The Senator’s Daughter Page 17

  As they went in, Lyle saw Mary looking down in disgust at a big glass jar, broken on the foyer floor. “I picked those olives myself from the tree by the river and preserved them in oil.”

  The search party skirted the slippery pool and set out, starting with the downstairs hall of the west wing. Their lights bounced off walls and stabbed into deep shadows in closets and behind shower curtains.

  Broken glass and china from knickknacks lay scattered. Books, vases, and suitcases had all ended up in heaps. Toilet articles were dashed onto tile floors, adding the pungent yet incongruous scent of perfume and aftershave to the wreckage. Fortunately, most of the exterior windows and transoms had survived.

  “We need to look everywhere,” Buck said.

  To Lyle’s relief, there was no sign of anyone trapped or injured. Further exploration confirmed the hotel was structurally in reasonable shape.

  Once they were back outside, Lyle and Sylvia rejoined the group around the radio.

  “The unfolding story of the Napa Quake continues,” the San Francisco announcer went on. “Reports of damage are confined to northern Napa and Lake counties so far. Power and phone service are out in a number of communities. We’ll have Sky Eye in the air at first light to give you more.”

  At two a.m., the USGS declared the quake to be approximately 6.0, but indicated the most affected areas seemed to be in the sparsely populated mountains. The epicenter was to the northwest of Mount Saint Helena, along a fault system in the Mayacamas Range.

  Lyle’s eyes felt scratchy, and he longed to lie down. Locating his bed comforter on a rose of Sharon bush beside the wall, he slung it over his arm.

  “Let’s get some rest,” he suggested, taking Sylvia’s hand and leading her away toward the river. Behind the inn, the white-painted porch columns shone in the light of a rising three-quarter moon.

  Lyle spread out their bed on the soft grass beside the rushing water. They sat, removed their shoes, and lay down side by side.

  For a while they stared up at the sky, shell-shocked by the suddenness of what had transpired. Low clouds scudded in a brisk wind above the mountains.

  Feeling a bit cool, Lyle drew Sylvia against him. She snuggled in with her head on his shoulder and her arm across his chest, while he drew the comforter into a fold over them. “I guess those little tremblers earlier were advance warning,” he said.

  She answered with a little shiver. “When we got booted out of bed, it was the biggest single shock I’ve ever felt.”

  Lyle inhaled and let it out slowly. “You know, when I was a kid there was a big one. I was so petrified I thought my heart was going to race itself to death.”

  “This the one you mentioned before?” she murmured.

  “The same. It sounds stupid, but it happened just before Mama went. After it stopped, my folks found me in their closet. I had pulled the clothes off the rack.” He paused to search for the words. “It was later, when she was gone, that I associated the quake and her leaving together. Having the solid earth betray you and having your mother, the woman who carried you for nine months, who taught you to love books and …” His voice broke.

  Yet, somehow in the telling, the past quake no longer seemed as fearful. He knew now it had no connection to Maddie’s disappearance. In some ways the one this evening had unnerved him more, for he’d been worried about keeping Sylvia safe.

  After searching for weeks and finally finding her, he didn’t want to lose her again.

  “I can see that frightened little boy.” Sylvia snuggled against him.

  He shifted; despite the serious topic, her touch was starting to fire him up again. And this wasn’t the place, not with the other guests awake and the kid with the radio walking around.

  “Have you thought maybe somebody’s trying to tell us something?” he quipped to change the mood.

  Sylvia’s lips grazed his collarbone, making his problem worse. “You mean we’re not to …?”

  “Something like that,” he admitted. Her hair felt like silk across the back of his hand.

  Sylvia lifted her face and planted a kiss on his mouth, one that lingered just enough to promise everything. “Don’t believe it,” she whispered.

  For a long time they were silent, listening to the stillness in the earth. Lyle’s eyelids grew heavy, and he brushed Sylvia’s forehead with his lips.

  She did not stir. He listened to her even breathing.

  Chapter 18

  “Careful! Take it down slowly,” Buck cautioned Lyle as they pulled the door to the rear porch from its hinges and lowered it to the floor.

  Sylvia watched them work.

  Lyle ran a hand along the inside of the door frame. “You can feel here where it needs planing because the building shifted.”

  Mary appeared in the doorway with her hair tied up in a bandanna. Her jeans were filthy, and she carried a broom and dustpan. “I never saw so much broken glass,” she bemoaned the mess everywhere.

  Andre Valetti appeared on the back porch outside the empty door frame. He was dressed in a pair of coveralls, and Sylvia hardly recognized him without his usual expensive clothing. He looked disturbed.

  “Everybody here come through okay?” He scanned the area, taking in the breakage. “You’re lucky this old firetrap didn’t spring a gas leak and go up.”

  “We’ve got sprinklers,” Buck said, “like all lodging establishments in the state.”

  “Of course.” After a decent interval, “Buck, you’re a geologist. I wanted to ask you about the springs.”

  Buck stepped over the downed door and outside. “Surging, are they?”

  “How did you know?”

  Buck frowned. “It’s common for wells and springs to behave oddly during or after quakes. The movement of groundwater can be upset by even small movements along local faults.”

  Andre looked upriver. “The water is cloudy and the flow erratic as hell.”

  Buck started down the steps.

  The river did look turbid and the water level higher than Sylvia remembered it.

  The geologist reached the bank, knelt, and put a hand in the water. “Warmer than usual.”

  Sylvia, Lyle, and Mary followed as Buck and Andre walked up to the springs. When they drew closer, they could see that the hot pools and even the river running through its rock-lined sluiceway steamed in the morning air.

  The travertine cliff guarding the cavern was wet twenty feet in the air, the fronds of ferns shining. From beneath the overhang of rock, a gurgling emerged that built to a crescendo as the surface of the usually placid water boiled up.

  “My God.” Mary pressed her fist to her mouth.

  Lyle touched Sylvia’s shoulder and a roll of Andre’s dark eyes said he noticed.

  The springs subsided again; a cloud of turbid rock flour swirled away downstream with the current.

  “Lots of people get their water from this source.” Buck shifted his weight. “Including our inn, the Palisades Pure bottlers, and the town of Calistoga.”

  “And Villa Valetti,” Andre put in grimly. “You once told me these hills are full of mercury and silver mines. Think this could have done anything?”

  “The water will have to be analyzed down at Palisades Pure.” Buck looked up toward Mount Saint Helena. “If the quake has shifted things about, we could find the springs are no longer safe to drink.”

  “You must be joking.” Andre put a hand to his chest. He looked again at the steaming hot pools. “Is there somebody you could call about this?”

  Buck looked thoughtful. “I could phone the U.S. Geological Survey. There’s one of their monitoring stations a mile or so downstream.”

  When Buck, Mary, and Sylvia turned back toward the inn, Lyle couldn’t resist the temptation to lag behind to speak with Andre.

  The vintner’s dark eyes opened wide enough to show the whites all around. Yet, this was the only indication of his discontent, as he gave one of his little bows and gestured Lyle toward a picnic table beside one of the hot pool
s.

  Lyle sat on the tabletop. Andre stood, and they were eye to eye.

  “After we talked yesterday, I did some digging into Esther Quenton’s death.”

  Andre’s nostrils flared.

  “Seems to me it was funny she would be out on a cliff south of San Francisco all alone.”

  A shrug.

  “The woman couldn’t walk unassisted. She didn’t drive. How did she get there?”

  A blink. “How should I know?”

  “She wouldn’t sell. After she died, her estate executor, David Dickerson, did.”

  Andre’s jaw tensed. “How—”

  “Mrs. Quenton’s obituary listed him as her attorney. Did someone have a meeting with her about the land up here? Take her for a drive, perhaps?” If Lyle were in court, the opposing attorney would already have objected and been sustained, and the judge would have ruled out his line of questioning for asking the witness to speculate.

  “Are you suggesting Tony killed Esther Quenton for her land?” Andre’s face purpled. “He’s got too many irons in the fire to care about one single deal.”

  Lyle pushed off the bench and towered over Andre. “I thought about that, too. The land he bought up here isn’t big enough for a guy like him.”

  Andre made what Lyle thought was a conscious effort to relax. “No, it is not nearly large enough for Tony.”

  “I agree.” Lyle capitulated too easily and watched for the effect.

  Andre remained stone-faced, while Lyle prepared his final thrust. With a gesture toward the vineyards across the road, he said, “I wonder if it might be big enough for you to get impatient for the old woman to die.”

  “How dare you speak to me that way?” Andre demanded. “You come up here with your courtroom tricks and bait me with wild accusations …” Unfazed by Lyle’s size, he moved in and tapped a finger sharply on his breastbone. It hurt.

  Lyle resisted stepping back or grabbing the guy’s wrist. He wanted to see where this led.

  Unfortunately, Andre only said, “You will not get away with this,” before he walked away.

  By five p.m., an amazing amount of cleaning up had been accomplished at the inn. Lyle would not have believed it possible, but in large measure the interior showed little sign of last night’s upheaval. Of course, the piles of trash bags in the front yard spoke volumes.

  While he was showering in naturally hot spring water that needed cutting with more cold than it had the day before, Lyle considered the implication of what Buck had suggested to Andre. If something had happened along an underground fault to change the subterranean flow, and if it had connected into an aquifer near one of the old mines, then the water cascading over his body might already be contaminated.

  The next few days would bring answers, once the local spring water bottlers made their analyses. If there was a problem, that would make it easier for him to convince Sylvia to return to San Francisco with him.

  He wondered again what he was going to do about her father. Was he crazy to risk losing the half-million-dollar bounty by keeping her secret?

  Or was he merely nuts to believe there was a chance for him with the Senator’s daughter? She’d already disappeared on him once.

  While Sylvia was toweling off from her shower, the power came back on, as evidenced by a ceiling fan starting. That was good; she hadn’t fancied candlelight again tonight, considering there could still be aftershocks.

  It was strange. As terrified as she had been during the interminable seconds of the quake, it had actually turned out to have some benefits.

  Today when Lyle had pitched in to help Buck and Mary, she had sensed their trust in him growing. If she couldn’t have her own parents approve, it made her feel better to know Buck and Mary seemed to like him.

  The other “benefit” was a paradox. Last night, when the earthquake had struck, she and Lyle had been close to having sex. Another few minutes and they would have been caught in the act, so to speak. Yet, as frustrating as that had been, it almost had a silver lining.

  During the quake, she’d had a singular insight—she didn’t want to die just when she was learning how to live. And last night on the lawn, when she and Lyle had slept in each other’s arms, it had made her feel closer to him than mere sex ever could. How magnificent it had felt to wake up beside him beneath the stars and fall back into the warmth of slumber with his body aligned with hers.

  Somehow, she was glad it had happened in that order.

  She stopped in the act of toweling her hair and looked at herself in the mirror. No “ifs,” “buts,” or “yets” about it. The next chance she got, she was going to make love with Lyle.

  “I’m a little nervous about sleeping indoors tonight,” Sylvia told Lyle when she met him on the lawn by the river at six o’clock. As there were no guests, there was thus no afternoon reception.

  “We’ve been working inside most of the day,” he pointed out from where he lounged in a wicker chair with a glass of Montague Merlot at hand … along with the bottle and an extra glass. “How is it different in the dark?”

  Though he made sense, she gave a little shiver. “A lot of things are different in the dark.”

  “Some I can think of are much better.” Lyle’s grin showed his teeth.

  Her stomach fluttered at how close they’d come to spending last night in bed. His damp blond hair bore comb marks, his pale yellow collared shirt over faded, soft-looking jeans accentuated the sun glow he’d picked up the past few days.

  Sylvia lowered herself into the chair beside him, favoring her back after today’s exertion. Or perhaps she ached from the way her muscles had locked up during the quake.

  For reassurance, she itemized, “Buck’s been online checking the National Earthquake Information Center every couple of hours. He says it was probably an isolated event on a local fault.”

  Lyle poured wine and passed the glass to her. “If that’s true, what does it tell us? Nobody knows when the next earthquake is.”

  She took the drink, raised it to the low angle sun filtering through the trees, and studied the ruby color. “Or whether an asteroid will hit the earth,” she quipped.

  “Or if your bed will catch fire while you’re sleeping.”

  Sylvia stared at him, the hair on her forearms lifting. There was no reason for her unease … “That’s enough worst-case scenarios. I’m sorry I started it.”

  “I’m sorry I said something that disturbed you.” Lyle reached a big hand to cover hers. “Let’s think about something pleasant.” His voice was warm silk. “Like last night under the stars, the way it felt to hold you while you slept.”

  From the touch of his fingers on hers, the ever-reliable current started humming between them. It made her feel good enough to tease, “Slept? I couldn’t have caught a wink after that eighteen-wheeler smashed into the bed.”

  “Au contraire.” Lyle grinned. “You snored. Kept me awake watching the moon for hours.”

  A chuckle burst up and spilled into the soft air. How skilled Lyle was at making her laugh.

  He squeezed her fingers; Sylvia returned the favor.

  “The thing I liked most about today was helping Buck and Mary out,” he said. “They were funny about me before, but I know now it was because they care about you.”

  “That’s true. And I’m glad they like you.”

  For a long moment, Lyle’s focus was on the forest. “You know, your parents must care about you, too. No matter how badly they handle things.”

  Sylvia almost withdrew her hand, but left it in his clasp. “I’ve been thinking about that. I certainly hold my end up when it comes to giving as good … or as bad as I get.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” he proposed. “You come back to the City and see them, and I’ll go out to the San Joaquin Valley to visit my father.”

  How marvelous it would be to have the weight of wondering how this would be resolved off her shoulders. Yet, how her chest ached at the prospect of telling her parents she’d disappeared jus
t to spite them.

  “I’ll take you along to see Pop,” Lyle went on.

  Though her heartbeat accelerated at the implication of meeting his father, she couldn’t commit. Most people looking at her situation would simply say, “Stop acting childish and do the right thing,” but there was more to it.

  When you had a fight with someone, even if you knew you were in the wrong, the more time that passed without telling them you were sorry, the harder it became. Like a friend you hadn’t talked to in years and whom you dreaded calling because you were embarrassed by how long it had been. Finally, it was easier not to get in touch, and you’d lost a friend.

  All she could tell Lyle was, “I’ll think about it.”

  Lyle almost hoped she would. Though he had trouble imagining taking her to the house he’d grown up in, it would certainly be the acid test when it came to finding out whether she could face his past poverty.

  The silence between them deepened, while they each struggled with the burden of family. Was there anyone who sprang from the ideal household?

  Time to drop this topic and move on.

  To little niceties like dinner.

  “After today’s manual labor, I’m ready to eat,” he ventured.

  “It would be all a woman could do to keep you fed,” she countered.

  The voltage between them jumped up, and he had to think about breathing. “You applying for the job?”

  “I’ve got a job. At the Lava Springs Inn.”

  “Nice dodge.” Though his mind had immediately started flashing images of walks on the beach, drives in the country, and cooking together in his loft, he kept it light. “Seriously, do you want to drive down to Calistoga and see if their power’s on? Find some food.”

  “I’m too bushed. How about if we raid the fridge?”

  “As long as somebody puts it on my tab.”

  Sylvia laughed. “Relax. Buck and Mary told me to help myself to whatever I wanted.”

  Ten minutes later, they sat on the back porch sharing a repast of cheese, French bread, grapes, and apples. Though Lyle would have liked to get back to the subject of him and Sylvia sharing more than food, as in cementing a relationship that lasted beyond these days at the inn, he kept up the bantering tone.