Page 51 of Mimosa

“You could do anything you wanted. Like paint your own paintings and get them into a gallery.”

Haze kissed his cheek again before he got up and started to head out of the room. “I’m good with what I do, babe.”

As soon as he heard Haze leaving the room, Mims called Abs. “Can you come down and bring Cosmo?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Just come to the basement.”

“We’ll be right there.”

As soon as they were sitting on either side of him at the computer desk, he told them his plan. “Haze spends so much time painting for the art jobs, that he might give up on his own soon. We need to give him a reason to keep going.”

Cosmo shrugged and said, “I know little to nothing about art. Why am I here?”

Sheepishly, he whispered, “I might need fast money, and…well, you…”

“Stealing a car is fast money. Okay, so my part is set, but what do you need money for? I mean, he’s got every kind of paint and pencil an artist could have hoarded in that room of his.”

Abs slapped Cosmo playfully. “Rude!” Then he explained, “Getting a gallery…that’s money. Plus, the money for the frames and a framer.”

Mims nodded crazily. “Exactly.”

“Okay, that sounds really expensive.” Cosmo thought on it, and said, “I know of a car that might fetch enough. Would have been better if we had the old fence, but we still might get enough.”

“We have to tell Murphy and the others,” Abs said.

“Do we? You know they’ll be mad, and we can’t tell Haze!”

“Just Murphy and the other guys then. Not Haze. I think they’d be on board if it was going to help Haze.”

Cosmo agreed, “Sure they would. I will for him.”

Mims heart warmed and it felt like it glowed in his chest. “Thanks. Maybe this is what we all need. There’s got to be life after the pub. I mean…you know what I mean.”

Cosmo said, “We know what you mean. We can’t shake our asses forever, and we can’t steal forever. There’s gotta be something after, but that doesn’t mean we all won’t still be close.”

Abs grabbed Cosmo’s hand and said, “Come on. Let’s go get the others, and I’ll keep Haze busy. I’ll tell him to draw me or something.”

“Like you need a new kind of selfie.”

When they were all gathered around the table, without Haze and Abs, Murphy heard Mims’s proposal and said, “Well, I guess you need something to keep you busy while you wait for your dude.”

“Paps!”

They all laughed with Murphy until Hippy said, “I know the framer he’s used before, you know for those two paintings we did a couple years ago. He can keep quiet, but it’s gonna cost.”

“We already figured that,” Cosmo said and pushed a paper he and Mims had printed from the computer while Abs was fetching everyone. “There are two there that will make us at least thirty thousand. Easy boosts, nice cars, but nothing that is gonna set off huge alarms. If we do it right, and make the two crime scenes totally different, they’ll think they’re two separate boosts.”

Murphy took the page and looked it over. “Not bad. I like when the research is started before we get going on something.” He handed the page to Goldie. “Check these out and have us the lowdown before next week, please.”

“Sure, Murph.”

“What else are we doing for this job?”

“I pulled up the list of owners,” Cosmo said. “None had special features installed, at least that they listed on the sales pages for them. And they would list them, they can charge hundreds and thousands more with those features. The security is practically nothing, so it’s in and out. Special keys for the Lincoln, but I can get those easily enough.”

“Good, get on that. Soon. We want to be prepared before Goldie gets finished with his research. What else?”

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