To Catch the Moon (30 page)

He saw her and walked over. “May I join
you?”

“Why not?”

He set his briefcase on Dudley’s worn blue
carpet, where Alicia relocated her pile of file folders. He flirted
briefly with the waitress, then made fast business of ordering a
burger. “Glad I ran into you,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Something’s come up I need you to handle.”
He bent down to pull a folder out of his briefcase and hold it
across the small table.

Just what she needed. “Kip, this is hardly a
good time.” But she wiped the mayo off her fingers and took the
folder, flipping it open to scan the documents inside.

The police report made it look pretty simple.
Twenty-nine-year-old Theodore Owens III, no priors from the look of
it, brandished a small-caliber pistol at a bar on a Friday night.
Apparently he got pissed off seeing a woman he’d dated a few times
chatting up a new guy. People were freaked but nobody got hurt.
Owens got arraigned in late December and was out on his own
recognizance. The cops thought it was misdemeanor brandishing,
though it was up to the D.A.’s office to decide. Everything looked
pretty much in order until Alicia saw the next court date.

“Kip, the probable-cause hearing is next
Wednesday! Why am I just seeing this today?”

“Well, what with the holidays and everything
it kind of fell through the cracks.” His burger showed up. “I just
didn’t get around to it till now.” He slapped the bottom of the
ketchup bottle and a big red blob sloshed onto his beef.
“Sorry.”

She shook her head. “Well, I’m sorry, too,
but I don’t have time to work this up. I’m going flat-out already,
and what with the preliminary hearing for Treebeard so soon it’s
going to ramp up even more.” She tossed the folder back at him,
where it skidded across the Formica. Kip grabbed it just before it
slid onto the carpet. “Give it to somebody else. Give it to
Rocco.”

“I am not giving it to Rocco. And don’t throw
things at me,” he said, just as he tossed the folder back at her,
as if they were playing a legal-file version of Hot Potato. “What’s
the big deal? It’s a first offense. There’s no reason to go
balls-out on this one. You should just make an offer.”

Kip and his plea bargains. It amazed her.
He’d dispense of a case with a casual conversation and a swipe of
pen across paper. True, she probably overanalyzed which cases to
fight and which to settle. Louella accused her routinely of being
idealistic about how the system should work. But she just couldn’t
wear lightly the incredible responsibility the D.A.’s office had in
deciding which crimes to pursue and which not. She doubted Kip had
even bothered to talk to victims when he’d been a prosecutor
himself, before he sailed off into private practice.

“Even if I did decide to make an offer,” she
said, “I don’t have time to get ready. I’d have to do it
Monday.”

“So today’s Thursday.”

“So that doesn’t give me enough time to talk
to everybody.”

“So talk to whoever you can and leave the
rest.”

She was about to object again when he threw
down his burger and said, “Alicia, just do it! Cut a corner for a
change, like everybody else. You’re getting this case and that’s
the end of it.”

Why the hell was he being so insistent about
this? Usually he backed off when she put up a fight. It was weird,
yet at the same time it was Kip-like for him to drop the ball and
then expect her to run it for a touchdown.

She wiped her lips with the paper napkin,
clattered out of her chair, and grabbed her file folders, Kip’s
included. “Fine,” she told him. “But you’re buying lunch.”

*

Joan decided that all things considered, she
had dodged a bullet New Year’s Day.

She drew this conclusion as she sat at the
antique writing desk in the suite’s study, more of an alcove,
really, adjacent to the bedroom. She had risen early that
morning—it couldn’t have been a second past eight-thirty—and
immediately did her workout, had a little breakfast, and went to
the spa for her manicure and pedicure. Then she’d pulled a suit out
of the closet, because she intended to go into Headwaters that very
day. It was all part of feeling efficient and businesslike, a woman
very much in control of her life, and rather a stark contrast to
how she’d felt twenty-four hours before.

Joan laid down the slim silver Tiffany pen
the Lodge provided as a writing instrument and shuddered,
remembering the petrifying stretch of New Year’s Day when that
Maldonado woman had appeared at the suite, entirely without
warning. What a horrible time for her insidious accusations to be
flying, what with Milo present to witness every millisecond of the
exchange. But though Joan was deeply embarrassed at how overwrought
she had become, the more she thought about it the more she believed
that she had acted exactly right. She’d revealed just enough to
explain away the one piece of supposed evidence that presumptuous
creature thought she had. True, Joan was caught in a lie about
returning to Carmel the night Daniel was murdered, but what wife in
her predicament wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing? What
wife would freely admit that she suspected her husband of cheating?
What wife would willingly lay herself open to the humiliation that
entailed, especially with the husband dead and absolutely no good
to come of the revelation?

No, any reasonable person would completely
understand and accept what Joan had done; it was all in the name of
protecting the reputation of a marriage; and it would be an
outrageous leap to claim that Joan’s lying about one thing meant
she was lying about another, far more serious thing. No, as her
father would have said,
that will not stand!

Joan reveled in the intoxicating rush that
followed of feeling competent and powerful. It was time for her to
take care of Alicia Maldonado once and for all, and she had a good
idea how to do it. She would take an extra precaution as well, just
to be safe. She lifted the phone and punched in Henry Gossett’s
home number.

The antique housekeeper answered. “Gossett
residence.”

“This is Joan Gaines. May I speak to Henry,
please?”

“Mrs. Gaines, he’s at his office. Would you
like that number?”

“I already have it.” Joan managed a
perfunctory “Thank you” and hung up, slightly peeved. She glanced
at the Ebel watch circling her wrist, a platinum band with diamonds
ringing the pearl face and winking on every hour except XII and VI.
It was only quarter past noon on the very first working day of the
year, and yet Gossett, that old moose, had beaten her into the
office. She punched in his direct line there. “Henry,” she said,
after dispensing swiftly with the requisite New Year’s greetings,
“I need you to retain the services of a criminal defense
attorney.”

Silence. A heavy, clearly shocked silence.
Then, “Joan,” he said, his tone as lugubrious as ever, “are you in
some difficulty you wish to discuss?”

“I am in no difficulty whatsoever,” she told
him. “I am simply requesting that you put a criminal defense
attorney on retainer on the extremely slim chance that I should
require his services. I have received a few visits from a
prosecutor working on Daniel’s case, a woman who clearly does not
understand who she is dealing with. It might set her straight to
see that I am taking steps for my own protection. I would rather
err on the side of prudence,” she told Gossett, knowing that
phrasing would warm the cockles of his geriatric heart.

“And Henry,” she added, “if you value your
position as counsel for this family, as I know you do, I strongly
recommend that you not breathe a word of this to my mother. I trust
we understand one another. Thank you, and good day.” She hung up.
That, as they say, was that.

Now, should she call Milo? Joan sank back
against the Queen Anne chair’s unforgiving wooden spine. No, her
every instinct told her she should wait for him to call her.

She thought back to the prior morning, whose
misery had peaked when Milo abandoned her to fly to New York. He’d
come into the bedroom after that prosecutor finally left,
brandishing his little blue Nokia cell phone.

What do you have to say about this, Joan?

Oh, Milo, I’m sorry
. She’d assumed a
regretful expression, and knew she looked both pathetic and sexy
huddled among the rumpled sheets where they’d shared so much
pleasure the night before.
I just wanted to be with you. I
couldn’t abide the thought of you being called away.

But Milo refused to be mollified.
That
terrorist threat you were so sure wouldn’t come to anything, Joan?
Well, it’s a damn good thing you’re not in charge of Homeland
Security, because a bomb went off at the Rose Bowl.

What astonishingly bad luck. She couldn’t
have been more surprised if Milo had announced that aliens landed
at Cypress Point. Then he’d ranted about how irresponsible she’d
been, didn’t she understand he had a job to do, did she even
remember what a job was—it had gotten fairly insulting. She would
have become quite angry if she hadn’t realized that it was just
Milo being Milo, passionate and melodramatic and Mediterranean. By
the time he declared he was leaving for New York, in what he termed
an attempt to save his reputation, if he still had one worth
saving, she’d offered to go with him. Nothing like a few nights in
Manhattan—wouldn’t a stay at the Pierre be nice? With perhaps some
shopping on Fifth Avenue and a show or two?—to get a man back on an
even keel. But Milo wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, he seemed shocked
at the suggestion.

Didn’t you hear a word I said, Joan? I’m
fighting to keep my job!
Then he’d scowled at her.
Or maybe
you’d rather I didn’t keep it, since you find it such a damned
inconvenience?

No, she wanted him to keep it—after all, a
man without a job was hardly a catch, unless he was between jobs,
sitting on his fortune and plotting where next to increase it—but
she just wished Milo’s job weren’t so unpredictable. Frankly, yes,
it was inconvenient that he was a hostage to news events. It was
very difficult to plan dinners or parties or trips when something
bad happening somewhere in the world would derail everything.

Joan sighed, feeling quite annoyed. Honestly,
she didn’t know how news anchors’ wives put up with it.

*

Milo cooled his heels outside the office of
the president of WBS’s news division, his mind spinning doomsday
scenarios for his professional future. He’d gotten quite good at
that particular game in the last twenty-four hours. It was a
macabre version of mental solitaire in which every deck was stacked
against him.

He had played the game at the San Francisco
airport, where his and every other flight was delayed thanks to
beefed-up security, a direct result of the terrorist bombing story
he’d failed to cover. He’d played it while flying east, every
passing mountain range and heartland plain bringing him that much
closer to the dreaded showdown with WBS brass. And he’d played it
during those restless overnight hours, when his high-priced
Manhattan hotel room failed to offer succor or relief.

The voice of the president’s secretary, a
well-preserved blonde who’d trailed Richard Lovegrove as he climbed
the news division’s executive ladder, sliced into Milo’s thoughts.
“Richard shouldn’t be long now,” she assured him, though she’d told
Milo exactly the same thing a half hour before. “Are you sure I
can’t get you some coffee?”

“No, Rachel, thank you very much.”

She nodded, wearing a rueful expression that
Milo knew he wouldn’t see on her boss’s face when he was finally
ushered into his office.

Milo found the fact that he was meeting with
Lovegrove extremely worrying. He’d anticipated a severe
dressing-down from Stanley Cohen, the domestic news producer, and
knew O’Malley would be present for the sheer joy of personally
delivering a few body blows. He’d half expected a pro forma wrist
slap from Al Giordano, the division’s senior VP and one of Milo’s
few longtime supporters. But the fact that his transgression had
drawn face time with Lovegrove himself boded ill indeed.

Glumly, Milo resumed staring around him. It
was ironic how often nondescript offices housed extraordinary power
centers. Here he sat at WBS’s Midtown headquarters, a
glass-and-steel monolith in the red-hot vortex of network news, and
the carpet was industrial, the furnishings ho-hum, and the artwork
nonexistent. Instead, framed posters of network talent served as
decor throughout much of the building. From the wall behind
Rachel’s desk, a photographic replica of Jack Evans, anchor of the
WBS Evening News
and the person Milo most wanted to replace,
gazed at him with a half smile that oozed intelligence and
sincerity. Next to Evans grinned the cheery duo who anchored the
highly rated breakfast show. Just at the moment Milo was finding
their multimillion-dollar, no-cut contracts particularly grating,
Lovegrove’s office door swung open. The man himself emerged,
looking every suave inch the top-dollar management consultant he
had been before he segued smoothly into the network management
ranks. He waved Milo inside and shook his hand, but desisted from
the comradely back slap he typically dispensed as part of their
ritualistic greeting. Milo took the omission as a bad sign.

Everyone Milo had expected to see was present
and accounted for and stood up in turn to shake his hand. In
contrast to the elegant silver-haired Lovegrove, Stan Cohen looked
like a poor man’s newsman. Complete with paunch, receding hairline,
and rolled-up shirtsleeves, he could have replaced Ed Asner as TV’s
Lou Grant. Then there was sleek, perfectly groomed Al Giordano—a
man after Milo’s own heart—sporting his usual three-thousand-dollar
handmade Italian suit. Rounding out the lynch mob was the hangman
himself, Robert O’Malley, indulging his affectation of dressing all
in black, as if he were a TV-news producer by day but morphed into
a theatrical director after hours. Milo suspected that even
executive producing
Newsline
, prime time’s most celebrated
newsmagazine, wasn’t sufficient gratification for O’Malley’s
enormous ego.