To Catch the Moon (38 page)

“Why do you say that?”

“Do you know he named Daniel trustee of his
living trust?”

“You’re kidding.” Milo frowned. “I would’ve
thought he would have named his wife.”

“He should have.” Molly Bracewell shook her
head. “Because I got the distinct impression that Daniel went wild
with that money. I know he did something with the trust that really
pissed Joan off. They had an enormous argument. She even moved into
a hotel for a few days.”

“Do you know what it was about?”

“I wish I did.”

“When was it?”

Molly Bracewell narrowed her eyes. “I did
specify off the record, Milo.”

“I realize that, Molly. Don’ t worry.” He
gave her his most convincing smile. “I’m just curious.” This time
he did the leaning forward. “Didn’t you want to know what it was
about?”

“Of course I did.” She kept her gaze level.
“But Daniel died before I could pry it out of him.”

Milo caught his breath. “So this
happened—”

“Not long before he was murdered.” She
paused. “About two weeks before.”

They were silent for a time, eyeing each
other. The lunchtime crowd buzzed around them, claiming tables,
exiting tables, eating, laughing, chatting. Oblivious to the
life-and-death questions that hovered like a shadow over the third
booth by the east window.

It was Molly Bracewell who spoke first. “I
thought the same thing that you are, for about thirty seconds. But
it’s got to be Treebeard. The evidence against him is overwhelming.
You know, his lawyer came to see me.”

“Jerome Brown?”

“Nice guy. But he’s clutching at straws.” She
laughed. “He was trying to find out if I was pissed at Daniel. Me!
Why would I want Daniel dead? I was planning to ride that horse all
the way to the White House.”

Milo kept his tone mild. “Since there’s all
that DNA evidence against Treebeard, maybe Brown is thinking
Treebeard might have been framed.”

“Well, maybe he was. But you have to be smart
to set somebody up for murder.” Molly Bracewell raised her index
finger in the air. “And knowing Joan Gaines the way I do? That
woman is not capable of pulling something like this off.” She shook
her head in a vigorous motion that brooked no argument. “If
Treebeard didn’t do it, I applaud whoever set him up. They were
brilliant. And believe me, that doesn’t describe Joan Gaines.”

Milo nodded. He wouldn’t think so, either.
But so much lately was different from what it had appeared to
be.

*

Joan paced the cream-colored carpet of her
master bedroom, very surprised at the e-mails she’d been reading on
Daniel’s desktop computer. They actually made her think more highly
of him. Who would have thought Daniel was clever enough to devise a
way to give Headwaters a cash infusion that required only some
surreptitious tree cutting? A bit of work on the side that several
Humboldt County lumbermen apparently were quite willing to perform?
Then a quiet shipment or two overseas, the details of which Daniel
had already ironed out?

Yet here was this clever plan, “all teed up”
as Daniel liked to say. True, it was risky. It was dangerous. But
it had one characteristic Joan believed true of the best schemes
and the most convincing lies: supreme boldness.

Ideas began to percolate in her head as she
gazed about her master bedroom. She was back in her home again,
thanks to her mother forcing her out of the Lodge. If only her
father had named her trustee after Daniel! Then she would have much
more control over her financial fate. At least this bedroom was a
joy. She’d allowed Daniel to have the first floor done in the
contemporary style he so admired—all metal and glass, the only
colors neutral taupes, grays, and whites—but her taste reigned
supreme in the bedrooms, where she’d gone wild with Italian
Provincial furnishings and yellow, blue, and green Florentine
prints. At the moment she was clashing wildly, dressed in her red
silk peignoir, but she was sick to death of wearing black.

She shivered and drew the thin fabric closer
around her body. It was disconcerting how she felt Daniel all
around her in this house. They had never been together at the
Lodge; there it was almost as if he had never existed. But here ...
She could imagine him at any moment emerging from the master
bathroom, his powerful body wrapped in a white towel, his pectoral
muscles flexing as he towel dried his thick blond hair. Or she
could hear him striding across the oak hardwood of the first floor,
talking loudly into the cordless phone, conducting a meeting with
campaign aides grouped in the living room. In the last weeks of his
life, this house had been a cauldron of activity. Now it was
silent. And empty.

Outside the bay window, the sun was gone from
the sky, though a residual orange glow rose from the surface of the
Pacific. The usual assortment of joggers, gawkers, and dog walkers
made their way along Scenic’s curving path, high on the bluff.

Joan forced herself to walk out of the master
bedroom and back down the long corridor to Daniel’s home office.
Again she sat down in front of his computer, set up just as it had
been when he was alive. It gave her the creeps. Piles of campaign
stationery were still stacked on the desk, the “Gaines for
Governor!” letterhead cheering at her in red, white, and blue. This
afternoon was the first time since he’d died that she’d bothered to
boot up the computer. Some mix of boredom and curiosity had
prompted her to probe what secrets it might contain. And led her to
... this.

The basics were simple. She’d learned them
from Daniel. The Forest Service prohibited logging companies from
cutting trees more than thirty inches in diameter—the so-called
ancient trees—to protect the irreplaceable old-growth forest. The
loggers didn’t like that because it meant that the biggest and most
valuable trees were off limits. Tensions ran high on both sides
because so few of those trees were even left. But everyone
understood the regulations, and flouting them meant both stiff
penalties and a public outcry, neither of which wanna-be politician
Daniel Gaines would tolerate.

What Joan hadn’t known was that however
valuable those trees were in the U.S., they were worth scads more
in Asia. She laughed out loud. There were a few suggestive emails
from a Mr. Fukugawa in Tokyo to prove it. Of course, she had to
read between the lines, because this Fukugawa fellow was smart
enough not to spell everything out. Thank God! Otherwise the cops
might have gotten a whiff of what was about to begin.

And Daniel had figured out how to spin it if
he ever got caught. He would claim either that the trees were dead
or that he was conducting “fire-risk reduction,” which gave him
leeway to chop them. And make a killing! Hundreds of thousands of
dollars per tree. After the lumbermen got their take, that
certainly would have helped Headwaters’ bottom line.

Daniel must have been seriously worried about
the red ink, she thought, because this was a risky proposition.
He’d always made a big show of claiming that Headwaters was
environmentally responsible. But what if one of the lumbermen
squealed? Or got greedy and said he would squeal if he didn’t get
more money?

Joan looked up from the computer, overcome by
a rare wave of admiration for her husband. This was a ballsy
scheme. It saddened her to think he had concocted it without
breathing a word to her. True, he never talked to her about the
business, which she always resented. After all, she almost had her
MBA! Her eyes teared with renewed anger. They might have been a
team, like her parents, if only Daniel had let her in.

She wanted a glass of wine. She geared
herself up to walk downstairs to the kitchen, which unfortunately
was right next to the library. These days she spent virtually all
her time on the second floor. She hated being downstairs, where
everything had happened. She left Daniel’s office and padded
downstairs on her bare feet, clutching her peignoir around her. Her
pace accelerated as she neared the library.

It was hellacious even being close to that
room, though she had to admit there was no longer any evidence of
what had happened there. Her mother had been true to her word and
made sure of that. Still Joan shuddered. The crimson pool on that
Bokhara rug she would never forget. But the Kashan that replaced it
was unmarred, and gorgeous against the built-in oak bookcases that
rose floor-to-ceiling on three of the four walls.

Into the kitchen, where the chardonnay was
chilling in the Sub-Zero. Joan poured herself a glass, then began
her return trip. Just as she rocketed past the front door, the
doorbell rang.

Damn
. She halted, then stood on tiptoe
and raised her eye to the peephole.
Double damn
. It was her
mother.

“Joan?”

Her mother either had heard her footsteps or
seen her swish past the front window, dressed, unfortunately, in a
bright red peignoir.
Triple damn
.

“Joan, open the door, please.”

Disapproval was writ large on Libby Hudson’s
patrician face when Joan reluctantly pulled open her front door.
“You’re in your negligee,” her mother announced, sweeping past her
into the foyer. “Did you even bother to get dressed today?”

No
, she replied silently. “What do you
care whether I did or not?”

The older woman’s brow arched, even as her
eye dropped to the wineglass in her daughter’s hand. “And you’re
drinking.”

“It’s not exactly ten o’clock in the
morning.” Joan raised the glass as if in toast. “Care to join
me?”

“I think not.” Libby Hudson clasped her hands
in front of her as if she were about to address a panel of
committeewomen. “But I did want to tell you that I have learned
what you are up to with Headwaters.”

Here it comes
. Joan set down her
wineglass and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re referring to
the fact that I’m selling the company? Who did you hear that
from?”

“It hardly matters. The point is that I am
astounded you made this decision without discussing it with me
beforehand.”

“You’re no longer a shareholder.”

“I can only suppose that you tired of the
company as swiftly as you have tired of every other enterprise you
have ever undertaken.”

“And you wonder why I don’t discuss things
with you?” Joan was horrified to feel tears not far behind her
anger. “Why should I when I know you’ll disapprove?”

A light flush suffused her mother’s cheeks,
which surprised Joan. The older woman trained her gaze on the
hardwood floor. “I am very sorry if I give you that impression.”
She sounded distinctly awkward, even stiffer than usual. “And I do
not care to fight with you, Joan. Despite what you may think, I
wish only the best for you, and always have.”

That left Joan at a loss for words. She
watched her mother turn to go, then halt at the front door, still
with her eyes averted. Again her tone assumed the harsh edge Joan
was used to, which actually came as a relief. They were back on
familiar ground.

“But I must register my disapproval of this
surreptitious behavior,” her mother said. “I would appreciate that
you not blindside me in the future.”

Out she strode, leaving Joan frustrated and
restless. With nothing better to do, Joan retrieved her wineglass
and climbed the stairs, returning to the master suite’s bay window.
One of California’s most spectacular vistas spread out grandly
before her.

She was at her mother’s mercy. Her mother,
who treated her as a recalcitrant child. Her mother, who had forced
her to move out of the Lodge against her will. Her mother, whose
arthritic hand was wrapped so tight around the living trust’s purse
strings, it might as well be a death grip.

Wouldn’t extra cash help get Joan out from
under her mother’s thumb? Surely independence required risk. If
Daniel could manage such risk, she could.

Joan decided quickly. She would call this
Fukugawa fellow, then go to Humboldt County to meet with the
lumberman Daniel had lined up to lead the cutting team. Perhaps en
route she’d spend a night at the Ritz in San Francisco. That was
always nice.

Joan sipped her chardonnay, relishing both
the buttery taste and her mother’s disapproval. She would book a
suite at the Ritz for sure. There wasn’t the least question about
that.

Part of Alicia couldn’t believe she was doing
what she was doing. A greater part couldn’t stop herself.

Her silver VW was one of hundreds of vehicles
inching north along the S curves that signaled 101’s final approach
to the city of San Francisco. To her right across four lanes of
freeway hulked Potrero Hill, a residential district where property
values waxed, then waned, with the Bay Area’s roller-coaster
Internet fortunes. A mile and a half ahead the tightly grouped
skyscrapers of the financial district poked into the twilit sky,
the towers aglow with rectangular squares of light for those office
workers still at their labors as the six-o’clock hour neared.
Behind downtown a bank of fog huddled over the cityscape like a
cottonball giant, obscuring everything from Russian Hill west to
the Pacific.

Over the phone Milo had instructed her to
take the Fourth Street off-ramp, then make her way through the
financial district to the eastern slope of Nob Hill and the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel. He had been in the city for a shoot, he’d told
her, and though his crew had already flown south to Los Angeles,
where he would follow the next morning, he had that evening free.
He had a room at the Ritz and had booked a second one for her, his
treat. It was both to prove his goodwill and to give them an
opportunity to trade information on the case. He had learned a
great deal from interviewing Molly Bracewell, he said, and had made
dinner reservations at a restaurant called Hawthorne Lane, which he
liked very much and hoped she would enjoy as well.