"No. Of course not," Quinta answered quickly. "What a ridiculous idea! And why are you talking to me in that tone? You make me feel like I'm thirteen years old again."
"You're right," he said, backing down. "You're right. So," he said softly. "You did read the diary. What did you think of it?"
"I think," Quinta answered, "that Laura Powers would have loved Colin Durant if he were her age, or younger, or older. Age had nothing to do with the way she felt. That was the real thing. You could feel her heartache ... her longing ... probably you don't want to hear this, do you. Because you thought it was wrong."
Neil stared at his drink with a sad smile. "At the time, anyway. It did mess me up for a while. I was a kid; I didn't understand any of it. On the Virginia, they fell in love so fast. And meanwhile, I was under Colin's spell myself. He was dashing, handsome, cool—the complete opposite of my father. Looking back, I can see that each man had his own strengths. Colin's just happened to be what my mother was looking for."
"I guess! They've been married almost fifty years."
"Hard to believe, looking at them; they just refuse to slow down. Until this summer, anyway."
"I know; I miss their visit. But Grandmother told me her doc said that her ankle should be mended well enough for them to come up for Thanksgiving."
"We're going out for dinner," Neil warned. Just so you know. Don't be getting any ideas about preparing some grand feast here."
"We'll see," Quinta said. She favored her father with an enigmatic smile, then said, "I do like grandfather. I have a bit of a crush on him myself."
Her father laughed and said "He was a good stepfather, conscientious, more of a big brother, really. But it was my mother first, for him. Still is. Always will be."
They drank in silence after that, each of them wondering about a world that was, a world that might have been. When the phone rang, Quinta answered it, expecting the detectives, or maybe Alan, whom she'd not yet seen since the fire. Expecting any voice, in fact, but the one she heard: cheerful, voluble, excited. On the edge.
"Thank goodness you're home. It's been so exciting that I haven't had a chance to call. Wasn't it a fabulous fire? I never imagined that aluminum could melt. It didn't even occur to me. I mean, did you see Alan's face on the evening news? He looked so exhausted. No. Not exhausted. Drained. He looks like that sometimes after he makes love. But then—you know that already, don't you, Quinta? I'll see you at the stone tower in ten minutes. You won't be a tittle-tattle, will you? Ciao." She hung up.
Quinta was left with a pounding heart and a dry mouth. Her father, looking oddly triumphant, said, "Cindy! I knew it! What did she say?"
"She really is deranged," said Quinta. "She wants to meet me at the stone tower in ten minutes. Obviously she means the old stone mill."
Neil had his cordless out of its holster and was punching in a telephone number. "Perfect. The police will have her bound and trussed five minutes after that."
"No, dad, don't! She wants to talk to me alone. I know, I know," she said in response to her father's look of amazement. "But it's perfectly safe; the tower's in the middle of a well-lit green. It's on Bellevue Avenue, for goodness' sake! She can't have anything devious planned or she'd have picked someplace more out of the way. Let's give her this one chance. She's got some wrong ideas. I can straighten her out, I'm sure of it. I can talk her down from her tree. She really seems to be crying out for help."
"Since when are we running a hotline for psychos?" Neil demanded.
"Just this once," Quinta said, grabbing a jacket to ward off the damp and foggy evening. "Mr. Locklear's upstairs; you're safe, and, really, so am I. Gotta go, she might not wait!"
He nodded, reluctantly, and she waved on her way out the door. He waited until he saw her running up the street toward her car, and then he picked up the phone again. "Alan?" he said when it got answered. "Cindy's just set up a meeting with Quinta at the stone mill. Get over there, for God's sake. Please!"
He hung up and waited five breathless minutes, then he picked up the phone again and began punching in the number he'd been given earlier by the sergeant-detective. But no: he was going to trust Quinta, trust in her judgment and in Alan's. For the first time in a long time, he was going to trust someone. He turned off the talk button.
And then he turned it on again and called the police.
****
It took Quinta a little longer than five minutes to reach the park. It was a Saturday night, and Newport was suffering its usual weekend gridlock. She found a place just shy of tiny Touro Park, left her car there, and ran the last block. Breathless, she arrived alone at the tower, an odd stone structure built by either Vikings or Benedict Arnold (no one was really sure) for religious or more practical reasons (no one really knew). In Newport it was officially called the Stone Mill, but everyone knew it as the mystery tower. The cylindrical tower was two stories high, supported by eight stone pillars and surrounded by a five-foot iron fence to keep tourists from taking home chunks of souvenirs.
It was quieter in the park than Quinta had expected, and eerier. The air was heavy and muggy, with lowering clouds. She could taste the salt: fog would be closing in soon. The benches in the park were empty, and surprisingly few people strolled on Bellevue Avenue.
The only sign of Saturday was the endless line of traffic a couple hundred feet away exiting Newport. Quinta waited by the iron fence, feeling observed, oddly grateful for the nearby traffic. It was nearly dark. She circled the mystery tower, feeling the hair on the back of her neck stand, wondering when Cindy, wherever she was, would be convinced that she had come alone.
It was only on her second pass around the tower that she noticed, through an archway framed by the pillars, the sheet of paper that was jammed between two of the flat stones inside. The paper had not been there long, of that she was certain. Quinta looked around, then vaulted the fence. She stepped inside the cylindrical tower, convinced that she had called down a curse on herself, and took the paper from its nook. Roosting pigeons, disturbed from their evening roost, fluttered over her, adding to her sense that she was violating a natural order.
By the light from one of the ground fixtures fixed on the tower, Quinta was able to make out the writing on the sheet of paper: "I'm glad you came," it read. "I hardly know anyone in town. Would you consider viewing the fireworks show at Fort Adams tonight with me? We could chat. It would mean a lot. I could meet you just outside the fort, nearest the point, on the side next to the Bay. I hope you can come. The Japanese Black Ships fireworks are the best. Just you, though. I need to talk to you. Please don't tell."
It was like being invited to a child's birthday party. If Cindy was crazy, she was also strangely innocent. Quinta looked around, saw no one. She folded the paper, then tucked it absently back into its nook. Should she go? The fireworks were scheduled to be set off just south of Cindy's proposed rendezvous point, a safe enough place in the circumstances. Thousands of Newporters would be in the area. In a way, it was a fitting occasion: a celebration of the friendship between Japan and America that was established when Commodore Matthew Perry opened up diplomatic relations with Japan in the eighteen-fifties. Yes. She'd go.
****
Ten minutes later, Alan arrived. He'd been trapped in the worst of the Thames Street traffic, all of it headed out to Fort Adams for the fireworks display. Furious with himself for not having put the fear of God in Quinta about Cindy; furious for having given her his reassuring opinion that he did not think Cindy was behind the arson; furious with the way Fate doled out its disasters in twos and threes—Alan scoured the pocket-sized park and nearby cars, looking for some sign of either woman. If anything—anything—happened to Quinta, if a hair of her head were touched ....
Alan grabbed hold of two of the spear pickets of the iron fence and swore a short, fierce oath that was half plea. When he looked up, a piece of paper caught in a gust of wind was fluttering to the ground in the center of the tower, in token acknowledgment from the gods.
A second gust pushed it out from the tower and up against the fence.
Alan snatched the paper before it took off again. He knew the handwriting before he saw it, understood the message before he read it. Oh God, Quinta. No. Don't.
He was racing back to his car, aware that it would take just as long to get to Fort Adams by boat, thinking that the only way to get there in time would be on the real Pegasus, when he came across a kid on a moped, weaving slowly but steadily in and out of the stalled traffic on Bellevue. The boy's T-shirt read, "I'm Not a Tourist; I Live Here." Perfect. Alan flagged him down.
"I'm Alan Seton. I need your bike. It's life and death, so help me God." He threw a fifty-dollar bill in the astonished kid's hand and gave him his Visa card. "I'll get this back to you tonight," he promised, and he was off before the boy could scream grand theft.
Chapter 18
Somewhere on Harrison Avenue Alan ran out of gas. He couldn't believe it; the damn kid had been running on his reserve supply. It was all one long nightmare, and no matter what Alan did, he could not wake up from it. The lane of traffic to the fort wasn't moving at all. Hitching would be pointless. He dumped the moped near the Ida Lewis Yacht Club and began to run. His only hope was that Quinta and Cindy had got caught up in the same traffic jam.
But they hadn't; neither one of them. Quinta found room in the Fort Adams parking lot for her Honda, and Cindy, not far behind her, managed to tuck her rental car close by. Clusters of Newporters with blankets and coolers were making their way in the dark toward the fireworks launching area, clucking about the wisdom of someone's decision to go ahead with the show on such a foggy night.
Quinta split off from the crowds almost at once and made her way to the fort that had never fired a shot except in salute. It occurred to her that no one would be interested in hanging out in an unlit stone fort at this hour, especially when a spectacular fireworks display was about to take place nearby; she would be quite alone. She didn't feel as confident as she had twenty minutes earlier.
Holding her shoulder bag close to her side, she tiptoed inside the low stone structure, worried more about muggers than maniacs. "Cindy?" she whispered. The word hung in the air, muffled in fog. The sound of Quinta's footsteps was cushioned by the grass floor; the inside of the fort was as quiet as a tomb. Quinta waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark; when they did not, she suddenly lost heart, panicked, and turned to go.
But someone was at the entrance in front of her, silhouetted in the lights of the harbor. Even in the dark, Quinta could see that the woman was holding a gun. Both her hands were gripping the pistol, police-style. Quinta did not know whether to pray that Cindy didn't know what she was doing or that she did.
"Hi-hi," said Cindy in the same bright, feverish voice that she'd used on the phone. "You were able to make it, after all."
"Y-yes," answered Quinta, more faintly than she would like. "I wanted to meet you—to explain a few things that I think you should know."
"Marvelous! That's why I wanted to meet with you! There's so much to tell. I hope we have the time."
"I have lots of time," said Quinta reassuringly. "I'm in no hurry."
"I'm not either, when you come right down to it. But the fireworks will be starting any minute. I've got to be done by then. Oh dear. Why didn't I set this up earlier? Then we would have had plenty of time to chat."
She seemed quite bothered by her sense of timing; Quinta could only speculate why. "I've seen the Black Ship displays," said Quinta. "They're not all that great ... especially in the fog ... we won't be missing much—"
"Oh, I'll be seeing them, as soon as I'm through here. I'm looking forward to it."
The blood iced up in Quinta's veins, but she pressed on. "Cindy, you haven't done anything seriously wrong yet. Not ... not as wrong as you could do. There are things you can't undo once you've done them—"
"What gibberish! Are you so afraid? Of dying, I mean?"
"Well, I'm not looking forward to it," Quinta said in a fading voice.
"But you should be. Oh, don't ever be afraid to die. It's like an orgasm. That's what Delly always said. Of course, it's hard to prove."
"Tell me why you did those things, Cindy," said Quinta, stalling for time. It was a transparent ploy; Quinta understood perfectly well that Cindy meant to shoot her once the fireworks began. "Why did you send the note?" she asked softly. "And spill the paint, and send the pizzas, and burglarize Alan's house? I have so many questions, Cindy. Why did you poison the dog? And burn the boat?"
"I can't answer all that," said Cindy petulantly. Her voice had a whining, fretful quality that seemed to fit the way she held her head, the way she lifted her shoulders and let them fall. "I don't have time. I thought the paint was a really beautiful color. I spent a lot of time with a paint chart on that one. It had to be just right, kind of like congealed blood, not fresh. And I didn't take hardly anything from Alan's house that wasn't mine. Except his tie."
"The Pegasus plans weren't yours," Quinta argued gently.
"What plans? I didn't take any plans. I took my little box and some other things, and I had some jewelry hidden in the basement. And I sent the pizzas because—you won't believe this—Alan once told me to bring pizzas to the dock for him and the crew. I didn't do it that time, so this time I made amends. Twice."
Her voice became even more petulant. "He always ignored me, you know. It was always boat, boat, boat. Cup, Cup, Cup. He was obsessed; he never had time for me. He isn't like most other men. I hope you don't think he's like other men. Other men buy their wives pretty things, or take them shopping. Not Alan. He wants ... I don't know, Wonder Woman. Oh, but he was so good-looking, so wonderful in bed. He knew what he was doing there. But you know that, don't you? You're with him there all the time, aren't you?"
She laughed, a merry schoolgirl's laugh, a playground laugh. It was a mindless sound, a terrifying sound. "I didn't like the dog," Cindy added in a lower, tenser tone. "The dog scared me. It was like the other dog. It took a lot of courage for me to go up to it that night with the food."
"You were very clever," said Quinta softly. "There were no fingerprints on the food bowl."
"Gloves. Did you figure out what the poison was?"
"We haven't heard yet," answered Quinta, watching feverishly for someone, anyone to come.
"It's colchicine. Delly's grandfather had it for his gout. He took too much of it once and nearly died. I saved it, because you never know." She sounded pleased that she had stumped the experts.
"It's too bad about your father," Cindy went on. "That he actually lived, I mean, and I didn't know it. Maybe my life would've been different. I might have come back sooner. Or not at all. I really don't know. But if I hadn't come back I might have missed the fire. I'm glad I saw the fire .... I saw it all—"
"You didn't start that fire, did you, Cindy?" Quinta said, resolved to drop to the ground when the fireworks began. She had nothing to lose ....
"How I wish I had," Cindy moaned. "It was so beautiful, so right—"
Suddenly the first fireworks were launched, perhaps two dozen of them almost simultaneously. It was so abrupt; despite all her intentions, Quinta was taken completely by surprise. Cindy, also startled, let out a little frightened cry and Quinta's split-second thought was, she's not a killer; I was right.
But she was wrong: in the next millisecond, before Quinta could drop out of the way, came a bright white light from the barrel of Cindy's gun. White light—that's all Quinta saw, but at the same time, she heard thunderous cannon sounds and machine-gun fire, and in the middle of it all, the little pop. And then she dropped to the ground, but not by choice.
She lay in the dark on the cool, damp grass, aware that her chin was resting in an ooze of blood on her shoulder, aware—crazily—that Cindy had ruined yet another outfit of hers, feeling dreamily outraged, unable to express her anger. She wanted to demand a new dress. It seemed only fair that she should have a new dress. She must stop wearing white ... white was apparently not
for her ....
"Well?" Cindy had come nearer and was standing over her. She nudged one foot in Quinta's side, causing her exquisite pain. "Are you dead?"
****
Quinta wasn't the only one able to pick out the hollow little pop of Cindy's pistol. Alan, breathless and with a burning pain in his side, arrived at the fort in time to hear the shot just inside and see Cindy moving cautiously toward Quinta. The stab of despair he felt was searing, but he kept himself from screaming out in rage and crept up behind Cindy as she padded toward the fallen figure in the grass. The words "Are you dead?" had no sooner been uttered than he tackled his wife with a viciousness he did not know he possessed. They fell to the ground together and he wrenched the gun away from her, prepared to break her arm in the process; and yet in the act of disarming her, his fury dissolved. Cindy was nothing, a blind instrument of mindless Fate.
Ignoring Cindy, he turned immediately to the woman who lay wounded in the grass, the woman who meant more to him than life itself. He lifted her gently in his arms, aware that there must be a proper medical procedure to follow, aware that he was not following it, aware that the stain in her dress was flashing now red, now green, now blue, now gold, in the eerily lit sky. But hearing nothing: it was as if they were in a vacuum, and the explosive celebration around them was a silent light show, nothing more. He didn't even hear the sound of his own voice murmuring, "Quinta ... love ... can you hear me? Darling ... can you?"
All the wit, energy, and love that he possessed were focused on her answer. When her "yes" dissolved into a low moan, it was enough for him. He carried her out of the fort, feeling his way over the uneven, tufted grass, his soul rejoicing that she heard.
He never saw Cindy flee, never thought about her after she stopped being a threat to Quinta.
****
Cindy, outraged and determined to avenge this final, insulting cut, ran down to the waterfront. She would get away again, and then later she would come back. A cluster of dinghies lay tied to one of the east-facing docks. She jumped into a small boat, an inflatable with an outboard engine, and untied the painter. She had been in inflatables before, and although she knew nothing about oars, she did understand how to start an outboard. Pushing herself away from the dock, she used her hands to paddle the boat around to face the bright lights of Newport, then yanked the starter cord. The engine caught at once, and she threw the throttle into forward.
By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs Page 22