To Catch the Moon (14 page)

Louella picked up the ball. “I understand
that Joan Gaines stayed overnight here at your home last
Friday?”

“That’s correct.”

“What was the occasion?”

“It’s a tradition. The Friday before
Christmas our group of Suitemates gets together for dinner and .. .
well, we call it a sleepover, even though that’s rather a girlish
term.” Courtney Holt smoothed a nonexistent crease on her trousers.
“Sometimes it’s the only night all year we see each other.”

“Your ‘Suitemates’?”

“We lived together in the Suites at
Stanford.”

“Do you always meet in Santa Cruz?” Alicia
asked.

“No, it varies. Last year we stayed at
Joan’s, actually. The year before we did the Ventana Inn, down in
Big Sur.”

“Where did you have dinner this time?”
Louella asked.

“At Pasatiempo. The restaurant at the golf
club.”

“At what time?”

“Five o’clock.”

Louella paused, then laughed, which seemed to
surprise Courtney Holt. “You ate dinner at five o’clock? For me it
has to be seven at least, even in winter when it gets dark so
early.”

Alicia watched their hostess carefully. For
the first time since they arrived, she seemed ill at ease. Abruptly
she rose from the sofa and walked to the fireplace. Alicia could
see her furrowed brow in the huge gold-edged mirror above the
mantel.

Finally she spoke. “Joan was very tired.” Her
tone was defiant. She spun around. “Campaigning is exhausting. She
was exhausted and wanted to eat early.”

“So it was Mrs. Gaines who wanted the early
reservation.” Louella looked down at the spiral notebook open on
her lap. “And what time did you get back?”

“As I told the officers, I’m not quite sure.
Probably a little after six.”

“That was a quick meal.”

“We wanted to have dessert and coffee
here.”

“And did you?” Louella asked.

She hesitated, then, “Yes.”

Silence. Louella glanced first at Alicia,
then back at Courtney Holt. “May we see the guest room where Mrs.
Gaines stayed?” Her face creased in a smile. “We’d appreciate
it.”

For a second Courtney Holt didn’t say a
thing. Then, “If you must. Joan stayed in the guesthouse. It’s this
way ...” and she led them down the narrow corridor that split the
first floor in two, then pushed open a rear door that opened onto a
garden. She halted and they all looked beyond the door frame. A
flagged walkway led thirty yards to a white shingled cottage that
reminded Alicia of a gingerbread house in a children’s book. She
half expected to see a dwarf peeking out from the curtained
windows.

Courtney Holt crossed her arms over her
chest. “That’s it.”

“It’s charming,” Louella said. “Why did Mrs.
Gaines stay there rather than in the main house?”

“It made the most sense since she wanted to
get to bed early.” Courtney Holt made it sound painfully obvious.
“She was far less likely to be disturbed there than she would have
been upstairs in a guest room.”

“So she asked to stay there?”

“Yes.”

“May we see it, please?”

Courtney Holt heaved a deep put-upon sigh,
but preceded them outside into the drizzle, up the path and to the
cottage.

Alicia was not particularly interested in the
cottage’s decor. What caught her attention was a second brick path,
visible through a window, that curved from the side door to an
alley, perhaps thirty feet away. On whose muddy surface, she noted,
were unmistakable tire tracks. “Did Joan park there?” she asked
Courtney Holt, indicating the alley.

“Yes.” She could not have been more curt.

A few minutes later they made their way back
to the main house. “Did all of you have an early night?” Louella
asked when they’d gotten back to the foyer.

“Yes.” Without warning Courtney Holt opened
her front door and stood in front of it to prop it open, letting
raindrops blow in onto her gleaming hardwood floor. She couldn’t
have made it more clear that she wanted them to leave if she’d
forcibly ejected them. “Are we finished here?”

“Not quite,” Alicia said. “When you got back
to the house from the restaurant, did all four of you have dessert
and coffee?”

Courtney Holt said nothing for a long time.
Then, finally, “I don’t remember.”

Silence.
That is very odd
, Alicia
thought. “You don’t remember if Joan had dessert and coffee with
the rest of you?”

“She may have.” By now Courtney Holt sounded
openly hostile. “Or maybe she didn’t. I told you I don’t
remember.”

“What time did everyone go to bed?” Louella
asked.

Alicia watched Courtney Holt’s
Stanford-educated mind work through credible answers. Finally she
spoke. “Around nine.”

No one moved. Rain pelted the Holt foyer.
“Are we finally finished here?” Courtney Holt repeated.

“One more question,” Alicia said. “Did you
see Mrs. Gaines for breakfast?”

Courtney Holt shook her head as if she
couldn’t believe Alicia’s audacity. “Yes. Around seven-thirty. And
since I’m sure you’ll need to know, she had one soft-boiled egg,
one slice of toast, and two cups of coffee. The toast was lightly
buttered and she took her coffee black.”

Alicia had dealt with unfriendly witnesses
before. She refused to be fazed. “What time did she leave?”

“Around ten. When everybody else left.”

“Thank you for your time,” Louella said.

They’d barely cleared the threshold when
Courtney Holt slammed the front door shut behind them. A whoosh of
air hit Alicia’s back, and behind her the eucalyptus wreath nearly
launched down the front steps.

“She’s a charmer,” Louella remarked when they
were back in the VW. “Too bad I can’t arrest people for being a
pain in the ass.”

Alicia was silent, strangely exhilarated. She
turned the ignition, did a three-point turn, and started them
home.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Louella said a
moment later.

“So you agree with me?” Alicia couldn’t keep
a note of triumph from creeping into her voice. “That Courtney Holt
was very uncomfortable answering a lot of our questions? That they
ate dinner weirdly early at Joan’s request? That she claimed not to
remember whether Joan was with the rest of them for dessert? That
Joan made a point of staying in the guesthouse, the one place where
she could come and go with no one seeing her?”

“So she stayed in the guesthouse. So what?
The fact remains that you need a hell of a lot more than that to
start thinking the woman offed her husband. Like actual evidence.”
Louella’s cell phone rang. “Hold on a sec,” she said, then flipped
open her cell. “Louella Wilkes.”

Alicia made the right turn that got the VW
back on Highway 1, heading south. Despite Louella’s skepticism, for
the first time Alicia felt she was making real inroads on the widow
Gaines.

“No shit,” she heard Louella say a second
later. She turned her head to see Louella’s face assume a peculiar
excited expression. “What is it?” Alicia mouthed.

Louella laid a hand over the receiver. “Pedal
to the metal,” she whispered. “They’ve picked up Treebeard.”

Late afternoon on Christmas Eve, with early
darkness falling, Kip Penrose stood on the wide courthouse steps
flanked by Alicia Maldonado and a few other D.A. office lackeys. He
felt himself master of the moment. This was
his
press
conference.
He
had enormous news to impart. If all the world
was a stage, then
he
was the star player.

He stared down at the reporters massed below
him, their faces raised toward him expectantly. “Thanks to the
tireless efforts of my office,” he began, “three days ago
law-enforcement agencies not only in the state of California but
throughout the nation launched an extensive manhunt for the
environmental extremist known as Treebeard.”

It didn’t faze Kip that, behind his left
shoulder, Alicia Maldonado gave a little snort when he delivered
his “tireless efforts” line. So what if his office hadn’t really
led the manhunt effort? That was splitting hairs. What she didn’t
know was that if you could take credit for something big, Just Do
It.

“As I apprised the media forty-eight hours
ago,” he continued, “John David Stennis, who calls himself
Treebeard, is the prime suspect in the murder of gubernatorial
candidate Daniel Gaines. Physical evidence collected at the crime
scene points conclusively to him. And hours after Mr. Gaines was
brutally killed, Treebeard fled his longtime campsite, in haste,”
he added, index finger in the air to emphasize the point.

Kip raised his chin a notch. He was much more
comfortable than he had been at his newscon a few days earlier.
Newscon
was an insider term he’d picked up from one of the
reporters, and he intended to sprinkle it liberally into his
conversation. Insider terms showed how savvy he was, how much he
understood, how totally he was in the loop of the movers and the
shakers.

He paused. He’d arrived at his most important
line. In its honor, he assumed his most portentous tone. “I am
pleased to announce that the fugitive known as Treebeard has been
apprehended.”

Videotape rolled. Bulbs flashed. Reporters
scribbled. Again Kip paused, partly to allow the import of his
words to sink in, partly to bask in the knowledge that all eyes
were on him. These reporters might sometimes have their way with
him, skewering him in their newspapers and on their radio call-in
shows. But not here. Not now.

“Where was Treebeard picked up?” a male
reporter called, which annoyed Kip. He hadn’t finished his prepared
statement yet. But he had to respond.

“In Mendocino County, near the town of
Laytonville.”

“Where’s that?” the same reporter yelled.

Kip had no idea. Didn’t these people have
maps? Then he heard Alicia’s voice in his left ear.

“It’s a hundred and eighty-five miles north
of Salinas off Highway 101. He was on Branscomb Road, we believe
heading for the south fork of the Eel River and the Admiral William
Standley State Recreation Area.”

That woman’s ability to retain detail was
amazing. Of course, it also proved her limitations. She might be
good at seeing the trees, but it was Kip Penrose who understood the
forest.

Feeling magnanimous—and also aware that he’d
already forgotten most of what Alicia had whispered to him—he let
her tell the reporters where Treebeard was captured. Then the
questions kept popping up and it was impossible not to answer them.
How did Treebeard get all the way north to Mendocino County? Did he
resist arrest? Who gave law enforcement the tip-off that Treebeard
was in the area?

The ins and outs of the surveillance detail
and of Treebeard’s hitchhiking weren’t all that interesting to Kip,
mostly because he’d had nothing to do with them. Finally, though,
the questions circled back to his territory. “Where’s Treebeard
now?” a woman TV reporter asked.

“He is currently being held in the Monterey
County Adult Detention Center. And a decision has been made that he
be held without bail,” he added.

The woman reporter frowned. She was
middle-aged and frowzy, Kip thought, surprised she still had a TV
job. “What decision had to be made?” she said. “Of course he’s
being held without bail. Isn’t this a capital case?”

Kip was momentarily flummoxed. Then, “She’s
right,” Alicia whispered into his ear. “You should know that,
Kip.”

How irritating! He did know it! He’d just had
to think about it for a second. He felt his cool slip away, like
the top scoop of ice cream on a jumbo cone.

But the questions kept coming, so he had no
time to collect himself. Had Treebeard admitted to the murder? No,
he’d refused to say a word about anything. Would he hire his own
legal counsel or be appointed a public defender? Too soon to tell,
but a public defender was likely. Since the local jury pool might
already be tainted by the press coverage, would there be a change
of venue?

At that last question, Kip was horrified.
“Change of venue?” he heard himself repeat. Meaning he might not be
able to prosecute the case? Meaning he might lose all that exposure
in front of the voters? Kip heard the shock in his own voice and
realized the reporters must have heard it, too, because some of
them were giving him strange looks. “No, there is no possibility of
a change in venue,” he declared, then took one more question so it
wouldn’t look too odd and ended the press conference.

“What is the chance of a change in venue?” he
whispered to Alicia the moment they were out of earshot.

“Don’t worry about it, Kip. It won’t happen.
And even if it did, you’d still get to prosecute the case.”

He glanced at her, surprised. She actually
sounded gentle. She seemed preoccupied, too, staring at the ground
as they walked, her brow furrowed. He felt a surge of gratitude.
She hadn’t made fun of him or yelled at him, both of which were par
for the course for her.

Then, “Not all the network people were there
today,” she said. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

She was actually asking for his opinion!
“Yes, it is,” he immediately agreed. “Why wouldn’t they all be
there?” Then he started to worry. Didn’t a press conference he
called carry enough weight? Were the national media already getting
bored with the story?

Alicia punched the code in the keypad door,
then seemed to brighten. “Maybe they just didn’t have enough
notice.” The buzzer sounded and she held the door open for him.
Kip, amazed at this first-ever show of politeness, walked through
ahead of her. “What was the notice, about two hours?” she asked. He
nodded. “The network people aren’t hanging around here—they’re off
doing other stories. They were the last ones to show up when Gaines
got killed, remember? But I bet they’ll come back now that
Treebeard’s in custody.”