“Provenance,” Nick corrected softly.
“Right. So the way I figure it, little Ms. Brightwell is pulling a fast one on all of you. Works like this, see, she hides the picture, pretends it got stolen and later, when the heat dies down, she leaves town, maybe goes to Seattle or some place like that and sells the damn thing. That way she gets to keep all the money. Now do you get it, Harte?”
“Interesting theory,” Nick said.
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?” Eugene quaffed more beer and lowered the glass. Pleased with himself.
“And you say you came up with it all on your own?”
“Yep.”
Dwayne opened his mouth, but he closed it again very rapidly when Eugene threw him a warning glare.
“In that case,” Nick said, “can I ask you two gentlemen to refrain from spreading it any further until we find out exactly what is going on and maybe get some proof?”
Eugene looked intrigued. “Why should we keep quiet?”
“For one thing, there’s a lady’s reputation at stake.”
“What reputation? Everyone in town knows she’s screwing your brains out.”
“I was speaking of her professional reputation.”
“Who cares about that?” Eugene asked blankly.
“I do, for one,” Nick said. “And I think maybe you and Dwayne, being gentlemen and all, should care about it, too.”
They both looked at him as if he’d suggested that they should care about quantum physics.
Eugene recovered first. “Hell with her pro-fess-ion-al rep-u-ta-tion,” he said, sounding each syllable out with sneering precision. “I don’t give a shit about her reputation. You give a shit, Dwayne?”
“Nope,” Dwayne said. “I figure the fact that she’s screwing Harte’s brains out is a lot more interesting than her professional reputation.”
Nick rose slowly to his feet. They both watched him, taunting challenge in their faces.
“Let me put it to you this way, gentlemen,” Nick said coolly. “If you two cannot manage to refrain from further public comment on either Ms. Brightwell’s personal or professional reputation, I have two words of wisdom for you.”
“What two words?” Eugene demanded, looking ready to pounce in victory.
“Lavender and Leather.”
Eugene’s face went slack as if he’d just gone completely numb. Maybe he had, Nick thought. With shock.
Dwayne gaped. He looked frozen with horror.
Satisfied that he had made his point, Nick turned and walked through the shadowy tavern. He pushed open the door and went out into the sparkling sunlight.
And immediately collided with Octavia, who had just put her hand on the door to open it.
“Excuse me, I—” She began, stepping hurriedly back out of the way. Then she recognized him. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
The transition from night to day dazzled his vision. Or maybe it was the sight of Octavia in a dress that was roughly the color of a tequila sunrise and was splattered with impossibly oversized orchids. He took his sunglasses out of his pocket and put them on.
She glanced past him toward the door of the tavern. “What happened in there?”
“I confirmed something that I have long suspected.”
“What?”
“No one in this town reads my books.”
chapter 14
“I read them,” she said.
“You don’t count. You’re leaving town in a few weeks, remember?” He took her arm and steered her away from the entrance. “What the hell are you doing here? I hope you weren’t planning to eat lunch at the Total Eclipse. You weren’t raised in Eclipse Bay, so you probably lack the necessary immunity to survive Fred’s cooking.”
“I wasn’t planning to eat there. I saw you go inside and I knew you had probably gone in to talk to someone about the painting.”
“Brilliant deduction.” Across the street, Sandy Hickson was watching them with great interest, a dripping squeegee dangling absently from one hand. Nick took Octavia’s arm again. “Come on, let’s get you out of here. There’s enough talk about you going around as it is.”
She skipped a little to keep up with him. “Did you learn anything in the Total Eclipse?”
“Always something to be learned in the Total Eclipse,” he said flatly. “It is never less than an enlightening experience.”
She frowned. “What happened in there?”
“Long story.”
“It’s lunchtime. Why don’t we go somewhere and you can tell me this long story.”
He looked at her.
“You know,” she said with a determinedly bright smile. “You can give me a report.”
A report, he thought. First he was therapy and now he was business. This relationship was not improving. On the contrary, it seemed to be going sideways. But an invitation to lunch counted for something.
“Okay,” he said. “But you’re the client, so you’re buying.”
She flushed a little and did not seem amused. “Certainly. Where shall we go?”
“I assume you have to get back to the gallery right away. We can grab a bite at the Incandescent Body.”
“Well, actually, no, I don’t have to get back to the gallery right away,” she said smoothly. “I just hired an assistant for the summer. Gail Gillingham. She said she could handle the place for the afternoon.”
“Gail?” He thought about that. “Good choice.”
“I think so. Unfortunately, I can’t offer her anything permanent, but she said that the position will give her some breathing space in which to hunt for a better situation. You know what they say, the best time to look for a job is when you’ve already got one.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” He kept his grip on her arm and angled her across Bay Street, steering toward the gas station, where his car was still parked at the pump.
“Gail has a very professional attitude and she’s smart,” Octavia said, trotting briskly along beside him. “I think that eventually she’ll turn up something at the institute or at Chamberlain.”
“Probably.”
Octavia finally noticed that they were halfway across the street. She frowned. “Where are we going?”
“To get my car.”
“Oh.”
When they reached the BMW, Nick opened the door on the passenger side and stuffed Octavia into the seat. He closed the door and reached for his wallet.
“What do I owe you, Sandy?”
“Twenty-three bucks.” Sandy peered through the windshield, looking at Octavia. “Everything go okay in the Total Eclipse?”
“Sure.” Nick handed him the cash and started toward the driver’s side of the car. “By the way, turns out Eugene and Dwayne were mistaken about that rumor they were spreading around.”
Sandy blinked. “You mean the one about Miss—” He broke off abruptly when Nick gave him a hard look. He swallowed heavily. “Wrong, huh?”
“Yeah.” Nick opened the door. “Completely false. Be a good idea if you didn’t pass it along. Know what I mean?”
“Right,” Sandy said quickly and nodded. “Big mistake.”
Nick got behind the wheel. “You got it,” he said through the open window. “Big mistake.”
He drove out of the station, aware that Octavia was watching him intently.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“Nothing important.”
“Don’t give me that. You deliberately intimidated Sandy Hickson. I want to know why.”
He turned the corner and drove up the street that led away from the waterfront. “I didn’t do a damn thing to Sandy.”
“Yes, you did. I saw you. Something about the way you looked at him. I call that intimidation. Why did you do it?”
He contemplated that question for a while. Then he shrugged. “Okay, you should probably know what’s going on, seeing as how you’re the client, and all.”
“Absolutely.” She put on her own dar
k glasses, settled back into her seat, and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Talk.”
“There’s a rumor going around town that you’re the one who swiped the Upsall.”
For a couple of seconds she did not move, just sat there gazing blankly through the windshield. Then she whipped around in the seat.
“Someone thinks I stole it?”
“I picked up the story from Sandy. He said he got it from a couple of colorful types who hang out at the Total Eclipse—”
“Mean Eugene and Dickhead Dwayne.”
He was a little taken aback. Somehow it was hard to envision her calling anyone dickhead. He had to keep reminding himself that the Fairy Queen was not all sweetness and light. Not anymore.
“Uh, yeah,” he said.
“Those two are spreading the rumor that I’m responsible for the theft, hmm?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but you must admit that there is some logic to their theory. I mean, I do have motive, opportunity, and a good working knowledge of the art world. How hard would it be for a slick operator like me to scam a bunch of locals like A.Z. and Virgil and the Heralds? All I’d have to do is make the picture disappear, tell everyone it got stolen, and then, a few months from now when I’m settled in some big city, make it mysteriously reappear. Presto, my name is suddenly legend in the world of modern art.”
“Not hard,” he agreed.
“And no one back here in Eclipse Bay would have a clue.”
“No one but me,” he corrected mildly.
“You wouldn’t have any way of knowing what had happened, either. Not unless you made it a point to keep up with events in the art world.”
He did not take his eyes off the road. “I’d do that, though.”
“You would?”
“Let’s just say I’d keep up with events concerning you.”
“Oh.” She mulled that over for a while and then, apparently not knowing what to do with it, let it go. She tightened her arms around her midsection. “Well, it’s all moot because I did not steal the painting.”
“I explained that to Eugene and Dwayne.”
“You did?” Something in her expression lightened. “That was very nice of you.”
“That’s me. Mr. Nice Guy.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “That rumor about me taking the painting sounds quite logical when you think about it. I can see where reasonable people might start to wonder if I was the thief. After all, I am related to Claudia Banner and everyone knows what she did here.”
He said nothing.
“I appreciate your support.”
“Hey, you’re the client. I lose you, I lose my fee.”
“What fee?” she asked warily.
“Good question. Been wondering about that, myself. What fee?”
“You’re not expecting a fee and you know it,” she said crisply.
“That right? No fee, huh?”
They were in the woods now, climbing the hillside above the town. The cool, green canopy cut the bright sunlight. He watched for the familiar sign.
“Stop making a joke out of this,” she said briskly. “We both know why you’re looking for the painting. You want to help A.Z. and Virgil and the others.”
“Not exactly,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“Means, not exactly.”
The sign inscribed with the faded words Snow’s Café came into view. The parking lot was crowded with vehicles ranging from bicycles to Volvos. Most of them, he knew, belonged to students and staff from nearby Chamberlain College. Arizona had catered to that particular clientele since she had opened the restaurant.
He turned off the road and parked next to a shiny little yellow Volkswagen.
“You know,” Octavia said coolly, “the macho-cryptic private eye talk reads well in your books, but it doesn’t go over so great in person.”
“I hate when that happens.”
He unfastened his seat belt and climbed out before she could pursue that line of inquiry. He was not in the mood to explain that the real reason he was playing private eye was because of her. Something Eugene had said came back to him. How does it feel to be led around by your balls? That was Eugene for you, a real relationship guru. Downright insightful.
He shut the door and started around the rear of the car. By the time he got to her side she was already out of the front seat, moving toward him with a determined stride. She gripped the handbag slung over one shoulder very tightly and there was a dangerous look in her eyes.
Damn. He was getting hard.
He opened the door of the café and ushered her into the pleasant gloom of the comfortably shabby interior. Tough-looking rock stars of another era, thin and angry and wearing a lot of leather, glared down at them from the ancient posters that decorated the walls. The music piped through the old speakers came from the same time warp as the posters, but the decibel level was kept reasonably low so that you could hold a conversation without shouting.
Arizona did not spend much time here these days. She relied on employees she recruited from the work-study offices of Chamberlain. She trained a new crew at the beginning of each academic year and she paid them handsomely. The result was a remarkably loyal staff that, in turn, freed her to concentrate on what she saw as her chief mission in life: keeping tabs on the goings-on at the institute.
“Getting back to the way you explained things to Eugene and Dwayne.” Octavia tossed her bag into the booth and slid in beside it. “Maybe you’d better tell me precisely what you said.”
“Hard to recall precisely what I said.” He flipped open the plastic-coated menu.
Portions of Arizona’s bill of fare were occasionally updated to reflect passing trends such as soy products and veggie patties, but mostly A.Z. stuck with the basic student food groups: burgers, fries, and pizza.
“Talk to me, Nick. I’m very serious here. What did you say to Eugene and Dwayne?”
“Why is that conversation of such great interest to you?” he asked, not looking up from the menu.
“Because the more I think about it, the more it worries me. I don’t know those two well, but from what I’ve heard about them, it would surprise me if they took good advice willingly.”
“I tried to provide an incentive.”
She went very still on the other side of the table. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Look, don’t worry about it, okay?”
“I’m worried.” She reached out and plucked the menu from his fingers. “What magic words did you use to make them back off those rumors?”
What the hell, he thought. She would probably find out sooner or later, anyway. He lounged against the padded seatback and contemplated her for a moment.
“Lavender and Leather,” he said finally.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Lavender and Leather is the name of a gay bar located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle,” he explained. “About a year ago, Eugene and Dwayne went off to the big city, had a few beers, and decided it would be amusing to hang out in the vicinity of the establishment. They planned to entertain themselves hassling some of the patrons.”
She was instantly incensed. “And here I’ve gone out of my way to be polite to them whenever I see them on the street. I actually felt sorry for those two.”
“The interesting part is that, being Eugene and Dwayne, they managed to misjudge their intended victims. They picked on a couple of guys who had studied the martial arts. In short, Eugene and Dwayne got their asses kicked. Literally. It was not, I am told, a pretty sight.”
“Oh, good.” Octavia brightened. “I love stories that end like that. They confirm Aunt Claudia’s theories about karma.”
“Eugene and Dwayne apparently got a real jolt of karma that night.” He picked up the menu she had taken from him and opened it again. “As you can imagine, however, it is not an incident they wish to have widely publicized here in Eclipse Bay.”
“Ah, so that’s it. Now I understand. No one here knows about their humiliating experience in Seattle?”
“Trust me, it is, perhaps, the best-kept secret in Eclipse Bay. If it ever got out that two gay men had used Eugene and Dwayne to mop out an alley, I doubt if the dynamic duo would ever be able to appear in public around here again.”
She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “In other words, you threatened Eugene and Dwayne.”
“That’s pretty much what it comes down to, yeah. Subtlety does not work well with those two.”
“Hmm.”
He looked up at that. “What?”
“If no one here in Eclipse Bay knows about Eugene and Dwayne’s excellent adventure in Seattle, how did you learn the details?”
“Virgil Nash.”
“Virgil? What does he have to do with Eugene and Dwayne?”
“As little as possible, like everyone else. It’s another long story but I’ll give you the short version. Several years ago, back in our wilder days, a bunch of us used to get together with some other guys out on a road near the bluffs to race our cars.”
“I thought drag racing was illegal.”
“Hey, we were nineteen-year-old guys with cars. What else could we do?”
“Right. Guys with cars. Go on.”
“At the time, Eugene’s pride and joy was a Ford that he boasted could beat anything else on the road. He was winning regularly but one night I beat him. He didn’t take losing well, to put it mildly. After the race he followed me home. It was one o’clock in the morning.”
“Go on.”
“He had Dwayne with him, naturally. They probably egged each other on. At any rate, Eugene started playing games on the road that runs along the low cliffs just south of town.”
“I know it. There are a lot of tight curves. What kind of games?”
“Coming up fast from behind, nipping at the bumper of my car, pulling up alongside and swerving toward us just as we went into a curve.”
“Us?”
He shrugged. “Jeremy was in the car with me that night.”
“I see.” She looked thoughtful.