To Catch the Moon

by Dempsey, Diana

  “I might.” Then she raised her head and squinted at something behind him. “My God,” she murmured, “look what it says in that man’s newspaper.”

  He swiveled in his chair. The headline on the far right column screamed at him: “Headwaters Resources to IPO.”

  “Isn’t that the Chronicle?” Alicia said. “Don’t we have a copy?”

  Milo was already reaching to extract it from the briefcase at his feet. He quickly found the business section, and the Headwaters story on the third page.

  Alicia rose to read the piece over his shoulder. “Whipple Canaday’s doing the transaction,” she said. “That’s the same bank Daniel and Web Hudson used when they bought Headwaters from Franklin Houser.”

  Milo scanned the article. “There’s a quote from Joan. ‘My husband ran Headwaters with the same vigor and vision he applied to all his pursuits. I believe a public offering of the company he loved is the best way to continue his legacy. It also has the great advantage of allowing all Americans the opportunity to participate in its future success.’ ” He shook his head. “She can really shovel it when she wants to.”

  Alicia sat back down. “Isn’t this awfully fast?”

  “It’s amazingly fast. Gaines has been dead only a little more than a month.”

  “She never said anything about this to you?”

  He tried to remember. “One time she said something about Headwaters. But never anything about going public.” It had been a gorgeous December morning, the morning of Treebeard’s arraignment. He and Joan had been eating breakfast on the terrace at the Lodge. Those were details he would not share with Alicia. “She said she was going into Headwaters that day, and something about the way she said it made me wonder if everything was all right there. I remember her telling me she wasn’t sure if it was or not.”

  “It can’t be in too bad shape if it’s going public.” Alicia was frowning. “I wonder if this is connected to the big fight Joan and Daniel had in early December. Because her taking the company public so soon after he died seems very odd to me.”

  “I agree. But Molly Bracewell told me that what pissed Joan off had to do with the trust, not Headwaters.” Milo set aside the newspaper, his mind working. “You know, this helps us.”

  “How?”

  “Because companies preparing to IPO have to release scads of information to the public. There’s something called an S-1 filing, I remember my brother Ari telling me. He’s an investment banker in London.”

  “Then this will help.” Alicia pushed back her plate, a light growing in her dark eyes. “It’s been so damn hard to get information on that company.”

  He glanced at his watch and grimaced. It was already past seven. “I’ll call Ari and ask if he can find out anything about it. Or put me in touch with someone who would know something.”

  She was chewing on her lip. “Maybe I should be the one to talk to your brother. Your shoot’s all day, right?”

  It was. And it would be a tough one. And the new and improved Milo Pappas must not allow himself to be distracted. “Would you mind?”

  “Of course not. Would you call him first to tell him who I am?”

  He smiled and leaned closer. “And who exactly would that be?”

  Clearly he’d caught her off-guard with that one. She looked away, her brow furrowed.

  He grasped her hand. “How about I describe you as ‘a very good friend’?”

  She raised her eyes to his. “What’s that a euphemism for?”

  “It’s for ‘fabulous woman I can’t wait to see again.’ ”

  Her features relaxed. “That doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

  He made a dramatic clutch at his chest. “ ‘Doesn’t sound too bad’? Alicia, you’re killing me here.”

  “You’ll live.” Her smile widened. “Now write down Ari’s number. You’ve got to get out of here or you’re going to miss your plane.”

  He jotted the number on the back of a business card, then had the presence of mind to record another series of digits as well. “I’m giving you my calling-card number,” he said. He didn’t want her saddled with the long-distance charges for a London call. Then he had another brainstorm, which he was both hesitant to mention yet reluctant to abandon. He lowered his voice. “Alicia, do you need a little something to tide you over?”

  Her response was instant. “No.”

  “Are you sure? Because I am completely happy to help. I know you have obligations to your family on top of everything else. Honestly, I’d be glad to help.”

  This time she was silent. He took that as an opening and reached back down into his briefcase for his checkbook.

  She shook her head. “I feel very weird about this.”

  “Don’t.” How much? He didn’t want to insult her, yet wanted to be genuinely helpful. He settled on two thousand dollars and began to make out the check.

  Then he heard a female voice, not Alicia’s, from very nearby. His hand froze.

  “Well, doesn’t this beat all.”

  No. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. But then he heard it again. Disdainful. Snide. Unmistakable.

  “Isn’t one of you going to say you’re surprised to see me?”

  Slowly he raised his head to see Joan standing beside the table, wearing an expression of such triumph, such contempt, such utter superiority he was rendered speechless.

  She raised her hand as if to forestall him. “Please don’t let me interrupt you. I can see you’re conducting business.” She glanced down at Alicia. “Payment for services rendered?”

  He found himself on his feet. If Joan hadn’t moved so quickly, he thought he might have punched her. But she had already skittered away, deeper into the restaurant, smiling as if to maintain the public fiction that all was right in her world.

  Smiling with her mouth, that is. Because her eyes held a cold, malevolent promise.

  Joan turned her back on them then. Milo’s heart thudded against his rib cage. Vaguely he was aware of Alicia speaking to him in a soothing voice that failed to have anything close to the desired effect.

  “It’s all right, Milo,” she was saying. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

  But it did matter. For sure it mattered. Because Joan would come after him. Somehow.

  *

  As Joan exited the Ritz-Carlton’s circular drive onto Stockton Street, her Jag’s tires screeching on the asphalt, she tried to convince herself that all she felt was anger. Anger was an emotion she could manage these days. Anger didn’t require a Xanax or a glass of wine or a massage. Anger fueled her. It made her bolder and more active. Anger was far superior to hurt, or bewilderment, or fear, all of which lurked beneath her rage like a festering malignancy, threatening to burst forth and destroy her if she didn’t maintain control.

  Well, she would be active now. She made a left onto California Street and climbed Nob Hill. She gathered speed despite the steep ascent and hurtled past a cable car offloading tourists bound for Chinatown, their heads swiveling to watch her as she careened past. Her own goal was 101 North and her tete-a-tete in Humboldt County with the Headwaters lumberman primed to perform the extra tree felling she wanted done. She had a second goal as well, devised the instant she had left Milo Pappas staring after her in the Ritz-Carlton restaurant.

  Joan abruptly pulled over to the curb at the crest of the hill, oblivious to the outraged drivers forced to maneuver around her in the heavy flow of traffic around the Fairmont Hotel and Grace Cathedral. She had no choice but to stop driving. She was too enraged to do more than one thing at a time, and one task above all others had become paramount. Her anger made her fingers tremble so uncontrollably it took her several seconds to gather herself sufficiently to punch the correct buttons on the car phone.

  Though she wasn’t master of her body, Joan was in complete possession of her wits. She knew exactly what she wanted to achieve, and she knew exactly how to do it. She would have done it before, but lacked the ammunition.

  No long
er. Milo Pappas had not only handed her the gun, he had loaded its chambers.

  “Operator,” she said once she had a line, “connect me to the WBS television headquarters in Manhattan. To the news division,” she specified.

  Milo had been worried about losing his job before? Well, she’d make sure he really had a reason to worry now.

  *

  Alicia cleared quickly out of her room in the Ritz-Carlton, too much a bundle of nerves even to consider going back to bed. Before she left she spoke to Milo’s brother Ari, whom she caught in his London office. He told her that for some years companies had been required to file their IPO documents electronically and that he’d already confirmed that Headwaters’ information was on-line. She jotted down what she needed to know to find the Web site herself, then thanked him and called down for her car. In minutes she was on city streets headed for 101 South.

  But no amount of dodging and weaving would get her home quickly. She’d forgotten she was driving straight into the morning rush hour, as fearsome an opponent as the prior day’s evening commute had been. And stop-and-go traffic did nothing to aid her personal equilibrium.

  She’d been on this freeway a mere fourteen hours earlier but it might as well have been a lifetime. On this, the morning after, she ricocheted between elation and panic. Had she reached new heights of idiocy to sleep with Milo Pappas? Had she reached a new moral low by cheating on Jorge? Was she streamlining or sabotaging her investigation into Joan Gaines by cooperating with Milo? Was he the most wonderful man in the world or the worst scoundrel imaginable? She had different answers by the mile, all of which rang alternately true and false. On some level she thought it was pointless even to ask those questions. She’d done what she’d done. Whether it was stupid or smart she’d have to live with the repercussions.

  Traffic eased fifty miles or so south of San Francisco, past San Jose. She was able to do the second half of the trip in half the time it had taken her to do the first.

  As she screeched to a stop on her own driveway, she spied a delivery on her stoop. She climbed out of the VW and approached it cautiously, like it might detonate. She was amazed it hadn’t been stolen or broken or somehow otherwise destroyed.

  Two dozen roses, long-stemmed, bloodred, in a vase sporting a huge white bow. Her fingers were cold as she opened the tiny parchment card, attached to the bow with an old-fashioned hairpin. I miss you already, M.

  She let out a shaky breath, admonishing herself for a brief surge of disappointment. He didn’t tell me he loves me.

  A second, more combative inner voice had a ready answer. Why should he? You don’t know how you feel.

  That wasn’t entirely true. She knew something of how she felt: alert, giddy, terrified, deliriously happy, fretful. In other words, a goner where Milo Pappas was concerned.

  She carried the roses inside and set them on the coffee table, staring at them for some time before she forced herself to step away. Then she booted up her computer and within minutes was on-line and had located the Web site where Headwaters Resources was cut open and dissected for prying eyes to see.

  Given what she didn’t know about business, much of what she read made little sense. Yet a good bit of it was fairly easy to understand. The company was described, along with its business strategy and competitive strengths and market position. What jumped out at Alicia came under organization and ownership.

  She read through that section, then read through it again. There it was, in black and white. At the end of November, Daniel Gaines bought Web Hudson’s stake in Headwaters Resources and became the company’s only shareholder.

  Alicia raised her head, trying to take that in. Less than a month before he was murdered, Daniel Gaines came to be the sole owner of Headwaters. Good-bye, Web Hudson, without whom Gaines never would have been able to buy the company in the first place.

  And how much did Gaines pay for his father-in-law’s stake? Thirty million dollars. Alicia knew from Franklin Houser that thirty million was exactly what Web Hudson had paid for it two and a half years before. So thanks to Daniel Gaines, Web Hudson’s estate got zero return on that investment. Zero return for Web Hudson’s making it possible for Daniel to buy the company in the first place. Zero return for being so generous as to double Daniel’s stake from twelve to twenty-five percent. Zero return for treating his son-in-law like the son he never had.

  You didn’t need an MBA to know that Web Hudson’s estate got screwed.

  For a time Alicia was baffled. If the estate of Joan’s late father owned the stake, how did Gaines even have the authority to sell it? It took her a while to remember what she had learned the night before, what Molly Bracewell had told Milo: that Gaines was trustee of Web Hudson’s living trust. That meant he controlled Web Hudson’s assets, one of which was the stake.

  That realization made Alicia’s mind work so quickly she had to bound out of her seat to pace her front room. On the face of it, it certainly looked like Gaines had violated his fiduciary responsibility to his father-in-law’s estate. He feathered his own nest to the detriment of the living trust. And what else had Bracewell told Milo? That Gaines did something with the trust that made Joan so angry she moved out of their house into the Lodge. Now Alicia knew that happened mere days after this transaction. Probably Joan found out and went ballistic.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine that this might make Joan pretty damn mad. What a slap in her father’s face. What bald greediness on her husband’s part. What contempt for the older man’s memory. Not even to mention the negative effect on the trust’s bottom line, and thus on its two beneficiaries: Joan and her mother.

  The phone was ringing. Again. It had been ringing a lot, and whoever was calling wasn’t leaving a message. This time Alicia ran to the kitchen to answer. It was Louella.

  “Where the hell have you been?” A very het up Louella, not so much mad as excited. “I’ve been calling all morning!”

  “I’ve been out.” That was a lame excuse but Alicia knew Louella would highly disapprove of her little assignation in the big city. “Why? What’s up?”

  “Can I come over?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “I’m coming over.” She hung up. Alicia rolled her eyes and went back to the computer. There was one piece of the puzzle she was missing. Where had Gaines come up with the thirty million to buy his father-in-law’s stake? Because when he and Web Hudson acquired the company, Gaines couldn’t even come up with four million.

  After ten minutes of trying to make sense of five years’ worth of spreadsheets, Alicia found an entry that pulsated in front of her eyes.

  She stared at it. In late November, Headwaters took on additional debt. How much? Thirty million dollars. And what was the purpose? To repurchase Web Hudson’s shares. Making Daniel Gaines the company’s sole shareholder.

  The pieces clicked into place in her mind. Daniel Gaines was both buyer and seller of his father-in-law’s stake in Headwaters. He could set the price, and he could accept it.

  It could not be more obvious. It added up. It was appalling, yet made sense. Daniel Gaines certainly had been a hotshot financier here. He’d parlayed four million dollars of borrowed money into sole ownership of a company valued at more than a hundred million dollars.

  Yet it might have cost him his life.

  Alicia could just imagine Joan’s reaction. Joan could well think that Daniel had stolen Headwaters from her family. She would be furious. Yet what could she do about it?

  She couldn’t get far by divorcing him. Given California’s community-property laws she’d get only half the assets from the marriage. And Daniel would walk away with a huge windfall, at her family’s expense.

  But if Daniel died? She’d get it all. Most spouses without children left everything to the surviving spouse. And even if by chance Daniel Gaines had no will, California law required that everything go to his widow.

  The doorbell rang. Alicia ran to her foyer and flung the door open. Louella stood on the stoop. “You will n
ever believe what I’ve found out about Daniel Gaines,” Alicia said.

  But Louella just pushed past her into the house. “And you will never believe what I’ve found out about Kip Penrose.”

  Alicia shut the door. “What?”

  Louella turned around in the front room and held out a manila folder. “It finally came in. The file on Theodore Owens’ felony conviction. From Massachusetts, twelve years ago. Guess who prosecuted the case?”

  Alicia raised her hands to her face, reading the truth in Louella’s eyes. “Oh ... my ... God.”

  “You got it, kiddo. One of the up-and-coming assistant district attorneys in Worcester County at the time. Who later moved to California.” Louella slapped the file. “Kip Penrose.”

  Chapter 22

  As Joan sped the Jag north along 101 deep into the heart of Humboldt County, she was reminded that this part of Northern California did not possess the charms she typically sought in her destinations. True, the highway was lined with coastal redwood, which she found herself appreciating more than usual, but there wasn’t a single five-star hotel or restaurant for hundreds of miles. People here enjoyed natural beauty, apparently, which was all well and good, but Joan rather preferred man-made attractions. The big draw in these parts seemed to be the rumored appearances of Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch, a manlike beast that topped nine feet, weighed over seven hundred pounds, and reportedly suffered from fairly severe body odor.

  Joan feared the lumberman she was driving to meet would match much the same description.

  She careened along the narrow curving highway in an uneasy silence. She’d long since turned off the radio, frustrated that all she could find on the dial were preachers and country-music stations. Every once in a while the fog billowed so thickly she was forced to slow down, which both relieved and irked her. At one and the same time, she wanted to get this meeting over with and yet didn’t want it to begin. It was nerve-racking. What was the protocol in such a situation? Thanks to Daniel’s earlier efforts, the lumberman had already agreed to involve himself in this enterprise, so she didn’t have to convince him. In fact, over the phone he’d told her with obvious pride that he’d long ago assembled “a team o’ good hardworkin’ men,” which she supposed he thought would reassure her. What she wanted to hear was that they were men who knew how to keep their mouths shut. Of course, that was in part what the cash was for.