Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel (13 page)

“I haven’t forgotten a thing,” he said. “Including the fact that I’m still kicking myself for not kissing you good-bye. If the plane goes down before I get back to Oregon, when my life’s flashing before my eyes, my main regret will be not having taken advantage of the moment before I left town.”

“Says the man who gets paid to write words for a living. Next you’ll be telling me we’ll always have Portland.”

“Which admittedly isn’t exactly Paris. But I swear it’s the truth. Would I be pushing my luck if I asked you out to dinner again when I get back?”

This time the hesitation was longer. “I’m not sure that would be a very good idea.”

“Why not? You can pick the place.”

“My caseload doesn’t allow any time for a relationship.”

At least she was admitting there might be a chance of one. He was definitely making progress. Reminding himself there was not a helluva lot he could do to change her mind while he was stuck in a hotel room halfway across the country, Nate didn’t push.

“You don’t have to worry about me taking up too much of your time. I’m a low-maintenance guy,” he assured her. “Meanwhile, how about you just think about it? I’ll call you tomorrow night from Minneapolis.”

“Really, that isn’t—”

“Tomorrow night,” he repeated. “Good night, Tess. Sweet dreams.”

As he pressed down the button to disconnect the call, Nate was grinning.

She was going to lose the Kagan case, Tess thought immediately upon waking. An hour later, as the day was turning into one of her all-time worst, the unpalatable idea of losing a case on which she had worked day and night became more firmly entrenched.

She’d had another threatening call shortly after midnight, which had left her unable to get back to sleep. Nate had been right about the dark, she had realized as she’d turned on every light in her house. It did seem to provide fertile ground for her imagination to create all sorts of forbidden horrors. Enough that she had another nightmare about her kidnapping, which always left her frustrated and tense because there were so many gaps.

Though, she’d noticed, less lately, for some reason, as foggy details began to fill in. The doctors had told her that it was always possible for her memory to eventually return. Not likely. But possible. Especially if she were to experience a trigger, though except for Nate Breslin’s horror stories, she couldn’t figure out what that might be.

If the fogginess from lack of sleep wasn’t enough, the morning got worse.

The heavy rain that had blown in from the coast had her hair so big and curly she looked like Elsa Lanchester in the Bride of Frankenstein, and just as she was about to leave the house, she spilled coffee on her brand-new winter-white suit, proving that she should never have succumbed to impulse and bought the damn thing in the first place.

For five years Tess had successfully stuck with proper gray business suits that were as practical as they were subdued. And incredibly boring, an impish little voice in the back of her mind had pointed out yesterday on her lunch hour when she’d passed Nordstrom’s window and seen the suit on display.

Drawn inside, she’d tried it on, and viewing her reflection in the dressing-room mirror, she hadn’t been able to help noticing that she looked decidedly softer, more feminine. Tess knew lawyers who used their femininity as yet another trial tool in the courtroom. She’d never been one of them.

Assuring herself that Nate Breslin—who’d kept his promise and called her from Minneapolis, then every other stop on his book tour—had nothing to do with her noticing the suit, knowing that she’d been behaving totally out of character, Tess had whipped out her credit card before she could change her mind.

After changing back into one of her boring charcoal suits, that she should have just stuck with in the first place, she’d left her townhouse, only to find that during the night her front tire had gone flat. Leaving an extra car key with her nosy, but friendly neighbor Mrs. Kael, who readily agreed to give it to the man from the auto club Tess had called to come change the tire, she took a cab to work.

“Something exciting came for you this morning,” Alexis greeted Tess as she entered the women’s lounge just down the hall from their desks.

Tess dampened a paper towel and sponged at the clinging mud her cab had splashed onto her skirt as it had peeled away after dropping her off at the courthouse. “With the way my luck is going this morning, it’ll probably be a subpoena,” she muttered.

“Subpoenas don’t come in such expensive-looking envelopes,” Alexis countered. “And certainly not bearing the governor’s return address.”

Tess lifted her head. “Why would the governor send me anything?”

She scowled down at her skirt. She’d gotten most of the mud off, but it still had wet blotches. “He’s probably hitting everyone up to help pay off his reelection campaign bills.”

“I don’t think so. It was hand delivered by a messenger service. I signed for it since you hadn’t come in yet.”

“My car had a flat. I had to call the motor club send someone to fix it.” Tess scrubbed viciously at one of the larger spots. “Seriously? It was hand delivered?”

“It was. And if you don’t stop fussing with that damn skirt and hurry up and open it, I’m going to die of curiosity.”

Tess tossed the paper towel into the wastebin. “It’s not going to get any better, anyway,” she said with a deep sigh. “Let’s check out this mysterious letter.”

Tess ran her fingernail under the flap of the envelope. Skimming the lines of bold script, she burst out laughing.

“I don’t believe this,” she said. First ghosts, now this. “You should’ve warned me Breslin’s crazy.” She handed the piece of heavy, watermarked linen paper to Alexis.

Alexis’s eyes widened as she read the brief note. “I love it!” she said on a rich laugh. “And it’s so Nate. How many men would have the governor write them a letter of recommendation in order to convince a woman to go out with them?”

“Only one that I know of.”

Alexis eyed her interestedly. “So are you going to give in?”

“I told him I don’t have time for a personal life right now.”

As she returned to the office, Tess wished that Alexis had put her question some other way. Give in. Surrender control. Weren’t they the same thing?

“We begin selecting the jury for the Schiff trial this morning.” Seeking something, anything, to do, she began straightening the few items on her desk.

Both women knew the sudden display of tidiness was unnecessary. The crystal paperweight, the only touch of femininity Tess permitted herself in the office, was exactly where it always was, three inches to the left of the leather-bound appointment book. The gold pen-and-pencil set was in its assigned place six inches from the front edge of her desk, memo pad and paper clip container right beside it. At the far left-hand corner of the immaculate desk were leather file boxes containing pristine folders.

The case files were color-coded according to the type of offense, the folders were never dog-eared, and Tess would die before allowing them to pile up in miniature pyramids on the floor around her desk, as was the habit of so many others working in the overcrowded office.

Alexis’s expression said that although she wasn’t buying a word of Tess’s flimsy excuse, she was willing to drop the subject. For the time being. “Well, whatever you decide to do about Nate, good luck this morning. And good luck with the Kagan jury.”

Tess grimaced. “I think that one is a lost cause. They’ve been out too long.”

“The second jury convicted the son,” Alexis reminded her. “And a lengthy deliberation doesn’t always mean acquittal.”

“It does when the case is so cut-and-dried,” Tess complained. “Damn, but I hate to lose that one!”

“You haven’t lost it yet,” Alexis reminded her calmly.

“Yes, I have. That woman’s going to walk. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Feeling a bit fanciful this morning, aren’t we? That’s what you get for hanging around with a writer, I suppose.”

“I haven’t been hanging around with him. We had lunch. That’s all. And one dinner, over a week ago.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“Because it didn’t count. He dropped by with some étouffée and bread pudding at a time when all I had in the kitchen were some eggs I was going to scramble.”

“From Acadia? I love their jambalaya, and Matt is almost orgasmic over the blackened catfish.”

“No. This was from Bon Temps.”

“The man brought you dinner all the way from Shelter Bay?”

“Well, it
is
where he lives.”

“It’s also not exactly around the corner,” Alexis pointed out. “Have you seen him since?”

“That’d be a bit difficult since he’s in the middle of a book tour. He was in Detroit last night and Chicago the night before that.”

“How interesting that you know his itinerary when you’re not at all interested in him.”

When her friend’s eyes began to brighten with that avid matchmaker’s gleam, Tess knew it was time to leave.

“I’m due in court,” she said, beating a hasty retreat before she ended up admitting she’d been thinking of Nate Breslin far too often for her own good these past days.

She’d just emerged from the stairwell when her phone rang. Normally, she’d ignore calls right before entering a courtroom, but the screen read the name of her AAA autoclub. Which couldn’t be a good thing.

“Ms. Lombardi?”

“Yes, I’m Tess Lombardi. Is something wrong?”

“This is Dan, from AAA. I just wanted to let you know that I changed the tire for you, no problem, but it wasn’t your typical flat.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. Unfortunately, your tire was slashed. Normally, I’d recommend buying a whole new set, to keep the tread even, but your car’s new enough, you’ll be able to get away with one.”

“Well, I suppose that’s good news,” she said, even as she tried to wrap her mind around this news. “Thank you, Dan. I appreciate your help.”

“No problem, Ms. Lombardi. Have yourself a good day.”

Unfortunately, while she appreciated the sentiment, it was too late for that. Slashed? Admittedly Portland wasn’t as crime-free as Kara’s description of Shelter Bay, but still…

Was this merely a case of random vandalism? Or had her caller escalated his threats? Whichever, she’d have to worry about the situation later.

Work, Tess reminded herself as she wove her way through the crowd of media people packing the hallway outside her courtroom. The Kagan and Schiff trials. Vasilyev’s appeal. That’s what she should be thinking of. Not a man who believed in ghosts.

“He’s going to make me as crazy as he is,” she muttered as she sat down at the prosecutor’s table. Even being here in the courtroom reminded her of him.

Rick Barber, the attorney assisting her on the Schiff case, overheard her. Rick was new to the district attorney’s office, coming directly from law school, as she, herself, had five years ago.

“Don’t worry,” he said, mistakenly thinking that she was referring to the bigamist. “This one’ll be a cinch. You haven’t left a single loophole for the snake to slither through.”

His enthusiasm reminded Tess of a time, not so long ago, when she, too, had been a wide-eyed optimist, believing that every case rested solely on its merits. Experience had taught her differently. And if she happened to forget that the law, like life, wasn’t always fair, there were always cases like the Kagan trial to remind her.

Despite weeks of painstaking preparation, despite an exemplary joint investigation by the PPB and the FBI, despite what she knew to be a solid presentation, she was going to lose the Kagan trial. Tess knew she was.

*     *     *

The depressing gray clouds that had settled over the city matched Tess’s mood as she sat in the back of the cab inching its way forward in the late-afternoon rush-hour traffic. If there was one thing you could depend on from a jury, it was that they could prove completely undependable.

Her ominous feeling about the Kagan jury had been right on the money. They had gone for acquittal, which had her thinking of something she’d heard in law school: one downside of litigation was trusting your fate to jury members who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

The cab pulled up behind her Audi, which was parked where she’d left it this morning, at the same time as a slicker-clad delivery boy. Tipping the bike rider generously, she took the package he’d pulled from a waterproof bag into the house.

As she placed the brown cardboard box on her kitchen countertop, her anonymous caller’s muffled, purposely altered voice from last night’s call came back to her.

“Some friends of Grigori Vasilyev are concerned about his hearing,” the voice had whispered in her ear. “Those friends would be very unhappy if anyone’s testimony kept him from getting out of prison.”

“Is that who you are?” she’d demanded. “A friend of Vasilyev’s?”

“You’d better be careful, lady. You never know when you’re going to have an accident.”

The call had ended, leaving her listening to dead air.

Feeling silly for letting the memory of last night’s call unsettle her, and admittedly more unnerved by the fact that someone had slashed her tire while she’d been upstairs in bed, she picked up the telephone and called Donovan.

“Don’t be foolish. You’re right not to take chances,” the detective interrupted as Tess apologized for bothering him after explaining about the package. “We’ve had the department shrink work up a profile on this guy.”

Tess’s mouth went dry. She swallowed. “And?”

“And the doc doesn’t think he’s kidding.” His tone turned encouraging. “Though this is probably nothing, maybe something you ordered online, then forgot, we can’t discount that it could be from your caller.”

And didn’t that strike a nerve? Looking at the box on the counter, she said, “I wish I’d had time to order anything online.”

“I’m headed out the door. I’m also sending the bomb squad to check it out just in case.”

“Are you sure that’s necessary?”

“What I’m sure of is that we don’t want to take any chances,” he said. “I’ll turn on the flashers and be there in ten minutes. Oh, and Tess, put the box out in the front yard, okay?”