was Cherrystone’s stab at being hip. The restaurant occupied the entire floor of the old Fruitland Packing Company’s first processing plant, two blocks west of the Courthouse. The building had been gutted by the new owners, leaving exposed brick walls, a ceiling lattice of duct-work, and a salad bar converted out of the steel juicing unit that, in Cherrystone’s glory days, had provided apple and pear juice to moms and kids in a seven-state region. The food was mostly vegetarian and the presentation was more New York than Spokane. Everything was pretty. And pretty expensive.
At least for Cherrystone.
Camille Hazelton and Emily Kenyon met there at least once a month to visit, discuss county and city government, and any cases that were on the docket that warranted a once-over before trial or pleading. This time, however, Mandy was on the menu.
While Camille ordered a tomato basil soup with pancetta confetti, Emily went to the salad bar. She put a layer of a chiffanade of romaine on a pale yellow plate and moved her tongs toward a marinated heart of palm.
That looks interesting, she thought, with a wry smile. I’d rather be sitting under a palm tree than eating one.
“Cary, great to see you,” a voice called from the other side of the salad bar.
Her smile faded. Emily’s heart sank to the floor. There was only one Cary in town. It took an extra breath to regain her composure, although she did so without so much as flutter of an eyelash. Few names and few people brought that kind of reaction. The ones who usually did were already in prison or, in the best of all worlds, six feet under in a grave dug in the Potter’s Field section of a cemetery. But not this one.
She looked over and there he was. His eyes caught hers and locked.
“This is old home week,” Cary McConnell said, with his perfect smile in place. “Hi, Emily Kenyon, lady sheriff.”
She swallowed. “Hello, Cary.”
He was a handsome figure, in a nearly black suit cut to fit a lean, athletic frame. His dark hair showed no signs of receding. He combed it back in a tousled look that Emily was sure he considered very sexy. His blue eyes were lasers. His eyes were whiter than the dish of peeled quail eggs that were next to the heart of palm.
“Been awhile. I guess that we’ll be seeing each other more now,” he said.
Emily looked puzzled and moved on to the feta. “How so?”
He looked over in Camille’s direction. “I’m surprised your pal over there didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me what?” The feta clumped too much, so she moved on to the Kalamata olives.
“I’m going to be representing Mitch Crawford.”
Emily started to leave. “Oh that,” she said.
“Hey Emily,” Cary said. “Aren’t you going to get some sweet peppers? I remember how much you liked hot things.”
Emily didn’t turn around. She didn’t want him to see her red face, her embarrassed and angry reaction to his comments. He’d said the “hot things” in such a salacious way that she was sure he meant it to be sexual.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, taking her seat.
“Emily, I know you have some history there,” Camille said, pulling back to get a better view of the man who’d just accosted her lunch companion. “But you’re going to have to deal.” The prosecutor’s eyes lingered on Cary and he flashed a smile in their direction.
Camille looked at Emily. “I am as surprised as you are that Cary would be handling this case.”
“Seems a little out of his league,” said Emily, who clearly wasn’t enjoying lunch anymore.
Her remark was a dig, and none too subtle. Cary had been her divorce lawyer, and he’d been a good one at that. He’d made sure that the split with David was fair, that the custody arrangements for Jenna favored Emily’s interests. Things took an unfortunate turn, when out of loneliness or just the need to be romanced, she’d dated Cary briefly. After a few dates, Cary became too attentive. Too interested. He’d fixated on her in the way that seemed unhealthy, almost scary. He’d even followed her to Seattle when she was working a big case. If he’d pushed her one iota harder to keep things going, she’d have arrested him herself for stalking. Their relationship had been consensual, of course, but Emily knew that she’d made a mistake nearly from the first time they’d been intimate.
God, I had more sense in my twenties than I do in my thirties, she’d thought at the time.
She’d forgiven herself, but she’d never forgotten how stupid it had all been. Whenever she heard his name, saw him in Cherrystone at the market, she was reminded that age didn’t always bring wisdom.
“So when did Mitch hire Cary?” Emily asked.
Camille swirled some fake sweetener into her iced tea. “Yesterday, I guess.”
“How come I’m only finding about this now?”
“Look, Emily, probably no one wanted to be the one to tell you that the rumor mill was churning with news of Cary getting involved in the Crawford case.”
Emily looked down at her salad and stabbed at an olive. She’d just lost her appetite.
“There is no problem here,” she said. It was a bit of a white lie. She couldn’t stand the man. The only saving grace was that she would never have to talk to him. Camille would provide discovery if an arrest of his client was ever made. The only thing that would drag Emily into a face-to-face conversation with Cary would be when and if Emily took the witness stand.
That was a big if. No one knew for sure where Mandy was, and if she was even dead. It didn’t look good for Mitch Crawford’s wife, but Camille never silenced her mantra: We need evidence. Get evidence, Emily.
That, and the combination of a man she loathed and his client, a probable killer, fueled Emily’s desire to get at the truth all the more.
Back in her office, the sheriff glanced out the window as a city snowplow ambled back to the garage next to her office. The snow was so scant that the machine almost looked defeated. Like Emily. The news that Cary McConnell was back in her life had tied her stomach like a Nantucket knot. It was visceral. Sudden. And it bothered her. She didn’t like holding on to any negative feelings about Cary. Lurking in her consciousness was slow-burning worry that Cary and their past relationship could find its way into her investigation, knocking her off her game.
He was everything she thought she’d wanted when her marriage to David unraveled. Cary was smart, charismatic, and even kind. There had been things about him that were so appealing. For a while, she imagined that his controlling nature—about everything from the cut of his suit coat to his confident manner on a case—cloaked a kind of insecurity that came with the need to always be right, to always win.
To be the best.
She understood how people wore masks of certainty and even false arrogance to make their case, to get what they wanted. One incident gave her a little glimmer that, perhaps, there was something deeper inside that perfectly groomed man with the nice car, expensive clothes, and top-of-his-law-class pedigree. There was a heart beating there, too. After she hired him to take care
