Chapter 5 - The Geography of the Arrival
The Gulfstream touched down on runway two-five at Santa Barbara Municipal Airport at ten-forty-eight Pacific Time.
The air that met the open cabin door was sixty-six degrees, dry, smelling of eucalyptus, wild sage, and the cold salt spray of the Pacific. It was an entirely different atmosphere from the heavy, brick-dust humidity of Philadelphia; it had no memory of nineteenth-century ledgers, no trace of medical board dinners, no scent of old tuberose trapped behind louvered shutters.
A black Range Rover was waiting on the tarmac beside the Signature Flight Support terminal.
The driver was an older man named Mateo, who had managed the grounds at my family’s Montecito estate since my tenth summer. He took the four titanium cases from the cargo loader without speaking, stowing them in the rear with the quiet, practiced deference of a man who understood that when the Sterling women arrived without husbands, questions were an impermissible luxury.
"The house is aired, Miss Claire," Mateo said, holding the rear door open. "Mrs. Ortega has the heaters on in the north wing. The lemons are ripe on the lower terrace."
"Thank you, Mateo."
The drive up the coast took twenty-two minutes.
The estate, known simply as El Mirador, sat on twelve acres of coastal bluffs above Butterfly Beach. It had been built in nineteen-twenty-six by an architect who had trained in Seville: thick white stucco walls, low roofs of hand-molded clay tiles, deep loggias paved with terracotta pavers that had been seasoned with linseed oil until they looked like dark amber.
It was the house my mother had retreated to when my father died in nineteen-ninety-nine.
It was the house where I had learned to ride thoroughbreds, where I had read the complete works of George Eliot beneath the olive trees, and where Graham Vale had spent exactly three weekends in eleven years because he claimed the coastal marine layer gave him chronic sinusitis that impaired his tactile sensitivity during surgery.
We reached the gate at eleven-fifteen.
The wrought-iron gates swung inward with a faint, hydraulic groan, clearing the gravel driveway that wound through four hundred olive trees toward the central court.
I walked through the arched front entrance into the central courtyard.
The fountain was running—three tiers of carved limestone throwing thin, clear arcs of water into a pool lined with cobalt tiles from Puebla.
In the loggia, a long cedar table was set with a white linen runner, a bowl of small green figs from the garden, and an iced carafe of sparkling water.
Tessa walked beside me, carrying her leather portfolio.
"Jonah’s office just transmitted the process server’s affidavit," she said, pulling a printout from the pocket. "Service was perfected at Delancey Place at eight-fourteen Eastern Time. Dr. Vale was present on the premises."
I sat down on the stone bench beside the fountain.
The sun was high now, warm against the black cashmere of my trousers. The smell of the ocean was clean, vast, carrying none of the claustrophobia of Rittenhouse Square.
"Did he accept service?"
"He did not have an option," Tessa said, her eyes dropping to the text of the affidavit. "The server was accompanied by two deputies from the Sheriff’s Department Civil Division, pursuant to the emergency property preservation order. The report states that the respondent was sitting on the kitchen floor beside the marble island when the officers entered through the service passage."
I looked at the water falling into the cobalt pool.
Sitting on the kitchen floor.
For eleven years, Graham Vale had not sat on a carpet without placing a clean towel beneath his trousers. He had not touched a floorboard without slippers. He had not allowed his linen trousers to touch the grass in Rittenhouse Park when we attended the summer symphony concerts.
"Is he still in the house?"
"No," Tessa said. "The deputies enforced the vacation order at nine o'clock. His personal effects—the five trunks that were packed yesterday—were transported to the Front Street condominium by the courier service. The locks at Delancey Place were changed by Midtown Lock & Key at nine-twenty. The property is secured by private guard until the estate auction in November."
"And Mara Beckett?"
Tessa paused. She turned the page with a faint, dry rustle of paper.
"The process server noted that a late-model Mercedes SUV registered to a Ms. Mara Beckett was parked in the alleyway behind the carriage house at eight-thirty. When the deputies informed Dr. Vale that the property was restricted under a protective order, the female occupant attempted to enter the kitchen through the courtyard door. The deputies informed her that any entry would be treated as criminal trespass under Title 18."
"What did she say?"
"According to Deputy Miller’s field notes," Tessa said, her voice dropping into that flat, clinical monotone, "the female occupant stated: 'This is ridiculous. Graham owns this house.'"
I laughed.
It was not a bitter sound. It was not loud. It was a single, clean exhalation of air that rippled the surface of the fountain pool.
"She really didn't know," I said.
"Apparently not, Claire."
"She thought she was moving into Delancey Place," I said, leaning my head back against the warm stucco of the archway, closing my eyes against the brilliance of the California sky. "She thought she was trading her flooded apartment in Fairmount for eighteen rooms of federalist paneling and my grandmother’s silver."
May you like
"She has the Front Street condominium," Tessa remarked.
"No, Tessa," I said softly. "Graham has the Front Street condominium. And if I know my husband—if I know the man who spent forty minutes washing his arms after touching my wrist—he will never forgive her for being in the room when the locks were changed."
