Flynn’s sudden phone call and departure hardly registered with Rachel, because Myron’s monstrous deceit had slapped her hard the moment she heard the man say the painting was a Joseph Badger original.
How could she have been so stupid? So goddamn blind?
The glass bowl, the torchères, the figurine, the goddamn tea service, for Chrissakes! How long had it been going on? How long had he been using her?
A rage, potent and powerful, was building in her chest. She ransacked her bag, looking for the number to her cell, a number she had forgotten because Myron had kept her phone for so long now. She found it in her PDA and quickly dialed, getting her, Rachel Lear, accomplice-to-a-huge-crime, on the voice mail. Furious, Rachel banged the phone down, then picked it up and dialed his house. Nothing.
Bastard! She threw the phone across the room. Her mind was a whirl, her heart on fire. She was reliving every conversation she’d ever had with Myron, recalling every little thing he had ever “given” her. Given, her ass—he’d stolen those things from the RIHPS! Fury prevented her from working through how he’d done it, or how much he’d taken—at the moment, she wanted nothing more than to kick him square in the nuts, then drive the point of her new Donald Pilner boots up his ass.
She picked up the phone and dialed her cell again. By some miracle, Myron answered. “Yo.”
“Myron! You goddamn bastard, I know what you’ve done!” she cried, aware of a cacophony of sound behind Myron somewhere.
“What have I done?” he responded angrily.
“You stole those things, Myron!” she cried, tears suddenly leaking from her eyes. “And you used me to hide them!”
“Oh fuck,” he said. “Look, Rachel. Don’t worry about it. They are never going to figure out where the shit is—how’d you figure it out?”
“How? How? Dagne took a Joseph Badger portrait to the Antique Road Show—”
“Goddammit, that is the painting I was looking for, you idiot!”
She choked on her own rage. “You’re going to call me names, you lying, thieving prick?”
“Shut up! It’s not that big of a deal! I used your place to stash some stuff, so what?”
“So what? she shrieked, incredulous, as tears streamed down her face. “You have made me an accessory to your crime! A criminal! Don’t you even care?”
“Your dad has truckloads of money—he’ll buy you out of any trouble. But there’s not going to be any trouble, Rachel. Look, I don’t have time to argue with you. I gotta go.”
“I’m calling the cops,” she tearfully informed him.
“You do that, and I’ll tell them you’ve been in on it from the beginning,” he said, his voice full of venom now. “Think where all the shit is! Who are they going to believe? Me? Or your fat ass?”
That did it. That so did it. She was seething now, barely able to contain her full-scale, nuclear fury. “My God,” she breathed into the phone. “You’re nothing more than a thieving son of a bitch.”
Myron snorted at that. “Maybe. But a rich one now. And you made it easy—Jesus, you’re getting a doctorate in history and you can’t even tell a real piece of art from a fucking replica? How stupid are you? All I can say is, don’t be stupid now. Be a good girl and carry all that shit down to the basement just in case the cops show up. I gotta go,” he said, and clicked off.
But not before she heard the announcement that the flight to Savannah was boarding.
Well then. She was stupid enough to have trusted him, but she wasn’t so stupid that she didn’t know Savannah was next to Hilton Head Island, where his parents had a condo, and where he was going to get stoned, lie on the beach, and contemplate his sorry life. “Asshole!” she shouted as she slammed the phone down.
She paced her living room trying to think what to do, and at last came to a couple of hard conclusions. She’d been an idiot, but she was not about to take this lying down.
Rachel picked up the phone again, dialed Dagne. “Hey,” Dagne began brightly, but Rachel quickly cut her off. “It’s real, Dagne. That painting is real. The bastard has been stealing stuff from the museums. I don’t know what his scam is, but he’s been using me.”
“W-what?” Dagne stammered. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, I’m dead serious,” Rachel said, choking back a sob. “He said if I called the cops, he’ll tell them I was in on it. Dagne, that stuff is all over my house! And worse, you sold some of it on eBay!”