Finding the Forger (10 page)

“Don’t look now, m’dear, but I think Hector is eyeing you rather suspiciously. You didn’t, by any chance, slip a painting into your brassiere?” Then he looked at me with a wolf-like gaze that made me tremble and blush. “But of course you couldn’t. Not the way that dress hugs you so deliciously.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been described as “delicious” before. And if some guy at school had just said that to me, I’d have swung at him. Or at least squinted. But somehow Neville could get away with saying a whole lot of things just because of his dreamy British accent. So when he pulled me a little closer, I didn’t resist, and that’s exactly how Doug found us—with Neville’s arm slipped around my waist and his lips perilously close to my ear as he whispered sweet and funny nothings to me.

Doug was not amused. He stood ramrod straight, then shoved his hands in his pockets, looked at me, raised his eyebrows (which I was smart enough to know meant “what the hey is going on here?”), and pursed his lips before speaking.

“Kerrie’s okay. Sarah’s helping her. They said they’d wait for
us downstairs.”

Doug was jealous. And, I’m ashamed to admit, I liked it. Something inside me said, “take that, you jerk. You ignored me to take care of sob sister Kerrie, so this is what you get—your girlfriend on the arms of Hugh Grant.”

But once I’d had my satisfying moment of silent revenge, I pulled away from Neville and stood next to Doug. I might be weak, but I’m not stupid. Doug was my guy.

And Doug wasn’t stupid, either. He knew Neville was putting the moves on me. Staking his claim, Doug grabbed my hand.

“Let’s catch up with the crowd,” he said as if actually interested in the art exhibit. I was touched. Doug was pretending to like this hoity toity stuff just to please me. My eyes welled with tears of joy.

Well, not really. But my mouth turned up in a kind of goofy grin that I’m sure knocked out my sophisticated look, good haircut or not.

Neville, meanwhile, was undaunted by Doug’s territorial attitude. He strode right along with us, as if we were the Three Musketeers. And he kept up his funny banter, which annoyed Doug as well as most of the other art patrons within earshot.

Trouble is, I’m a sucker for amusing banter. Okay, okay, I’m a sucker for anything silly—it doesn’t even need to rise to the level of “banter.” So I had a hard time controlling myself. To keep from laughing, I kept biting the insides of my cheeks. If this kept up much longer, I was going to need oral surgery by the time we were finished.

But we were finished in a few minutes. Fawn Dexter said something about the generosity of several important patrons such as Jean Connelly, everyone applauded, and we were on our way
back to the food again.

When we tramped back downstairs, Kerrie and Sarah were waiting for us, looking like the best of friends, which is what they used to be. In fact, it now looked like Kerrie was comforting Sarah, who was pale and distracted, glancing this way and that as if looking for someone. Spotting Hector across the room, she shot him a glance that said “betrayal.” He, meanwhile, looked at her like a confused puppy, which, come to think of it, is a look I’ve seen on a lot of guys’ faces. It must be standard issue.

I did the introductions and then turned to Sarah.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Well, I . . .”

Kerrie stepped forward. “She thought she was locked out.” “I had to go to my car,” Sarah said. “I had a blouse there. And when I tried to get back in, the door was locked.”

I looked over my shoulder at the museum’s front door, which was open.

“Not that door,” Sarah said. “The one by the dumpster.”

Hector headed our way, and behind him I saw another figure enter the scene, a very familiar figure. Connie! But she didn’t come toward us—I’m not even sure she noticed me or cared that I was there. Instead, she headed purposefully up the stairs as if on a mission.

Sarah saw her, too, and quickly turned to us to announce she was hungry. It was as if she wanted to draw attention away from Connie’s presence.

“I can drive us all somewhere. Who wants to go?” she asked with false bravado.

“Sounds smashing,” Neville said. “You’ll go, won’t you, Bianca?”

Whoa, Neville. Suddenly he was part of our group. Grimacing, Doug squeezed my hand tighter. “I have my own car. But I have a term paper due . . .” Doug said.

Neville grinned devilishly. “Then Bianca can come with us while you scoot on home to Mummy.”

This didn’t sit too well with Doug. I actually saw the muscles in his jaw working as he struggled to control his anger. I was reminded of those nature shows where two rams buck at each other, horns intertwining.

“I’m tired anyway,” I said lamely, wanting to avoid any carnage.

“Aw, come on, Bianc, it’ll be fun,” said Kerrie. “We haven’t done anything together in a long time.” She was right. We hadn’t done anything together in a long time because of the unspoken feud between her and Sarah. This was reconciliation time and I didn’t want to miss it. Besides, I might be needed for more mediation.

“Yes, Bianca, it
will
be fun,” said Neville. “Where are you going? One of those chain places, I hope. Where there are plastic menus and food that’s the same the whole country over.” He smiled and rocked on his heels. “I love those places.”

While Neville launched into a funny riff on things he liked about America, I caught sight of Hector talking quietly to Sarah, just on the edge of our group. I edged a little closer to eavesdrop.

“I thought we were going out together,” Hector was saying. He sounded miffed.

“Not tonight,” she whispered back.

“I get it—
your
friends. I don’t swim in the same sea.” He turned his back and walked away. Sarah stared after him but came back to our group.

“. . . and we watch ‘ER,’ ‘Friends,’ ‘Frasier’—American shows are very popular at home. And music, too. Eminem is well good, if you ask me,” Neville was saying.

“‘Well good’?” Kerrie asked. “Don’t you mean ‘very’?”

“I suppose,” Neville laughed. “It’s how we say things. Like a
bird
. If she’s what you call ‘hot,’ she’s ‘well fit’ in Britain.” Neville looked straight at me and I blushed.

“A bird?” Kerrie chirped.

“A girl,” I explained. I might not have the slang dictionary, but I was good at getting things from context. And this context was getting too “well fit” for me.

“Let’s go,” I said brightly.

“We could go to Applebee’s,” Sarah said to us, her voice trembling. “They have fajitas.”

“I love Mexican food. Oh, let’s do go,” Neville chimed in.

Doug looked at me, then at Neville, and must have made an instant calculation. “I can go for a little while. We’ll meet you there.”

“Just a sec. I need to go to the ladies room,” I said, and rushed off looking for Connie.

I didn’t find Connie, but I did find Hector. When I came upon him just around the corner from the crowd, he was locking up a closet with a big ring of keys.

“Hector,” I blurted out, “I understand you’re an art student.”

He looked surprised and nodded slowly. “Yeah. So?”

“What kind of stuff do you do?” I tried to sound conversational, but I knew I was coming off as just weird. Heck, I felt weird.

“Watercolors. Nothing like this.” He swept his arm around in a gesture that included the whole museum, but I knew what he meant. Hector’s art was probably not what galleries and museums were looking for. Maybe Hector
was
behind all the museum shenanigans, and maybe that’s why Sarah was worried. And darn it, she couldn’t afford to get into trouble even if she was moony over a sweet-looking art student who moonlighted as a guard. I’d learned my lesson with Sarah already—don’t be quiet when you think something bad is on the horizon. So, pardon the pun, but I forged ahead. She might not have the courage to.

“Look, Hector,” I said, wagging my finger at him. “Sarah is one of my best friends and I don’t want her getting hurt. A month or so ago, she was in big trouble, and if she even gets near that kind of trouble again—with the law and all—she won’t get any breaks. And I happen to know that the museum has been missing a few things and Sarah is afraid her friend has done something wrong, so all I can say is—stay away from her, buster, until you straighten up and fly right!”

Woohoo—what a lecture! Now I understand why grown-ups enjoy it so much. The rush of power, the thrill of control, the high of being The Authority. It’s a wonder they don’t indulge in it more often.

But if I’d expected Hector to simper and cower, beg for forgiveness, and back away, I was sorely mistaken. Instead, he pulled himself up like a bear ready to strike, and he unleashed his own lecture. Except it wasn’t really a lecture. It was the truth. And the reason I know it was the truth is because the truth has this funny way of zooming in on you like a heat-seeking missile. It doesn’t miss.

“You can tell Sarah she has nothing to worry about,” he hissed and stomped off.

In those ten words, he had communicated an essay’s worth of info. He was not the thief. And he was not going to pursue a woman—Sarah—who thought he was.

Way to go, Bianca. I’d just managed, at one and the same time, to falsely accuse a man I didn’t even know, and to ruin my best friend’s budding romance with him. Was I talented or what?

T
HE CAR RIDE to Applebee’s was silent and slow. I was in my own world, trying to figure out how to break it to Sarah that I’d ruined her relationship with Hector, while also berating myself for zeroing in on him in the first place. But hey, Sarah herself had been concerned about him, so I wasn’t completely in left field on this. I just was missing too much information. I had to talk to Connie. I started choosing the various torture methods I could use to pry the info out of her that night. Perhaps I’d remove all the tofu from the house and substitute packages of Jimmy Dean’s breakfast sausage.

My silent musings soon gave way to silent fuming, however, when I realized that Doug was engaging in his own fume fest. Why should he enjoy it alone, right?

Doug always drives slowly, which is okay by me. I’d rather have that than some Dale Earnhardt wannabe behind the wheel. But today, his slowness was matched by a clenched jaw version of simmering irritation, which just lit my own irk-fuse, if you know what I mean.

Okay, question for guys now: why can’t you just come out and say what’s on your mind? I mean, with girls, it’s blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A guy would have to be an alien mutant not
to know what’s on a girl’s mind. (Come to think of it, maybe guys
are
mutants.)

But guys, I have discovered, are real Silent Sams. Something bothers them, they mope and fume, but don’t say a word. Then, like some big loping dog, they eventually get over it or snarl and bark at you.

Now, I knew that Doug was miffed because of the whole Neville thing. I was miffed that he was miffed because I had been miffed about the Kerrie thing, but I had not moped and fumed. So he shouldn’t either, right? Keep it to himself!

Uh-oh. He
was
keeping it to himself. That was the problem! I needed to rethink this whole comeuppance flirting thing.