The Senator’s Daughter (36 page)

Sarah nodded. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Is this the water from last night?” Fiamma asked.

She shook her head. “The truck is off-loading it now.”

Andre put his hand to the small of Sylvia's back. “Let us go, then. You will let me know if you find anything, Frank.”

At the intersection of Highway 29 and the Lava Springs Road, a sheriff's sedan was parked in the place where Sylvia's Jag had gone over the edge. The officer was out, smoking and looking over the valley.

As Andre's Hummer approached, Sylvia resisted the urge to duck down in the seat.

Flipping the cigarette onto the gravel with a typical “butts aren't litter” attitude, the lawman stepped closer to the precipice and proceeded to grind his heel to be sure the flame was extinguished.

Andre signaled for the turn and lifted his fingers in a little wave. Thankfully, the smoker's focus was downward.

Once on the side road, the trees crowded closer to the Hummer, and a breeze from the open window cooled Sylvia's heated brow.

Andre glanced over at her from the driver's seat. “Do you want to take a look at the inn?”

She didn't. Then curiosity made her agree. In daylight, she'd have a better idea what Buck and Mary were up against.

Andre pulled the Hummer into the drive, and Sylvia knew what it meant in books when someone's heart “leaped into their throat.” Yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the ruin. Behind several sheriff's department cars, men in uniform milled on the lawn.

“It looks like a total loss,” Andre observed.

“It took a long time for the fire trucks to come and start pumping water from the river,” Sylvia recalled.

The blackened roof had fallen in over all but the kitchen area. Part of the front porch appeared intact, but at least 80 percent of the graceful structure was an unrecognizable pile of charred rubble. Any fantasy Sylvia had of retrieving anything of hers or the Klines' went out of her head.

Her throat thickened at the thought of how proud Buck and Mary had been of this place only yesterday. How quickly dreams could turn to disaster.

One of the sheriff's men looked their way. Her gut clenched.

“Want to talk to them now?” Andre asked. “About who might want to kill you?”

“No!” She recoiled in the Hummer's big seat. Being unmasked by law enforcement, who would be unable to ID a Sylvia Cabot, but whose computer would quickly bring up Sylvia Cabot Chatsworth and her driver's license photo …

“What's wrong?” Andre asked mildly. “You on the lam or something?”

“Or something,” she got out. “Please, Andre, just drive on.”

He lifted a lazy hand to the cops and put the Hummer in reverse. While her heart pounded and she waited for one of the officers to stop them, he backed slowly out of the drive.

As they rolled between the vines and the redwoods, Andre kept drilling her with those intense black eyes. “Want to tell me what that was about?”

“I really don't.”

He gave an elegant little shrug.

When Andre pulled up to the guard shack, Luigi informed him Buck had called from the hospital and they were staying there.

Though swarthy and forbidding, Sylvia figured Luigi knew the Klines as neighbors. She leaned across. “He didn't say Mary was worse?”

“No. Said he felt better being there with doctors on call, rather than coming up here in the country.”

Sylvia had a vision of them waiting for the fire trucks and ambulance last night…

Buck was right, but she wished they had made the decision before she left.

Before Andre could park the Hummer under the porte cochere, she said, “I want to go back to the hospital.”

He pulled beneath the overhang and cut the ignition. “Before you do, you must have something to eat, a bath, and rest. We will go down together later.”

Though her exhausted haze, Sylvia realized she needed all that. But, “I'd rather eat after a nap.”

Inside the villa, Andre spoke in Italian to his butler, uniformed in black trousers, shirt, and a matching jacket.

“Salvatore will escort you to the Rose Suite.” Andre handed off her department store bag with Lyle's soiled shorts and tee and touched her shoulder again. “Sleep well.”

Sylvia followed the immaculate servant through the great room decorated with hunting trophies, past a dining room with tapestried walls and a table that could seat at least thirty, into a hall at least twelve feet wide. The walls were of white marble, carved into intricate archways with the effect of a cathedral's nave.

At least forty feet down the corridor, Salvatore stopped before an ornately carved door. With a graceful motion, he swung the portal wide. “The Rose Suite,
signorina.”

Sylvia, though used to five-star accommodations, couldn't help but be impressed. A cavernous sitting room at least twenty by thirty feet ended in a wall of windows overlooking the sloping lawn and the vineyards beyond. Drapes of the finest damask framed the casements. Gilt-framed oils represented a fortune; if she wasn't mistaken there was an original Monet … in a guest suite.

“The bedroom is this way.” Salvatore gestured her through a doorway into a parallel room the same size. A silk-covered king bed dominated one wall. “Everything in the way of toiletries is provided.” He placed her clothing sack on the bed and gave a little bow that reminded her of Andre in a bad way.

After he departed, Sylvia explored the bath, more marble on the floors, walls, and in the capacious shower. A whirlpool bath had been built up in front of yet another window so one could soak and take in the mountaintop view. She should bathe, but she'd been running on empty for hours. Sleep wasn't an option; it was a necessity.

Sylvia removed the clothes she'd worn out of the store's dressing room and lay down naked in the opulent room, too much like a velvet-lined prison. She hadn't liked Andre buying her things.

A little voice said she hadn't minded when Lyle took them to the mud baths and to dinner. Where was he now? Having to work without this luxurious chance to catch up on the sleep they'd lost last night, due to both the fire and making love.

Images of them together played like an erotic film. Slowly, with exquisite attention to each remembered detail, she reconstructed everything that had happened. From the moment she straddled him and drew the sheet down over his chest until they both lay exhausted by the storm. Afterward, he'd given her that lazy smile.

The one that said he did trust her, with his heart.

As she was sinking into sleep, she heard a helicopter above the villa.

I
t took Lyle longer than he expected to clean out his desk. Or maybe it just felt like it because he wanted the hell out as soon as possible. His co-workers, many of whom he'd been friendly with, stayed away as though he had suddenly become a leper.

The security guard brought a dolly, helped him downstairs, and waited in the rain while he brought his car around and put four boxes in his Mercedes' trunk.

Behind the wheel, he drove down Bryant Street toward the Bay and his loft. Everything seemed at a little distance … to avoid an accident he concentrated on the route he usually drove on autopilot.

Once home, he brought in the boxes and dumped them in a stack near his computer. He'd heard people who got a shock went into frenzied action, so he forced himself to sit watching the rain make rivulets down his windows.

That son of a bitch David Dickerson didn't deserve to sit in the district attorney's chair. He was supposed to be a man of justice, yet he had kowtowed to Senator Chatsworth in the matter of Lyle's leave of absence, and fired him because prominent Andre Valetti hadn't liked him poking around.

What a fool Lyle had been, telling Sylvia he had good instincts. Andre hadn't needed to resort to arson to carry out his threat. Without his power of position in the prosecutor's office, Lyle could throw accusations all he cared to and nobody would listen.

And as for how his files got erased, it wasn't required that the Valettis hack into the DA's computer system. David Dickerson, toady to the rich and powerful, on his way to bigger and better things in Sacramento or Washington, had no doubt purged the folder himself.

Well, Lyle had always known at an intellectual level—it was all about politics. Now he lived it.

A look around the loft… how in hell would he pay the bills? How naïve he'd been to believe that hard work was all it took.

He glanced at the box with his résumé, but he wasn't ready to start updating it. Going back up to the Napa Valley for Sylvia crossed his mind, but she'd probably still be at Queen of the Valley with Mary and Buck. The hours passed slowly in a hospital waiting room.

One thing he must do was get there before Andre took Sylvia up to his house. That business about him knowing who she was and not letting on was disturbing. Had he found it amusing to know where she was when the rest of world wondered?

Unless … Lyle's jealous streak reasserted itself… Sylvia asked Andre to keep her secret but never told Lyle? Perhaps single-guy Andre had been playing along with her “Cabot” identity, thinking he might get the Senator's daughter as his next bride.

As far as getting to Queen of the Valley before Andre made off with Sylvia … as Lyle had thought in Dickerson's office, the Senator had probably been notified where Sylvia was by now. He would no doubt have law enforcement converging on Napa, and, within the hour, there would be an announcement on the air about the search for her being called off.

Lyle would decide later whether to go up or see her back here in the City. Right now, he'd phone Cliff Ames at Justice, who had the same database resources he'd been shut out of.

Upon arriving at one of his and Cliff's usual haunts, the Four Seas Restaurant, Lyle ascended the stairs to the second-floor dining room where Asian murals covered the walls. From the window, Chinatown appeared to be a maze of metal fire escapes and colorful signs.

The setup here was dim sum, in which servers wheeled around carts laden with small plates of delicacies for the diners' selection.

Cliff waved from a corner table. The two men clasped hands, and Lyle settled in. Cliff poured pale yellow jasmine tea into a handleless white cup at Lyle's place. “Where you been keeping yourself since last Thursday?”

The place was well subscribed after noon so Lyle lowered his voice. “I've spent the last four days with Sylvia Chatsworth in the northern Napa Valley.”

Cliff whistled. “No kidding?”

“Nope.”

“You didn't call me.”

“Sorry, buddy, but she asked me to keep her secret.”

A teenaged Chinese girl in a white shirt and black skirt appeared beside the table, offering duck's feet in a monotonous voice, suggesting she'd memorized the phrase in English.

After cocking a brow at Lyle, who shook his head, Cliff waved the girl away.

As soon as she was gone, Cliff gave him a knowing grin. “So you scored with
la
Chatsworth and think you have the world by the tail.”

“Not exactly.”

A young man presented another tray. Pointing to a platter of jellyfish, Lyle noted that Cliff chose some shrimp toast.

Lyle sampled—too salty and the texture was rubbery. He shoved the plate aside.

Washing down a bite of shrimp toast with a mouthful of tea, Cliff gestured. “This is better.”

Lyle looked at the crispy triangles. “Dickerson fired me this morning.”

“The hell—”

“I can't believe it, either.” At a sudden image of his usual weekday routine, including lunches like this, he clutched his teacup so hard he realized he was about to break it.

“That's totally weird.” Cliff set aside his chopsticks and stared at Lyle.

“It was like he had it planned. My office was clean except for my personal files. When I went back down after talking to him, there were packing boxes on my desk.”