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“Mind telling me what was so funny back there?”

“Nothing. That’s just this… psychological tic I have. I guess you could call it a coping mechanism for dealing with shock.”

His concerned expression gave way to one of relief. “That’s good. I mean—that’s bad, but it’s better than what I was thinking. I was thinking you might be, well… pregnant or something.”

“Pregnant? Of course I’m not pregnant! I’m—I’m Hannah.”

“Who?”

“The artist. Who paints pigs. And is positively mad for Cool Ranch Doritos.”

“No kidding? You’re her? That really
was
Dinner?”

I nodded.

Now it was his turn to laugh. “Damn! You’re about to be famous!”

“Well, here’s the thing. It isn’t quite that simple. Hannah’s supposed to be an eighty-two-year-old resident of Maine who lives in a tar paper shack and eats squirrels she traps in the woods.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How’d that happen?”

“The woman I work for thought it would—I don’t know—add cachet, I suppose.”

Hank rubbed his temples, taking it all in. “Looks like she was onto something. That booth sure was packed. So… what’s the problem?”

“I’m worried our subterfuge might be construed as… fraud.”

“Fraud? Heck, that ain’t fraud. From what I seen, them paintings were the best thing in the whole show.”

“Thanks, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m hardly eighty-two.”

“That don’t matter. If you say you’re Hannah, you’re Hannah, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

He stopped me with a look. “Dana, this here’s America. You can be anybody you want, long as you ain’t killin’ people or blowin’ stuff up. And… I ought to know.” He reached for his wallet and pulled out a driver’s license, but not his current one. This one had been issued in
Tennessee—quite a while ago, judging by the picture of a much younger Hank in its corner.

He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you… Hannah.”

I absentmindedly shook it while continuing to inspect the license. “Nice to meet you, too.…”

Jefferson Davis Calhoun?!!

CHAPTER NINETEEN
DOUBLE JEOPARDY

“Y
ou can keep calling me Hank,” he said while I sat gaping at the license, my emotions ping-ponging between confusion and outrage. “I been him going on eleven years now.”

I looked into his eyes. “So… who
are
you?”

He met my gaze and shrugged. “Who are you? Dana Mayo? Or this Hannah lady?”

“But—”

But wait a second. This was different. Whatever Hank—no, J.D.—no, Hank—was involved in, I had a feeling it was a more serious transgression than painting under a
nom de pinceau
.

But what, exactly,
was
he involved in? Identity theft? Apparently. But what had necessitated the name change? Was he on the lam? If so, from what? Murder? Kidnapping?

Oh god. I
so
should have followed through with Tom-Tom’s suggestion at Christmas and conducted a background check.

I backed up as far as the wall would allow and handed Hank the license. “You need to explain what this is all about. Immediately.”

“That’s just what I’m planning on doing. But let me tell you right off the bat—there ain’t no stain on the name Calhoun. We’re just poor folks,
that’s all. Never did have nothing. When my daddy died, all he left me was his truck.”

“The panel truck?”

He nodded. “Used to be his daddy’s. Soon as I got it, I started doing odd jobs here and there—painting, moving… whatever paid cash.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with—”

“I’m gettin’ to it. One day a guy hired me to clear out one of them self-storage units. Turns out when folks don’t pay their bill for a couple of months, whatever they got in there gets sold off to the highest bidder.”

“I thought about going to one of those auctions a while back. But then I heard you don’t get to look inside the units before you bid.”

“You sure don’t. I always figured you’d get stuck with a bunch of broken-down junk. But this guy I was working for decided he’d take a shot anyway. He laid out forty bucks and wound up with some fancy Art Deco bedroom set, and a whole mess of other old stuff, and he took it on over to the antique mall outside Knoxville and made himself a whole mess of money.”

“So you decided to do the same thing.”

“You bet I did. And I’ll tell you what—I wound up with more broken-down junk than you ever saw in your whole life. Don’t matter how busted a bike is, folks can’t seem to get rid of it. Or old newspapers. Or beat-up rugs full of holes. Once in a while I might make a buck or two off a set of tires or a baby crib, but it was rough going, that’s for sure. And then one day I got lucky.”

Finally,
I thought. By now my fingernails had left burgundy-colored half-moons in the palms of my hands.

“I kept showing up, and after a while I started to get pretty chummy with the auctioneer. One day he tells me about this old guy whose brother’d died up in New York City. Guy drove north, packed up the brother’s apartment, hauled everything down to Tennessee, and put it all into a storage unit earlier that year. Now that guy was dead, too. With no kin.”

At last I understood where his story was going. “And the brother’s name was Hank Wheeler.”

“Sure was.”

To hear Hank tell it, anybody would have recycled the name.

“First box I opened was nothing but a bunch of old paperwork. I’ll tell you, I sure wasn’t happy to see that. But I dug around a little and found a folder full of tax returns. The last year this guy filed, he made over two hundred grand. Well, I near about fell over when I saw that. And when I looked at what line of work he was in and read ‘contractor,’ I thought, heck—I could do that.”

My mind immediately returned to the switch-plate incident. “Guess it turned out to be a little more involved than you expected, huh?”

“Not really. I knew the job was more than slapping on paint and hammering nails. But Wheeler hired folks to do the hard stuff for him. There was piles of invoices from all sorts of specialists—plasterers, stained-glass restorers, you name it—and every last one of ’em charged a fortune. Not that old Hank minded. Turns out every time they’d send him a bill, he’d just turn around and charge his clients even more for the work they done.”

“Twenty percent more,” I said.

“How’d you know that?”

“My brother.” I remembered Tom-Tom railing against the practice—called ten and ten, for ten percent overhead and ten percent profit—when he’d had renovations done on his town house a few years back. No wonder Hank had encouraged me to double the price on those balusters.

“Ain’t that the sweetest deal you ever heard of? I couldn’t hardly believe what I was lookin’ at.”

I couldn’t hardly believe what I was hearing. “But—I don’t get it. If the real Hank Wheeler was dead, wouldn’t his clients and all those craftsmen have heard about it?”

“They knew all about it. That’s why I had ‘Hank Wheeler and Son’ painted on the side of the truck.”

“Ohhhh. And
Son
.”

“After that, I was all set. Made some calls and moved on up a week later. Hank Wheeler did some real fine work in this town. Folks couldn’t wait to hire Junior.”

Damn,
I thought to myself.
New Yorkers are so gullible when it comes to… brownstone whisperers. And I ought to know.

The door to the stairwell squeaked open, and Tom-Tom cautiously poked his head inside. “Is it safe to come in yet?”

“Be my guest. I’m fine.” I held up a sodden lump of cloth. “Your handkerchief wasn’t so lucky.”

He waved a hand in dismissal and extracted a pillbox from his jacket pocket. “Have a Valium. God knows you look like you could use one. In fact—have two.” He shook a couple of tablets into my palm, and I gulped one down, putting the other in my change purse for safekeeping. The way the evening was going, I had a feeling it would come in handy.

Tom-Tom took a seat and peered into my eyes. “That was quite the exit you made. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”

My brain was so overloaded with new information about my boyfriend, it took a few seconds before I could recall the circumstances. “Oh, that. Uh—did you happen to notice the pig portraits in there?”

“How could I not? The mob around them was so dense, I could hardly squeeze past. I found them charming, actually—don’t you think they looked just like Dinner? And what a story about the artist.” He placed one hand over his heart, intoning, “A geriatric star is born.”

Hank chuckled. “That’s a fine way to talk about your kid sister.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“She’s the one painting ’em.”

Tom-Tom let out a yelp. “They’re
yours
? You’re—?”

My brother’s laugh has always been distinctive. When people first
hear it, they often wonder aloud what happened to his beard and red suit. Robust ho-ho-hos echoed in the stairwell for the next few minutes.

“What in the
world
were you smoking to come up with a story like that?” he finally said.

“I didn’t come up with it. Vivian did.”

“The bitch who sells the vintage clothing?”

I nodded. “Graciela—the dealer you just saw in there—came into the store one day, and Vivian just… went to town. Next thing I knew, I was Hannah.”

“Extraordinary. And I’m impressed. The paintings really are quite charming.”

“I appreciate your saying so. But is what I’m doing… legal?”

Tom-Tom rose to his feet. “I’m famished. Let’s discuss it over paella.”

Normally I loved going to dinner at El Quixote, but that evening I would have preferred to be stretched out on my bed digesting Hank’s revelation, not jammed into a banquette digesting paella. I laid out the details of my arrangement with Vivian while Tom-Tom listened intently.

“A fifty percent commission is unconscionable,” he declared. “Although it
does
provide you with an added layer of protection.”

“Protection?” The forkful of rice I’d just taken turned to Styrofoam in my mouth. “So I am committing a crime?”

“That’s a bit of a gray area. The paintings are all the work of a single artist, so thankfully forgery’s not an issue. It’s just that the artist has very little in common with her official biography.” He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Honestly, that Graciela woman is a real rube. The first thing any reputable dealer would have done is establish provenance.”

“How would they do that?” I asked, just as Hank was requesting a definition of the word.

“Provenance is a way of authenticating a work of art,” Tom-Tom explained. “Which can be accomplished using a variety of methods. With
the type of artists I tend to represent—long-dead ones—one would need to have a professional appraisal done by an expert if there was any question about a painting’s lineage.”

“I get it,” Hank said. “But Hannah ain’t dead. What happens then?”

“For a living artist, a personal encounter could suffice, and allegedly this New England picker Vivian dreamed up has regular contact with her. As long as your partner in crime sticks to her story—and why wouldn’t she, for half the take?—I can’t imagine your secret would be exposed.”

Hank squeezed my arm. “See? You got nothing to worry about.”

“Of course,” Tom-Tom continued, “should some intrepid dealer decide to make a trip to Maine in order to ferret out Hannah…”

He stopped midsentence and slapped his forehead with the butt of his hand. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?” Hank and I chorused.

“Some intrepid dealer”—he pointed at his head with both index fingers—“just decided to feign a trip to Maine. Two Hannah sightings is twice the protection, especially when one of them comes from a professional with more than forty years in the business.”

I was touched by Tom-Tom’s willingness to get involved, but I wasn’t convinced he was the right person for the job. His affluent clients were the type who purchased Rembrandts, not folk art. And if his machinations on my behalf were discovered, they wouldn’t be buying any art from him ever again. “Don’t you think you’re taking an awfully big risk with your reputation? What if something… happened?”

“Then I’d retire. Air travel’s become so abysmal of late, I’ve been considering it, anyway. God, I miss the Concorde.” He covered my hand with his. “Honestly, Dana, Vivian’s taking advantage of you this way makes me so livid, I consider it my brotherly duty to stick my neck out. Give me your next couple of canvases and let me reach out to that gallery owner.”

“Take him up on it,” Hank said. “You’ll double your money.”

“But I can’t cut off Vivian entirely. If I stop giving her paintings to sell, she’ll expose me to Graciela in a heartbeat.”

“Then at the very least, reduce her supply curve,” Tom-Tom instructed. “Now, what can you tell me about Hannah that only someone with an intimate knowledge of her work would be aware of?”

I pondered the question while Hank poured another round of sangria. “I’ve got it. You know the hat series Graciela had on display? It was originally a grid of sixteen paintings. She’s one short.”

“Is she aware of this?”

“She was pretty disgruntled about not getting the entire set.”