Painted Ladies

“You’re a fraud, too?” Kate said.

“I was faithful to my husband,” she said. “He was unfaithful to me. I was one half of a fraudulent relationship.”

“I’d say that made him a fraud,” Kate said.

Rosalind shrugged. She was slipping back into her poetic persona.

“It’s a metaphor,” she said.

“I have a question,” I said.

She nodded at me without much warmth.

“How do you know the one in your house is a fake?”

“Well, it certainly isn’t the original,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Why, we couldn’t . . .” She paused. “Ashton told me it was.”

“We could get somebody over there from the Hammond,” Healy said.

“Their expert was Prince,” I said.

“Someplace,” Healy said.

“Guy in New York,” I said.

“Gimme a name and address,” Kate said. “We’ll see if we can arrange it.”

Rosalind stood.

“I wish to go now,” she said.

“Sure,” Kate said. “Just so long as I can find you when I want you.”

“I’ll be at home,” she said.

“I can have someone drive you home,” Kate said.

Rosalind shook her head.

“No,” she said, and left.

“Show us,” Kate said. “She don’t need no stinking ride.”

“I think there’s more to get from her,” Healy said.

“I do, too,” Kate said. “But we pretty well used her up today. We’ll have a few more rounds with her.”

“Yeah,” Healy said. “Telling the truth exhausted her.”

“She’s not used to it,” I said. “She’s been pretending all her life.”

“You saw the painting,” Healy said. “What do you think?”

“Looks good to me,” I said. “But I don’t count.”

“How’d you get to see it?” Kate said.

“He B-and-E’d her house,” Healy said.

“I never heard that,” Kate said.

58

Susan took power yoga in a gym in Wellesley on Saturday mornings. I normally went with her and lifted some weights, and when she was though we’d go to breakfast. This morning I’d picked her up at nine-ten and we headed out the Mass Pike.

“People pick the damnedest ways to confess,” I said.

“If they need to,” Susan said.

“Rosalind confesses in her public poetry,” I said. “Prince confesses in his doctoral dissertation.”

“You should read mine,” Susan said.

“Maybe I ought to.”

“Be the first human to do so,” Susan said. “Do you have any theory on how this swindle was supposed to work?”

“I’ve been dwelling on that,” I said.

“Wow,” Susan said. “Dwelling.”

“For instance, I’m wondering how long this scheme has been incubating. He had to know for quite a while that Lady with a Finch was at the Hammond.”

“And his father had, at one time, had possession of it,” Susan said.

“And perhaps some claim on it,” I said. “Or a claim that someone like Prince could persuade himself of. And he had a connection to the other claimants.”