To Catch the Moon (28 page)

And then she made her next kiss seal the
bargain.

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.”