By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (23 page)

Do you think they have wheelchair lifts on
their Jeeps in Nairobi?" he'd ask dryly. And then he'd file the
brochures alphabetically by continent. He had seven boxes one for
each continent, and a separate box for the Bahamas.

The Bahama Islands were his continuing
obsession. For as long as Quinta could remember, Neil Powers had
collected information on them. It was part of his fascination with
the wreck of his parents' schooner on a reef there, and Quinta had
long ago stopped considering it morbid. She'd learned to think of
it more as a hobby. Neil received books or brochures or guides to
the Bahamas once every couple of weeks. Today he'd picked up the
top envelope and waved it at her and she knew immediately that it
was something on the islands, always a special treat.

Her father leafed through the rest of the
mail quickly, then yanked a piece out from the bottom and frisbeed
it to Quinta over the specially built low kitchen counters. "You're
on some junk lists of your own, kiddo," he said. "That's from the
Pegasus
office. Looks like an invitation."

"No kidding?" She snatched the heavy linen
envelope out of the marmaladed toast where it had landed and opened
it. Inside was a note on a small white slip of paper torn from an
ordinary scratch pad. It read:
You seem hard pressed for
material about me. Come to the ball. Maybe I can do better.

"For goodness' sake!" she cried. "It's a
ticket to the
Pegasus
send-off ball."

Her father jerked his head up from his
Bahamas brochure. "The fund-raiser? I read that those tickets are
two hundred and fifty bucks a pop."

"You're right," she said. "It says so right
on it. And the ticket's numbered: number thirty-six."

"Sounds like that invitation came right from
the top. There's status in a low number like that, girl," Neil
said, impressed. "Who sent it, and why?"

"It ... it came from Alan Seton. I guess he
felt sorry for me after the interview." She had not offered a copy
of the interview to her father, and he had not admitted to having
read it.

Nor did he now. "I wonder what number the
governor got? And the presidents of all the sponsoring
corporations? Hey. Number thirty-six."

"Honestly, Dad," she said, grimacing. "It's
not the Presidential Inaugural Ball or anything."

"Hey, it's a ball. A ball's a ball. I say,
good for you. Your mother would have been proud. Mind if I wheel
around to the servants' entrance and watch?"

"Very funny. Besides, who says I'm going? I
don't own a ball gown."

"I'll round up some mice and birds to make
you one, Cinderella," he said wryly. "Quinta, it's not as though
we're poor."

"But it would be a waste of money. I don't
know how to dance ballroom .... the ball's in two days .... I
wouldn't know anyone .... I was never as taken with these Society
events as you. Am I supposed to bring a pad and pencil? I suppose
this is a pity thing, like inviting an orphan over for Thanksgiving
...."

She whimpered on for a while, arguing more
or less with herself as she loaded the dishwasher. Her father had
long since assumed she was going to the ball and had turned his
attention back to the new Bahamas brochure. Quinta was just about
to go upstairs, when Neil cried out.

"God almighty, it's true! I knew it was
true!"

"What? What? What is it?" she said.

"Stones! We had a fortune in stones aboard
the
Virginia
when she went up on the reef."

"Dad, even in 1934, granite wasn't all that
valuable—"

"Not granite. Gems! I've known it for a fact
all these years. Even then, at the time, I knew something was up.
There was too much whispering, too much excitement. I heard Colin
say it was a 'bleeding fortune.' It was in the cargo hold. Colin
kept going back there. The rest of us didn't have a clue. Stubby …
Billy … me. We didn't know anything. But Colin Durant and Laura
Powers did! The question for me always has been, what did they do
with them?"

"Dad,
Dad,"
Quinta said sharply,
stunned by her father's burst of incoherence. "Get hold of
yourself. What's wrong with you?"

"Listen to this," he said excitedly. He read
from the brochure: "'Locally, San Salvador is known as Watlings
Island, named for a fierce buccaneer who operated from there in the
eighteenth century ... blah, blah—wait, here it is: 'But if you
prefer more modern treasures, sail over to nearby Pineapple Cay,
where a fortune in diamonds and rubies is said to have been buried
by some down-and-out bootleggers in the early thirties.'"

Neil laughed crazily. '"Down-and-out
bootleggers' is a little harsh—Colin and my mother will resent that
when they read this—but other than that, the shoe fits. It
fits!"

Quinta had come over and sat perched on the
edge of the loveseat, opposite her father's wheelchair. Her father
was much too excited. It set her aback. "You've never said anything
about a buried treasure before."

"Well, of course not," he answered,
irritated. "How the hell did I know that it got buried—if it got
buried? I was eight years old!"

"Wow. Buried treasure. Wait! What about that
cruise ship they were on the summer you were hurt? Was it supposed
to put in at any Bahamian port? Although, even if it did, they
wouldn't have had time to go searching for a treasure they'd buried
fifty years ago. And gallivanting all over the islands at their
age? It's silly. They would have done something like that when they
were younger." Quinta had it all worked out.

Neil said, "Hold on, I just remembered: they
took that belated honeymoon when your grandmother was about forty,
and they wouldn't tell me where they were off to. It was a
secret—has been, all these years. I always figured it was to
Nantucket. But they were gone for nearly ten days. Who's to say
where they really were?"

"Do you remember if they packed shovels?"
Quinta asked, falling in with the fantasy.

Her lighthearted tone brought her father up
short. "You're right. It's a dumb theory. If they had ended up with
the jewels, then or later, they'd be living a lot higher on the hog
than they are now."

"They're not poor! Waterfront in
Florida—"

"A one-bedroom condo? Big deal. Nah, they
never had any fortune in jewels."

"Stubby was the guy, let me see, who got
seasick? And great-Uncle Billy, he was the cheerful one who played
the concertina?" Quinta's mother had passed on the little she had
learned about the shipwreck to her daughters, but no one, including
Nancy herself, had dared to ask for more. This was the first time
in her life that Quinta had ever broached the subject directly to
her father. "And grandfather was the mate? Because Grandpa Sam
couldn't go, right?"

Neil looked away. "Yeah." He cleared his
throat. "Well, never mind. The gems are only a legend, after all,"
he said gruffly.

He had slid the lid off a mental box that
she'd never been allowed to peek into before, and now he slammed it
shut again.

Neil smacked the brochure idly against the
palm of his other hand. "Still, this is the first time I've seen an
allusion to it in print. It might be worth following up with a
letter. Just for curiosity's sake."

"Good idea, Dad," she said, a little
uncertainly. "You should do that."

Diamonds and rubies. What an enchanting
notion. In a way it was in character for her father to seize on an
idea as melodramatic as buried treasure. Diamonds and rubies. Her
imagination began drifting amiably. Dancing at a ball wearing
diamonds and rubies. The glitter of candles over diamonds and
rubies. What kind of gown went with diamonds and rubies?

"Um, Dad," she said at last. "Can I borrow a
hundred dollars?"

Men have no idea about ball gowns. They
think of them as dressy dresses, when every woman knows that a
proper ball gown is not clothing at all, but an extension of her
soul. Why else does a wealthy woman have her own couturier? The
designer is a high priest at her altar, striving to interpret the
ineffable. If her soul is blond, he will wrap her in blue. If her
soul is old-money, he will set off her pearls with simple satin.
One way or another, the couturier will make a wealthy woman's
special beauty shine forth.

Of course, other souls have to be happy with
ready-to-wear, and Quinta Powers was one of them. For one thing,
there was not enough time to have a gown designed and made for the
Pegasus
ball, even if her father did take out a second
mortgage. For another, she did not wish to rely on someone to tell
her what her best feature was, or what color suited her, or which
fabric was in vogue. So she set out, blithely enough, with a
hundred dollars in cash and but one caveat in mind: the gown must
be long, even if it were made of bed-sheeting.

Which, for one hundred dollars, she soon
found, was about all she could hope for. Anything she saw under
that price looked frilly and silly—a prom gown, not a ball gown.
She had a vague idea that a ball gown was different, that a ball
gown was adult. After hovering timidly in front of a Bellevue
Avenue shop window filled with dazzling, jeweled ensembles, Quinta
found the courage to step inside.

"Yes, ma'am. May I help you?"

"Ah, no. I'm just browsing," replied Quinta.
How dumb. You browsed at J. C. Penney's, when there was nothing to
watch on TV. Here you tried on, and then you bought.

Still, Quinta went gamely through the
motions, sliding each beaded and bejeweled dress carefully along
the recessed rack, afraid almost to touch them, let alone ask to
try them on. Her worst fears were realized when a bright-blue
sequin came off one dress and stuck to the palm of her hand.
Horrified and feeling like a shoplifter, she dropped it inside the
neckline and kept looking. She thought it might be
gauche
to
check a price tag, but she did it anyway, unable to bear not
knowing. Her eyes widened, but not too much. Eight hundred dollars.
It was a stunning dress, silver and black, wildly dramatic. When
you thought about the labor involved ... each little bead … even in
India, that had to add up.

A dizzying thought occurred to her. If she
tried it on? If she liked it? If she charged it? She lifted the
hanger carefully off the rack. It took three seconds, the exact
same length of time it took for her brain to begin functioning
normally again.
Not for you, Cinderella. Put it back.

She did, with a sigh, and was about to leave
when the salesgirl—so slim, so chic, so pitying—said, "There are a
few things on sale in that armoire, if you'd like to look at
them."

More to oblige the salesgirl than any
uncontrollable urge of her own, Quinta went through the rack of
ensembles, almost not looking at the items, just checking
shamelessly through the price tags: $400, $360, $500, $400,
$200—two hundred! Was it possible? Sure it was: the bottom half of
the ensemble was missing. The part that remained was a lovely white
top with a neckline of bugle beads fanning into a flower-motif over
the bodice. Not very many beads, but some. Enough to gain entry to
a ball. As for the fact that she would be naked from the waist
down—well, she could sew a silky polyester floor-length skirt in a
couple of hours.

She tried on the top, liked it, put it on
her Visa card and flew out of the shop: she had material to buy,
and a pattern.

****

In Newport during a Cup summer it is not
unusual to see couples in formal dress shortcutting across the
harbor in rubber inflatables to a pre-ball dinner on some yacht, or
(if they have not been invited to a pre-ball dinner) ambling down
Americas Cup Avenue in gowns and black ties to dine at the Pearl or
Clarke Cooke House, carefully oblivious to the stares of tired
day-trippers pushing baby strollers. But this was not a Cup summer
in Newport, just a practice one, and waterfront ambience was at an
all-time low.

Mavis Moran drove past the evening throngs
on Thames Street and thought,
How ordinary.
There were no
French, no Swedes, no Aussies, no Brits, no Italians. No Kiwis, no
Canadians. No competition, no excitement. She was utterly bored.
Still, events filled with donors required her attendance; the
Pegasus
Ball was one of them.

It took longer to reach Beau Rêve than she'd
planned. Still feeling oddly listless, she padded in
silk-stockinged feet across thick carpeting to a walk-in closet,
then pulled out a beaded gown in pale multicolor from among a dozen
spectacular gowns hanging there. When had she worn it last? She
couldn't remember, so enough time must have passed. It was a
difficult dress to wear jewelry with; she settled for a thin gold
watch. Mavis kept very little jewelry in Newport anyway, partly
from having learned her lesson three years earlier, and partly
because of a recent and unusual rash of robberies in the mansions
along Bellevue Avenue. She'd swept her hair almost perfunctorily
into a twist; even now soft curls were sneaking out, determined to
frame her face.

She slipped the gown over her head and
fastened the side opening, then stared at herself in a full-length
mirror. The off-shoulder dress, an intricate design of mauve, pale
blue, and gray-green beads, followed the curves of her body like a
second skin, emphasizing her height, playing off her skin color,
doing everything a good gown was supposed to do, including
flattering her reconstructed breast. The camera of her eye said
that no one could tell; no one. But she turned away from the mirror
anyway, convinced that all would know.

On her way out to the hall, she paused
before an antique silver-framed photograph of her grandmother,
dressed in a riding habit, standing next to a superb Arabian mare.
The photograph had been taken when she was a guest in a villa
outside of Paris; Mavis remembered the stories of legendary parties
held there. It was said that Tess Moran never once alluded to her
own infirmity, a noticeable limp; nor did she let it stop her from
doing anything she'd ever wanted to do. But after her accident no
one, neither man nor maid, had ever seen Tess Moran without her
clothes on.