What the Heart Knows: A Milford-Haven Novel - Book One (18 page)

“Then how about tomorrow night? I’ll be around one more day.”

“I don’t mean to be vague, but can you call me tomorrow at around four p.m.? By that time I’ll know how much I’ve been able to accomplish on my current commissioned piece.”

“I understand. Jot your number down for me, will you?”

“Yes, sure.”

While she reached into her bag for a pen and paper, he added, “In case it works out—you’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

“No.” She chuckled. “You
do
want me to get my
other
work out of the way so I can get to yours, right?”

“Fair enough!”

But it isn’t fair,
he whined inwardly.
A lovely, intriguing woman, a beautiful sunset about to settle over the coast … and I’ll have to wander around this tiny town or crash in my hotel room with a rented movie … alone
.

Zelda McIntyre looked up to see peach-colored light streaming through her office windows, and realized it was now late afternoon.

Glancing down at her desk, her gaze fell onto the compact planner that was her constant companion. She’d first discovered Filofax on another trip to London—an intriguing shop whose company name was contracted from “file-of-facts.” Walls covered with display racks offered page inserts: diary and address, finance and graph sheets, sticky notes and note cards, even maps and currency conversion tables. She’d been a devoted follower ever since, gradually upgrading until she owned this model: a Deco Personal Organizer.

She ran her fingers over the soft amethyst leather stamped with a micro-crocodile print; then she clicked open the distinctive diamond-cut clasp to reveal the cream-pigskin suede interior. To match the planner, she’d chosen cotton
cream insert pages. Her fingers danced over the dividers—calendar first, followed by twenty more she’d labeled herself.

The row of professional categories read:
Art Clients; Competitors; Galleries; Reading; Viewing
. The row of personals included
Art; Clothing; Furnishings; Inspirations; Research; Restaurants; Travel
. The rest were blank, ready for new ideas. It was in this little book that she outlined schemes and took notes about anything she enjoyed tracking down.

Research … one of my favorite things
. She found herself drifting into a deliciously investigative mood. The conversation with Miranda had been a tidbit to whet her appetite. Now she wanted to see if she could find any more tender morsels.
It’s a failing, my hunger for gossip
. She sometimes admitted this to herself, but, just as quickly, justified her behavior by remembering that she used whatever she found to splendid advantage with her ability to mix unusual ingredients.

I’m thinking in food metaphors … I must be hungry. I never did break for lunch
. Pushing back from her desk, she walked to her kitchen and peered into the refrigerator. First she drew a small bottle of chilled
Perrier from
the door and unscrewed the top. Next she spotted a plate of cut apple segments along with a nice hunk of Brie that lay plastic-wrapped on the middle shelf. Grabbing it, she pulled away the clear wrap, got her cheese knife from the flatware drawer, and carried her small repast back to her desk.

Sitting once again, she sliced a piece of cheese, balanced it on an apple slice, and munched a tasty morsel, washing it down with a sip of her drink. “Zackery Calvin,” she said out loud rolling the name around her tongue. From Santa Barbara. It
sounded familiar.
Of course,
she almost said aloud.
The name Calvin from Santa Barbara … and he was well dressed … he has to be part of Calvin Oil. So Joseph Calvin must be his father
.

Zelda considered this for a moment. She looked down at her hands.
Polished nails are professional; long ones, gauche
. She made a mental note to shorten her nails that night, and to redo her neutral-colored polish.

I’ll have to do a little digging and see if Miranda’s done it again,
she mused.
It wouldn’t look good for my client to make more influential contacts than her representative finds
. That girl did have a maddening ability for stumbling across the right people.
Maybe it isn’t really stumbling. Maybe it’s in the genes
.

Zelda had met the formidable parents Miranda always seemed so eager to escape. Wealthy enough to understate their inherent sense of style, influential enough that people snapped to attention in their presence, they’d cut a wide swath the night they attended Miranda’s first major gallery show in San Francisco less than a year ago.

Miranda had been effusive in her praise that night, giving Zelda all the glory for her brand-new success.
And rightly so. I made all the connections, persisted with the right people, strategized the press, orchestrated every detail of the evening from canapes to Miranda’s wardrobe
.

It’d launched Miranda’s career—that night, that show. And for nine glorious months, both Zelda and her client had basked in the warm light of acceptance and admiration.

At that point—and for a few years leading up to it—Miranda had very sensibly been rooming with her glamorous sister.
That Meredith … she knows what side her proverbial bread is buttered on. Smarts, looks, goals—that young woman
has it all
. The convenient living arrangement had changed, though, as both sisters had begun earning more money. And somehow, while looking for a larger, more appropriate place to live, Miranda had gone off the tracks.
Wish I’d been a fly on the wall during the conversation they must’ve had. Did Meredith want something upscale, while Miranda wanted to maintain her bohemian lifestyle? Did Miranda feel she had to run away from the limelight? Or did she feel she had to protect her precious pristine art from the pollutants of the big city?

Whatever the case, the next thing Zelda knew, Miranda had announced she was moving to Milford-Podunk-Haven!
I nearly had a fit. The stress that girl puts me through! Really, why do I risk my own health?

She sighed. Nothing had been better than those glorious days of Miranda’s early success in San Francisco. First, there was the city itself: a richly textured, multi-ethnic fabric, woven from the scores of cultures that any great seaport would gather, sewn together by the threads of ambition and dreams.

Then, there’d been Zelda’s own star rising in the afterglow of her young artist-client: luncheons with elegant and savvy gallery owners or gab-fests with gossip columnists; and, when she herself was feeling Bohemian, wine-and-cheese evenings in the diverse art studios that peppered the city.
I do miss how eclectic the city is
.

Zelda still maintained a compact but well-appointed
pied-a-terre
in San Francisco, as well as the elegant suite of personal and professional rooms here in Santa Barbara. This “dual citizenship” suited her perfectly. She relished the pace and the glamor of the city. Yet this beautiful town had its own glamor, and in some ways gave her better opportunities.

I can be a larger fish in a smaller bowl. Why not create a bigger splash right here?
She chuckled, and looked around her office.
Yes, and connecting with the Calvins could be the next piece of the puzzle
. She picked up her Cross pen and began to doodle on a clean sheet of paper, sketching the outlines of jigsaw pieces as she often did when working on making connections.

After a moment she wrote the name
Joseph Calvin
. She considered the parties or events such a man might logically attend, the charity boards on which he might serve, the clubs where he might play tennis or golf.

Obviously, this is someone I need to know, and there’s no time to waste
. She flipped open her Filofax to check her schedule.
If things go my way, maybe I can get a meeting with Mr. Calvin, senior, before the end of the week
.

Cornelius Smith squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked them open to peer out his window at the nearly full moon with his practiced astronomer’s eye.
It’s reached 87 percent illumination and is waxing
.

He felt somehow reassured to find it still hanging in the sky where he’d left it a moment earlier.
What time is it?
He glanced at his watch, which read two a.m.
I should also be able to tell by the moon’s position. Let’s see. Here at Milford-Haven’s longitude and latitude the moon would be 25 degrees south of west at an altitude of about 23 degrees … lower than it would’ve been at eleven p.m., when it would’ve been at its highest—about 53 degrees
.

Though he’d only been back at his parents’ home since this
morning—and had hardly spent any time in town as yet—somehow things seemed different.
Is it my folks? Because they’re getting older? They’re in their seventies now. Or maybe it’s just that I haven’t been home in a while?

He looked around the small room that’d been his as a boy. A daybed sat pushed against the same wall where the bunk-beds had once stood. He remembered fondly that, though he was an only child, his parents had thought bunkbeds would be fun for sleep-overs with friends, or for creating forts.

In its current reconfiguration, by day, the twin bed doubled as a sofa. By night, a quick removal of the attractive squared-edged pillows with their matching tailored comforter made it suitable for sleeping. His dad had replaced the boyhood study carrel with an oak computer desk.
Probably to encourage me to come home more often. Hard to say which of them is more considerate. They always think of my comforts
.

Yet an eeriness seemed to hang in the air—not necessarily of their home, but of the town itself.
Well, what do I expect? The moon’s nearly full, and it’s almost Halloween. There be goblins and ghosties about
.

Officially, he shouldn’t be working tonight. He’d come home to Milford-Haven to look in on his parents—his quarterly visit. Despite the subtlety of California seasons, his mother still maintained her life-long practice of switching things around in her home every three months. Though she’d managed with only Dad’s help all these years, now the two of them found some of the tasks difficult. And for her, life just wouldn’t be the same without putting away the summer greens and dotting their home with touches of autumn hues: pumpkins on the front porch; rust-colored throws on the sofas; a different set of
sheets, coverings and decorator pillows on the beds.
What does she call them? Russet? Amber?

He’d helped her all day, then driven south to Cambria to pick up the meal his parents considered a special treat: fish-and-chips from the Main Street Grill. Hours ago, his folks’d toddled off to bed after watching Satellite News, though they’d been disappointed their favorite TV journalist Chris Christian had not broadcast one of her special reports. But for himself, the late-night habits of an astronomer proved hard to break.

His career encompassed two primary activities these days: extra-solar planet-finding, and SETI. In simplistic terms, one focused outward, one inward.
Seeing and being seen. Or maybe listening and being heard
.

As a member of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence team, he worked on listening to and deciphering the spectrum of signals most people would call static that constantly traveled through space. Though plenty of folks in and out of government remained skeptical, if anything there was now more pressure to succeed because of the August “discovery.” He kept the clipping in his Day Planner as a reminder:

August 6, 1996: NASA Uncovers Possible Ancient Life In Martian Rock.
Scientists at NASA released a study describing possible microbe fossils found on a meteorite which was strewn from the planet Mars. This event marked the first scientific evidence for the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Classic situation that proves just because something is in print, doesn’t mean it’s true
. Cornelius studied again the dog-eared piece of newsprint.
I remember when I first saw them I was excited for a bit,
he admitted.
That is, until I noticed the scale. These features were about l/100th the size of terrestrial bacteria. It was like someone claiming to have found a fossil
human skull, but it was the size of a pea
. Most scientists doubted it even at the time, but the media had been set loose, the NASA administrator had called a press conference, and the President had given a speech. So there it was.

Regardless of bad reporting, to Cornelius, using earth’s high-magnification
eyes
to be looking into the tapestry of the universe was every bit as important as using their high-tech
ears
to listen for potential incoming signals. So he scheduled days, weeks, and months to comb the heavens, collect bits of information, then make sense of it.

He rotated his shoulders.
I’ll keep at it till moonset. That’ll give me a chance to finish reducing my data
. Though his regular job kept him most of the time at NASA Ames in San Jose, he’d done a run recently at the Lick Observatory. One of his favorite places, the enclave comprised a series of round, white buildings strung along the ridge of Mt. Hamilton. Rising suddenly to 4,250 feet above sea level, the range offered a distant glimpse of the southern tip of San Francisco Bay, and one of the most extraordinary coastal vistas in California.