Perfect on Paper (21 page)

Hank’s present had cost me approximately one and one-third of my net worth. Wrapping it would be nothing compared to paying for it, which I calculated would take until March.

But that was as it should be. Guilt was expensive.

I finally determined that the most efficient way to package Hank’s jacket would be to roll it up lengthwise in wrapping paper and tie ribbons around each end, like an oversized firecracker. After laying the paper on the floor and shooing Puny off it three times, I had it in position when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Meeeerrrrrry Christmas!” my mother squealed. There was a ferocious racket in the background. It sounded like…

Bon Jovi?

“We got the grandkids a karaoke machine!” she announced. “That’s your nephew, Jeffer Junior. Listen.” She held the phone so the music swelled for a moment before she returned to the receiver. “He’s a cowboy!”

“I can hear that.”

“And he’s wanted!” she added.

“Dead or alive?” I said.

“Dead or aliiiiive!”
she trilled.

Every so often my mother could be undeniably endearing. I laughed and flopped on the couch. Puny, of course, flopped on the wrapping paper.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be home,” she continued. “I thought you might be out in Pennsylvania with your Edith Ann.”

“Elinor Ann,” I corrected. Mom invariably confused my friend’s name with that of the Lily Tomlin character from the 1960s. “I’m leaving in a few minutes to have Christmas with Hank.” And Tom-Tom, but, of course, she didn’t have to know that.

“Ahhh. Your young man. Sounds like it’s getting downright serious.”

“We’ll see. How’s Dad?”

“Couldn’t be better! I’d put him on the phone, but he’s gone off to the bedroom to freshen up. He just brought the house down with a rousing performance of ‘My Way’!”

I couldn’t help but question the appropriateness of a ninety-nine-year-old singing about the end being near and facing the final curtain. “Are you sure that was the best choice of song?”

“You know the Commodore. He loves his Sinatra!”

Then again, Dad would never have managed to hit those high notes on “Stayin’ Alive.”

I got off the phone, rolled up Hank’s jacket, and put on some makeup. Just before I prepared to walk out the door, the phone rang again. But I was in a hurry.

I did, however, have enough time to listen to whoever was calling leave a message.

Click.

Especially if the caller didn’t leave one.

My timing was flawless. When I arrived at the brownstone, Tom-Tom was unloading gift after gift from the trunk of a black town car.

“What’d you do?” I said when I reached his side. “Buy out Barneys?”

“What’d
you
do?” he said, eyeing Hank’s bulky present. “Buy me a corpse?”

“Damn. How is it you always guess what I got you before you even unwrap it?”

We emptied the trunk, and the town car drove off just as Hank opened the door. I heard Tom-Tom gasp under his breath.

“That’s
him
?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

“Tell you what?”

“How criminally handsome he is.”

Hank did look handsome in his blue cashmere sweater and faded jeans. He bounded down the steps and offered his hand to Tom-Tom.
“Let me help y’all with those,” he said, picking up roughly twice his weight in presents. “Sure is nice to finally meet you.”

“I assure you, Mr. Wheeler, the pleasure is all mine.”

“Your boyfriend’s charming,” Tom-Tom whispered during the house tour, after the gifts had been placed under the tree. “Too bad he can’t stop staring at me.”

His comment was all I needed to hear to know Hank had passed muster. My half brother always signaled his approval of my boyfriends by insisting they were gay. My shoulders dropped about six inches. Everything was going to be fine.

Things got even better when we entered the kitchen and Dinner emerged from the butler’s pantry. I handed Tom-Tom an apple, and by the time it disappeared, he was smitten. “I
want
one of these.”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Hank said, “keeping pigs ain’t exactly legal round these parts.”

“Then I want one even more. You know, Hank, I’m having a devil of a time pinpointing your accent. Where are you from, anyway?”

“Eastern Tennessee. Little bit south of Knoxville.”

Tennessee?
I thought.
What happened to Las Vegas?

My cell phone rang before I could raise the question. I had a strong hunch about the identity of the caller. Best not to answer it.

On the other hand, spending Christmas with one’s boyfriend could be considered the adult equivalent of going steady. Maybe if Billy knew I was at Hank’s, he’d finally back off.

“Hello?”

“The Bieber bus is lonely without you.”

“Uh… I think you’ve got the wrong number.”

“Oh,
I
get it. You’re with that guy you were telling me about, aren’t you?”

“This is four-three-
seven
-three.”

He chuckled. “Tell him his competition wishes him a merry Christmas. It’s the last one he’ll be spending with my girl.”

“Happy holidays to you, too, sir.” I flipped the phone shut and willed myself not to get all gooey at Billy’s use of the term “my girl.”

My half brother gave me a quizzical look. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Your face is all red. You look as if you’ve been imbibing eggnog since the crack of dawn.”

“I guess it’s the heat. It must be a thousand degrees in here with that oven blasting!” I could only hope that Tom-Tom, on the opposite side of the room, couldn’t feel the frigid air seeping in from Dinner’s pet door. I shrugged off my cardigan for emphasis and prayed I wouldn’t start shivering.

Hank glanced at the timer on the stove. “Tell you what. That roast’s got a good half hour to go—how ’bout we go on back to the parlor and open up some presents?”

I would have agreed to open up a vein, as long as it detracted attention from my conflicted state. Besides, one of Hank’s offerings had caught my eye when I’d added my packages to the pile: a compact box, just the right size for a small item of jewelry.

“Excellent idea.”

Not that I was ready for a ring—at least, not a diamond. Not yet. And I hardly deserved one after my recent lapses in judgment. But an opal would be nice. An opal would make the statement, “I genuinely care about you, but I’m not so cocky as to assume you’d agree to marry me seven and a half weeks after our first date.”

The four of us made our way down the hallway, but just before we reached the parlor, a thunderous crash sent Dinner scurrying back to the safety of the kitchen. We crowded into the door frame to discover the toppled tree, which had missed shattering the bay window by mere inches.

“Aw, heck,” Hank said. “I just knew building my own tree stand was gonna turn out to be a lousy idea.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MAKE MINE A DOUBLE

T
he gifts were spared, but Hank’s reputation wasn’t.

“He’s a fraud,” Tom-Tom whispered after Hank had gone to the kitchen to find a broom for sweeping up the broken ornaments.

I sighed. “That’s what Elinor Ann keeps telling me.” No doubt Cal was capable of building a Christmas tree stand that would keep a conifer upright in the face of gale-force winds.

“I’m not sure exactly what he’s up to, but I’m confident that most contractors know their way around a toolbox.”

“He doesn’t seem to have much experience with electrical wiring, either,” I confided, recalling the switch-plate incident of the previous month.

Tom-Tom hoisted the tree and propped it in a corner. “On the other hand, he did a fabulous job refinishing this floor.”

“He sure did.” My half brother had been presented with enough damning evidence for one afternoon. He did not need to know about the floor guy who’d been brought in to do the actual refinishing—or the fact that Hank seemed to be a native of both Las Vegas and Eastern Tennessee. “So… what do you think I should do?”

“Oh, sweetie. With my track record, I’m the last person you should turn to for advice. I will say one thing, though. He’s terribly attractive.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

“And he does seem utterly devoted to you.”

“There’s that, too.”

“And… I like the guy.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

I liked him even better when I opened the compact box, suitable for a small item of jewelry, and discovered an antique sterling silver key ring.

“I know you got your own place and all, but I want you to feel welcome anytime,” Hank said, handing me a key to the brownstone. “Well, least as long as I’m here.”

Tom-Tom laid a hand over his heart. “That is
so sweet
.”

“Hey—that’s my line,” I said, giving my boyfriend a hug.

“I mean it, Dana,” Hank whispered. “I really like having you around.” Over his shoulder, my half brother was silently mouthing something, but I couldn’t quite make out what. Two words, beginning with the letter
B
…

I raised my eyebrows, and he repeated the phrase more slowly:

Background check.

“I sure do like that brother of yours,” Hank said after the gifts had all been opened, the roast had been eaten, and Tom-Tom had departed for the Upper East Side. “It was real nice of him to get me all them presents.” He’d received a couple of tickets to the opening night party for the Outsider Art Fair next month (“contingent on your escorting my half sister”), a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers (“flattering on everyone”), and a very good bottle of champagne (“no one should ring in the new year with swill”).

“He’s always been generous.” I myself had been gifted with enough cashmere to keep the entire population of Siberia warm all winter. “But your present was my favorite.”

“Yours was mine.”

This was the moment when we were supposed to embrace and begin wending our way down the hallway to the little room off the kitchen. But it was also the optimal occasion for posing the question that had been nagging at me for the past four hours.

“Hank… can I ask you something?”

“Course you can.”

“Well… when my brother asked where you were from, you told him Tennessee.”

“Shooks.”

“Shucks?” What was that supposed to mean? Shucks, my cover is blown? Shucks, I can’t keep my stories straight?

“No, Shooks—Shooks, Tennessee. Little bitty town that don’t even show up on most maps. Wheelers have been living there since pretty near forever.”

“Then how come you told me last month you were from Las Vegas?”

He laughed, but just before he did, a fleeting expression crossed his face that might have conveyed panic. Then again, it might have conveyed indigestion, since Tom-Tom had brought an unbearably rich blackout cake for dessert.

“Aw, that. My daddy was a horse trainer. He met some folks from that Circus Circus casino, and when I was round about thirteen, he packed up the family and moved us out west.”

Suuuuure he did,
I silently responded.
What did your mother do? Sing backup for Wayne Newton?

Hank stood and offered his hand. “Getting kind of late. What do you say we turn in?”

That would be the simplest thing to do—smile sweetly and forget about all the things I’d been hearing lately that didn’t quite add up. And I was just about to comply—until I looked over his shoulder and saw the Christmas tree leaning against the wall, broken ornaments hanging from its branches.

“In a second. There’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

“Like what?”

“Like… well, sometimes I get the feeling you’re not being completely honest with me.”

He frowned. “I got no idea what you’re talking about.”

Then stop staring at your shoelaces and look me in the eye,
I thought but didn’t say. I took a deep breath. “I’m talking about that tree stand you built, for starters. It just seems strange to me that it—you know.” I tilted my head toward the corner.

“I’m a contractor, Dana. Never said nothing about being no carpenter.”

Or a floor guy. Or any of the skilled professions listed on the side of your truck, for that matter.
“I guess I just figured contractors were—you know. Handy.”