To Catch the Moon (33 page)

Joan’s heart leaped at that magic phrase
cash flow
. And though Frederick Whipple left much unsaid,
Joan knew exactly what he meant. “Considerable enthusiasm” meant
top dollar. “Circumstances as they are” referred to Daniel’s
gruesome murder, the tie-in to her famous family, her own role as
the lovely young widow eager to continue her husband’s legacy. It
all added up to one dramatic possibility: If Whipple Canaday took
Headwaters public, Joan Gaines might make a killing.

So to speak.

The suit started talking again. “Of course,
the IPO market is the weakest it’s been in years. And we’ll need to
assess Headwaters closely to see if an IPO is even feasible. Check
into the books, analyze the assets, and find out if any of our
institutional clients would be interested in participating.”

Yes, Joan was worried about that, too. She
could only hope these bankers would find enough to like when they
probed Headwaters’ books, which were not exactly a cheery read
these days. But surely they would try to put the best possible spin
on things, as they, too, would enjoy big fees from an IPO.

Which she had known all along.

The widow Joan produced a brave smile for all
the parties assembled around Whipple Canaday’s vast conference
table. “Let us proceed swiftly,” she urged them, “so that I can
best do justice to the company that was so dear to my husband’s
heart.”

Kip Penrose couldn’t remember when he’d last
felt so good. Nervous, too, but that was to be expected. He raised
his chin and nudged the knot on his best yellow paisley tie just a
tad higher, using as a mirror the glass panes of his office
armoire, which housed his TV, VCR, and personal videotape
collection. No doubt he would have fresh material to add to the
stash later that day. Behind the glass the VCR read out the time in
little blue numerals: 12:54 PM. Six minutes to his next newscon,
and boy, would this one be a doozy.

He chuckled and moved away from the armoire.
He was far too excited to sit, so he loped agitatedly around his
office, rotating his shoulders and trying to keep loose as though
he were a quarterback waiting on the sidelines to go for the
fourth-quarter game-winning drive. Was the one-o’clock hour for the
newscon not perfect? Also the fact that this was a Friday
afternoon? Kip believed most people got the ax Friday afternoon so
they’d have the weekend to lick their wounds and their first
jobless workday wouldn’t roll around till Monday.

Kip marched to his desk to make sure his prop
for the newscon was in order. Sure enough, inside a folder lay the
FBI report on Theodore Owens III. Kip had requested the report days
earlier, knowing what it would contain. It had arrived just that
morning, ready to be displayed to the media at the appropriate
dramatic moment.

Kip congratulated himself on his
understanding of drama. That was one of the things that made him a
good politician. His favorite politician of all time, Ronald
Reagan, was a master of drama, and so was Kip Penrose.

“Kip, did I hear you have a news conference
scheduled for one o’clock?”

Kip’s ears perked up at the puzzled voice of
Alicia Maldonado coming at him from his office doorway. How perfect
was that? He looked up from the folder to smile at her. “As a
matter of fact I do.”

She shook her head. He loved how befuddled
she seemed. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about it. Or”—a sort
of understanding lit up her eyes—“maybe it doesn’t have to do with
Treebeard?”

“Oh, it has to do with Treebeard.” Then Rocco
appeared behind Alicia at the doorway, with his overcoat already
on. He raised his brows in a
Ready to go?
expression. Kip
hoisted his own overcoat from the stand behind his desk, pausing to
admire its navy wool. So much more flattering to his coloring than
black. Then he gifted Alicia with another smile.

“I don’t need you to be at this newscon,” he
told her, “but you might want to, anyway. I’m sure you’d find it
interesting.” He grabbed his folder prop and brushed past her out
the door, relishing her confusion as he followed Rocco outside to
the courthouse steps.

Quite a crowd of reporters and camera crews
was waiting. Kip took a few deep breaths, getting that edgy feeling
he always got before doing something big. But he had to do this,
right? Joan Gaines had put her foot down. And even though Alicia
Maldonado could be useful, she’d been annoying him for years. Plus
she’d already done most of the heavy lifting on the Treebeard case,
and now Rocco could do the rest.

Kip set up himself up behind the TV
microphones, grouped on their metal stands like skinny soldiers,
while Rocco took the position behind his left shoulder, where
Alicia used to stand. Not anymore. Kip felt another shiver run
through him. Was this a bad idea? He couldn’t worry about that now.
He was out on the playing field with the ball in his hand.

“I have a serious matter to bring to your
attention,” he said, “one I hoped I would never face. And it comes
when this office is fast approaching one of the most important
trials in its history, that of John David Stennis, who calls
himself Treebeard.”

Man, the excitement of those reporters
radiated toward Kip like heat waves on a desert highway.
Drama!
Drama!
Kip could almost feel the Gipper at his back, urging him
on.

“The case at issue,” he continued, “centers
on a defendant by the name of Theodore Owens the Third. Two weeks
ago, Mr. Owens brandished a gun in a crowded bar in Pacific Grove.
He was irate at a woman with whom he had briefly been involved.”
Kip scowled for the cameras, showing himself to be a man who
profoundly disapproved of such behavior. “Mr. Owens was reckless.
He posed a threat to innocent people trying to unwind after a long
week of earning their livelihood.”

Kip then raised his voice in righteous anger,
like a preacher. “I am a district attorney who takes such a
transgression very seriously. Regrettably, I must inform you that
the deputy district attorney who handled Mr. Owens’ case, the very
prosecutor working at my side to bring the accused killer Treebeard
to justice, is not of the same mind.”

Kip shook his head and struggled to appear
sorely disappointed. “That prosecutor dispensed swiftly with this
matter, recommending a plea bargain to Mr. Owens’ defense counsel.
A plea bargain,” he repeated, as if he found those two words
exceedingly vile. Then he made himself sound amazed, as if the
unbelievable, the truly astonishing, had happened. “That prosecutor
recommended a charge of misdemeanor brandishing! And then agreed to
the minimum sentence so that the defendant would face only three
months in county jail!”

It was time. Kip raised the folder high in
the air, where it glinted in the sun like a beacon. Flashbulbs
popped. TV camera lenses refocused. “I have here a report from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation outlining Mr. Owens’ criminal
history. Given the plea bargain, naturally you would assume that
the defendant had no serious blemishes on his record. But no.” Kip
dropped his arm to his side. “For Mr. Owens is a felon, convicted
in the state of Massachusetts, someone for whom it is illegal even
to possess a firearm. California law requires that Mr. Owens be
charged with a felony for this latest transgression. And if
convicted he would receive not only a second felony strike on his
record but a lengthy sentence in state prison.”

Kip raised his voice dramatically. “Mr. Owens
came frighteningly close to flouting the law. And how did he manage
that, you ask?” Kip paused and for the first time understood what
“bated breath” meant. “Because of the lackadaisical, incompetent
performance of Deputy District Attorney Alicia Maldonado, who was
more interested in moving a case off her desk than in seeking
justice for the law-abiding citizens of Monterey County!”

The reporters were stunned, Kip could tell.
They were raising their eyebrows at each other and writing
furiously in their little notebooks.

Time to deliver the final blow. Kip lifted
his chin, thinking of the one very important woman who would
approve mightily of what he was doing and how he was doing it.
“Therefore I terminate Deputy District Attorney Alicia Maldonado
for gross incompetence, effective immediately. Deputy District
Attorney Rocco Messina will assume her duties on the Treebeard
prosecution. Questions?”

Those came thick and fast, but Kip had
answers for all of them. He told himself that was because this was
his lucky day. Somewhere in all the back-and-forth, he turned
around and spied a dark-haired woman standing at the courthouse
door, far enough away not to be easily visible but close enough to
have heard every word.

Kip turned back to face the journalists
massed before him, a smile lighting his features, a bead of sweat
slinking down his back. He’d done exactly what Joan Gaines had
asked him to, and he’d done it in such a way that Alicia
Maldonado’s reputation would never recover.

*

Milo had to hand it to Joan. She’d gotten him
to agree to meet her, in a restaurant no less. It was as though
eight days of post-
flagrante delicto
silence simply hadn’t
happened. She’d called him and amidst all her chatter managed to
say the one thing that could make him agree to meet her, the one
thing that fit with his new Joan Gaines agenda.

Maybe I can tempt you with a little inside
information on the case. Doesn’t that get your reporter juices
flowing?

Yes, that most certainly did. His primary
goal was to do bang-up reporting on the Gaines case, meaning he
definitely wanted inside dirt. If she was willing to dish it, fine.
Ironic, but fine.

Yet he was hardly at ease. Joan was at best a
schemer; at worst she was dangerous. Of course she had refused to
talk over the phone. In desperation he had sent Mac and Tran to
collect beauty shots of the peninsula, which would keep them
occupied for a few hours at least. He could not risk having them
see him in the company of the lovely widow.

A waiter glided over, his dress shirt and
half apron as blindingly white as a naval officer’s. “May I get you
a glass of wine while you’re waiting?”

“Thank you, no, I’m fine.” Milo’s new spartan
regimen, which he’d adopted immediately upon exiting Richard
Lovegrove’s office, did not allow for lunchtime tippling. It barely
allowed for evening tippling. It certainly didn’t allow for women
who led him down paths he could ill afford to travel.

He sipped his carbonated water and chuckled
softly to himself. How fitting that he should be contemplating his
new abstemiousness in Pacific Grove, a community founded a century
before as a Christian seaside resort. That puritanical sensibility
continued to hold sway at the nearby Asilomar conference site,
though it had been modernized in recent years with New Age
overtones.

Joan, of course, would be oblivious to the
irony. No doubt she had proposed Joe Rombi’s restaurant for their
rendezvous because it removed her from the Carmel/Pebble Beach
axis, where she was highly recognizable and hence forced to
maintain the fiction that she was in deep mourning. Luncheon
excursions to chic Italian eateries with former boyfriends did not
exactly jibe with that image.

Milo’s anger with Joan was boundless, but
still it did not compare to his anger with himself. What an idiot
he had been. How totally he had let his little brain do the
thinking. How thoroughly he had allowed himself to be taken in yet
again. Joan Hudson Gaines was no more than a whiny, self-absorbed
rich girl with the moral code of a piranha. He had known it, yet he
had ignored it. He was detestable. But it was no more. The scales
at long last had fallen from Pretty-boy Pappas’s eyes.

He downed his fizzy water, rattled an ice
cube into his mouth, and was admiring Joe Rombi’s selection of
vintage French Art Deco posters when Joan sailed into the
restaurant. She wafted expensive perfume and looked as if she’d
spent the entire morning in a salon. Being Joan, she probably
had.

“Hello.” She sat opposite him, removed her
dark-lensed Chanel glasses, and smiled—a broad, welcoming smile
that said,
Surely nothing could be seriously wrong between
us?

“Hello, Joan.”

“I know you’re still mad at me but I’m
determined to jolly you out of it.”

He said nothing. The bright-white waiter came
by. “What may I get you?” he asked Joan.

“I’ll have a glass of pinot grigio,
please.”

The waiter’s gaze skipped to Milo. “And for
you, sir?”

Milo hoisted his fizzy-water glass. “A
refill, if I may.”

Joan arched her brow. “Won’t you share a
glass of wine with me?”

“I’m working this afternoon.”

She leaned across the table and lowered her
voice, her tone conspiratorial. “Surely we can think of a better
way to celebrate our reunion than you working all afternoon?”

“I have a story to write.”

She rolled her eyes and lolled back in her
chair, producing an impressive pout. “You really want to make me
suffer, don’t you, Milo?”

Her self-absorption was gigantic. Milo was
amazed there was room for it at their table. He was even more
astonished that it hadn’t suffocated him before now.

Their drinks came. She clinked her glass
against his without comment.

He broke the silence. “So what did you want
to tell me about the case?”

Her eyes over her wineglass grew more
disapproving, before she remembered herself. She put a smile on her
lips, then picked up her menu. “Let’s order first, shall we?”

That was achieved fairly quickly, though Joan
as usual made numerous off-menu requests. Milo already knew what he
wanted, since he’d had so much time before her arrival to ponder
the question. Once the waiter glided away, Joan straightened in her
chair and squared her body toward him as if she were about to
deliver a prepared speech. It ran through his mind that indeed she
was a politician’s daughter.