To Catch the Moon (9 page)

Joan made herself calm down and focus on the
yellow legal pad on her lap. On it she’d jotted notes for a
statement to the press, her top to-do item for the day. She would
order Daniel’s campaign to release it the following morning and was
sure it would dominate the Christmas Eve news shows. She would then
get another round of coverage with Daniel’s funeral on Friday. She
wanted to create an impression of dignified sorrow, like a
modern-day Jackie Kennedy. Joan believed that appearance would
serve her well down the road.

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Christmas Eve.
At this hour of profound grief for my family, and for the family of
my beloved husband, I wish to offer my sincerest gratitude to those
many Americans who have offered their prayers and sympathy.

She bit her lip. For this next section, she’d
have to lay it on thick if it killed her. She thought for a minute,
then resumed writing.

My husband was a man of extraordinary
judgment, intelligence, and commitment. I am sure that had he lived
to continue my father’s tradition of selfless political service,
not only California, but all America, would have benefited from his
efforts. A brilliant light has been cruelly dimmed, and I shall
never rest until I understand why. To that end, I am offering a
hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the
arrest of the man who calls himself Treebeard, whom law-enforcement
authorities have charged with my husband’s brutal murder.

She reread it and smiled.
Very good!
Now all she needed was a closing line, preferably something upbeat.
Ronald Reagan proved that voters liked a positive note even on the
saddest occasion. Minutes later, she again put pen to paper.

I am reminded in this Christmas season that
hope shines like a star in the night sky, even in our darkest hour.
I seek that light for my family and for all Californians as we cope
with this loss and move forward into the promise of the new
year.

She capped her pen and took another sip of
her fizzy water. She would make people see that everything Daniel
had done, she could do better. She could run Headwaters, and she
could run for office. And when she did, she’d be out from the
shadows and into the light, getting the respect she deserved.

Invigorated, Joan pulled out her cell phone
and punched in the numbers she needed. She steeled herself for the
call, as she always did before any interaction with Molly
Bracewell.

M.B., Daniel’s pet name for her, had had so
much plastic surgery and intensive help from personal stylists,
she’d been remade from a pathetic frump to a mildly attractive
woman. People seemed to think she was brilliant. Joan thought she
was a low-born climber who’d gotten where she was on her back. But
it was undeniable that she’d become one of the most sought-after
press officers in the country. Joan couldn’t stand her, partly
because she knew Molly dismissed her as a pampered know-nothing
political wife whose only asset was her family name. Wouldn’t Miss
Molly be surprised at just how much the wife of the candidate did
know?

Finally the call was answered. “Molly
Bracewell.”

“It’s Joan Gaines. I’ve drafted the statement
and I’ll e-mail it to you tonight.”

Silence. Then, “Joan, I really do not think
you need to—”

“I don’t care to go over this again. Just get
it on the wires.”

Heavy, pained sigh. “Fine,” Molly said, her
tone grudging.

Joan jabbed at her cell’s end button without
uttering another word.

Damn that woman. Damn her and everybody
else who underestimates Joan Hudson Gaines
.

*

Late the afternoon of the press conference,
Alicia pulled the lever on the concession machine in the
courthouse’s second-floor snack bar. Down dropped a Snickers bar.
Plunk
. Healthy snack.

Back downstairs, across the west wing’s
high-ceilinged tiled foyer, through the security door. She
unwrapped the chocolate while walking along the narrow perimeter
corridor back to her office, then halted outside Penrose’s open
door. He wasn’t inside but his grandfather clock was, ringing out
six chimes. Didn’t the network news shows come on at six in the
evening?

She couldn’t stop herself. She went into
Penrose’s office and switched on his television and tuned it to
WBS, even though she almost never watched TV, and when she did she
watched NBC. But somehow her finger insisted on pushing the up
arrow on the remote until she hit Channel 8, and then it just
stopped moving. She tried to be casual about it, just standing
around in front of the set, not admitting to herself what she was
watching for.

The newscast started, the
WBS Evening News
with Jack Evans
, a serious-looking man with salt-and-pepper
hair. To her surprise, right after he said, “Good evening,” he
started talking about Daniel Gaines’ murder, then said, “We go live
now to Milo Pappas in Salinas, California,” and there he was.

He was still in the white dress shirt, red
paisley tie, and black overcoat he’d worn at the press conference,
and was as amazing-looking on air as he had been in person. He
spoke for a while, then his story started, first showing video of
Treebeard in front of the Headwaters building in Monterey.
Superimposed on the screen’s top right corner were the words
File footage
. Then Daniel Gaines appeared, which gave Alicia
a chill. The file footage stayed on while Gaines talked about how
frustrated he was that Treebeard never understood that Headwaters
preserved the so-called “ancient” trees, the old-growth forest. He
sounded pretty convincing and looked good, too: tall and blond and
like a star college quarterback, even twenty years after he’d given
up the gridiron.

Then there was a sound bite from Penrose,
about how a nationwide APB had been issued for Treebeard. She was
startled to see herself in that shot, standing behind Penrose’s
right shoulder. She looked whipped, her skin pale, and purple
shadows under her eyes.

Great, now on top of everything else she had
to worry about looking good for the cameras. She wouldn’t exactly
improve her electoral chances down the road, if she ever had any,
by looking like something the cat dragged in.

Back to Milo Pappas. She watched as he talked
about how Treebeard had fled his campsite within hours of Daniel
Gaines’ murder. Then Evans asked a question about when the trial
might start and he gave a quick answer.

Then it was over. Alicia punched the remote’s
power button, her mind racing. So Milo Pappas might cover the
trial, she realized. He might be on the Monterey Peninsula for some
time. The notion was oddly exciting.

Her phone was ringing when she got back to
her desk. It was Penrose, summoning her from his car phone. Time
for the big powwow with Joan Hudson Gaines.

She got to the Alisal Street side of the
courthouse just as Penrose pulled curbside in his sleek white
Mercedes. She opened the door—he wasn’t the kind to lean over the
gearshift and do it for her; he wasn’t the kind even to think of
it—and escaped Salinas’s chill evening air for the sedan’s perfect
warm comfort. Penrose rocketed away from the curb so fast his tires
screeched.

She couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her
voice. “Are we in a drag race I don’t know about?”

He let that pass. So she would get the silent
treatment for suggesting he didn’t want to keep his A-l donor
waiting. Fine.

He turned on the radio. Bing Crosby crooned
that holiday perennial “White Christmas.” Alicia watched Salinas
whip past in the dark, run-down houses with plastic Santas set up
on browning squares of lawn, stores blaring holiday sales, cars
with pine trees roped onto roofs.

As they hurtled toward the coast, the terrain
shifted from golden brown to green, from pines to cypresses, from
farmland to soft forested hills. She’d been amazed once to see
hundred-year-old photos in which the whole coast was barren and
windswept. Some places still were, like Seaside and Sand City. But
most of it was like the Garden of Eden. Then again, the coastal
areas were rich, and money bought gardeners, and gardeners planted
whatever they could think of: eucalyptus trees and California live
oaks, rock roses, Mexican sage, and lavender. All of it seemed to
grow like wild once it got started.

Penrose got to the Highway 1 gate to Pebble
Beach in twenty-eight minutes flat. He flashed his county ID at the
guard and drove into one of the wealthiest neighborhoods on the
planet. The “Circle of Enchantment,” people used to call it. Alicia
knew what she wasn’t seeing, here in the dark: a paradise of
palatial homes, many modeled after villas on the French and Italian
Rivieras. In the old days people like Andrew Carnegie, William
Vanderbilt, and Joseph Pulitzer owned them. Today, Clint Eastwood,
Charles Schwab, and Libby Hudson did.

Here Penrose slowed down. 17 Mile Drive
twisted through the Del Monte Forest, dense with eucalyptus,
Monterey pines, and jagged cypresses. During the day, the views out
toward Carmel Bay were spectacular: amazing beaches, half-hidden
coves, and the clifftop fairways that drew hordes of well-heeled
tourists to the very place Joan Gaines was now staying.

They passed through yet another entry gate
and along a curving drive, cutting a swath through the perfectly
manicured fairways of the Pebble Beach golf links. Past a beach
club, then a tennis club, then a spa, to the main building
itself.

The Lodge at Pebble Beach was the snazziest
hotel Alicia had ever seen, though she knew she didn’t have much to
compare it with. To her it seemed like more of a campus than a
hotel. There were lots of understated white stucco structures with
dark green awnings and fabulous landscaping. But once Penrose
valeted the Mercedes and they walked inside the main building, the
entire place reeked of money and luxury.

Alicia had been inside only once before, when
Louella had persuaded her to celebrate a trial win by having a
drink at a bar that was really more of a pub, with dark wood
paneling and golf memorabilia from the annual AT&T Pro-Am. This
time, Alicia was all at once painfully aware of how she looked.
That is, how she looked compared to everybody else. She cringed at
her slightly ragged cuticles and split ends, the scuffs on her navy
pumps, and how much polyester had gone into her pin-striped suit.
It wasn’t as if she were poorly dressed or badly groomed, but she
didn’t look like she’d just stepped out of a salon, either.

No tremendous surprise that Joan Hudson
Gaines was staying in a prime oceanside suite. Penrose halted
outside her door. “I’ll do the talking,” he told Alicia, then
jabbed at the buzzer. A moment later the young widow let them
in.

Alicia’s first reaction was that she looked
incredibly better than she had two days before. Now everything
about her was perfect, from her hair to her nails to her makeup to
her clothes. She wore a white knit suit with black trim and gold
buttons—a ladies-who-lunch suit—and lots of gold jewelry.

For a newly minted widow, she looked
positively stunning.

“Thank you for coming,” she said to Penrose,
then turned cool blue eyes on Alicia.

“This is Alicia Maldonado,” Penrose said,
“one of the prosecutors assisting me in the case,” and Alicia held
out her hand. Joan Gaines shook it mutely, with no show of
interest, then turned and led them inside.

The suite was gorgeous. Alicia had never seen
anything like it, except maybe in old movies starring Grace Kelly
or Audrey Hepburn as society women. She halted in the main room,
heels sinking into the thick, cream-colored carpet. Every piece of
the dark, elegant furniture was polished to a high sheen. Oil
paintings hung on the walls, each illuminated by an individual
light. A fire with real logs blazed in the marble-fronted
fireplace, giving off a wonderful piney smell. Most of the side
tables had crystal vases full of fresh-cut flowers, and a baby
grand piano stood in one corner. Silk-shaded lamps gave the room a
soft, golden glow.

Alicia took it all in. Something about the
easy luxury angered her. She couldn’t afford a single night in a
place like this. Her father hadn’t been near such a suite in his
entire life; her mother and sisters never would be. Joan Gaines’
stay had already cost as much as Alicia’s car.

Well, I can’t be expected to stay at that
house
, Alicia had heard her tell Kip Penrose. So she’d checked
in here. The bill? Thousands a night. She was so offhand, so casual
about it.

There were two worlds on the Monterey
Peninsula; Alicia had known that forever. There was her world, back
in Salinas, the world of run-down bungalows and manure-smelling air
and drive-by shootings, where you were lucky if you ever got to do
what you wanted. Then there was this world, on the coast, the
Carmel and Pebble Beach world, where houses were pleasure domes and
people could do whatever the hell they pleased. Never in a million
years would she be part of the latter, Alicia knew, and both that
truth and her frustrated reaction to it irked her.

Penrose seemed out of sorts, too, but Alicia
knew he was petrified of doing something to alienate his
benefactress. The only person who appeared completely at ease was
Joan Gaines.

They sat at a grouping of love seat and
chairs beside the baby grand. On the coffee table in front of them
was a tray with a delicate-looking tea set, one cup smeared with
lipstick stains. A linen napkin had been tossed on top of an
untouched tray of tiny sandwiches and cookies. Their host made no
move to get rid of it or to order anything fresh for them.

Penrose cleared his throat. “How are you,
Joan?”

She looked down at her lap. “As well as can
be expected.”

“Again,” Penrose went on, “I am so very sorry
about all of this. Your husband was a great man.”