To Catch the Moon (16 page)

That was true. Alicia clicked on a new e-mail
telling her to expect a call from one Milo Pappas, WBS News, New
York. She was cleared to talk to him on camera. That was both good
and bad. Much as career advancement required exposure, TV cameras
made her nervous. And she didn’t care to probe too deeply into her
nervous system’s reaction to certain male television
correspondents.

She cleared her throat. “When do you want to
do this?”

“ASAP. I need to file the piece in two
hours.”

“What’s it about?”

“Daniel Gaines’ funeral. Your job is to say
something pithy about the murder investigation.”

“Where do you want to do it?”

“We could do it quick and dirty on the
courthouse steps.”

She arched a brow. Quick and dirty was
certainly one way to do it with Milo Pappas. She could think of
others. “I’ll meet you downstairs in ten minutes,” she told
him.

The interview was over in a heartbeat, and
thanks to the downpour was conducted not on the courthouse steps
but in its entry hall. The cameraman and sound guy wired her up,
Milo asked a few questions, she answered them, then the cameraman
and sound guy unwired her.

Milo drew her aside while his crew packed up
their equipment. “You know”—and he gave her that smile that lit up
both his mouth and his eyes—“I’m glad your boss takes such a
lackadaisical approach to his work. Otherwise I would have had to
interview him and would’ve missed seeing you.”

She stared at him. He could say anything and
any woman in the world would believe him. That was probably what
he’d built his career on. “You’re certainly full of
compliments.”

“I can’t help myself when I’m around
you.”

“Will you stop laying it on, Milo?” She
couldn’t help it. This guy was too smooth for words. She crossed
her arms over her chest. “What do you want from me?”

He looked taken aback. “I was hoping you’d
join me for dinner.”

He could not possibly be asking me
out
. “You’re still trying to pump me for inside
information?”

He raised his hands, all innocence. “I won’t
ask a single question about the case.”

Fat chance
. She could see the scenario
play out in her head as though it had already happened. Mr. Slick
would do what he’d done at Mission Ranch, start out by being all
warmhearted attentiveness. Then after a few glasses of wine he’d
bring the conversation around to the investigation. If the last
time was any indication, before long she’d cave. It humiliated her
to admit it, but he’d dazzle her and she’d cave.
I can’t do
it.

The simple fact of the matter was that she
was at too much of a disadvantage when it came to Milo Pappas. He
had everything—money, celebrity, and, as a result, power. She was a
county employee slaving away for a fool D.A. and barely making it
from one paycheck to the next. She desperately wanted what Milo had
but she didn’t have it. And by the looks of things she never
would.

And it pissed her off that he would use
everything in his arsenal to get what he wanted from her. He’d use
his looks, his fame, his charm, and now dinner at a snazzy
restaurant she could never afford on her own. He probably did that
with all women. Well, she wasn’t all women, and if he didn’t know
that already he was about to find out.

“Look, Alicia.” He edged closer to her then,
probably because she hadn’t said yes yet, and his voice got softer.
He was inches away, breathtakingly near. “I like you. I’d like to
get to know you. If we don’t discuss the case it’s not verboten, is
it?”

Even as she tested the words
I like
you
to see if they carried the ring of truth, “There’s an issue
of appearances,” she heard herself say. When did she ever talk like
that? For once in her life she actually sounded like a lawyer.

He frowned. “Somehow you don’t strike me as
somebody who worries too much about what other people think.”

Oh, but she did. She had to. She was a woman
and she was Latina. So far she’d been smart enough not to do
anything to jeopardize her professional reputation. Why should she
start now? For a man who would soon be long gone? While she was
working on the very case that could propel her career to a whole
new level?

But she couldn’t expect him to understand
that. Not the ambassador’s son.

“Sorry.” She kept her voice light. “It
doesn’t work for me.”

Then she edged closer to the D.A. office’s
glass entryway and watched while he weighed whether to ask her
again. There was a very good chance that if he did, she’d say yes
this time.

But he didn’t. She could see from the veil
dropping over those dark, dark eyes that he decided not to. “I’m
sorry, too,” was all he said, then he rejoined his crew and was
gone.

8:15 Friday night. Alicia lay on the couch in
the pitch-black living room of her yellow bungalow of a house,
watching television and nursing a second glass of cheap red wine.
By now she was sick of watching news shows, or more to the point,
sick of watching Daniel Gaines’ funeral service covered on news
shows. Somehow—she had no idea how, given how long she’d been
watching—she’d missed Milo Pappas’s version of the story.

On the street a few yards from her front
window, a car sped past, rap music blaring. Next door the Lopezes
were fighting, though it didn’t sound like the kind of knock-down,
drag-out that would land
senora
in the ER.

Another Friday night and here she was alone
on her couch, though she had only herself to blame. In the end
she’d begged off seeing Jorge, claiming fatigue and a headache, and
not having to lie about either.

It’s punishment
, she told herself,
punishment for lying to Jorge, punishment for not caring about
him as much as he cares about you, and punishment for thinking
twice about Milo Pappas.

Then a chuckle, more like a snort, escaped
her.
Right
. Even after countless years of Mass-less Sunday
mornings, apparently she was still loaded with enough Catholic
guilt to concoct an idea like that one. As if God meted out
punishment whenever it was called for. Neither He nor Earth’s more
slapdash justice system could manage that trick.

She hoisted her left arm in the air and
watched as the tennis bracelet Jorge had given her for Christmas
slipped down her wrist to settle at the cuff of her gray
sweatshirt, its tiny diamonds winking incongruously against the
frayed cotton. It was beautiful. She’d never been given anything
like it. She’d thanked him profusely, verbally and otherwise, and
he’d flushed and mumbled something about other diamonds in her
future.

And what had she given him? A book and a
sweater. Granted, she made a lot less money than Dr. Jorge Ramon,
but in her heart of hearts she knew lack of funds wasn’t the real
reason for her uninspired gift giving.

She let her arm drop back to the couch with a
thud, drowned in another thick wash of guilt. Nights like these she
believed she mucked everything up. Love life: fake. Career:
stalled. Finances: shot. She even judged herself deficient in home
decor.

She’d bought this house a year ago, over
frantic objections from her mother.
Loca!
her mother had
yelled,
loca
for a single woman to buy a house! As far as
Modesta Maldonado was concerned, a single woman should just bide
time until she got married. Didn’t matter if she was sixty years
old when her “big day” came. Buying real estate was way too
permanent. It was as though—horror of horrors—Alicia was admitting
she might never marry.

Then, to make matters worse, Alicia bought on
Capitol Street right near the courthouse, so she could walk to
work.
Loca!
her mother screamed again. The neighborhood, to
put it nicely, was transitional. The mix of ugly 1960s apartment
architecture and run-down California bungalows, with the occasional
garbage-strewn, fenced-in lot thrown in, wasn’t exactly pretty. Not
to mention there were more shops selling bail bonds than
groceries.

But it was the best she could afford. Anybody
who thought all lawyers made scads of money didn’t consider those
who worked for local government, let alone those who had to support
an aging mother and a can’t-hold-a-job sister with two kids by
different men. Alicia had scrimped for the down payment and finally
been forced to buy mortgage insurance because she couldn’t manage
the bank’s usual minimum. Initially she’d had visions of repainting
each room in soft pastels. Replanting the garden. Sewing filmy
curtains for the windows, which would have been a good way to hide
the iron bars. But work intruded, sucking up the hours, and one
desperate Saturday, after months of living in empty rooms, she’d
raided IKEA and run her credit card up to the limit buying sale
castoffs. All she was really proud of were her Navajo throw rugs in
desert shades of rust and ocher, and the Frida Kahlo posters
plastered to the walls in every room.

Her admiration for the painter approached
reverence. Both were of Mexican ancestry and had had tough early
years. Yet Kahlo triumphed, despite both childhood polio and a bus
accident in which she got impaled by a metal bar. All Kahlo’s short
life she suffered by comparison to her husband and fellow painter
Diego Rivera, yet was an object lesson in persistence, Alicia
thought, radical, strong, and passionate.

What Kahlo went through in the 1930s and ‘40s
didn’t seem to Alicia all that different from her own experience.
When she started as a D.A., how many times had she gone into court
only to have the judge ask if she was a Spanish interpreter? Or a
secretary? Or to hear some cop mutter “wetback” when she walked
past? It didn’t help that she’d been so very green. She prosecuted
the very first jury trial she ever saw. She hadn’t even known which
table to claim. She’d stood around till the defense sat down, then
meandered to the table they’d left empty. Assumptions of her
incompetence hadn’t felt so misplaced back then, and sometimes
didn’t even now.

In one swift motion she rose from the couch.
Enough wound licking. It was exactly one week ago that Daniel
Gaines had been murdered. After the Courtney Holt interview, Alicia
had badgered Louella into knocking on a few doors in the
neighborhood to try to uncover something new about that night, but
as Louella had predicted, it proved fruitless. Nothing, nothing,
nothing.

But what if Alicia gave it a go? Not to talk
to neighbors but to watch, listen, observe. And not during the day,
as Louella had done, but at night, when the murder had actually
happened.

Alicia felt adrenaline kick into her veins,
battling the wine for dominance. Action was always good, she told
herself, far better than sitting alone in the dark.

She ran to get her parka.

*

Everything in Joan’s suite was in order,
ready for Milo Pappas to arrive.

Joan smiled to herself. And arrive he would,
though it had taken some arm-twisting.

She’d tracked him down on his cell phone when
she got back from the cemetery.
It was so good to see you today.
It gave me such comfort to see a friend
. He’d sounded cautious,
so she started crying.
Will you have dinner with me? Tonight of
all nights I don’t want to be alone.
She’d heard the hesitation
in his voice, she’d sat through the litany of excuses, but she
hadn’t let any of it dissuade her.
Come after you file your
story,
she’d urged him.
We’ll keep it simple, eat here in my
suite.
Of course, eventually he’d agreed. Who could refuse a
woman in mourning?

She was very pleased with herself. Tonight
she didn’t even miss being in her own home; she knew there was
nothing like a hotel suite for entertaining a man. It was more
immediately suggestive than a home, somehow; more mischievous.
Maybe it was because the bedroom was never more than a few steps
away.

Not that she and Milo would end up in the
bedroom, not that night anyway. She was in a testing stage with
him. Was he worth her while? He’d always been wonderfully
considerate, but would he still be? And while in the past he’d
seemed to understand their relative social levels, would he be
confused by his network-news success and presume to think he was
her equal?

Even if she weren’t just testing him, Joan
strongly believed in making a man wait for sex, usually until he
was nearly beside himself with desire. Three dates at a minimum;
personally she was much keener on six, just to prove how much value
she put on herself and give the man in question a standard to shoot
for. But though she had no intention of sleeping with Milo that
night, she wanted him to want to sleep with her. She wanted that
badly.

It was so delicious to be desired, and she
hadn’t been for ages. Daniel had gotten bored so fast and so
thoroughly that she’d been both shocked and humiliated. By now
she’d had all she could take of chastity. She was primed for a real
man—particularly a successful, handsome, prominent man, whose
devotion she could flash like a badge of honor. It was yet another
way, perhaps the most important way, for a woman to exhibit her
superiority among women. She Who Nabs The Best Man Must Be The Best
Woman.

Yet it wasn’t clear that Milo was The Best
Man. The name Pappas didn’t exactly show up in the social register.
It really was such a shame he wasn’t the British ambassador’s son.
Still ... Joan closed her eyes and ran a hand down her naked
throat, her mind traveling back to their time together. She
shivered. In some ways, Milo Pappas could not be bested.

She forced herself to gather her wits and
perform another check of the suite. The staff had done a superior
job getting it in order, sparing no detail on the dinner for two
set on a small linen-draped table in front of the fireplace. She
only hoped their professionalism would extend to keeping their
mouths shut about Joan Hudson Gaines requesting such arrangements
on the very night her husband had been buried.