To Catch the Moon (21 page)

No one said a thing. Alicia stared at her
empty foam cup, its rim stained with the coral-colored lipstick
she’d applied that morning, carefully outlining her lips then
painting them in, as if getting it right were the most important
thing in the world. For those thirty seconds, it had been.

Alicia knew it was easy to get screwed in
life. It was easy to go from just fine to royally screwed, in
minutes. Seconds, even. Get in the path of a drunk driver—bam.
Board the wrong plane—over. Look like somebody else’s perfect way
out of a bad situation—that was possible, too. Was that what had
happened to Treebeard?

He was speaking again. “Then, I don’t know, I
just thought, I gotta get out of here. I gotta go. But I sort of
fell. I was standing up but it was wet all over, with the blood,
and I sort of fell and grabbed the wall on the way down. I saw my
own handprint on the wall—that freaked me out more—I just ran.”
Treebeard stared at the green linoleum floor, shaking his head.
Eventually he raised his eyes to Alicia. “I just ran.”

She stared at him. “You told me before that
you know who did it.”

Silence.

“What did you mean by that?”

Treebeard took a long time to answer.
Finally, “I saw someone. Just when I got into the house, when I was
standing by the front door trying to decide what to do, I saw
someone.”

“Where?”

“By the side of the house. The right
side.”

“You mean you were inside and you saw the
person pass by on the outside?”

“Yes, through the window.”

Alicia vaguely remembered a picture window
overlooking a passage between the Gaines property and the house to
the south. “How clearly could you see?”

He shook his head. “It was dark.” He paused.
“She was short. Slight. With light-colored hair.”

“You’re saying it was a woman.”

“It was a woman.”

The interview room seemed especially still
suddenly. To her right, Alicia felt Jerome’s concentration, so
intense as to be almost a physical thing. The smell of sweat hung
in the stale air—hers, Jerome’s, Treebeard’s, she had no idea. She
cleared her throat. “Did you see this woman’s face?”

Again Treebeard looked pained. “No.”

She felt a rush of disappointment, and
irritation. This man was not doing much to help her. He wasn’t
doing much to help himself. She heard her voice rise. “How can you
be so sure it was a woman?”

He replied instantly. “By the build. And the
way she moved.”

“Could it have been Joan Gaines?”

He eyed her steadily. “It could’ve been.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No.”

She shook her head, hearing the anger in her
own voice. “Do you have any evidence that this person was ever
inside the Gaines house? How do you know it wasn’t the neighbor
just walking down that passage?”

“I don’t know.”

Alicia threw her pen down. “And I’m guessing
that you could not pick this supposed female out of a lineup.”

Silence. Then, “No.”

Treebeard went on to recite further details
about that night, and Alicia dutifully took notes. She heard how he
cleaned himself off and grabbed what he could from his campsite and
fled, hitchhiking north, camping on the road like usual, but not
like usual at all. She took notes, and asked questions, and
wondered how much of what this man said was truth and how much was
fiction. Whether he would ever get out of the pit into which he had
fallen. Whether he deserved to get out of it. And who, if anyone,
might have put him there.

“I’m not used to getting out of bed this
early, you know,” Milo heard Joan whisper coyly in his ear.

She’d come up behind him. He’d been so taken
with the view from the Lodge’s ocean-facing restaurant terrace he
hadn’t even noticed. He followed her progress as a waiter seated
her at their small table draped with a pale yellow linen cloth.
“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning to you! I’m so glad you could
join me for breakfast.” She leaned close to him, smiling, elbows on
the table. “Especially on such short notice.”

Milo settled in his white wrought-iron chair
and watched Joan chat and smile. It was Treebeard’s arraignment
that had brought him back to the Monterey Peninsula, but somehow
Joan’s antennae had picked up his imminent return to her domain. An
hour after he got his e-mailed flight reservations from WBS’s
travel department she called to cajole another assignation out of
him. He’d agreed because she was, after all, an important source.
She gave him an inside track, and he would be a fool not to use it.
Yet he felt himself being sucked back into her orbit, as if she
were a solar force and he a mere small moon unable to resist her
greater power.

The restaurant terrace on which they sat was
a redbrick affair with California’s obligatory ferns in terra-cotta
pots and the neoclassical touch of Doric columns supporting an
overhead arbor. It was rimmed by a low wall built of Carmel’s
native chalkstone, beyond which a velvety lawn stretched toward the
golf link’s eighteenth green and beyond that to Stillwater Cove,
where the surf broke in gentle tongues against the rocky shore.
Again this Monday morning they were blessed by the weather. As if
taunting the advent of January, the spectacular sun and warmth of
the last few days had held.

The waiter sidled over. “Do you have any
questions about the menu?”

Joan immediately spoke up. Milo was amused to
hear her order in typical fashion, which was to request whatever
she wanted whether it appeared on the menu or not. “I would like an
egg-white frittata with a baked tomato on the side, please. No oil.
And whole-wheat toast, no butter.”

“For you, sir?”

Milo would not order the same. “The American
breakfast,” he said, and handed over his menu. He looked across the
table at Joan, who was as perfectly turned out as Pebble Beach’s
famed fairways. Then again, she always looked assembled, he
remembered, regardless of the circumstance or the hour. Always in
the right clothes, always combed, always made-up. Models and
actresses could get away with grunge, but not politicians’ wives
and daughters. Middle America wouldn’t stand for it.

He found himself both irritated by her public
perfection and admiring of it. His intimate acquaintance with those
of the female persuasion had taught him that it was hard work to
look that put-together at all times. Then again, it was the only
work Joan did. “What are your plans for today?” he asked.

Her gaze slid away from him. “I’m going into
Headwaters.”

“Really?” That piqued his interest. “Is
everything all right over there?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure.” Then her face
brightened and she looked back at him. “I take that back—I’m sure
it’s fine. But I feel I should put in an appearance, talk to
people, boost the morale a bit. You understand. They must be
worried about the company’s future now that Daniel’s gone.”

Something in her tone stopped Milo from
asking what she thought that future might be. The consequences of
Daniel’s death on the campaign were obvious; that wasn’t the case
with Headwaters. Since the company was privately held, there was
little public information about it. Milo did remember a
Wall
Street Journal
piece on how Daniel and Joan’s father had pooled
resources to acquire Headwaters from the Idaho family that had
founded it years before. It had been a controversial transaction,
particularly for the conservative former governor, since it
involved a highly leveraged takeover scheme.

“And what do you have on your agenda?” Joan
refreshed his coffee from the bone-china service.

He hesitated, then, “I’ll be covering
Treebeard’s arraignment this afternoon.” He watched the radiance
retreat from her face. “I’m sorry to have to bring it up.”

“It’s all right.”

“You must be relieved he was picked up.”

She shrugged, a casual reaction that
surprised him. “I knew they’d catch him. A man like that can’t
dodge the authorities for long.”

“Are you convinced he’s guilty?”

She looked at him sharply. “Isn’t it fairly
obvious that he is? Why would you even ask that?”

Alicia Maldonado’s face flashed through
Milo’s memory.
It surprises me that you’re not even willing to
consider the possibility that this case might not be all sewn up
...

He shrugged. “It all seems a little, I don’t
know, cut and dried.”

“Aren’t most murders?”

“Beats me.” The conversation had taken an odd
turn. Fortunately they were interrupted by the waiter, who came
bearing one healthy breakfast and one monstrosity of cholesterol
and calories. Milo accepted the latter and watched Joan cut into
her frittata.

“I must say,” she went on a moment later,
“I’m not too keen on the woman the D.A. has helping him with the
case.”

“You mean Alicia Maldonado?”

Joan’s head snapped up. “You know her?”

Milo thought for a moment. “She’s been at all
the press conferences. She seems more on top of things than Penrose
is. I’d say he’s lucky to have her.”

“Well, I sincerely doubt she’s as good as you
seem to believe. You would not—” Joan made a dismissive wave with
her hand. “Oh, forget it.”

“What?”

“I don’t care to go into it.”

“Come on, now you’ve got me curious.”

Joan shook her head, her jaw set. She had the
look of her mother at that moment, he thought. Abruptly she set
down her fork. “All right, I’ll tell you. She drove all the way to
Santa Cruz to talk to Courtney Holt. Even though the police had
already interviewed her. You remember Courtney, one of my
Suitemates from Stanford?”

He remembered. Attractive woman. Nose a
little high in the air, but that described most of Joan’s friends.
“Weren’t you at Courtney’s house overnight when Daniel was
killed?”

“Yes, I was. And of course that’s what I told
the police. But apparently that wasn’t good enough for that
prosecutor woman. She put Courtney through the mill, all to find
out exactly what the police had already found out. It was very
rude,” Joan added, “and completely unnecessary.”

Milo found himself reluctant to point out
that it didn’t fall into the category of “rude” for the D.A.’s
office to reconfirm Joan’s whereabouts the night her husband was
murdered. But her reaction didn’t surprise him. One of Joan’s less
attractive characteristics was her unwavering conviction that
society’s usual rules didn’t apply to her, and her subsequent
indignation when she was informed that they did. Then again, that
point of view was a direct result of growing up a Hudson.

He spoke carefully. “It does surprise me that
she went out to Courtney’s house herself. Seems to me that even for
a return visit, that’s police work.”

“Apparently she had some investigator with
her. But Milo, that’s beside the point. I just don’t like her.
She’s very full of herself, very arrogant.”

He downed the last of his eggs, scrambled
hard just the way he liked them. “It sounds as if you’ve met
her.”

“I have. She came here to the Lodge once,
with Penrose.”

He would love to have witnessed that meeting.
Again he thought carefully before speaking. “You know, Joan, the
best thing in the world is for you to have the strongest possible
prosecutorial team. Penrose doesn’t strike me as a brain trust, but
Alicia, she’s a different story. Apparently—”

“You call her Alicia?”

Milo looked up to see that Joan’s eyes were
as cold as her tone. “When I cover a story, especially one that
will carry on for some time, it’s to my benefit to be on good terms
with the major players. Of course I call her Alicia. Do you expect
me to call her Ms. Maldonado?”

That seemed to mollify her. “Still, I think
she should have a better idea of her place.”

“Apparently her place is at the head of the
class in the D.A.’s office,” he heard himself say.

Joan flounced back in her seat and crossed
her arms over her chest, as if about to launch into a full-out
tantrum. Her tone was pouty. “You’re certainly very high on
her.”

“She is impressive.” He kept his voice mild.
“And attractive as well,” he added, knowing even as he said it that
crowing to one woman about the good looks of another was neither a
smart move nor the done thing. But somehow he felt goaded.

“You think she’s attractive?” Joan’s face
took on an appalled expression. “Well, I suppose she might be,” she
allowed, “in an ethnic sort of way.”

Classic Joan
, he thought, then had the
impulse to goad her right back. “Just like me,” he said.

“Oh, honestly, Milo! The things you say
sometimes.” Then Joan frowned, and her cheeks flushed a light pink.
She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “I certainly
don’t mean to say anything derogatory about Hispanic people, but
she is very common-looking. Have you seen how she dresses? She’s
not like you at all. And despite what you say,” she went on as he
was about to protest again, “I still would rather she wasn’t on the
case.” Joan leaned back and smoothed the linen napkin on her lap.
“I don’t think she creates the right impression. And I may talk to
Penrose about it.”

This conversation was pointless, he realized.
It also reminded him of something else about Joan. She won all
arguments. She won because she refused to consider any point of
view other than her own. She had the conviction born of lack of
analysis. It was frustrating, he remembered. Then he was returned
to the present by the sound of muffled sniffling. He raised his
eyes to see Joan’s head bent over her open handbag, her face now
suffused with color, her cheeks damp. “Joan ...”

She waved a
Not now
hand, then pressed
a tissue to her nose. Milo waited out the display, mildly
irritated. Maybe he’d gone on too long about the case, but it was
Joan who’d brought most of it up. “Are you all right?” he murmured
a few seconds later.