Kip congratulated himself on his understanding of drama. That was one of the things that made him a good politician. His favorite politician of all time, Ronald Reagan, was a master of drama, and so was Kip Penrose.
“Kip, did I hear you have a news conference scheduled for one o’clock?”
Kip’s ears perked up at the puzzled voice of Alicia Maldonado coming at him from his office doorway. How perfect was that? He looked up from the folder to smile at her. “As a matter of fact I do.”
She shook her head. He loved how befuddled she seemed. “I’m surprised you didn’t tell me about it. Or”—a sort of understanding lit up her eyes—“maybe it doesn’t have to do with Treebeard?”
“Oh, it has to do with Treebeard.” Then Rocco appeared behind Alicia at the doorway, with his overcoat already on. He raised his brows in a Ready to go? expression. Kip hoisted his own overcoat from the stand behind his desk, pausing to admire its navy wool. So much more flattering to his coloring than black. Then he gifted Alicia with another smile.
“I don’t need you to be at this newscon,” he told her, “but you might want to, anyway. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.” He grabbed his folder prop and brushed past her out the door, relishing her confusion as he followed Rocco outside to the courthouse steps.
Quite a crowd of reporters and camera crews was waiting. Kip took a few deep breaths, getting that edgy feeling he always got before doing something big. But he had to do this, right? Joan Gaines had put her foot down. And even though Alicia Maldonado could be useful, she’d been annoying him for years. Plus she’d already done most of the heavy lifting on the Treebeard case, and now Rocco could do the rest.
Kip set up himself up behind the TV microphones, grouped on their metal stands like skinny soldiers, while Rocco took the position behind his left shoulder, where Alicia used to stand. Not anymore. Kip felt another shiver run through him. Was this a bad idea? He couldn’t worry about that now. He was out on the playing field with the ball in his hand.
“I have a serious matter to bring to your attention,” he said, “one I hoped I would never face. And it comes when this office is fast approaching one of the most important trials in its history, that of John David Stennis, who calls himself Treebeard.”
Man, the excitement of those reporters radiated toward Kip like heat waves on a desert highway. Drama! Drama! Kip could almost feel the Gipper at his back, urging him on.
“The case at issue,” he continued, “centers on a defendant by the name of Theodore Owens the Third. Two weeks ago, Mr. Owens brandished a gun in a crowded bar in Pacific Grove. He was irate at a woman with whom he had briefly been involved.” Kip scowled for the cameras, showing himself to be a man who profoundly disapproved of such behavior. “Mr. Owens was reckless. He posed a threat to innocent people trying to unwind after a long week of earning their livelihood.”
Kip then raised his voice in righteous anger, like a preacher. “I am a district attorney who takes such a transgression very seriously. Regrettably, I must inform you that the deputy district attorney who handled Mr. Owens’ case, the very prosecutor working at my side to bring the accused killer Treebeard to justice, is not of the same mind.”
Kip shook his head and struggled to appear sorely disappointed. “That prosecutor dispensed swiftly with this matter, recommending a plea bargain to Mr. Owens’ defense counsel. A plea bargain,” he repeated, as if he found those two words exceedingly vile. Then he made himself sound amazed, as if the unbelievable, the truly astonishing, had happened. “That prosecutor recommended a charge of misdemeanor brandishing! And then agreed to the minimum sentence so that the defendant would face only three months in county jail!”
It was time. Kip raised the folder high in the air, where it glinted in the sun like a beacon. Flashbulbs popped. TV camera lenses refocused. “I have here a report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation outlining Mr. Owens’ criminal history. Given the plea bargain, naturally you would assume that the defendant had no serious blemishes on his record. But no.” Kip dropped his arm to his side. “For Mr. Owens is a felon, convicted in the state of Massachusetts, someone for whom it is illegal even to possess a firearm. California law requires that Mr. Owens be charged with a felony for this latest transgression. And if convicted he would receive not only a second felony strike on his record but a lengthy sentence in state prison.”
Kip raised his voice dramatically. “Mr. Owens came frighteningly close to flouting the law. And how did he manage that, you ask?” Kip paused and for the first time understood what “bated breath” meant. “Because of the lackadaisical, incompetent performance of Deputy District Attorney Alicia Maldonado, who was more interested in moving a case off her desk than in seeking justice for the law-abiding citizens of Monterey County!”
The reporters were stunned, Kip could tell. They were raising their eyebrows at each other and writing furiously in their little notebooks.
Time to deliver the final blow. Kip lifted his chin, thinking of the one very important woman who would approve mightily of what he was doing and how he was doing it. “Therefore I terminate Deputy District Attorney Alicia Maldonado for gross incompetence, effective immediately. Deputy District Attorney Rocco Messina will assume her duties on the Treebeard prosecution. Questions?”
Those came thick and fast, but Kip had answers for all of them. He told himself that was because this was his lucky day. Somewhere in all the back-and-forth, he turned around and spied a dark-haired woman standing at the courthouse door, far enough away not to be easily visible but close enough to have heard every word.
Kip turned back to face the journalists massed before him, a smile lighting his features, a bead of sweat slinking down his back. He’d done exactly what Joan Gaines had asked him to, and he’d done it in such a way that Alicia Maldonado’s reputation would never recover.
*
Milo had to hand it to Joan. She’d gotten him to agree to meet her, in a restaurant no less. It was as though eight days of post-flagrante delicto silence simply hadn’t happened. She’d called him and amidst all her chatter managed to say the one thing that could make him agree to meet her, the one thing that fit with his new Joan Gaines agenda.
Maybe I can tempt you with a little inside information on the case. Doesn’t that get your reporter juices flowing?
Yes, that most certainly did. His primary goal was to do bang-up reporting on the Gaines case, meaning he definitely wanted inside dirt. If she was willing to dish it, fine. Ironic, but fine.
Yet he was hardly at ease. Joan was at best a schemer; at worst she was dangerous. Of course she had refused to talk over the phone. In desperation he had sent Mac and Tran to collect beauty shots of the peninsula, which would keep them occupied for a few hours at least. He could not risk having them see him in the company of the lovely widow.
A waiter glided over, his dress shirt and half apron as blindingly white as a naval officer’s. “May I get you a glass of wine while you’re waiting?”
“Thank you, no, I’m fine.” Milo’s new spartan regimen, which he’d adopted immediately upon exiting Richard Lovegrove’s office, did not allow for lunchtime tippling. It barely allowed for evening tippling. It certainly didn’t allow for women who led him down paths he could ill afford to travel.
He sipped his carbonated water and chuckled softly to himself. How fitting that he should be contemplating his new abstemiousness in Pacific Grove, a community founded a century before as a Christian seaside resort. That puritanical sensibility continued to hold sway at the nearby Asilomar conference site, though it had been modernized in recent years with New Age overtones.
Joan, of course, would be oblivious to the irony. No doubt she had proposed Joe Rombi’s restaurant for their rendezvous because it removed her from the Carmel/Pebble Beach axis, where she was highly recognizable and hence forced to maintain the fiction that she was in deep mourning. Luncheon excursions to chic Italian eateries with former boyfriends did not exactly jibe with that ima
ge.
Milo’s anger with Joan was boundless, but still it did not compare to his anger with himself. What an idiot he had been. How totally he had let his little brain do the thinking. How thoroughly he had allowed himself to be taken in yet again. Joan Hudson Gaines was no more than a whiny, self-absorbed rich girl with the moral code of a piranha. He had known it, yet he had ignored it. He was detestable. But it was no more. The scales at long last had fallen from Pretty-boy Pappas’s eyes.
He downed his fizzy water, rattled an ice cube into his mouth, and was admiring Joe Rombi’s selection of vintage French Art Deco posters when Joan sailed into the restaurant. She wafted expensive perfume and looked as if she’d spent the entire morning in a salon. Being Joan, she probably had.
“Hello.” She sat opposite him, removed her dark-lensed Chanel glasses, and smiled—a broad, welcoming smile that said, Surely nothing could be seriously wrong between us?
“Hello, Joan.”
“I know you’re still mad at me but I’m determined to jolly you out of it.”
He said nothing. The bright-white waiter came by. “What may I get you?” he asked Joan.
“I’ll have a glass of pinot grigio, please.”
The waiter’s gaze skipped to Milo. “And for you, sir?”
Milo hoisted his fizzy-water glass. “A refill, if I may.”
Joan arched her brow. “Won’t you share a glass of wine with me?”
“I’m working this afternoon.”
She leaned across the table and lowered her voice, her tone conspiratorial. “Surely we can think of a better way to celebrate our reunion than you working all afternoon?”
“I have a story to write.”
She rolled her eyes and lolled back in her chair, producing an impressive pout. “You really want to make me suffer, don’t you, Milo?”
Her self-absorption was gigantic. Milo was amazed there was room for it at their table. He was even more astonished that it hadn’t suffocated him before now.
Their drinks came. She clinked her glass against his without comment.
He broke the silence. “So what did you want to tell me about the case?”
Her eyes over her wineglass grew more disapproving, before she remembered herself. She put a smile on her lips, then picked up her menu. “Let’s order first, shall we?”
That was achieved fairly quickly, though Joan as usual made numerous off-menu requests. Milo already knew what he wanted, since he’d had so much time before her arrival to ponder the question. Once the waiter glided away, Joan straightened in her chair and squared her body toward him as if she were about to deliver a prepared speech. It ran through his mind that indeed she was a politician’s daughter.
“I want you to know,” she said, “that I have thought long and hard about what I did New Year’s Eve. Milo, I recognize that it was irresponsible of me to turn off your phone, and childish, and I am very, very sorry. I truly apologize.”
Neither her tone nor her gaze could be more earnest. A less knowledgeable man would have been fooled. But it served Milo’s purposes to warm her up and get what he needed out of her. So ...
“I accept your apology,” he told her.
She laughed and laid her hand over his. “I’m so relieved!” Then she leaned closer and batted those baby blues at him again. “Though I didn’t think you could stay mad at me for long.”
There was no point disputing her. There was no point reminding her that apart from turning off his phone—which, bad as it was, might be explained away—she had committed another, more serious transgression. She had lied to him. Repeatedly. And about a very serious matter—where she was and what she was doing the night her husband was murdered. Either Joan had forgotten that little prevarication, or she figured it didn’t much matter, or she wanted to kick it under the table in hopes that over time it would just slink away. She saw the world, and him, through the prism of her own delusion. He understood that failing, because he was just recovering from a bad case of it himself.
“Where are you staying?” she asked him.
“The Monterey Plaza Hotel.” He was doing everything by the book these days. No more quirky inns or out-of-the-way B-and-Bs.
“There’s always room for you at the Lodge,” she murmured.
There was no need to disabuse her of that notion because of the timely arrival of their entrees. Joan refused parmesan on her tomato and basil pasta; Milo accepted it on his pesto. He thought for a moment that he would do almost anything at this point to set himself apart from Joan Gaines.
They were about a third of the way through a silent inhalation of their lunches when the floodgates opened. Cynic that he had become, Milo saw the display as no more than another trick in Joan’s arsenal. She could see that Coquette hadn’t worked its usual magic. Earnest Joan had fallen flat. Perhaps Waterworks might enjoy more success?
“Milo”—much sniffling and nose-wiping—“I would just hate for one stupid mistake to drive us apart. We are so good together. We have so much potential. I will just never forgive myself—”
Milo stopped eating, despite the powerful lure of his pesto fettuccine. It seemed just too rude to eat pasta during a woman’s tears. The waiter approached, then suddenly veered left through the swinging doors to the kitchen, clearly judging this not the best moment to inquire whether everything was satisfactory.
“Can’t we get past this, Milo?” she was asking. Her face by now was nearly as red as her tomato sauce. “Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive me? Is what I’ve done so very wrong?”
He pondered that last question. Then he found himself saying something he knew he shouldn’t but somehow couldn’t resist. “I don’t know, Joan. You tell me.”
Something in the depths of her eyes shifted, hardened. “What are you asking me?”
“I’m asking you if you’ve done something very wrong.”
She said nothing for a long time. When she did speak, her voice had a new edge to it. “Surely you don’t think it’s possible that I killed Daniel.”
“It’s possible, certainly.” He decided to hedge that. “Anything’s possible.”
The restaurant seemed very still. It being such an odd hour—too late for lunch, too early for dinner—there was only one other group dining, a threesome several tables away. Milo was vaguely aware of the ebb and flow of their conversation, the occasional tinkle of their laughter. They were finishing dessert and coffee. They were getting ready to leave.
They were clattering out of their chairs when Joan spoke again. “You’re attracted to her, aren’t you, Milo?” Her voice was venomous. “You’re attracted to that cheap Latin spitfire.”
He almost laughed. Attracted was way too weak a word for the pull he felt toward Alicia Maldonado. “What I’m asking has nothing to do with her,” he said.
“It has everything to do with her, because apparently, unlike me, everything she says you believe. Well, you might be interested to hear that what I was going to tell you today actually has to do with your little Spanish rose.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s been fired!” Joan’s tone was exultant. “Not just from my case but from the entire district attorney’s office. For gross incompetence, no less! Oh, yes, I see the shock on your face that Senorita Maldonado could be anything less than perfect. But let me assure you that she is.” Joan leaned forward. “She is positively demented, Milo. She is a psycho.”
Then Joan proceeded to tell him a story he could hardly believe was true. And as she told it, he could clearly see the triumph in her eyes, hear the glee in her voice, and he knew as surely as he knew his own name that somehow Joan had orchestrated Alicia’s downfall.
He felt a rage gather itself inside his chest, almost painful in its intensity. This powerful woman, the daughter of a governor, the heir to a fortune, who lived a life of ease but still found it difficult—that such a woman would wreak havoc on the life of someone so much more honorable and hardworking than she ...
“So now she’s out of a job, which is what she deserves,” Joan was saying. “For what she’s done to me, I hope she dies soon. She’s not fit to do my gardening, let alone prosecute my husband’s case.”
He had risen to his feet, he realized. His napkin had dropped to the floor. He was actually tempted to overturn the table onto Joan’s pampered lap.
“—two of a kind,” she was saying. “Your family is as pathetic as hers. Both of you are poseurs, and I hope you suffer the same fate she did. You are an ill-bred, social-climbing—”
He stopped listening to Joan but could still see her. Her face was twisted in anger. Her words were vile flying things he had no time for.
This woman deserved no words from him, nothing, nevermore. He turned and walked out of the restaurant, leaving the bill unpaid, though that was the sort of nicety Joan would attend to. Kill her husband, that she might well do. But fail to adhere to a social convention? Not possible.
Chapter 18
“How did I not see it coming?” Alicia paced her living room like a woman possessed, Louella exhorting her to slow down, sit down, calm down. It was just after five on Friday afternoon. The sun was making its last stand of the day. The Lopez boys next door were playing stickball in her driveway, while the smell of their mother’s greasy cooking invaded her bungalow like a pestilence. Cars buzzed past the front windows, courthouse commuters using Capitol Street as a shortcut to Route 183.
Commuters. People who still had jobs.
“Who could have seen it coming?” Louella sat cross-legged on the couch in front of the window, sipping a diet ginger ale. The sun made a frizzy halo of her bleached-blond hair. “Stop beating yourself up, Alicia. How many cases do we plea-bargain? Four out of five? This one fit the bill. What you did made sense at the time.”
“Penrose set me up.”
“We don’t know that.”
To Catch the Moon Page 25