“No.”
His brows rose in surprise. “You’re not hungry yet?”
She stepped closer. “No.”
Understanding seemed to dawn in those dark eyes of his. He stood completely still. When she got very close she ran her hands up the starched front of his tuxedo shirt. His ruby studs were cold and bloodred. The ornate clock on the mantel chimed the hour.
“Nine PM,” he said into the stillness when the last note sounded. Joan noticed, her hands still resting lightly on his chest, that his heart was beating very quickly.
She smiled. “I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?”
He shook his head in instant denial. “No, no.”
No part of her believed him. She cocked her head. “Would it be so very wrong?”
He said nothing. His eyes were cautious but she could see desire too in their black depths. She rose on her toes to brush her lips against his. “Would it be so very wrong to make love?”
His face froze. “Joan—”
“I’m alone.” She kissed him again. “You’re alone.” He began to protest anew but she silenced him with a soft finger on his mouth. “We could make each other happy.”
“We could also regret it.”
“How could I regret being with you?” So, so true. And she’d never been much for regrets as it was. They held you back. They kept you from doing what you wanted.
“But it hasn’t been very long—” He stopped.
“Since Daniel died?” She didn’t think that much mattered, but knew that Milo, like everyone else, thought it did. How strange. Daniel was dead. He wouldn’t be more dead in a month. But she mustn’t say that to Milo.
So instead she looked deeply into his eyes and said, “Daniel was lost to me long before he was killed, Milo. I’ve been alone for a long, long time. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
And then she made her next kiss seal the bargain.
Chapter 14
Alicia lay awake in bed with her eyes closed and her face buried in the pillow, debating whether to rise or remain cocooned beneath the duvet. At her back she heard Jorge’s deep, even breathing. It was the first of January. Happy New Year, she told herself. She sighed and fluttered her eyelids open.
She realized it must still be quite early. No light snaked around the blinds, though this time of year the sun didn’t rise till close to seven. Darkest before the dawn.
She slipped out of bed, the warped peg-and-groove floorboards she kept vowing to refinish cold on her bare feet. She and Jorge had come back to her house the night before. She hadn’t packed an overnight bag for Jorge’s and studiously avoided leaving much at his condo. A toothbrush, yes, her favorite face and hand lotions, but nothing by way of clothing. She did it partly in homage to her mother’s Catholic fantasy that she and Jorge weren’t sleeping together. In truth, though, the deception suited her just fine.
She pulled on a terrycloth robe, tiptoed out of the bedroom, and once in the kitchen made coffee. Then, in what of late had become a kind of guilty pleasure, like chocolate first thing in the morning, she flipped on the small television set that hunched on the white tiled counter next to the phone.
There was no need to change the channel. As ever it was tuned to WBS.
An anchorwoman appeared, Asian, not the usual blonde. A substitute, Alicia knew, because in the last few weeks she’d become more than passingly familiar with the news staff. She turned away to set her mug beneath the stream of coffee issuing from the drip coffeemaker, only to have the anchorwoman’s clear voice cut through the fog of her drowsiness. “We just received a wire report from AP that the number of fatalities from the bombing is up to six—”
Alicia jerked back around to face the television. Now, instead of the anchorwoman, a brunette reporter stood before a gargantuan pile of smoking debris, over which rescue personnel in yellow and orange gear swarmed like crabs on a beach. The images immediately took Alicia back to that horrendous September day no American would ever forget. But this time the words in bold red capitals on the bottom of the television screen read ROSE BOWL UNDER ATTACK. And in a blue-and-white ticker-tape scroll beneath that: EXPLOSION RIPS THROUGH PARADE GROUNDS . . . TERRORIST LINK SUSPECTED . . .
Alicia clutched at her throat. Oh, my God. Not again.
“We can confirm the number of fatalities,” the reporter was saying, clearly struggling to keep her composure amid the chaos. One hand clutched a microphone; the other was clamped over her left ear as if she were at that moment getting information in her earpiece. “I’m hearing now that the injured number well over fifty, and that several of those people are in critical condition.”
Alicia shook her head, disbelieving, despite the undeniability of the horror playing itself out before her.
“What is it?”
She heard rather than saw Jorge pad into the kitchen, as she couldn’t stop watching the television. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that he wore his blue-and-white striped pajamas, like a Latino Ward Cleaver. He came to stand beside her with his back against the counter and wrapped his arm over her shoulders, hugging her close. “My God,” he said, parroting the very words she kept hearing in her own head, as if her vocabulary had been reduced to two primal sounds that on that tragic New Year’s morning said it all.
Shoulder-to-shoulder they watched. There was one piece of good news among the bad: the bomb had gone off around 3 AM, so the full complement of parade workers was not yet on hand. If it had been, the casualty count would have been much higher.
Soon the picture changed from the female reporter to an Asian male standing on the White House lawn, talking about how the president would soon speak to the nation. Next came video of various cabinet officials hurrying into the White House, their grim expressions an incongruous contrast to the casual clothing they wore for what should have been a relaxing holiday.
Vaguely she was aware of a sizzling sound behind her, then another. Jorge pulled away from her. “Alicia—”
Her mug had overflowed, the excess coffee sizzling against the coffeemaker’s hot plate. As her hands began automatically to clean up the mess, her mind cranked into a higher gear.
I wonder if Milo is covering this story. He might well be. He’d been in Salinas on Monday and this was only Wednesday. And Pasadena was a short flight away. Then again, who knew where Milo Pappas might have jet-setted off to, to celebrate New Year’s Eve? Images of him in Paris, with a stunning female creature on his arm, crashed across her brain, sickening in their clarity.
Jorge came back into the kitchen—though she realized she hadn’t noticed him leave—bearing the Salinas Californian and a legal-sized manila envelope. He held it out to her.
“You got another one of these. Slipped under the door. Louella must’ve come back last night after we left for your mom’s.”
Alicia took one look at the envelope’s label and knew it came from Louella. She ripped the package open. Inside were Joan Gaines’ credit-card and cell-phone records for the last month, the records Alicia had sought in the subpoena.
She pulled out the phone records first, her eyes skipping down to December twentieth. Joan Gaines had made only a few calls from her cell that day, and none past 5:47 PM.
Alicia turned to the credit-card receipts. American Express, nothing interesting. On to MasterCard, which recorded a huge number of purchases, most in what were to Alicia astonishingly large amounts. Finally she reached December twentieth.
Her eyes stopped on an entry. She blinked and stared at it again: Dec. 20, Shell No. 27937563936, Carmel, Ca.
And next to it, in Louella’s neat print, was the exact time the transaction had occurred: 9:46 PM.
At 9:46 PM. When Joan Gaines said she was asleep in Courtney Holt’s guesthouse.
Alicia raised her head, staring unseeing across her small kitchen. Joan lied. She was in Carmel, gassing up her Jaguar. What else was Joan Gaines doing in Carmel that night?
Alicia looked at Jorge,
who was making a ruckus holding the toaster over the sink shaking out the crumbs. “She lied,” Alicia told Jorge’s back. “She lied about her whereabouts the night her husband was murdered.”
He pivoted to face her, toaster in his hands, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
“Joan Gaines. Daniel Gaines’ wife.” Alicia ran out of the kitchen. “I have proof she lied. And I’m going to call her on it.”
*
Only after Milo had pulled open the door of Joan’s suite to find Alicia Maldonado standing in the hallway did he vow that never—never again!—would he be so careless. He had thought for sure that it was room service. He had made just that one dangerous assumption as his bare feet padded across the soft ivory carpet, as the rapping repeated itself, louder the second time around; Joan must have called for something to be sent up before she got into the shower, he assumed, reaching for the knob as he heard the water in the adjacent bathroom pound. In fact, he even anticipated a delicious repast. A frittata, perhaps? Or eggs Benedict? On the first morning of the new year, maybe even Joan would indulge.
Oh, he saw the astonishment, the bewilderment, then the comprehension in the prosecutor’s dark eyes. He saw himself as he must look to her, with his morning stubble and slept-in hair, wearing over his nakedness a fleecy white robe with The Lodge at Pebble Beach embroidered in a half moon over the heart. He might have been a gigolo, a married man, even a priest—the guilt that pierced him was so intense. Alicia’s disapproval was writ large on her beautiful face, and reflected in the rough shoulder she gave him as she brushed past him to enter the suite.
She pivoted to face him. “You weren’t kidding when you told me you knew Joan Gaines.”
“It’s not what you think,” he heard himself say, but it was exactly what she thought, and they both knew it.
Alicia cocked her chin in the direction of the shower, where Joan, Milo was embarrassed to hear, was singing some cheery song whose lyrics and melody were both unrecognizable. “I take it that’s the lady of the manor?” she asked.
He ignored the question. “Let me explain,” he said instead, and found himself wanting to, though he knew he wasn’t obliged. Alicia had turned him down, he reminded himself. He was a free man. Joan was a free woman. Yet somehow he felt as if he’d gone from one woman’s bed to another’s without missing a beat in between. “I can explain,” he repeated, and felt even more of a fool.
“Don’t bother.” Her voice was both cold and dismissive. “I’m here to see Joan,” she informed him. “I’ll wait.” Then she walked further into the suite and settled herself on the sofa near the baby grand.
He felt excruciatingly conscious of his nakedness. It put him at such a raw and obvious disadvantage. Yet what was he to do? Repair to the bedroom and put on his tuxedo, which he knew was heaped on the floor? Maybe call down to the pro shop and ask them to send up a pair of madras pants and a polo shirt? He walked to the phone. “I’ll call down for coffee.”
She remained silent. So did the elephant in the corner of the room.
The businesslike transaction of ordering from room service made him feel marginally less impotent. And slightly more contentious. Alicia was being self-righteous, he decided. Holier than thou. “How was your New Year’s Eve?” he asked her. He heard the belligerent edge to his voice.
“Not as good as yours, apparently.”
“Mine was delightful.”
“I’m so glad to hear it.”
“You brushed me off, remember?” He watched her shake her head, though she couldn’t deny the truth of his words. “You have no right to sit in judgment on me.”
“Were you conducting an affair with Joan Gaines while her husband was alive?”
“I am not conducting an affair with her now!” His voice had risen, he noticed. He lowered it. “We are two single adults. Our being together is no sin. It is certainly no crime.” Yet even as he said it, a cooler part of his brain wondered whom he was really trying to convince.
“If you were sleeping together while her husband was still alive, it would arguably be both.”
He moved a step closer. “Oh, so you prosecute adultery?”
Her dark eyes were cool. “It would be adultery for her. Fornication for you.”
Even through his anger, he was reminded yet again that Alicia Maldonado was a force to be reckoned with. “I see your Catholic upbringing is standing you in good stead.”
“It has its uses.”
“I’ll tell you again. What Joan and I have done is no sin. Certainly not by the moral code I live by.”
“Well, we’ve established how stringent that is.”
He jabbed a finger in her direction. “What is your problem? Exactly what is it you’ve got against Joan? She is a widow—need I remind you of that? She lost her husband.”
Milo was forced to wait while Alicia raked her eyes slowly up and down his body. Suddenly it was as though the fleece robe were made of gossamer silk. “I can see how deeply she’s grieving.”
Milo shook his head, yet again bested. Damn that woman. “Not that I owe you any explanation, but Joan and I have a long history. We’ve been friends for years.”
“So I repeat. Were you sleeping together while her husband was alive?”
“Are you asking as a prosecutor? Or as a woman I made the mistake of pursuing?”
Silence. The flash of pain in her eyes gave him a shiver of ill-gotten satisfaction. “I asked you a yes-or-no question,” she said finally. “It doesn’t require context.”
“Maybe I want a lawyer present to answer it.”
She arched her brows, then, unexpectedly, she laughed, and looked down in her lap to finger something there. It was the first time he noticed that she was carrying a large manila envelope. “You’re right about that. You may want a lawyer present.”
That unnerved him. Once again his impulse was to lash out. “You would be so much better off preparing your case against Treebeard than engaging in this insane pretense that Joan should be a suspect in her husband’s murder.”
“Oh, really.” Her tone was dry.
“That supposed eyewitness of yours has got it all wrong. Joan and I talked about the night Daniel was killed. She was in Santa Cruz the entire night, as she has told you more than once.”
“Yes, that’s certainly been her story. You may want to wait and see if she sticks to it today.” Milo watched Alicia’s gaze slide past him. “Good morning, Mrs. Gaines.”
Milo turned to see Joan enter the room with her hair wrapped in a towel, dressed in the same exact robe he was sporting. He felt a new rush of humiliation, as if Alicia had caught them playing house.
Joan looked at him, her eyes bewildered, her right hand steadying the pyramid of towel on her small head. “What’s she doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Milo moved closer to Joan. He was taking sides, he realized. So be it. “Apparently she wants to kick off the New Year by lobbing more crazy accusations.”
Joan’s skin paled. “Why did you let her in?”
“I thought she was room service.”
Then Joan looked at Alicia. “Why didn’t you call first?”
Alicia remained on the sofa, sleek and calm as a cat. “I tried. From the house phone. But the hotel operator told me you stopped all calls.”
That surprised him. Then again, he could easily imagine how at some point during the prior night Joan might have decided she wanted no interruptions.
Joan looked up at him, a plea in her childlike blue eyes. “I don’t want to deal with this right now, Milo,” she murmured.
“You’re completely right,” he told her. “In fact, you shouldn’t.” He grasped Joan’s elbow and was surprised to find that she was trembling. He turned toward Alicia. “I’m sure Joan will answer any questions you have, repetitive though they are bound to be, but only when she has a lawyer present. Call later to make an appointment.”
He began to steer Joan toward the short corridor that led to the bedrooms. But in a hea
rtbeat Alicia was standing right beside them and had Joan’s other elbow in her grasp. “Joan is going to talk to me right now,” she said.
Joan’s lower lip trembled. “No.”
Alicia’s voice was low, cajoling. “You want to tell me the truth this time, Joan? You’re better off telling me the truth.”
“This is insane.” Milo pulled on Joan, but Alicia didn’t release her. Joan was like a rag doll being fought over by two warring children.
“I’m warning you.” Alicia had raised her head and was talking to him now in that same low, commonsense tone. “In fact, I’ve already warned you. Do not interfere in a criminal investigation.”
“Joan is not a suspect!” He shouted it rather than said it but no longer cared. “We are rapidly getting to the point where I will encourage her to file harassment charges against you and the entire district attorney’s office. You back off or I swear she’ll do it.”
Alicia looked from him back to Joan, as if he were a pesky annoyance not worth bothering about. “Tell me the truth, Joan. Because I have proof, incontrovertible proof, that you went back to Carmel the night your husband was murdered.”
By now Joan was crying. Plump tears ran down her pale, pale cheeks, whipped into irregular trails by Joan’s vehement shaking of her head. “No,” she was saying, “no ...”
Something in Milo’s mind registered that Joan’s reaction wasn’t quite right. She should be angry. Yet if anything she seemed petrified. Curious, he released her elbow, just as Alicia did the same. Then Alicia pulled a document out of her manila envelope and waved it in Joan’s face. Milo had the disconcerting sensation of being the odd man out, as if the women before him were the only characters in this impromptu drama who had starring roles to play.
“I’m giving you one last chance,” Alicia said. “Not only do I have an eyewitness who puts you back at your house the night Daniel was murdered, I also have proof in black and white. Proof any jury would believe. Now do the smart thing and tell me the truth.”
To Catch the Moon Page 21