Hers the Kingdom (77 page)

For three days she distracted herself with trips to Berkeley, where she and Porter went to coffeehouses where they listened to political speakers, or to the moving pictures, or sometimes took long walks in the eucalyptus groves, which made her think of the ranch. Porter tried to get her to talk about her future, and when she wouldn't he accused her of being evasive.

     "True," she told him, "but I'm not going anywhere, not for a while. I'll tell you when I'm ready."

     She shopped at the City of Paris. She even agreed to lunch with an acquaintance from school, regretting it immediately. The girl chattered incessantly.

     On the morning of the fourth day she rose at five, dressed carefully and warmly, pulled on sensible shoes and a woolen scarf, and drove Sara's yellow Stutz out to the beach.

     She arrived just after six; the green Pierce-Arrow was there. She caught her breath. She could feel the blood throbbing in her temples. She slowed, doubt assailed her. She all but turned the car around, but, instead, stepped hard on the gas pedal, and pulled up next to the big car.

     "Hello," she called to the driver with false cheerfulness, "I'm late, I'm afraid. I take it he's already gone in for his swim?"

     The driver looked at her, confused. Then he recognized her and smiled politely. "Yes, miss," he said, "no more than five minutes ago. He'll be twenty more, at least."

     "You can put his things in my car," she said, "I'll take the towel and wait for him."

     "Ma'am?" the driver said, confusion flickering over his face.

     "Didn't Mr. McCord tell you that I would be meeting him here, to drive him back?"

     "No, ma'am, he didn't."

     "Perhaps he didn't think I would make it on time," she laughed, a warm, girlish laugh. "That scoundrel!" He laughed too, then, sharing the joke. While she had the advantage, she quickly reached for the towel. "You are to have the morning off, I believe. If you'll just put his things in my car there." She nodded toward the flashy little Stutz. "Well, in truth it's Sara Hunt's car, but I pretend it's mine."

     "Miss Hunt, oh, yes," the driver said jovially, gathering up his employer's clothing.

     She did not wait, but walked off toward the water's edge as if to wait, searching the foggy waters for some sign of the swimmer.

     When she looked back, the Pierce-Arrow was driving along the highway. She pulled the towel close around her and laughed; the first part of the plan had worked. He could not avoid her now.

     She caught sight of him, stroking steadily, riding a wave as it surged forward out of the fog. Then he was standing, walking toward her. His body was tightly muscled, she noted, his chest covered with wet, gray hair, his legs slim. A good body, she thought, and felt her own stomach tighten.

     He did not break pace, but took the towel from her without a word and began to dry himself as he must every day, not looking at her now but attending to the business at hand.

     She waited. She had thought she would say something witty, something glib, but words seemed locked inside her. Her smile felt fixed; she could not speak.

     They walked together toward her car on the deserted beach. From the roadway above, they would have looked as if they knew each other well enough to walk without speaking, they would have looked as if they knew where they were going.

     He reached into the car, pulled on his clothes, tucked in his shirt without the semblance of embarrassment at buttoning his pants in front of her. She could scarcely bring herself to look at his face, such was her discomfort. When she finally did, she could not tell what he was thinking or feeling. His face was not readable.

     Suddenly she felt angry, it welled within her and spilled over. "Damn you," she said, "just damn you."

     She started the car, every motion a jabbing anger. She pulled out of the dirt in a spray of sand and gravel. Connor slammed his door shut, but a quick turn sent it flying out from him so that he struggled a few moments.

     She slammed on the brake. "I have been stupid . . . stupid and childish and . . ." She had turned toward him, and now she looked at him. "I don't have the slightest idea why I would do this, and I am terribly sorry and embarrassed. Tell me where I should take you."

     He smiled then, a small and careful smile.

     "I'll take you home," she said, disgusted with herself. "And I won't bother you again, I promise."

     He spoke, then, for the first time: "Surely you had some plan, something more than taking my pants, that is."

     "It wasn't your pants I was after," she said, the anger returning. "Though please . . . don't tell me I'm too young for that, too. I'm not."

     "Whoa . . . wait one minute, slow down," he said to her, laughing now at her anger, "you've successfully kidnaped me, the very least you can do is buy me a cup of coffee."

     She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and whispered, "Where?"

     "There's a diner down the way."

     "Your pants are wet," she answered.

     "Maybe no one will notice," he said.

     Sitting on stools in the brightly lit diner, sipping bad coffee from heavy mugs, she told him, "It really was a childish thing to do, especially when I'm trying to convince you I am not a child, but I wanted to see you and you wouldn't . . ."

     McCord said nothing, but sipped the steaming coffee. He was wearing his wet swimsuit under his clothes, but if it was uncomfortable, he didn't show it.

Porter sat in his usual sprawl on the lounge in Sara's morning room, turning a chambered nautilus from Sara's collection of shells over and over in his hands, studying it while listening intently.

     "I have been trying to understand why I've been acting so strangely," Kit said. "He is an interesting man, that's part of it. And I wonder if it's because I've never had anyone push me away before, I mean any man I was interested in . . ."

     "Have you ever been interested before? I mean, that much?"

     Kit shook her head. "I suppose not, but it's not just silly romantic notions, Porter. I enjoy him, yes. There is something exciting about the man. But . . ." She shook her head, dropped her hands. "Maybe it is just because he won't see me, maybe that is it . . . maybe that's all there is to it."

     "Maybe," Porter said. "It looks as if it is keeping you from doing anything else, so you had better find out."

     "Thanks for the sympathy," she said.

     "What the hell do you need sympathy for?" he answered, and she patted him on the sleeve to let him know she didn't.

     "Push him," Porter said. "Just keep after him until he explains why he can't see you. Maybe he's got a wife and kids stashed away—hidden in that big house he owns out by Crystal Springs."

     Then Porter smiled. "I still can't quite feature the beautiful Kit, Queen of the May, hiding a man's clothes from him."

     She threw a pillow at him and he, catching it, caught her too and held her easily at bay with one hand. She flailed at him helplessly, until she began to laugh and he joined her.

     "I'd like to meet him too," Porter said. "I've always wanted to know what he thinks about the Mooney case . . . he was there, that day. We know that."

     "Well you can't see him, Porter. Not until he agrees to see me, at least."

     "Too bad Sara isn't here," he said, "maybe she could help."

     "I rather doubt it," Kit answered, biting her lower lip. "I have a feeling that Sara wouldn't approve. Otherwise, why wouldn't we have met Connor before? He and Sara are friends, good friends. And we have wanted to meet him, we asked . . . remember?"

     Porter did remember. "It is a mystery, isn't it?" he said. "Maybe Philip knows something. He's coming next week, we can find out."

Philip took a long time to study the menu, then he asked for a wine list and took an equally long time to decide on his choice.

     Porter looked at Kit and raised his eyebrows. She knew what he meant. Philip knew something and he was trying to decide how much to tell them.

     Kit's stomach tightened.

     "He is, I think, quite an interesting man," she said, trying to sound casual, "McCord, I mean. But he doesn't seem to want to see me. Naturally," she mocked, "I find that terribly difficult to understand." She frowned. "Even more difficult to understand is
why
it angers me so—I don't know any man, other than Porter, who can make me angry."

     Philip smiled at her, patted her hand. "Kit," he said, "could it be, well—could he perhaps think you too young? He is a man of experience, and . . ."

     "For Christ's sake, Philip," Porter started, but Kit stopped him.

     Philip shifted uncomfortably. He knew what Porter had been about to say. "I'm sorry, Kit, really I am," he said, "you're more mature than most of the women I know, and damned attractive as well. I suspect it's something else. Have you thought, well . . . have you thought that there might be another woman?" He said this with a certain delicacy.

     Kit leaned across the table as if to share a confidence. "I am not necessarily applying for the position of mistress of his household," she whispered, "I simply want to get to know the man."

     Philip and Porter exchanged glances.

     Porter leaned back in his chair and began tapping a spoon against the crystal. In his shabby corduroys, he should have seemed out of place in the elegant little restaurant; instead, he seemed so perfectly at ease that the waiter, annoyed by the clinking of the crystal and the fact that Porter's long legs rested in the walkway, still could not bring himself to say anything to the young gentleman.

     "Could we settle this romantic problem so we can get on to other, perhaps equally important, subjects?" Porter said.

     Kit smiled sweetly and put her hand over the spoon. "Stop making noises, dear heart," she said, "and stop referring to my interest in McCord as 'romantic.' It's condescending."

     "Kit's right," Philip said. "I do know a bit about McCord, nothing that isn't common knowledge, I suppose. I know, for example, that he spent a few years in San Quentin some time back."

     "Really?" Kit and Porter said in unison.

     "A long time back, actually. After that, he seems to have made quite a spectacular fortune with a gold mine in Grass Valley, I believe. He developed a way to reach the deeper veins in the old mine. Sara's done business with him."

     "Of course Sara's done business with him," Porter laughed. "Count on Sara."

     Kit was thinking about their conversation at the restaurant at the beach. She had mentioned San Quentin and he had looked away, had seemed uncomfortable. Was that it? Was that why he wouldn't see her?

     She turned the talk to Philip's work on the court, and they went from that to their own futures, hers and Porter's. They spoke of Wing Soong in Macao with Sara and their auntie. They talked of politics and power and Philip, feeling the warmth of the wine and the good feelings of old friends, told them once more what
a remarkable pair they were, how extraordinarily intelligent he believed them to be.

     Philip sat up late that night in his room at the Palace Hotel, trying to decide. He went through it all in his mind, covering every point as he might a case. He was concentrating as hard as ever he had, trying to determine what was just . . . understanding that justice often had little enough to do with fairness, or right. It was a case that he had considered for a very long time and he knew, he was certain, that in some way he was a participant, that he was inextricably involved in its resolution. He wished he were not. He wished he were merely an observer, not feeling the need to act.

     "Are you playing God?" he asked himself. Willa would say so. Willa would accuse him of taking revenge.

     "Is that right?" he asked himself. "Is it because she couldn't love you enough, is that it?"

     He puffed on his cigar, and looked out over the buildings on Market Street. He blew one circle of smoke and then another, letting them float out of the window to disperse. No, he said to himself, that's not it either. He had come to terms with Willa Reade. He accepted, finally, what Willa must have known. That there was not enough between them. That he—or she—was lacking some final wellspring of . . . of what? Need, perhaps. It wasn't there, or, if it was, it wasn't powerful enough. He lay back, closed his eyes, and dozed fitfully.