“Afternoon, Mrs. Seaton. Nice day.”
“It is, indeed. I was just telling Octavia how Gail went off to college in Seattle and ended up married to that investor fellow who left her a couple of years ago and ran off with the decorator who redid his office.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t keep up with the gossip at the time,” Nick said in a repressive tone that was clearly meant to change the subject. “I had my hands full in Portland.”
“Gail got almost nothing out of the divorce, they say,” Edith continued, oblivious to the unsubtle hint. “Word is her husband stashed all his assets on one of those little islands in the Caribbean, declared bankruptcy, and left the state. Never sees his daughter, of course.”
“Poor little Anne,” Octavia said.
“Ready to go?” Nick said pointedly to Octavia.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw that her potential clients were still contemplating a purchase. “In a few minutes.”
“Gail lost her job in Seattle a couple of months ago and now she’s back here in Eclipse Bay. She’s living with her folks while she looks for work. Money is tight.”
“She’s job hunting?” Octavia looked down the street. Gail’s Chevy had disappeared around a corner. “Is that why she was in your shop?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I had to tell her that I just don’t do enough business to warrant hiring an assistant. I gather she’s tried several other places with no luck.”
“Hmm,” Octavia said.
chapter 5
The middle-aged couple left a short time later with their newly acquired seascape wrapped in brown paper.
Octavia set the security alarm, locked the door of the gallery, and dropped her keys into the spacious bag that hung from her right shoulder.
Nick gave her an enigmatic smile and put on his sunglasses.
She would have given a lot to be able to read his mind at that moment, she thought. Then again, maybe it was better not to know what he was thinking. The knowledge would only have made her more tense. She was still wondering if this burst of recklessness was going to prove to be a disaster.
They walked together toward the parking lot. When they reached the BMW, he opened the door on the passenger side and held it for her. She searched his face quickly, looking for any concealed signs of triumph. She saw none. If anything, she thought, he seemed as wary as she felt.
Now that was an interesting development.
She collected the folds of her skirt in one hand and slipped into the front seat. “What did you do with Carson?”
“He’s spending the evening with Rafe and Hannah out at Dreamscape,” Nick said.
“Oh.” She realized she had become accustomed to seeing Nick and Carson together during the past two weeks. “Will he be joining us for dinner later?”
He smiled. “This is my date, not Carson’s.”
He closed the car door very deliberately.
She watched him walk around the front of the vehicle. He moved with an easy, fluid grace that was at once relaxed and purposeful. Probably the way most top-of-the-food-chain predators moved when they were going out to grab a gazelle for dinner, she thought. Fascinating, exciting. More than a little dangerous.
The sense of deep, sensual appreciation that swept through her caught her by surprise. She was still slightly awed by her decision to go out with him. Until tonight, the only big risks she had ever taken in life had involved the buying and selling of art. She trusted her intuition when it came to taking chances on unknown painters. But she had always been cautious when it came to men.
Nick got behind the wheel and closed the door. The interior of the BMW suddenly felt overwhelmingly intimate. She realized she was holding her breath.
“Couple of things you should know,” she said carefully when he made to slip the key into the ignition. “The first is that, in case your grandfather hasn’t told you, Claudia Banner was my great-aunt.”
Dead silence.
Nick did not fire up the engine. Instead, he twisted slightly in the seat and rested his right arm on the back. He watched her very steadily through his dark glasses.
“Want to run that past me again?” he said.
“I’m related to Claudia Banner. The woman who—”
“Trust me, I know who Claudia Banner is.”
“Was. My aunt died a year and a half ago.”
“I see.” Nick waited a beat. “This is for real? Not a joke of some kind?”
“No, it’s not a joke.” She gripped her bag very tightly in her lap. “Does it change things? Do you want to call off the date?”
“My grandfather knows who you are?”
“Yes. Sullivan and Mitchell both know. They figured it out the night of Lillian’s show.” She cleared her throat. “Obviously they haven’t told anyone else in either family yet.”
“Yeah. Obviously.” He tapped the key absently against the leather seat back. “Well, hell.”
“Is this a problem for you?”
“I’m thinking,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“Look, if you’re that rattled, I can find my own way out to Thurgarton’s place.”
“It isn’t a problem and I’m not rattled.” He took off his dark glasses and examined her with cool, faintly narrowed eyes. “I just find this news a little unexpected, that’s all. It raises a few questions.”
“I know. I answered some of them for Mitchell and I can do the same for you.” She glanced pointedly at her watch. “But not now. We need to get going. I promised Virgil I’d meet him and the others at six.”
“Right.” He turned back and twisted the key in the ignition. The powerful engine growled softly. “I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“The other shoe?”
“You said there were a couple of things I needed to know.” He checked his mirrors and reversed out of the parking space.
“I’ll be leaving town at the end of the summer.”
He shot her a quick glance and she knew that the news had taken him by surprise.
“You’re leaving Eclipse Bay?”
“Yes, I’m going to sell the gallery.”
He seemed to relax slightly. He gave an understanding inclination of his head. “Not surprised the gallery here isn’t working. Makes sense to concentrate on the Portland branch.”
She watched the road through the windshield. “Both galleries are successful, as a matter of fact. But I’m going to sell both branches.”
“Getting out of the art business altogether?”
“Not that easy.” She smiled slightly. “It isn’t just a business. More of a calling, I’m afraid. I can’t imagine not being involved in art. A couple of months ago I was offered a position in a large gallery in San Diego. I don’t have to give them my official decision until next month, but I’m leaning strongly toward accepting the offer.”
“San Diego, huh?”
“It’s not a certainty. There’s also a possibility that I’m looking at in Denver.”
“I see.”
He drove in silence for a few minutes, piloting the BMW carefully through the small business district, past the pier, the town’s single gas station, and the Incandescent Body bakery.
“Sounds like you’re cutting a lot of ties all at once,” Nick said eventually. “Is that wise?”
“I don’t have any personal ties in the Northwest. I didn’t even move to Portland or open the galleries until a couple of months after Aunt Claudia died.”
“You’ve only been in the area a little more than a year?”
“That’s right. Not long enough to put down roots. There’s nothing holding me here.” It was time to accept that truth, she thought. Time to get on with her life.
She looked out over the expanse of Eclipse Bay. The sun was low in the sky. It streaked the clouds gathering out on the horizon with ominous shades of orange and gold.
Nick drove without speaking for a while, concentrating on the road, although traffic was almost nonexistent on the
outskirts of town.
“Why did you come to Eclipse Bay?” he asked finally. “Why go to all the trouble of starting up a business in a small town in addition to one in Portland? That was a major undertaking.”
“It’s not easy to explain. Aunt Claudia talked a lot about what happened here all those years ago. The memories bothered her a great deal toward the end. She felt guilty about her part in the feud. I promised her that I would come back to see if there was anything I could do to put things right.”
“No offense, but just what the hell did you plan to do to mend a three-generation rift?” Nick asked dryly.
She winced. His obvious lack of faith in her feud-mending skills hurt for some obscure reason. The worst part was that he was right. She had been a fool to think she could do anything constructive.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just decided to give it a whirl.”
“I gotta tell you, that sounds damn flaky.”
“I suppose it does. The thing is, after Aunt Claudia died there wasn’t anything holding me in San Francisco.”
“That’s where you were living?”
“Yes.”
“What about your job?” He flexed his hand on the wheel. “A significant other?”
“I had a position in a small gallery, but it wasn’t anything special. And there was no particular significant other.”
“Hard to believe.”
“I was seeing someone before Claudia got so sick. But it wasn’t that serious, and we drifted apart when I started spending more and more time with my aunt. He found someone else and I sort of went into hibernation. By the time I resurfaced after the funeral, I had no social life left to speak of.”
“Family?”
“Not in the San Francisco area. My folks are separated. Dad lives in Houston. Mom’s in Philadelphia. They’ve both got other families. Other lives. We’re not what you’d call close.”
“So you just up and moved to Oregon.”
“Yes.” She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose that sounds very flighty to a Harte.”
“Hell, it sounds flighty for anyone, even a Madison.”
That irritated her. Given his track record with women, he had a lot of nerve calling her flaky and flighty.
“I like to think of myself as a free spirit,” she said. She rather liked the sound of that now that she thought about it. Free spirit definitely sounded better than flighty or flaky. More mysterious and exotic, maybe. She arched her brows. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never actually met a free spirit before.”
He was still pondering all the possible definitions of free spirit ten minutes later when he turned into the narrow, unpaved road.
“You know, I think you were right.” Octavia leaned forward a little, peering through the window at the trees that loomed on either side of the rutted path. “I might have spent hours searching for this turnoff. Mr. Thurgarton certainly didn’t believe in making his place easy to find, did he?”
He shrugged. “Thurgarton was one strange man. Just ask anyone.”
She smiled fleetingly. “Sometimes I think that being a bit odd or eccentric is a requirement for renting or purchasing real estate in Eclipse Bay.”
“I will admit that the people we’re about to meet certainly exemplify the finest in that local tradition.”
He eased the BMW deeper into the trees and brought it to a halt at the edge of a small clearing.
Arizona Snow’s pickup truck was parked under a nearby tree. Virgil Nash’s vintage sports car stood next to it.
A gray, weather-beaten cabin occupied the center of the open space. It was on the verge of crumbling into the ground. The front porch sagged and the windows were caked with grime. There was a worn-out quality to the old house, as if it were content to follow its owner into the grave.
“It doesn’t look like Thurgarton took good care of his property,” Octavia said.
The touch of feminine disapproval in her voice almost made him smile. He thought about her pristine gallery with its sparkling windows and carefully hung paintings. The interior of her little fairy cottage out on the bluffs probably looked just as neat and tidy.
“Thurgarton was not real big on home improvement projects,” he said.
He switched off the engine and climbed out from behind the wheel. Octavia did not wait for him to show off his first-date manners. She got out of the front seat all on her own.
Free spirit.
Virgil Nash opened the front door of the cabin as Nick and Octavia started toward the porch steps.
“He certainly doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of a porn shop proprietor, does he?” Octavia murmured in a very low voice.
Nick grinned. “Virgil’s definitely one of a kind, and you’ve got to admit that his business offers a unique service to the community. Sort of like a library.”
“Well, that is one way of looking at it, I suppose. There is something scholarly about him, isn’t there? Maybe it’s the frayed sweater vest.”
“Could be.”
It was true, Nick thought. With his gaunt frame, silver goatee, and preference for slightly frayed sweaters and vests, Virgil would have been at home in an academic environment. There was an old-fashioned, almost courtly air about him. No one knew where he had come from or what he had done before he had arrived in Eclipse Bay. His past was as shrouded in mystery as Arizona Snow’s.
For as long as anyone could remember, Nash had operated Virgil’s Adult Books & Video Arcade. The establishment was discreetly located a couple of hundred yards beyond the city limits and, therefore, just out of reach of ambitious civic reformers and high-minded members of the town council.
Virgil believed in the old saying that location was everything in real estate.
“Nick, this is a surprise.” Virgil walked across the porch. “Good to see you again. Heard you were in town for the summer.”
“Needed a change.” Nick went up the steps and shook Virgil’s hand. “Thought Carson would enjoy the beach.”
“Good thing you drove Octavia out here.” Virgil smiled ruefully at her. “I got to thinking later that it might not be easy for you to find this place, what with being new to the community and all.”
“You were right,” she said. “Left to my own devices, I’d probably still be looking for the turnoff.”
“Thank you so much for coming all the way out here to look at the paintings. We certainly appreciate it.”
“Happy to be of service,” Octavia said. “Where’s A.Z.?”
“Right here,” Arizona boomed through the screen door. “You met Photon, here?”
“Yes, of course.” Octavia nodded at the tall man in the long, flowing robes who stood behind Arizona. “Good evening, Photon.”
“May the light of the future brighten your night, Miss Brightwell.” Photon inclined his gleaming, shaved head in Nick’s direction. “Light and peace, Mr. Harte.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “Same to you, Photon.”
Another resident eccentric, Nick thought. Photon was the leader of the New Age crowd that operated the Incandescent Body bakery. The group styled itself the Heralds of Future History. Their philosophy was a little vague, but their baking skills were outstanding. The incredible muffins, pastries, and cornbread produced at the bakery had gone a long way toward quelling local concerns that Eclipse Bay had been invaded by a cult.
“Come on inside.” Arizona thrust open the screen door. “Got the paintings lined up here in the living room.”
“We had to clear out two pickup loads of junk to make space to display them,” Virgil said dryly.
Nick grinned. “There goes the inheritance, huh?”
“Let’s put it this way,” Virgil said. “It was nice of Thurgarton to think of us, but it’s starting to look like being the beneficiaries of his will is more trouble than it’s worth. The furniture is in such bad shape it isn’t even worth the effort of putting on a yard sale. Other than the pain
tings, everything else is just junk. Personally, I’m not holding my breath that the pictures are worth much, either.”
Nick ushered Octavia ahead of him into the cramped, dark living room. She came to an abrupt halt.
“Oh, my,” she said. “This is really quite amazing.”
“That’s one word for it.” Nick stopped just behind her and whistled softly at the sight of the truly monumental clutter. “The term firetrap also comes to mind.”
Faded magazines and yellowed newspapers spilled from the tops of row upon row of cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. Old suitcases were heaped in a corner. One of them was open, revealing a tangle of old clothes. The surface of the desk near the window was buried beneath piles of file folders and three-ring binders stuffed with notebook paper.
In addition to the desk and its accompanying chair, the only other furnishings in the room were a recliner and a reading lamp.
Octavia gave Virgil, Arizona, and Photon a quick, laughing smile. “And to think that this is all yours now.”
Virgil chuckled softly. “You know, this is the first time anyone was thoughtful enough to remember me in his will.”
“The property is worth something,” Nick said, trying to be optimistic.
“Something,” Photon agreed, “but not a lot. No view of the water. The house, itself, is a tear-down. The plumbing is in bad shape and the wiring is decades out of code.”
Nick was mildly surprised by Photon’s assured assessment of the house and land value. For the first time he wondered what the man had done before he became the leader of the Heralds of Future History. Everyone had a past.
“Hold on, here,” Arizona said. “There’s more to this than meets the eye. Only one reason Thurgarton would have left us in his will, and that’s because he knew we were the only ones he could trust. He must have been working on something mighty big there at the end.”
Nick exchanged a knowing glance with Octavia and Virgil. He was pretty sure they were both thinking the same thing he was thinking. Here we go with the ever popular, never dull Snow conspiracy theories.