To Catch the Moon (13 page)

Joan clenched her jaw. “We’re back to that
again?”

“There is very little you’ve begun that
you’ve finished, Joan.”

“For example, business school. And of course
you would consider my investment banking job a failure, too.”

“I would hardly consider it a success. My
recollection is that you lasted only six months.”

Joan bit back the impulse to correct her
mother.
Eight months!
she wanted to scream, but there was no
point. No one understood that when she was finished with a project,
she was simply finished with it. Why stay at Stanford Business
School just to get the degree? Why stay with Humphrey Stanton when
she’d lost her interest in I-banking? No one gave her credit for
knowing when to move on. Well, she knew it right now.

She rose from her chair. “I have realized
that I cannot stay for lunch,” she declared stiffly. “Good-bye,
Mother.”

Joan walked out, holding her head high. She
told herself she’d won that argument, though she wasn’t entirely
sure she had. She felt her mother’s eyes on her back the entire
time she exited the enormous drawing room of the 17 Mile Drive
estate.

She pulled open the chateau’s front door and
walked out into the rain. She was alone. Her father was gone. Her
husband was gone. And her mother might as well be.

*

Christmas Eve found Milo seated at his older
brother Andreas’s Park Avenue dining table, participating in one of
the few family events in which he engaged per year. He’d flown
cross-country for the dinner gathering, but Milo flew halfway
around the world to shoot a few stand-ups. Newspeople flew like
commuters rode the bus.

At the table’s head, Andreas carved a massive
turkey, bestowing on it the same intense concentration he gave the
documents that crossed his desk as a managing partner of the Wall
Street law firm Fenwick, Reid & Patcher. Directly opposite Milo
sat Ari, Andreas’s twin in every way but two: he had chosen
investment banking over law and London over Manhattan. At the
moment the wives were doing mysterious things in the kitchen, and
the five offspring were raising a ruckus kicking each other under
the table. Milo’s parents were absent, because neither Mana nor
Baba would undertake international travel over the holiday season.
They preferred the gorgeous serenity of their retirement home in
Thessaloniki, and Milo could hardly blame them.

“So, Milo,” Andreas asked over the din, “what
stories have you been working on lately?”

Brothers they might be, but intimates they
were not. With Mac and Tran, Milo could spend hours dissecting the
meaning of life. Or even better, saying nothing at all. But with
his brothers, exchanging pleasantries and professional data was the
deepest their conversation ever got.

“Oh, the usual.” Milo straightened the
oyster-white napkin on his lap. “New revelations about
terrorist-linked overseas bank accounts. Scandal at a nuclear power
plant near San Diego. And of course the Daniel Gaines murder.”

“That is so shocking!” Andreas’s wife Helen
swept in, bearing platters of yams and carrots. Blond and snooty
and rarely out of Upper East Side air, Helen handled serving dishes
only on major holidays, and then only when forced. “When are they
going to arrest that Treebeard man?”

“When they find him.”

“Poor Joan.” Helen’s face assumed an
expression of dismay, but Milo could see the naked curiosity behind
the false concern. Clearly she wanted inside dirt to pass along to
her fellow society doyennes. “I feel so terrible for her. How is
she doing, do you know?”

“I don’t know.”

“But haven’t you—”

“We need a serving platter here, Helen.”
Andreas looked up from the turkey and shot his wife a pointed look
that said,
Shut up about Joan
. Helen scowled but said
nothing, flouncing off to the kitchen. For once, Milo was grateful
to his brother.

Joan and Milo’s sordid romantic history was a
family non-secret. Everyone knew that Joan had thrown Milo for a
loop when she’d cut him loose. Or, as Helen liked to put it, when
she’d “dumped him from a dizzy height.” Given that the man Joan
eventually married had gained national prominence as a timber
executive and followed that up with a promising gubernatorial run,
Milo knew his siblings thought Joan had made the smart choice. Even
with Daniel Gaines dead, in this crowd Milo suffered by
comparison.

Milo watched Andreas systematically dismantle
the twenty-eight-pound turkey and, with no effort at all, slid back
into the role of Pappas family black sheep. However high his star
rose, however brightly it shone in the network-news firmament, in
his family circle he would forever be Milo, the lackadaisical
student. Milo, the career hopper. Milo, the incorrigible womanizer,
who at age thirty-eight was still unmarried and had sired no sons
to carry on the Pappas name. Milo knew his father and brothers
secretly believed his TV-news success to be a fluke, one that would
eventually be righted.

Milo never ceased being proud that what he
had achieved in broadcast news, he had achieved on his own. In late
1990, while the Gulf War loomed and he dithered over his
dissertation, he heard from a Georgetown friend that WBS was
looking for people with overseas experience to base in London. He
applied, and after several rounds of interviews got hired as an
entry-level producer. When he abandoned his Ph.D. for the job, his
family howled in protest, warning that Milo would regret the
decision for the rest of his days.

They shut up when Milo parlayed that first
job into a much more visible on-air correspondent’s position. They
let out not a peep when years later he did such stellar work
covering the war on terrorism that he was promoted to a plum
correspondent role on
Newsline
.

“Children, keep it down!” Marissa, Ari’s wife
and a red-haired upper-class Dubliner, bustled in. She put her
hands on her hips, which, unlike her sister-in-law’s, were
spreading. “Or does all this noise mean none of you wants
dessert?”

Outraged yells answered that question. Order
was restored and finally every Pappas was seated. Ari, older than
Andreas by three minutes and hence the patriarch when Baba was
absent, had the honor of making the toast. After several rambling
sentences about the great joy that possessed him whenever his
family was gathered, he raised his wineglass. “
Kali
oreksi
!”

“
Kali oreksi
,” they all duly repeated,
Greek for
Bon appetit
.

The white Bordeaux slid down Milo’s throat,
chilled and delicious. The feasting began, no simple matter when it
required the passing of a dozen serving dishes to five adults and
an equal number of rambunctious children.

It both amused and irritated Milo to see his
brothers act like WASPs, reproducing the Pilgrims’ feast on
Christmas Eve because they couldn’t get enough of it just once a
year. The only concession to their heritage was the
arni
stofourno
, a baked lamb dish that Marissa made and that Helen,
with her horror of all things high fat, wouldn’t touch.

Once they’d dispensed of the latest in every
Pappas male’s professional life, Helen turned her eagle eyes in
Milo’s direction. “So,” she said, her tone coy, “are you dating
anyone interesting?”

The face of Alicia Maldonado flashed before
his eyes. “Not lately,” he replied. He realized, with some
surprise, that for once he had no romantic exploits to polish off
and display. What a rarity.

Milo learned soon after his network star
began to rise that his fame was a powerful erotic magnet, even to
exceedingly attractive females. Moreover, life on the road invited
sexual escapades. Tantalizing offers were frequently made. How was
a man to resist? More to the point, why should he? Even many of his
colleagues with wives in the home port routinely indulged. Why
shouldn’t the unencumbered, uncommitted Milo Pappas?

Yet it was Milo who was tarred by these
episodes, in the gossipy mouths of his network brethren; Milo who
overindulged, laid waste to young hearts, ran roughshod over
vulnerable women. All thanks to his reputation as Pretty-boy
Pappas, O’Malley’s favorite moniker for the newsman he would
forever dismiss as a jet-setting playboy.

As his brothers and their families chattered
on around him, Milo let his mind drift to Alicia. She was
different, toughened by life in a way he didn’t usually encounter.
True, network newswomen were a hard-nosed bunch, but they enjoyed
big-time money and big-time attention. They envied no one, except
perhaps their counterparts who occupied higher rungs on the
network-news ladder than they did.

The fact of it was, Alicia intrigued him, and
not just as a source. She was proud. She was scrappy. A little
touchy, but that was understandable given where she came from. And
while for whatever reason most women kowtowed to him, this one
didn’t. He actually felt one down to her, which oddly enough was
invigorating. And that kiss of hers ... There was a lot of juice in
that woman, a lot of life. He didn’t know quite what to expect from
her and discovered he was eager to see her again just to find out
what she’d do next.

Milo’s cell phone rang, jolting him back to
the reality of his brother’s dining table. He excused himself and
repaired to the hallway to take the call.

It was O’Malley, unfortunately. “We’re going
to need you in San Diego Saturday,” O’Malley told him. “Turns out
our deep throat will give us an interview.”

The nuclear power plant story. “Let me
guess,” Milo said. “He’s agreed to go on camera so long as we hide
his face, alter his voice, and don’t use his name.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

It would still be powerful. Former operator
disclosing details of close calls, pressure to hit targets, and
safety lines crossed. Milo had an unrelated thought. “What are you
doing working, O’Malley? Aren’t you in Florida with your son’s
family?”

He sounded impatient. “Yes, I’m in
Florida.”

Typical. Christmas Eve, on holiday with his
family, and O’Malley was working the phones. That was why he was a
network producer star. He painted his personal life into as small a
corner as possible, then stepped on it when he needed to and
figured somebody else would repaint.

“How’s the lovely widow?” O’Malley’s tone was
snide. “Crying on her old friend’s shoulder?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Milo replied. “Sorry, gotta
go.” Then he jabbed the end button on his cell.

Damn O’Malley
. Milo snapped the phone
shut, then returned it to his trouser pocket. From down the hall he
could hear his brothers and their wives engaged in a lively debate
about the relative merits of vacation homes in the Caribbean versus
the Mediterranean.

So San Diego Saturday. After the Monterey
Peninsula Friday to cover Daniel Gaines’ funeral, at which no doubt
he’d see Joan. Milo began to walk toward his family’s voices. The
woman he’d much rather run into was Alicia Maldonado.

*

Alicia listened as the doorbell at Courtney
Holt’s Victorian home set off an impressive resounding chime. A
moment later an older Latina answered the door.

Alicia flashed her ID. “
Yo soy
Alicia
Maldonado
, de la Oficina del Fiscal de Distrito
.”

“
Si
,” the woman said, and waved them
into an elegant foyer, then a high-ceilinged front parlor. They
claimed two armchairs by a fireplace, its ornate carved mantel
covered with Christmas cards. Deep in the recesses of the house
they could hear children battling over a toy, and the scolding
voices of a few women younger than the housekeeper, also speaking
Spanish.

“I guess the nannies don’t get Christmas Eve
off,” Louella muttered under her breath.

“It sounds like there’s one nanny per kid.
Have you ever heard of that?”

“I think that’s standard for this crowd.”
Louella made a face like
Who knows?
and Alicia continued her
inspection of the Holt front parlor.

It was a beautiful room with elaborate white
molding. The furniture was dark and traditional, and the hardwood
floor was partially covered by a thick Oriental carpet in rust,
green, and gold. Above a white-on-white striped sofa was a stunning
oil painting of a young girl. The room was dominated by an enormous
Christmas tree, as tall as the ceiling, its white lights twinkling.
Beneath it was quite a collection of presents waiting to be
unwrapped.

“Not too shabby,” Alicia heard Louella
murmur, and she had to agree. Joan Gaines’ friend might not be as
rich as Joan but she was doing just fine.

Then Courtney Holt appeared in the flesh to
reinforce that opinion. She was thin and good-looking with short
blond hair, and was decked out in cream-colored trousers and a
matching cashmere sweater. Alicia doubted she’d dressed up for
them; more likely this was a typical weekday getup. She had the
look of somebody who might show up on the cover of Town and
Country.

“Would you like coffee? Or tea?” she asked.
Her offer sounded halfhearted and her green eyes were cold. That
didn’t surprise Alicia. Most people weren’t thrilled to find a
prosecutor and her sidekick investigator in their front room.

Alicia declined. “I appreciate your taking
the time to see us on Christmas Eve.”

“I must say, I find it odd.” Courtney Holt
perched on the sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles. Her tone
was accusing. “I already had a lengthy discussion with several
officers from the Carmel Police Department. Don’t you think the
district attorney’s office should be focusing on finding that
Treebeard man?”

“Many resources are being deployed in that
direction.”

“Then what do you need with me?”

“We’d just like to go over some things again.
Louella?” Alicia looked pointedly at Louella, who they’d agreed on
the drive up would do most of the questioning.