”

She shrugged. “It’s not complicated. Just common sense.”

Before long, we were at the museum, which wasn’t open yet for visitors. But there, alone in the parking lot, was Neville’s father’s car. And Neville was just sitting behind the wheel, staring at his hands as if he didn’t know what to do.

It was oddly disappointing and kind of anti-climatic, if you know what I mean. I’d expected a long chase and some melodramatics. Maybe even a race on foot around the museum grounds. Instead, Neville just sat there, as if he were waiting for us—or someone—to come along and stop him before he stole again.

Before I could say “boo,” Connie veered into a spot behind him and was out of the car. I followed her, completely forgetting I had that kooky hat on. Funny thing about hats—you forget you have them on while they’re on, but you feel like you have them on once you take them off. Go figure.

“Neville!” Connie shouted.

Neville looked up, and his face was ghostly white, stricken, as if he were coming to grips with some painful event. He rolled down the window.

“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.

“I think you know.” Connie stood next to his car and I stood right behind her. What a pair we made—she in her beach headgear, me in my clown outfit. “What’s in the bag, Neville? It’s not a shirt, is it?”

His mouth fell open, and it looked for an instant like he would protest. Then his eyes widened as if he realized all was lost. “No, it’s not,” he said slowly. “I . . . I . . .” He hung his head in shame. Then he pulled the bag from the passenger seat and handed it to Connie. She carefully pulled out the bag’s contents—an abstract expressionist painting about the size of a calendar, with bold clean lines done in reds and grays.

“Can I talk to my father first—before you do anything?” he asked. He sounded so pathetic, you could hardly say no. Connie handed him her cell phone.

“How do you work this thing?” he asked softly.

I
N RETROSPECT, giving Neville the cell phone may have been a mistake. It meant Neville’s dad came swooping in before the police got there, refused to let the cops talk to the kid, and whisked him away before I even had a chance to say goodbye, let alone remove that darn hat from my head. Just my luck, too, that a Sunpapers photographer showed up with the men in blue. They snapped a photo of the scene, including me in the floral contraption. Connie had wised up and removed her headgear by then.

It was a sad story, though, and I can’t say that I feel really proud of myself. In fact, I think all of us—Kerrie, Sarah, and Doug—had a case of the guilts after it came out. Connie had pretty much gotten the story right. Neville was really troubled by his parents’ divorce, had even been seeing a therapist for awhile, and had come to America specifically to see if he could snap himself out of a depression and start over. His father and he hadn’t always gotten along. He adored his mother . . . it was practically a textbook case.

But once we heard it, we all wished we’d reached out more to him beyond the superficial “isn’t he the cutest thing” stuff. And in Doug’s case, he wished he’d made an effort beyond the “get your hands off my girlfriend, ugh ugh” stuff. Doug had even imitated Neville a couple times in the last week, and been pretty darn good at it, too.

But all that quickly evaporated into the past because, just two days after Neville’s arrest, he was gone—as in out of the country. His father must have arranged it, even though Bertrand Witherspoon said he had nothing to do with it. And his mother, contacted in London, wasn’t sure where Neville was even though she didn’t sound all that worried in the television interview I saw.

To make up for all this trauma, Mom took me shopping on Tuesday night and let me buy a burgundy velvet dress that screamed “oh yeah, baby.” Meanwhile, she promised to finish the green dress for Christmas.

The only cloud on this horizon was that it was too late for Mistletoe Dance tickets. So Kerrie, Sarah, Doug, Hector, and I decided to make a special night of it by going out to dinner on the last day of school before the holiday break.

And you know what? With Neville taken care of, Doug and I back together, and Kerrie and Sarah friends again, I wasn’t too upset about not having tickets to the Mistletoe Dance. Sure it was the biggest dance outside of the prom. And it was a holiday dance, which meant it would be particularly festive, with mistletoe and everything. And it would be the only dance where you could wear a totally cool winter dress . . . Wait a minute, maybe I
was
upset!

I pushed those feelings aside as I powdered my nose and glided on some lip gloss. The usual holiday hits were blaring from my clock radio. Focus on the good stuff, I kept thinking—it wasn’t too bad going out to a posh restaurant with Doug and my friends. Giving him his Christmas gift. Getting mine from him. And no Neville around to mess things up.

But the thought of Neville brought the black cloud of nagging sadness into my room.

“What time is Doug picking you up?” my mother called from the hallway.

“In a half hour. Why?”

“I want to take pictures.”

Since she couldn’t see me, I rolled my eyes. “Okay!”

Standing, I looked at myself in the mirror and felt pretty darn good, even though I was just in my slip. This haircut looked even better, now that the just-cut edges had mellowed out a bit. It was a keeper. After dabbing perfume behind my ears, I was just about to shimmy into my dress when my mother knocked on my door.

“Connie’s on the phone for you!”

Opening the door a crack, I grabbed the cordless from her outstretched hand. “I didn’t even hear it ring!”

Mom just shrugged. “Turn your radio down.”

“Hello?” I said into the phone.

“Bianca? I can hardly hear you. Turn your radio off!” Connie’s melodious voice shouted at me through the receiver. I did as she said.

“Why are you calling? I’ve got to get ready to go out.”

“This’ll take just a minute. Can you go in my room and get my Witherspoon file?”

Groaning, I pulled on my robe and walked to her room. “Why didn’t you have Mom do this?”

“I figure you’ve already snooped in the file, so I’m not breaking any confidentiality with you. Why involve Mom?” she snickered.

“Where are you, anyway?” I opened her bedroom door and flipped on the light. She didn’t need to tell me where the files were.
Without being directed, I headed to the standing file on the corner table by the window.

“His office at his home. Witherspoon’s.”

“You forgot to take his file with you?” I plucked it from the bunch, and for once it was easy to suppress the temptation to look at the other files stuck there. I needed to get going. My little burgundy dress awaiteth.

“I grabbed the wrong one. No big deal. I just need to check on one thing. Open to the expense account information. It should be in the back. I need to tell him . . .” She chuckled and I heard a bell-like noise followed by a whir and music. “His office is phenomenal. Tons of electronics. You should see this clock he has.”

“Huh?” Flipping through the pages, I found the ones she was looking for. “Got ‘em. What do you need? And why are you meeting with him, anyway? I thought you were off the payroll once you turned his son in.”

“He’s leaving his firm. Going to London to meet with his ex about Neville. Then taking early retirement. I thought he might leave a recommendation for me with someone else at the firm.”

“That sounds like a long shot.”

“Well, yeah. But I’ve got to make a living.”

“What do you need? I’ve got the file, but I’ve to get going.”

“The total. It should be at the bottom of the page. It should be the expenses plus retainer.”

As I rattled off different figures in response to her questions, she interspersed our conversation with more awe-struck comments about Mr. Witherspoon’s at-home electronics. Just as we finished, her tone changed and she started talking to someone else, telling him she was describing his office to me, her sister, because it was so “dazzling.”
Dazzling
? Was that supposed to impress him? I held the
phone away from my ear and silently gagged. Then I heard Witherspoon speak. “Yes, I’m a gadget aficionado. I think I should have been an engineer.” Connie came back on to say thanks, she had to go.

After I replaced the phone in its hall cradle, I went back to my preparations, which didn’t take long. But I was distracted. Something nagged at me I couldn’t quite figure out. After attaching my fake diamond chip earrings to my ears, I shook my head to try and knock the feeling out of me, and went downstairs.

In a few minutes, Doug came in and Mom did the “ooh, aah” routine and snapped some pictures. Even Tony poked his head out of his room and his silence was as close to a “you look great” pronouncement as I’d ever get from him, so I was a pretty happy camper.

The beginning of the date went well, with Doug giving me a goose-bump-inducing kiss in the car before we took off. This was going to be a great night.

Next stop was Kerrie and Sarah’s, where we did the ol’ picture-taking routine again. As I waited in the Daniels’ foyer with Doug, the nagging feeling came back. What was it? Connie calling me for help. That had to be it. Something out of the ordinary. Something that didn’t fit.