By The Sea, Book Four: The Heirs by Antoinette Stockenberg Read Free Book Online

trench jacket from Bill Blass; a
front-button white linen dress by Calvin Klein; a lace-trimmed
blouse and earth-toned ruffled skirt by Ralph Lauren—initially they
would be heading west, after all. Cindy winced as she jammed a
couple of Oscar de la Renta silks into the duffle; probably they
would never be wearable again, but tissue-paper packing was out of
the question.
    Should she take the pearl and crystal beaded
bed jacket? So pretty, but no. She tossed it reluctantly back into
the drawer. The jogging suit was more of a problem—bulky, but she
squished it ruthlessly into a corner. She'd always meant to try
jogging, though not at six in the morning, when Alan ran.
    Accessories. She had dreaded this moment,
having bought wildly and with little regard for the space shoes and
handbags took up. After several false starts Cindy settled on a
small ring-lizard clutch in a carefully neutral shade; a shoulder
bag of snake and calfskin; another in dove grey lambskin. The
cobalt-blue high heels—Paris—went in and out of the bag several
times, remaining, with much sorrow, out. All the other shoes
stayed. Finally, she dressed herself in jeans and a pale green
pullover of cotton weave. She couldn't get more unobtrusive than
that.
    Time to go. Cindy pulled open the bottom
drawer of a miniature antique carved rosewood chest, lifted the
silk lining, and removed the cash she had so assiduously scraped
together in the last few weeks. It wasn't much—ten thousand dollars
in hundred-dollar bills—but it would be convenient. She had savings
bonds, too: twenty thousand dollars' worth (on maturity), an
inheritance gift from her grandmother, the only lump of money she'd
ever received that wasn't designated to that odious trust fund. But
could she cash them if she were dead? On the whole, she thought
not; but she took them along anyway.
    She must not take any of her jewelry, of
course; that she understood. Nearly all of the heirloom pieces were
in a safe deposit box, anyway—and out of sight, in Cindy's case,
was definitely out of mind. Still ... she fingered the double
strand of gray Tahitian pearls and diamonds that she had so nearly
worn tonight and sighed. Such a waste to leave them behind when she
so often wore black. She threw the necklace into her duffel bag
with the cash and the bonds, zipped up the canvas bag, and hurried
to the door, forgetting that she'd locked it. In the split second
that it took to dump her bags on the floor and turn the key, she
reconsidered about the cobalt shoes, ran back to her closet,
scooped them up and jammed them into a side pocket of the duffel.
If they hadn't been the exact color of her eyes, she would not have
bothered.
    Tiptoeing down the hall in the opposite
direction of Alan's rooms, Cindy suddenly froze, gripped by the
first real moment of panic she had felt since she'd returned to the
house. The note! She'd forgotten the suicide note! She retraced her
steps to her room, sat down at the Queen Anne writing desk at which
she'd poured out so many passionate letters in the last two months,
and scribbled vindictively: "Alan, it was an accident, but what
difference does that make? You wouldn't care, either way. My life
is a mess. Cindy." She tucked the note into the leather edge of the
desk blotter, locked the door as she left, and in minutes was on
her way to a rendezvous with the Newport Bridge.
    Now that she had made her escape from
Seacliff, and despite the first faint suggestion of a foggy, murky
sunrise, Cindy began to sink fast into an exhausting sense of
anticlimax. She rummaged in the handbag lying on the seat beside
her until she found a large gold pillbox—not without taking the
Mercedes nearly off the road. How ironic, she thought, popping two
diet pills into her mouth, if after all this she crashed head-on
into a telephone pole.
    Like most resort towns, Newport tended to
party late and sleep in on the following morning. Ocean Avenue,
which meandered along the coast past dozens of huge