By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  At that Delgado turned to her with raised, finely shaped brows. "It was you, was it not, who wished to strike back at the husband who abandoned you to pursue a mere trophy? I understand such emotions. I understand the need for retribution. I sympathize completely with you, Cindy. And yet you treat this as if it were a child's game. It is not. Nor, I regret to say, is your fleeing the scene of a fatal accident. And finally, of course, there is the loss of some very valuable emeralds by your beautiful friend."

  "Oh, which reminds me. Can I have my watch back now?"

  Again he looked surprised. "My dear! Most definitely not. We are trying to maintain a—how do you say it? A low profile. I will dispose of the Bulgari, as well as the emeralds, in Las Vegas. We do not wish to encourage scrutiny by customs officials on either side of the Atlantic."

  "I see," Cindy answered, although she did not. With gentle naïveté she persisted. "Can I get another one once we get to Lisbon, then?"

  "Anything your heart desires, little one."

  Cindy lifted Delgados arm and snuggled happily underneath it. "Oh, I am so happy to be getting away from Newport, away from ... everything. If you only knew how I've dreamed of your castle in Lisbon—"

  "Not a castle," he interrupted. "A villa."

  "Don't be modest, darling," she argued contentedly. "Anything with a moat around it is a castle."

  "It is a dried-up stream, Cindy."

  "I'm sure it's a moat."

  "Your fascination is misplaced, my dear. The villa is very old, it's true, but much of it has lain in ruins since the middle of the eighteenth century. An earthquake and then the fire ... No, it was too much. Few buildings in Lisbon survived the devastation."

  "Oh. You never told me that."

  "I did not want to disappoint you. And you see—I have done so just now."

  "Can't we restore it? They're doing that a lot of that in the British Isles, you know."

  "I do not think so."

  "Oh." Cindy looked blank for a moment, then she rallied. "I'm sure parts of it will be very nice. And anyway," she said with a serene smile, "your villa has something that all the beautifully kept mansions in Newport do not: proximity to Paris."

  "You are so very fond of Paris?"

  "Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Couture, Delly. Paris is couture! Once when Alan was tracking down a naval architect in Paris, I went to a spring showing for Dior. It was breathtaking, fabulous. There was a beaded gown ... I've never wanted anything so much in my life. Alan was aghast when he found out the price. And yet, you can't imagine some of the stories that circulate over there—a sultan buying a dozen versions of the same dress for each of his wives, when anyone knows the wives can't all have been built to carry it off equally well. Private planes being sent to pick up finished garments.... Did you know, on the flight back to New York, Alan and I sat across from a fitter from Givenchy; she was taking a dress to a New York customer for a final fitting! Really, it just ... boggles.

  "That's what so infuriated me about Alan," she went on. "Granted, there's no reason why he should jump up and down over an exquisite bit of embroidered fabric, or the perfect line and detail of a tailleur by St. Laurent. Fine. But then why expect me to go all misty over the shape of a Mylar-Kevlar mainsail that costs so many thousands and can be counted on to fall apart if it blows more than ten knots? Is that fair? Why are you laughing at me, Delly?" she demanded, taking his hand and nipping his forefinger. "I suppose you don't have ... weaknesses?"

  "Unlike the admittedly exotic needs of you and your husband, my requirements are mundane: a line of nose candy now and then; a roulette table; a friendly game of handball; women—"

  "Women! You mean woman, Delgado," Cindy said in a remarkably sultry voice. Close to him, she studied his dark-skinned, dark-eyed face, the clean straight lines of his profile, and she felt again the tingling rush down to her stomach which had convinced her that she loved Delgado as no other. "You make everything inside me go tumbling," she murmured, rubbing her nose in the linen of his shirt, breathing in the scent of him. "I love you so much," she said, almost in pain. She hesitated, and then shyly asked, "Did I ... you know, do all right last night?"

  Delgado began to say something, then checked himself and said carefully, "You did surprise me, rather. I thought we had agreed you would isolate a frail, elderly type—the lady with the tiara, for example."

  "Oh, but I never got the chance. Mavis chose me; she took me away from the party. She wanted to be alone with me."

  "Is she a lover of women?" Delgado asked.

  "Mavis? Oh, I don't think so," Cindy said with a shocked laugh.

  "She is an extremely beautiful woman."

  "If you like the type. She's so tall. And that hair! And, anyway, Delly, don't make me jealous. What can I do to make you not think about her?"

  Delgado smiled an easy, comfortable smile. "I think you know."

  "Now?" She looked out the window. Delgado was following the scenic by-roads to Interstate 95. The foggy morning had not quite stretched and awakened yet, but judging from his response to her touch, Delgado certainly had. "Delly, you're outrageous," she said, grinning. "Should you pull over first?"

  "I prefer to drive," Delgado answered in a low, rumbling voice. "It is more ... challenging."

  She loved that in him, that willingness to teeter on the razor's edge. To Cindy, a narrow escape was infinitely more exciting than a dogged pursuit. Life with Delgado was bound to be one long adventure. She wanted desperately for him to make love to her, but this was good, too: it showed that she also had some power, while at the same time it proved how much she trusted in Delgado's almost incredible calm in any given situation. If Cindy had done to Alan what she was doing just then to Delgado—well, Alan would certainly have run them right off the road and into the nearest ditch.

  Chapter 4

  Fog consumes Newport from two directions. Sometimes it begins by nibbling at the southern shore of Aquidneck Island, munching its way northward at a leisurely pace until the pretty little City by the Sea disappears lock, stock, and harbor. And sometimes the fog hovers over the city itself, sampling the taller parts: the towers of the Newport Bridge; an occasional smokestack here and there; the signal tower on the Navy Base; and of course the Newport Hospital, built on Newport's most prominent hill. The fog which soon gobbled up Cindy's silver Mercedes was of the top-to-bottom variety; it had swallowed the red brick hospital first thing, making it appear even more ominous to those who had business there.

  One of these was a thoroughly frightened seventeen-year old whose life, after the four-thirty a.m. phone call, would surely never be the same. At an hour when girls her age were deep into dreams about boys her age, Quinta Powers was pulling on a pair of battered jeans with shaking hands in the predawn quiet before the police arrived to take her to the hospital. At an hour when most girls her age were just becoming sleepily aware that today was Sunday, no school today, Quinta Powers was rocking back and forth in anguished suspense in the lounge chair outside the Intensive Care Unit, waiting for her father to be wheeled out of the operating room.

  "She's alone? No one else?"

  The nurse on duty nodded grimly.

  "How did she get here? Surely she didn't have to drive."

  "Lieutenant Halran and another cop went out to her house to pick her up. Apparently the patient's a widower with five daughters. This one's the youngest. Only one other still lives in Newport, and she's pregnant and due any minute. Take your choice," the nurse said wryly, aware that the orthopedic surgeon would rather be anywhere on the planet than where he was right now.

  "Well, hell. No grandparents? Neighbors?"

  "Uh-uh. It was the patient's decision. Apparently he's worried about the pregnant daughter; there's a history of miscarriages in the family. Though how he had the energy to worry …. Anyway, the girl's been doing pretty well. It's only since she knows the operation's over that she's started to crumble."

  Fred Greene was a case-hardened veteran of many hundreds of operations, m
ost of them successful. He had given his prognoses—good, bad, and uncertain—to thousands of relatives and survivors of his patients. But never, to his recollection, had he had to face a pretty teenager wide-eyed with fear and all, all alone. There was far too much of Charles Dickens in it, and it filled him with loathing for the task before him. Hastily he checked his scrub suit for tell-tale traces of blood—if he'd left his surgical gown on, the girl might have passed out in horror—and approached her.

  "Miss Powers? Er—Quinta?" A peculiar name, he thought; he couldn't have got it right.

  "Yessir." She jumped up, an athletic, tallish girl about to explode with tension. Her hazel eyes were fastened on his face with an intensity that wilted his resolve to look upbeat.

  "I'm Dr. Greene. Quinta, I'm sure you realize that your father has been very seriously injured." He hastened on with the good news part: "If it weren't for the dog he was holding, he might easily have been killed; the poor dog, well, absorbed the blow somewhat."

  "Yes?"

  It was a signal, he thought, to continue at his own peril. Her eyes never left him, and he felt, more than ever before, like a demi-god who'd screwed up. There was nothing further anyone could do—he knew that. But how in the name of Hippocrates could he convince her of that? He plowed stoically ahead through the bad news. "When your father was brought in, he had a fracture dislocation of the spine," he said carefully. "The exact location was D-12 on L-1, but you don't care about that."

  "But I do care, I care about every last bit. 'Fracture dislocation... D-12 on L-1,'" she repeated fiercely, memorizing the meaningless labels.

  Oh Christ, she's going to want to be adult about it. "We had to operate immediately to reduce the pressure of the piece of bone pressing on the nerves," he continued slowly. "We hope that by reducing the pressure, your father will recover completely."

  "From the fracture dislocation?" she said with touching naïveté.

  "Well, yes. From the paralysis," he explained, unsure suddenly whether she understood what the danger even was.

  "What ... paralysis?"

  "From the dislocation, Quinta. Your father has no movement from his waist down."

  She sucked in her breath slowly, quietly. Her large hazel eyes glazed over with tears; they welled behind the thick lower lashes with no more hope of staying back than overflowing reservoirs out west in spring. "My father can't walk?"

  "Not when he was admitted; but we're hoping for the best, Quinta."

  "But he has to walk; he has a boat," she argued, as if that would tip the balance of justice in her father's favor. "He has to get on the dock ... off the dock ... up to the boat's flying bridge .... You have to walk if you have a boat, one with a bridge especially," she repeated, still in shock.

  "Quinta, you have to hope for the best. And you have to help your dad hope for the best. He's going to need you very much in the next few weeks. He'll be counting on you."

  "I've failed him completely," she whispered in agony.

  Puzzled, he said, "Nonsense! You seem to me very levelheaded, very intelligent. This is what you have to do: you have to stay calm and be optimistic. Can you do that, especially in front of your dad?"

  She nodded. "If you could tell me," she said, taking a deep breath, "the worst case."

  "The paralysis would be permanent, Quinta. But even then, if your father were very determined he could move around with leg braces and crutches." Very, very few were that determined, he might easily have added, but not to her.

  Instead he said, "But let's take things one at a time. Right now I want you to go up to the coffee shop and get something to eat. Do you know where it is?"

  "Yes. I was here before," she murmured, for the first time averting her eyes from his. "When my mother was ... ill ."

  Best stay away from that, he thought. "All right then," he said briskly. "Do you have any money with you?"

  Again she nodded. "But I'm not really hungry."

  "Hunger has nothing to do with it. You have to be strong—for your father—and that's where food comes in, you know that. So get off to the snack shop and strengthen up." He tried a lame smile. "I'm going to call your brother-in-law." Whether the patient likes it or not, he added to himself.

  "When can I see my dad?"

  "Soon. But I gotta tell ya," he said lightly, "he isn't going to be much for small talk. Don't plan on discussing the theory of relativity or anything like that."

  Quinta let him have a pale ghost of a smile, which nonetheless had a feisty sweetness in it. She picked up her canvas purse, slung it over her shoulder, and started out for the visitors' lounge. Then she stopped and turned around. "Thank you, Dr. Greene. I'm sorry I was such a baby."

  "Oh, but you weren't," he said sincerely, shaking her hand.

  "Yes, I was. But I'll get better. I just wasn't, you know, expecting ... this." Her voice broke and she turned and hurried toward the elevator.

  ****

  Four days later, Alan Seton called a press conference. Dr. Frederick Greene couldn't come; he was busy operating on the fractured tibia that would pay the July mortgage on his overly large Victorian house. Quinta Powers couldn't come; she was dividing her time between her sister's house, where Jackie was overdue and in a perilous state, and Intensive Care, where her father lay broken and grieving. Cindy Seton couldn't come. She was dead, and besides, she was in Nevada, taking in the shows at the casinos while her lover fenced a few emeralds. Mrs. Cyril Hutley, shocked beyond expression by her protégé's suicide, certainly wouldn't come. She would have nothing further to do with the Setons. And she couldn't bear Alan Seton anyway; he was so hopelessly single-minded. Of all the principals in the Saturday night drama, in fact, only Mavis Moran had the leisure and the inclination to go and see what Alan Seton had to say for himself.

  Not that the Newport National Guard Armory was empty. The historic granite building, which by tradition was converted to press headquarters for the duration of the America's Cup trials as well as the final races, was filled to overflowing. The media were there, naturally, and so was anyone else lucky enough to have wrangled a guest pass for the summer—crews and members of the four U.S. and seven foreign syndicates; local officials responsible for avoiding chaos whenever possible; and the usual smattering of politicians, crashers, and hangers-on.

  This wasn't very fair to the residents of Newport—it was more or less their Armory, after all—but those who really cared could always tune in to the local radio station for a fairly complete broadcast. And since this press conference was not about the Aussies' secret winged keel; since it was not about which yacht club advised which measurer on what date; since it was about a juicy, scandalous piece of news that everyone could understand—most Newporters, and quite a few non-Newporters, did tune in to listen. There was no doubt about it: the combined events of the last few days had had everyone in Newport reeling.

  The average townie shook his head and said, "It isn't right. Neil Powers is a good man who puts in long hours on the Christmas toy drive. For him to be run down by some damn socialite high on drugs just isn't right."

  Society shook her head and said, "What a tragic pity. Cindy was pretty, charming, bright. If her parents had lived, who knows how high she might have flown? She might have bowed at the Palais Schwarzenberg. Fate was too cruel to her. First her parents' car crash, then this fellow wearing dark clothing on a dark road on a dark night. Too cruel."

  The butler murmured to the housekeeper, "There'll be trouble if he's not reinstated. Never heard of such a thing, dismissing a man like Bob—never sick hardly in twelve years, steady as the day is long—and why? Because that security outfit fell flat on their faces and Mrs. Cyril Hutley was looking for a scapegoat, that's why."

  The press, ecstatic over the bumper crop of stories, packed away hearty, cheap breakfasts at Handy Lunch and told one another gleefully, "Best Cup summer in a hundred and thirty-two years. A Cup assignment used to be about as exciting as watching paint dry, but damn if this isn't fun. This'll be the death
blow to Alan Seton's campaign. Guaranteed. "

  So far Mavis Moran had successfully avoided the media men who flocked to the waterfront like seagulls to dumpsters. She had given a report of the theft to the police, and then, after the silver Mercedes was discovered on Newport Bridge, she had given it again. She had been interviewed by the insurance company more than once, but to the media she had said not a word.

  Now she stood quietly in the back of the crowd, dressed in flat sandals, nondescript khakis, and a cheap navy polo shirt. Her thick auburn hair was hidden under a visor-bandanna combination, and a pair of enormous light-adjusting glasses broke up the Celtic curves of her face. She had taken extreme care to hide the fading bruise on her chin under makeup, not so much out of vanity as from a sense of embarrassment that Delgado had landed such a clean punch. She was as nearly incognito as a woman with dazzling skin who stands five feet nine inches tall can be.

  The magnified thump of a finger being tapped against a hot mike told Mavis that the press conference was about to begin. Boisterous exchanges died to excited chatter and finally faded to a subdued murmur as the Chairman of the U.S. Selection Committee made a few introductory remarks. Mavis scanned the hall and found six or seven of the Shadow crew gathered in a small knot near the front, looking glum.

  Mavis knew what was coming, of course. So did just about everyone else in the Armory, but that didn't stop them—and her—from staring with unconcealed expectation at the dark-haired skipper who sat stonily behind the podium, about to read his statement.

  "Mr. Chairman, members of the press, ladies and gentlemen," Alan Seton began in a voice resonant with self-control. "It must be obvious to most of you why I've called this press conference. Four days ago my wife, because of her involvement in a tragic accident, chose to ... take her own life. It came as a severe shock to me, and now I don't think I can summon the intense, total concentration needed to compete seriously for the right to defend the America's Cup."