Nick appeared in the doorway at that moment, three coffee cups in his hands. He studied the trio in the gallery through the lenses of his dark glasses and appeared to make an executive decision.
"Maybe I should come back later." He started to step back out onto the sidewalk.
Octavia rounded on him. "Don't you dare leave. Get back in here right now. Do you hear me, Nick Harte?"
"Oh, yeah." Nick went to the counter and set down the three cups. "I definitely hear you."
She crossed her arms and faced the three of them. "Let's try to get some clarity on this issue."
"Damn." Nick removed his dark glasses with obvious reluctance and dropped them into his pocket. "Do we have to do clarity? I hate the clarity thing." He looked at the cup Gail held and the one that sat on the counter. "You've already got coffee."
"I brought it," Jeremy explained.
Nick glanced at him. "You look like hell."
"Which is extremely unfair," Jeremy said, "given that I was just an innocent bystander."
"Innocent bystanders have a very high accident rate," Nick informed him with an air of authority. "Look it up."
"I'll remember that. But, you know, you might want to show a little gratitude here, Harte. I'm the one who took that cue stick away from Dickhead before he could ram it where the sun don't shine."
Nick nodded. "I am, indeed, grateful for that. By the way, that reminds me. You mentioned True's sidekick, Bonner, last night. Do you read my books?"
"What can I say? A divorced man has a lot of spare time on his hands."
"Is that how you got the black eye?" Gail asked Jeremy. "Did Dickhead hit you with the pool cue?"
"Actually, it was a little more complicated than that," Jeremy said.
"Excuse me," Octavia said very loudly.
They all looked at her with polite expectation.
"As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted," she went on, not even trying to lower her voice, "I want to know why everyone in town believes that I was the cause of that stupid bar fight last night."
"Probably because, as I just told you, it's true." Jeremy took a swallow of coffee.
"It is not true," she shot back.
"According to the ladies down at the beauty parlor, it is," Gail offered. "That's all anyone could talk about. That and the fact that Nick spent the night at your place, of course."
Nick paused in the act of taking a sip of coffee. "Folks are discussing that, too?"
"With relish and zest," Gail assured him.
"Huh." He shrugged and drank more coffee.
Octavia threw up her hands. "Okay, so I suggested that you two have a drink together. How was I to know you'd be dumb enough to have that drink at the Total Eclipse?"
"It wasn't the fact that Nick bought me a beer that started the fight," Jeremy said with grave precision. "The fight started when Mean Eugene announced to the entire bar that you had bestowed your favors upon Nick for certain agenda-driven reasons."
She stared at him. "I beg your pardon?"
"Eugene implied that you had commenced an affair with Nick, here, with the goal of causing him to become so bemused and befuddled that he would be unable to think clearly. The net result would be that our intrepid investigator would be unable to detect that you were the person most likely to have stolen the Upsall."
Octavia made it to the end of the counter and grabbed hold of it to steady herself. "Good lord."
"Of course, Eugene didn't put it in precisely those words." Jeremy glanced at Nick for confirmation. "Don't think he used the words bemused and befuddled, did he?"
"No," Nick said. "I believe what Eugene said was that Octavia was screwing me senseless."
Jeremy shook his head. "Don't think he said senseless, either. Maybe it was screwing your brains out."
"Right." Nick raised a cup in a small salute. "That was it. He said that Octavia was screwing my brains out in an effort to distract me from my investigation."
Jeremy turned to Octavia. "There was also some question about the naturalness of your red hair. Naturally, Nick could not let Eugene and Dickhead get away with talking about a lady in such crude terms. Hence the bar brawl."
Octavia clutched the counter, feeling dazed and disoriented. She looked at Nick, hoping he would tell her it was all just a big joke. "The brawl really did start because of me?"
"Don't worry about the gossip," Nick said, dismissing the entire event with another shrug. "It'll blow over in a few days."
"Are you kidding?" Jeremy asked. "Folks around here still talk about the big fight between your grandfather and Mitchell Madison that took place outside of Fulton's decades ago. What makes you think that forty or fifty years from now, they won't be telling the story of what happened last night at the Total Eclipse?"
"Jeremy's right," Gail said. "You're a Harte, Nick, and Octavia is related to the woman who sparked the original Harte-Madison feud. Trust me, the legend of the big brawl at the Total Eclipse will live on forever."
Jeremy nodded in agreement. "Mostly because there's so little to talk about in a small town like this."
"Well, it's only to be expected, I suppose. You do know she is related to that Claudia Banner woman. The one who started the Harte-Madison feud all those years ago."
Octavia froze in the act of putting the six-pack of bottled spring water in the basket of the supermarket cart. The voice came from the next aisle over, the one labeled Canned Veg & Beans.
"My Hank said there hasn't been a brawl like that at the Total Eclipse in ages. Not since that biker club came through town three years back. Fred claims that there was a couple of thousand dollars worth of damage done in the pool room last night."
She recognized the voices now. Megan Grayson and Sandra Finley. Both women had come into Bright Visions to browse on occasion and both served on the Summer Celebration committee.
"If you ask me, Fred's just taking advantage of a golden opportunity," Megan said. "One of the Willis brothers told my husband that Fred has been thinking about repainting the Total Eclipse for years. He put it off because he was too cheap to pay for the job. But he knows he can get the money out of Nick Harte and Jeremy Seaton now, so why not go for it?"
"You have to wonder why Nick and Jeremy were playing pool together in the first place. Those two haven't had much to do with each other in a couple of years. Not since Jeremy's divorce, in fact. Everyone assumed they'd had a falling out of some kind."
