She clicked on Find Now. The number of Temp files was reduced to about a dozen. Listed alongside them were their size and the date and time on which they had been last modified. One was a small file bearing the date 12/19, 11:08 AM.
Alicia held her breath and clicked on it. It opened.
A shiver ran up her spine, into the hairs at the back of her neck. She stared at it for a long time, unable to believe what she was seeing. Yet there it was, undeniable, and just as Treebeard had described. His name appeared nowhere on the letter but other phrases leaped out at her. Please join us at Daniel Gaines’ home Friday evening at nine o’clock ... Perhaps some private conversation would allow us to find common ground ... Best regards, Molly Bracewell.
*
Milo drummed his fingers on the round glass table in the kitchen nook of Joan’s home. The nook really was more like a greenhouse, with paned windows on three sides affording a view of the road above the bluff.
He was puzzled. For on that road not only were gawkers beginning to gather, so were newspeople, so many that the sheriff’s department had cordoned off the area with yellow crime tape. Two camera crews already had set up behind the tape, in addition to a still photographer. Reporters were arriving on the scene in news vans and ENG trucks, which signaled that live shots would be happening for the noon news.
All this for a search warrant? Implausible. But what else could it be? Milo had no idea, which depressed him. He was out of the loop, fired, no longer of import in the news business. For all he knew Mac and Tran were out there among the mob, taping a stand-up with his replacement. Weeks before his ego had chafed at the assignment. Now he wished it were his.
As it was, he felt as if it were wartime and he was battling on all fronts. Yet he was too drained to be upset. Perhaps the life force had seeped out of him while he was throttling Joan, leaving him a shell of a man, with a ruined past and an uncertain future. No job. No reputation. No Alicia.
He’d had her for a time and then he’d lost her. Why? Because his anger at Joan had gotten the better of him. He’d run back to her house like a man possessed, or a man obsessed. Who could blame Alicia for wanting to wash her hands of him?
The cop sitting to Milo’s left cleared his throat. BUCKY SHERIDAN, his badge said. Somehow he didn’t look like one of the department’s top performers.
“Officer Sheridan,” Milo asked, “do you know why there are so many reporters outside?”
“Beats me.” Then the cop raised his brows. “You don’t know? Aren’t you one of ‘em?”
Milo let that pass. “Is it the search warrant?”
“Beats me.”
Not exactly a font of information, was he? Milo resumed watching the housekeeper, who was doing a lousy job mopping the floor. She did some areas repeatedly and totally missed others. But he had to assume she was scared to death. One month ago her employer was murdered in the house. Today for the second time cops were crawling all over the property and reporters were massing like jackals on the street outside.
As he watched, she stepped backward without looking and knocked over her pail of sudsy water. “Dios mio,” she muttered, then just stood still, as if it were all too much, holding her mop with one hand and massaging her forehead with the other.
Milo rose to his feet. “Here, let me help.”
She raised tired eyes to his face. “Gracias, senor. Thank you.”
Between the two of them they made quick work of cleaning up, while Officer Sheridan did his bit by observing their progress from the table. Toting the pail and mop, Milo trailed the woman to a mudroom off the kitchen. She pulled open a utility closet stuffed to the gills with foul-weather paraphernalia, from Gore-Tex parkas to slickers and mud boots and garden clogs.
“These both go in there?” he asked. It was hard to believe.
“Mop only, please. I take pail.” She relieved him of the latter as he pushed the mop back inside, then apparently had another thought. “Get me broom, please?”
“No problem,” he said, but it wasn’t true. Not only did he have to shove past all the gear, he then had to root around against the back wall among the collection of brooms. His hands closed on one and he pulled it out, then stared down at it, frowning.
This is no broom.
It was a long, slim piece of highly buffed wood, about five feet in length, with one small notch carved into the top and another carved into the bottom.
This is no broom. It’s a bow.
An unstrung bow, which made it hard to recognize.
Milo stared at it, awestruck. It fit right in with the brooms and mops. It was the same size, made of the same material. But with a totally different purpose. Its aim was to kill.
*
Alicia stood in the library with Joan, the sheriff’s deputy, Shikegawa, Johnson, and Louella. They were gathered around Joan like a posse, or a lynch mob. It was deliberate, cruel but deliberate. Alicia handed Joan the letter to Treebeard, which she had printed out on Gaines campaign stationery, and watched her carefully. She was trying to shock an admission out of her, as she had New Year’s Day. That time it had worked. She needed it to work again.
For while the letter lent Treebeard’s story credibility, it didn’t convict Joan. It was damning, but circumstantially so. Alicia still needed more.
“Explain this to me,” Alicia demanded. She made her voice harsh and accusing. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”
Joan just shook her head, though she looked ready to crack. Her eyes were puffy from crying, and her skin was mottled. Chips of mascara littered her cheeks. The sheriff’s deputy who’d been watching her said the phone calls she was getting, one after another, were upsetting her. Something about Headwaters, and a lumberman dying in an accident.
Alicia thought that must explain the reporters and TV crews and photographers massed outside, and the news chopper circling overhead. No one in the media, except Milo, of course, even knew about the search warrant. That couldn’t be what had drawn the press to the Gaines property in such numbers.
Joan handed the letter back, her eyes defiant. “I’ve never seen this before in my life.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Alicia raised her voice. “You lied to me before and the truth still came out, didn’t it? This letter came off the computer upstairs. Your prints are all over that keyboard,” she said, though she had no idea if that was true. “Who else had access to that computer but you? Come on, Joan. Admit it!”
But again Joan shook her head, and backed away a few steps. “I’m not saying another word until I speak to my attorney. He’s on his way. Leland Jennings.”
“You think a big-name defense lawyer is going to get you out of this?” Alicia advanced on Joan, holding the letter out to her. “Come on. Take credit for your handiwork. It’s pretty clever, I have to admit. More clever than I thought you were capable of.”
“Shut up! You just shut up!”
The veneer was cracking. Alicia stepped closer still. “You wrote this to Treebeard, didn’t you? Then you signed Molly Bracewell’s name. You wanted to set him up for Daniel’s murder and implicate her at the same time.”
“Shut up!” Now her arms were flailing, her voice spiraling upward like a helium balloon.
“It’s driving you crazy, isn’t it? Knowing you killed Daniel? Knowing how cleverly you did it? But having to keep it all to yourself for the rest of your life?”
One of those arms suddenly jutted straight out and pointed at Alicia. “You’re the crazy one! You are! For trying to pin my husband’s murder on me!”
Before Alicia could respond, a commotion behind her at the library’s door made her turn around. It was Bucky Sheridan, his face even more flushed than usual. Next to him stood Milo, who somehow looked different than he had before. Calmer, more relaxed.
A word popped into Alicia’s head. Vindicated.
Bucky hoisted something long and thin in the air. He gripped one end of it in his right hand, which was encased in a protective plastic glove. “Look what we foun
d. In the mudroom off the kitchen.”
There was amazement in Bucky’s voice.
No wonder.
“It’s a bow,” Alicia heard herself murmur. The murder weapon? Here in Joan’s house? Slowly she pivoted to face Joan, who stood wide-eyed and openmouthed across the library. “That’s the bow you used to kill your husband, isn’t it?”
“I did not kill my husband!” Joan screamed, though she was panting, and her eyes were wild, which gave the lie to her denial. “I haven’t seen that in ages. I didn’t even know it was in the house. My parents gave it to me when I was, I don’t know, thirteen.”
“You really are something, aren’t you?” Alicia stepped closer to Joan. Now she was only a foot away. It must have been her proximity that sent Joan scuttling sideways, like a crab, close to Milo and Bucky. “Stealing one of Treebeard’s arrows,” Alicia went on, “writing a letter to get him here to the house, arranging all of this for a night when you knew you would have an alibi in Santa Cruz—”
“Shut up!” Again out stretched the arm, though this time it trembled violently. The index finger jabbed at Alicia’s face. Joan’s own skin was a bright, angry red, as if she’d been slapped. “You are the reason all this is happening, you bitch!”
Alicia watched, oddly calm. What a vile creature, she thought, like something that slinks along the bottom of the sea. She arched a brow. “In some ways I don’t blame you for killing Daniel, Joan. I know how he stole Headwaters from your family. It was like he spit on your father’s grave after your father did so much to help him.”
“Shut up!” Joan’s hands were clutched over her ears, while she shook her head violently. Then her arms fell and her voice reached a shrill, ear-piercing note. “Shut up!”
It happened mesmerizingly fast. Alicia watched as Joan grabbed the bow from Bucky’s unsuspecting grip and raised it high above her head. Then she pounced on Alicia, her eyes crazed blue spheres, like those of a madwoman, or perhaps a sane woman who’d just been pushed too far.
It's like when I was in a car accident, Alicia thought, watching Joan’s arms go up, up, up. I knew the other car was coming but I couldn’t do a single thing about it …
Then the arms were coming down, the bow was arcing in one swift, relentless motion, and all at once Alicia felt herself thrust aside. She watched Milo step between her and Joan, saw his body twist away from the bow, his arms raised protectively over his head.
The silent library was rent with a mighty crack.
Chapter 25
Joan perched on the edge of the narrow metal cot in her jail cell, her hands folded in her lap. She was trying very hard not to touch anything, not to smell anything, not to hear anything. The more she kept herself aloof from her surroundings, the less real they became. The more she could dismiss the urine odor from the toilet so close to the cot; the more she could banish all the banging and buzzing sounds, and the endless muffled sobbing of some woman several cells to her left. The more she sat silently, within herself, not moving, not thinking, the more easily she could believe that her imprisonment was a gigantic error that soon would be corrected.
For it was an error. Despite that treacherous letter, despite the unearthing of that bow, despite the endless accusations of that vampirish Maldonado creature who would not stay dead, she had not killed Daniel. I did not kill him, Joan repeated to herself. I didn’t.
Close by, she heard a clanging of metal upon metal. A buzzer sounded. A door opened, then closed. Heavy steps came nearer, each footfall accompanied by the jangling of many keys.
A female warden, an enormous black woman sporting a pair of equally outsize wire-frame glasses, appeared beyond the bars of her cell. “You got a visitor.”
Joan scurried toward the tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed man who then stepped into view beside the warden. There was no one in the world she wanted more to see. “Leland.”
Her cell door swung open. Attorney Leland Jennings strode inside and clasped Joan’s small hands in his own. The door slammed shut behind him, the entire cell shuddering with the force, but at least this time she wasn’t imprisoned all alone.
“Leland,” she repeated, helpless to think of anything else to say. She wanted to weep. At this moment Leland Jennings reminded her of her father. He was strong, knowledgeable, someone who would take what was wrong and make it right again. Her father might not always have given her her due, but he never, ever betrayed her the way Daniel had.
“You poor dear,” Leland Jennings said, which did make the tears flow. “Come sit down,” he added, and with him at her side Joan was more willing to sit on the cot.
For a time he let her weep, making consoling noises and handing her tissue after tissue as the need arose. It surprised her that such a distinguished gentleman could secrete such an enormous supply of tissues on his person.
Finally she produced a last sniffle. “I apologize, Leland. I am not myself.”
“Of course not.” He smiled, which made little crinkly lines appear at the outer edges of his bright blue eyes. He did so remind her of her father!
It took her some time to regain control. “They’ll never be able to make this stick,” she said. She rose from the cot and listened to her declaration hang in the cell’s heavy air, trying to gauge whether it had the ring of truth. It didn’t quite, so she tried again. “They have no case against me whatsoever.”
Leland Jennings pursed his lips and looked into the distance, as if some justice-system truth were out there that only he could see.
“Isn’t that right, Leland?” she demanded.
It took forever for him to say anything. Finally, “From what I have seen of the evidence, it is no more than circumstantial.”
“Well, that’s hardly enough!” Particularly when it comes to me, she wanted to add, but stopped herself. “The case against that Treebeard man is far more convincing. What about all the DNA evidence they’ve got against him? Has that prosecutor woman conveniently forgotten about that?”
“Joan,” he said, and her back stiffened at the patronizing note she suddenly detected in his voice, “it is clear they plan to argue that you framed Treebeard for your husband’s murder. They will not try to claim Treebeard was not at the scene.”
Something about the phrase plan to argue made Joan feel positively faint. “You could defend me against a circumstantial case if it came to that, couldn’t you, Leland?” That last bit came out more desperate-sounding than she had intended. Again she felt tears threateningly close to the surface.
“Of course, Joan. If it came to that.” Leland Jennings smiled the sort of smile that made juries believe every single word he told them about his unfairly maligned client. It had the same reassuring effect on Joan. She reclaimed her position next to him on the cot. Then her curiosity got the better of her. “How is Milo Pappas, by the way?”
“He has a broken forearm and some lacerations about the head and neck. From the splintering of the wood,” Leland Jennings added.
She found herself again upset, this time at the limited extent of Milo’s injuries. For everything that man did to her he deserved far worse than a broken bone and some cuts. It was also a real shame that she hadn’t hit her mark. She would have dearly loved to have cracked the bow on that Maldonado woman’s head. Then a terrifying thought occurred to her. “They can’t charge me with murder for Hank Cassidy, can they?”
“No.” Leland Jennings patted her knee. “No one disputes that was an accident.”
But according to both Craig Barlowe and Frederick Whipple, it was an accident that killed not only Hank Cassidy but the chance of a successful IPO. Whipple claimed the revelation that Headwaters was flouting environmental regulations would tarnish the company beyond repair.
Joan shut her eyes. She couldn’t think about that now. All she could focus on was her own survival. She turned to her attorney. “When are they going to let me out of here?”
Leland Jennings sighed, the sort of drawn-out, pained sigh that signaled bad news was about
to be imparted. Joan steeled herself. “Joan,” he said finally, “I don’t anticipate you’ll be released anytime soon. This is a capital case, after all.”
She rose to her feet, though the movement was unsteady. “I don’t care what kind of case it is. I want you to get me out of here. Do it or I shall retain an attorney who can!”
He remained mute, just staring at her. All of a sudden she found his behavior infuriating.
She set her hands on her hips. “Are you forgetting who I am?” she demanded. “I am Joan Hudson Gaines, the daughter of former governor and U.S. senator Web Hudson. I am not someone who should be incarcerated, not for several hours, let alone for some indeterminate period!” She walked to the door of her cell, as if she were dismissing Leland Jennings. Which she was, for the moment. “I suggest you find a judge and clarify the situation.”
He seemed to consider her words, then rose and approached the door of her cell. “Warden,” he called, then turned to face her. She was astonished to see not one iota of warmth in his expression. Rather he regarded her with the look of a man at a rather distasteful piece of business.
The warden appeared behind the bars. Leland Jennings seemed to weigh his words carefully before he spoke.
“Joan, I suggest either that you purge that sort of thinking from your head or keep it to yourself. For if we do find ourselves in trial, I can promise it won’t win you any points with a judge or jury.”
Then he walked out, leaving Joan alone, petrified, and incarcerated. And wondering, for the first time in her life, if perhaps the Hudson name wasn’t worth so very much after all.
*
Alicia sat in the ratty chair beside Louella’s desk in the D.A.’s office and asked a question neither woman could answer. “Why in the world would Libby Hudson want to see me?”
Louella frowned, sipping overheated coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “What time did she say she’s coming by?”
“Six.”
Both women raised their heads toward the loudly ticking round white-faced clock above Louella’s cubicle window, whose hands pointed to 5:51 PM. Louella shook her head. “I can’t believe she thinks she can get us to drop the charges.”
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