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Authors: Aimee Gilchrist

The Tell-Tale Con (22 page)

BOOK: The Tell-Tale Con
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Yum.  Wendy's.  And
score
.  Prissy red-haired daughter for the win.  I pulled the bag out of the backseat and rifled through it until I found a flowered pink number that looked like I was going to knock on Mr. Pibbs' door and offer him a copy of The Watchtower.  

I stripped down to the basics, a fitted tank top and bike shorts, the best way for a public quick change.  Didn't want to give anyone a free show or embarrass the stiffs.  Though I was fully dressed still, Harrison averted his eyes.  Likely, in this scenario anyway, he fell under the stiffs.  When I was dressed, we walked the block back to Mr. Pibbs' house while I gave some thought to the best way to get information out of the guy. 

Once again, if he was the one trying to kill Harrison, he would know who we were no matter what I said.  If he wasn't, I would need to be cautious to keep Harrison's identity a secret.  By the time we got to the doorbell, I knew who I was going to be this morning. 

The door was answered, promptly after one ring, by a man in his mid-sixties with baby fine white hair and a pair of too large tan slacks pulled up to his underarms and secured with a braided belt. 

“Hi.”  I smiled as sweetly as I knew how and offered my hand.  “I'm Bonnie Radcliffe, and this is my brother, Ben.  I'm so sorry to just drop in on you like this.”

He looked me over, then trained his gaze on Harrison.  He didn't comment on the fact we didn't look related, but if he did later, our parents were totally Christian missionaries who had adopted us.  “What can I help you kids with?”

“Ben and I are working on a large scale project for our humanities class about the possible negative ramifications of the increase of film work being done here in New Mexico.  We have a section on the corrosive influence of Van Poe, who does a great deal of filming here in the Land of Enchantment.  We were told that you might be a good source of information about his work ethic and behaviors.”

Mr. Pibbs snorted, his nose flaring alarmingly, presenting us with a show of dancing hairs.  “Well, I certainly do know about Van Poe.  You kids want to come in?”

We followed him into his brightly lit living room, every curtain pulled back to allow in the sun.  “You want some lemonade?”

I declined, and Harrison politely agreed that he would.  When Mr. Pibbs disappeared into the kitchen, Harrison raised an eyebrow at me.  “Your brother?”

“We were adopted by missionaries.  You shouldn't be so judgmental.”

He cut off his laugh, disguising it as coughing when Mr. Pibbs returned with a glass, which he immediately handed to Harrison.  “Maybe this will help.” 

Harrison took a giant swig and then coughed harder.  When he was finally done trying to choke to death, we took a seat on a delicate settee by the window, and Mr. Pibbs sat on the patchwork easy chair across from us.  He had a fire going, though it wasn't cold. 

“Well, now, you're doing a paper on all the movies getting made here?”

“That's the intention, yes.”  I smiled again, making sure to turn my head in the way that best displayed my one very lame dimple. 

He sighed and stared out the window behind him for a moment.  “I have a daughter, Maggie.  She looks a little like you.”  He pointed at me, and I feigned surprise.  “She always wanted to be an actress.  But she's shy.  A little bit nervous.  So when she got a divorce and she thought the whole world was over, I thought I'd do her a bit of a favor.”  He sighed again.  “I guess I shouldn't have.”

Harrison leaned forward to put down his empty glass and smiled gently.  “I think a child always appreciates a kind gesture from their parent.  Regardless of whether or not it works out.”

I wasn't certain whether Harrison was sincere or not, but either way, Mr. Pibbs seemed to appreciate the sentiment.  “Well, I tried to help.  I had some money from her mother's life insurance.  I thought I would help her to get a little part in some movie, and then maybe she could get her self-confidence back.  It wouldn't have been anything major.  Just something to make her happy again.  Divorce is so hard, you know.  On the young people.”

He fiddled with the TV remote but didn't try to turn it on.  “I gave about twenty thousand dollars to Van Poe with the understanding that I would ‘help with the casting,' you know.”  He made finger quotes.  “But we both knew the point was for Maggie to get a part.  I wasn't asking for a big part.  Just a little something.  But once he started casting he refused to consider her.  Not even for the extras.”

Dude.  Van was a real dick.  It wasn't like I didn't know that, but still.  Sometimes it came as a shock.  “What did you do then?”

“Well, I asked him for the money back, and of course he wouldn't give it to me.  We didn't have a contract or anything.  Ours was a gentleman's agreement.  I should have checked first to see if he was a gentleman.”  Mr. Pibbs' mouth twisted, and he put the remote back down.

I wasn't getting the crazy kill vibe off this guy.  Maybe Maggie was the killer we were looking for.  “Did Maggie take it very hard?”

He seemed caught unawares by the question.  “Why, she never knew.  I didn't tell her what I was planning.  It was supposed to be a surprise.  I felt later that I had definitely made the right choice in keeping my own council.  She would have been most disappointed.”

Well, that ruled Maggie out as a suspect, I supposed.  “Where is she now?  Did she ever make her Hollywood dreams come true?”

“Oh, my, no.  She isn't cut out for that, you know.  It's a silly dream but one I wanted to indulge her in.  No, now she lives in Mississippi and is married again to a probate judge.  She's due to have her first baby in three months.  She's thirty-seven!  What is that, now I ask you?  In my day no girl would be having her first baby at nigh on forty.”

I had no idea how I was supposed to respond to that, so I made little noises I hoped might be taken for whatever he expected the proper response to be.  Harrison rested his hands on his knees like he was prepping to stand up, but he didn't move.  Instead, he asked a great question. 

“What about the money?  Did you make it up?  Or was it lost?”

Mr. Pibbs laughed harshly.  “I didn't get it back.  I paid twenty thousand dollars for a lesson in being naive.  No matter, though.  The money was Maggie's anyway.  I mean, her mother and I always intended her to have it.  And there was more where that came from.  I'm mostly ashamed I was so easy to fool.”

I shook my head.  “Don't be ashamed.  You'd be amazed the kinds of things people will believe.  It's Van Poe who should have been ashamed.” 

I had seen people believe crap my parents told them that defied imagination.  Stuff that was too utterly ridiculous to ever be true.  But people believed it because it made them feel good.

“So, you would recommend less filming in New Mexico?  Do you think the state is profiting financially, but suffering morally?”  Harrison sounded so earnest that I was, once again, impressed with his acting ability.  He was a natural. 

Mr. Pibbs shrugged his bony shoulders.  “I think those who suffer morally at the hands of the movie industry would be likely to suffer morally at the hands of anyone who was capable of even a modicum of persuasion.  No more harm in it than anything else that involves a person working with crocodiles.”

Yeah, this guy was so not our man.  I stood and smoothed out my dress.  “Thanks so much for having us, Mr. Pibbs.  Your help was so valuable.”

We gave him several very pretty goodbyes and walked back towards the car. 

When we were safely inside, I belted myself in and sighed.  “Not him.”

Harrison shook his head.  “No way.  On to the next one.”

 

 

CHAPTER EIGHTTEEN

 

 

Rules of the Scam #27

Anyone worth conning is worth conning right…

 

Harrison had a list, which he briefly consulted before heading back to the highway.  I had no idea where we were going since the master list meant nothing to me.  It contained names of people I'd never heard of and addresses that were unfamiliar to me after such a short time in New Mexico. 

But I trusted Harrison to get us where we needed to go while I debated my next personality change.  “What can you tell me about the person we're going to see.  I gotta prep.”

“Okay, this house is in Santa Fe, back towards home.  We're going to, hopefully, see Vickie Bridges.  But, remember, Greg says she's a complete shut-in.  So I don't know if she'll actually talk to us or not.”

“She's got to have a nurse or something, right?”

Harrison shrugged, the car jerking slightly to the right with the movement of his arms.  “I guess.”

“Well, then we'll have someone to talk to.  Even just to tell us to go away.  Tell me about this Vickie chick.  Did you know her?”

“I don't know.  I was like six when she went nuts.  All I remember about her was that she liked red lipstick and my mom thought she was trashy.  But Vickie seemed to love being trashy, if that was what she really was.”

Hmm.  Trashy Vickie embraced life in the red lipstick lane.  “Did she like being an actress?”

“She seemed to.  I mean, I don't know.  I was young.  But sometimes Dad bemoans her loss because she was that good at what she did.  You know.  Before.”

I reached for the bag in the backseat and grabbed the only two things I would need for this transformation, a pair of expensive and ridiculously tight designer jeans my mother wore when she was trying to pick up marks who liked trashy rich girls, and the makeup and jewelry bag.  I pulled off the stupid dress and tossed it into the back while Harrison studiously avoided looking my way.  Boy, he'd better get a little bit more gumption about me changing if he wanted to stay friends. 

Or whatever. 

Not that I had friends. 

Or anything.

Flustered, I slid the jeans over my shorts and had trouble buttoning them, they were so tight.  I was still in the seatbelt, which did not help.  When I was finally in them I spent a moment panting like a dog and recovering from my enormous feat of dressing gymnastics.  After I finished the theatrics, I considered the touches that would make my persona just right and pulled out the makeup.  Lips a deep, glossy, red.  Eyes a bit too dark.  No blush.  I fluffed up my hair until it looked like I'd slept in my clothes and then wandered out. 

By the time we were coming into Santa Fe, I was sliding on some extremely good costume jewelry of Mom's.  It was the little details that made it all so real.  I chose pieces that suggested I was both rich and tasteless.  The perfect combo. 

Harrison pulled up to a curb inside of a subdivision on the outskirts of Santa Fe and glanced over at me.  He'd picked exactly the wrong time.  I had unfastened my bra and was pulling it out through the armhole of my tank top.  I stopped when his eyes bugged out of his head, and he gave himself whiplash turning to the window. 

“Sorry, dude.  I'm in costume changes.”  It was the best I could muster.  I didn't think Hallmark made cards for “sorry you caught me taking off my underwear in a public place.”

I wished I'd had a sluttier tank top, but the white ribbed one I had on would have to do.  Oh!  One last thing.  I reached back into the bag for Mom's box of small props and dug around until I found a cigarette pack, knocking one out and into my palm.  Mom always said there was no halfway in a con.  Anyone worth conning was worth conning right.

I evaluated Harrison and frowned.  He wouldn't do at all.  “Do you still have those prescription sunglasses you wore to the bank?”

He gestured to the glove box without looking at me, like he was afraid of what I might be doing now.  “In there.”

I pulled the case out and tossed it in his lap.  I'd better leave his hair alone.  Revealing gunshot wounds was likely not the best way to make strangers feel comfortable.  Biting my bottom lip, I turned my head to the side and evaluated his apple green, button-up shirt and dark jeans.  Did he have to look so prissy on today of all days?  I reached forward, and he jerked back in surprise.  But he was still when I leveled him with a hard look and reached out again. 

He didn't move when I unbuttoned the first three buttons of his shirt and mussed up his chest hair with careless fingers.  I fisted my fingers because it turned out that was really intimate and left the pads of my fingers feeling uncomfortably tingly.  I sat back and took it all in again now that the glasses were on.  Hmm.  Still not perfect.  But definitely better. 

I grabbed the cigarette off the dashboard and opened the door.  “Let's do this thing.”

He followed me out of the car, but then I dropped back and let him lead the way, since I had no idea where we were going.  It was a bit of a trek up the hill to the house that Vickie Whoever lived in.  Bridgeman?  Maybe.  Maybe just Bridge.  Being an obsessed starlet fan would work way better if I remembered her freaking name. 

“What—”

“Vickie Bridges,” Harrison said.

He was so good. 

Vickie Bridges' place was like every other house in the neighborhood and practically every house I'd ever seen in New Mexico.  A squat, brown rancher with a courtyard, and a driveway lined with volcanic rocks.  It didn't look like the kind of home I'd expect to find a reclusive ex-Hollywood hottie living in, but then again, I'd encountered that with Greg as well.  Except for the facts that weeds poked out from the rocks and there was a distinct air of disuse and neglect around the house, I wouldn't have been able to differentiate it from the one that belonged to the president of the PTA or the banker down the street. 

Harrison looked at me and shrugged, as though he were confused by the place as well.  I took a deep breath, rotated the tension out of my shoulders and swayed my way up the sidewalk in my painted on jeans.  I rapped on the door, not bothering with the doorbell.  It took a few moments before I could hear the sound of footsteps approaching. 

BOOK: The Tell-Tale Con
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