By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (27 page)

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.

Alan turned to Neil and smiled. "To be
honest, I thought that showed real ingenuity. But we plan to keep
our keel under wraps until we've won the Cup, just the way the
Aussies did in 1983."

Quinta, too, seemed anxious to avoid the
real point of Alan Seton's visit. "I was wondering," she began
hesitantly. "Normally in the early trial races, some of the boats
hold back their best performances. They don't want to show their
hand or peak too soon. But if you take the chance of not looking
good, won't you scare off the funds you need in corporate
sponsorship? Nobody wants to back a slow horse."

Her voice was quavering a little; she
refused to meet Alan's gaze. It was very odd; Neil had always
thought of his youngest daughter as exceptionally poised. And yet
here she was, staring at the lamp behind Alan's head. Was she
worried about his reaction to the photograph in
Cup Quotes
?
She damn well should be, but somehow Neil thought not.

Alan, meanwhile, seemed impressed by the
sharpness of Quinta's observation. More than impressed; he was
downright pleased, as if she were a star pupil of his. What the
hell right did he have to be pleased?

"You've just hit on our biggest dilemma,"
Alan said. "It's maddening. We've got to look impressive and still
not give away the store to the competition. We'll all be sailing a
fine line and hoping the sponsors can recognize sandbagging when
they see it. The trouble is, some of them don't know a mainsheet
from a bed sheet."

Who cared about fundraising? Cindy Seton
was still alive!
And yet the man who was her husband hadn't
even brought up her name.

"This is all very well," Neil interrupted,
conscious that he was bludgeoning his way into their exchange, "but
maybe we should get to the point. You have better things to do with
your time," he said, turning to Alan, "so here it is: the woman who
poisoned my dog in my yard was the same woman who ran me down." He
wondered why he chose to put it so brutally. "I'm sorry I can't
make this more palatable to you. I know she's your wife—"

"That's not an issue," Alan said
quickly.

"—and I know this is a hell of a
distraction—"

"Now
there
you have a point," he
agreed, his look grim.

"My father didn't want me to tell you,"
Quinta cut in. "But something has to be done, and soon. If it was
just a question of an occasional rock through our living room
window, we could put up with it—"

"Hold it. Back up," Alan demanded, "and
start from the beginning."

Quinta did, with help from her father. From
the original poison pen note to the gruesome episode of the night
before, she laid out the campaign of terror before Alan. She tried
not to sound lurid; she didn't need to. It was obvious, at least to
Neil, that Alan was profoundly affected by her story: not once did
his gaze leave Quinta's face, and when she was through, he
whispered only, "My God."

"I'm accustomed to thinking that Cindy Seton
ruined my father's life," Quinta added, with a quick look at Neil.
"But now I think that she must feel my father ruined hers. You do
believe us, don't you?"

"Oh yes," Alan answered grimly. "It's her
style, all right. Now that I think about it, she has to be behind
the pizzas, too." Quinta nodded, and Neil looked on in confusion.
"I've never accepted her suicide," Alan went on. "For one thing,
there was that damn shoe that she left behind in the Mercedes. One
blue high-heeled shoe, never worn—and I think there might have been
some pearls missing, though I can't be sure of that."

"Wouldn't the insurance company have a
record?" asked Neil.

Alan shook his head. "None of her jewelry
was insured. She'd been robbed before, and yet she insisted on
wearing the originals everywhere. They wouldn't touch her after the
first claim. Besides, Cindy bought new things all the time. She
didn't keep track."

"It wasn't the perfect crime, in other
words. Just close enough?" Quinta was sitting in the loveseat with
her legs folded under her, chin on her fists, blond hair falling
over her shoulders, eyes fixed in rapt attention on Alan's
thoughtful face.

"Exactly," answered Alan, returning the
intensity of her gaze. "Nothing could be proved."

For a moment no one said anything, and Neil
felt eerily invisible: something was happening in the room, and he
wasn't a part of it. It threw him back in time; he could almost
feel the floor moving underneath him, the way the
Virginia
had on the high seas. Colin Durant and Laura Powers.
Déjà
vu;
it frightened him. He didn't know what to do to break the
spell, so he said roughly. "Now what?"

Alan seemed to shake himself loose, and the
visible effort he made caused Neil's heart to pause.
I can't
believe it. He's in love with her, or on the way to it.

"Have you called the police?" Alan
asked.

"How could we?" exclaimed Quinta. "The
publicity would destroy your campaign, just like it did in
1983."

"My daughter convinced me it would be
un-American," added Neil with a wry look at the pretty woman who
used to be his pretty little girl.

"It's un-American to distract you at all,"
said Quinta in a voice filled with understanding. "But honestly,
Alan, we don't know what to do."

"It's obvious what to do. We'll go to the
police," he said.

"No! Can't you think of anything else?"

Alan began pacing the floor, walking off
pent-up energy. "I can post a bodyguard inside your house. But I'm
leaving for Australia in two weeks; they're packing up the
Pegasus
right now. I won't be back until February, after the
races are over. You can't live under lock and key until then. No.
We've got to go to the police. There's no other way."

Neil was inclined to agree with Alan and was
about to say so when his daughter got in ahead of him. "We could
try flushing her out," she said. "We could take out an ad."

"An ad?"

"
An ad?"

"I know it sounds hokey, but what the heck:
it worked for Holmes and Watson, didn't it? Cindy sounds unhinged
enough to go for something like that. Psychotics read the
personals, don't they? We could say, 'C. S.: We know you're out
there,' and give our phone number."

"Quinta!" said Neil sharply. "Don't be
frivolous."

"I'm not joking, Dad. We don't have that
many options." She turned to Alan, lifted her chin, and said,
"Well?"

Neil Powers had never seen that look in his
daughter before, but he recognized it. It was a combination of
defiance, allurement, enticement; a care-for-me-if-you-dare look.
His mother had it down pat.

Neil stole a glance at Alan, half expecting
to see Colin Durant. But no, the eyes were too blue, the hair
nearer to brown, than the Frenchman's. And Alan, English to the
core, was quicker to flush; it seemed harder for him to hide his
emotions than Neil's French stepfather. But the electricity between
Quinta and Alan—
that
, Neil had seen half a century before,
in the cabin of the
Virginia
as she sailed hell-bent toward
ruination.

"All right," Alan said at last. I think it's
goofy, but … run the ad. I'll have a security guard stay inside—if
that's all right with you, Neil—for the next few days. They can be
very discreet; we can't have a tip-off. I'll be here when I can. If
I know Cindy, that'll precipitate some further gesture on her part.
If nothing happens by the time I'm scheduled to leave, we go to the
police with this. I can't say how far over the edge she's gone—but
I doubt that she cares any more for people than she does for
dogs."

Quinta—still, after all, an innocent—looked
shocked. But Neil was absorbing every word, and wishing he had a
gun.

It was true: bodyguards really did wear
brown suits. The one they had did not smile and wasn't much for
chit-chat. He toured the house, swept the phones for bugs, looked
out every window, sighted down halls and staircases. Then he placed
a chair at a good vantage point and took out a brown bag and a
thermos jug from his valise, and an issue of
Soldier of
Fortune.
The magazine made Quinta lose a little faith in him:
presumably he was the kind whose services could be bought by the
highest bidder. On the other hand, there was a reassuring coldness
in his eyes; he would not hesitate to gun down a psychotic, female
or not.

So Quinta set out for work, lightened not
only by the thought that her father was in more capable hands than
hers, but by the thought that Alan had promised to bring in Chinese
food when his day at the docks was done. And by the thought that
Mavis Moran was in New York.

Quinta stepped onto the porch, glanced
casually up and down the street, and saw nothing. She walked
briskly toward Thames, resisting the urge to turn around and yell,
"Gotcha!" every few feet.

When she arrived at her office she found
Peter Gallager, the tall, shambly, feisty editor of
Cup
Quotes,
waiting for her. "I've been getting my ear blistered
all morning by various and sundry members of the
Pegasus
syndicate. They don't seem to like your shot of the tomato pitching
the tomato," he said, lighting a cigarette.

"
Alan Seton too?" she asked
.
There goes the pu-pu platter
.

"Nah. He's the only one who
hasn't
beat me up; that's not his job. Anyway, they're threatening to take
the Cup somewhere else when they win. They think we're being
inhospitable."

"Should we back off the story a little?"
Quinta asked.

"The hell we will. It's good copy. It's
legitimate copy."

"I guess so," she said, not at all sure it
was anymore. "But I keep thinking how the media always take heat
for giving terrorists face time."

"The moral issues are not exactly
comparable," he said dryly. "There are no lives at stake here.
These guys are throwing fruit, not bombs. I want you to go down to
the docks and see if you can get a follow-up on the girl. I doubt
she's anywhere near, but see what you can find. Maybe you'll get
lucky."