To Catch the Moon (36 page)

Joan took several deep breaths. She had to
stop thinking about it, at least for now. She had to gather her
wits. The conference call was in five minutes. And besides, one day
very soon she would think of a way to give Milo Pappas his
comeuppance, the way she’d given it to Alicia Maldonado.

Joan had just finished repowdering her face,
though she was still lamenting her puffy eyes, when Frederick
Whipple’s sidekick, the gray-suited male twenty-five years his
junior knocked on Daniel’s door to summon her to the call. She
followed him downstairs to the first-floor conference room.

Joan assumed her rightful place at the head
of the table. “Craig, good to see you.”

From his post at her left, Craig Barlowe
nodded back. “Hello, Joan.” She noted that his demeanor had not
improved. Ever since she’d told him she was selling Headwaters, he
had been positively sullen. Probably he thought he’d end up out of
a job. She thought he’d been lucky to hold on to this one as long
as he had.

The gray suit sat at her right and one of the
minions fussed with what they all insisted on calling the “squawk
box,” which perched like a high-tech centerpiece on the conference
table’s gleaming mahogany surface. Frederick Whipple, from his
office in San Francisco, was soon telephonically connected.

Greetings were exchanged. Less important
business was dispensed with. Frederick rapidly got to the
point.

“As you know, Joan, my associates have spent
the greater part of the week analyzing the viability of an initial
public offering of Headwaters Resources. I must tell you there is
some difficulty with that approach.”

Joan’s heart sank. Frederick embarked on a
dissertation about debt loads and regulatory constraints and
stagnating economic conditions, but it all added up to one thing:
she’d have to settle for just selling the company, which would mean
less money than an IPO.

Whipple paused to sip something, apparently.
Outside the conference room’s three small windows, set deep into
the whitewashed adobe, it was already dark. Joan wanted to scream.
It was Friday night and what did she have to look forward to?
Nothing. No dinner date, no rendezvous, no party, no nothing. And
now no IPO either.

“However,” Whipple’s voice intoned from the
squawk box, “Headwaters Resources does possess some unique
attributes that our institutional clients are finding quite
attractive.”

Her ears perked up.

“For example, Headwaters owns thousands of
acres of old-growth forest, which are increasingly rare and hence
quite valuable. In addition, in the wake of the dot com bubble,
there is a renewed interest in the basic industries, which can
produce solid and predictable returns.”

Joan glanced at the gray suit. He caught her
eye and smiled.

Could it be a go?

“Investors have renewed interest in
established companies in this uncertain market,” Whipple droned on.
“The technology companies that were in such demand in years past
are not luring investors at this point in time.”

Frederick Whipple kept her in suspense for a
while longer, enumerating Headwaters’ good points, then said, “In
short, Joan, I believe that Whipple Canaday can position Headwaters
Resources in such a way that it will generate enthusiasm in the
public marketplace. Therefore I recommend that we bring the company
to market and give all Americans an opportunity to participate in
what I’m sure will be its great future success.”

Everyone broke into raucous applause—everyone
except Craig Barlowe, that is—and all the minions came around the
conference table to shake Joan’s hand. The gray suit broke out a
few bottles of Dom Perignon. Frederick Whipple sounded a cautionary
note or two, as was his wont as Whipple Canaday’s most senior
partner, but Joan tuned out and took a token sip of champagne. She
couldn’t have more, not after the Xanax, which apparently was
already starting to work. She felt quite serene about everything
she’d have to think about next, investor presentations and S-ls and
research analyst briefings. She’d think about those tomorrow. Or
maybe Monday.

As she began the fifteen-minute drive back to
Pebble Beach, she made the mistake of answering her cell phone.

“Mother, I thought you were still in
Marblehead!” The Storrow family seat, on Boston’s North Shore,
where her mother had spent New Year’s. Joan had hoped she’d be so
overcome by the native puritanism that she’d stay till spring.

“I returned yesterday.”

Small talk ensued. Joan marveled how little
detail about her life she cared to share with her mother. Theirs
was an arm’s-length intimacy, with no sign of rapprochement on the
horizon. That suited her just fine.

“What have you been occupying yourself with,
dear?” her mother asked.

“Oh, this and that.” What had she been doing
that she could tell Libby Storrow Hudson about? She couldn’t go
into all her treatments at the Lodge’s spa. Or her efforts to
ensure that a local D.A. lost her job. Certainly she should stay
mute about having sex with Milo and then getting dumped by him.
“I’ve been spending a great deal of time at Headwaters,” she
offered.

Silence. Joan could imagine her mother’s
wrinkle-lined mouth puckering into a frown. Then, “I would have
thought you’d be done with that by now.”

An oblique reference to Joan’s supposed
flitting from project to project. She swiftly decided this was not
the time to mention that Whipple Canaday was taking the company
public.

Though she couldn’t put it off for long. Very
soon it would hit the financial pages. Her mother was no longer a
shareholder in Headwaters, since Daniel had bought out her father’s
stake, but her interest in the company could safely be described as
very high.

Her mother was speaking again. Joan detected
a slight change in her tone, as if they were moving from
inconsequential matters to the heart of the conversation. “I met
with Henry Gossett this morning,” she said.

That wasn’t good. “How is Henry?”

“We reviewed some matters having to do with
the trust.”

That was really not good. “Was this in your
new capacity as trustee?” Joan couldn’t help but sound snide.

“As a matter of fact, it was. Joan, I’m
afraid I must ask you to make a change in your living
arrangements.”

Ahead of her on Highway 1, brake lights
flared bright red. “What are you talking about?”

“It has come to my attention that you are
still residing at the Lodge. You have been there for nearly three
weeks now. The bill, I must say, is imposing. On top of which I
note that you spent three nights this week in a suite at the
Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco.”

She resisted saying,
So what?
“I had
business in the city.”

“Business.” Her mother enunciated the word as
if it were impossible that Joan could ever engage in such a thing.
“Be that as it may, our cash-flow situation is such that we must
exercise some restraint. Double-booking suites at two luxury hotels
is no longer permissible, at least not at present.”

Permissible?
“Are you telling me to
move out of the Lodge?”

“Joan, Henry and I have had your home
thoroughly cleaned, from top to bottom. It is absolutely pristine.
Still, if you are not comfortable returning there, you are always
welcome to stay with me here on 17 Mile Drive.”

Joan narrowly avoided rear-ending a black
Mercedes sedan.
I would rather die than live with you!
“I
don’t want to move out of the Lodge,” she said, but somehow it came
out wrong, making her sound like a petulant child stomping her
foot.

Her mother was silent but Joan got the
message loud and clear through the humming airwaves:
You don’t
have a choice
. Libby Hudson was trustee. Joan merely received
an allowance. She might as well be six years old getting her coins
doled out on Saturday morning.

“Oh, dear, I’m going through a bad patch,”
Joan lied. “I can’t hear you. ‘Bye.” Then she pressed the end
button, opened the Jag’s passenger-side window, and with all her
arm’s strength flung the cell phone into the foliage that lined
Highway 1. That was the end of that conversation.

Alicia couldn’t believe how busy a nominally
unemployed person could be.

She opened a package of ramen into boiling
water, then sprinkled dried basil and oregano on top and set it on
medium heat. Lunch would have to be a twenty-minute affair given
her 12:30 PM telephone appointment with Franklin Houser, the scion
of the Idaho family that had sold Headwaters to Daniel Gaines and
Web Hudson two and a half years before.

She was starving. She’d spent the morning, in
fact most of the week, at the public library, poring over
microfiche news stories on the transaction. There wasn’t much to be
found, since the company was privately held, and the grunt work of
digging up what did exist was laborious. But Alicia guessed it was
a far sight better than bouncing off the walls of her house.

Besides, what else could she possibly be
doing? She had filed her suit for wrongful termination. Louella was
pursuing the case file from Massachusetts on Theodore Owens’ felony
conviction. How could she not keep trying to nail Joan Gaines?

Milo Pappas had been completely on target not
to believe she’d lost interest in the case. In fact,
interest
didn’t nearly describe how she felt.
Obsession
came closer. And the notion of vindication that
he’d kept throwing around had begun to sound pretty good, too.

Not like any of this was easy. She was on her
own now. Gone were the D.A. office benefits of free phone and fax
and photocopier. Gone were the cops and the D.A.’s investigative
arm. Whatever help she could get from anybody now would come by way
of favors, which she’d never been good at asking for. And she was
up against a suspect who had all the world’s power and money at her
disposal.

Safe to call it an uphill battle.

Alicia grabbed a box of Triscuits from the
cupboard and turned on her kitchen TV for the noon news. News
watching was another big unemployment activity. On Tuesday she’d
been forced to suffer through endless coverage of Treebeard’s
probable-cause hearing, complete with Kip Penrose and Rocco Messina
out on the courthouse steps in full strut. Of course, with all the
evidence against Treebeard, which she’d lined up so neatly, he was
bound over for trial. Yet Penrose looked as if he’d just outdone
Mark Spitz and won nine gold medals in the Summer Olympics.

To make matters worse she couldn’t stop
herself from watching Milo’s reports on the story. They were good.
Quite good. And you couldn’t look away while he was on-screen. At
least, she couldn’t.

She gave the ramen one final stir, then
transferred it to a bowl and carried it to the kitchen table, a
Formica-topped rectangle that would fit right into Dudley’s. She
grabbed some crackers and started eating.

Yet however compelling she found Milo Pappas,
on and off the air, his “proposition” remained as baffling as it
had been when he’d first offered it. Apparently his reporter crony
spilled her phone number as well as her address, because Milo
Pappas called her at least once a day. His frequency was right up
there with Jorge’s. It was, she had to admit, fun. He kept
insisting they work together on the Gaines murder; she kept
insisting she couldn’t trust him. It bothered her that at some
point he’d give up trying to convince her. Probably some point
soon. She didn’t like the idea that he’d stop calling, that she’d
no longer have something he wanted. It also made her feel like she
was still in some sort of cosmic professional loop to know where he
was jetting off to to cover his stories. He was in San Francisco
now, after getting a break on a banking story he’d been pursuing.
Before that he’d been in Seoul, and before that San Diego.

She poured the last of the ramen down her
throat and set the dirty bowl in the sink. Unfortunately, the
Triscuits box was now empty, as her cupboards would soon be. She
would be forced to go grocery shopping and spend money she didn’t
have. The only good news was that on sale, ramen went for only a
dime a package.

Time for the call. On went her telephone
headset, one of the few items she’d taken from her office. Lots of
things she’d left, as it felt too much like surrender to empty her
desk entirely. She scanned her list of questions, made sure her pen
worked, then punched in the Boise area code and number.

A woman answered, presumably a housekeeper.
“Houser residence.”

“This is Alicia Maldonado with the Monterey
County district attorney’s office. Mr. Houser is expecting my
call.”

“Just a moment, please.”

Alicia didn’t mention that at the moment she
was persona non grata in the D.A.’s office. Or, for that matter,
that she was no longer prosecuting Daniel Gaines’ accused killer.
She “withheld” that change in status, as Milo Pappas himself might
have done. When she booked the call, she’d wrapped herself in the
cloak of the law—which she still felt justified wearing—and spewed
forth a litany of arguments that persuaded old man Houser to speak
to her.

Of course, it helped that no one else from
the Monterey County district attorney’s office had gotten to him
first. Not Kip Penrose, certainly; not Rocco Messina; no one. Nor
had Milo Pappas. Alicia told herself that no one else was
investigating as thoroughly as she was. She preferred that
interpretation to the other likely possibility: that it was
patently obvious there was nothing to be gained from this line of
inquiry.

But who knew? She’d heard of more than one
family business that had provided a motive for murder. And while
she had found an opportunity for Joan Gaines to have killed her
husband, she hadn’t found means or motive. Not yet.