He brought up his computer file structure. There were his e-mail folders; notes to his remodeling contractor, banker, and broker … at least these were password protected.
He moved the cursor to the folder marked “DA.” When he’d named it, he’d dreamed of walking in those shoes. Within it, the subfolders came up in alphabetical order. Scanning down, he searched for the “V”s.
There, where “Valetti” should be, he saw “Titus” sitting above “Williams.”
For a moment, Lyle sat motionless, watching a trapdoor open beneath his feet. How could anyone have invaded the network of the San Francisco district attorney’s office?
Unless the Valettis were that kind of Italian family.
Pulse pounding, Lyle shoved to his feet. Across the room, he tore open the door. Down the hall, he rushed past Lara, who sputtered, “Lyle … he’ll call you when …”
He knew he should slow down, think through what to say, but he opened David Dickerson’s door and strode in.
His boss was on the phone, facing the windows. “… All right, Valetti… That you, Lara?”
“No, it’s not.” Lyle spoke in as even a tone as he could muster.
Dickerson swiveled his chair. “I’ll talk to you later,” he told the phone, and set it into its cradle.
“Andre Valetti?”
Dickerson blinked. For a moment, Lyle thought he wasn’t going to answer. “Andre and I play golf occasionally.”
“My computer files on Tony Valetti’s disappearance have been erased.”
Poker-faced, Dickerson pointed to a chair opposite. “Have a seat and calm down.”
“Calm down? Not only are confidential files missing from this office, which shouldn’t happen … last night I was almost killed.”
Dickerson looked startled. “What?”
“I was staying at the Lava Springs Inn in the northern Napa Valley … tracking down a lead on Sylvia Chatsworth …” He didn’t say he’d found her. “Yesterday evening at dusk, I saw Andre skulking around the hot springs where I was bathing. In the middle of the night, an arsonist torched the inn. I barely escaped, and the innkeeper is in the hospital.”
“Are you suggesting Valetti did it?”
“The fire was hours later, but …” Was he prepared to go that far when talking to the DA? Did his dislike of the vintner make him a potential killer? Had Andre’s warning Lyle off meant he would use deadly force?
Dickerson scowled. “You say you were at the inn chasing a lead on Sylvia Chatsworth. Andre told me you were there, poking around, asking prying questions about the death of Esther Quenton that was settled as accidental, throwing wild accusations. Like thinking someone tried to kill you.”
Lyle’s blood beat in his ears.
“Andre told me about the fire, just now. His version is the target was Sylvia Chatsworth, who was saved because she was sleeping in your room.”
Whoa. Andre had never indicated he knew who Sylvia was. Had someone told the Senator that Lyle was with her?
Dickerson went on, “For falsely acting under the authority of the San Francisco district attorney, I’m afraid you need to clean out your desk.”
Lyle came to his feet. “It looks like somebody did most of that for me.”
The DA stabbed a finger at Lyle. “I’ve never liked your ‘Mr. Too-Good’ attitude. Well, it makes me feel good to tell you you’re fired.”
Chapter 23
After Lyle left, Andre Valetti’s wealth immediately began smoothing the way for Sylvia, Buck, and Mary. Around nine o’clock he took her to a department store, where he bought new clothes for the three of them, she guessing at the innkeepers’ sizes. Sylvia emerged from the dressing room wearing black slacks and a woven silk sweater in her favorite true red. She also had new lingerie and a pair of slim black leather flats.
Back at the hospital, Andre suggested to Buck if money was an issue, he’d be happy to buy the forty acres surrounding the inn, leaving just a lot to rebuild on. The innkeeper said he’d discuss it with Mary.
When she was about to be moved from the ER to a hospital room for what they termed “several days” of observation, Andre arranged for a private nurse instead. By ten thirty, the home-health-care folks had agreed to drive Buck and Mary up the valley to his villa, while Andre insisted Sylvia ride with him in his Hummer.
“One of fifteen vehicles I own,” he explained, steering them expertly toward the upper valley.
Sylvia dutifully asked about the others.
While he spoke of a Shelby Cobra, Lotus Europa, vintage Mustang, Lincoln Navigator, and the same model Jaguar she drove … used to drive … she zoned out. Buzzing from lack of sleep and exhausted from the adrenaline burnout of last night’s narrow escape, she continued to worry about Mary and Buck.
And she wished Lyle’s boss hadn’t called him back to work. Sure, she was upset with him for not trusting her with Andre, but just thinking of him brought back the feeling of completeness she’d found in his arms.
At eleven by the dash clock, Andre turned the Hummer onto Tubbs Lane in Calistoga. He drove past the hill that concealed the cellars of Chateau Montelena Winery. “I need to make a stop up ahead.”
At a discreet blue and white sign for “Palisades Pure Water,” he pulled into the drive. A Quonset hut housed the bottling plant; a set of garage doors stood open at the end. Inside, wooden pallets piled with bottles of water awaited distribution. At the opposite end of the building, a silver tanker truck discharged a load of spring water into a tall metal tank.
A stocky white-haired man in gray coveralls came toward them. Andre got out, and they shook hands. He motioned for Sylvia to join them, and she did, slowly, once more risking recognition.
“Frank Fiamma, Sylvia Cabot.” Andre put a hand on her shoulder.
Sylvia stepped away and shook hands with the bottler. She didn’t tell him his tanker truck had run her off the highway.
“What brings you by today, Andre?”
“Wondering how the Lava Springs water looks after the quake.”
“We’re just analyzing samples.” Fiamma frowned. “Heard Buck Kline’s place burned last night. Hell of a note.”
Sylvia didn’t say she had nearly been killed.
“A terrible thing.” Andre looked grave. “I came by because Buck said we’d better check the water carefully … the springs started surging and got hotter after that earthquake.”
“They did?” Fiamma looked up toward the mountains, then glanced back west toward neighboring Old Faithful Geyser, whose faithlessness had warned of the quake.
Then he led the way into the Quonset hut, through an office, and into a bright room lit with fluorescent lights. The countertops were covered with sample bottles filled with water. Each was labeled with masking tape and a mark of the day’s date.
At the end of one of the counters sat a black plastic box. The lid was closed, but by the label of Eco-osmotics, Sylvia surmised it was the type of apparatus she and Lyle had been curious about in Andre’s lab.
“Mr. Fiamma.” She stopped beside it. “Can you tell me what this is?”
Though intent on their mission to check the water analysis, he paused politely.
Andre broke in. “Why would a pretty girl like you want to clutter up her head with science?”
Sylvia shot him a death-ray look and immediately toned it down for Fiamma. “I guess I’m just curious about anything in a black box. It’s such a cliché.” She laughed at her own performance. “So, Mr. Fiamma …?”
He lifted the lid, and she saw the same interior as before. “You fill a bottle with a chemical solution and set it up here.” He pointed to the rack where there had been an upside-down bottle in Andre’s device. “This osmotic membrane …” he indicated the mesh disk, “releases the liquid at whatever rate you set.” He finished by showing her the timer, like something for a sprinkler system or for turning on a lamp while on vacation.
Sylvia wondered why she’d bothered. It was just science stuff.
&
nbsp; In a glass booth at the rear of the lab, a woman with long brown hair sat with her back to them on a high stool in front of a larger, more impressive piece of machinery. Sylvia watched her place a strawlike tube into a sample bottle.
The machine drew water through the tube and aspirated it in a burner with a glowing yellow-orange flame. The sound of the liquid flowing through the fire was a sharp hiss.
In answer to Sylvia’s raised brow, Fiamma replied, “This is the atomic absorption spectrophotometer that detects concentrations in the range of parts per billion.”
“I mentioned it the other day,” Andre told Sylvia.
“Right now Sarah is running the chromium analysis,” Fiamma went on.
Sarah nodded. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Is this the water from last night?” Fiamma asked.
She shook her head. “The truck is off-loading it now.”
Andre put his hand to the small of Sylvia’s back. “Let us go, then. You will let me know if you find anything, Frank.”
At the intersection of Highway 29 and the Lava Springs Road, a sheriff’s sedan was parked in the place where Sylvia’s Jag had gone over the edge. The officer was out, smoking and looking over the valley.
As Andre’s Hummer approached, Sylvia resisted the urge to duck down in the seat.
Flipping the cigarette onto the gravel with a typical “butts aren’t litter” attitude, the lawman stepped closer to the precipice and proceeded to grind his heel to be sure the flame was extinguished.
Andre signaled for the turn and lifted his fingers in a little wave. Thankfully, the smoker’s focus was downward.
Once on the side road, the trees crowded closer to the Hummer, and a breeze from the open window cooled Sylvia’s heated brow.
Andre glanced over at her from the driver’s seat. “Do you want to take a look at the inn?”
She didn’t. Then curiosity made her agree. In daylight, she’d have a better idea what Buck and Mary were up against.
Andre pulled the Hummer into the drive, and Sylvia knew what it meant in books when someone’s heart “leaped into their throat.” Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the ruin. Behind several sheriff’s department cars, men in uniform milled on the lawn.
“It looks like a total loss,” Andre observed.
“It took a long time for the fire trucks to come and start pumping water from the river,” Sylvia recalled.
The blackened roof had fallen in over all but the kitchen area. Part of the front porch appeared intact, but at least 80 percent of the graceful structure was an unrecognizable pile of charred rubble. Any fantasy Sylvia had of retrieving anything of hers or the Klines’ went out of her head.
Her throat thickened at the thought of how proud Buck and Mary had been of this place only yesterday. How quickly dreams could turn to disaster.
One of the sheriff’s men looked their way. Her gut clenched.
“Want to talk to them now?” Andre asked. “About who might want to kill you?”
“No!” She recoiled in the Hummer’s big seat. Being unmasked by law enforcement, who would be unable to ID a Sylvia Cabot, but whose computer would quickly bring up Sylvia Cabot Chatsworth and her driver’s license photo …
“What’s wrong?” Andre asked mildly. “You on the lam or something?”
“Or something,” she got out. “Please, Andre, just drive on.”
He lifted a lazy hand to the cops and put the Hummer in reverse. While her heart pounded and she waited for one of the officers to stop them, he backed slowly out of the drive.
As they rolled between the vines and the redwoods, Andre kept drilling her with those intense black eyes. “Want to tell me what that was about?”
“I really don’t.”
He gave an elegant little shrug.
When Andre pulled up to the guard shack, Luigi informed him Buck had called from the hospital and they were staying there.
Though swarthy and forbidding, Sylvia figured Luigi knew the Klines as neighbors. She leaned across. “He didn’t say Mary was worse?”
“No. Said he felt better being there with doctors on call, rather than coming up here in the country.”
Sylvia had a vision of them waiting for the fire trucks and ambulance last night…
Buck was right, but she wished they had made the decision before she left.
Before Andre could park the Hummer under the porte cochere, she said, “I want to go back to the hospital.”
He pulled beneath the overhang and cut the ignition. “Before you do, you must have something to eat, a bath, and rest. We will go down together later.”
Though her exhausted haze, Sylvia realized she needed all that. But, “I’d rather eat after a nap.”
Inside the villa, Andre spoke in Italian to his butler, uniformed in black trousers, shirt, and a matching jacket.
“Salvatore will escort you to the Rose Suite.” Andre handed off her department store bag with Lyle’s soiled shorts and tee and touched her shoulder again. “Sleep well.”
Sylvia followed the immaculate servant through the great room decorated with hunting trophies, past a dining room with tapestried walls and a table that could seat at least thirty, into a hall at least twelve feet wide. The walls were of white marble, carved into intricate archways with the effect of a cathedral’s nave.
At least forty feet down the corridor, Salvatore stopped before an ornately carved door. With a graceful motion, he swung the portal wide. “The Rose Suite, signorina.”
Sylvia, though used to five-star accommodations, couldn’t help but be impressed. A cavernous sitting room at least twenty by thirty feet ended in a wall of windows overlooking the sloping lawn and the vineyards beyond. Drapes of the finest damask framed the casements. Gilt-framed oils represented a fortune; if she wasn’t mistaken there was an original Monet … in a guest suite.
“The bedroom is this way.” Salvatore gestured her through a doorway into a parallel room the same size. A silk-covered king bed dominated one wall. “Everything in the way of toiletries is provided.” He placed her clothing sack on the bed and gave a little bow that reminded her of Andre in a bad way.
After he departed, Sylvia explored the bath, more marble on the floors, walls, and in the capacious shower. A whirlpool bath had been built up in front of yet another window so one could soak and take in the mountaintop view. She should bathe, but she’d been running on empty for hours. Sleep wasn’t an option; it was a necessity.
Sylvia removed the clothes she’d worn out of the store’s dressing room and lay down naked in the opulent room, too much like a velvet-lined prison. She hadn’t liked Andre buying her things.
A little voice said she hadn’t minded when Lyle took them to the mud baths and to dinner. Where was he now? Having to work without this luxurious chance to catch up on the sleep they’d lost last night, due to both the fire and making love.
Images of them together played like an erotic film. Slowly, with exquisite attention to each remembered detail, she reconstructed everything that had happened. From the moment she straddled him and drew the sheet down over his chest until they both lay exhausted by the storm. Afterward, he’d given her that lazy smile.
The one that said he did trust her, with his heart.
As she was sinking into sleep, she heard a helicopter above the villa.
Chapter 24
It took Lyle longer than he expected to clean out his desk. Or maybe it just felt like it because he wanted the hell out as soon as possible. His co-workers, many of whom he’d been friendly with, stayed away as though he had suddenly become a leper.
The security guard brought a dolly, helped him downstairs, and waited in the rain while he brought his car around and put four boxes in his Mercedes’ trunk.
Behind the wheel, he drove down Bryant Street toward the Bay and his loft. Everything seemed at a little distance … to avoid an accident he concentrated on the route he usually drove on autopilot.
Once home, he brought in t
he boxes and dumped them in a stack near his computer. He’d heard people who got a shock went into frenzied action, so he forced himself to sit watching the rain make rivulets down his windows.
That son of a bitch David Dickerson didn’t deserve to sit in the district attorney’s chair. He was supposed to be a man of justice, yet he had kowtowed to Senator Chatsworth in the matter of Lyle’s leave of absence, and fired him because prominent Andre Valetti hadn’t liked him poking around.
What a fool Lyle had been, telling Sylvia he had good instincts. Andre hadn’t needed to resort to arson to carry out his threat. Without his power of position in the prosecutor’s office, Lyle could throw accusations all he cared to and nobody would listen.
And as for how his files got erased, it wasn’t required that the Valettis hack into the DA’s computer system. David Dickerson, toady to the rich and powerful, on his way to bigger and better things in Sacramento or Washington, had no doubt purged the folder himself.
Well, Lyle had always known at an intellectual level—it was all about politics. Now he lived it.
A look around the loft… how in hell would he pay the bills? How naïve he’d been to believe that hard work was all it took.
He glanced at the box with his résumé, but he wasn’t ready to start updating it. Going back up to the Napa Valley for Sylvia crossed his mind, but she’d probably still be at Queen of the Valley with Mary and Buck. The hours passed slowly in a hospital waiting room.
One thing he must do was get there before Andre took Sylvia up to his house. That business about him knowing who she was and not letting on was disturbing. Had he found it amusing to know where she was when the rest of world wondered?
Unless … Lyle’s jealous streak reasserted itself… Sylvia asked Andre to keep her secret but never told Lyle? Perhaps single-guy Andre had been playing along with her “Cabot” identity, thinking he might get the Senator’s daughter as his next bride.
As far as getting to Queen of the Valley before Andre made off with Sylvia … as Lyle had thought in Dickerson’s office, the Senator had probably been notified where Sylvia was by now. He would no doubt have law enforcement converging on Napa, and, within the hour, there would be an announcement on the air about the search for her being called off.
The Senator’s Daughter Page 22