Angel Condemned (15 page)

“Mamma!” Antonia said. “As if we would.” Then, “But if it’s anything really bad, it might make her feel better to know what a rat he was.”

“Let it alone, Antonia. It’s water under the dam. Let’s concentrate on where she is now.” Francesca set a plate with a perfect, puffy omelet in front of each of them and then sat across from Bree. She looked better. Activity—especially where it concerned her daughters—always took Francesca out of herself.

“What are you smilin’ at, Bree?”

“You, Mamma.”

“You still going to be smiling when you tell me just how much trouble my sister’s in?”

“Maybe not so much,” Bree admitted.

“What kind of evidence have they got? And don’t you try and fudge the facts. I’ve been married to your father for thirty years and I’ve about heard it all.”

“They quarreled that morning, in front of the museum staff. The weapon seems to be from her kitchen. She was standing next to him when he was killed. There’s spatter patterns of blood on her coat.”

“She was wearing that fur, I expect,” Antonia said darkly.

Bree picked up her fork and put it down again. “Unfortunately, there’s also a highly prejudiced eyewitness.”

“Alicia Kennedy,” Francesca said. “That little witch. Cissy was worried about her. Thought she had a crush on Prosper. Am I right? I thought so. Eat your omelet.” She clasped her hands together and stared down at the table for a long moment. “This doesn’t sound good.”

“She didn’t kill him,” Bree said.

Francesca started to wring her hands. “You sure about that?”

“Mamma!” Antonia stared at her, shocked.

“Had to be asked,” Francesca said steadily. “Cissy’s got a temper, and she’s impulsive. Bree? What do you think?”

“I’m sure. She didn’t . . .” She hesitated, searching for the right way to explain. “There was no aura of violence about her, Mamma. That’s the best I can do. Cissy’s pretty well-grounded, in her way. She doesn’t have the kind of crazy edge that could push her into an impulsive act of violence, and she seemed to genuinely love Prosper. Besides, this murder was planned. You just don’t carry a knife around in your pocket on the off chance you’re going to run into a chicken that needs boning. And anyway, she’d bought a new nightgown for her honeymoon that morning. If she’d been planning to kill White, she’d have bought a new black suit. Don’t you think?”

Francesca smiled a little. “So who did kill the son of a gun?”

“A fair number of people had good reason.” She glanced up at the kitchen clock. Nearly six o’clock. “As a matter of fact, I’ve got to start to look into it right now. You two going to be okay if I go out for a bit?”

“I’ve got to get back to the theater,” Antonia said. “Why don’t you come with me, Mamma? It’s time you got a good idea of what I do.”

Francesca bit her lip. “I want to wait here.”

“It’s unlikely to be today, no matter who Daddy hired,” Bree said. “She’s going to be held over for arraignment. The best we can hope for is tomorrow afternoon.”

“Then you come on with me, Mamma. I’ll get you a front-row seat for the show. It’s
Pygmalion
. You’ve always liked Shaw. Then we can go out to Huey’s after, and I’ll introduce you to the cast.”

Francesca’s hands went to her hair. “Let me freshen up a bit. You come with me, Bree. I’m all unsettled.”

Bree followed her into the small bathroom and watched as she brushed her glowing hair.

“You’re looking a little peaked, honey. I was thinking maybe you and I could take a weekend off. Maybe go on up to that nice spa near Asheville.”

“I’m all right,” Bree said absently. “But you’re on for the spa weekend. As soon as this is all over. Tell me something. You and Daddy spent some time with White, didn’t you?”

Francesca made a face. “He was after us for a donation to that damn museum of his. So yes, we did. For Cissy’s sake.”

“There’s a piece of jewelry that’s connected to his case. I’m not sure how, just yet. It’s a cross. It looks very old. Silver, inlaid with lapis, coral, and jasper. About this big.” Bree held her forefinger and thumb apart. “And very ornate.”

Francesca put down the brush. “What?”

“A cross. It’s called a pectoral. It may have once been attached to a silver chain. It dates from the Holy Roman Empire. The first Christian emperor, Justinian?”

Francesca knew something about antiquities. “Prosper White never had anything like that that I ever saw. But your birth mother did. Leah. She was a volunteer on a dig out in Istanbul more than thirty years ago with Scholield Martin and Terrence Kennedy.”

Armand Cianquino lived six miles outside Savannah at Melrose, a cotton plantation built by a notorious slaver in the early nineteenth century and converted into apartments by a banker from New Jersey in the latter half of the twentieth. The huge, old place faced the Savannah River. It was built in the Southern Colonial style. Its broad verandahs, gracious oaks, and extensive rose gardens usually delighted Bree.

Not this evening.

The setting sun left sullen tails of orange in the western sky. A few stars poked through the oncoming blanket of dark. The moon was a wan splinter of light. Bree pulled into the graveled driveway and sat for a moment in the darkened car.

She had an orderly mind. She had a gift for detachment. Both traits were crucial to her success as an advocate in the temporal and supernatural worlds.

“This,” she said to Sasha, “has thrown me for a loop.”

Francesca had been bewildered at the intensity of Bree’s questions. No, she hadn’t seen the Cross since; it wasn’t in Franklin’s effects after he died. Leah had worn it until she became pregnant with Bree. Then she began wearing the necklace she had left to Bree: tiny gold scales of justice cupped by a pair of wings.

Bree had that necklace on now. She touched it. It lay against her breast.

Sasha butted his head beneath her hand. She cupped his ears and smoothed the silky fur over his skull. She had called this meeting of the Company, and she was determined to get answers.

First, she would think this through.

Then she’d ask coherent, logical questions.

She wasn’t a praying woman, but she prayed now, briefly, for courage and compassion both.

Armand’s apartment was one of two on the ground floor of the sprawling old house. Bree had never seen any of the other tenants. Maybe there weren’t any live ones. Local legend had it that Melrose was haunted by ghosts, although Bree had never seen either the beautiful slave murdered by the son of the original builder nor the suicidal lover of a pirate chief. Armand Cianquino would have been a match for either.

Armand had taught the history of law at Bree’s former school. He’d been respected as a historian, feared as a professor, and retired with honors after a long, successful career. Like Bree, he had held another, secret profession. He was the director of Beaufort & Company. He had been director of the Company when Leah and Franklin had done what she did now. For all she knew, he’d been director during the first case cited in the
Corpus Juris Ultima
: Lucifer v. Celestial Courts (Year One).

There were lights in the ground-floor apartment overlooking the river. The Company was assembled there, waiting for her.

A line from an old movie drifted into her head—Roy Scheider as the obsessed choreographer staring into his bathroom mirror each morning: “It’s showtime, folks!”—and Bree repeated it to herself under her breath.

“Come on, Sasha.”

She let herself into the foyer. The pine floor was highly polished as always. Fresh lilies sat in the vase on the credenza underneath the stairway, filling the air with scent. She knocked on the door and waited, hearing the whirr of Armand’s wheelchair over the wood floor. He opened the door.

“My dear. And Sasha, too. Welcome.”

Old habits of respect were hard to lose. Despite her fury and her concern, Bree bent and dropped a kiss on his head. “Professor.” She wanted to say he was looking well, but he wasn’t. Age laid a heavier hand on him every time she saw him. He looked exactly like the old silk screens of Confucius, the Chinese sage.

“Just leave your coat on the couch. We needn’t stand on formality, do we? We’re meeting in the library, as usual.”

She tossed her coat on the white leather couch and followed him across the room, Sasha at her heels. His living room was spare. The white leather couch faced mullioned doors that overlooked the river. A reading lamp curved over the back of a comfortable recliner. There were no rugs, to allow for the unimpeded movement of the wheelchair.

The library was located at the far end of the living room. The doors were made of rosewood, heavily carved with ornate spheres and the Scales of Justice. The wrought iron fence surrounding the Angelus Street office featured the same design. Bree pushed both doors inward, then stepped back to allow Armand to roll through.

The library never changed. The glass doors directly opposite the entrance from the living room opened onto the terraced gardens outside. A fireplace had a roaring fire against the evening chill. Except for an oil lamp at each end of the long table in the middle of the room, the fire provided the only light in the room.

The long east and west walls held books: books of all kinds and of all descriptions. Editions of the Koran sat side by side with translations of the Torah. There was every possible translation of the Christian Bible. Hand-stitched volumes of the Hindu Vedas were tucked between books on religions Bree had barely heard of.

The long table in the middle of the room was heaped with strange and exotic objects. An ancient sword lay underneath a jumble of bowls, trenchers, pieces of armor, and a couple of knives in short scabbards. A huge bronze birdcage sat in the middle of the table. The door was open. Bree greeted the brown owl inside. “Hello, Archie.”

“Go home,” Archie said. “Go home, go home, go home.”

Bree was never sure if the familiar greeting was aimed at her or if the bird was expressing a desire to be elsewhere. One of these days she’d ask him.

She pulled out one of the heavily carved chairs grouped at the table and sat down. Sasha cocked his head at Archie and wagged his tail. Archie shrieked at him. Armand rolled to the head of the table.

They sat silently for a long moment.

Three of the four unoccupied chairs began to fill with columns of light that whirled and spun like noiseless fireworks. Green. Blue. Violet. The lights coalesced into vaguely human forms.

“I, Rashiel.”

“I, Dara.”

“I, Matriel.”

Ron, Petru, and Lavinia shimmered and became flesh. The fourth chair—Gabriel’s chair—disappeared in a brief flash of silver. When the light returned, the angel himself stood behind it. He was tall, and the flickering from the oil lamps and the fireplace made him seem taller still. He was beautifully built, with the shoulders and chest of a boxer. He gave her a cocky salute.

Armand lifted both his hands in what may have been a benediction. “There has been a significant temporal event since we last formally convened. I believe it’s this event that has brought our advocate here.”

The owl clacked its beak. “The key. The key.”

“Patience, Archie. Bree. You asked that we meet. Perhaps we can take care of your concerns first.”

Bree stood up. She had one severely tailored black suit she used in court. She wished she had it on now instead of her skirt and sweater. She also wished she’d taken the time to make notes. She said, formally, “I came to request clarification on the rules of conduct that apply to my position as the current appeals advocate.” She waited, but nobody said anything. She cleared her throat.

“First. A client has requested that I represent him. Taking his case on might endanger my own family. I’d like assurances that I can turn down such requests.”

“You may, of course,” Armand said. “It is a matter of your own conscience.”

“Second. If I do take on his case, does the kind of protection I have”—she nodded at Gabriel—“extend to my family members, too?”

“As far as physical threats are concerned, absolutely. There is, however, a caveat. We cannot protect you or anyone else from temporal actions. We cannot, for example, extricate your aunt from her current difficulties.”

“Third,” Bree paused and bit her lip, almost afraid to bring the relic into the open. “I’m tired. Perhaps that’s why I’m feeling so uncertain. So . . . dislocated. As if I’m somewhere else instead of here.”

“You have doubts,” Armand said with great kindness. “About your mission? The Company? About yourself? We cannot help you with that. It’s part of the human condition.”

“Doubts.” Bree thought about this. “Doubts about what I’m here for? No. I was fated to do what I do. Doubts about whether I can continue? Some. It’s a tough job, and I wasn’t fully aware of the kinds of sacrifices I’ve had to make. Other kinds of doubts?” She hesitated. “Yes. For instance, I’m not sure you’re telling me everything I need to know. I want to know about this Cross of Justinian. It’s got some kind of horrible power. Is it dangerous?”

Archie clicked his beak and cried, “The key!”

Lavinia said, “Oh,” very softly. Although she didn’t move from her chair, Bree felt the soft touch of her fingers against her cheek. “All you have to do is ask us, child.” She turned to the others, her face sorrow filled. “It’s us she’s having doubts about, Armand.”

“I’m in the middle of a scary case. It involves my aunt, whom I love very much. Not an hour ago, I learned that it may involve my birth mother. I’m out of my depth. I don’t know what kind of help to ask for. I don’t know what kind of help you can give me.” She looked at Armand. “Professor. I’m a temporal. You seem to be a temporal, although of a special kind. You others . . .” She looked directly at them, one by one. “This case is heading beyond celestial jurisprudence into something else. You’re angels.
Why can’t you fix this?
”