Sunset Point: A Shelter Bay Novel by Joann Ross Read Free Book Online

white-haired woman accused of laundering vast amounts of drug money through the restaurant she ran with her son.
    The lengthy legal proceedings consisted of two separate trials—the same judge but different juries—for Janet Kagan each morning and her son and alleged partner, John Kagan, each afternoon. The case had captured the imagination of the press, which had the local cable company televising excerpts from each day’s trials. Nate wished he’d tuned into the station earlier. It would have saved him a great many sleepless nights.
    Granted, Teresa Lombardi was not the mirror image of the woman in his dreams. The vision who’d been disturbing his sleep night after night had a thick mane of straight hair that fell like rainwater down her back. Teresa Lombardi’s glossy black curls hit her shoulders. But everything else was the same.
    The eyes of both women were a rich, deep brown, framed by thick sooty lashes that curled upward. Although he’d yet to see her mouth curve into a smile, he hadn’t the slightest doubt that the effect would be devastating.
    At the moment, those lips were pulled into a tight, grim line as Tess put her hands on the jury box railing and addressed her audience. In a few minutes, Judge Gerald Keane would instruct the jury, and the case would be out of her hands.
    At least until this afternoon when she returned to the courtroom to make her closing remarks in the son’s trial. Tess stifled a weary sigh and forced herself to go slowly.
    “The defense attorney, Mr. Parker, would ask you to believe that Mrs. Kagan’s only crime is faulty bookkeeping. Yet you’ve heard Mr. Lawton Drew, president of Multnomah Community Bank, where Mrs. Kagan opened an account with twenty thousand dollars in cash, testify that she told him she was taking care of people who needed to get their money out of the country without a hassle,” Tess reminded them.
    “You’ve also heard Mr. Drew testify, under oath, that Mrs. Kagan promised him a one-percent commission in return for his services.”
    That, of course, had been Kagan’s downfall. In assuming that all individuals were as greedy and grasping as she was, the elderly criminal hadn’t counted on Lawton Drew going to the authorities immediately after she’d left the bank.
    The jury members’ gazes turned toward the woman who looked as if she should be baking cookies for her grandchildren rather than standing trial. A few nodded thoughtfully as Tess’s words brought back the banker’s testimony describing how, for the past three months, he had been working closely with the district attorney’s office, DEA, and FBI on a complicated sting that involved Multnomah Community Bank and a half dozen more loosely regulated ones in the Cayman Islands.
    Tess walked over to the table where evidence was displayed and picked up a thick stack of thousand-dollar bills, riffling through them idly as she continued speaking. “We are not talking about nickels and dimes, ladies and gentlemen. Mrs. Kagan was drowning in millions of dollars that she laundered through her River City Sports Bar and Grill for a major drug cartel.”
    With the bound bills still in her hand, she walked over to stand beside the defense counsel’s table. Twelve pairs of interested eyes obediently followed her.
    “This elderly woman, who bears such a striking resemblance to my grandmother and undoubtedly yours, as well, used the United States banking system, Western Union, and various other fund transferring systems to send millions of illegal dollars back to the cartel.”
    She could sense the doubt creeping in. Like tendrils of fog slipping beneath the heavy wooden door from the nearby Willamette River into the jury box.
    “Thanks to all those novels we’ve read, movies we’ve watched, and even news reports of major drug busts, drug-related money laundering conjures up images of plastic-wrapped bundles of bills, which look a great deal like this package I’m holding, hauled around the country