To Catch the Moon Page 7

  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, b
ut 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.”

  She said nothing, and Penrose launched into his spiel. About the evidence that had been collected from the house. The autopsy results. The nationwide search for Treebeard. Not once did Joan Gaines say a word. All she did was cross and recross her legs, and occasionally finger her hair, as if all she wanted was to get this over with.

  Alicia watched. As a prosecutor she was constantly assessing people: defendants, witnesses, potential jurors. After ten years in the business, she prided herself on her instincts.

  Yet those instincts were in a muddle when it came to Joan Gaines. There was something false about her, though Alicia thought that was true of most rich people. She was about the coldest fish Alicia had ever run across. What kind of woman didn’t ask a single question about how her husband had been killed? What kind of wife didn’t care to know the details? It was so far from the typical spousal reaction that Alicia didn’t know what to make of it.

  Finally Penrose was finished. Silence fell.

  “How did you meet your husband?” Alicia heard herself ask, and was rewarded with an affronted look from Joan Gaines and a scowl from Penrose. She was curious, she realized, not just to hear the answer to that question but to hear Joan Gaines talk about her murdered spouse.

  “We met in New York,” she said eventually.

  “You were living there at the time?”

  Her tone was curt. “I was working in investment banking.”

  “Was this before Mr. Gaines bought Headwaters Resources?”

  “Yes, he was still in private equity.”

  Penrose cut in, with another pointed glare at Alicia. “Joan, I drafted a potential time line for the trial, assuming that Treebeard is picked up within the next few days, as we expect him to be. I know you need to plan your time.” He reached down into the leather briefcase at his feet and pulled out a manila file. He was about to spread it open on the coffee table when he stopped. The dirty tea tray was in the way.

  Slowly Joan turned her head from Penrose toward Alicia. “I’m so sorry,” she said, though there was no apology in her smooth voice. Her blue eyes shone with a curious light. “Will you clear that, please?”

  Alicia froze. Maybe she hadn’t heard right, or had misunderstood. “Excuse me?”

  “Will you clear that?”

  She’d heard right. She’d understood.

  Nobody moved. It felt to Alicia as if time stopped. Even Penrose seemed to be in a kind of suspended animation.

  Something inside her seethed. The small, dark crypt in her soul where she’d buried the frustrations of thirty-five years. Always having to do without, her and her sisters. Her father never home because he was driving that damn eighteen-wheeler. The drawn, worried face of her mother, her beauty stolen at a young age by poverty and childbirth. Her own burden, knowing she was the only one who could pull the family out of the mire. And worst of all, that horrible night when she learned that her father had fallen asleep at the wheel, and knew from then on that what he had done, she would have to do. She would have to support her mother and sisters. Then and always.

  Most times Alicia was resigned to her history. Sometimes it grated. And sometimes, as on this night, it fueled a cold anger that could barely contain itself within her skin.

  “No,” she heard herself say into the silent room, “I will not clear it. If you want it cleared, either do it yourself or call room service.”

  The other woman’s eyes narrowed. Alicia forced herself to hold Joan Gaines’ stare, though her heart pounded fiercely inside her chest. Penrose was oddly forgotten; it was as if the two women were alone in the room. Abruptly Joan Gaines stood up. “We’re finished here.”

  Alicia had a feeling of having won a point in a contest that had not yet been declared. She remained seated and smiled, her heart still thumping. “Actually, I have a few more questions. I was curious what time you returned home last Saturday and what you were so busy doing that you didn’t notice your husband lying with an arrow in his chest on the floor of the library.”

  “That’s enough, Alicia,” Penrose barked, his face flushed, but Joan Gaines said nothing at all. She didn’t even acknowledge the question. Instead she strode to the door of her suite, Penrose scrambling to collect his briefcase and manila file. Alicia knew he’d read her the riot act but she couldn’t say she cared.

  After a moment, Alicia rose as well and made for the suite’s main door, which Joan Gaines was already holding open. Penrose was clearly apologizing to her, putting his limited persuasive powers to the test. To Alicia it didn’t look like he was having much success.

  They had just entered the corridor when a young man in a chauffeur’s uniform ran up, laden with shopping bags sporting the Neiman Marcus logo. Surprised, Alicia halted to w
atch.

  “Sorry to be so slow getting your packages up, Mrs. Gaines.” Nearly out of breath, he dropped the bags just inside the suite. “Let me know if you’ll need me again tomorrow.” He hurried away.

  Alicia stood still, watching the young widow’s fine features set into stone. What woman, she wondered, goes on a shopping spree two days after her husband is murdered?

  The Latina prosecutor and the society wife regarded each other wordlessly, until Joan Gaines retreated a step and quietly shut her suite’s door.

  Alicia joined Kip Penrose at the elevator bank, her mind filling with unanswered questions. Even Penrose was silent as they exited the hotel into Pebble Beach’s chilly December air.

  *

  Milo arrived early for his eight-thirty rendezvous with Prosecutor Maldonado but had plenty to survey at Carmel’s Mission Ranch to keep him occupied before her arrival. In a small parking lot between some unassuming white clapboard buildings, he parked the rental Explorer next to an old-style green Ford pickup bearing, in small gold block letters, the words Robert Kincaid Photography.

  He chuckled. It was the truck Clint Eastwood drove when he starred in The Bridges of Madison County, apparently being stored at the hotel the actor now owned. Milo had heard tell of Eastwood’s long-standing attachment to the peninsula, his stint as mayor of Carmel, and his mid-1980s purchase of the ranch, which otherwise would have been demolished to make way for a condo development. That would have been a sorry fate for such a historic property, which in past incarnations had been not only a dairy but a World War II officers’ club, and which boasted an enviable Carmel River Valley location. In daylight hours it provided a panoramic view of the Carmel Highlands and Point Lobos across a picket-fenced meadow dotted with grazing sheep.

  Milo found the bar and set himself up at a small table. It was a cozy room with a country feel, warmed by a fire blazing in a stone hearth. In the far corner a television blared Monday Night Football to a group of avid male watchers, all nursing beers and flushed faces. “Dos Equis with lime,” Milo told the waitress.