"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 Cafe 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 cafe 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.

"We didn't know if Eugene was really trying to force us off the road or merely attempting to scare us. He was more than just annoyed because he had lost to me that night. He was crazy mad."

"What happened?"

"I figured I had two choices; I could either try to outrun Eugene, which would have been dicey on those curves, or try to fake him out. I went for faking him out. Jeremy watched him while I concentrated on driving. When Eugene made one of his moves to pull up alongside, Jeremy gave me the word. His timing was right on the mark. I braked hard. Eugene kept going and lost control. His car went over a low bluff and down a short incline, and landed in some shallow water."

"Whew. Well, obviously he and Dwayne weren't killed."

"No. The only thing that saved them was the fact that the tide was still partially out. I stopped at the top of the bluff and Jeremy and I went down to see how bad things were. Eugene was slumped over the wheel. At first we thought that he was dead but then we realized he was just badly dazed. Dwayne was frozen with shock. There was no time to get help because the tide was coming in fast. Jeremy and I hauled them both out of the car and dragged them out of the water. We wrapped them in some blankets I kept in the back of the car."