The Senator’s Daughter (37 page)

“Why did he fire you?”

“His official reason is that I was asking Andre Valetti questions under the guise of representing the DA's office.”

“So what?” Cliff shrugged. “You've always been highly rated.”

“Water over the dam, pal. He also said he'd never liked me, and it felt good to fire me.”

“Whoa.” Cliff broke off for more food, selecting an assortment of dumplings and Char su Bao, steamed buns stuffed with barbequed pork. “Maybe I could put in a word for you at Justice …”

While he squirted red pepper sauce onto a shark fin dumpling, something seemed to occur to Cliff. “Let me get this straight. You've just been fired, you have no prospects, and you haven't made the half-million-dollar call to Senator Chatsworth.”

Lyle felt as though a stone hit him in the chest. Since Dickerson had booted him, while he'd cleaned out his desk and been humiliatingly escorted out by security, he'd been thinking on an intellectual level about losing his job.

It hadn't really registered.

Now it did. He'd just been fired. He had no prospects. His monthly payments were a pretty penny, and he was already behind since he'd refused the Senator's first installment. Moreover, despite Sylvia's lukewarm send-off this morning, he hadn't even considered going after the money.

Hell, he'd decided before he made love to Sylvia.

“I get it.” Cliff chuckled. “You've been in bed with her for days. It's clouded your judgment.”

Lyle scowled.

“Not talking just proves it.” Cliff slapped the table. “You're in love with her.”

“Not an option,” Lyle snapped. But wasn't that a reflex? Hadn't he decided it had changed?

“Don't jack with me, Lyle. I'm the best friend you've ever had, and I'm telling you you've got a decision to make. Admit you love Sylvia or go for the money.”

“I … don't know.” He hadn't told her, how could he tell somebody else?

Cliff drilled on. “You think you can't love anybody because they might leave you.”

“What about you? We're both thirty-two-year-old bachelors with a load of baggage.” Lyle knew Cliff's folks had divorced when he was thirteen and his friend had almost not made it to UC, where they met.

And Cliff knew his own story well enough to parry, “We're talking about you now and your habit of backing out of relationships before they get too serious.”

Lyle relented. “Maybe that's changing.”

“Enough to give up all that money?”

He didn't hesitate. “I decided days ago the Senator could take his money and shove it. The trouble Sylvia's had made me realize being rich doesn't make you happy.”

“Hallelujah!” Cliff raised his arms like an evangelist. “I've been telling you that for how many years?”

Lyle looked at his friend. “Sometimes we have to figure things out for ourselves.”

By one thirty, they were in Cliff's office at the Federal Department of Justice. Lyle sat in an armchair and brought Cliff up to date on his conversations with Andre Valetti about his brother and the Esther Quenton deal. And about the mysterious late-night fire that destroyed the inn.

“Sounds like there's no love lost between you and Andre.” Cliff started to boot his computer.

“I was blunt,” Lyle admitted. “I practically accused brother Tony of having had a hand in Quenton's death, then even suggested Andre was the one behind the deal since the dead woman's land abutted his.”

“Way to win friends and influence people.” Cliff turned to his computer and went into the database Lyle had been trying to access at the San Francisco Hall of Justice. It cost a lot of money to subscribe to and was restricted to law-enforcement agencies and top private investigators with deep pockets.

Within thirty minutes he raised his fist. “Aha!”

Lyle went behind the desk to look.

Cliff pointed to the screen. “Here are the rest of the investors in the limited partnership Tony bought the Quenton land through.”

Lyle read aloud, “Andre Valetti, no surprise there.” He whistled. “David Dickerson.”

Esther Quenton's attorney and executor had made Andre and Tony a too-good-to-be-true deal on her land. Rather than just being a toady for political contributions or stroke, he stood to make money if the land was developed.

“Conflict of interest all over that,” Lyle observed. “No wonder he said it made him feel good to fire me. I was breathing down his neck, as well as the Valettis.”

“One last investor,” Cliff pointed out. “Another LLC, Capitol Investors.”

“Don't know that one.”

Another hour and Cliff couldn't come up with any names for the principals of the LLC. “That's odd,” he observed. “Should be a matter of public record.”

The two men broke for coffee; Lyle longed for some decent java, but drank the institutional brew offered.

Facing Lyle across his desk, Cliff leaned forward. “Let's play what if?” He ticked a finger. “Let's say Esther Quenton was helped across the River Styx by Tony or Andre or one of their boys.”

“Andre has an armed thug who guards his place. Luigi.” If the Valetti boys did come from that type of Italian family, it would explain why he needed a guard.

Another finger. “Say Luigi did the dirty work.”

Lyle put in, “And Dickerson never pushed for an investigation of her death, though it was odd a woman in her physical condition could have gone walking on the terrain along a cliff.”

Another finger. “Then say there was a falling out between the brothers.”

Lyle put up a hand. “Say Andre asked Luigi to fit Tony with cement overshoes. Christ, I left Sylvia with him.”

“You said you saw Andre sneaking around before the fire. He must have done it, or Luigi.”

“I was afraid Andre might have, but I hoped he was too refined to throw a Molotov cocktail. Dickerson acted like it was lunacy.”

“Dickerson is dirty. We know now he's in on the deal.”

“They must have been trying to kill me, to stop me from digging any more.” Andre might have seen them embracing through the inn's living-room windows and then noted the light come on in her room when she went to change clothes. If Lyle hadn't worked by candlelight setting things up for seduction, the fire might have started right on his bed while he and Sylvia were sleeping.

“On the other hand,” said Cliff, “why try to kill you when firing you would do the trick? Or to put it another way, if they tried to kill you and failed, why not keep trying instead of falling back on namby-pamby ‘you're losing your job'?”

Lyle stared at him. “Dickerson said Sylvia was the target. He said Andre told him that.”

“A red herring?”

“To make it look political and take the heat in another direction?”

“What if the fire was set in her room because someone expected her to be there?” Cliff tried. “What if you really were immaterial?”

Lyle's mind raced. “She might have been targeted, but Valetti has a better motive to hit me.”

“Maybe not. Remember what Julio Castillo said about the Senator being buds with Tony? What if the Senator was supposed to be an investor and went ballistic when Quenton was killed? Maybe they decided to use Sylvia as an example of what could happen if he went to law enforcement?”

“That doesn't make sense. If his daughter's dead, where's the leverage?”

Cliff looked troubled. “It would be signature Mafia. No pussyfooting around, no threats, just hit one of his loved ones and say the wife's next.”

“We're speculating wildly here.”

“If any of this is true, do you think Dickerson knew your life or Sylvia's was in danger?”

“If he covered up what happened to Esther Quenton, that makes him an accessory to murder.” Lyle sipped cold coffee.

“And possible accessory to Tony's demise. And murder one for Andre if he did Tony.”

A little silence fell.

“Where is Sylvia now? With Andre?”

Lyle consulted his Rolex and found it was after three. “Let's go.”

S
ylvia awakened in Andre's guest suite at four fifteen, but she didn't feel refreshed. Her muscles ached, and she had a groggy sense of having had too long a nap. As she almost drifted back into slumber, her stomach rumbled … and she remembered she and Andre must go back to the hospital.

Going to the window, Sylvia found it had begun to rain, bringing an early twilight. She wondered if it was raining where Lyle was … not knowing emphasized the distance between them.

In the marble bath, she looked at her reflection in the beveled mirror. Did she look different since Lyle had made love to … with her?

This morning when he'd acted jealous of Andre, she should have understood he was simply afraid, as she was, that what had happened between them might not last. Knowing how swiftly a dream could become disaster brought everything into perspective.

Sylvia wanted time with Lyle. She wanted to wake beside him and read the papers in bed on lazy Sunday mornings, to take long walks in the redwoods, to go to the grocery store.

Boy, she had it bad. She hated grocery shopping.

She looked around for a phone. Andre probably had one in every bath.

Yes, there was the plug on the wall opposite the toilet, but no telephone. She padded into the bedroom where it took a few seconds of processing the flat surfaces to determine there was none here. And none in the suite's living room.

Surprising since Andre was loaded, but maybe he was funny about little things.

While she bathed, the weather outside continued to darken. Wind whistled around the window frames, turned up the leaves on the vines so their pale undersides showed, and she felt sorry for the grape growers who hadn't harvested.

Dressed again in the black slacks and red silk sweater, Sylvia wandered through Andre's villa. Though there were plenty of outlets, there were no telephones.

Her theory that Andre was merely odd had evaporated. What Lyle had said this morning about investigating Andre for the prosecutor came back and made her throat threaten to close.

There should be phones in a place like this, unless Andre didn't want Sylvia making any calls. And if he had some kind of ties to organized crime, as Lyle's interest suggested, he might be the kind of man who'd imprison a serving girl.

Yet, if she confronted him about her suspicions and she was right, he wouldn't let her leave the building.

Heart pounding, she decided to try playing it cool, have him drive her down to see Buck and Mary. Then she'd refuse to come back here, have Lyle come and get her, the way he'd wanted.

In a pretty sitting room off the great room, Sylvia found a TV. Without effort, she located the remote and brought up a national news channel.

There was her photo again. It seemed odd since it had been so long since she disappeared.

She nearly thumbed the set off, but stopped. There was a photo of the sheriff's men on a curving highway, all too familiar.

She adjusted the volume. “Breaking news this afternoon. The daughter of Senator Lawrence Chatsworth, Sylvia, has been missing for almost four weeks. About an hour ago, Sylvia's automobile was found.”

Oh, Lord. Her mother was hearing this. Or someone would call her within thirty seconds.

“The red Jaguar convertible was spotted by a sheriff's deputy in a deep ravine off Highway 29 north of Calistoga in Napa County. The driver's seat was empty, but Sylvia's purse with ID, cash, and her cell phone were found beneath the crushed dash. A suitcase full of clothing was in the trunk. Law enforcement is starting to comb the area of the wreck, going door to door locally to ask if anyone might have seen her.”

Sylvia looked over her shoulder toward the foyer.

“Interestingly enough, a local delivery man has already come forward to say a woman who answers to the description of Ms. Chatsworth was working at the Lava Springs Inn recently, using the name Sylvia Cabot, which happens to be Ms. Chatsworth's middle name. Hiding out to avoid the inquiry into whether she ran off the road while under the influence of alcohol or drugs? Updates throughout the day.”

“Good afternoon,
cara.”

Sylvia jumped and turned. That's what she'd do—tell him who she was. He'd never consider playing sexual games with Senator Chatsworth's daughter. Not if he knew what was good for him.

She looked back at the screen, but the story about her was over.

“I trust you slept well.” He leaned against the door-jamb, hands in the pockets of expensive fawn-colored trousers. His V-neck cashmere sweater, worn without a shirt, revealed a nest of dark hair on his chest. His smile didn't reach his eyes. “What's on the news?”

Sylvia pointed the remote and turned off the TV. “There's something I need to tell you.”

A salt-and-pepper brow arched. “Why don't we go into the morning room? I've had some coffee and tea set up for us there.”