By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "That's all right," he said gruffly, returning it. "You'll need it for your fare home. I'll drive past your place and make sure everything's okay."

  She rallied a limp smile for him.

  After that, Quinta telephoned her father. There was nothing to report, much to learn. Neil was exhausted but lucid. He told his daughter that after he'd flipped on the porch light, he'd had a clear look at the woman who was feeding Leggy in the side yard. She was wearing a black and crimson ball gown. She had dark hair. He yelled at her through a screened window to get away from his dog. She looked up at him with a face twisted by hatred, but there weren't enough twisted expressions in the world to throw him off a face. He knew that face. It was Cindy Seton's face. Meanwhile Leggy, stupid, trusting Leggy, kept on wolfing the food.

  "She's the Reebok Man," he finished up tiredly.

  For a long moment Quinta said nothing. Her father had given her the access code to a secret file in the computer of her mind: Cindy Seton. Suddenly it all came printing out, the crime sheet of a psychopath. The poison pen note; the rock through the window; the blood-red paint; and now Leggy. Escalating violence, and tonight a line had been crossed. What next? The possibilities made Quinta's blood run cold.

  "Have the police shown up yet?" she asked, trying to keep panic from creeping into her voice.

  "Yeah. There's a cop here now, taking a statement."

  "Ask him to stay. I'm coming right home."

  "What about Legs?"

  "I can't do anything more here. The vet will call when he knows anything."

  Quinta ended up with the same cabbie who'd taken her out; he'd turned around immediately when the call came through. They rode back in thoughtful silence, and Quinta had time to begin to sort things out. That there was one perpetrator, and that the perpetrator was Cindy Seton, she had no doubt. Her father had an uncanny, almost phenomenal recall of faces. She'd never known him to make a mistake. No one else might believe him, but Quinta did.

  Why was Cindy Seton pursuing them? Why had she come out of hiding now, why come to Newport, why flaunt herself to one of the few people who could identify her? Crazy? For sure. Self-destructive? Everyone had thought so three years ago, when they'd found the drugs in her car on the bridge and assumed that she'd taken her life. But they were wrong. From where Quinta stood, Cindy Seton seemed hell-bent on destroying everyone else first. Going after Leggy, dressed in a ball gown! It was as if the woman were reliving the night of the ball three years earlier, the night she ran down Quinta's father and Leggy's mother, paralyzing one and killing the other.

  Was Cindy Seton going to get it right this time around?

  Quinta resisted the urge to scream "Faster, faster" to the driver. She hated melodrama—a reaction, no doubt, to her father's tendency toward it. Things were under control. For the moment, nothing more could be done. In two minutes more the cab pulled up in front of her house, still lit up like the Fourth of July. She paid and thanked the driver again, then went inside.

  "Where's the policeman?" she demanded, upset when she saw that he was gone.

  Her father had backed his wheelchair into a kind of gunfighter's position, where he could see all the doors and windows simultaneously. Other than that he seemed quite calm. "I didn't want to seem like an overly doting pet owner," he said dryly.

  "That's not the issue—"

  "How is he?" he cut in, and she could tell that he was afraid of the answer.

  "They said he was very bad, but that they'd seen even worse."

  "Worse who survived?"

  "I didn't ask," she admitted. "What did the policeman say when you told him it was Cindy Seton?"

  Neil gave her an incredulous look. "I didn't tell him it was Cindy Seton. Do you want me laughed out of town?"

  "But wearing a ball gown—it wouldn't take long for them to trace her movements ...."

  "It's high season; there were half a dozen balls tonight. She could have been anywhere or nowhere. You think they're going to believe the word of a shut-in that a dead woman has come back to haunt him? Get serious, girl. It's up to us. I think it's time to call in a private eye. You and I are no good between us. I'm a cripple and you're a girl."

  He didn't mean it the way it sounded. Or maybe he did; she was too tired to care anymore. Quinta: "Fifth." The fifth in a line of useless non-male offspring. The name, so offhandedly given, would sting forever. "We can talk about it tomorrow, Dad. I'm going to bed."

  The father surveyed his drooping, bedraggled daughter and said, "Your dress is shot."

  "I know."

  He hesitated, then murmured, "I'm sorry, Quint."

  Whether he was sorry about the dress or sorry about the put-down, she couldn't say. "It'll all work out; I know it," she said more softly. "'Night, Dad."

  She dragged herself up the stairs, confident that they wouldn't be bothered any more that night. In the upstairs bathroom she peeled off the torn and fouled skirt and threw it in the wastebasket. She didn't know what to do about the top. Maybe it could be saved. But why would she want it? In the splattered beads and sequins she could see the wrath of God: she had ventured from the home fires to a place where she didn't belong, with death the possible result. Poor Leggy.

  Quinta washed up thoroughly, realizing with a kind of dark humor that a single human being was causing an awful lot of wear and tear not only on her emotions but on her dwindling wardrobe. Her father was right; it was time to take drastic action. In the morning she would tell Alan Seton that his wife was not in the least bit dead. After a quick shower, she drew a nightgown over her sun-darkened, athletic body. Since her father's accident, she'd had spasms of guilt about her robustness. Not anymore. She was glad now of her strength. Cindy Seton, she recalled from society photographs after her disappearance, was model-thin, a frail excuse of a female. Quinta was glad of that, too.

  Strong or not, she practically staggered to bed. It amazed her to think that guests would be dancing at the send-off ball until dawn; simply amazed her. She flipped off the ceiling light in her bedroom, went over to the bed, and peeled back the bedspread. Something landed in the dark on her bare foot and she jumped, then turned on the bed stand lamp. It was her grandmother's diary, sprawled like a dried-out butterfly on the rag rug next to the bed.

  Quinta lifted the diary gently and laid it back on the bed, then, despite her weariness, propped the pillows up against the headboard and slipped between the sheets. Her grandmother's diary. Given the night's events, she'd forgotten all about it. She fingered the leatherette cover, then opened the diary and read her grandmother's name, Laura Andersson Powers, written in an independent, up-and-down hand. It was wholesome, straightforward handwriting, without affectation, just like her grandmother.

  But when it came down to it, Quinta hesitated to turn to the first page. Her father had implied only that she ought to read the last page. When and if she read the rest of it, she wanted all her senses about her. But the last page—well, the last page was not to be resisted.

  She turned to it and read: "I cannot believe it. In the cement, in a small marble globe that twists open, gems worth I am certain a vast fortune. Colin seems as surprised as I am, but who can say? He feels entitled to them. The storm—"

  And that was all. There was no date, but it must have been written on the day of the wreck: the handwriting in no way resembled the confident script on the title page or even on the page that preceded it. Of course, that could have been because of the weather; writing during a storm would be like writing in a Jeep going up a mountain road. There was no mention of what kind of gems, and who was to say her impoverished grandmother could recognize a vast fortune if she did see one? Quinta reread the entry, disappointed. There were no answers here, only more mysteries.

  She turned to the preceding page and learned nothing more about the gems. But she learned much about her family, more than her father could ever bring himself to tell her: "September 24, 1934. I love him to distraction, and I know Neil sees it .... Neil seems quieter and more w
ithdrawn .... Colin thinks it's better for Neil to find out sooner rather than later .... Colin can't possibly understand ...."

  Her grandmother loved Colin then! But Quinta had always assumed that Colin was merely the crew on that ill-fated voyage, and that he and her grandmother had fallen in love sometime after Quinta's Grandpa Sam died.

  She had been married to someone else, but Laura Powers loved Colin. She loved him still. She would love him until her dying breath. If you saw them together, then you knew: they were meant to be.

  Quinta read on, flipping backward and forward in the diary until, completely exhausted, she fell asleep. She did not wake again until her father's phone rang. She was out of bed and down the stairs in a shot, but her father beat her to it. She picked up an extension in the kitchen.

  "You got him here in time," Dr. Kenney said at the other end. "It looks like he's going to make it. He's young and strong and well cared for. It was good thinking, bringing in the rest of the poisoned food. I'm going to have it analyzed if it's all right with you; this is no ordinary rat-type poison. As for Leggy, you can probably pick him up in a day or two. Go back to bed now," he said kindly.

  He hung up and Quinta and her father exchanged tired smiles of relief. "Maybe we should get Legs a litter box and keep him inside," she said across the room.

  "Maybe we should feed what's left of exhibit A to the lady," her father answered grimly.

  Chapter 15

  At daybreak Quinta was seriously considering whether it was a decent hour to call Alan Seton. At seven she had her hand on the phone but managed to take it off again. At eight she punched in the unlisted Newport number she'd got hold of. A woman answered; Quinta resisted the urge to lower the receiver quietly into its cradle. "I'd like to speak with Alan Seton, please," she said, pretending not to recognize Mavis Moran's voice.

  Great timing, she told herself.

  She heard muffled voices and then Alan came on.

  "Alan, I have something important to talk about with you," she said, coming straight to the point. "Last night when I was at the ball, someone poisoned Leggy, my father's dog. You probably don't remember; he was the little puppy—well, anyway, my father caught the person in the act. He saw her face clearly in the porch light. You have to understand that my father never, ever forgets a face. And he insists—and I believe him—that it was Cindy Seton who did it." She waited for his reaction.

  The pause was so prolonged that finally she said, "Hello?"

  "I understand," he answered in a low voice. "Will you be home this afternoon?"

  Quinta said yes and he said, "One-thirty, then," and hung up.

  Well, she told herself, that went pretty well. Everything except for the part about Mavis Moran being in his bed with him. Or was he in her bed? Or was neither of them in bed, but they were merely planning strategy? The morning after a ball? Probably not. Why the hell didn't they just marry and get it over with?

  Too late, Alan. Looks like you've missed your chance.

  The thought came and went in a second. She was getting mean. It seemed to be in the air.

  She showered and dressed and went downstairs to find her father deep in research. News clippings covered the huge oak library table at which he liked to work; a thick journal lay opened in his lap. It was a familiar scene, and it signaled that her father, at least, had recovered from the shock of the night before.

  "I called the vet," he said. "Leggy's doing all right; weak but responsive. I suppose," he added defensively, "you think I'm being stupid. He's only a dog."

  "He isn't, either. He's family," Quinta replied, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

  "Dammit, he is family," he agreed. "Who else have I got? Four daughters scattered to the four winds, and once you move on—"

  "I'm not going anywhere, Dad," she said automatically. "What are you working on?"

  "You'll laugh."

  "I won't laugh."

  He placed a bookmark carefully in the opened journal, closed it, and laid it on the table. Then he turned to his daughter and with an air of courage said, "I'm writing away for a copy of the proceedings of a meeting in Oslo of the International Paraplegia Association."

  Quinta waited for more. "Apparently there's an experimental procedure," he continued, "where surgeons are taking part of the omentum, snaking it under the skin to the spinal cord, and using it to restore blood flow and, hopefully, lost movement."

  He turned away from her and fiddled with the bookmark. "Okay, so it's experimental. So I'm sixty years old. There's no law against being curious, is there? Half the test patients have recovered at least some mobility. I said you'd laugh," he added, coloring.

  "Oh, Dad," she said, sitting at the table beside his wheelchair. She took his hand in hers. "I'm not laughing at all," she said softly. "I'm thinking of the possibilities." Her eyes glazed over.

  "Cut it out," her father warned. "I wouldn't have told you if I thought you'd start bawling on me. Not a word to your sisters. I don't want them feeling sorrier for me than they do. I only told you because—well, because you're you and not them. Knock it off, Quint, I said. Stop it." He looked away, embarrassed.

  "Okay, okay," she said. She wiped her eyes quickly. "I just … feel good about it, that's all."

  "Look, who knows how many years it'll take before there's any real breakthrough? Probably I'll be an old dog," he said. "But I'm not going to sit around in this chair and wait for her to come after me. I can tell you that," he added more vigorously.

  Quinta sat up straight. "Oh glory, that's right—Cindy Seton. I almost forgot. I called Alan Seton and told him she's alive. He's coming by at one-thirty."

  "Holy shit! With a straitjacket?" he said angrily. "How could you tell him that?"

  "It doesn't sound as crazy as you think, Dad. Originally Alan did wonder whether his wife might have faked the suicide." Was she betraying a confidence? Quinta thought of Mavis Moran with him that morning and added, "Of course, it doesn't seem to have cramped his style any."

  "When did he tell you his suspicions? During the interview? What else are you holding back?" Neil demanded, suspicious.

  "That was pretty much it," Quinta said with a deliberately vague look.

  "What did he say when you told him?" asked her father, rubbing his stubbly, unshaved chin. He too was trying to anticipate the next step.

  "He didn't say a thing, but I don't suppose he's too happy about it," she said dryly.

  Neil grunted. "You know the man better than I do. Well, well."

  But her father didn't seem worried that Alan Seton would think he was crazy. In fact, he looked excited and rather pleased; he seemed to sense that, in some strange way, the waiting was finally over.

  ****

  Quinta and her father spent the morning staring at the doorbell chimes. By eleven they were desperate for something to do. Despite the vet's warning not to come by, Quinta drove her father in their customized van so that they could see Legs for themselves. They were allowed to see the dog, who became wildly excited, and then the vet scolded them; so that was a bust. They went back home and searched the side yard for clues. That was a bust, too, but at least now it was one o'clock.

  The mail came, and with it the latest issue of Neil's complimentary subscription to Cup Quotes. He snatched it up. "Alan Seton's going to be here in twenty minutes; I should try to be au courant," he said with one of his wry smiles.

  He scanned the newsletter and ran into Quinta's black-and-white photo of the young demonstrator heaving a rotten tomato at Pegasus. With a low whistle he said, "If I were Alan Seton, I'd call this aiding and abetting the enemy. Nothing inspires a terrorist more than publicity, girl. Don't you know that?"

  "I don't call it publicity," she argued, feeling guilty. "I call it news."

  "I call it bad judgment," Neil said with his usual bluntness.

  The doorbell rang. Quinta grabbed the newsletter and threw it in a drawer. "We can discuss it later!"

  Neil Powers watched as his daughter ran to the hall
mirror, raked one hand through her blond hair, straightened the collar of her yellow polo shirt, took a deep breath, and swung open the door. Alan Seton was leaning on the porch railing, hands in his pockets, apparently without a care in the world. He was whistling a tune. He didn't look distracted. He didn't look devastated. He didn't look tired. Neil was certain, as he watched from the other end of the hall, that Alan Seton hadn't understood the message.

  "Hello, Alan. Sorry I woke you this morning," Quinta said. Neil thought he detected a touch of coolness in his daughter's voice.

  "No problem. I had to put Mavis on a plane for New York, anyway," Alan replied evenly. He gave Quinta a quick, ironic smile and Neil thought, What's going on here?

  "Mavis is having dinner with a potential sponsor," Alan continued, stepping over the threshold into the hall. "I can't name names yet, but the company is a major producer of board games. If anyone can land them, she can."

  He saw Neil waiting for him and put out his hand. "Mr. Powers. It's good to see you again."

  Neil nodded curtly and shook hands, surprised to realize that his own was a little clammy. So. He was letting himself be impressed. He felt like a child. He tried to cover his uneasiness with informed chatter before they launched into the subject of Cindy Seton.

  "I've read that fund-raising is the number one concern among all seven American syndicates. How far from your goal are you?" he asked Alan politely. Why, he didn't know; he wasn't going to make up the difference.

  "Oh, the average amount: a couple of million or so. We're working with a medium-sized budget—ten million—so we're not in as tough a shape as the fifteen-million-dollar syndicates. But it's still an uphill battle; it's all we ever think about," said Alan, glancing to see Quinta's expression.

  "Have you sold billboard space on your winged keel yet? I read that one of the syndicates was offering to paint their keel with the logo of any company that could come up with a million bucks," Neil said, aware that his daughter seemed uncharacteristically self-conscious.