To Catch the Moon (44 page)

“What off-the-record information? She never
said a damn thing to me that I used in my pieces!”

“Save it.” O’Malley shook his head, a look of
disgust twisting his features. “Lovegrove’s warning had no effect
on you, did it? If you had one brain cell in that pretty head of
yours, you would’ve kept yourself zipped at least until the Gaines
story was finished.”

Milo clenched his fists to keep himself from
punching O’Malley’s smug, superior face. “You set me up, O’Malley.
You were the one who forced me into covering Gaines’ murder in the
first place because you knew my history with Joan would be a
ratings grabber.”

O’Malley just laughed, a wicked, triumphant
sound. “I make no apologies for wanting to spike the numbers,
Pappas. But I sure as hell didn’t tell you to hump the widow. You
came up with that idea all on your own.” Then he leaned closer and
dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “You know what’s really
rich? The widow said you were screwing not only her but some
prosecutor on her husband’s case. You never learn, Pappas, do
you.”

That last wasn’t a question but a statement
of fact. At the moment Milo couldn’t dispute it.

“Come on, hand over your press pass and
ID.”

This time Milo relinquished them, mouthing
words he wasn’t sure he believed. “You can expect me to challenge
this legally,” he heard himself say.

O’Malley laughed again. “It’s airtight. We
have given you so many warnings and documented every one. Your ass
is cooked. All you’ll get out of filing suit are legal fees.”

For once Milo thought O’Malley had spoken the
truth.

“If you ever get another network job, which I
doubt,” O’Malley went on, “I suggest you leave your cock at
home.”

“You’re an asshole, O’Malley.”

“Maybe so.” He leaned closer. “But I’m an
asshole who’s the executive producer of
Newsline
. Who are
you?” Then he turned and walked away, slowly, casually. Milo
watched him go.

He’d lost. He’d proved all his detractors
right. Everybody who’d ever called him Pretty-boy Pappas had hit
the target. Now they would crow and he would cry, and it was his
own damn fault.

His. And Joan’s.

It was almost ten Saturday morning when
Alicia’s doorbell rang. The five hours she’d already been awake had
been an eternity of waiting. She flung the door open to find
Louella and Department of Justice criminalist Andy Shikegawa on her
stoop. She waved both of them into her front room.

“You got it?” she asked—needlessly, because
Shikegawa’s presence told her they had.

Louella turned around and brandished a white
envelope in her hand. “Hot off the press.”

“Can I see it?” Alicia took the search
warrant with cold fingers. There it was, in legalistic black and
white: permission to search Joan Gaines’ house on Scenic for
evidence relating to the murder of Daniel Gaines.

Not that the property hadn’t been searched
before. It had been, thoroughly, when Gaines’ body was discovered.
But perhaps some clue had been missed? Or was present now but
hadn’t been before? Those were long shots but all Alicia could hope
for.

This search warrant was her last chance. For
while she could argue that Joan Gaines had killed her husband, all
that backed her up was circumstantial evidence. She needed
something real, something tangible, something undeniable, to link
the lovely widow to her husband’s murder. Otherwise Treebeard would
go down.

She handed the search warrant back to
Louella. “Did Frankel put up much of a fight?”

Shikegawa laughed. “Let’s just say the good
judge proved the old adage wrong.”

They’d all heard it—and repeated it—a million
times.
What do you call an attorney with an IQ of fifty? Your
Honor.

“Not that Frankel’s convinced beyond a
reasonable doubt,” Louella added, “but she found all the new
information about Headwaters and Web Hudson’s living trust pretty
compelling.”

“And you convinced her to let me go with
you?”

Shikegawa piped up. “That took a little more
doing.” Alicia was fired, after all, which made it highly
unorthodox for her to be able to participate in the search. “But we
made it clear that you were the one who came up with everything
new.”

“And, of course, she’s known you for years,”
Louella added. “I also told her that Penrose had been discouraging
you from pursuing Joan Gaines as a suspect. What came out in your
press conference yesterday sure didn’t hurt.”

Shikegawa clapped Alicia on the arm. “You
looked good on the news.”

She rolled her eyes, though privately she
agreed she’d done well. She was embarrassed that in the evening
she’d pulled a Penrose herself: surfing among the local newscasts
to find her own appearances, and taping a few for posterity.

Not that her own interlude of Penrose-like
behavior made her any more sympathetic toward old Kip. As far as
she was concerned he deserved whatever he got, and from the early
noises people were making, that might be quite a comedown.

“I got to hand it to you, Alicia,” Louella
said. “Now you’ve even got me thinking Joan Gaines might have offed
her husband.” She turned and spied the roses, still in their
position of honor on the coffee table, then bent to sniff them.
“These are gorgeous. That is really sweet of Jorge.” She stood back
up, her expression puzzled. “Did I miss your birthday?”

“No.” Alicia did not want to get into
this.

Louella gave Alicia a penetrating stare, then
turned to Shikegawa. “Andy, why don’t you go on ahead? Alicia and I
will meet you there.”

“Fine.” Shikegawa moved toward the front
door. “You called Carmel PD and the sheriff’s department,
right?”

Louella nodded. “Bucky Sheridan’s on his way,
and we’ll get two squad cars from the sheriff’s department to set
up a cordon if we need it.”

“Good.” Shikegawa left.

Alicia ran to her bedroom to get her purse
and overcoat, then headed for the door. “Ready?”

“Not so fast.” Louella grabbed Alicia’s arm.
“You have such a guilty look on your face.” She cocked her chin at
the roses. “Those aren’t from Jorge, are they?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Especially
since she hadn’t heard word one from Milo since he’d left her at
the Ritz-Carlton the prior morning. Though she’d called his cell.
Twice. And left a message both times.

“Who are they from?”

“Forget it, Louella.” Though Alicia couldn’t.
She was back to feeling like a fool. A genuine, certifiable idiot.
With an arrow piercing her own heart.

Louella shook her head. She looked, and
sounded, highly dubious. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Alicia was silent. She hoped exactly the same
thing.

*

“Is it me or is it hot in here?” Kip Penrose
crammed his index finger between his Adam’s apple and the collar of
his dress shirt, then craned his neck, trying to give his windpipe
some breathing room. Goddamn Saturday morning and he was dressed in
a suit and tie and sitting in his office. Under TV lights that had
to be making the ambient temperature ninety degrees.

"I'm fine,” reporter Jerry Rosenblum
declared, and Kip could’ve kicked him. Sure,
he
was fine. He
was asking the questions, not answering them, and he was behind the
lights, not under them.

It hadn’t taken Kip long to decide he
couldn’t go through another news cycle without presenting his side
of the Alicia Maldonado firing story, weak though that might be.
Nothing could be worse than seeing himself portrayed either as an
incompetent buffoon who couldn’t remember whom he’d prosecuted in
years past, or as a malicious bigot who would stop at nothing to
get rid of a Latina on his staff. So this morning Kip was spinning
the story his way, giving one-on-one interviews in his office with
local reporters, a format he hoped would afford him more control
than a press conference.

So far, that wasn’t the case.

“Let me ask you that question again,”
Rosenblum said.

Kip stumbled a lot, which didn’t exactly
build his confidence. Thank God he wasn’t doing this live.

Rosenblum consulted his reporter’s notebook.
“How do you explain instructing Deputy D.A. Maldonado to do a plea
bargain in the Owens case when you knew from prosecuting Owens
yourself that he had a felony conviction?”

“Jerry”—Kip forced himself to smile
pleasantly at the reporter—“here’s where the misinformation I was
telling you about earlier comes in. I did not instruct Ms.
Maldonado to do a plea bargain in the Owens case. She made that
determination on her own.”

That was his story and he was sticking to it.
He was following the politician’s creed: If the truth doesn’t work,
lie. Even if the lie doesn’t work, repeat it. Because eventually
everyone will get bored and move on.

Besides, he had plausible deniability. He had
made sure to assign Alicia the case at Dudley’s. He’d also made
sure that no one who mattered overheard him argue for a plea
bargain.

Unfortunately Rosenblum’s face wore an
expression of disbelief. “But Deputy D.A. Maldonado takes more
cases to trial than any other prosecutor in this office. Every
defense attorney I’ve talked to says she hates to bargain.”

“First of all,” Kip said, “she is no longer
Deputy D.A. Maldonado. She has been fired from that position. And
second,” he added, raising his voice above Rosenblum’s attempt to
interrupt him, “there is no dispute whatsoever about whether Ms.
Maldonado sought a plea bargain in this case. She did.”

“At your urging,” Rosenblum repeated.

“No!” Then Kip remembered himself, or rather
remembered the camera, inches from his face, recording his every
twitch. He took a deep breath. “I did not urge her to do so,” he
declared.

Rosenblum again consulted his notebook. “When
the Owens case crossed your desk, before you assigned it to Deputy
D.A. Maldonado, didn’t you remember that you had won a felony
conviction against him years before?”

Kip smiled. “Jerry, do you know how many
cases cross my desk?” He made an expansive gesture, indicating,
Many! Many!
“I don’t take note of the defendant’s name,
rank, and serial number. Moreover, do you know how many felony
convictions I’ve won?”

Rosenblum shook his head.

“Too many to count,” Kip lied. Truth be told,
about a dozen over the years he himself had been a prosecutor. He
hadn’t exactly been a star in court. “And, I admit it, I couldn’t
rattle off to you the names of all those felons.” Kip laughed.
“Come on, Jerry! Could you tell me the names of everyone you’ve
ever reported on?”

The guy didn’t even crack a smile. “No. But
when I see one I recognize it.” Then he blindsided Kip with a
question he wasn’t in the least prepared for. “What is your
reaction to news that citizens are banding together to mount a
recall initiative against you?”

Kip felt his jaw drop. “What? Well, I’ll sure
as hell put a stop to that!”

Then he remembered himself. And the camera.
But it was too late. Because by then he had a pretty good idea
which sound bite would make the news that night.

*

Joan drove the dust-caked Jag up the driveway
of her home and braked right there, not bothering to park it in the
garage. Even pushing the automatic door opener seemed like too much
trouble. It felt like all she’d done in the last forty-eight hours
was drive, drive, drive: two hours up to San Francisco, then five
hours each way back and forth between the Ritz-Carlton and
Redcrest, and back again this morning to Carmel.

It better have been worth it.

When she walked into the house she was
astounded to find her housekeeper sitting in front of the kitchen
TV, eating a vile burrito-like concoction and watching a cartoon.
Joan stalked over to the set and jabbed the power button. “Elvia, I
don’t pay you to watch television!”

The woman’s face fell. “But it helps me learn
English, missus.”

“Learn English on your own time.” Joan
slammed her purse down on the granite counter. “Make me some
coffee. I’m going to take a shower.” She headed upstairs.

“You’ve been getting calls, missus,” Elvia
called after her, but Joan ignored her. She would shower first and
deal with calls later.

She made the water scalding, as if heat could
purge the frustrations of the last days. She showered quickly and
didn’t linger over dressing, wondering as she selected an outfit
where she might go to lunch that wouldn’t be crawling with weekend
tourists.

She was at her dressing table finishing a
light makeup when she heard a sudden commotion downstairs, near the
front door. She frowned, her mascara wand suspended in midair,
trying to make out what was going on.

She heard a man’s voice. It was raised,
arguing with Elvia.

Then she recognized who it belonged to.

Oh, my God
.

Footsteps on the stairs, then in the hallway
outside the master suite. Joan sprang up from her dressing table
just as Milo slammed open the door of her bedroom and burst inside,
Elvia frantic at his heels.

“Missus, I tried to stop him!” Her face was
twisted. “He pushed past me! He’s the man calling you all
morning!”

“It’s all right, Elvia.” Joan was amazed how
calm she sounded.

“It’s
all right
?” Milo laughed, an
odd, forced sound. He couldn’t stand still, it seemed. He was
moving constantly, pacing her creamy white carpet like a beast in a
luxurious padded cage. “All right for who, Joan? Not for me!”

Elvia was wringing her hands. “Should I call
the police?”

“Not yet, Elvia.” Joan realized her mascara
was still clutched in her hand. She tried to appear casual as she
set it back on the dressing table, though it was sticky from the
sudden dampness on her palms.