To Catch the Moon (4 page)

What a mess Daniel had left! Just twenty-four
hours he’d been dead, and already her life was in chaos. She
abandoned the windows to pace the pink-and-gray rectangle of
Aubusson carpet next to the baby grand. Not only was the press
hounding her, but Daniel’s campaign aides, particularly that bitch
Molly Bracewell, were circling constantly, wanting to know this,
wanting to know that. That asinine D.A. Kip Penrose kept calling
her cell phone, six times just that day, to “keep her abreast” of
developments.

The only consolation was that she had a plan.
Change creates opportunity
, her father always said, and for
once she agreed with him. This was her chance, if she played it
right.

The suite’s buzzer sounded, a jackhammer on
her brain. It had to be Henry Gossett, her father’s attorney, whom
she’d phoned the instant she got out of bed. Before letting him in,
she paused at the foyer mirror. She plucked a speck of lint from
her black wool trousers, teamed on this supposed day of mourning
with a black cashmere turtleneck, and plumped her short blond hair.
As often happened, she found herself slightly irritated with her
reflection. She was so damn petite and pixieish, even in black it
was a struggle not to look like Tinkerbell.

Finally she pulled open the suite’s door.
“Hello, Henry.”

The attorney regarded her solemnly from the
corridor. “Hello, Joan.”

It was back in the seventies, when her father
was serving his second term as mayor of San Francisco, that he had
retained Henry Gossett as his personal counsel. Joan thought
Gossett looked the same now as he had when she was five years old.
Whatever the day, whatever the weather, he wore a suit and bow tie,
with old-man’s wire spectacles and, weirdest of all, a felt fedora.
Henry Gossett was unbelievably staid and boring but he had one
hugely redeeming characteristic: he would be loyal to the Hudsons
to the end.

He entered the suite and set his fedora on
the narrow foyer table below the mirror. “I am so very sorry,
Joan.” His expression was dour, though she couldn’t remember ever
seeing it otherwise. “This is an enormous tragedy.”

“It’s been unbelievably awful,” she told
him.

He nodded and spread his hands. “Whatever I
can do...”

Joan nodded, then led Gossett into the suite.
She knew full well that though he made all the right noises, Henry
Gossett deeply disapproved of her late husband.
Sizzle but no
steak
, she’d once overheard him say of Daniel in a rare,
champagne-induced lapse. She might have been insulted, but by that
point she agreed with the assessment.

She took a seat on the pale gray silk sofa in
the main room and Gossett chose a matching wing chair. “Henry,” she
said, “I asked you here today because I have a few questions about
my father’s living trust. Now that I’ll be trustee.”

Gossett frowned and shifted, his gaze sliding
away from her face. He looked damned uncomfortable. Joan suspected
that like most people he expected a new widow to be so undone she
couldn’t think past her own grief. Well, that didn’t describe this
new widow.

He cleared his throat. “Joan, there is
something you should know. Now that Daniel has passed away, your
mother is the new trustee.”

“What?” She could not have heard right. “My
mother?”

“That is correct.”

“But it should be me!” She was flabbergasted.
“Why isn’t it me?”

Gossett’s frown deepened. “You know I’m not
in a position to answer that question, Joan.”

“Then who the hell is?” She rose to her feet
and made her way to the French doors to stare out of them again,
though nothing in the vista had changed. Stillwater Cove was as
gray and choppy as ever. Maybe choppier. Angrier.

Unbelievable! She couldn’t stop shaking her
head. Again she’d been passed over, and again by her own father.
She’d been livid when he’d picked Daniel over her as trustee in the
first place, though it was all part and parcel of his blind eye
where Daniel was concerned. But to heap insult over injury by
passing over her again …

And what did her mother know about managing
money? Nothing. When had she ever gone to business school? Never.
Joan was stunned. She’d assumed that after Daniel was gone it would
be her in control for a change. But apparently not.

Would she always be underestimated? First by
her father, then by her husband. Sometimes she felt as if people
even thought more highly of her mother than they did of her. But
what had Libby Storrow Hudson ever accomplished?

She turned from the view to face Henry
Gossett. “What is the value of the trust’s assets today?”

He hesitated. “I’m afraid I can’t say, Joan.
I don’t have an exact figure.”

“You mean you can’t say because I’m not the
trustee or you can’t say because you don’t know?”

He put on his patient voice, which irritated
her further. “As a major beneficiary, Joan, you’re certainly
entitled to that information. I simply don’t have an exact
figure.”

“It doesn’t have to be exact. Ballpark.”

Again he hesitated. “I truly can’t say,” he
repeated. “The value fluctuates.”

“Don’t be such a lawyer, Henry!” she snapped.
“What is it, give or take?”

He stared into the middle distance, as if
calculating from rows of numbers. Then, finally, “Thirty million
dollars.”

She frowned. That was considerably less than
she’d expected. “What about my father’s stake in Headwaters?”

“Daniel purchased your father’s stake, Joan.”
He spoke slowly, as if she wouldn’t understand otherwise. “You and
your mother received notification of that earlier this month.”

She was impatient. “Yes, I am aware of that.
But I thought the stake would revert back to the trust now that
Daniel is dead.”

“No, that transaction is complete. It won’t
revert back. It—”

“Then where is that stake now?”

“It’s part of Daniel’s estate. So—”

“Ah.” She turned away from Gossett, her mind
working. That was fine, then. She knew Daniel had a simple will,
one that left everything to her. If he ever had plans to change it,
he never got around to acting on them. She knew that for a
fact.

She returned to the sofa and sat down. “I’ll
want to see the trust assets listed on a spreadsheet, Henry. I’d
like you to come back the day after Christmas with it.”

Gossett hesitated. “Joan, Dodie and I were
planning to spend Christmas with our daughter in Boston. We have a
new grandchild.”

She was astounded. How could Gossett possibly
be so self-absorbed as to consider taking a trip now, when she was
in such a crisis? “Well,” she said tightly, “I’m sure you’ll find a
way to do the right thing.” Then she rose and walked to the foyer.
This highly unsatisfactory meeting was over.

Gossett rose and followed her, returning his
fedora to the top of his head. “Again, Joan, I am so very
sorry.”

“Yes. Good-bye,” and she opened the door to
let him out.

These damn men!
She rested her
forehead against the door after Gossett left and shut her eyes. A
pain, surprisingly raw after all this time, shot through her. Again
her father had passed her over, underestimated her, thought her
capable of so little. How ironic that the one time she earned his
approval was when she married Daniel. That turned out to be the
biggest mistake of her life.

She needed a drink. She headed for the
suite’s wet bar. And what was this about the trust being worth only
thirty million dollars? The only comforting possibility was that
Gossett was being conservative in his estimate. That would be just
like him.

She poured herself a scotch, then sipped at
the crystal tumbler, its contents warm down her throat. The ache in
her temples worsened, throbbing like dull blades against her skull.
She decided to pop a few aspirin as well, resisting the impulse to
take the Xanax Dr. Finch had prescribed her. She should be careful
with those. Minutes later, listless, she wandered into the bedroom
and switched on the TV.

She watched for a long time, propped up
against the pillows, getting drowsy from the combination of aspirin
and alcohol. Aimlessly she channel-surfed, until suddenly a
familiar face appeared on the screen. She started, then stared at
the flickering image. Tall, curly dark hair, broad shoulders,
features that might have been stolen from a Greek god.

Milo. Milo Pappas. In Carmel.

Her heart pounded. The remote slipped from
her hand onto the floor, where the plush carpet dulled the sound of
its fall.

Milo. She narrowed her eyes, assessing how
he’d changed in the years since they’d been together. Physically,
very little. But professionally, quite a bit. She knew he’d risen
through the ranks at WBS, even become a household name. Funny. Back
when they’d dated, she thought he wouldn’t amount to much. But
apparently he’d become quite the network-news star.

She smiled, overcome by a surge of affection.
Milo had always been so nice to her. He had always appreciated her.
Unlike some people.

Mesmerized, she smiled at his image on the
screen. And now Milo Pappas was back in Carmel. Imagine that.

*

Alicia raised eyes from her dog-eared copy of
the California Penal Code, a navy volume with the size and heft of
a big-city phone book, and considered the wisdom of making a third
pot of coffee. The red numbers on her digital clock read 2:36 PM,
and already she was terrifyingly close to caffeine-wired. She’d
been in her office since dawn, after allowing herself four hours of
sleep. The fact that it was a Sunday, and three days before
Christmas, was irrelevant. She didn’t want anything to happen in
the Gaines case that she didn’t know about. And the best way to
make sure of that, in these early days when the situation was
highly fluid, was to remain at Case Central, otherwise known as the
D.A.’s office.

Penrose hadn’t assigned the case to her yet.
She wasn’t surprised, but it worried her. After the chaos of Daniel
Gaines’s corpse pitching off the gurney in full view of the media,
with the footage then being broadcast nonstop around the globe, she
hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise with him. Nor had he
shown up yet in the office. On a normal weekend Kip would never
appear at work, but in these circumstances she expected that even
he would put himself out.

Nothing could move slowly in this case: it
was too high-profile. Everyone in the state, in the
country
,
was watching. The pressure to name a suspect grew more intense by
the hour; the speculation in the media more fevered. Everything
else got shoved aside. The autopsy was already done. They could get
a match on the fingerprints at any time. Soon, very soon, they
might have enough to issue an arrest warrant. And once they did,
Penrose would be forced to name a prosecutor.

She shivered, out of both fear and
anticipation. In the last twelve hours she’d grown even more
desperate for Penrose to assign her the case. Most prosecutors went
through their entire careers without even getting near a case like
this one. She couldn’t let it slip away. She would stay till
midnight if she had to, and beyond. She would sleep here. She would
eat here. She would make Penrose give her the case, and she would
win it.

Her phone rang and she almost jumped out of
her chair. She grabbed the receiver before the second ring.
“Maldonado.”

“
Hola
,” said a man’s voice.

She let out a sigh. “Hi, Jorge.”

He laughed. “Think you can sound a little
more enthusiastic?”

She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Sorry.
It’s just—”

“I know, I know, you’re working.” He paused
and his voice softened. “
Es que me haces falta
.”

She sighed. Not only did he miss her; he told
her so. The damn thing was that most women would die to have Jorge
Ramon in love with them. Her mother thought she was certifiable.
Maybe she was. What Jorge had going for him, especially compared to
what passed for an eligible bachelor in Salinas, was
unbelievable.

He was Mexican. He was Catholic. He was
thirty-nine and never married. He owned his own home. He didn’t
have any kids. He didn’t have an ex-wife. He didn’t do drugs or
screw around. He didn’t have a temper. He’d never been arrested.
Not only did he accept her work, he even claimed to admire it. He
was cute, or at least cute-ish. And to top it all off, he was a
doctor. With, as her mother constantly reminded her,
su propria
consulta privada
.

It was yet another way Alicia baffled Modesta
Maldonado and the dozens of other Maldonados she called family.
Well, join the club.
She baffled herself.

“I miss you, too, Jorge,” she lied.

“We never got to decorate the tree
yesterday.”

“No, we didn’t.” Her tree, he meant, because
he’d decorated his own a good two weeks back, being wildly
efficient in every way. She’d worked that night, and winced
remembering how she’d lied to him then, too. Oh, yes, she
remembered saying, she would have loved stringing popcorn and
drinking egg nog and listening to Frank Sinatra Christmas albums.
That did sound fun, actually. She just dreamed of doing it with a
man other than Jorge Ramon.

“Any new developments?” he asked.

“Nothing yet. But I’m expecting something
soon...” she added hastily, to head off the very suggestion that
next tripped off Jorge’s lips.

“How about dinner? Especially since we missed
last night.”

She made herself sound regretful. “I can’t,
Jorge. I just can’t. I have to stick around. Something could come
down at any—”

“Okay, I understand. I just miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” Oops, she did it
again.

“
Te amo
.”

“ ‘Bye.” Softly, very softly, she replaced
the receiver, as if to lessen the hurt of not responding in
kind.