To Catch the Moon (48 page)

“I’m going to break up with Jorge,” Alicia
said.

Louella arched her brows. “Come again?”

“I should’ve done it before.”

“You mean you should’ve done it before you
got those roses.”

Alicia said nothing. She was increasingly
convinced she had treated two men unfairly. She might be able to go
only part of the way toward making amends, but it was time to do
it.

Louella lolled back in her chair and trained
her eyes on the ceiling. “Mind if I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Mind if I go after Jorge?”

“You want to? Really?” Alicia laughed, then
thought about it. “No, I don’t mind.”

“Mind if I ask you something else? Did you
get those roses from Milo Pappas?”

She felt Louella’s laser stare. “Yes.”

Louella said nothing for some time. Then,
“You know, I have to say I was impressed watching him jump in front
of you like that today. That was pretty heroic stuff.”

That notion bounced off the gray padded walls
of Louella’s cubicle. In the chaos of Joan’s attack, Milo’s injury,
and Joan’s arrest, Alicia had had no time to talk to Milo. He’d
been sped off in an ambulance without even a backward glance to
her.
Even if he was “heroic,” what am I supposed to do about it?
By now I’m sure he wants nothing to do with me.

The early noises from the Board of Sups were
that she’d get her job back. Though it was too soon to say for
sure, it certainly looked as if she would take Penrose’s place in
prosecuting Joan Gaines for Daniel Gaines’ murder, with Rocco
Messina at her side. Reporters had already begun to ask if she
planned to challenge the badly weakened Kip Penrose for D.A. in
November. If he were the target of an official investigation, he
might be pretty easy to beat, despite all the fund-raising money he
had socked away. She’d have to mount an instant campaign, but for
the first time in years she’d have enormous name recognition. Not
to mention major momentum, if indeed she were appointed the lead
prosecutor in the Gaines case. Her name would be in the news
constantly without her having to spend a single ad dollar.

All of a sudden Alicia Maldonado was a
hometown hero again. Overnight she’d gone from a miscreant
prosecutor to a never-say-die D.A. who protected the little guy
from the rich and powerful. It was a second chance in a world that
didn’t hand out a lot of those.

She wondered if she’d be pressing her luck to
try for a second chance somewhere else, too.

Louella’s phone rang. She answered, said yes
twice, then hung up and turned to Alicia. “Libby Hudson’s here,
with her lawyer.” She rose from her chair. “They’re waiting in the
conference room.”

*

Milo arrived at San Francisco airport three
hours early for his red-eye flight home to D.C. He paid the driver
who’d ferried him north from Salinas, then paused on the pavement
in front of the terminal.

Saturday evening was a strange, in-between
time at airports. It was the midpoint for the weekend-travel crowd,
so none of them were in evidence. Businesspeople wouldn’t be flying
until the following afternoon and evening. Only travelers with odd
itineraries were around, like him.

He set his briefcase atop his rolling bag.
Wide glass doors slid back to admit him into the cavernous
terminal. In a departure from his usual habit, and in deference to
his broken ulna, he decided not to carry his bag onto the plane but
to check it through.

The redhead working business-class check-in
recognized him before he’d handed over his driver’s license. Her
eyes widened in obvious surprise at his appearance. “Mr. Pappas,
how are you?”

His face was more than a little banged up.
“It looks worse than it feels,” he told her. Actually, he felt like
hell. Physically and every other way.

“I’ve been hearing on TV about what you did,”
she said, then flushed. Milo knew why. News of his abrupt firing
from WBS was a widely reported sidebar to the tale of his battering
at the hands of his former lover, Joan Gaines. At least he was
getting credit for protecting prosecutor Maldonado from the accused
husband killer, which burnished to an even higher sheen his
reputation as a stud.

He was enough of a cynic to believe that was
the reason that WBS executives were spinning his termination the
way they were. The network’s official line was that WBS and its
star correspondent had “arrived at a mutual decision to part ways.”
Milo guessed that WBS brass knew the public would not applaud their
firing a reporter who protected women despite harm to himself. He
was equally certain that O’Malley was spreading a more insidious
explanation of Milo’s termination to anybody who would listen.

“You’re all set,” the ticket agent said a
minute later, and handed Milo his ticket with a smile. He thanked
her and proceeded to security. This was the last time he’d fly on
WBS’s dime, he realized. After how many thousands of flights over
his dozen years of employment? Still, the network was dotting every
I and crossing every T, returning him to his home base before
washing their hands of him.

He emerged at the other side of security at a
loss. Now he had two and a half hours till his flight. Where to go,
what to do? Always-on-the-go Milo Pappas wasn’t used to such a
surfeit of time. Or pleased with it, either. Time was hardly a joy
when it felt empty and useless.

For lack of a better alternative, he set
himself up in the airline’s red-carpet lounge. A beer and a few
handfuls of nuts later he felt better, but not by much.

Would he get another TV job? Certainly. With
a network? Possibly. With the prestige of
Newsline
? No way.
Unless he was named a rival network’s main anchor, which was about
as likely as O’Malley suddenly morphing into his biggest fan,
whatever post next came his way would be a comedown.

Then again, the unlikely had been happening
lately. Amazing as it was, Alicia had found enough evidence to
charge Joan with Daniel’s murder. She’d bulldozed her way from a
gut feeling to an arrest, despite getting fired in the process. It
was impressive. She’d get her job back, he knew. Or a better job.
He wasn’t worried how Alicia would fare. She was made of strong
stuff.

How ironic that Alicia thought he was
involved with Joan when he wasn’t. It was the only time he could
remember when he’d been wrongly accused of cheating. He was
blameless, but guilty by reputation. And it had cost him the first
woman in years he cared about losing. It left him feeling hollowed
out, as if for a long time to come his life would consist of
nothing more than going through the motions.

A waitress came by and Milo ordered a second
beer. In a corner of the lounge a television was tuned to MSNBC,
which was doing a roundtable on women who committed murder. Joan
Gaines would be an enormous story, Milo knew. Her transgressions
against Daniel, and against nature—given the tree-felling scheme
that had just been exposed—would make her one of the most notorious
figures of her day. “Governor’s Daughter Turns Husband and Tree
Killer!” The tabloid potential was mind-boggling.

Joan Gaines would be a huge story and Milo
Pappas would be sidelined.
How ironic
, he thought;
how
sad
. How in keeping with everything else in his life at that
painful juncture in time.

*

Alicia preceded Louella through the wide-open
door of the D.A. office’s main conference room. It was as
unprepossessing a space as could be found in any county office
building, with turn-your-skin-green fluorescent lighting,
grime-streaked windows, and furnishings so timeworn the Salvation
Army would refuse to accept them for donation. It looked like the
sort of room where people who worked too hard made what they could
of bad situations.

At the table’s head sat a woman as unsuited
to her surroundings as the queen of England would be to a trailer
park. She was a tiny but powerful presence, white-haired and
bird-thin, in a severe navy suit softened by the largest, most
outrageously perfect pearls Alicia had ever seen. Behind her right
shoulder, like a loyal vassal, stood an older man in a conservative
suit.

Alicia was mildly irritated that Libby
Storrow Hudson had claimed the conference table’s most powerful
position, but supposed that a woman of her ilk would do no less.
Alicia offered her hand. “I’m Deputy D.A. Maldonado,” she said,
earning such a keenly appraising stare she immediately felt
compelled neither to blink nor look away.

It took Libby Hudson some time to speak, but
when she did her voice was as cold as the wind that lashed her
native Massachusetts. “Have you been reinstated as a prosecutor,
Ms. Maldonado?”

“Not officially, though I expect to be
shortly.”

“And you have that expectation because you’ve
arrested my daughter for her husband’s murder.” Libby Hudson’s
voice was oddly matter-of-fact, given the enormous emotional
underpinning of her statement.

Alicia regarded her for a moment. “Your
daughter was arrested for Daniel Gaines’ murder because of very
compelling evidence, Mrs. Hudson.”

The older woman arched her brow. “Compelling,
is it? Well, we shall see about that.”

So that
is
why she’s here
.
Alicia stepped aside to allow Louella to introduce herself, and
made the acquaintance of Henry Gossett, who she learned was the
Hudson family counsel. Then, in her own strategic positioning, she
claimed the opposite head of the conference table.

This visit wasn’t so surprising, really. More
than once family members had appealed to her to drop charges
against their loved ones. Occasionally they made a persuasive case.
In this instance Alicia would refuse to be swayed. For what
arguments could Libby Hudson make? The evidence against her
daughter might be circumstantial but together the pieces created a
perfect mosaic of guilt. All Libby Hudson could do was fall back on
the usual bullying tactics of the rich and powerful: subtle though
undeniable threats that the Hudson family would make Alicia’s life
difficult, derail her career, besmirch her reputation. All of which
had already happened, and over all of which Alicia had already
triumphed.

No, she wouldn’t budge, though the prospect
of tangling with the Hudsons was more than a little fearsome.
Get used to it
, she told herself.
This is practice for
the face-off you’ll get in court.

Louella took the seat to Alicia’s left, while
Henry Gossett claimed its mirror opposite. The two opposing pairs
were perfectly balanced, though empty space yawned between
them.

Through the conference room’s dirty windows
came the muffled noises of a Salinas Saturday night, the revelry
just getting under way. People walked past en route to early
dinners at Spado’s a few blocks down Alisal Street. Car horns
blared as traffic began to clog the street, and rap music pounded
so loudly from a passing radio that Alicia felt the floor shudder
beneath her shoes.

Libby Hudson spoke. “You claim the evidence
you have against my daughter makes a compelling case for her guilt.
Yet this office claimed the same thing against Treebeard just days
ago.”

Louella spoke up. “New evidence has come to
light that indicates your daughter framed Treebeard for her
husband’s murder.”

“Are you referring to the bow found on the
property?” Gossett asked. His tone was disdainful.

“In part,” Alicia said. “Joan’s fingerprints
are all over it.”

“Of course they are. She was forced to use it
to protect herself from Milo Pappas.”

Alicia and Louella glanced at each other.
That was quite a twist Joan and her attorney were putting on that
episode.

“What other evidence do you have?” Henry
Gossett demanded.

Alicia kept her tone measured. “Mr. Gossett,
we have no intention of arguing our case before you and your
client. It will be presented before a judge and jury and not
before.”

“Long before you go to court,” he insisted,
“you will be required to share your supposed evidence with defense
counsel.”

“And I will do so, as the law requires.”

Again Alicia felt herself under Libby
Hudson’s laser stare. Clearly she and her attorney were trying to
ascertain just how much Alicia and Louella actually knew versus how
much they were bluffing. Alicia didn’t want to tip her hand yet at
the same time had no desire to prolong a pointless
conversation.

Libby Hudson spoke. “My daughter was in Santa
Cruz the night Daniel was murdered. She didn’t return to her home
until the following morning.”

Louella answered. “Actually, your daughter
did return to her home that night, Mrs. Hudson. We have an
eyewitness who places her there, and in addition a credit-card
receipt proving she was in the area.”

Alicia stared across the expanse of
conference-room table and saw the first chink in the older woman’s
armor. Beneath the discreet cover of foundation her skin paled,
just a shade, and her mouth revealed the slightest tremor. Gossett
was about to speak when Libby Hudson laid a silencing hand on his
arm.

“Ms. Maldonado,” she said, “you claim to have
means and opportunity for my daughter to have committed this crime.
But what motive could you possibly imagine she possessed for
murdering her own husband?”

Alicia spoke carefully. “I know that over the
course of his marriage to your daughter, Daniel Gaines became a
very powerful member of your family. I also know that he did not
always exercise that power well, either when it came to your
husband’s living trust or to Headwaters. Believe me, Mrs. Hudson, I
will be able to convince a jury that your daughter had a motive for
murder.”

Alicia fell silent and the two women regarded
each other. For a moment Alicia was thrown back to that evening in
the Lodge, when she and Kip Penrose had gone to brief Joan Gaines
on the investigation into her husband’s murder. On that night
Alicia had stared into the imperious eyes of this woman’s daughter.
Superficially the eyes of mother and daughter were the same, blue
and ice-cold. Alicia sensed, though, that the will they revealed
was much more powerful in the older woman than in the younger.