By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (29 page)

"Oh." What could Quinta say to that? Better
to return to a safer subject. "She didn't take anything worthwhile,
then?"

"Oh, yes, she did, although probably not for
that reason. A Fabergé box that she got from her grandfather was
missing. And some plans ...." But here he stopped.

Quinta waited for him to finish, but he
seemed to have no intention of it. Instead he shifted gears, as he
so often did in his conversations, and said, "Do you have a
nickname, Quinta?"

She had been looking down, savoring the
sound of his voice wrapping around her like a clematis vine. Now
she lifted her gaze. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she saw
in his face—or thought she saw—a warmth that transcended good
will.

"Windy," she answered in a whisper. "My
sisters called me Windy when I was a little girl. Sometimes they
still do .... It sounds a little like Quinta .... I used to love a
windy day ... because my father might take me for a sail ... and
then, too, I talked a lot ... you know—'windy' ...."

She waited, as generations of young women
before her had waited in the same spot on the same porch, for his
kiss. When it came she was not prepared for the devastating effect
it had on her sense of balance, or for the fire that scorched a
path through her body.
It's only a kiss,
she thought
dizzily,
only a good-night kiss.

But her arms lifted up around him anyway,
and that touched off a whole new series of flash fires. She felt
his body up against her, his arms around her, and she knew that she
was trapped, doomed to go up in flames. She could not escape if she
wanted to; and when he broke away from the kiss long enough to
whisper, "Windy," in a husky voice and then kissed her again—she
understood for the first time in her life that there could be joy
in annihilation. The thought was exhilarating, a pocket of pure,
clean oxygen before the flames returned to consume her.

After another long kiss he let her go, but
she wobbled, and he wrapped his arms around her more tightly,
burying his face in her hair. She gave a small, shaky laugh and
said inanely, "That was some kiss."

He laughed, not so steadily himself, and
murmured in her ear, "I won't pretend to be sorry. I don't know
what the hell's going on. All I know is, I'm not sorry." He held
her away from him. "I haven't made out on anyone's front porch in
quite a few years," he said ironically.

"You haven't forgotten a thing," she
reassured him, her eyes half-closed with pleasure. "It must be like
riding a bike."

He kissed her lightly on her mouth. "This is
an unexpected complication."

"Which I suppose you don't need," she
answered wistfully.

He smiled—sadly, she thought—and lowered his
mouth to hers one last time, and then he was gone, leaving Quinta
to reshape her cinders into the person she'd been before they came
out on the porch. But it was no good; she was too giddy, too
aroused, too apart at the seams to go in and face her father just
yet. So she sat on the porch rail, and wrapped one arm around the
porch column, and dreamed.

She might have been there still if her
father had not yelled her name with such sudden, piercing urgency
that she stumbled as she jumped off the rail onto the porch, then
tore back into the house. Neil was staring at the television
screen, along with Mr. Locklear.

"News at Eleven" was leading off with the
kind of story that makes a broadcaster's heart beat faster:
breaking news, a live account of a fierce fire, climaxed minutes
earlier by a series of chemical explosions, in glamorous Newport.
Quinta recognized the wooden shed instantly, even with one wall
collapsed in flames, and listened in stunned silence as the
announcer told the tale.

"A raging fire has all but destroyed the
12-meter yacht
Pegasus,
one of America's best hopes to win
back the America's Cup, the prestigious 135-year-old trophy which
the Australians wrested from Dennis Conner and the New York Yacht
Club three years ago," the newscaster intoned. "The yacht was being
stored in the shed while it was being prepared for shipment to
Perth, Australia, where preliminary trial races are scheduled to
begin in October.

"Paint and flammable supplies destined for
Australia were also being stored in the shed; the explosions are
believed to have resulted from the igniting of these materials. The
source of the fire is so far undetermined. We hope to have more for
you later in the broadcast."

It was a red, red dawn, but not so red as
the still glowing hunk of metal that lay twisted and molten in the
charred embers of the shipyard shed. Alan Seton, sooty and
bleary-eyed as any fireman, plunged his hands in his pockets and
stared at the pitiful remains of a three-year dream.
Pegasus:
mythical winged horse, born of blood, favorite of
the Muses.
Pegasus:
who threw his rider when he dared to fly
up to Olympus, there to try to take a place among the gods.
Pegasus,
so aptly named.

Shit,
thought Alan, kicking a charred
cinder out of his way.
We should have called it
Phoenix
.

It was impossible for him not to feel that
this was a judgment for his having dallied on a front porch with a
certain young woman. To some extent, it wasn't his fault: he'd been
minding his own business, chasing the Cup, when Quinta Powers had
first knocked on his door. And then Cindy got in the act, forcing
them together. But the kiss, that was his fault. He'd always known
that he was vulnerable in times of stress; most men were. He'd
taken up with Mavis on the same night that he'd withdrawn from the
competition in the last campaign. Would he ever learn?

He shook himself free from his meditation.
That was not today's problem. He turned and smiled stoically and
gave the thumbs-up signal to those of his crew who huddled
forlornly near the spot, trying their best to understand evil and
wantonness. In the campaign so far, they'd had their arms broken
and shins gashed, and they'd suffered concussions and bruises and a
variety of deprivations. They'd endured cold and wet and the kind
of intense misery that only those who have taken on the sea can
know. They were here not for the money, God knew, or even for the
chance of glory. They weren't even here out of loyalty to Alan.

They had come back because their hearts and
souls had been with the eleven men on the deck of
Liberty
when she lost the Cup three years earlier. They'd come back because
they were Americans, just as the Australians were coming back
because they were Australians.

If that sounded jingoistic, too damn bad. It
was a good thing for nations to be proud, and a good thing for them
to joust nobly with one another on the ocean. It beat the hell out
of going at one another with planes and missiles, or sending
ruthless killers to terrorize one another's citizens. That was the
real banality of evil, he'd long ago decided: that it made you feel
self-conscious about doing something good.

And yet at that moment he felt anything but
self-conscious. They were going to Australia: with no supplies,
missing a few sails and, oh yeah, without the fastest boat ever
designed. But they were going
.
They would race
Shadow,
their trial horse, instead; coax her and if
necessary flog her, for one last run at success. She was not the
fastest any more, but she was surely one of the most reliable.
Overbuilt for a 12-meter yacht,
Shadow
just might endure the
boat-crushing waters off Australia, where a lot of faster but more
temperamental thoroughbreds would surely fall. He had a small
window of opportunity—maybe only a pinhole of opportunity—but he
was going to take it. This time, he was going to take it.

****

Nothing could have been further from Mavis
Kendall's mind than the thought of sex, but when she stepped out of
the limo and saw Alan on the afternoon after the fire, the first
thing that popped into her head was:
he's lost interest in
me.
His mind was preoccupied with something besides the arson
of the night before. She could see it in his look, or rather in the
way he seemed not to look at her. She did not expect banter, and
she did not expect a medal for her heroism in bed three days
earlier. But she did expect his deep blue eyes to flicker when she
came into his view. And they didn't.

She tossed her clutch bag on the small
Formica table in the Airstream trailer, sat down, crossed her legs,
traced the red enameled tip of a finger across a crease in her gray
linen skirt, and said, "Well, Alan. It seems to me you've been here
before. Any words of wisdom for the rest of us?"

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try
again," he said with a wry smile, leaning his chair back against
the trailer wall.

"You're taking it better than I
thought."

He snorted and said, "Not by choice. They've
taken away all the sharp objects around me, as well as my belt and
necktie."

"Any clues yet?"

He shook his head and looked away. "Just
that it was done by professionals. Did you know you can order the
building of your choice burned down for a few thousand bucks? You
can't buy a decent used car for that, and yet someone can take out
a ten-million-dollar campaign with what amounts to pin money. You
look tired."

"I've been on the phone nonstop. And
you?"

"Meetings. Phone conferences. Talks with
boat builders. Statements to the police."

"You've been busy. What's the prognosis? Can
they build another one in time for Perth?"

"Not bloody likely. We'll have to use
Shadow."

"Shadow!"
said Mavis, surprised.
After a minute she added, "How ironic. If I'd known that
Shadow
was destined for the races, I'd have asked a higher
price when I sold it to the syndicate."

He gave her a hard look, as if he were
seeing her for the first time. It made her acutely
uncomfortable.

"Is that all you think about, Mavis?" he
asked. "Money?"

"It does give me pleasure," she answered
coolly. She stood up and tucked her bag under her arm. "I see we're
a little testy today. That's understandable."

"How're the sponsors taking this?" he asked,
unaware that he'd offended her.

"On the whole—poorly. We've lost the
Nickleby Cooler pledge, of course, and Sleptell is getting cold
feet. Warren-Colgate Chemical is unhappy. Of the private donors I
think we can kiss Johanssen, Dribbs, Heartner, and maybe Mrs.
Petrel good-bye." Mavis smiled ironically. "The up-side is that our
boat maintenance has been cut by half. I'll be at Beau Rêve if you
need me."

She stepped outside, then came back in. "I
think we had a phenomenal boat in
Pegasus.
But
Shadow
—"

She shook her head; he was wasting his
time.

****

The two police detectives had come and gone
hours ago, and Neil and Quinta, their spirits almost totally
deflated, were still discussing the arson, obsessed by this latest
turn of events.

"It had to be her," said Neil. "I don't mean
she poured the gasoline herself. But you heard Alan: anyone can
contract out the job. Not that the police believe there's a
connection. But then, the police don't believe there's a
Cindy."

"I know. And who can blame them? I'm
beginning to think she's a poltergeist. I haven't heard her, seen
her, touched her—and yet I know she's out there, somewhere. And now
we know that she stole the plans to
Pegasus
when she broke
into Alan's house." Quinta poured a stiffer gin and tonic than
usual for her father, and a smaller one for herself.

"But I do not think that Cindy had the boat
burned down, as crazy as she is," she continued. "No one could hate
someone that much. And so many innocent people got hurt in this; so
much effort and love and sweat were wasted. Not to mention, someone
could easily have died in that fire. Why would she do that to
people she didn't even know?"

"Because she's crazy, that's why." Neil
tested his gin and tonic and grimaced, but he didn't send it
back.

"It looks more like sabotage to me. I could
see some group doing this for political reasons. They might be
willing to sacrifice a life for their much larger cause."

Neil was lifting himself with his arm braces
from his wheelchair into an armchair that Quinta and Mr. Locklear
brought up from the basement. That was the one bright spot in the
events of the past couple of weeks: Neil had so thoroughly resented
being victimized by a crazed female that he was putting twice his
previous effort into keeping himself mobile.

He leaned his head back into the high-backed
armchair, then sipped from his drink again. "You keep pounding that
one note—the protesters—but if it
was
sabotage, there are a
slew of suspects. It could be another syndicate; it could be a
competing sponsor; it could be Alan himself, for crissake."

"It could
not
be Alan," Quinta
said.

"Of course it could. Maybe he's afraid he's
lost his competitive edge and just wanted out. Okay, so he's
supposed to be a brilliant helmsman and strategist. But he missed
the last campaign; maybe he knows he's peaked. Maybe he doesn't
have what it takes anymore."

"He's steering the boat, dad, not lifting
it. Anyway, he's not much over thirty; you talk about him as if
he's got one foot in the grave."

Neil looked at his daughter suspiciously.
"You're always defending him lately, always so touchy about his
age."

"That's because you're always harping on his
age!" she cried. "And I know why," she added recklessly. "I read
the diary. I read about the gems—but then I read on. I know now
that Grandmother was still married at the time she fell in love
with a younger man than her husband. But, Dad, Grandpa Sam was
much
older than she was! There's no comparison!"