Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel (2 page)

Alexis leaned back in her chair. “Sometimes I think you’re too softhearted to be in this business, Lombardi.”

“Why don’t you try telling that to the much-married Melvin Schiff?” Tess countered. “One of the reporters down at the courthouse couldn’t wait to show me today’s
Oregonian
.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Schiff was quoted as saying that I was such an icy bitch that if any man even was willing to have sex with me, his penis would freeze off.”

“Shut up. They did not write that.”

“No, they put in an asterisk for the
i
in bitch and went with a
‘certain part of the anatomy
’ for penis, which, I suspect, is still a more polite term than he actually used.”

“The guy’s a real charmer.”

“Isn’t he? I can’t figure out what all those women saw in him.”

“He’s a con man,” Alexis said. “I suppose, looking at the big picture, we—and all those women who fell for his slimy grifter ways—ought to be grateful he isn’t some sociopath who kills his wives for their insurance money. His M.O. was to do a juggling act between families for as long as he could get away with it, clean out the bank accounts, then move on.”

“Leaving them alive but devastated,” Tess said. “And speaking of moving on, I’d better get going. As it is, I’m probably going to have to break every speeding law on the books to get there in time.”

“At least if you get stopped, you can argue your own case. Want some company?”

Tess considered the offer for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’ve been working around the clock on that arson case the past three weeks. Besides, aren’t you going out with Matt tonight?”

“I could cancel. It’s not as if he isn’t used to it.”

Which was life as normal in the D.A.’s office. Tess couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date. Nor a day off, including weekends. There were even times when she thought that if her townhouse ever became a crime scene, one look at the contents of her refrigerator and cupboards would have investigators questioning whether anyone actually lived there.

“You just happen to be engaged to the man voted Portland’s second sexiest bachelor,” she reminded her best friend. “And we both know he only lost first place to the judge because you guys got engaged, which took him off the market. Besides, after the hours you’ve been putting in, you both deserve to get lucky.”

Alexis grinned. “Now that you mention it, although I meant my offer to go along to Shelter Bay for moral support, that’s pretty much what I was planning when I went shopping at lunch.” She reached beneath her desk and pulled out a shopping bag from Portland’s premiere French lingerie boutique.

“Ooh la la.” Tess lifted an ebony brow. “You’re pulling out the heavy weaponry.”

“You bet I am. In this designer bag, I happen to have a bustier, garter belt and hand-dyed vintage stockings designed to knock Matt’s socks off…along with the rest of his clothes.”

“If you weren’t my best friend, I’d have to hate you,” Tess, whose only sex life for too long had involved batteries, complained. She was still laughing as she left the office, headed down the hall.

Another deputy district attorney was headed her way, his expression that of a depressed bloodhound. “Hey, Tess,” he greeted her with a poor attempt at a smile. “Heard what your bigamist said. Which should make it even more satisfying when you take him down.”

“The day I worry about what criminals think of me is the day I open up a private practice and start handling divorces and DUI cases,” she said.

“Somehow I can’t see that in my crystal ball. Which, if I actually had one, would’ve told me I was going to end up with a hung jury today.”

“Oh, Eric. I’m so sorry.” Eric Jensen had had a run of bad luck lately. Losing two of his last four cases, having one overturned on appeal, and now this. “But sometimes these things go in streaks. You’ll get your mojo back.” There’d been a time not that long ago, when he’d had one of the highest win percentages in the office.

His attempt at a smile came off more like a grimace. “From your mouth to God’s ear,” he said. “I knew during the selection process that things could get tough. But to paraphrase a former defense secretary, you’ve got to go with the jury you’ve got. Not the one you’d want. Of course, if you can load yours with women, Schiff’s toast.”

“Hopefully. But I can’t count on that,” she said. “Since apparently he plays for both teams.” Which also was why a San Francisco D.A. was waiting in the wings for her trial to end to prosecute Schiff for having married a gay tech mogul he’d taken for over a million dollars.

“You’ll nail him,” Eric assured her. “You’ve got the Midas touch. While, if I don’t turn things around soon, I’m going to be the one hanging out a budget divorce shingle. Or worse yet, get myself a P.I. license so I can save money by doing my own adultery window-peeping stakeouts.” He sighed heavily and raked a hand through his pale blond hair.

“How would you like to go out for drinks?” he asked. “Or dinner? Maybe some of your gold dust will rub off on me before my murder-for-hire case.” A case that should be a slam dunk, since the would-be murderer the woman hired to kill her husband just happened to be an undercover cop. But with Eric’s string of bad luck, Tess understood why he’d be worried.

“I’m sorry, but I’m on my way out of town.”

The bloodhound was back. Even more depressed than ever. “Maybe once your caseload clears up a bit?”

“Maybe,” she echoed, not wanting to encourage him but not having the heart to turn him down flat after the day he’d had. They’d had two dinner dates last year, and although he was a cute enough guy, in a conservative, just-stepped-out-of-a-Ralph-Lauren-ad preppy way, she hadn’t felt a single spark.

They continued on their separate ways—Eric trudging back to the office, Tess racing toward the doorway leading to the stairs. She was nearly there when a fiftyish man called to her from down the hall. “I heard you were headed down the coast,” Jake Carter said when he caught up with her. “
Alone.
”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him.

“You’ve received threats.” Pewter brows dove toward a nose that had been broken more than once. If faces were maps of people’s lives, Jake’s revealed a rough and rocky road.

“That comes with the territory.”

“Tell that to Martin Phelps,” he retorted. “Oh. Wait.” He held up a beefy hand. “You can’t. Because the guy’s dead.”

Martin Phelps had been a deputy district attorney in Salem who’d disappeared two weeks ago after leaving the office to interview a witness in a trial of a dealer who belonged to a Russian mob whose kingpin Tess had helped convict. After an intensive search, his body was finally found in a heavily wooded area off I-5 by hikers.

“That was tragic,” she allowed. Even more so, given that Phelps had left behind a wife and two children. “But I’m never going to allow anyone to make me afraid of shadows again.”

It was the truth, but she realized she’d hit a nerve when his neck above the shirt collar flushed red. “I’m sorry, Jake.”

She put a hand on the sleeve of his navy blue sport coat, which like the rest of Jake’s clothing, always seemed to rumple the moment he put it on. A bit like Columbo’s raincoat. It humanized him in a way that she suspected made leery potential witnesses more willing to talk with him.

He scrubbed a hand over the buzz cut he’d had as long as she’d known him. “I screwed the damn pooch on your case back then.”

Jake had been Yamhill County sheriff when eight-year-old Tess had been kidnapped walking back to her maternal grandparents’ house after having attended a friend’s sleepover party. At the time, in the small Oregon wine country where everyone knew everyone else, no one ever locked a door. Evil was something for Sunday sermons, bad guys only skulked the streets of cities, and boogeymen were limited to horror novels and movies.

Until that day Tess’s kidnapper had single-handedly destroyed the close-knit community’s innocence.

Although Jake and her dad, working together, had found her hidden in a room beneath the floor of a cabin in the hills, Tess knew Jake was still carrying around a boatload of guilt for having taken two long weeks to locate her. Weeks that must have seemed like an eternity to her family and all those professional and volunteer searchers.

Not that she’d been all that aware of the passing of time, due to the memory-stealing drugs the doctors later determined the kidnappers had used to keep her quiet and semi-conscious. Drugs that included the compound more recently used in date rapes Tess had prosecuted.

After her rescue, burdened down by that guilt that followed him around like a dark cloud, Jake had gone into a tailspin, suffering depression and alcoholism, which had led to a messy divorce. He’d ultimately chosen to retire rather than run for an election that, by then, he couldn’t have possibly won, only to discover that having nothing to do but fish only allowed more time to drink.

Refusing to give up on the man who’d become a friend, Mike Brown had convinced Jake to get help, and although the former sheriff considered therapy too touchy-feely for comfort, he
had
joined AA, sobered up, and moved across the border to Washington State, where he’d worked his way through the twelve steps and landed a job as a fugitive recovery agent working for a Vancouver bail bondsman.

Two years ago, having cleaned up his act and seeming to have, if not vanquished, at least quieted his demons, he’d driven back across the Columbia River and gone to work in the Multnomah County district attorney’s office. Which had united victim and rescuer yet again.

“You found me,” she reminded him now, not for the first time. Feeling the pressure of time, she resisted just cutting him off rather than have this conversation they’d had too many times before. “I don’t remember much about what happened, but I do remember you and Dad breaking down the door and rescuing me, just like the prince chopping his way through those briars to rescue Sleeping Beauty.”

Back in those days, Tess had believed in fairy tales. Life had taught her that happily-ever-afters were far more difficult to come by than in fiction.

Jake’s cigarette-roughened laugh at her claim held more regret than humor. “Some prince I was, with my rusty armor. Your dad’s, on the other hand, has never been anything but blindingly bright.”

“He’s a great man,” she agreed. “As are you.”

“That second part’s a major exaggeration. Besides, you’re prejudiced.”

“You bet I am.” If they hadn’t been in a public building, she would have kissed his cheek.

His gray eyes held seeds of concern. “I worry about you, kid.”

“I know.” Tess realized that although she’d grown up, a part of Jake would continue to think of her as eight years old. She’d also decided that continuing to put bad guys away was his way of trying to make up for not having found her that first day she’d disappeared. For letting the kidnapper escape. On a good day Tess could avoid thinking about that man out there somewhere, undoubtedly committing more crimes. Jake, she sensed, had not managed that.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him yet again. “Shelter Bay’s pretty much crime-free.”

“So was Yamhill County once upon a time…I don’t suppose you’d call me when you get there?”

“Sorry. That would be a no.” She shook her head and opened the door to the stairwell. Despite her refusal to allow anyone, including this man she loved, to treat her like a victim, lingering claustrophobia had her avoiding elevators whenever possible.

“The apple sure as hell didn’t fall far from the damn tree,” he muttered with a swipe of his hand down his ruddy, haggard face. “You’re as stubborn as your old man.”

She laughed in an attempt to ease his frustration. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.” She left him looking as frustrated as she’d ever seen him.

As she walked out the stairwell into the building’s lobby, Tess knew that just as Jake was still trying to prove himself after not catching her kidnapper, she needed to make her father proud of her. Not that he’d ever been anything but totally supportive and encouraging, but she’d overheard stories of how Detective Sergeant Mike Brown had been tapped for commander. And how, when she’d been a freshman in high school, there’d even been talk of him being promoted to chief of police.

Whenever she’d asked him about those lost opportunities, he’d always profess to be happy and satisfied where he was. Then claim that he wasn’t cut out for the politics and publicity that came with those higher rungs on the PPB ladder.

Which might have been true. But Tess knew that Mike Brown would’ve been the best chief of police Portland would ever have. If he hadn’t taken on the responsibilities that came with being a single father.

Her mother leaving had not just changed her life. It had also changed his. In so many ways that Tess had always believed that she’d gotten the better end of the deal.

Once she was finally on her way down the Pacific Coast Highway to Shelter Bay, a quaint coastal community two hours southwest of Portland, Tess promised herself, yet again, that the moment the Schiff trial was over and that sleazy bigamist was finally behind bars, she was going to take an entire week and go somewhere.

Mexico, perhaps. Or Hawaii, where most of the Pacific Northwest sun lovers escaped to.

It didn’t really matter. Just as long as the tropical sun shone, the pristine beaches sparkled like diamonds, the sea was warm and inviting, and no one knew, or cared, what she did for a living.

Tess had been a deputy district attorney for five years. During that time, she’d discovered that the world seemed to be divided into two groups. One comprised of individuals who, upon hearing what she did, looked guilty, as if they expected her to read their minds, know every petty offense they might have committed, drag them into court, and prosecute them straight to the big house for jaywalking or parking fines.

The other group appeared fascinated by her work and wanted her to reveal the “inside scoop” on her most gruesome or violent cases. She suspected that these were the same people who kept those true crime TV shows in business. Those were the times when she was grateful that her kidnapping had occurred before these days of a twenty-four-hour news cycle and nonstop social media.