The Love Scam - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,21
wrong way, but we’re never to speak of this again.”
“The screwing-up gay sex part, or the—”
“All of it. Any of it. It’s gonna be the thing we know about but never talk about, like the Noodle Incident trope.”
“Weird. But fine. But I think you’re overreacting. It’s not like we’ve done anything wr—”
“Polizia! Sei in arresto per aver commesso un atto osceno in un luogo pubblico!”
“Oh hell,” she groaned. “It’s my senior prom all over again.”
“Osceno? Obscene?” Rake yelped at the cops coming forward. “It was beautiful, dammit!”
Fifteen
“… so then we paid the five-hundred-euro fine and went our separate ways and I never saw her again. And we were sort of … uh … banned.”
“Uh-huh.”
“From the city of Venice.”
“Oh.”
“For life.”
“Ah.”
“Our kids, too. They were pretty mad—the cops, the mayor, the guy in charge of keeping the park sex-free…”
“That’s not fair,” Lillith protested. She tossed the latest wet washcloth on the floor for emphasis. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to be banned. What if I want to go to the Accademia di Belle Arti?”
All Rake could do was shrug an apology and wonder, yet again, when he was going to wake up.
“So you did know Donna,” Delaney said, blatantly ignoring the beauty of the tale of tender lovemaking to hone in on one teeny insignificant detail.
“Briefly.” He wasn’t sure how much of this was appropriate in front of Lillith. None of it would be his first guess. “Okay, so—I was wrong, I did know your mom.” And to Delaney, because it was time to face up to the inevitable: “You said the DNA results will be back in a couple of days?”
“Yep. But that’s not your only problem.”
“My missing money,” he said glumly.
She waved away the looming problem of his vanished fortune. “Not that, either.”
“There are bigger problems than a mystery kid—no offense, Lillith—and finding myself broke in a forbidden city with dried shit in my hair?”
“Yes. Because we don’t know if Donna’s death was an accident. Myself, I’m not a fan of coincidences. But I don’t like conspiracy theories, either. Here it is: Donna found out something, either by accident or because she was falling into old habits. That I can tell you for sure. But I don’t know what it was. She sent me some paperwork the week she died.…”
“What kind of paperwork?”
“Some letters, and the fact that she thought you might be Lillith’s father. She also referenced a flash drive … but that’s it. I don’t know where the flash drive is or what was on it. And I couldn’t make that my first priority, because finding Lillith was my first priority. And now that she’s with me, there are still questions to be answered. And if Donna’s death was an accident, that still leaves the issue of Lillith’s minority.”
“I can take care of myself.” The child sniffed.
Delaney smiled. “I don’t doubt it, but that’s not what your mother would have wanted. Right?”
“Right.”
“All that sounds bad,” Rake observed.
“Tell me. So we have to figure out what’s going on pretty damned quick, because we’re way behind. And we have to keep Lillith safe, because she could very well be in danger.” To Lillith: “Sorry to be so blunt.”
“You don’t have to apologize. Mama always said it’s worse to keep quiet about trouble.…”
Oh, is that what the thieving blackmailer taught you?
“… and pollomerda to pretend it’s not there.”
Rake blinked and wondered if society’s rules against children saying chickenshit in casual conversation applied if the child in question swore in another language.
Best not to dwell.
“And that’s where I come in,” he guessed.
“Unfortunately.”
“Hey!”
“You’re plan D,” Delaney continued, “the backup plan to the backup plan’s backup plan.”
“I’ll have you know I’ve never been plan D in my life,” he said hotly. “I’m always plan B!” Huh. This is a weird thing to brag about.
“And we need you both for this.” She gestured to the room with candy on literally every surface. Even the windowsills!
“You said it was cover.”
“It is. But that doesn’t mean there’s not work to do. Don’t worry, the charities are real, and we really will deliver the Easter baskets.”
“I can honestly say I wasn’t worried about either of those things.”
“But we need the bad guys looking in the wrong direction.”
“If there are bad guys.” He knew it was childish to cling to the hope that the people who might or might not have murdered Lillith’s mother didn’t exist and this was all some odd misunderstanding culminating in his reversal of fortune, but he couldn’t help hoping.
“While my friends and