She wondered what she and Daniel had been. Similar in some respects. They both liked to be out and about, at restaurants or parties or concerts. At some point early in their marriage, she had noticed they weren’t at their best alone. And very often Daniel fell into sullen moods she hadn’t understood. It happened when things weren’t going his way, either with Headwaters or the campaign. Then nothing would make him happy but work, work, work, which was very trying.
The far more fascinating question was, How compatible were she and Milo? Joan tripped lightly up the few steps to the Gossetts’ entry and rang the bell. She had concluded the prior night that Milo was as charming as ever, and as handsome. Perhaps even more so, because now his aura of success was so much more powerful. He was kind to her, very considerate, though his refusal to share her bed was a worry.
Didn’t he find her attractive anymore? No, she decided, that wasn’t possible. Could he be seeing someone? She frowned, then smiled, her concern fading fast. It wouldn’t take Joan Hudson Gaines long to beat out any competition. One other thing she hadn’t liked, she remembered: that he’d left so early to catch his plane. That didn’t show what she considered sufficient regard. Still, she would allow him that lapse if he phoned her early enough in the day. Before eleven in the morning would be best; between eleven and three was acceptable; she deemed anything after three to be rude. So what if he had an interview to tape? She tapped the toe of her high-heeled pump impatiently as she waited for someone at the Gossett residence to let her in. Well, this would be a good test of whether Milo Pappas had his priorities straight.
Finally Henry Gossett himself pulled open his front door. He wore his suit jacket and bow tie, though in the privacy of his own home he’d forgone his felt fedora. At least that. “Good morning,” he said, lugubrious as ever.
“Good morning, Henry.” She pushed past him into the foyer, a dark, cheerless space that did justice to the owner’s personality. He directed her toward a library that was all wood paneling, mahogany furniture, and crimson leather. Oil paintings depicted mallards paddling across murky ponds or horses waiting patiently to be saddled for the hunt. An antique uniformed housekeeper crept in with a bone-china coffee service.
“How are you, Joan?” Henry settled himself behind his desk.
“I’m managing, Henry. Thank you for asking.”
They sipped their coffee and exchanged pleasantries, both maintaining the fiction that this little get-together wasn’t occurring under duress. Joan ached to delve into the spreadsheets she’d already spied atop Gossett’s desk. Finally she felt able to move the attorney past the preliminaries into the business at hand.
“I imagine that in the last several days you’ve been able to generate a more trustworthy estimate of the current value of my father’s living trust,” she began.
Gossett cleared his throat. His eyes, behind their wire spectacles as dull a gray as the mallards’ wet feathers, dropped to the spreadsheets. “It appears,” he said, “that my prior estimate was fairly accurate.”
Joan stilled. “Excuse me?”
“Yes. I believe I estimated the value at thirty million dollars—”
“It is thirty million dollars?” she cut in.
Gossett moved his index finger across the spreadsheet’s lined, pale green surface. “Twenty-eight point four million.” He raised his eyes to hers. “And change.”
Sunshine poured in through the diamond-shaped panes of the casement windows behind Gossett’s head. A car sped past, the engine producing the sort of guttural roar only German automaking could achieve. And somewhere outside she heard men, presumably gardeners, speaking Spanish in loud voices. Laughing occasionally. It seemed inappropriate, somehow.
It took her a minute or so to be able to talk again. Then, “Henry, correct me if I’m wrong, but my recollection is that at the time of his death, my father’s trust was valued at something like a hundred million dollars.”
“Your recollection is correct.”
She took a deep breath. “If that is correct, then how in the world could the value now be less than thirty million?”
Gossett said nothing. For a few seconds his gray gaze didn’t waver, then it dropped again to the spreadsheets.
“Are you telling me that the trust lost seventy million dollars under Daniel’s stewardship?” She heard her voice rise. “He was trustee for only a year and a half but he lost seventy million dollars? Is that what you’re telling me, Henry?”
“It’s not accurate to say that it lost seventy million dollars.”
“What is it accurate to say, then?”
“Forty million dollars went into Headwaters.”
She did a quick calculation. “But that still leaves us thirty million shy. Where did that go?”
Gossett’s brow furrowed. “Your husband made some investments which, I would say, didn’t quite pan out.”
“What kind of investments?”
“In the technology area.”
No. She dreaded asking the question. “When you say ‘the technology area,’ do you mean Internet investments?”
Gossett nodded. “Primarily, yes.”
She had a terrible sinking feeling then, like the one that came from the steepest daredevil plunge in a roller-coaster ride. Daniel had fancied himself Internet savvy. He had fancied himself one of the great minds of Silicon Valley, though he had never lived or worked there. The closest Daniel ever got was tee times with venture capitalists or Web business CEOs, after which he’d come home spouting off about IPOs and valuations and lockup periods. She hadn’t been convinced he knew what he was talking about but hadn’t imagined it really mattered.
Suddenly she feared that it had.
She tried to form a coherent line of questioning, though her mind whirled with terrible ideas that repeatedly spun around and crashed into each other, like bumper cars driven by drunken teenagers. “Henry, isn’t it true that my father made considerable money in Internet investments?”
“Your father did, yes.” Gossett paused. “In fact, those investments contributed nicely to the value of the trust. But, Joan, remember that your father was making those investments in the early and mid-nineties.”
“So?”
“So he was able to cash out of many of them by the late nineties. When Daniel took over as trustee, he poured a good fraction of those proceeds back into Internet companies.”
“But then those companies began failing.” She shook her head, remembering the shocking stories she heard people gossip about, or read about in the newspaper. High-flying Web companies, once valued at millions of dollars, suddenly worth zero. The people who invested in them going overnight from paper millionaires to paupers. “A lot of those companies went bankrupt, Henry—they shut down.”
“Yes.” The attorney nodded somberly. “Yes, Joan, they did.”
She erupted suddenly from her chair. “But that was an incredibly stupid thing for Daniel to do!”
“It was a mistake many people made, Joan.”
“But not with my money!” She glared at Gossett, whose expression hadn’t changed one iota. She thought that if he told her the trust was worth a billion dollars or a thousand, his expression would stay the same. “Why didn’t you stop him, Henry?”
Gossett said nothing for some time. Then, “Your husband had a mind of his own.”
“But you were the attorney! You could have stopped him!” Yet even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She hadn’t been able to stop Daniel from doing anything and she was his wife. Daniel would do what Daniel would do. That was another thing she had learned about her husband. After she married him.
Something in her fizzled then. She felt as though she lost her will somehow, as though it drained out of her onto the navy-and-crimson Oriental carpet. Perhaps her mother had been right after all. Perhaps she would have been better off not knowing any of this. Perhaps now she’d be better off just doing what her mother had suggested. Traveling. Shopping.
Maybe even—oh, God, s
he couldn’t abide the thought—doing charity work. She collapsed back into her chair. Gossett poured her more coffee.
“This is a blow, Joan,” he said, “but it is not as dire as you might think. Your mother and I have some ideas about conservative yet rewarding investments that over time will produce substantial returns for the trust.”
“Over time?” She shook her head. “I don’t have time.”
She saw Gossett hide a smile and she wanted to smack him. Old people always thought young people had all the time in the world. Well, they didn’t. She had things she wanted to do now, and they cost money.
“I would make one recommendation,” he said then, in an especially careful tone that immediately arrested her attention. “It is based on the fact that the trust’s remaining assets are not highly liquid. Much of the value is tied up in your mother’s estate on 17 Mile Drive and in your property on Scenic. So therefore—”
“Are you telling me I’m house rich and cash poor? Do I have a cash-flow problem?”
“Perhaps it’s more accurate to call it a cash-flow concern.” That reassured her, but only momentarily. “I would recommend that you embrace, shall we say, a prudent lifestyle in the short to medium term.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, prudent?”
“Simply”—he spread his hands—“a lifestyle which, while very comfortable, is more thoughtful about major expenditures.”
“Henry, I have no intention of buying another house or a jet or a yacht or anything! What are you talking about?”
“Well, for example, perhaps you might consider moving back into your home from the Lodge. Or, if that is uncomfortable for you,” he added, as she was about to launch again from her chair, “as well it might be under the circumstances, perhaps you would consider moving into your mother’s home for a time?”
Are you insane? she was thinking. What a hellacious idea! And impossible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the reappearance of Milo Pappas on the horizon. Who, she suddenly realized, hadn’t called yet. She glanced at her watch: 11:08.
Abruptly she stood up. She had had quite enough. “Henry, I find it impossible to believe that a few thousand dollars a night will make any difference whatsoever. I will remain at the Lodge for the foreseeable future, and that is the end of that discussion.” She made it to the library door before she forced herself to turn around. “I’m sorry, Henry. I apologize for being abrupt. As you might imagine, you did not bring me the happiest news today. But thank you again for all your efforts, and I will be in touch. No”—she raised a hand to stop him from rising from his chair—“I will show myself out.”
Once she was back in the Jag, her cell rang. It had to be Milo, she thought—finally. But she mustn’t let on she wasn’t in a fabulous mood; glumness was not something men found attractive, even in new widows. She prepared to be cheery as she pushed the talk button. “Hello!”
“I am so glad I finally caught you.”
Damn. Courtney Holt, who had left numerous messages over the past few days. “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back, Courtney, I’ve just been so—”
“It doesn’t matter—don’t worry about it. But you must hear who came by my house Christmas Eve.”
*
“I kind of remember now who signed the letter,” Treebeard offered.
They were back at it, round two of Treebeard’s interview. Alicia’s behind was numb from hours sitting on the unforgiving metal folding chair, her breath sour from overheated, Cremora-ed coffee. Jerome apparently wasn’t feeling all that spry, either, as he’d downed a few aspirin during the break. As for Treebeard, he seemed one degree less suspicious, which made him that much easier to deal with, but his grasp of detail had not improved.
“What do you mean, you kind of remember?” Alicia asked.
“It was a woman. Mary something. Something like Mary Baker. Mary Bakewell, maybe.”
Mary Bakewell? Alicia didn’t remember anyone of that name from Gaines’ campaign staff, not that she’d cared before now. She jotted it down. Mary Bakewell.
“You know,” Treebeard went on, “I had the letter with me when I went to the house.”
“When did you realize you’d lost it?”
That question seemed to deflate him. “Not till a lot later.” He shook his head. “I was already way up north.”
So much for the letter. “Let’s move on. You arrived at Gaines’ house. What time was it?”
“I don’t know. Close to nine.”
“You’re not sure?”
He raised his right arm in the air. “I don’t wear a watch.”
Of course not. “What happened when you arrived?”
“I walked up to the front door. This was weird. The door was open.”
Alicia frowned. “It was open?”
“Yeah, a little open. So I pushed it and leaned my head in and called hello. A few times. Heard nothing.”
Treebeard paused to take a deep breath. Alicia eyed him. He seemed jittery, as if he were reliving those moments. If he wasn’t telling the truth, he was a good liar. “So what did you do?”
“I walked inside. Man, it was quiet, like a tomb.” He shivered. “I called out again. Still nothing.”
“Were the lights on?”
He nodded. “There were lights on. Not many but it wasn’t pitch-dark.”
“Which room were you in at this point?”
“The living room.” All of a sudden Treebeard heaved himself to his feet. “Man, I should’ve left! I knew something was shit-ass wrong—I should’ve left right then.”
“How did you know something was wrong?” Jerome asked.
“Because it didn’t feel right! Because it was so goddamn quiet! Because the front door to this ... mansion was frigging wide open!” Treebeard was panting and shaking his head. “Man, I was so stupid! I walked right into it!”
“Did you think about leaving?” Alicia asked.
“Sure, I thought about it! But I was curious, you know what I mean?” He looked at her. Yes, she knew what he meant. For a moment the two eyed each other, until Treebeard looked away. “So like an idiot I kept going into his house, still calling out Gaines’ name. Then ...”
Alicia remained silent. In her own mind’s eye she could picture Daniel Gaines’ corpse, in all its skewered grotesquerie. But she’d seen it hours later, when it was no longer fresh, but had been sanitized by police procedure. When its horror had been diluted by time and process.
“I saw him. Lying on the floor. There was all this blood. And he was wearing, like, a white robe, but he had—” Treebeard motioned at his own chest, then began pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. “I couldn’t believe my eyes—I couldn’t believe what was in him. I ran over to him and knelt down. I got blood all over me, my knees, my hands. I looked down at him and his eyes were open. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was sort of looking beyond me. Man ...” Treebeard halted and put his hands over his face.
“Did you think he was dead?” Alicia asked.
Treebeard shook his head, mute for some time. Then, “I knew he was dead. And I think that’s why I kinda freaked. Would you believe I tried to get the arrow out of him? I actually tried to pull it out.” Treebeard’s face pinched, as if the memory itself pained him. “The guy was dead and one of my frigging arrows was in him.”
“Was it one of your arrows?”
“Oh, for sure it was one of mine.”
“And you touched it?”
“Of course I touched it! I was pulling on it. I was trying to get it out.”
No one said a thing. Alicia stared at her empty foam cup, its rim stained with the coral-colored lipstick she’d applied that morning, carefully outlining her lips then painting them in, as if getting it right were the most important thing in the world. For those thirty seconds, it had been.
Alicia knew it was easy to get screwed in life. It was easy to go from just fine to royally screwed, in minutes. Seconds, even. Get in the path of a drunk driver
—bam. Board the wrong plane—over. Look like somebody else’s perfect way out of a bad situation—that was possible, too. Was that what had happened to Treebeard?
He was speaking again. “Then, I don’t know, I just thought, I gotta get out of here. I gotta go. But I sort of fell. I was standing up but it was wet all over, with the blood, and I sort of fell and grabbed the wall on the way down. I saw my own handprint on the wall—that freaked me out more—I just ran.” Treebeard stared at the green linoleum floor, shaking his head. Eventually he raised his eyes to Alicia. “I just ran.”
She stared at him. “You told me before that you know who did it.”
Silence.
“What did you mean by that?”
Treebeard took a long time to answer. Finally, “I saw someone. Just when I got into the house, when I was standing by the front door trying to decide what to do, I saw someone.”
“Where?”
“By the side of the house. The right side.”
“You mean you were inside and you saw the person pass by on the outside?”
“Yes, through the window.”
Alicia vaguely remembered a picture window overlooking a passage between the Gaines property and the house to the south. “How clearly could you see?”
He shook his head. “It was dark.” He paused. “She was short. Slight. With light-colored hair.”
“You’re saying it was a woman.”
“It was a woman.”
The interview room seemed especially still suddenly. To her right, Alicia felt Jerome’s concentration, so intense as to be almost a physical thing. The smell of sweat hung in the stale air—hers, Jerome’s, Treebeard’s, she had no idea. She cleared her throat. “Did you see this woman’s face?”
Again Treebeard looked pained. “No.”
She felt a rush of disappointment, and irritation. This man was not doing much to help her. He wasn’t doing much to help himself. She heard her voice rise. “How can you be so sure it was a woman?”
He replied instantly. “By the build. And the way she moved.”
“Could it have been Joan Gaines?”
He eyed her steadily. “It could’ve been.”
To Catch the Moon Page 15
