By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (17 page)

It looked the same, from the four-poster bed
to the pastel drawings by Amanda Seton that adorned the walls. One
of the pastels was of Alan's mother, Amanda's daughter-in-law. Alan
had once offered to move it if Cindy preferred. As if she
cared.

She roamed the room, checking drawers,
closets, the antique rosewood jewelry chest—but there was nothing
of her own anywhere, no evidence that she had lived and breathed
and bought clothes. Her other pearls, the sapphire pendant, the
diamond choker—all gone. Gone to Alan's new lover, or to pay for a
gadget on his latest 12-meter. Cindy stood in the middle of her
bedroom, turning slowly around. So this was what it meant not to
exist. People erased all traces of you and went on with their lives
without you.

Cindy was now a brunette, but the angry
flush in her cheeks belonged to a natural blonde. Cindy Seton
did
exist, and she damn well meant to let them know it. One
thing she'd learned from Delly before he was murdered: you could do
anything you wanted to, and most times no one could stop you.

****

"How the
hell
could you have
forgotten to lock your door?"

Mavis Moran didn't mince words, with Alan
Seton or anyone else. The expression on her face, sharp and angry,
was at odds with the soft, utterly feminine silk dress that she had
worn to dinner with him.

Seton hardly heard her. He was staring out
the window of his study, seeing neither the sea nor the crescent of
sun that was still visible behind it. His mind was recreating the
morning's routine. "I took out the garbage," he said at last.

"And you threw out your key with it?"

He ignored her scathing tone. "I left
through the back door. I could have sworn the front door was
locked. I guess it wasn't."

"You didn't set the alarm?"

"It's a pain in the ass."

"Of course," she agreed with crushing irony.
"I'm sure our contributors will sympathize. They've pledged ten
million dollars so far to develop the ultimate 12-meter, and now
the lines and construction plans for that boat have been stolen.
We've budgeted half a million dollars to keep the
Pegasus
design a secret from all the other—ah, well," she said,
interrupting herself with a deadly smile. "It could happen to
anyone."

"The cantaloupe rind was getting smelly,"
Seton said absently. "I had to toss it." He seemed not to hear her,
not to care. "I don't get it. It doesn't make sense." He was
staring at a checklist he'd scrawled of the stolen or damaged items
he'd noted so far. "This list is goofy. A photo of my grandmother
... pajamas in the toilet bowl ... the
Pegasus
plans ... a
partial list of contributions-in-kind ... a jewelry box .... It's
goofy."

"On the contrary," Mavis said suddenly. "It
may be brilliant." She tore the list from his hand and studied it
in the light of a small green-shaded lamp on Alan's desk. "They
didn't vandalize the place, so we know they're not just
thrill-seekers. They took enough of value to justify a theft;
enough of the plans to make a good case for sabotage. We have to
decide which it was."

"Except for the Fabergé box, nothing had
much value."

"Except! You said the Fabergé piece alone is
worth eighty thousand dollars!"

"More or less." He was shuffling through a
stack of papers on his desk. "Shit. They took the keel alteration
plan. I left it here after we looked at it the other night. So they
have the latest version of
Pegasus
as well."

Alan looked up at Mavis distractedly, his
blue eyes focused on some midpoint between himself and her
red-haired beauty. "I'm sorry, Mavis. You were saying? You think
it's a case of simple theft?"

"I was saying it's possible. It's
diabolically possible that the thieves know about you and the
Pegasus
campaign to win back the America's Cup. They may
have stolen the plans along with the Fabergé because they know we
won't dare go to the police and blurt out that the construction
plans are also missing. Maybe they're hoping by that to keep the
theft of the Fabergé out of the papers."

"Come on, Mavis," he said, suddenly
irritated. "No one is that ingenious. Besides, I could always
report the theft of everything except the design plans."

"That would still set off alarm bells with
our contributors. If the thieves know it, then they know
we
know it. They're aware that fundraising is an absolute, urgent
priority." She laughed softly to herself. "Ask the
America
II
syndicate if they could afford to scare off
Newsweek
or Cadillac."

Pacing the room, Alan rubbed his eyes with
the fingertips of one hand. "What a fricking mess," he said with
disgust.

Mavis stopped toying with the emerald bangle
that she wore around her wrist and looked up at the man with whom
she'd thrown in her lot for a run at the Cup. "What made you keep
something so valuable as a Fabergé box in your living room,
anyway?"

Alan shrugged. "It belonged to Cindy. She
got it when she was still a child, from her grandfather after he
toured the Continent one summer. I had her jewelry auctioned off—I
had no use for it—but somehow the box ... I guess I expected some
long-lost relative to show up and claim it. It's hard to believe
there was absolutely no one to contest the will ... that she was
such a waif ...."

Mavis stood up abruptly and said, "If you're
going to take a trip down memory lane, I think I'll go. There must
be something better I can do with my time."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to go into it again.
It's just that I never understood her. Whether it was the drugs or
her screwed-up childhood—I was never able to reach her."

Mavis turned on him impatiently. "Admit it,
Alan. Your vanity suffered when she killed herself. She ended her
marriage to you, after all, in a fairly spectacular way."

"We were talking about the theft," he said
coldly. "We seem to have strayed afield."

"But that's just it; it's all connected.
Vanity:
that's why you're still smarting over her suicide.
That's why you're still chasing the Cup. But vanity isn't a pure
enough motive. It lets you be careless about alarms."

For a moment he said nothing, only stared,
as he had a way of doing, at a point in the air between them. Then
he looked at her and grinned and said, "Vanity, hey? I wish you'd
call it hubris. It sounds more noble."

Slowly she shook her head and said, "That's
what I hate most about you: your sense of humor. It's the kiss of
death to ambition. Can't you see that?"

"I wouldn't worry about it, Mavis," he said,
pulling off his tie and heading for his bedroom. "You lack enough
sense of humor for both of us."

"Don't push me too far, Alan," she said,
following him but pausing in his doorway. "You are expendable."

"I have a contract," he reminded her.

"It can be snapped like kindling."

"But it won't, because I'm the best, and you
want the best."

"Tell that to Dennis Conner," Mavis
replied.

"He's not bad either, but at the moment he's
hell-bent on avenging a personal score with Australia. I doubt that
he'd be available to pinch-hit for you and the syndicate."

Mavis leaned against the doorway and folded
her arms.

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes as
she said, "Conner has it, you know. Ambition. Fire in the
belly."

"Good for him." Alan reached in his closet
to hang his tie on its rack, then paused. "What the—? They took my
Pegasus
tie. For Pete's sake, all they had to do to get one
was give a few bucks to the campaign. It's tax-deductible. My tie!
Nothing's sacred anymore. These are probably the same creeps who
pulled hairs from the mane of Caroline Kennedy's pony Macaroni, the
same nuts who yank blades of grass from James Joyce's grave. Gee, I
wonder if I can claim a tax loss? I'd better add the tie to my list
of—"

"Stop it!" Mavis shouted. "Be serious for
once, would you?" Just as suddenly she stopped, pulled herself up,
took a deep breath. "Oh, no. I will not let you banter your way out
of this, Alan. You screwed up, and royally. I want to know what you
plan to do about it."

"Wait and see," he said quietly.

"I want to know
now,
Alan."

"That
is
the plan: to wait and see
which turns up first, the Fabergé box or the construction plan.
Maybe neither one will. Maybe the loot will end up in someone's
rumpus room in Queens. There's not a hell of a lot we can do right
now. But you knew that. You just wanted me to confirm your worst
fears."

Mavis leaned her head back on the doorjamb
and closed her eyes. She remained in that position until she felt
Alan's kiss at the base of her throat; and then emerald eyes met
his sapphire ones as he asked, "Are you staying tonight?"

"I ... no. No, I'm not. That was insanity
last night. I still can't believe what I did; what I told you.
Besides, no man likes to function under that many ... constraints.
There were too many constraints for you," she said in a pained
voice.

"You mean: lights out, no fondling, you on
top, no lying around naked after? I have to admit it was kinky, but
I liked it." He leaned over to kiss her lightly on her mouth.

"You
know
why it had to be that
way—now," she said, her cheeks flooding with color.

"Mmnn," he murmured. "Your mastectomy.
Personally, it doesn't matter to me whether you have one breast
or—"

Mavis sucked in her breath sharply and
pushed him away. "That's cruel, Alan!"

"Cruel? Why is that cruel?"

She flew to the study, then rounded on him.
She was towering, fierce, unforgettably beautiful as she raged at
him. "How dare you make light of this! As if I'd broken a
fingernail instead of been maimed for life! How
dare
you
condescend to me! You bastard—you cruel, unthinking bastard!"

She threw up her hands to ward him off as he
came closer, but he held her wrists and said, "Mavis, listen to me,
listen to me!
Artless, yes. But cruel, never. No, wait!
Listen! Do you think you're less desirable because you have a
prosthesis? Then you're a stunning fool. It makes absolutely no
difference to me. It wouldn't to most men. Only to you, Mavis.
You're obsessed with an image of your own perfection. Where did
that come from? Why are you like that? Have you made allowances for
old age? For wrinkles and liver spots and bifocals?"

He relaxed his hold on her wrists, aware
that she was becoming rigid in his grasp, shocked by what he was
saying to her but angry enough to keep going. "It's inconceivable
to me that you said nothing about your cancer, or your surgery, or
your chemotherapy two years ago. It boggles my mind that you just
cut off the relationship and went into hiding. When you looked me
up to sail the
Pegasus,
do you know what I thought? 'She can
be a living nightmare, but I'll do it anyway.' So much for your
careful image of perfection. If you had just told me, trusted me
...."

Mavis' voice was deadly calm. "Have you
finished?"

He let go of her wrists. "All right, I know
I haven't handled this well. Your analyst will be apoplectic. But I
swear to God—last night, when you were fairly pulsing with
desire—to think you'd gone two years without being with
someone—starved yourself—for what? For an image? And now finally
you've let it all out, but you treat last night like a moral lapse,
like some crazy fall from grace. I don't understand it, Mavis. I
don't understand you."

She pushed her way blindly past him. "And
you never will."

****

Cindy Seton picked up the phone and dialed
the number for Wisteria Pizzeria in Westport, Connecticut. "I'd
like to order eleven pizzas, with everything. The name is Alan
Seton." She gave them her husband's address, said thank you, and
hung up, smiling.

Some little girls grow up gradually. They
trade their Barbie dolls for soccer balls, their soccer balls for
baby strollers or attachés, all in a smooth continuum. Other little
girls grow up overnight. Oldest daughters, youngest daughters,
kindest daughters—it can happen to anyone, and the cause is nearly
always the same: sudden responsibility. It happened to Quinta
Powers, who compressed more growing up into the three years
following her father's crippling accident than many women do in a
lifetime.

Not that Quinta was tragic about it. She had
already decided before her father's accident to commute to an
in-state college for economy's sake, so renouncing Greek life and
non-stop partying never was an issue for her. She didn't sign up
for sports, theater, political clubs or any other extracurricular
activity either, because she'd never been a joiner in the first
place. The pain of doing without them wasn't terribly severe,
either.

What Quinta did refuse to give up throughout
her compressed three-year college education were the things she
loved most: sailing her dinghy in Newport Harbor; ushering for a
local, thoroughly Off-Broadway local group perpetually in search of
an off-season audience; reading, hiking, and playing chess. Her
four older sisters (grateful that she'd taken on the burden of
caring for their father) thought she was spunky and cheerful. Her
ex-boyfriend (a varsity jock who couldn't understand why she rarely
went to his games) thought she was too hard-working and thoughtful.
Her father did not express an opinion either way.

Quinta was barely twenty when she graduated
magna cum laude
from URI in 1986 with a major in applied
math and a minor in creative writing. Her sisters called her
precocious; Quinta called herself ambivalent. She proved it, too,
by accepting two completely different jobs: one as a software
engineer with a local company, to begin in September; the other as
a writer for
Cup Quotes,
a Newport newsletter covering the
America's Cup scene while it was still in the States. The
assignment at
Cup Quotes
would wind down at the end of
summer when the last American boat left Newport's waters for
Australia. By the time the trial races began off the Freemantle
coast in Australia in October, Quinta would be at her real job,
standing on the first rung of the ladder to high-tech success.