By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs (12 page)

"What? For the fastest twelve on the water?"
He puffed his cheeks, then blew air out of them, a perfect used-car
salesman. "Miss Mavis, Miss Mavis," he chided gently, reaching out
to stroke and pat her sleep-tossed hair, "you and I have some
serious dickerin' to do."

****

It's sad but true that on hot, sunny days
the visitors' parking lot of the Newport Hospital is noticeably
emptier than on wet, soggy ones. Alan's silver Mercedes, which only
a week ago had been found bloody and bent on the Newport Bridge,
was now clean, repaired, and sitting more or less alone at the east
end of the visitors' lot. Even the inside of the hospital seemed to
Alan a little empty, as if half the patients had declared a holiday
from being sick and had gone off to First Beach for a picnic and a
dip in the surf. The nurses greeted Alan in a friendly, small-town
way; it was hard for him to believe that people could be truly,
seriously ill in such pleasant surroundings.

And yet, as he stood in the hall outside of
Neil Powers' room, waiting for an opportune time to announce
himself, the awful, inescapable truth of hospitals was driven home
to him. The voice of a young woman, whom he couldn't see, was
unnaturally bright; the man's was patient but hopeless.

"Dad, don't you think it's kind of cool?"
Apparently the girl was showing something to her father, trying to
gin up enthusiasm. "You can do anything with one of these chairs.
Think how you can get around, even before you're on your feet
again."

"Yes, Quinta," he said, not unkindly. "Just
think."

"And I talked to the dockmaster at the
marina. He thinks the docks are wide enough for a ramp to the boat,
but we'll have to work out some way to rig—"

"Are you kidding, girl? I can't go on the
boat anymore." There was genuine wonder in his voice.

"Sure you can, Dad. Look, I've been thinking
about it. Why can't we put in some kind of, I don't know, a rod or
like a roll bar or something to lash the wheelchair to?"

Despair hovered around the edges of his
amusement. "How the hell do I see forward to steer? Periscope?"

"Oh, well, no. I could steer. I handle the
boat pretty well." In an unsure voice, her confidence faltering,
she added, "You always said I did."

Alan half-turned on his heel; he had no
right to be privy to this conversation. But there was something
about the young woman's voice—her brave, single-handed effort to
appease her father—that made Alan want, if nothing else, to divert
the bitterness of the father to himself.

He knocked lightly on the open door, cursing
himself for having worn boat shoes and a polo shirt, for seeming to
rub it in that he was an active sailor.

"I'm Alan Seton," he said without preamble.
"May I come in?"

Neil Powers made a sound and looked out the
window. Alan interpreted it to be a yes, entered the room, and
stood at the foot of the bed. The second bed was unoccupied, he
noticed, but flowers were on both bedstands. The girl, younger than
she'd sounded, was watching her father anxiously. She was tall,
with surprisingly strong-looking arms and shoulders set off by a
yellow tank top. Alan wondered whether she was a swimmer. Like a
lot of people in Newport, she was tanned, fit, healthy. Her hair,
shoulder-length and straight, gleamed like polished brass plate.
She did not look at Alan. She was neither shy nor intimidated, he
decided; just intensely preoccupied.

Still, when her father continued to act as
if Alan weren't in the room, she turned to Alan with a silent plea
for understanding. Her look was clear, hopeful, surprisingly
bewildered by her father's despair.

Alan broke the awkward silence. "The police
have finished with me in their investigation. I'll be leaving
Newport tomorrow, probably for good"—Why did he add that?—"but I
wanted to tell you first how ... how extremely sorry I am. I still
can't believe this has happened." His words sounded painfully
clichéd to him.

"Funny, it seems real enough to me." Powers
spoke without taking his gaze from the view through the window, a
sweep of Newport and the harbor beyond. Despite the comfortable
temperature in the room, he seemed to huddle, as if he were waiting
for a bus on a cold night.

"Mr. Powers, I understand that Dr. Greene
remains hopeful that your ... condition ... is temporary. In the
meantime, is there anything—anything at all—that I can do?"

Powers turned to Alan and looked him full in
the face. His eyes were so different from his daughter's: his were
sad, soulful, yearning eyes. They were the eyes of a romantic, Alan
thought; of a man who can't help but dwell on the tragic
possibilities of life. What could he offer as comfort to such
eyes?

"Anything you can do?" Powers said quietly.
"Yes. You can get out of here." And Neil Powers, America's Cup
fanatic, turned deliberately away from the first skipper since
Harold Vanderbilt to speak to him directly, and resumed his
mournful gaze out at the harbor.

"What my father means is that he's not up to
seeing anyone just now," the daughter said quickly.

Alan gave her a quick, grateful smile.
"Yeah—that part I got." To Neil Powers he said, "I understand
completely. I am sorry." And he left.

But before Alan reached the end of the
corridor, the girl had caught up with him. "Mr. Seton," she said
breathlessly, pulling up alongside him, "that wasn't right. My dad
isn't mad at you personally, just ... the world," she said,
trailing off.

Alan stopped where he was and studied her.
She suggested a maturity that she didn't perhaps have yet, but she
carried herself well. Head high, shoulders back—she was ready and
eager to take on the Forces of Evil, wherever they happened to be.
Alan felt slavishly grateful to her, he didn't know why. "What's
your name?" he asked.

"Quinta," she answered with a sigh.

Alan said softly, "Is that so bad?" Because
it did seem as though she was embarrassed by the name.

"Well, no. It's just that Quinta is a funny
name and people
always
ask what it means," she said with
another sigh. "It means 'fifth,' because I was my dad's fifth
daughter with no sons," she explained. "As if that was my
fault."

Smiling, Alan said, "Are all your sisters
listed numerically, too?"

"No, they're named after boys: Eddie,
Georgie, Bobbie, and Jackie."

"You must be special, then, since you were
named on a different system."

"You think so?" She turned her pretty hazel
eyes on him, cutting through his patronizing remark. "Actually,
I've always thought it was because Dad got bored with waiting for a
son and just lost interest." Her shrug was the gesture of an older,
more world-weary woman.

"Anyway," she said, reverting to her real
age, "I'm sorry Dad ... you know ... spoke to you like that. It
wasn't your fault, and"—here she blushed scarlet—"I guess you do
have problems of your own." She stuck out her hand in apology.

He took it and said fervently, "Quinta,
look, I've spoken to Dr. Greene and—well, obviously the insurance
companies will take care of everything, but if there's anything you
see that your dad might want, anything, really, at all—" He was
thinking of dock ramps and roll bars, and he didn't know
what
he was thinking of—"just call me, or write." He let go
of her hand to take a business card from his wallet. "And don't
apologize for your father. If it had been me—"
I'd have blown my
brains out,
he thought, but he left the sentence unfinished. He
wondered again about the dock ramp. "Now
think,"
he urged
her. "Is there anything—anything—I can do or get?"

Just as earnestly, she stood and stared at a
spot in mid-air, considering. "No, except—"

"What is it?" He'd put a down payment on the
Brooklyn Bridge if she asked him to.

"This is maybe a little silly," she said
reluctantly, "but the dog that dad was holding? He said it was a
female who looked like she was still nursing. He still feels bad
about her. I was wondering about her litter ... but I don't know
who the owners are ... although I suppose I could find out from the
police?"

Of course she could; perhaps she knew it;
but he understood her hesitance in pursuing it. "I'll have the
information for you in five minutes. Can you meet me in the lobby
then? I need to make a phone call or two." He was elated at the
chance to be useful.

She gave him a tight, self-conscious smile.
"Thanks. I will."

In five minutes he was pacing the lobby
impatiently; he'd had an idea. Ready or not, Quinta Powers was
destined to be mistress of a very expensive purebred black Labrador
puppy. It was something he wanted to do, a symbol of his fierce
desire to make amends. In another minute he saw her, walking
quickly, a canvas backpack slung over one shoulder. In her faded
jeans and flip-flops, she looked like every other young woman on
campus, except that she wasn't on her way from class but leaving
her broken father for a little while. She would be right back the
first chance she got, Alan had no doubt.

"Hi," she said, suddenly shy. He supposed it
was because of the more everyday atmosphere in the lobby. People
were coming and going, speaking normally, laughing.

Suddenly he felt a little awkward himself.
Really, how would it look if he hauled her off without her father's
knowledge? The puppy plan was dumb. He decided to give her the
information she'd asked for and leave it at that. "Okay, here's the
scoop," he began. There are six in the litter, which was born of a
very high-class liaison. Three have been sent off to other breeders
and surrogate mothers. The owners are keeping one, a female. The
last two are up for adoption: one is a very frisky, friendly male;
the other is a female, but she's been spoken for. Apparently they
weren't quite weaned, but they're adapting nicely. So the situation
seems to be under control."

Like all young women when the words "puppy"
and "adoption" are mentioned, Quinta went misty-eyed. Her eyebrows
tilted up toward one another, and she shaped, but did not say, the
word, 'ohh' on a sigh.

"I was thinking of going out to see them,"
he said, suddenly yielding to his original impulse after all. "If
you want, I could take you along and drop you off at your house
afterward. Or back here, if that's where you left your car."

"Oh,
would
you?" It was said without
coyness.
Puppy puppy puppy
was written all over her lit-up
face. He hadn't noticed before how high and fine her cheekbones
were when she smiled. But then, she hadn't smiled before.

"Do you want to run back up and tell your
father where you're off to?" he said conscientiously.

Quinta didn't answer right away; she just
gave him a look. He had no idea what it meant. Annoyance? Contempt?
Wonder? Pity?

Very quietly she said, "I don't think that's
necessary." Mrs. Astor couldn't have done it better.

The hell with it,
he thought. His
first instinct had been the right one. "Well, then," he answered
with more cheerfulness than he felt, "off we go to Ocean Avenue. I
don't suppose you know where an estate called 'The Gray Tower' is."
She shook her head and he went on, trying to cover his earlier faux
pas. "Why they can't use plain old number addresses is beyond me.
So big deal; so the house has a tower. That doesn't tell us much
about east or west, does it? Oh, Almy Pond. They're across from it.
And they're near the ocean. Some clue. Everyone on the island is
near the bloody ocean."

They were in the parking lot and face to
face with faux pas number two: the infamous silver Mercedes that
had run down the mother of the litter in question and the
kind-hearted man who was holding her at the time. Alan swore a
silent, intense string of especially violent oaths and, desperately
hoping that Quinta would not make the connection, opened her door
for her and went around to the driver's seat.

He talked on, asking her where she was
planning to go to college, and what sports were her favorites, and
math or English? And all the while he was glancing at her through
the side of his aviator sunglasses, seeing her look around and then
run her hand over the tufted seat, no doubt saying to herself,
"This is where the mysterious high-heeled shoe was lying. This is
where the little box of pills and drugs rolled out." And he was
telling himself, Oh shit, oh
shit,
what a dumb idea this
was.

But she merely commented, "I've never been
in a Mercedes before."

Which surprised him. Was she so oblivious?
Is that what her generation amounted to? He launched on another
irrelevant ramble, this time about every car he'd ever owned,
including his first, a 1965 red Volvo, as they negotiated the
one-way morass that is downtown Newport.

They passed the southern end of the harbor,
and Quinta said, "My dad lived for a while in a little house off
that street, but it's been torn down. He was eight when he moved
there—off a boat, no less. An old coastal schooner. That must have
been so cool, but he doesn't ever talk about it. I suppose because
it was wrecked on a reef in the Bahamas."

"Whoa. Was he aboard the schooner at the
time?"

"Yeah. With my grandmother. They had a mate
and crew, but my grandfather wasn't aboard because he was crewing
on Vanderbilt's
Rainbow
."

Worse and worse. A man steeped in Cup
history and a survivor of a tragedy at sea, crippled probably for
life because of Cindy. No more boat for him; no ocean, no joy …
because of Cindy. He remembered vividly her words:
Blood? Oh,
that. I hit a dog.

God help him, but he hoped fervently just
then that Cindy truly was at the bottom of the bay. There would be
divine justice in that, at least.

He did not know what to say to Quinta's
simple account of what was obviously another traumatic event for
Neil Powers. To pursue it struck him as ghoulish, so he settled for
saying, "Your father has not lived an ordinary life so far." And
even that sounded lame to him.