To Catch the Moon

by Dempsey, Diana

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “No.”

  She shook her head, hearing the anger in her own voice. “Do you have any evidence that this person was ever inside the Gaines house? How do you know it wasn’t the neighbor just walking down that passage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Alicia threw her pen down. “And I’m guessing that you could not pick this supposed female out of a lineup.”

  Silence. Then, “No.”

  Treebeard went on to recite further details about that night, and Alicia dutifully took notes. She heard how he cleaned himself off and grabbed what he could from his campsite and fled, hitchhiking north, camping on the road like usual, but not like usual at all. She took notes, and asked questions, and wondered how much of what this man said was truth and how much was fiction. Whether he would ever get out of the pit into which he had fallen. Whether he deserved to get out of it. And who, if anyone, might have put him there.

  Chapter 11

  “I’m not used to getting out of bed this early, you know,” Milo heard Joan whisper coyly in his ear.

  She’d come up behind him. He’d been so taken with the view from the Lodge’s ocean-facing restaurant terrace he hadn’t even noticed. He followed her progress as a waiter seated her at their small table draped with a pale yellow linen cloth. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning to you! I’m so glad you could join me for breakfast.” She leaned close to him, smiling, elbows on the table. “Especially on such short notice.”

  Milo settled in his white wrought-iron chair and watched Joan chat and smile. It was Treebeard’s arraignment that had brought him back to the Monterey Peninsula, but somehow Joan’s antennae had picked up his imminent return to her domain. An hour after he got his e-mailed flight reservations from WBS’s travel department she called to cajole another assignation out of him. He’d agreed because she was, after all, an important source. She gave him an inside track, and he would be a fool not to use it. Yet he felt himself being sucked back into her orbit, as if she were a solar force and he a mere small moon unable to resist her greater power.

  The restaurant terrace on which they sat was a redbrick affair with California’s obligatory ferns in terra-cotta pots and the neoclassical touch of Doric columns supporting an overhead arbor. It was rimmed by a low wall built of Carmel’s native chalkstone, beyond which a velvety lawn stretched toward the golf link’s eighteenth green and beyond that to Stillwater Cove, where the surf broke in gentle tongues against the rocky shore. Again this Monday morning they were blessed by the weather. As if taunting the advent of January, the spectacular sun and warmth of the last few days had held.

  The waiter sidled over. “Do you have any questions about the menu?”

  Joan immediately spoke up. Milo was amused to hear her order in typical fashion, which was to request whatever she wanted whether it appeared on the menu or not. “I would like an egg-white frittata with a baked tomato on the side, please. No oil. And whole-wheat toast, no butter.”

  “For you, sir?”

  Milo would not order the same. “The American breakfast,” he said, and handed over his menu. He looked across the table at Joan, who was as perfectly turned out as Pebble Beach’s famed fairways. Then again, she always looked assembled, he remembered, regardless of the circumstance or the hour. Always in the right clothes, always combed, always made-up. Models and actresses could get away with grunge, but not politicians’ wives and daughters. Middle America wouldn’t stand for it.

  He found himself both irritated by her public perfection and admiring of it. His intimate acquaintance with those of the female persuasion had taught him that it was hard work to look that put-together at all times. Then again, it was the only work Joan did. “What are your plans for today?” he asked.

  Her gaze slid away from him. “I’m going into Headwaters.”

  “Really?” That piqued his interest. “Is everything all right over there?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure.” Then her face brightened and she looked back at him. “I take that back—I’m sure it’s fine. But I feel I should put in an appearance, talk to people, boost the morale a bit. You understand. They must be worried about the company’s future now that Daniel’s gone.”

  Something in her tone stopped Milo from asking what she thought that future might be. The consequences of Daniel’s death on the campaign were obvious; that wasn’t the case with Headwaters. Since the company was privately held, there was little public information about it. Milo did remember a Wall Street Journal piece on how Daniel and Joan’s father had pooled resources to acquire Headwaters from the Idaho family that had founded it years before. It had been a controversial transaction, particularly for the conservative former governor, since it involved a highly leveraged takeover scheme.

  “And what do you have on your agenda?” Joan refreshed his coffee from the bone-china service.

  He hesitated, then, “I’ll be covering Treebeard’s arraignment this afternoon.” He watched the radiance retreat from her face. “I’m sorry to have to bring it up.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “You must be relieved he was picked up.”

  She shrugged, a casual reaction that surprised him. “I knew they’d catch him. A man like that can’t dodge the authorities for long.”

  “Are you convinced he’s guilty?”

  She looked at him sharply. “Isn’t it fairly obvious that he is? Why would you even ask that?”

  Alicia Maldonado’s face flashed through Milo’s memory. It surprises me that you’re not even willing to consider the possibility that this case might not be all sewn up ...

  He shrugged. “It all seems a little, I don’t know, cut and dried.”

  “Aren’t most murders?”

  “Beats me.” The conversation had taken an odd turn. Fortunately they were interrupted by the waiter, who came bearing one healthy breakfast and one monstrosity of cholesterol and calories. Milo accepted the latter and watched Joan cut into her frittata.

  “I must say,” she went on a moment later, “I’m not too keen on the woman the D.A. has helping him with the case.”

  “You mean Alicia Maldonado?”

  Joan’s head snapped up. “You know her?”

  Milo thought for a moment. “She’s been at all the press conferences. She seems more on top of things than Penrose is. I’d say he’s lucky to have her.”

  “Well, I sincerely doubt she’s as good as you seem to believe. You would not—” Joan made a dismissive wave with her hand. “Oh, forget it.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t care to go into it.”

  “Come on, now you’ve got me curious.”

  Joan shook her head, her jaw set. She had the look of her mother at that moment, he thought. Abruptly she set down her fork. “All right, I’ll tell you. She drove all the way to Santa Cruz to talk to Courtney Holt. Even though the police had already interviewed her. You remember Courtney, one of my Suitemates from Stanford?”

  He remembered. Attractive woman. Nose a little high in the air, but that described most of Joan’s friends. “Weren’t you at Courtney’s house overnight when Daniel was killed?”

  “Yes, I was. And of course that’s what I told the police. But apparently that wasn’t good enough for that prosecutor woman. She put Courtney through the mill, all to find out exactly what the police had already found out. It was very rude,” Joan added, “and completely unnecessary.”

  Milo found himself reluctant to point out that it didn’t fall into the category of “rude” for the D.A.’s office to reconfirm Joan’s whereabouts the night her husband was murdered. But her reaction didn’t surprise him. One of Joan’s less attractive characteristics was her unwavering conviction that society’s usual rules didn’t apply to her, and her subsequent indignation when she was informed that they did. Then again, that point of view was a direct result of growing up a Hudson.

  He spoke carefully. “It does surprise me
that she went out to Courtney’s house herself. Seems to me that even for a return visit, that’s police work.”

  “Apparently she had some investigator with her. But Milo, that’s beside the point. I just don’t like her. She’s very full of herself, very arrogant.”

  He downed the last of his eggs, scrambled hard just the way he liked them. “It sounds as if you’ve met her.”

  “I have. She came here to the Lodge once, with Penrose.”

  He would love to have witnessed that meeting. Again he thought carefully before speaking. “You know, Joan, the best thing in the world is for you to have the strongest possible prosecutorial team. Penrose doesn’t strike me as a brain trust, but Alicia, she’s a different story. Apparently—”

  “You call her Alicia?”

  Milo looked up to see that Joan’s eyes were as cold as her tone. “When I cover a story, especially one that will carry on for some time, it’s to my benefit to be on good terms with the major players. Of course I call her Alicia. Do you expect me to call her Ms. Maldonado?”

  That seemed to mollify her. “Still, I think she should have a better idea of her place.”

  “Apparently her place is at the head of the class in the D.A.’s office,” he heard himself say.

  Joan flounced back in her seat and crossed her arms over her chest, as if about to launch into a full-out tantrum. Her tone was pouty. “You’re certainly very high on her.”

  “She is impressive.” He kept his voice mild. “And attractive as well,” he added, knowing even as he said it that crowing to one woman about the good looks of another was neither a smart move nor the done thing. But somehow he felt goaded.

  “You think she’s attractive?” Joan’s face took on an appalled expression. “Well, I suppose she might be,” she allowed, “in an ethnic sort of way.”

  Classic Joan, he thought, then had the impulse to goad her right back. “Just like me,” he said.

  “Oh, honestly, Milo! The things you say sometimes.” Then Joan frowned, and her cheeks flushed a light pink. She lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “I certainly don’t mean to say anything derogatory about Hispanic people, but she is very common-looking. Have you seen how she dresses? She’s not like you at all. And despite what you say,” she went on as he was about to protest again, “I still would rather she wasn’t on the case.” Joan leaned back and smoothed the linen napkin on her lap. “I don’t think she creates the right impression. And I may talk to Penrose about it.”

  This conversation was pointless, he realized. It also reminded him of something else about Joan. She won all arguments. She won because she refused to consider any point of view other than her own. She had the conviction born of lack of analysis. It was frustrating, he remembered. Then he was returned to the present by the sound of muffled sniffling. He raised his eyes to see Joan’s head bent over her open handbag, her face now suffused with color, her cheeks damp. “Joan ...”

  She waved a Not now hand, then pressed a tissue to her nose. Milo waited out the display, mildly irritated. Maybe he’d gone on too long about the case, but it was Joan who’d brought most of it up. “Are you all right?” he murmured a few seconds later.

  She put down the tissue, recovered except for some residual puffiness around her eyes. “I’m sorry for being snappish,” she said. “It’s just that everything about this situation upsets me.”

  Well, that had to be true. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She raised her eyes to his. “You are so sweet, Milo.” Then she reached across the table and grasped his hand. Her fingers were unbelievably fragile and soft. Her whole body was like that, he remembered, a malleable, tender thing he used to worry he might crush.

  She tilted her head to one side, the hint of a smile on her lips. “Thank you for forgiving me.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “I’m just so emotional these days. It’s all ... it’s all of this. Sometimes it’s very hard.”

  He nodded, saying nothing. Should he pull his hand away? She showed no sign of letting it go.

  Again she spoke. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’d like to have a few friends over to the suite tomorrow evening. Would you join us?”

  He frowned. Wasn’t tomorrow ...

  “I know it’s New Year’s Eve,” she went on hastily, “and it’s short notice, but ...” Again the tilt of the head. Again the big eyes. “You don’t already have plans, do you?”

  He didn’t, unfortunately. He had a vague notion of flying back east for the holiday but didn’t relish the prospect of another get-together with his brothers and their families. Obviously there was no hope of seeing Alicia.

  Joan was waiting. He was being rude. His choices were either Joan or solitude, and Joan was an old friend, an inside source, and newly bereaved. Besides, her friends might be interesting. “It would be my pleasure,” he heard himself say.

  “Wonderful.” She squeezed his hand once more before she let go.

  *

  Alicia plucked a cellophane-wrapped banana-nut muffin from the overflowing basket of baked goods in the courthouse’s second-floor snack bar. It was a sign of how early she’d gotten to work that it was still warm. She laid it on her orange plastic tray next to her apple and coffee and turned to Louella, behind her in the cash-register line. “I don’t know what else to tell you,” she said, “but I can’t just drop it.”

  Louella shook her head, dubiousness written all over her features. Squeezed into a white turtleneck with her blond hair less rigorously straightened than usual, Louella looked more Norma Jean than ever. “I bet you want me to go to a judge and get you a subpoena.”

  “Can you do it this morning?”

  Louella just shook her head again. “What do you want to see?”

  “Credit-card bills and cell-phone records.”

  At that, Louella rolled her eyes. “A dollar forty-five,” the cashier announced in a bored voice, tapping her fingernail on her metal register as Alicia painstakingly counted out the dimes and nickel. Louella paid for her coffee and muffin and grabbed a handful of paper napkins. “It’s so nice today, why don’t we eat outside?” she suggested.

  The women arranged themselves on a park bench in the courtyard between the courthouse’s east and west wings. Boxwood hedges edged the expansive planters, all of them spilling over with petunias, agapanthus, and birds-of-paradise. It would be a floral splurge for the county budget were this not Northern California, where all flora and fauna thrived. They sat with their backs to Alisal Street, which on this semi-holiday thirtieth day of December was much quieter than usual.

  After a few muffin bites, Louella spoke up. “What time’s the arraignment?”

  “Three.”

  “You expecting a lot of media?”

  Expecting? No. Hoping for, in one particular case? “Some,” she said. “Not a full house.”

  Arraignments were the least exciting of all courtroom dramas because they yielded so few surprises. The defendant and his lawyer went before the judge; the clerk read the charges; the defendant entered a plea. Most times everybody knew in advance what that would be.

  This afternoon at the appropriate moment, Jerome Brown would nod at his client, and Treebeard, if he was talking, would say, “Not guilty.” Then the judge would set the date for the preliminary hearing, in roughly ten days. If this weren’t such a high-profile case, the arraignment would be thoroughly boring. But as it was, a fair number of media would be in attendance, if only to photograph a manacled Treebeard in prison orange.

  Alicia sipped her coffee. “Jerome called yesterday to say Treebeard passed a lie-detector test.”

  “Wow!” Louella’s tone was fake impressed. “It’s a wonder they don’t just drop the charges and let him out this morning.”

  “You made your point.”

  “Those tests are meaningless. You know that, Alicia.”

  Alicia said nothing. While the public seemed to think
a lie-detector test was a good barometer of guilt or innocence, the judicial system had never been convinced. Because a polygraph could be fooled by an accomplished liar—which described many an accomplished felon—most often the results were inadmissible in court.

  Still, Alicia was unwilling to dismiss these particular test results as meaningless. Not definitive, certainly, but perhaps indicative?

  “So let me see if I’ve got this straight.” Louella half rose from the bench to swipe the last of the muffin crumbs off her trousered lap, then sat down again. “Basically, there are three things you want me to do. First, interview this Harry McEvoy who lives on Twelfth, find out if he’s a kook or really did see the widow Gaines in front of her house the night of the murder. Despite the fact that she told us she was in Santa Cruz and that we’ve got eyewitnesses who put her in Santa Cruz for dinner that night.”

  “Right.”

  “Then, assuming McEvoy has all his marbles, you want me to go to a judge and get a subpoena for Joan Gaines’ credit-card bills and cell-phone records.”

  “Right.”

  “And last but not least, you want me to check out who lives just south of the Gaines house. See if by some chance one of the residents happens to be a height-impaired female who gets her kicks out of trotting up and down the passage between the two properties in the dark. Have I got it so far?”

  Alicia turned to regard Louella. “Do you have to be so sarcastic?”

  “Let’s just say I feel it’s my duty as your colleague and friend to remind you that given the evidence it is crazy to think that somebody other than Treebeard murdered Daniel Gaines. ‘I’ve been framed,’ he says? Honestly, Alicia, how many times have we both heard that?”

  “And it’s never true,” she murmured.

  “No, it’s never true. Or one time in a million it’s true. And do you understand that it’s especially crazy to think that the person who framed Treebeard is Joan Gaines?”

  A trio of sheriff’s deputies walked past in their olive-green uniforms, guns in their holsters and walkie-talkies in their belts. They would agree wholeheartedly with Louella. They would think she was crazy, too.