To Catch the Moon (42 page)

She carried the roses inside and set them on
the coffee table, staring at them for some time before she forced
herself to step away. Then she booted up her computer and within
minutes was on-line and had located the Web site where Headwaters
Resources was cut open and dissected for prying eyes to see.

Given what she didn’t know about business,
much of what she read made little sense. Yet a good bit of it was
fairly easy to understand. The company was described, along with
its business strategy and competitive strengths and market
position. What jumped out at Alicia came under organization and
ownership.

She read through that section, then read
through it again. There it was, in black and white. At the end of
November, Daniel Gaines bought Web Hudson’s stake in Headwaters
Resources and became the company’s only shareholder.

Alicia raised her head, trying to take that
in. Less than a month before he was murdered, Daniel Gaines came to
be the sole owner of Headwaters. Good-bye, Web Hudson, without whom
Gaines never would have been able to buy the company in the first
place.

And how much did Gaines pay for his
father-in-law’s stake? Thirty million dollars. Alicia knew from
Franklin Houser that thirty million was exactly what Web Hudson had
paid for it two and a half years before. So thanks to Daniel
Gaines, Web Hudson’s estate got zero return on that investment.
Zero return for Web Hudson’s making it possible for Daniel to buy
the company in the first place. Zero return for being so generous
as to double Daniel’s stake from twelve to twenty-five percent.
Zero return for treating his son-in-law like the son he never
had.

You didn’t need an MBA to know that Web
Hudson’s estate got screwed.

For a time Alicia was baffled. If the estate
of Joan’s late father owned the stake, how did Gaines even have the
authority to sell it? It took her a while to remember what she had
learned the night before, what Molly Bracewell had told Milo: that
Gaines was trustee of Web Hudson’s living trust. That meant he
controlled Web Hudson’s assets, one of which was the stake.

That realization made Alicia’s mind work so
quickly she had to bound out of her seat to pace her front room. On
the face of it, it certainly looked like Gaines had violated his
fiduciary responsibility to his father-in-law’s estate. He
feathered his own nest to the detriment of the living trust. And
what else had Bracewell told Milo? That Gaines did something with
the trust that made Joan so angry she moved out of their house into
the Lodge. Now Alicia knew that happened mere days after this
transaction. Probably Joan found out and went ballistic.

It wasn’t hard to imagine that this might
make Joan pretty damn mad. What a slap in her father’s face. What
bald greediness on her husband’s part. What contempt for the older
man’s memory. Not even to mention the negative effect on the
trust’s bottom line, and thus on its two beneficiaries: Joan and
her mother.

The phone was ringing. Again. It had been
ringing a lot, and whoever was calling wasn’t leaving a message.
This time Alicia ran to the kitchen to answer. It was Louella.

“Where the hell have you been?” A very het up
Louella, not so much mad as excited. “I’ve been calling all
morning!”

“I’ve been out.” That was a lame excuse but
Alicia knew Louella would highly disapprove of her little
assignation in the big city. “Why? What’s up?”

“Can I come over?”

“Sure, but—”

“I’m coming over.” She hung up. Alicia rolled
her eyes and went back to the computer. There was one piece of the
puzzle she was missing. Where had Gaines come up with the thirty
million to buy his father-in-law’s stake? Because when he and Web
Hudson acquired the company, Gaines couldn’t even come up with four
million.

After ten minutes of trying to make sense of
five years’ worth of spreadsheets, Alicia found an entry that
pulsated in front of her eyes.

She stared at it. In late November,
Headwaters took on additional debt. How much? Thirty million
dollars. And what was the purpose? To repurchase Web Hudson’s
shares. Making Daniel Gaines the company’s sole shareholder.

The pieces clicked into place in her mind.
Daniel Gaines was both buyer and seller of his father-in-law’s
stake in Headwaters. He could set the price, and he could accept
it.

It could not be more obvious. It added up. It
was appalling, yet made sense. Daniel Gaines certainly had been a
hotshot financier here. He’d parlayed four million dollars of
borrowed money into sole ownership of a company valued at more than
a hundred million dollars.

Yet it might have cost him his life.

Alicia could just imagine Joan’s reaction.
Joan could well think that Daniel had stolen Headwaters from her
family. She would be furious. Yet what could she do about it?

She couldn’t get far by divorcing him. Given
California’s community-property laws she’d get only half the assets
from the marriage. And Daniel would walk away with a huge windfall,
at her family’s expense.

But if Daniel died? She’d get it all. Most
spouses without children left everything to the surviving spouse.
And even if by chance Daniel Gaines had no will, California law
required that everything go to his widow.

The doorbell rang. Alicia ran to her foyer
and flung the door open. Louella stood on the stoop. “You will
never believe what I’ve found out about Daniel Gaines,” Alicia
said.

But Louella just pushed past her into the
house. “And you will never believe what I’ve found out about Kip
Penrose.”

Alicia shut the door. “What?”

Louella turned around in the front room and
held out a manila folder. “It finally came in. The file on Theodore
Owens’ felony conviction. From Massachusetts, twelve years ago.
Guess who prosecuted the case?”

Alicia raised her hands to her face, reading
the truth in Louella’s eyes. “Oh ... my ... God.”

“You got it, kiddo. One of the up-and-coming
assistant district attorneys in Worcester County at the time. Who
later moved to California.” Louella slapped the file. “Kip
Penrose.”

As Joan sped the Jag north along 101 deep
into the heart of Humboldt County, she was reminded that this part
of Northern California did not possess the charms she typically
sought in her destinations. True, the highway was lined with
coastal redwood, which she found herself appreciating more than
usual, but there wasn’t a single five-star hotel or restaurant for
hundreds of miles. People here enjoyed natural beauty, apparently,
which was all well and good, but Joan rather preferred man-made
attractions. The big draw in these parts seemed to be the rumored
appearances of Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch, a manlike beast that
topped nine feet, weighed over seven hundred pounds, and reportedly
suffered from fairly severe body odor.

Joan feared the lumberman she was driving to
meet would match much the same description.

She careened along the narrow curving highway
in an uneasy silence. She’d long since turned off the radio,
frustrated that all she could find on the dial were preachers and
country-music stations. Every once in a while the fog billowed so
thickly she was forced to slow down, which both relieved and irked
her. At one and the same time, she wanted to get this meeting over
with and yet didn’t want it to begin. It was nerve-racking. What
was the protocol in such a situation? Thanks to Daniel’s earlier
efforts, the lumberman had already agreed to involve himself in
this enterprise, so she didn’t have to convince him. In fact, over
the phone he’d told her with obvious pride that he’d long ago
assembled “a team o’ good hardworkin’ men,” which she supposed he
thought would reassure her. What she wanted to hear was that they
were men who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Of course, that
was in part what the cash was for.

Ten thousand dollars, in neat bills newly
extracted from Wells Fargo Bank and now conveniently tucked into a
business-size envelope in her handbag. The money had come from one
of her personal accounts, where Mr. Fukugawa already had wired his
promised down payment of twenty-five thousand dollars. And there
were several multiples of that to follow when the first shipments
arrived in the port of Tokyo. This afternoon she would do her own
cash handoff to lumberman Hank Cassidy, make the final
arrangements, and get this operation going.

It was really happening. Her mother couldn’t
stop it, even if she knew about it. Nobody could. Joan supposed it
was juvenile to derive such satisfaction from doing things Libby
Hudson would disapprove of, but there it was. This was Joan’s small
way of declaring independence, which she’d thought she’d done
numerous times before but which somehow never seemed to take.

Joan saw from a white-on-green highway sign
that she was fast approaching the town of Redcrest. She had to
focus so as not to miss it; sometimes these towns went past before
she even knew she’d hit them. It was quickly obvious as she slowed
the Jag that Redcrest was a major stop for tourists out to see the
Avenue of the Giants, a thirty-mile scenic drive boasting some of
the biggest, oldest redwoods in the state. Given her own intentions
in Headwaters’ forests, it gave Joan the creeps.

It was easy to spot the Burlwood Cafe at
Redcrest’s main crossing; Hank Cassidy had given her directions
from there.

She headed north and took the first right
onto a dirt road that led straight into the woods. About sixty
yards in she found the promised clearing, a black pickup truck, and
Hank Cassidy. He was leaning against the truck chewing a weed,
which he tossed aside when he saw her. Joan knew lumbering was a
highly dangerous profession, and she regarded its practitioners as
he-men of the first order. Tall, broad-shouldered Hank Cassidy fit
the bill. She was surprised to find him fairly attractive, in a
jeans, cowboy hat, and work boot sort of way.

He tipped the brim of his hat at her when she
emerged from her car, an Old West gesture she rather liked, too.
“Ma’am.”

“Mr. Cassidy.” She held out her hand, which
he shook, briefly. He seemed to have his features permanently
arranged in a half scowl, with frown lines deeply etched into his
skin. Then he cocked his head to indicate the woods behind him.
“Let’s mosey on a little further back there.”

So he wanted to be even more hidden. That
showed caution, a trait she was happy to find in Hank Cassidy.
Never having “moseyed” before, Joan tiptoed along the dirt, which
she rapidly could tell would not be kind to her Cole Haan calfskin
mules.

When they were twenty yards or so into the
woods, Cassidy turned to face her. “Thought you’d be wearin’
black.”

She was puzzled. “You mean because I came
from the city?”

“Because your husband’s newly dead.” The
scowl deepened.

She had no idea how to respond to that.

But Hank Cassidy spoke into her silence.
“Your husband understood the lumberin’ business.” Admiration was
evident in his voice. “None of this fool worryin’ about habitat or
too much silt flowin’ into the river, killin’ off the chinook
salmon or the steelhead trout. Not that I don’t fish the Mattole
River,” he added, as if to forestall that horrifying suggestion.
“But a man’s gotta make a livin’. And sensible loggin’ and sensible
nature preservation can coexist side by side—that’s what I
say.”

“I quite agree, Mr. Cassidy.”

“Let’s do our business. You got what we
talked about?”

“Yes.” She reached into her handbag, but
Cassidy held up a restraining hand, his eyes looking past her at
the clearing. “Wait—I hear somethin’.” Seconds passed, while Joan
struggled to hear anything other than the natural sounds of the
forest. “Now,” he said.

Joan found herself quite impressed at the
speed and agility with which Hank Cassidy claimed the chunky
envelope and slid it into the interior pocket of his well-worn
sheepskin jacket. “You’re not going to count it?” she asked.

His eyes got even narrower. “Doin’ this kinda
business, Mrs. Gaines, we best trust one another.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest
otherwise.”

He nodded. “That’s that, then. My men ‘n’
I’ll start this evenin’.” He began to walk away.

“What? That’s it?”

He stopped to look at her. Somehow she knew
the phrase
fool woman
was lumbering across his brain.

“I mean,” she hissed across the few yards
that separated them, “you know what to do?”

“I went over all that with your husband,
ma’am.”

“Don’t you need a way to contact me if you
need to?”

For just an instant the scowl became
something like a smile, though it was less of comradeship than
derision. “Ma’am, I’ll find you if I need you.” Then Hank Cassidy
tipped his hat at her again and went off on his way.

Well, apparently that was that. Joan began
the return trip to her Jag, oddly reassured despite the brevity of
their interaction.

Hank Cassidy seemed to know what he was
doing. She watched him drive away, the tires of his black truck
kicking up dust. In his own way, he struck her as a powerful man.
And as Joan Gaines well knew, powerful men could handle their own
business.

*

Kip Penrose sat at his desk, his manicurist
at his side for his regular Friday 3 PM appointment, when his
intercom sounded. He pulled back his right hand, whose nails the
tiny Korean woman had been buffing, to press the intercom’s little
red button. “What is it, Colleen?”

“Mr. Penrose,” she said, sounding unusually
tentative, “people are telling me there’s a press conference about
to start on the courthouse steps.”

She sounded perplexed, and so, he had to
admit, was he. “A press conference? Called by whom?”

“That’s the strange thing, sir.” She paused.
“It sounds like by Alicia Maldonado.”