Shooting Gallery by Hailey Lind Read Free Book Online Page B

cappuccino?” he asked.
    â€œDouble cappuccino, please.”
    Although he was six feet, six inches of rippling muscle, Pete was more teddy bear than grizzly bear, his animosity toward our landlord being a notable exception. Mary claimed it was due to a testosterone-driven territorial fixation and urged Pete to go ahead and pee around the perimeter of the studio. He had found Mary’s suggestion bewildering but not altogether out of the question.
    While Pete ground aromatic beans and noisily steamed water and milk, I checked my phone messages and my calendar. I needed to update sample books for the interior designers I worked with, finish the holiday displays for a local charity, and follow up on a bid for a “castle in the clouds” mural for a little girl’s room in the St. Francis Wood neighborhood. I also needed to see how Bryan was doing. Oh, and find a stolen Chagall.
    First, though, I called Janice Hewett to make arrangements to be paid one hundred and fifty dollars an hour to speak with a recalcitrant sculptor. She chattered for several minutes about last night’s excitement before giving me the phone number and address of Robert Pascal’s studio on Tennessee Street, which was not far from the DeBenton Building. I called the number twice, but there was no answer, not even voice mail. Looked like it was time for a field trip.
    â€œMornin’, Annie,” my twenty-something assistant said as she breezed in and threw herself onto the velvet couch. Mary Grae was a tall, striking blonde who believed that, when it came to clothes and eye makeup, any color other than black was unnecessarily complicated. Today was her day off, but I wasn’t surprised to see her. She often took refuge at the studio to escape the crowded apartment she shared with the members of her pseudopunk band.
    Close on Mary’s heels was Sherri, her best friend since kindergarten. A few years ago the pair had hitchhiked cross-country from a small town in Indiana, where they had outraged their elders by dying their hair, sporting tattoos, and forming truly wretched bands. Mary insisted the only things of value she and Sherri had learned in three years of high school were how to smoke, forge their mothers’ signatures, and pee in a cup.
    In San Francisco they seemed positively quaint.
    â€œMornin’, Annie,” echoed Sherri, a dark-haired pixie whose high, tobacco-roughened voice sounded like Minnie Mouse on a pack a day.
    â€œHello, young ladies,” Pete called from the kitchenette. “And how do you do today?”
    Mary rolled her eyes at Pete’s outmoded gallantry, but the better socialized Sherri returned his greeting and elbowed Mary in the ribs.
    â€œWhat’s up?” I asked, ripping open the mail in the vain hope that I’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House sweep-stakes.
    â€œWe were just—” Mary’s reply was interrupted by the sound of heavy boots clomping down the hallway. Two young men—one tall and baby-faced, the other short and snickering—ducked through the open door. Their black leather jackets, black jeans, and spiky hair clued me in to their friendship with Mary. The bronze art-nouveau Tiffany lamp bases in Babyface’s arms clued me in to the purpose of their visit.
    â€œWe made a bet that you couldn’t tell which was the fake Tiffany and which was the real one,” Mary said, bouncing up from the sofa and staring at me fixedly. “You have ten seconds.”
    â€œ Dude , no way she can tell in ten seconds,” Snickers said.
    I sighed. I didn’t pay Mary enough to refuse her the occasional moneymaking favor, and besides, I had spotted the fake the second the boys walked in.
    I gestured with my pen. “The one on the right’s the reproduction.”
    â€œDude!” Snickers punched his friend in the arm. “She didn’t even look! Lucky guess!”
    â€œIt’s not a guess,” I said, taking