To Catch the Moon (26 page)

It turned out that Headwaters needed serious
work. Such serious work that it buried beyond excavation any desire
Joan ever had to be chief executive officer.

Going over the books with Craig Barlowe, she
had wanted to weep. The debt payments? Enormous. The P&L for
the year? Lots of L and not much P. The regulatory constraints on
harvesting timber? Tightening constantly. Her compulsion to shuck
it all? Growing. Oh, yes, growing.

It was just all so much trouble. It was
probably possible to turn Headwaters around, but it didn’t look
easy. Being CEO was all well and good, but not of a company that
was in such difficulty. What fun would that be? Very little, as far
as Joan could tell. It didn’t seem to her that Barlowe, in his
capacity as acting CEO, was having such a grand time.

Plus, thanks to Daniel, too much of her money
was tied up in that damn company. Thanks to him she was cash poor,
which was nearly as bad as being actually poor.

The masseuse dug into a particularly tender
area of her nape. Joan winced. “I’m sorry,” the woman murmured,
though her pulverization continued at no less pressure.

In a way the pain felt good, though,
distracting. Joan freed her mind to roam over the solution she had
begun crafting.

She had worked as an investment banker for
about eight months after she’d left Stanford Business School. As
far as she was concerned, she knew all there was to know about
selling companies. So as soon as the holidays were over, she would
call the San Francisco I-bankers Daniel and her father had used to
acquire Headwaters and talk to them about selling it. Why not? It
would free her up in so many ways. Good-bye, corporate headaches.
Hello, cash flow.

And she judged this the perfect time. Who
would question why Joan Gaines wanted to sell her murdered
husband’s company? He was no longer alive to run it. Who would
doubt that it gave his widow too many painful memories? Most likely
she would even enjoy a certain premium from selling it quickly. She
was a new widow: wounded, bereaved, vulnerable. Even hard-nosed
businesspeople would be reluctant to drive too tough a bargain. And
if they did, she could retaliate by dropping a word or two to the
press. Milo would help, wouldn’t he?

Joan knew she could get a lot of mileage out
of the young-widow bit. Losing your husband to a brutal murder at
age thirty made you sympathetic even if you were from a prominent
family. Look at Jackie Kennedy. She’d been able to ride that wave
her entire adult life.

Joan fought a rising disappointment as she
realized her massage was winding to a close. In the final moments
the masseuse signaled the last act by lightly running her fingers
in silky, smoothing motions over Joan’s face and neck. Then,
unfortunately, she stopped, and murmured some cooing phrases about
how Joan should take her time and lie still for a while. She exited
the room so quietly that all Joan heard of her departure was the
soft click of the door closing behind her.

Joan resumed her contemplations, reluctant to
disrupt the pleasant stupor in which she found herself. She
imagined her life after she sold Headwaters for every last cent it
was worth. Shedding the company would free her from having to live
on the Monterey Peninsula. More and more she thought of it as a
backwater. For one thing it had virtually no desirable men. Who was
it who said that Carmel was for the newly wed and the nearly dead?
It was so, so true. All the resident males were either aged or
married, and usually both. The dregs were struggling poets or
artists, and she’d lost interest in that category a decade before.
No, Los Angeles and maybe San Francisco were much better bets.

Of course, she had to have a better idea what
to do about Milo. At the moment she had no idea, though the notion
had traipsed across her mind that he might provide some useful …
shall we say,
release
that very evening. After all, it was
New Year’s Eve. What healthy thirty-year-old woman didn’t have sex
on New Year’s Eve? Surely the holiday gave her leave to dispense
with her usual “Make him wait” calendar.

She chuckled to herself, entranced by her own
cleverness. What a brainstorm to tell him she was having friends
over! She knew that would make him much more likely to accept her
invitation. Obviously he was hesitant to be alone with her. But
he’d get over that fast enough. She’d make sure of it.

He could be so delicious, she remembered. The
things he did, with such gusto ...

She squirmed on the massage table, recalling
one particular ministration in exquisite detail. Daniel hadn’t done
that to her in eons. Maybe it was the Greek thing again.

Joan smiled a private smile in anticipation
of the evening ahead. Ethnicity might have its drawbacks when it
came to the social register, but clearly it had its place in the
bedroom.

*

7:30 on New Year’s Eve. Alicia sat on her
mother’s living room couch—the plastic that usually covered it
temporarily removed in honor of the holiday—and watched Modesta
Maldonado, in her best Christmas housedress, bend down to hold a
tray of deep-fried cheese-stuffed jalapeno peppers tantalizingly
close to Jorge’s nose.

“
Andale, Jorge, prueba otro
,” she
said, her wide face positively beaming. Nothing Modesta Maldonado
liked better than having a real live man in her living room eating
her food, especially one who might marry her eldest daughter.

Jorge winked at her mother. “
Con mucho
gusto
.” He reached for the biggest, Cheez Whiziest popper, and
her mother’s smile widened even further. How her face had enough
room to hold that big a grin, Alicia had no idea.

Well, she might not be in love with her
boyfriend, but her mother sure was.

From her perch at Jorge’s side, Alicia tried
to think what in this house had changed in thirty-five years. Now
she had nieces and nephews, that was different, and of course her
father was gone, but the living room looked much as it had when she
was a kid, and no doubt it would look the same still on the day
Modesta Maldonado went to claim her heavenly reward.

Alicia both loved this house and hated it. It
was where she had started, yet she often feared it would be where
she’d end up, too. Certainly she was the one writing the checks to
keep it going. Yet at the same time it gave her great satisfaction
to know that her father would be proud of her. She hadn’t let the
family down.

Tonight it was a raucous scene, the living
room full to bursting with people and noise and furniture. People
because there were nine Maldonados plus Jorge: herself, her mom,
her two sisters, the one husband, the four kids. Noise because no
one ever seemed to shut up and both the TV and stereo were on. And
furniture because the prior summer Alicia had bought her mother a
living room set from IKEA, but her mother had refused to get rid of
any of her old stuff, worn though it might be. Who knew if she
might need it someday? she asked, and that was the end of that. To
Alicia it was yet another mysterious working of her mother’s
mind.

Then there were the Christmas decorations,
starting with the silver foil Christmas tree with the red and green
balls hauled out every year from the garage to be stood next to the
television. The plastic reindeer that most people would put on
their lawn but which stayed inside because of the high likelihood
that outside they would be stolen. The Nativity set too large to be
contained beneath the tree, so that the myrrh-bearing wise man was
forced to stand right next to a reindeer.

“Alicia made tonight’s main dish,” her mother
informed Jorge.

“Think of it as Mexican lasagna,” Alicia told
him. “Instead of mozzarella it has picante sauce and refried
beans.”

Jorge grinned. “I can’t wait to try it.”

“It’s not the healthiest thing in the world.
Nor are the
hongos enchilados
Mom insisted on making.”

Jorge chuckled. “Deep-fried mushrooms?”

“Deep-fried in
manteca
.” She wouldn’t
actually use the word
lard
, though that was the shortening
of choice in her mother’s kitchen. Modesta Maldonado could not be
torn from her old-world habit of not only using lard in her cooking
but making her own by frying flabby chunks of pork in a
thick-bottomed pot.

“
Esos parecen sabrosos tambien, Dona
Modesta
,” Jorge told her mother, who beamed so brightly at the
compliment to her mushrooms that Alicia half expected her to blow a
fuse.

Jorge was such a diplomat, he might have
been the ambassador’s son
, she thought. He was on his best
behavior that night—then again he always was—spruced up in a blue
suit, starched white dress shirt, and festive holiday tie, for the
benefit both of the Maldonado clan and the local bar the two of
them would patronize later to greet midnight. His dark eyes shone
with kindness and good humor; he listened intently to every word
that dropped from her lips; he showered her family with luxuries
they could never afford, like the pearl stud earrings her mother
was how sporting.

I should love him. There’s something so
wrong with me that I don’t.
Why she should be vaguely bored by
Jorge Ramon and hanker lustily after Milo Pappas made no sense in
the world. Yet she sat next to one man and thought of another. When
her mind wasn’t wandering to the Gaines murder.

That reminded her. She rose from the couch.
“I’ll go check on the lasagna. It’s been almost an hour in the
oven.” She picked her way around the reindeer, furniture, and
children—most of whom were sprawled on the floor engrossed in the
Game Boys Jorge had given them—toward the kitchen. The lasagna was
an excuse for her to take yet another look at the contents of the
manila envelope Louella had dropped off at her house just as she
and Jorge were leaving for her mother’s.

It was lying next to her purse on the white
Formica counter. She opened it and pulled out the two sheets
inside.

One was a sheet of Gaines campaign
stationery. And sure enough, the logo was exactly as Treebeard had
described.
It was like the flag, you know? White stars on a blue
background, with red and white stripes. And it was like the flag
was underneath and the words ‘Gaines for Governor’ were cut out
from it ...

Did it prove anything? No. But if Treebeard
had gotten the logo wrong, his claim to have received a letter from
the campaign inviting him to Gaines’ house would have been
seriously undermined.

On to the second document: a typed list of
Gaines’ top campaign staff.

Mark Donovan—CEO

Don Monaco—COO

Molly Bracewell—senior strategist

Marty Ziegler—pollster

Molly Bracewell. The name popped off the
page.
I kind of remember now who signed the letter ... It was a
woman. Mary something. Something like Mary Baker. Mary Bakewell
maybe.

Did that mean anything? Maybe. Maybe not.

Alicia leaned against the kitchen counter,
the Formica hard against the small of her back. Pretty soon Louella
would get Joan Gaines’ credit-card and cell-phone records. Both of
them might be a bust, revealing nothing. But if so, she could take
it further, try another tack.

Alicia stood alone in her mother’s kitchen,
in the house where she’d lived the first twenty-five years of her
life. Everything around her was familiar: the smell of corn from
her mother’s nonstop tortilla making; the chipped, mismatched
platters on which soon they would serve dinner; the mix of
boisterous Spanish and English bouncing off the walls of the
jam-packed living room. She should feel warm and happy, she knew.
She should be eager to have Jorge wrap her in his arms at midnight.
She should be able to forget the murder that had ended the life of
a man too young to die. She should be strong enough to banish from
her mind the lurking vision of a man’s dark, intense eyes and warm,
demanding lips. Yet not even the most festive night of the year
could make those wishes come true.

*

Twenty miles yet a world away, Milo cut
across the Lodge’s small, elegant reception area. An overcoat
shielded his tuxedo, and in his right arm, cradled like a gilded
football, was a bottle of chilled vintage Perrier-Jouet. He veered
right and continued down a dimly lit carpeted corridor whose left
side was lined with glass cases full of golf trophies from the
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am held every January on the hotel’s
famed links.

He felt himself on a cloak-and-dagger
mission, which was an odd sensation for what should be a purely
celebratory evening. Yet after what he’d overheard in the D.A.’s
office, how could he not be driven to question Joan about the night
her husband met his maker? Penrose’s voice reverberated in his
memory.
We do not need to second-guess Joan Gaines’ whereabouts
the night her husband was murdered. She is not a suspect in this
case
. Then Alicia’s.
Maybe she should be
.

Even given how much Alicia resented Joan,
Milo couldn’t help but give weight to her prosecutor’s instincts.
And obviously an eyewitness placing Joan back in Carmel the night
of the murder was highly problematic.

So his mission was clear. Somehow that
evening he would get Joan away from the other guests to ask her a
question or two. He would elicit what he needed to know. He would
warm her up and then go in for the kill.

So to speak.

He had barely knocked on her suite’s door
when she threw it open. Despite himself he caught his breath.

“Hello,” she murmured.

She was as far from widow’s weeds as a woman
could get, a vision in a glittering silver sheath held up by
whisper-thin straps. The dress shimmered when she moved, like the
scales on a fish, giving her a bit of the look of a mermaid.

Milo smiled to himself. This New Year’s Eve
at least, Joan indeed was a man-killer.