I quickly stifled that. 'Ta, love. Tinker?'
'Dosh Callaghan wants to know whyn't you got whoever stiffed him over the padpas yet. Funny, he didn't seem concerned, Lovejoy. Are they worth much?'
The stout bowler-hatted gent had arrived, and was chatting up the serving lady. He had all my bad habits, glancing into wall mirrors, speculating. Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Third time, it's a plot. How often had he been nearby unnoticed?
'Dosh dursn't be scorned. The lads'd crucify him.'
'Then why did he order so few?' Trout persisted. 'Five small gems aren't worth much.'
'Five? Was that all?' Trout was right. If you're going to bother, you want a hefty shipment to make profit. I'd been slow.
'If I were you, Lovejoy, I'd see Sturffie. He must have asked that same question when Dosh placed the order, right?' Trout was sympathetic. 'I know Sturffie's your pal, Lovejoy, but you gotter tackle him.'
'Trout,' I said earnestly. 'If ever I want a Tarzan-O-Gram, I'll see you're hired.'
'Ta, Lovejoy,' he said modestly. 'I do a good job. I'm also a Snake-O-Gram. I got a cobra suit.'
'Some other time,' I said faintly. Snakes make me queasy. 'So we go for it, okay?
Gluck's the mark. Snobbery and greed are the prod. The question is, what antique's the carrot?' I'd already made my mind up.
Sorbo said. 'We'll need fair money, and a couple of pretty birds.' He eyed Lydia. 'Got a sister, love?'
'Lydia's out,' I told him, thinking of Gloria Dee's antiques. 'I'll get the money. Let's hear it, Sorbo.'
The stout man was arguing with the bar lady while lighting his pipe. I wasn't taken in.
He was here because we were.
'And keep your voice down,' I added. We bent to listen.
24
THEY TOLD ME at the manse that Mrs Dee was out painting. It meant a trudge of a mile before I found her at her easel by a river's oxbow bend.
You never know with artists. They mostly hate gawpers, especially those who say, 'Hey, you've got the clouds wrong.' So I stood there like a spare tool. In countryside, everything's hunting. A heron standing on one foot, a kestrel flicking the sky, a crow on a branch, all itch to slaughter. An angler downstream proving that fishing is a good doze ruined.
'Thank you,' she said eventually. 'Others can't resist talking.'
'Okay.' I felt awkward. She seemed at home amid country carnage.
'You're dying to tell me what I'm doing wrong, Lovejoy.' Her smile was mischievous. I didn't move to help her pack up. Artists are funny about that, too.
'No.' Though I was, of course. Why the hell did she use a sable No. 12 brush, her washes so thick on 120 Whatman paper? 'Don't blame people, Mrs Dee. The eye can distinguish six million different hues. Bound to be argument.'
She smiled, folding the easel, drying the paint wells with tissues. No litter from this lady. Clicked her box. Ready, steady.
'Did they say when's teatime?' she asked. I took the wooden box, leaving her to tote her priceless works of art.
'No. They never invite me in, at strange houses.'
I was glad her hair was long. The Other Woman always has longer hair than The Betrayed Wife. Odd but true. A moral in there? Let your hair grow long, you'll not only keep your own bloke but snaffle some other woman's?
'I heard they do. Invite you in, I mean.' She seemed to find me funny.
Had she sussed me out? I didn't like that. Today I wanted everybody to be gullible.
Especially Mrs Gloria Dee, who had antiques. I needed money to do Dieter Gluck. You can't con a crooked dealer without being at least a bit rich. Those two admirable Italians proved that, with their now fabled 'Walt Disney Scam'.
They ordered four million dollars' worth of jewels in Place Vendome. Cleverly, they hinted at illicit arms deals, knavish underworld connections, and in France's posh Hotel Intercontinental showed the jeweller two cases bulging with German banknotes. 'Assure us of privacy,' was their line, 'and we'll pay over the odds.' What salesman could resist?
The jewels and money were swapped, the Italian conmen vanished. The money proved to be marked 'Banknote Walt Disney', with Mickey Mouse logos. This cheeky scam proved the universal law that greed rules us all. And Gluck.
We came in sight of the manse where her village began and countryside, thank God, ended. She hesitated.
'The question is, Lovejoy, whose side are you on?' Her blue eyes held me.
I didn't know what to say. 'In what?'
'In poor Mortimer versus Dieter Gluck.'
Women are often ahead of me when I think I'm miles up front. 'Dieter who?'
