To Catch the Moon (35 page)

Louella stopped kicking. “What?”

“That a few weeks ago all I was worried about
was not getting the big case that would jump-start my career. Now I
don’t even have a career to jump-start.”

“Yes, you do. Don’t say that.”

“Joan Gaines will get away with it now. Who’s
going to stop her?”

“Alicia, it’s not even clear she did
anything. And second of all, now is not the time to be worrying
about Joan Gaines. You should be worrying about yourself.” Louella
grabbed her backpack, dumped at the side of the couch, and slung it
over her shoulder. “I hate to say this but I gotta go. Can you
believe I’ve got a date tonight? Talk about timing. With Tom in
Water Resources.”

“The one you turned down for New Year’s?”

“Yeah, but now it’s January tenth. So he’s
looking more palatable.” Louella headed for the front door, then
stopped and turned around. “Hey, you want to join us? Or should I
cancel and you and me do something? We could—”

“No. Really.” Alicia pushed Louella out the
door. “Go. I’m fine.”

A few more pushes, a few more lies about how
really okay she was, and Alicia convinced Louella to go. She shut
the door and leaned her forehead against it. The truth was, she
wanted to be by herself. She wanted to wallow, and plan, and curse
Penrose. And while those were activities that could be accomplished
with a companion, there was a bitter consolation in doing them
alone.

She was about to relatch the chain when the
doorbell rang. She pulled the door open. On her stoop stood Milo
Pappas.

*

“May I come in?” As a precaution Milo lifted
his right foot off the WELCOME doormat and inserted it into
Alicia’s tiny shadowy foyer. She looked like she might slam the
door in his face at any moment.

“What are you doing here? And how in hell did
you get my address?”

“May I come in?” he repeated.

She didn’t answer, but after a moment she
stepped back and allowed him to brush past her into the house. He
turned to face her in the small front room, though she remained in
the foyer, as if she expected to be ushering him out again very
soon.

He had the same reaction he always did to
Alicia Maldonado: she was a drop-dead beauty. Even in her decidedly
unglamorous faded jeans and peasant blouse, she was stunning. Then
he remembered he was taking a hiatus from such observations.

“People at the WBS station here know where
you live,” he told her. Right after he’d left Joan, he’d hightailed
it there and quizzed the reporter covering the Treebeard trial on
why Deputy D.A. Maldonado had gotten fired. He’d used every bit of
yank a star network correspondent had with a local reporter to pry
Alicia’s address out of him. “Is the story true?”

“Do you mean did I do the plea bargain? Yes.
Did I know the guy’s history? No, or I never would’ve done a
deal.”

That was basically what she’d said on the
sound bite the reporter showed him. That seemed to be her only
excuse and it struck him as a weak one. He knew what that was like.
“Did Penrose rig this to get rid of you?” he asked her.

Bingo. He could tell from her startled intake
of breath that he’d hit pay dirt. Ever since he eavesdropped on her
argument with Penrose, he’d known there was serious antipathy
between the D.A. and his deputy. Then in the videotape of that
afternoon’s press conference, he watched Penrose do a piss-poor job
of masking his glee at being “forced” to fire her. Being the target
of a so-called superior’s ire was a phenomenon Milo well
understood. And sympathized with.

She said nothing, so he pressed on. “Is there
anything you can do about it?”

“Plenty.”

“Like what?”

She advanced a few paces into the front room
and put her hands on her hips. Her eyes were defiant. “That’s none
of your business.”

“I’m trying to help.” Though even as he said
it he knew he was hardly in a position to offer career advice.

“I don’t need your help. And as I recall we
haven’t exactly been on the same side lately.”

We could be now
, he wanted to tell
her. Instead he pointed to the couch. “Do you mind if I sit
down?”

“Go ahead.”

But she remained standing and offered no
refreshment, which made him feel about as welcome as a door-to-door
salesman hawking undesirable wares. He looked around the room, full
of the sort of furniture he’d thrown out after college. The
rust-colored Navajo throw rugs were pretty, though, as were the
posters. “You’re a big Kahlo fan,” he said.

There was a flicker of surprise in her eyes,
probably that he even knew who Frida Kahlo was. Maybe he should
mention that his parents had an original in their home on
Thessaloniki.

“She was a real fighter,” Alicia said.

“I always preferred her to Rivera.” But that
didn’t warm her up, either, though he suspected she shared his
opinion. They stared at each other for a few seconds longer, then
Milo again broke the silence. “I’m not your enemy.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you
are. The last time I saw you ...” She stopped.

“I was sleeping with the enemy? Well, I’m not
anymore.”

He dropped his eyes and concentrated on the
rug, which covered scarred, uneven hardwood flooring. It had taken
him a while to cool down from his run-in with Joan. He still
couldn’t believe the bile that had fallen from her lips. It was as
if the mask had come off and he’d seen that what lay beneath was
rotten and corrupt.

“For the record,” he said, “Joan and I dated
years ago. She broke it off. It was tabloid fodder at the time,
pretty unpleasant stuff.”

He raised his eyes. Alicia’s expression was
unreadable. Maybe she was one of those rare Americans who didn’t
pore over the gossip columns. Good for her.

“I certainly didn’t intend for anything to
happen between us,” he went on.

Her voice was cool. “Funny. It seemed to
anyway.”

“It sure as hell did. And I was a total
idiot, I can tell you that.”

Alicia looked away. Milo had the idea she’d
become one iota less suspicious. He watched her walk to a side
table and wipe nonexistent dust off the broad striped leaf of a
potted ficus. Funny. Joan was supposed to be the thoroughbred, yet
Alicia Maldonado seemed made of nobler stuff. Here she stood in her
very small, very plain house—in a neighborhood Joan wouldn’t be
caught dead in—and still she had a certain regalness about her.

“I have a proposition for you,” he told
her.

She looked away from the plant and arched her
brow. “Why do I feel like I’ve heard that one from you before?”

“A business partnership. It’s strictly on the
up-and-up.”

“That’d be a real change.”

“I never once lied to you, Alicia. I may have
withheld a thing or two but I never told you anything but the
truth.”

“What are you withholding now?”

What, indeed? Nothing he could think of. In
fact, at the moment he was playing it unusually straight. Maybe
this was the new and improved Milo Pappas in action.

He rose from the couch and approached her.
She retreated a step and crossed her arms over her chest, as if to
put another barrier between them. He met her eyes. “I think Joan
knows more about Daniel’s death than she’s letting on. A lot
more.”

Clearly that took her by surprise. Her mouth
dropped open and she drew an unsteady breath. Then her eyes
narrowed. “So one night you sleep with her and the next you think
she had something to do with her husband’s murder? Some lover you
are.”

“Let’s just say that I’ve seen a different
side to Joan.”

Alicia shook her head. “Boy, you are some
kind of quick-change artist. And even if I did believe you, why are
you telling me this now? What am I supposed to do about it? I’m off
the case, remember? I’m out of the D.A.’s office. This is somebody
else’s problem.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

“How many times do I have to say this, Milo?
I can’t be of any use to you anymore!”

“Not true. Not if you and I join forces.”

“What?” She laughed. “What are you talking
about?”

“I need a killer story. You need vindication.
If you and I prove that Joan had something to do with killing
Daniel, we’ll both get what we want.”

She laughed again, though it was more of a
scoffing sound. “The last thing I need is a man I can’t trust
trying to get me to ... how did you put it?” She made big quotation
marks in the air, her voice laden with sarcasm. “ ‘Join forces with
you?’ What’s that a euphemism for? Feed you every piece of evidence
the D.A.’s office has compiled? Forget it. For all I know you could
be working with Joan. You could be an accomplice to murder. I don’t
know what your agenda is but I know I want nothing to do with it.”
She stalked to her front door.

“Hold on just a minute.” His voice came out
harsher than he’d intended. “Now you’re accusing
me
of
killing Gaines?”

She said nothing. She was an unreadable
presence in the shadows of the foyer.

“For your information, I found out he had
been murdered when I was in New York. It came over the wires while
I was anchoring the evening news. You want to see a tape of me
subbing for Jack Evans on December twenty-first? I can get it for
you.”

Her voice was soft but icily suggestive. “You
don’t have to be physically present to be involved in a
murder.”

Cool it
, he told himself, though it
was a challenge. All these accusations of Milo Pappas doing wrong,
ratcheting ever higher into allegations of murder. There was truth
to some of them but not one whit of truth to this one, the worst of
all.

“Let me tell you something, Alicia.” He
couldn’t stop from advancing toward her. “I had nothing to do with
that man’s death. From the day Joan dumped me, I didn’t see her
again until I covered her husband’s funeral. You are way off base
if you think I had anything to do with it. And I’ve got to tell
you, it pretty seriously pisses me off that you would think I
did.”

He forced himself to back off and return to
the front room. His heart was thumping as if he were once again at
Georgetown running the stadium steps. She said nothing and remained
in the foyer.

He wondered if this whole thing was worth the
trouble. This woman could be a real pain in the ass. He’d probably
be better off just doing a pro forma job covering Treebeard’s trial
and trying to resuscitate his reputation with a different story
altogether.

But he didn’t really want to let it go. That
was what separated the real journalists from the impostors, he told
himself. Not letting go.

Part of him knew he didn’t want to let her
go, either. Not yet. He wanted a connection, however tenuous.

He turned to face her one more time. “Look,
you believe Joan killed Daniel. You may or may not be right, but
how are you going to prove it on your own? You have a better chance
working with me.”

“Oh, so now you’re a PI as well as a
journalist? You must have a lot of free time on your hands, buddy.”
She pulled open her door. In blew a blast of frigid air, redolent
of exhaust from the nonstop flow of cars. “You’re leaving now.”

He didn’t move. “There’s no conflict of
interest anymore. I’m still covering the story but you’re no longer
in the D.A.’s office. You get total vindication if you prove Joan
was the murderer.”

“You’re really big on this ‘vindication’
thing. Somehow it makes me wonder if you want it more than I do.”
She opened the door wider. “Out.”

Fine. He’d had all he could take for the
moment. He moved forward but paused at the door to stare down at
her. “Think about it,” he said. “You’re not getting rid of me so
easily.”

*

Joan was finding it very, very difficult to
read spreadsheets with her eyes constantly filling with tears.
Very, very difficult!

She gave up. She propped her elbows on
Daniel’s eighteenth-century Hepplewhite writing desk, rested her
forehead in her hands, and let the tears flow. She couldn’t believe
that on this afternoon of all afternoons she had to be at
Headwaters waiting for a 6 PM conference call with Frederick
Whipple. His minions were swarming all over the building, poking
their noses into files and asking questions of employees and all in
all making great pests of themselves. It was necessary, she knew,
but it was all just too much.

She raised her head and sniffled, fumbling in
her Prada handbag for yet another tissue. Not that she’d been
serious about Milo, not really, but nevertheless she was astounded
by his behavior. Just who did Milo Pappas think he was? Certainly
if any dumping was going to occur, it should have been her
unloading him, like last time. Her initial instinct that his
network-news success might lead him to misunderstand his place
relative to hers had been quite on point.

She had been so deliciously angry at Joe
Rombi’s, so powerful giving him the plain truth about Alicia
Maldonado, another presumptuous no-name who had to be taught just
where in the great wide world she stood.

Joan was seriously undone. There was nothing
for it but to take one of the Xanax Dr. Finch had given her. She’d
been very careful how she took them, but there were moments when
she just couldn’t get by without their help.

She fished the amber prescription bottle out
of her handbag and jiggled one out, washing it down with her now
cold Darjeeling tea. It was such a shame she wasn’t angry anymore.
Anger had felt so much better than sadness. She hated to admit it
but this could be yet another case of her mother being right all
along. Right about Daniel and right about Milo. Her mother had
warned her that she should stick to men who shared her background
and breeding. Well, neither of these specimens had stood up under
the test. Milo had revealed himself to be a lowborn cad: using a
woman still reeling from grief for his own sexual pleasure, then
tossing her aside. Using
her
, a Hudson! He should have been
tremendously grateful she allowed him into her bed in the first
place. It might be appropriate behavior among Greeks, but among
Episcopalians it was appalling.