To Catch the Moon (47 page)

Alicia thought that must explain the
reporters and TV crews and photographers massed outside, and the
news chopper circling overhead. No one in the media, except Milo,
of course, even knew about the search warrant. That couldn’t be
what had drawn the press to the Gaines property in such
numbers.

Joan handed the letter back, her eyes
defiant. “I’ve never seen this before in my life.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Alicia raised her voice.
“You lied to me before and the truth still came out, didn’t it?
This letter came off the computer upstairs. Your prints are all
over that keyboard,” she said, though she had no idea if that was
true. “Who else had access to that computer but you? Come on, Joan.
Admit it!”

But again Joan shook her head, and backed
away a few steps. “I’m not saying another word until I speak to my
attorney. He’s on his way. Leland Jennings.”

“You think a big-name defense lawyer is going
to get you out of this?” Alicia advanced on Joan, holding the
letter out to her. “Come on. Take credit for your handiwork. It’s
pretty clever, I have to admit. More clever than I thought you were
capable of.”

“Shut up! You just shut up!”

The veneer was cracking. Alicia stepped
closer still. “You wrote this to Treebeard, didn’t you? Then you
signed Molly Bracewell’s name. You wanted to set him up for
Daniel’s murder and implicate her at the same time.”

“Shut up!” Now her arms were flailing, her
voice spiraling upward like a helium balloon.

“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it? Knowing
you killed Daniel? Knowing how cleverly you did it? But having to
keep it all to yourself for the rest of your life?”

One of those arms suddenly jutted straight
out and pointed at Alicia. “
You’re
the crazy one!
You
are! For trying to pin my husband’s murder on me!”

Before Alicia could respond, a commotion
behind her at the library’s door made her turn around. It was Bucky
Sheridan, his face even more flushed than usual. Next to him stood
Milo, who somehow looked different than he had before. Calmer, more
relaxed.

A word popped into Alicia’s head.
Vindicated
.

Bucky hoisted something long and thin in the
air. He gripped one end of it in his right hand, which was encased
in a protective plastic glove. “Look what we found. In the mudroom
off the kitchen.”

There was amazement in Bucky’s voice.

No wonder.

“It’s a bow,” Alicia heard herself murmur.
The murder weapon? Here in Joan’s house?
Slowly she pivoted
to face Joan, who stood wide-eyed and openmouthed across the
library. “That’s the bow you used to kill your husband, isn’t
it?”

“I did not kill my husband!” Joan screamed,
though she was panting, and her eyes were wild, which gave the lie
to her denial. “I haven’t seen that in ages. I didn’t even know it
was in the house. My parents gave it to me when I was, I don’t
know, thirteen.”

“You really are something, aren’t you?”
Alicia stepped closer to Joan. Now she was only a foot away. It
must have been her proximity that sent Joan scuttling sideways,
like a crab, close to Milo and Bucky. “Stealing one of Treebeard’s
arrows,” Alicia went on, “writing a letter to get him here to the
house, arranging all of this for a night when you knew you would
have an alibi in Santa Cruz—”

“Shut up!” Again out stretched the arm,
though this time it trembled violently. The index finger jabbed at
Alicia’s face. Joan’s own skin was a bright, angry red, as if she’d
been slapped. “You are the reason all this is happening, you
bitch!”

Alicia watched, oddly calm.
What a vile
creature
, she thought,
like something that slinks along the
bottom of the sea
. She arched a brow. “In some ways I don’t
blame you for killing Daniel, Joan. I know how he stole Headwaters
from your family. It was like he spit on your father’s grave after
your father did so much to help him.”

“Shut up!” Joan’s hands were clutched over
her ears, while she shook her head violently. Then her arms fell
and her voice reached a shrill, ear-piercing note. “Shut up!”

It happened mesmerizingly fast. Alicia
watched as Joan grabbed the bow from Bucky’s unsuspecting grip and
raised it high above her head. Then she pounced on Alicia, her eyes
crazed blue spheres, like those of a madwoman, or perhaps a sane
woman who’d just been pushed too far.

It's like when I was in a car
accident
, Alicia thought, watching Joan’s arms go up, up, up.
I knew the other car was coming but I couldn’t do a single thing
about it
…

Then the arms were coming down, the bow was
arcing in one swift, relentless motion, and all at once Alicia felt
herself thrust aside. She watched Milo step between her and Joan,
saw his body twist away from the bow, his arms raised protectively
over his head.

The silent library was rent with a mighty
crack.

Joan perched on the edge of the narrow metal
cot in her jail cell, her hands folded in her lap. She was trying
very hard not to touch anything, not to smell anything, not to hear
anything. The more she kept herself aloof from her surroundings,
the less real they became. The more she could dismiss the urine
odor from the toilet so close to the cot; the more she could banish
all the banging and buzzing sounds, and the endless muffled sobbing
of some woman several cells to her left. The more she sat silently,
within herself, not moving, not thinking, the more easily she could
believe that her imprisonment was a gigantic error that soon would
be corrected.

For it was an error. Despite that treacherous
letter, despite the unearthing of that bow, despite the endless
accusations of that vampirish Maldonado creature who would not stay
dead, she had not killed Daniel.
I did not kill him
, Joan
repeated to herself.
I didn’t
.

Close by, she heard a clanging of metal upon
metal. A buzzer sounded. A door opened, then closed. Heavy steps
came nearer, each footfall accompanied by the jangling of many
keys.

A female warden, an enormous black woman
sporting a pair of equally outsize wire-frame glasses, appeared
beyond the bars of her cell. “You got a visitor.”

Joan scurried toward the tall, silver-haired,
impeccably dressed man who then stepped into view beside the
warden. There was no one in the world she wanted more to see.
“Leland.”

Her cell door swung open. Attorney Leland
Jennings strode inside and clasped Joan’s small hands in his own.
The door slammed shut behind him, the entire cell shuddering with
the force, but at least this time she wasn’t imprisoned all
alone.

“Leland,” she repeated, helpless to think of
anything else to say. She wanted to weep. At this moment Leland
Jennings reminded her of her father. He was strong, knowledgeable,
someone who would take what was wrong and make it right again. Her
father might not always have given her her due, but he never, ever
betrayed her the way Daniel had.

“You poor dear,” Leland Jennings said, which
did make the tears flow. “Come sit down,” he added, and with him at
her side Joan was more willing to sit on the cot.

For a time he let her weep, making consoling
noises and handing her tissue after tissue as the need arose. It
surprised her that such a distinguished gentleman could secrete
such an enormous supply of tissues on his person.

Finally she produced a last sniffle. “I
apologize, Leland. I am not myself.”

“Of course not.” He smiled, which made little
crinkly lines appear at the outer edges of his bright blue eyes. He
did so remind her of her father!

It took her some time to regain control.
“They’ll never be able to make this stick,” she said. She rose from
the cot and listened to her declaration hang in the cell’s heavy
air, trying to gauge whether it had the ring of truth. It didn’t
quite, so she tried again. “They have no case against me
whatsoever.”

Leland Jennings pursed his lips and looked
into the distance, as if some justice-system truth were out there
that only he could see.

“Isn’t that right, Leland?” she demanded.

It took forever for him to say anything.
Finally, “From what I have seen of the evidence, it is no more than
circumstantial.”

“Well, that’s hardly enough!”
Particularly
when it comes to me
, she wanted to add, but stopped herself.
“The case against that Treebeard man is far more convincing. What
about all the DNA evidence they’ve got against him? Has that
prosecutor woman conveniently forgotten about that?”

“Joan,” he said, and her back stiffened at
the patronizing note she suddenly detected in his voice, “it is
clear they plan to argue that you framed Treebeard for your
husband’s murder. They will not try to claim Treebeard was not at
the scene.”

Something about the phrase
plan to
argue
made Joan feel positively faint. “You could defend me
against a circumstantial case if it came to that, couldn’t you,
Leland?” That last bit came out more desperate-sounding than she
had intended. Again she felt tears threateningly close to the
surface.

“Of course, Joan. If it came to that.” Leland
Jennings smiled the sort of smile that made juries believe every
single word he told them about his unfairly maligned client. It had
the same reassuring effect on Joan. She reclaimed her position next
to him on the cot. Then her curiosity got the better of her. “How
is Milo Pappas, by the way?”

“He has a broken forearm and some lacerations
about the head and neck. From the splintering of the wood,” Leland
Jennings added.

She found herself again upset, this time at
the limited extent of Milo’s injuries. For everything that man did
to her he deserved far worse than a broken bone and some cuts. It
was also a real shame that she hadn’t hit her mark. She would have
dearly loved to have cracked the bow on that Maldonado woman’s
head. Then a terrifying thought occurred to her. “They can’t charge
me with murder for Hank Cassidy, can they?”

“No.” Leland Jennings patted her knee. “No
one disputes that was an accident.”

But according to both Craig Barlowe and
Frederick Whipple, it was an accident that killed not only Hank
Cassidy but the chance of a successful IPO. Whipple claimed the
revelation that Headwaters was flouting environmental regulations
would tarnish the company beyond repair.

Joan shut her eyes. She couldn’t think about
that now. All she could focus on was her own survival. She turned
to her attorney. “When are they going to let me out of here?”

Leland Jennings sighed, the sort of
drawn-out, pained sigh that signaled bad news was about to be
imparted. Joan steeled herself. “Joan,” he said finally, “I don’t
anticipate you’ll be released anytime soon. This is a capital case,
after all.”

She rose to her feet, though the movement was
unsteady. “I don’t care what kind of case it is. I want you to get
me out of here. Do it or I shall retain an attorney who can!”

He remained mute, just staring at her. All of
a sudden she found his behavior infuriating.

She set her hands on her hips. “Are you
forgetting who I am?” she demanded. “I am Joan Hudson Gaines, the
daughter of former governor and U.S. senator Web Hudson. I am not
someone who should be incarcerated, not for several hours, let
alone for some indeterminate period!” She walked to the door of her
cell, as if she were dismissing Leland Jennings. Which she was, for
the moment. “I suggest you find a judge and clarify the
situation.”

He seemed to consider her words, then rose
and approached the door of her cell. “Warden,” he called, then
turned to face her. She was astonished to see not one iota of
warmth in his expression. Rather he regarded her with the look of a
man at a rather distasteful piece of business.

The warden appeared behind the bars. Leland
Jennings seemed to weigh his words carefully before he spoke.

“Joan, I suggest either that you purge that
sort of thinking from your head or keep it to yourself. For if we
do find ourselves in trial, I can promise it won’t win you any
points with a judge or jury.”

Then he walked out, leaving Joan alone,
petrified, and incarcerated. And wondering, for the first time in
her life, if perhaps the Hudson name wasn’t worth so very much
after all.

*

Alicia sat in the ratty chair beside
Louella’s desk in the D.A.’s office and asked a question neither
woman could answer. “Why in the world would Libby Hudson want to
see me?”

Louella frowned, sipping overheated coffee
from a Styrofoam cup. “What time did she say she’s coming by?”

“Six.”

Both women raised their heads toward the
loudly ticking round white-faced clock above Louella’s cubicle
window, whose hands pointed to 5:51 PM. Louella shook her head. “I
can’t believe she thinks she can get us to drop the charges.”

Alicia found everything on that Saturday
evening hard to believe. It was hard to believe that Joan Hudson
Gaines was sitting in the Adult Detention Center charged with her
husband’s murder. It was even more mind-boggling that Alicia had
put her there, resuscitating her own prosecutorial career by
refusing to abandon a murder investigation she believed was
seriously offtrack. Judge Dede Frankel was planning action against
Kip Penrose with the California Bar Association for impeding the
investigation. And Treebeard would soon be a free man.

Not only that, but Milo Pappas had landed in
the emergency room for protecting Alicia from Joan Gaines. Alicia
found that about as unfathomable as everything else.

Outside Louella’s window Alicia watched a
couple stroll past, arm in arm, heads bent against the January
wind. They had the look of being on a Saturday date, not their
first and certainly not their last. They laughed and chattered and
walked quickly, their steps in easy unison.