To Catch the Moon (34 page)

“I want you to know,” she said, “that I have
thought long and hard about what I did New Year’s Eve. Milo, I
recognize that it was irresponsible of me to turn off your phone,
and childish, and I am very, very sorry. I truly apologize.”

Neither her tone nor her gaze could be more
earnest. A less knowledgeable man would have been fooled. But it
served Milo’s purposes to warm her up and get what he needed out of
her. So ...

“I accept your apology,” he told her.

She laughed and laid her hand over his. “I’m
so relieved!” Then she leaned closer and batted those baby blues at
him again. “Though I didn’t think you could stay mad at me for
long.”

There was no point disputing her. There was
no point reminding her that apart from turning off his phone—which,
bad as it was, might be explained away—she had committed another,
more serious transgression. She had lied to him. Repeatedly. And
about a very serious matter—where she was and what she was doing
the night her husband was murdered. Either Joan had forgotten that
little prevarication, or she figured it didn’t much matter, or she
wanted to kick it under the table in hopes that over time it would
just slink away. She saw the world, and him, through the prism of
her own delusion. He understood that failing, because he was just
recovering from a bad case of it himself.

“Where are you staying?” she asked him.

“The Monterey Plaza Hotel.” He was doing
everything by the book these days. No more quirky inns or
out-of-the-way B-and-Bs.

“There’s always room for you at the Lodge,”
she murmured.

There was no need to disabuse her of that
notion because of the timely arrival of their entrees. Joan refused
parmesan on her tomato and basil pasta; Milo accepted it on his
pesto. He thought for a moment that he would do almost anything at
this point to set himself apart from Joan Gaines.

They were about a third of the way through a
silent inhalation of their lunches when the floodgates opened.
Cynic that he had become, Milo saw the display as no more than
another trick in Joan’s arsenal. She could see that Coquette hadn’t
worked its usual magic. Earnest Joan had fallen flat. Perhaps
Waterworks might enjoy more success?

“Milo”—much sniffling and nose-wiping—“I
would just hate for one stupid mistake to drive us apart. We are so
good together. We have so much potential. I will just never forgive
myself—”

Milo stopped eating, despite the powerful
lure of his pesto fettuccine. It seemed just too rude to eat pasta
during a woman’s tears. The waiter approached, then suddenly veered
left through the swinging doors to the kitchen, clearly judging
this not the best moment to inquire whether everything was
satisfactory.

“Can’t we get past this, Milo?” she was
asking. Her face by now was nearly as red as her tomato sauce.
“Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me? Is what I’ve done
so very wrong?”

He pondered that last question. Then he found
himself saying something he knew he shouldn’t but somehow couldn’t
resist. “I don’t know, Joan. You tell me.”

Something in the depths of her eyes shifted,
hardened. “What are you asking me?”

“I’m asking you if you’ve done something very
wrong.”

She said nothing for a long time. When she
did speak, her voice had a new edge to it. “Surely you don’t think
it’s possible that I killed Daniel.”

“It’s possible, certainly.” He decided to
hedge that. “Anything’s possible.”

The restaurant seemed very still. It being
such an odd hour—too late for lunch, too early for dinner—there was
only one other group dining, a threesome several tables away. Milo
was vaguely aware of the ebb and flow of their conversation, the
occasional tinkle of their laughter. They were finishing dessert
and coffee. They were getting ready to leave.

They were clattering out of their chairs when
Joan spoke again. “You’re attracted to her, aren’t you, Milo?” Her
voice was venomous. “You’re attracted to that cheap Latin
spitfire.”

He almost laughed.
Attracted
was way
too weak a word for the pull he felt toward Alicia Maldonado. “What
I’m asking has nothing to do with her,” he said.

“It has everything to do with her, because
apparently, unlike me, everything she says you believe. Well, you
might be interested to hear that what I was going to tell you today
actually has to do with your little Spanish rose.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s been fired!” Joan’s tone was exultant.
“Not just from my case but from the entire district attorney’s
office. For gross incompetence, no less! Oh, yes, I see the shock
on your face that Senorita Maldonado could be anything less than
perfect. But let me assure you that she is.” Joan leaned forward.
“She is positively demented, Milo. She is a psycho.”

Then Joan proceeded to tell him a story he
could hardly believe was true. And as she told it, he could clearly
see the triumph in her eyes, hear the glee in her voice, and he
knew as surely as he knew his own name that somehow Joan had
orchestrated Alicia’s downfall.

He felt a rage gather itself inside his
chest, almost painful in its intensity. This powerful woman, the
daughter of a governor, the heir to a fortune, who lived a life of
ease but still found it difficult—that such a woman would wreak
havoc on the life of someone so much more honorable and hardworking
than she ...

“So now she’s out of a job, which is what she
deserves,” Joan was saying. “For what she’s done to me, I hope she
dies soon. She’s not fit to do my gardening, let alone prosecute my
husband’s case.”

He had risen to his feet, he realized. His
napkin had dropped to the floor. He was actually tempted to
overturn the table onto Joan’s pampered lap.

“—two of a kind,” she was saying. “Your
family is as pathetic as hers. Both of you are poseurs, and I hope
you suffer the same fate she did. You are an ill-bred,
social-climbing—”

He stopped listening to Joan but could still
see her. Her face was twisted in anger. Her words were vile flying
things he had no time for.

This woman deserved no words from him,
nothing, nevermore. He turned and walked out of the restaurant,
leaving the bill unpaid, though that was the sort of nicety Joan
would attend to. Kill her husband, that she might well do. But fail
to adhere to a social convention? Not possible.

“How did I not see it coming?” Alicia paced
her living room like a woman possessed, Louella exhorting her to
slow down, sit down, calm down. It was just after five on Friday
afternoon. The sun was making its last stand of the day. The Lopez
boys next door were playing stickball in her driveway, while the
smell of their mother’s greasy cooking invaded her bungalow like a
pestilence. Cars buzzed past the front windows, courthouse
commuters using Capitol Street as a shortcut to Route 183.

Commuters. People who still had jobs.

“Who could have seen it coming?” Louella sat
cross-legged on the couch in front of the window, sipping a diet
ginger ale. The sun made a frizzy halo of her bleached-blond hair.
“Stop beating yourself up, Alicia. How many cases do we
plea-bargain? Four out of five? This one fit the bill. What you did
made sense at the time.”

“Penrose set me up.”

“We don’t know that.”

Alicia knew it. She didn’t know how he had
done it but she knew that he had. Her pacing accelerated. “He knew
I wouldn’t check on Owens with the FBI.” That was the only national
database to check, but no prosecutor did for a misdemeanor charge.
For a felony, sure. As it was, Alicia had taken the extra
precaution of making sure Owens had no outstanding warrants from
other states, which most prosecutors didn’t bother with for lesser
crimes.

“Penrose wants to plea-bargain everything,
remember?” Louella was saying. “That’s his modus operandi.”

“There’s more going on here than that.”
Alicia sagged onto the couch next to Louella and let her head drop
against the back cushion. “I feel so unbelievably stupid to let
that buffoon get the better of me.”

It was too weird to be real. All afternoon,
since that godawful press conference, Alicia had felt as if she
were watching her life with someone else’s eyes, as if what was
happening to her surely must be happening to some other poor sap.
Yet it was
she
who had to clean out her desk,
she
who
had to carry her cardboard box out of the district attorney’s
office into the chilly January air. People she’d worked with for
years darted back into their offices when she walked past, as if
she were suffering a disease they could catch if they got too
close.

Alicia shook her head. “When Veronica Hodges
immediately settled on misdemeanor brandishing for Owens, without
arguing with me for a second, that should have been an enormous red
flag. That woman would dispute whether the sun rises in the east.”
The phone rang again, for the umpteenth time. Alicia let the
machine pick up. “Hodges knew what exposure she had. She knew she
was getting away with something huge.”

For once Louella had no comeback.

Alicia went on. “What I don’t get is how
Penrose could have known what Owens’ history was.”

“I don’t see how he could have. That’s the
point.”

“The timing is just too suspicious.” Alicia
stood up and resumed pacing, as though the couch were a jury box
and she a prosecutor lining up arguments to persuade Louella to
convict. “On New Year’s Day I show Joan Gaines proof positive that
she lied to me about being back in Carmel the night her husband was
murdered. The very next afternoon Kip insists on assigning me
Owens, which turns out like this. Am I crazy or did Kip use Owens
to get me off the Gaines case?”

Louella met her eyes, her face somber.
“You’re not crazy but I just don’t see how Penrose could have
known.”

“And nobody else heard him badger me to do a
deal. ‘No reason to go balls-out on this one,’ he tells me. ‘Guy’s
from a good family—it’s a first offense,’ he says. He actually told
me that!”

“There’s no evidence he didn’t believe
it.”

Not yet. But she knew—she’d always known—that
Penrose would get her if he had the chance. Or if he could create
the chance.

“You know, Alicia,” Louella went on, “maybe
you should focus on how to fight this. There are steps you can
take.”

“I could sue for wrongful termination. And
you can be damn sure I will.” Her case would go before the County
Board of Supervisors. If she could find a way to prove how Kip had
manipulated her, she could get her job back. “But that’ll take
forever. You know how slow the Board of Sups is.”

“I could loan you a little—”

“No.” Alicia held up her hands as if to stop
the flow of Louella’s words. Jorge had offered money, too, but she
wouldn’t take it from him, either. “I appreciate it, Louella,
really I do, but I can’t take your money. I know you’re not exactly
rolling in cash.”

Nobody who worked at the courthouse was, with
the exception of Penrose, and that was because after his own stint
as a prosecutor he’d done years in private practice. Alicia figured
some of the judges were pretty well-off, too, but most everybody
else lived paycheck to paycheck. She wouldn’t admit to Louella just
how close to the edge she was herself. Her checking account was
down to a hundred and twenty-three bucks. She’d confirmed the
balance at an ATM on the way home from the courthouse. Now she had
one more paycheck coming in, for the week she’d just worked; then
that was it. That wouldn’t last long, not with the money she gave
her mother every month to help with her mortgage and the cash her
sister Carla kept needing.

The phone rang again. “I’ll get it this
time,” she said, then headed for the kitchen.

It was Jerome Brown, Treebeard’s defense
lawyer. “I don’t know what to say, Alicia, except I can’t believe
this.”

“Then you’re in the same boat I am.”

“What happened?”

How to explain? “I didn’t know Owens’
history. Nothing showed up on the CLETS. And even though this was a
misdemeanor charge I checked for outstanding warrants. But nothing
showed up. I never would have plea-bargained if I’d known about the
felony.”

“That’s what I heard you say on the
news.”

She closed her eyes. She’d fed Jerome the
same line she’d been feeding reporters all afternoon. It was true,
but it hardly erased the allegation of incompetence. “Is this
getting a lot of coverage?”

“Hard to say. We just saw you on the local
news at five, and my wife said she heard it on the radio.”

Great. Her reputation was trashed. Even if
she got reinstated it was this firing that people would remember.
If she got rehired, that would run on page sixteen of the newspaper
when this story had headlined page one. Good-bye, any chance at
elective office.

“I suppose I should be happy about it,”
Jerome was saying, “because it’ll help me defend Treebeard.” He
paused. “After all, it’s one thing to go up against Rocco Messina
and quite another to face Alicia Maldonado.”

For a second or two she couldn’t say
anything. Then, “Thanks, Jerome.”

“If there’s anything I can do, I mean it, you
let me know.”

“I will.” She lay down the receiver, then
returned to the living room. Louella was rising from the couch in a
series of awkward motions. “Damn.” She started kicking her feet,
like a halfhearted Rockette. “My legs fell asleep. Have you noticed
how that happens more often the older you get?”

Alicia halted in the middle of her living
room and stared out her front window. In the asphalt parking lot of
the ratty apartment building across the street, two men had their
heads bent over some kind of business. It looked like a drug deal
but for once Alicia didn’t much care. “You know what’s the craziest
thing of all?”