The Wives of Beverly Row 3: Lust Has a New Address (6 page)

—Right now?

—Yes. Hurry.

Trudy went back into the bedroom. She had a costume that she wanted to wear for him. It was a leather Catwoman costume, like the one Halle Berry wore in the movie. She’d paid over eight-hundred dollars for it at a speciality leather store and she was really excited to try it out. She slipped out of her dress and pulled the leather body suit on. The mask attached over her heard, complete with cat ears, and tied at the back with criss-crossed black laces. She only just had it on when she heard the doorbell.

She picked up her phone and texted Kyle.

—The door’s open. I’m in the bedroom.

She got on her bed on all fours and waited. She heard him on the stairs, then in the hall. At last, he opened the bedroom door and stood there, staring at her.

“Meow,” she said, making a clawing motion in the air with her hand.

Kyle’s jaw literally dropped.

“What the hell?” he said.

“Get over here,” Trudy said. “I’m going to do something very special for you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make you come, using only my tongue.”

“What?”

“You heard me, now get on the bed.”

Kyle came over and lay back on the bed. Trudy unzipped his pants and pulled them and his boxer shorts down to his ankles. Kyle kicked them off onto the floor.

“You look beautiful,” he said to her.

“Shh,” Trudy said. She was looking at his young, red cock which was throbbing with desire. She hadn’t even touched him yet and it was already pumped so full of anticipation it looked ready to burst. And that was exactly what she wanted it to do. She wanted it to burst into an orgasm of cum, right inside her mouth. And she wanted him to be so in love with her that he couldn’t even think clearly.

“Meow,” she said, quietly, as she crawled over to him.

“Jesus Christ,” Kyle said.

She put her face down to his cock and stuck her tongue out. Very gently she touched it against the tip of his cock. It throbbed the moment her tongue made contact.

“Oh God,” Kyle gasped.

He couldn’t contain himself. Trudy knew it was too much for him. She plunged her mouth down over his cock just in time to feel the first burst of semen from his mouth. She drove her mouth down hard on his cock, sucking on the head of it while his sperm pulsed into her mouth. She sucked and sucked on the tip of his cock until he gasped in satisfaction and pleasure.

“Oh Jesus,” he said.

She looked at him with a vicious smile. He was staring right at her, his eyes as big as globes.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” he said.

She opened her mouth. It was still full of his sticky white sperm.

“Oh God,” he said, shaking his head.

She grinned and then she swallowed. “Delicious,” she said.

Kyle put his arms around her and held her so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. It was working, Trudy thought.
It was almost too easy!

IX

A
RIEL LOOKED AROUND THE CONVERTED
warehouse that Gabe had rented. They were close to the Santa Monica pier. Huge windows opened up giving her a dramatic view over the ocean. It was stunning.

“How much is this place costing you?” she said.

“That’s not important. The important thing is whether or not you’ll do this forgery.”

She walked up to the canvas. It was already mounted on an easel in front of the windows. Gabe had set it up so that she could look out at the ocean while she painted. Next to the easel was a glass desk with a paper-thin computer screen on it. On the screen was the high resolution scan of the original painting. Ariel looked at it,
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.
It was a remarkable piece. She’d never really looked closely at that particular painting before, she’d always been more interested in modern work, but now that she had a chance to appreciate it she was dumbfounded. She could see why the museum was offering so much money for information leading to its return. It depicted a scene from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus in a boat with the apostles calming the sea during a storm. It was a stunning picture. According to art historians the extra person in the boat was a self-portrait of the artist himself.

She sighed.

“You’re insane, Gabe,” she said. “How do you ever expect to get away with this?”

“You let me worry about that.”

“How can I let you worry about it? If you get caught, I get caught. I’m worried already just from being here.”

She looked at the blank canvas. It was massive. Sixty-four inches high and over fifty inches wide. This was from the almost four-hundred-year-old batch that Gabe had somehow managed to get a hold of. The canvas alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars. It was a forger’s wet dream.

“Will you do it?” Gabe said.

Ariel had to admit, the challenge was tempting. Even working on a canvas like that, it was a thrill just thinking about it. She was terrified at the thought of putting paint on that canvas though.

“I presume you have paint that will match tests too,” she said.

“I’ve got paint.”

She looked at him. She hadn’t painted anything like this in years. She’d been good, she knew she could match Rembrandt’s brush strokes if she wanted to, she just wasn’t sure she had the courage to go through with it.

“Gabe,” she said.

“Ariel.”

She wanted to bring up something that they hadn’t ever spoken of before. She usually wouldn’t have spoken of this to him, she was very private when it came to her art, but they’d just made love the night before and she was feeling close to him, connected in a way that she never really had when they were married. Now that they were divorced, now that he was cheating on
another
woman, and was cheating
with
her, she finally felt as if she was on an equal footing with him.

“I never told you the full reason I dropped out of art school.”

“You got pregnant. You married me. We opened the gallery. You did what you had to do. Life took over.”

She looked out the enormous windows at the waves of the ocean.

“But there was more to it than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t just because of Becky that I dropped out of college. It wasn’t just because of our marriage.”

“What was it then?”

“I dropped out because I felt like a fraud.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’ve never really spoken about this to anyone.”

“You were the real deal, Ariel. I remember the fuss they made over you at that school when they first saw your work.”

“I was talented.”

“Yes you were.”

“But I felt like I was just going through the motions. Like I was just echoing the art I’d seen from others. I didn’t feel like I had my own voice.”

Gabe was quiet. For once it seemed he didn’t know what to say.

“I felt like I was too young, like I didn’t know enough about the world, or about life, to offer anything new or unique. I felt that I hadn’t seen enough of life to start mirroring it with my art.”

“You
were
very young,” Gabe said, “but you were wise too. You knew as much about life as anyone else. You had as much right as anyone else to paint it.”

“I know,” Ariel said. “I know that now. And I’ve seen so much more of life now, too.”

“Enough to have a voice of your own.”

“I think so,” she said. “I think if I wanted, I could create something original now, offer a perspective that hasn’t been seen before.”

“So you’re saying you won’t do the forgery?” Gabe said.

Ariel didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure what she was saying. She hadn’t painted in years, at least nothing more than sketches and concept pieces that kept her skills honed. She hadn’t even seriously considered painting either. She’d long thought that the only place open to her in the art world was as a curator, a gallery buyer, a judge of the work of others.

She looked at Gabe. He was staring at her intently, waiting for her response. She could see that he’d put so much effort into this already. He’d invested so much. He was possibly fifty or a hundred grand into this scheme and they hadn’t even started the forgery yet.

“What’s the plan?” she said.

“For collecting the reward?”

“For getting the money and not going to jail.”

Gabe looked around the room as if making doubly sure no one else was in there. She’d seen the amount of locked doors they’d had to pass through to get in there. She knew they were completely alone.

“I’ve purchased a building on the outskirts of Amsterdam. It was destroyed in a fire in 1991. It’s an apartment building.”

“It wasn’t rebuilt?”

“No. Too many structural issues. The area hasn’t been that hot of a real estate market. It’s just been sitting vacant.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

“Enough,” Gabe said.

“Gabe,” Ariel said. “How much money have you poured into this scheme so far?”

“That’s not important,” Gabe said. “When we collect the five million I’ll be well into the black.”

She raised her eyebrows questioningly. One thing about Gabe, he’d always been a gambler at heart.

“Tell me about the building.”

“It turns out that the previous owners were involved in organized crime, one of the biggest drug rings in Holland. The four men who died in the fire were wanted drug dealers at the time.”

“I see,” Ariel said.

“They imported massive quantities of cocaine. They also imported a variety of other things for the black market. And that’s not all.”

“What else?”

“The insurance reports from the fire detailed a massive safe that was discovered in the wreckage.”

“What happened to the safe?”

“Nothing. It’s still in the wreckage. The door melted to the body of the safe. They couldn’t open it.”

“They didn’t try?”

“It appears they didn’t. They just left it. The insurance company wouldn’t have been entitled to the contents even if they got it open. The owners never came to claim it. It’s all documented in the public reports.”

“Wasn’t anyone curious to see inside the safe?”

“I guess not. They probably didn’t think there was anything valuable in it.”

“So you’re going to open it?”

“I’m going to get plans drawn up to develop the building, turn it into condos. I’m going to get a team to remove the safe and bring it to a welding facility to dismantle it. And I’m going to say I found the canvas inside, completely by chance.”

“They’re going to be all over it,” she said.

“Yes they are.”

“They’re going to have every art expert in the world examine it.”

“And what they’re going to find is a four-hundred year old Dutch canvas, with four-hundred year old Dutch paint, perfectly matching Rembrandt’s painting right down to the marks on the back of the canvas and behind the frame.”

Ariel shook her head. It was a crazy plan. She had no idea if it would succeed or not.

“You’re just going to call up the museum and tell them you have their painting?”

“I’m going to call a reporter. Pretend I have no idea what I just found.”

“You’re insane, Gabe.”

“So what do you say?” he said. “Are you going to be crazy with me?”

Ariel couldn’t believe she was allowing herself to get sucked into this scheme. She knew it was crazy to even hope they would get away with it. But she found herself nodding her head. “Let’s do it,” she said.

X

B
ECKY WAS CERTAIN SOMETHING WAS
going on between Kyle and Trudy. On her way home from a movie with her dad she noticed him on the street. She’d thought he was on the way to her house but before the car caught up to him he turned the corner to go down Trudy’s driveway. It was after ten at night.
What the hell was he doing at Trudy Luxton’s after ten at night?
There was only one thing she could think of.

Trudy Luxton was trying to steal her boyfriend. How was that even possible?
Trudy was her mother’s age. She could imagine having to fend off girls from her high school, especially seniors, but having to fight to keep her boyfriend away from a middle-aged woman who was old enough to be his mother? That was too much!

As soon as she got home she ran up the stairs to her bedroom and tried to call him. There was no answer. Of course there was no answer.
Why the hell would there be an answer?
She was only his girlfriend. He was only her first real love, the first boy she’d ever been intimate with in her life, and now he was cheating on her! She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid. She’d spent her entire childhood vowing never to become her mother, now here she was, just sixteen years old, and the boy she’d chosen to go out with was already trying to get one over on her.
How did women ever tolerate men?

One thing was for certain, he wasn’t going to get away with this. Not on her watch!

XI

W
HEN BECKY WOKE UP THE
next morning she was determined to do something. She wasn’t going to be like her mother who had spent years letting the man she loved get away with infidelity. She took a quick shower, got dressed, grabbed an apple from the kitchen counter and went straight over to Kyle’s house. It was still an hour before they needed to leave for school and she knew she’d catch him getting ready. She wasn’t taking any risks that he’d try to avoid her.

“Oh, Becky!” Veronica said when she answered the door.

“Good morning Mrs. Roycroft. Is Kyle here?”

Veronica looked a little confused that she was there so early but she let her in and told her Kyle was still in his room. Becky didn’t even knock when she got upstairs. She just walked straight into Kyle’s room and announced her presence.

“Becky!” Kyle said, a little startled. He was still in his boxers and was standing at the door to his bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. He finished brushing and rinsed his mouth and then came back out.

“You’re here early,” he said. He came over to kiss her but she stopped him.

“What’s going on?” she said. She wasn’t going to get sidetracked.

“What do you mean?”