By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

Cindy said nothing at first. Slowly it was dawning on her that she, Cindy Seton, was being asked to help force-feed a little of Mavis Moran's considerable fortune into Alan's campaign. It was natural to assume that Cindy would look forward to saving some of her husband's hard-earned money and maybe, even, having the pleasure of his company once in a while.

  Cindy's laugh was quick, shrill, almost hysterical. This was too ironic for words. "As far as I'm concerned, they can flush the entire Shadow campaign right down the toilet. I've never been so sick of anything in all my life. I hate it. I hate the Cup! It's ruining us! It's ruined—"

  "Shhh! Someone's coming." Mavis tightened her grip on Cindy's shoulder; it had the sharp sting of a slap across the face. Cindy let out one cracked gasp and was still.

  "Good evening, ladies. There is nothing, I think, quite so ... intense, as a tête-à-tête on a moonless night. Do you not agree?" The speaker stood before them and bowed to a point midway between the two women, who exchanged startled looks. The accent was Mediterranean; the body, tall; the demeanor, rather courtly. What little light there was shone behind him, throwing the dark features of his face into obscurity.

  Mavis spoke first, with chilly exclusion. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Is he a friend of yours, Cindy?" She might have been acknowledging a small untrained puppy nearby; Mavis did not suffer interruptions lightly.

  The visitor was quick to perceive the cut, and before Cindy could speak he said, "Permit me to introduce myself. I am known—occasionally in Newport and invariably abroad—by the name of Delgado. And this," he added, withdrawing almost as an afterthought a handgun from his pocket, "is a gun. Now that we have all become acquainted—for, of course, neither of you requires an introduction—perhaps you will oblige me by retiring to the footpath behind you. I have had occasion to stroll along it quite recently, and I can assure you that it is easily traversed, even in your charmingly impractical shoes. Although, of course, I should not want to be in your shoes," he added, amused by his own quip. "Ah, please, Mrs. Seton, no trembling. Can you not take your cue from your lovely companion?" He jerked the gun toward the path with a crisp, almost ruthless motion which belied his casual, friendly manner.

  Cindy, breathless and speechless, followed Mavis onto the footpath.

  "Very good," Delgado said, as they proceeded, single-file, down a generally smooth path through thick high shrubs. "Now stop, please." They did. "To your left, please."

  They had reached a small clearing in which another stone bench, long unused and partly overgrown, waited to play its part in a lovers' tryst which would probably never happen. A small garden lantern threw the clearing and its occupants into dim relief. Delgado, as before, kept his back to the light.

  "Please. Your rings and your watches," he said, and held out his left hand. His gun was pointed between the women but favored Mavis's side. Cindy sobbed once, prompting Delgado to let out a warning noise that sounded to Cindy like the swish of a snake through grass. With what was left of her strength she unclasped her 18-karat Bulgari watch and dropped it on top of Mavis's in Delgado's hand. Her ring, a four-carat yellow sapphire, followed. She wore no other ornament.

  Delgado pocketed the jewels and said to Mavis, "And now the emeralds. Please." He was pointing his gun at Mavis, ignoring Cindy altogether now.

  Mavis unfastened her bracelet and with a motion signifying fear of contamination she dropped it from several inches above Delgado's outstretched hand. No word had escaped her so far.

  "Excellent. And now—the pièce de rèsistance," Delgado said, waving the gun toward Mavis's throat.

  "I can't," she answered evenly.

  Cindy swung her look away from Delgado and gazed wide-eyed and horrified at Mavis. She was going to resist. Oh, no.

  "Can you not? And why is that?" Delgado murmured, clearly surprised.

  "It's ... welded shut."

  "Welded?" He hesitated a moment, as if to review his English vocabulary. Then he chuckled in a soft, ominous way. "How, then, would you be able to wash your very pretty neck?" he asked as he slipped the watches and bracelet into the pocket of his dinner jacket.

  "Once a week I stroll through a car wash," Mavis snapped.

  "Mavis!" Cindy choked, shocked at her flippancy.

  "Give it to me now," Delgado demanded, dropping all pretense at urbanity.

  Unaccountably, Mavis stepped back and looked at Cindy. Cindy thought she might be planning to run, an absurd idea. And then Delgado lashed out at Mavis with his left fist. Cindy heard the sound of his knuckles against Mavis's jaw and watched Mavis collapse. She stared helplessly as Delgado turned Mavis on her side; fumbled with the clasp; said, "Hell! It is welded!"; fumbled some more; succeeded at last; and stood up.

  "All right!" he said hoarsely. He was breathing heavily now. "Don't screw it up, lady." And he was gone.

  For the first time the sounds of the nearby ocean slamming against the sea wall penetrated Cindy's state of arrest. An irrational fear that if she moved she would stumble into the ocean and drown seized her. She dropped to her knees, gripping the thick grass with her hands as if she were a jostled baby holding on to her mother's hair for support. A sense of nausea swept over her and she thought she might throw up, but she didn't. Mavis lay on the ground where she had fallen, and Cindy bent over her.

  When Mavis stirred, Cindy slipped her arm behind her shoulders, cradling the injured woman.

  Mavis's chin and neck were warm with blood; Cindy drew her hand away instantly, fighting down another wave of nausea.

  "Mavis, can you sit up?" Cindy helped her struggle partly to her feet and sit back on the stone bench. "Are you okay?" she asked. She looked around wildly to see if anyone was coming toward them.

  "Been ... better," Mavis said thickly. "Jaw ... hurts." Her breath was coming in long, ragged strokes.

  Cindy groped in her handbag and pulled out a wonderfully useless lace-edged handkerchief. Her thought was somehow to keep the blood from staining the white fabric of Mavis's gown; she pressed the tiny remnant against Mavis's breastbone, the way one tries in a panic to stop spilled coffee from running over the edge of a kitchen counter. "Should I—what should I do?" Cindy asked, numb with indecision. "Should I scream? What if he comes back?"

  "Just ... quiet," Mavis said.

  The two sat without speaking—Mavis, trying to bring her painful breathing under control; Cindy, holding her useless little rag to Mavis's breast.

  Finally Mavis said, through a wince that could be heard rather than seen, "I bit my tongue. I think my jaw is ... all right." She touched her hand to it gingerly, felt blood, and made a sound of disgust. "I must be a mess. Bring me my wrap—a white silk cape. Here's the check. And a damp tow—ow!—el."

  Cindy stood above her uncertainly. "Shouldn't I —you know—tell someone?"

  "And ruin the Ball? No. I'll report it when I get home. I'm insured, and I trust you are. Go."

  Cindy turned and carefully retraced her steps on the footpath. Cape. Towel. The important thing was not to panic; that would ruin everything. She stayed on the edge of the lawn, outside the tents, her black gown the perfect camouflage in the pitch-dark night. A sudden fear seized her that she would be grabbed from the bushes and held hostage until every last guest was denuded of jewelry, but she knew that was crazy. Just let me get through this night, she prayed. The heavy-metal pulsations from the dance tent on the lawn graduated into the sweet flowing strains of the string orchestra in the mansion's Great Hall. The Strauss waltz reinforced the sense that she had arrived at Finnesterre a hundred years ago instead of—how long?—half an hour? She glanced at her wrist; no watch, of course. Was it insured? Who knew? It didn't matter in the least; she hoped viciously that it was not.

  She was on the veranda with Mavis's cape, two steps from a plunge back into the blackness of the night, when she felt herself pinned by the strong, encircling arm of Mrs. Cyril Hutley who had, as promised, a crushingly handsome male in tow.

  "There you are. I've told Jean-Louis all a
bout you. He loves ballroom dancing and doesn't know a word of English. Perfect for you; no bothersome small talk. Now you just turn right around and march back into that house with him," Mrs. Hutley commanded, beaming with good will.

  Cindy, unnerved by the new and opposing set of commands, twisted away from the older woman's embrace. "No! It's impossible!" she cried.

  To the self-assured Frenchman, the words sounded an awful lot like "Non! C'est impossible!" His eyebrows shot up in true Gallic astonishment.

  Mrs. Hutley, too, looked abashed as Cindy mumbled, "You have to excuse me," and escaped by the veranda steps.

  Oh, God, she thought, I'll never be invited to another ball in Newport. But then, it didn't matter. Newport would never matter to her again.

  When she returned to the clearing, she wasn't surprised to see Mavis standing and looking self-possessed once more. They moved closer to the light of the lantern and Cindy tried to wipe away the mess. It struck her that even though Mavis was battered, bloody, and robbed of a fortune in emeralds, she was behaving beautifully. There was intelligence and self-confidence in every word that Mavis spoke, every line of her tall, fluid body, as she stood in the dim light, bravely—almost majestically—enduring Cindy's clumsy assault on the drying blood. Mavis looked born to lead a rebellion against invading Scots and/or Englishmen; born to carve up and defend her share of the Irish provinces.

  And yet a hundred years ago her grandmother had been in service in one of the huge Newport estates. Beau Rêve, that was it. The grandmother had been a laundress, Cindy had heard, or an upstairs maid. It seemed perfectly ironic that Cindy herself, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution Society, should be attending to the granddaughter of an upstairs maid. She had to giggle; it was all so funny.

  Mavis clearly did not see it that way. She turned on Cindy, emerald eyes blazing; the robbery had caught up with her at last. "What the hell is so funny?"

  Cindy didn't actually cringe, but she did look less imperial than when she stepped out of the silver Mercedes earlier in the evening. The details of the story of Mavis Moran's grandmother were coming back to her now. She remembered that the laundress or maid or whatever she had been had either shot or been shot by her lover, one of the wealthiest of Newport's gilded society. It wouldn't have surprised Cindy if Mavis's ancestor had been the one wielding the gun.

  "We're running the risk of being found here," Mavis said, tossing the soiled towel into the bushes. "Leave as unobtrusively as possible—don't even think of telling anyone. Tomorrow morning I'm sure the police will be in touch with you. If you're up to it, write down what you remember when you get home. My insurance company isn't going to like this. But calling the police now would throw the entire event into chaos."

  "Won't he be on the prowl still?"

  "With $100,000 worth of emeralds in his pocket? I doubt he'll feel the need. Besides, I just followed his path a little way. It leads right into Cliff Walk. By now he's disappeared into the darkness and is heading for his car."

  "He would be noticed; he's dressed in black tie!"

  "Who isn't, during a Cup summer? At worst he'll be taken for just another bored guest from one of the mansions. Go home, Cindy," Mavis implored wearily. "It's over."

  Chapter 3

  The first big pellets of rain splashed the back of his neck; Neil Powers picked up the pace. He'd be drenched by the time he reached home. Hell. This was all Nancy's fault. If she were alive she'd never have let him out the door without an umbrella, or a foldable raincoat. Or something. She always knew when it was going to rain, just like she always knew which events were worth rubbernecking. He had missed her fiercely tonight. Why hadn't she been standing by his side, giving him the real lowdown, the stuff that never made it into the Newport Daily News but got passed around at her hairdresser's on Bellevue, or the produce mart on Memorial Drive?

  He had never much cared who Yves St. Laurent was, or why it was important for women to be seen wearing one of his gowns; but he'd had to confess to real interest the night, back in 1977, when Nancy had pointed out a backless and almost frontless debutante who'd been found a week earlier clinging naked and drunk to the stern of a yacht in Newport Harbor and hollering for all she was worth. The ensign whose Coast Guard cutter aided in the rescue was pals with the mechanic who had tuned the station wagon of Nancy's neighbor's cousin (Nancy was scrupulous about her sources). Nancy. Nancy! You knew everything except how to beat a two-pack-a-day habit.

  He'd loved her in a way that only the quiet ones could. Sometimes, during their first year of marriage, he'd be sitting at his desk hunting down a programming bug and his mind would simply shut down, and then he'd call her. Edwina, their colicky one, would be bawling in the background and Neil would tease, "Whaddya say, Nance? Should I come home and we'll make more Edwinas?" And she'd laugh her exasperated laugh and say, "Bring me a cupcake and we'll see."

  Off he'd go to her favorite bakery on Broadway, and then home, and by golly if they didn't just succeed in making another baby. Five births, four miscarriages. Nancy Powers was always pregnant, always happy about it.

  But always, always smoking. Was that what had caused the miscarriages? Maybe affected the health of the girls even? He dismissed the thought. All the girls were healthy, rosy-cheeked, pretty. The married ones had healthy babies of their own, and his latest grandchild was due any hour now. Maybe nicotine only hurt boy babies. Two of the miscarried babies had been boys. Both times Neil had planned to name them Sam, after his father. He had cried bitterly after the second time, and they never had another boy.

  His rambling, melancholy thoughts seemed to blur and diffuse in the steadily increasing rain. A thin, cool trickle of wet had settled in a trail down his spine. He was about to break into a run for it when a high, shrill bark of distress stopped him in his tracks. It trailed off into a whimper, and Neil knew immediately that an injured animal lay nearby. In his pocket he carried a small disposable flashlight—something Nancy had succeeded in training him to take on his night strolls. But finding the dog wasn't hard.

  It was lying on its side almost in the center of the narrow asphalt road, panting the way it might if it were a sunny and hot July afternoon instead of a dark and wet July night. It was a black Labrador, impossible to see from a car on a night—on a road—like this. Neil shone the light over the animal. Brown eyes stared up in fearful wariness. The Lab's leg was broken, at the least; fresh blood covered one haunch. Maybe there were internal injuries, too, but the dog couldn't be left lying in the middle of the road. Neil swore violently at the bastard who'd left her for dead; at the owners who let a black Lab run leash-less and unreflected in this dark neighborhood. A golden retriever might have had a chance. Not so a black Lab.

  As gently and carefully as he could, Neil slipped his arms under the dog's back, not without a fear that the dog might lunge for him. But the animal's pain was too great, or perhaps she understood, because she lay limply as Neil adjusted his own weight to lift the load.

  That was when the sound of a car registered somewhere deep, deep inside his brain. It was too fast, it was too late, for him to form any other thought than, "This dog is having the rottenest luck." Too late, even, to look up and see a silver Mercedes bearing down on them both.

  ****

  Cindy thought she saw red blood even before she hit them. That was what she remembered: blood, a supernatural omen, a devil's promise of the deed to come. And then the horrible, ghastly, sickening thud and the long, long screech of wet brakes. Whose? Hers? And the door opened and she fell rather than jumped out, tripping on her gown; and the rip of black silk as she fell to one knee, the gown trapped under her shoe. When she stood back up her teeth were chattering, or maybe they had been, all night, all endless-nightmare night. There was no possible way that Cindy could acknowledge or comprehend the act as she stood in the drizzle, viciously squeezing and pinching her arms to force herself into wakefulness. Nothing happened. She was still there. She stared unblinking at a small white beam of l
ight which lay flat on the road, throwing her handiwork into dim, horrifying relief. There were two ... lumps. Nothing moved, not the dark pile of clothing, not the dark animal. Not her.

  "Hello?" she whispered, instantly aware through her fear that she would never be able to utter the simple greeting again. "Are you ... there?" Nothing, nothing moved.

  Cindy had no idea whether she rode home under her own power or on the broom of a witch. All she remembered was an overwhelming sense of paranoia as she kept a terrified lookout for flashing sirens. At one point she was convinced that she was clawing her way to the surface of the ocean from thousands of fathoms down, waiting for breath. At another point a dazzling sense of vertigo overwhelmed her as she negotiated the sharp turns of the winding coastal road in the wet, horizon-less night. Still dazed, she overshot the house, braked, and backed furiously up the road and into the garage, hell-bent on reaching the asylum of her bedroom.

  Seacliff was no more a summer rental than a Rolls-Royce is a second car for most people. It was one of the dozens of Gilded Age mansions which were no longer viable as private residences but which earned their keep as summer quarters for the many America's Cup syndicates, both U.S. and foreign. Seacliff was a vast and imposing Tudor built on a flat run of rocky ledge with a view to the south of the hazy blue waters of Rhode Island Sound. It housed not only the Setons but the ten Shadow crewmen, two of their wives, three children, and a babysitter. When the group arrived in May there had been a polite but fierce scramble for rooms with a view of the Atlantic.

  Everyone had scrambled but Cindy. She had demanded, and gotten, a suite facing away from the hated ocean. It was in fact the ground floor of a pentagonal tower of soaring height completely enclosed by stained glass windows. Alan, who was rarely home and cared little where he slept, had nonetheless predicted that his wife would tire eventually of the lurid colors and long for a glimpse of real sky.

  Alan was wrong. Cindy, who shunned the other wives and their children, spent many long afternoons curled up in a wide window seat covered in green velvet, her arms hugging her knees tightly, staring entranced at the men and maidens and odd mythical and quasi-religious creatures in the vaulting stained-glass panels, inventing fantasies about them.