Chapter 2
Betty
Forlorn, I sat on the front stoop of my West Village townhouse. With a harrumph, my chin flopped into my upturned palms, fingers drumming against my cheeks.
It was late March in New York. Plants were blooming, trees coming back to life with bright pink and white flowers.
Little petals floated through the air, making a mess of the sidewalks.
It’s hard to believe there was snow just a week ago.
The weather was very wishy-washy this time of year, much like me and my allergies.
Sybil, my soon-to-be sister-in-law, was puttering about her townhouse across the street. I could see her and Nash—my brother—moving boxes, repositioning furniture, and nesting into their newly remodeled environment.
Last fall, we’d almost lost little Sybil in a fire that claimed the townhome she stood in now. It was terrifying, but ultimately proved to be a fresh start for the little max-introvert and secret artist.
It was Sybil’s hidden art studio that was to blame for the fire, which also led to our discovery of her very cool secret identity as one of New York’s most sought-after mystery artists.
She was an enigmatic, unknown, colorblind artist who went by the name of PERL.
She was New York’s masked gem of the art world, the most famous mystery yet to be solved alongside Banksy—and we’d solved it.
Our reward was gaining a new family member, and I couldn’t be happier.
That mystery had changed our world, but a secret we were now bound to help her keep.
If you haven’t already surmised, my brother and I live a double life. We may work legitimate jobs at Beaumont Antiquities Especially one as rare as a Rembrandt landscape.
Not on my watch.
I enjoyed my dual life. After nights spent roving the world’s greatest cities in the dark or hunting for light of hand villains on the web, I could spend quiet days tediously restoring my rescued art and readying them for their return to the real world.
It was a simple life of cleaning and refurbishing pieces to their original glory. There was nothing more satisfying.
My idea of happiness was putting in a twelve-hour day stripping yellowed 300-year-old varnish from the surface of a priceless piece of art, one cotton swab at a time.
I especially loved color matching in order to patch and repair scratches or dents.
A fun little game. It required a surgeon’s hand and an expert eye for color.
It focussed my rambling and sporadic thoughts and helped me smooth out the wrinkles of my mind.
Nash surfaced through the front door across the street. Bill, their border collie, was leashed at his side. The little herding dog happily lifted his leg to find relief on a nearby tree.
Nash noticed me and waved, looking for cars before they both trotted to my side of the street.
“Hey, Bee,” he breathed out, reaching me.
“Hey, bro. How’s the moving?” Bill scampered up to me, landing a giant slobbery-wet kiss on my arm. “Thank you, Bill. Do you miss Mr. Beans yet? I don’t think he misses you, unfortunately.” I kissed his wet nose.
Mr. Beans was my ‘stolen’ calico cat. He’d come as part of the Sybil fire rescue package when they moved in with us after her house burned down. I’d grown so attached to Mr. Beans that Sybil let me adopt and keep him on my side of the street when they moved back post-restoration.
I was elated to have this one consolation prize in my new spinster lifestyle.
Perhaps I’d collect more catlings and go full-on cat lady.
The townhouse was too big with just me in it, empty and sad without Nash and Sybil, and could use more fluff.
Mr. Beans? He loved the solitude, practicing his beanie-weenie opera in the stairwell every morning, unfettered by Bill’s yapping and nipping.
“The moving? It’s going,” Nash said with a shrug. “Sybil is in a flurry with all there is to do. She loves her two new kitchens. She’s having a ball organizing them. I don’t know how she keeps them straight. I just want to know where she keeps the cheese, but her mind works differently than mine.”
I grinned. “Of course it does. She’s a thinker. You’re, well, not.”
He grunted at my dig. “You’re awfully saucy today. Are you grumpy? lonely? On your period?” he prodded in return.
“Of course I am. I’m all of the above.” I puffed out a pathetic raspberry, lips flapping. “I know it’s going to annoy you to hear this, but I wish I knew where Gray went.”
Nash scoffed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass where he went, pun intended.”
I glared. “He was a good guy.”
Nash didn’t bother disguising his disagreement. “He broke into our house, stole from us, and was basically stalking you. He was trouble. I don’t see why you let him live in your head when he’s not paying the rent.”
Oh, he was paying the rent, alright. The flashes behind my eyelids of his naked body were enough. God, I could practically still taste his skin. I had it bad.
“I like a little trouble,” I snapped back.
He rolled his eyes with a full-body arc worked in for good measure. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Clementine hasn’t found anything about his whereabouts?”
Elbow on knee, I propped my chin on a fist. “No,” I groused. “Clem promises she’ll keep digging, but if she can’t find him, I don’t know who can. She’s the best hacker I know.”
“She found him before. Why not now?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure he wanted us to find him last fall. The whole point of that exercise in stealing the PERLs from us was to get my attention,” I reminded him. “I dunno. Maybe it was goodbye?”
Nash nodded but didn’t seem convinced, sucking on his teeth in contemplation. “It didn’t seem like a goodbye. He looked pretty into you.”
Wow, I was shocked Nash was almost defending him. I shrugged. “Who knows. Time will tell.”
“I loved punching him in the face, though. That was satisfying,” he added with a grin, cracking his knuckles as though to replay the moment in his mind.
I tried to thwack him in the gut, but Nash dodged.
We marinated in familial silence for a bit, looking at his refurbished home. There were new, glossy windows, a black door, and a few flowers Sybil dared to plant out front. I wondered how long it would take before homeless people started peeing in the pots; it was New York, after all.
Bill was sitting, eyes squinting into the sun, and tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. He was endlessly happy—I wish I knew what that was like.
It seemed Nash had run out of things to say. I offered him a way out. “Well, I better get back to what I was doing,” I lied, hooking my thumb over my shoulder and gesturing to the house.
I had nothing going on but the next episode of Bridgerton.
It was already cued up on the screen in my new bedroom—the room that was once Nash’s master suite before he moved in with Sybil.
It was an enormous space, and I was glad to inhabit it, but it had taken some work to make it mine.
I was treating it like a mini-apartment, adding a front doorknob complete with a deadbolt.
This way I could lock the door and feel cozy, despite the size of the rest of the house.
Perhaps I should get a few roommates; being alone was creepy.
It was the random house noises that bothered me most. Mr. Beans was my tiny Ferrari.
I could hear him zooming through each floor all night long, banging things around.
Every crash of sound set my teeth on edge.
When he finally tired himself out, he’d slink through the cat flap I’d also installed on the bedroom door and lie with me.
He was especially good at controlling the bug population, though. A luxury built-in feature.
I rose to my feet on the stoop, clog-clad feet shuffling up the few steps to my front door—the shoes were hideous.
Nash gathered up Bill’s leash. “Sounds good. Well, swing by later if you get bored. You can check in on Sybil’s progress and harp on her about it. You’re more anal about organization than even she is.”
I guffawed, opening my front door. “It’s an art, dear brother. Being anal is my superpower.”
He laughed once. “I wouldn’t go around advertising that.”
I laughed in return, stepping inside and shutting the door behind me as he walked away. I watched him disappear down the street, sighing to fill the space with sound.
I didn’t like that Gray kept needling my thoughts.
I barely knew the man, but he was hard to forget.
Most New York men were a boring bunch. Guys in the city were materialistic, money-driven wet rags that barely passed as male.
The effort required to guide them to my vagina wasn’t worth the squeeze.
Half of them lacked any form of confidence; the other half were toxic pools of caca.
Their heads were so far up their own asses they thought two seconds of foreplay was sufficient—shoving their way in like an iceberg to my Titanic.
It was the visuals alone that kept me from dating.
Why bother?