Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel (8 page)

“Do you… Well, have you ever… Oh, skip it,” she said as she twisted a paper clip into figure eights. “The entire thing’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Her atypical uneasiness had captured Alexis’s attention. “What’s ridiculous?”

Tess shook her head. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

Alexis put down her pen and waited.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Tess asked.

Alexis took her time in answering. “No,” she said at length. “I don’t believe I do, although I can’t deny that I find the idea intriguing. Do you?” she asked. “Believe?”

“Of course not,” Tess insisted, not entirely truthfully as she tossed away the mangled paperclip. “Forget it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Alexis continued to observe her for another long moment. “Sure,” she said finally, returning to her research. “Consider it forgotten.”

Nate Breslin’s ludicrous story about a ghost living in his house had to be a fabrication. There wasn’t any ghost of Captain Angus MacGrath because ghosts didn’t exist. They couldn’t. The entire idea of some lost soul, trapped between his earthly existence and some ethereal paradise, was nothing but a fantasy created by novelists and screenwriters.

Tess told herself that over and over as she drove home at the end of the day. She reminded herself continually of the fact as she turned on every light in her townhouse before fixing a bowl of cereal for dinner.

“I don’t believe this,” she moaned later as she turned her television to the Classic Film Channel. She had intended to put Nate Breslin and his ridiculously tall tale out of her mind by losing herself in an old movie, only to discover that tonight’s offering was none other than
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” she said aloud, aiming the remote control at the television just as Rex Harrison, playing the spirit of an ancient seaman, appeared in the kitchen of Gull Cottage. The screen went dark. “They’re nothing more than fictional characters. Or figments of nervous minds,” she added as the wind coming off the river began to howl eerily down her chimney.

Settling down with a romance novel, Tess vowed to put both the annoying horror writer and his ghostly friend from her mind. But despite her best efforts, she still jumped when a shutter on an upstairs window suddenly banged.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” she repeated determinedly, picking up the book she’d dropped onto the rug. The flames of the gas fire she’d turned on to warm up a rainy night were creating tall, flickering shadows on the wall. “It’s ridiculous to even be thinking about one.”

As she struggled to ignore the wind’s lonely wail, Tess felt like a little girl whistling past a graveyard.

Tess woke the following morning with a splitting headache and the unsettling feeling that she’d spent the night in another dimension. She’d had a dream. A dream of her kidnapping so vivid that she’d awakened time after time unable to discern what was real and what was only the product of an overworked, over-stimulated subconscious.

She’d been in the dark. Curled up on a rough woolen blanket that scratched her skin and smelled like a wet dog. She’d lost track of the time and would have been unable to tell if it were day or night if it weren’t for the masked man occasionally bringing her food and water.

An Egg McMuffin was breakfast, which told her she’d survived another night. Chicken McNuggets were another marker, letting her know that a day had gone by and she was still alive.

But how many days? Time had blurred.

She’d heard the squeak of floorboards overhead. Seen a rectangle of light as the hidden doorway opened. Then identified the sound of heavy boots pounding down the stairs.

It was a familiar nightmare. One she’d had at least weekly into her teens, then it had, for several years, suddenly gone away. Until recently, when it had returned from where it had been lurking in the far, darkest reaches of her mind.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, she always woke up before discovering to whom those boots belonged. But because she knew the outcome of the story, she’d always believed it had been her dad and imagined him scooping her up into his strong arms and holding her against his chest, the way he must have held her when she was a baby.

Did she remember or imagine the tears streaming down her face?

And if they’d been real, had they been her father’s? Or hers? Or both?

Not doing anything to ease her unrelenting stress, she’d also received another threat from her anonymous caller sometime in the middle of the night. This time he’d accused her of putting an innocent man in prison and suggested that she watch her step very, very carefully.

Her head was still pounding when she reached the office, where she poured a paper cupful of water from the cooler and tossed down her third Advil of the morning.

“Rough night?” Alexis asked sympathetically, handing her a cup of black coffee and a chocolate-frosted donut from a box someone had brought in.

“Thanks,” Tess said. “I just had too much spinning around in my head to get much sleep.” Even as she vowed to run after work to avoid the donut attaching itself directly to her hips, no way could she resist the aroma of warm fried fat and chocolate.

“If you’d gone out to dinner with Nate, your night might have turned out a lot better.”

Despite her friend’s quasi-denial of matchmaking, Tess still believed that Alexis had hoped the lunch would lead to something else.

Like matching rings, picket fences, and strollers. None of which Tess was interested in. She wasn’t saying
never
. Just not now. And especially not with a man who was either delusional or a liar.

“Don’t tell me that Matt is so desperate for work that he’d try to marry Nate off just for the opportunity to update his will and write a prenup.”

“Did I mention anything about marriage? For the sake of our friendship, I’ll ignore the snark,” Alexis declared haughtily. “Besides, for your information, Matthew just happens to agree with me.”

“About what?”

“That, first of all, you are far too much of a workaholic who needs to get out more. When was the last time you took a long, romantic walk along the river? When did you stop to enjoy the feel of the breeze in your hair, the scent of flowers at the Japanese Gardens, a dazzling sunset—”

“I get the idea,” Tess broke in dryly. “I just can’t tell if you’re describing a shampoo commercial or one for a little blue erectile dysfunction pill. But while we’re on the topic of Matthew, what else does your paragon of a fiancé agree with you about?”

“We agree most of the time,” Alexis said. “Sometimes it’s almost boring how alike we are. But in this case, we both think that you and Nate would make an ideal couple.”

Tess sputtered out a laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding. The man and I are light-years apart. We have absolutely nothing in common.” Except, admittedly, their choice in restaurants. Which didn’t mean anything. After all, the reason for the restaurant’s longevity was that it was a favorite of lots of Portlanders. That didn’t mean she was destined to marry any of them.

There was also the fact that Breslin and she did, in a few degrees of separation way, have Captain MacGrath in common, Tess allowed. Enough that he’d somehow also infiltrated her dreams last night. But sometime during the predawn hours, she’d vowed to stop thinking about her errant, long-dead great-great-grandfather.

“Hey Tess.” Their conversation was interrupted by a tall, sandy-haired man sporting an unfortunate comb-over, who stopped by Tess’s desk on his way to the coffee bar. “I hear Vasilyev’s lawyer’s going after a federal habeas corpus ruling.”

Grigori “The Viper” Vasilyev was one of Tess’s more successful cases. Since it was also her first case when she’d joined the district attorney’s office, she’d been assigned to Jim Stevens, a veteran prosecutor. Although the Russian mobster had used the U.S. justice system for all it was worth, winning delay after delay, both Jim and Tess had remained adamant that the man should stand trial, and eventually he had, drawing a life-plus-twenty-year sentence for drugs, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, criminal assault, illegal gambling, and human trafficking.

After having lost his appeal on the judgment of conviction, and two years later another loss on a post-conviction appeal, his last-ditch attempt to claim that his constitutional rights had been violated in the Oregon court system because the infirmary hadn’t had a Russian-speaking doctor on staff when he’d suddenly come down with shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat, and chest pain (which had not proven to be a heart attack) didn’t surprise her.

“He’ll lose again. Just as he always does. Because he’s guilty as sin.”

And also because she had a witness willing to testify that not only was Vasilyev continuing to run his empire while in prison, he’d purposely injected himself with an overdose of anabolic steroids to cause the symptoms that would land him in the infirmary in the first place. Given that his English was as good as hers, Tess knew he’d gone through all that subterfuge in order to claim federal discrimination for anti-nationality reasons.

Granted, Vasilyev’s attorney would paint her informant to be a jailhouse snitch, which, indeed, he was. The low-level dealer to the prison gym rats was also hoping to cut a deal that would expunge infractions that had added more time to his sentence.

Adding yet another dark mark against him, he’d been the one who’d been selling the bulked-up Russian the illegal steroids in the first place.

But Tess had driven to the penitentiary in Salem herself, and while her work had admittedly made her cynical, she’d believed the informer who’d told her that The Viper was plotting yet another murder while inside those brick walls.

“Maybe so.” Bill Mitchell snagged a maple-glazed Long John from the bakery box. “But I sure as hell admire your guts. If I had your connections and mucho wine bucks, I’d blow this pop stand, buy myself my own tropical island, and live la dolce vita.”

“I have a job.”

“One that probably doesn’t cover your shoe budget.”

Since when was appreciating a well-made, beautiful shoe a crime? “I’d rather work than spend my spare time drinking mai tais and polishing seashells,” she said, deciding not to share that escape to exactly such a place was on her to-do list.

“You could always work for your family’s winery.”

“I don’t know anything about running a vineyard. All I do is cosign the checks. Besides,” she added, “the only interest I have in wine is drinking it. I love my job here.”

“Even when it makes enemies of guys like Vasilyev?”

“We’re already enemies. That was decided when I chose to prosecute criminals and Vasilyev chose to
be
one. Besides, he threatened to have me killed the day of his sentencing, and as you can see, I’m certainly still around.”

“But your former mentor and co-counsel on that case isn’t,” Mitchell pointed out.

A cold shiver skimmed up Tess’s spine. “That was an accident,” she insisted, citing the Coast Guard’s findings.

She didn’t mention that her recent calls coming so soon after her co-prosecutor’s death three months ago was—along with the murder of the Salem deputy district attorney who’d prosecuted another one of the Russian’s gang—the reason the police had gotten a warrant to listen in on her phone calls. “Accidents happen. Even to the best of sailors.” Which Jim Stevens had definitely been.

“Hey,” Alexis broke in, “can’t you two discuss something a little more cheerful? At least until I’ve had my second cup of coffee?”

Mitchell grinned sheepishly and held up both hands. “Sorry.” He turned his attention back to Tess. “I still think you’ve got major cojones. For a girl,” he said before continuing across the room.

Tess and Alexis watched him go. “He meant that as a compliment. I think,” Alexis said finally.

Tess sighed. “I know. It’s just that I really don’t like him.” She shook her head, watching as he stopped yet again to joke with another prosecutor. “He’s rude, sexist, and totally lacking in tact.” He was also slick. No, that wasn’t exactly it. More
slimy
. If he were a mobster, his name would be Bill “The Slug” Mitchell.

“Speaking of your taste in men,” Alexis said, smoothly turning the conversation back to its original track, “I promise not to mention it again, but I still contend that you and Nate could work out.” Her friend’s eyes had the gleam of an unrepentant matchmaker.

“Really,” she insisted when Tess rolled her eyes. “You don’t believe anything unless you read it in the
The Oregonian
in black and white. Despite his Marine years at war, including being wounded in an IED explosion, which should have made him cynical, Nate tends to believe in everything until he’s proven wrong.” Alexis’s smile was guileless. “See?”

“The only thing I see is that somehow, when I wasn’t looking, you’ve turned into one of those women who, just because you’ve found happiness with a man, wants to send every woman up a white satin aisle for a life of wedded bliss.”

“Would that be so bad?”

Tess rose abruptly from her desk, brushing scattered doughnut crumbs off her fog-gray pencil skirt. “I don’t believe in marriage.”

“Ah, yes,” Alexis drawled. “How foolish of me. I’d almost forgotten the infamous Lombardi curse.”

“You can laugh all you want.” Tess picked up her briefcase, checking to be sure she had everything she needed for a long day in court. “But the fact remains that no Lombardi woman, from Isabella on, has managed to live happily ever after, including me. Captain MacGrath, bastard that he was, saw to that.”

“How in the world can you continue to insist that you and Nate aren’t a match made in heaven when you say things like that?” Alexis argued doggedly. “He’s one of the few people I know on this earth who might actually buy that outlandish tale of the captain’s curse.”

Tess knew Alexis was right. She also knew it was totally uncharacteristic of her to give the story, which had become legend in the Lombardi family, any credence. But try as she might to discount it, she couldn’t deny that, beginning with her great-great-grandmother Isabella, every single one of the Lombardi women had proven disastrously unlucky in love.