The Senator’s Daughter Page 5

What difference did any of it make?

  Her last guy was happily married. Lyle, the man who might have been next, couldn’t afford to jeopardize his career by being seen with a “tramp.”

  Ever since she left her parents’ place, she’d been on the edge, but now she lost it. A stabbing pain cut her chest, and the back of her throat closed. She folded down onto the carpet.

  Not just Corinne Walker and her friends wanted her to leave town, her own mother and father wished she’d disappear like Tony Valetti. The redecoration of her room must have been a message. The Chatsworths had enough space for guests without trashing her full body pillow that she’d hugged and imagined to be her ideal man, her collage of concert tickets and posters of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

  What had her mother done with them? She’d never said, and for some reason Sylvia refused to ask. She wanted to believe they’d been packed away with care, Laura’s memories of her daughter being a typical teen.

  Sitting cross-legged, Sylvia let her shoulders droop. The pose was an uncanny mirror of the one she’d adopted in first grade when she decided to hide in her closet forever because nobody cared. Her miscalculation had been that Lawrence and Laura were entertaining that evening and had neither the time nor the inclination to wonder where their small daughter was.

  As the hours in the closet passed, her legs had grown numb. Six-year-old Sylvia wanted Mommy. To run to her and jump up, heedless of Laura’s legs encased in sleek hosiery, to wrap skinny legs around her waist and bury her head into her shoulder. Mommy always smelled of soap, sachet, and perfume from one of the many colorful bottles on her dressing table. On rare occasions, she’d pull one of the ground glass stoppers, wave it about leaving a cloud of scent, and touch the cool tip behind Sylvia’s ears, knees, and on her wrists.

  Mommy was like a queen. Yet, Sylvia sometimes wished she were like other mothers.

  Cathy Ferron’s mom cooked all the meals for her family. When Sylvia visited, the kitchen was full of warm smells, of Toll House cookies fresh from the oven with the semisweet morsels nearly liquid, a huge pot of beans with a ham bone simmering, and delicious dry cornbread that crumbled when you tried to butter it.

  Mommy said Sylvia wasn’t to go there anymore because Cathy’s folks weren’t “their kind.”

  Maybe Daddy would come and find her in the closet. He was so smart—everybody was always saying that. Though she’d been missing for hours, soon he must be able to detect her and walk right to where she was. Tonight, he’d be wearing his suit and tie with an immaculate shirt she mustn’t rumple. But he’d be so glad to see her, he’d let her cuddle against him and not worry about his clothes. He’d wrap his arms around her and murmur she was his best girl.

  She stared at the crack of light under the door and told herself they’d be sorry if she starved. When they found her dead, they’d drop everything that interested them so much and wonder how they could have been so stupid not to cherish her before it was too late.

  Finally, after a child’s eternity, someone snapped off the light outside. The closet went black, and Sylvia started to scream.

  When the door opened, she cried, “Mommy! Daddy!” but her rescuer was their housekeeper.

  Though she was no first grader anymore, the memory still slashed like a blade.

  She told herself to grow up, but, as she had when she was a child, she remained on the floor. The inclement day gave way to evening and she sat in darkness, relieved only by the citrus glow of a streetlight. The wine splotch on the wallpaper, where she’d thrown the glass at Rory Campbell’s exit, was a blacker blot on gray.

  Somewhere this evening he and his wife were having dinner. She imagined them talking a little shop, as they were both in real-estate development, then setting aside work in favor of having a glass of good vino and winding down from the day together.

  Sylvia wished she had somebody. But everybody branded her a bitch.

  Hadn’t she considered that in the bathroom stall at Ice? Shouldn’t she have remembered the luncheon to help battered women? When her mother had baited her this afternoon, hadn’t it been cruel to cut down her hairdo?

  With a knot in her stomach, Sylvia wondered what time it was. At eleven, “On the Spot” would feature her again, the Senator’s daughter hanging with bikers.

  She tried to put things in perspective. There had been good times growing up, hadn’t there? Walks with Mommy in the redwoods—Daddy came when he could take the time. Being swung to Daddy’s shoulders on the east-facing terrace at their hillside Sausalito home, so she could see “all the way to Boston and Virginia.” Shopping with her mother for the white dress Sylvia wore at her “coming out” party, patterned after Southern tradition.

  She needed to stay out of the deep end and act her age.

  But her mother and father might already be staring at the TV and wishing her picture was on a milk carton.

  She could get up; face the music. Watch the show, live or on her tiVo.

  Sylvia sat on her floor, her legs as numb as they’d been when she was six.

  Time passed.

  She could brazen this out as she’d been doing. Laugh in the face of Julio Castillo, Corinne Walker, and their ilk. Grandstand the way she had with the male entertainer, albeit with blouse on; pose with the Polk Street bikers.

  Oh, God. Lyle would see her on TV and hate her for making a public fool of him. It would look like she’d gone from him to those grungy men.

  A sob heaved her already aching chest. Lyle didn’t deserve the trouble she’d gotten him into with her thoughtlessness, didn’t need to see her on TV and agree with the rest of the world that she was a bitch.

  How could she go on? How could she keep holding her head up, when her spine felt like a broken stalk? The next time Julio Castillo held his mike in front of her, she’d break down in front of the world. And her mother would say, “A Cabot sheds tears in private,” or, “A Chatsworth never admits defeat.”

  Sylvia uncrossed her legs with a grimace. Pins and needles shot from her hips to her toes while she struggled to her feet.

  Going to the bedroom, she reached into the closet and jerked forth her luggage.

  She packed a single tote with casual clothing, jeans, and her low-heeled leather boots, but left her sequined scarf tops that skimmed her tummy. From the floor safe, she pulled several thousand dollars in cash she’d earned working in a prestigious North Beach gallery, something her parents did not approve of… “A Chatsworth doesn’t wait on other people.”

  It was well past midnight when she tossed her tote in the trunk, took a last look around, and closed her town-house door. Not knowing when she’d be back put a twist of nostalgia on the leave-taking, but she’d bought the place with Daddy’s money.

  From now on, Sylvia planned to earn her own.

  Ten minutes later, she accelerated her Jag onto the Golden Gate Bridge, headed for points north. She didn’t have any idea where she was going, only that she had to get away.

  As no one would notice her being gone for a few days, she might as well use her car until she found a place to hide out…

  Who was she kidding? Her father would have her tracked down without effort. What he wasn’t counting on was that when he did, his daughter wasn’t going back under his thumb.

  At three a.m., it was pitch dark on the treacherous wet hairpins of Highway 29 north of Calistoga.

  What was she doing? She should be home in bed.

  But Sylvia remembered that up ahead where the northern end of the Napa wine country gave way to forest, there were redwoods. How crazy was that, but she’d been thinking of the peaceful groves as though they were a symbol of her escape.

  Driving north, she’d followed Highway 101 to Healdsburg and decided on the Alexander Valley Road to Calistoga. She’d avoided the most mountainous route, but her eyes ached from peering ahead through rain-dimmed headlights, and a pair of knives seemed to have been inserted below her shoulder blades.

  Too much stress, and though she considered tak
ing a room at a Calistoga inn, she pressed on. The dark rows of vines on the flat valley floor gave way to a steepening climb.

  She’d just drive up into the forest, find a pullout, and sleep the few hours till morning. Then she’d ferret out a private little off-road B&B or inn, register as Jane Doe or some such, pay cash, and park her Jag. Tell the owners it was on the fritz and grab rides to get groceries. She couldn’t hope to disappear cleanly, but it might be weeks before her father figured out where she was.

  How long would it take to notice she was gone?

  Sylvia told herself to turn around and get back to her place before dawn. That this was the purest form of childishness, the equivalent of a little girl testing her family by hiding in a closet.

  Yet, this wasn’t just about her folks. It wasn’t about finding out who her friends were by who worried the most about her not sending e-mail or texting. And it wasn’t to see what Julio Castillo would say.

  She wasn’t going to read the papers or watch TV. She was going to rest and think about what she wanted to do with her life. Being an “heirhead,” as the tabloids called celebrity daughters, was no longer on the agenda.

  This road really was dangerous on a wet night, twisting and turning like an anaconda. A diamond-shaped yellow sign indicated a twenty-five-mile-per-hour curve ahead.

  Pumping her foot on the brake, Sylvia got her speed down. But as she entered the tightest arc, her Jag lost traction on the wet pavement and skidded, thankfully toward the inside lane instead of an apparently sheer drop on the right.

  She made it around the curve and saw the looming silver side of a tanker coming out of a side road. As the truck swung wide for the turn, it blocked both lanes. Thank God the lettering on the side said, “Palisades Pure Water,” rather than “Mobil” or “Chevron.” But she still had to avoid T-boning the tank.

  It was amazing her mind could work in what she knew were milliseconds. If she pulled to the right, she’d have to go out onto the narrow shoulder and barely clear the truck’s front end. And she might end up going over the edge. Or she could cut left and try to slip through behind the massive vehicle.

  Sylvia jerked the wheel left. Every pebble skittered beneath the wheels on the shoulder. The Jag climbed the road cut on the inside of the curve, tilting down at a dangerous angle. A jagged outcrop stuck out ahead.

  Her car sideswiped it with a sickening crunch of metal on the driver’s side door. The shoulder belt compressed her chest, expelling the air from her lungs.

  Things were happening too fast. She needed to get back down on the road and pass behind the tanker on pavement.

  When she tried, she clipped the side road’s stop sign with her left front fender.

  The Jag careened right, narrowly missing the rear bumper of the tanker.

  Sylvia tried to regain control and steer back into her lane of traffic, but, as the truck disappeared around the curve, her tires fought for traction. She tried the brakes. The Jag barreled onto the outer shoulder.

  With no guardrail, her headlights stabbed into the void.

  Chapter 4

  Lyle couldn’t sleep.

  When he was a child, Mama called the black time between one and four a.m. the “witching hour.” Sometimes, when he would wake up crying from a bad dream, she would come into his bed and put her arm around him. She’d tell him stories of a little boy growing up to marry a princess.

  From the time he was six and had been too big a boy for that, he’d never experienced such peace and the sensation of being loved without reservation.

  Wherever she was tonight, if she were somewhere tonight, he hoped she slept better than he.

  With a punch to his pillow, he rolled onto his back. Though he kept his blinds open to let in a sky view over the Bay, the fog was in, aglow from sodium vapor lights.

  He should be sleeping soundly, or sawing logs and stacking them, as Pop used to say, but for the past two days, he hadn’t been able to get Sylvia out of his head.

  First, on Saturday when he’d spent time online researching the Valetti brothers and succumbing to the urge to check out the Senator. Turned out if somebody was looking for a high-powered Bay Area developer, one need look no further than Chatsworth. Though he’d placed his company at arm’s length to avoid any conflict of interest, the man had formerly had his thumb in every pie.

  Every time Lyle read the word Chatsworth, he flashed back to the too-brief evening he’d spent with the man’s daughter. Maybe it was crazy, but he could have sworn when he left her town house Sylvia was in tears behind her bedroom door. Not the crocodile kind, but the genuine, clench-your-gut-until-you-thought-you’d-throw-up variety.

  Then why had he spent Saturday and Sunday dithering about phoning her?

  His friend Cliff was always on him about being afraid of commitment. Usually he didn’t bother to argue the point … he had gone back and forth about calling Sylvia a dozen times since leaving her Friday night.

  It must have been the right decision, for a few hours ago, “On the Spot” had disabused him of the notion Sylvia cared about anything or anybody.

  No hearsay this time. Lyle saw her on television with her arms around two chopper boys’ thick necks.

  It was clear he didn’t know the woman at all. They’d shared a martini, an escape from the paparazzi complete with theatrical heroics on his part… and a kiss that had scorched him.

  Lyle gave up on sleep. Pulling on a pair of well-worn gray sweatpants, he went to the kitchen to make a pot of Sumatra Decaf. While he sat at his glass-topped table listening to the sucking sounds of the machine and savoring the aroma of fresh-ground beans, he had a sensation of unease that couldn’t be explained by his anger at Sylvia or at himself.

  Rising, he felt the flush of adrenaline, the old fight-or-fight response. His hands stung.

  God knew he hated earthquakes. The ones he’d experienced had left him with a sense of helplessness.

  But when Lyle placed a hand on the tabletop, it felt steady. A look at a mug in the sink, half-filled with water, confirmed no disturbance of the liquid’s surface.

  He went to the French doors and out onto the rooftop terrace. All appeared normal, no sirens, no shouting in the streets … or any apparent explanation for his feeling.

  Rubbing his hands together to relieve their tingling, he went back inside.

  The Jag’s nose pointed down at a terrifying angle; dark tree trunks leaped past the windshield. Yet, as the plunge continued, picking up speed, the car managed to miss a collision.

  Heart racing, Sylvia tried to steer.

  The front end smashed into a thick pine and went abruptly from thirty miles per hour to zero. The air bag deployed in a powdery cloud, striking her face and chest. The squeal of outraged metal gave way to a background of steam hissing from the radiator.

  A mental inventory said she wasn’t hurt.

  She’d heard people in shock sometimes didn’t feel pain.

  The air bag gradually lost pressure until she could see over it. With both headlights out and the overcast, it was pitch dark; she fought claustrophobia. Unbuckling her seat belt, she fumbled in the glove box for a flashlight.

  She must have left it out the last time she changed the batteries.

  Sylvia tried to open her door, but it didn’t budge; jammed in the frame, either from the first collision with the outcrop or from the frontal impact.

  At the realization she might be trapped, her mouth went dry. In darkness, she strained to detect the Jaguar’s accordioned front end through the cracked windshield. The impact had been greater on the passenger side than the driver’s, causing the dash to collapse on top of her purse on the floor. Try as she might, she wasn’t able to get it free.

  She twisted around and reached across the console, only to discover the passenger door wouldn’t open, either.

  She turned the key. The engine failed to fire. She tried the power window buttons in vain.

  A scream rose in the back of her throat, but who would hear? Nobody kne
w she was down here unless the tanker driver had seen her go over the edge.

  As if on cue, far away on the winding curves of Highway 29, she heard the tanker downshift for a curve.

  Though it was just after three a.m., Lyle showered, dressed, and headed in to the forbidding, prisonlike gray box known as the San Francisco Hall of Justice. He parked in his usual monthly space on a vacant lot beneath a freeway ramp, walked past a bail bondsman’s office, and entered the building through the security checkpoint.

  Once in his office, he played investigator on the Internet.

  No, he didn’t play. He was damned fine at ferreting out the smallest tidbit he might use to paint a defendant in the kind of light that would sway a jury of his or her peers.

  This morning’s project lacked both defendant and jury. But Lyle smelled victim all over the missing person of Antone … Tony Valetti.

  He thought back over their exchange and didn’t see a personality who would have slipped away and harmed himself. No, someone must have had it in for Tony, and it must have something to do with money.

  What if Tony had borrowed from the wrong Italian family? Some of that ilk still used strong-arm tactics on their debtors.

  Lyle decided to follow the money by finding out what deals Tony was involved in.

  At the charity auction he’d overheard something about an oceanfront property named Emerald Cliff, but found nothing on it online. Must be too early for the sales phase.

  Tony had also mentioned something up north, so Lyle started a county-by-county search of property tax ownership.

  He hit pay dirt in Napa County. It seemed that Tony was the owner of a large tract in the foothills where the vineyards of the Napa Valley gave way to the Mayacamas Mountains. Only last month Tony had purchased over five hundred acres from the estate of a woman named Esther Quenton. The price appeared cheap for the area.

  Intent on his computer screen, Lyle barely heard the swish of pant legs. He fumbled his index finger on the mouse and slid the cursor to bring up his screen saver.

  He didn’t move fast enough.