Angel's Advocate (10 page)

The last time she’d seen Payton, she’d encouraged Sasha to pee on his shoes. The time before that, she’d tossed him over the restaurant table at Huey’s.

He was still gorgeous, though.

Bree scowled at him.

“Yo, Bree. How’s it going?”

“Nobody says ‘yo’ anymore, Payton.” Aware that this was the feeblest riposte possible, Bree settled herself into the velvet cushions and stared intently at the stage.

“You’re looking great.”

“Shh.”

The overture began, a sprightly, ominous piece that fit perfectly with the Victorian theme of the play.

“I didn’t know you liked Sherlock Holmes.”

“Will you shut up? The play’s starting.” Bree glared at him. “What are you doing here, anyway? The last play you went to voluntarily was the third grade Christmas pageant, and that was only because you played a sheep.”

He opened the program and pointed at the actress playing Irene Adler.

“Lorie Stubblefield?” Bree’s eyebrows shot up and she giggled. “You’re dating Lorie Stubblefield?” The significance of the name hit her. “John Stubblefield’s daughter? You’re dating the boss’s daughter? Payton, you are . . .”

The woman seated behind Bree leaned forward and hissed,
“Shhh!”

Bree was so annoyed she missed the opening scenes of the play. When she finally focused on the action, it was to admire the deftness of the staging, the really outstanding performance of the actor playing Sherlock Holmes, and the satisfying awfulness of the performance of Lorie Stubblefield. Lorie was pretty enough, but too young for the part and way too vapid to convey the sophistication and depth of “the woman,” as Sherlock Holmes always referred to the great Irene Adler. The light from the stage was sufficient to read the program; Bree thumbed through it and was happy to see her suspicions justified: Stubblefield, Marwick was a heavy contributor to the Savannah Rep.

At the interval, she stood up to go find Antonia and at least wave at her, but Payton grabbed her elbow.

“How’s about I buy you a glass of wine?”

“No, thank you,” Bree said.

“Seriously, I think there’s some things we need to talk about. I’ll buy you a glass of wine now, and later you can come with us to the cast party. John’s holding it at his house on Oglethorpe.”

Bree cocked her head and looked at him coolly. “I can’t think of anything that we need to talk about, Payton. Except maybe why you don’t pack up and leave that sleazy law firm you’re working at and get a job with some integrity attached to it. Like maybe campaign manager to elect Attila the Hun to the Georgia legislature.”

Payton smirked and gestured at someone over her shoulder. “You remember our senior partner, John Stubblefield.” Bree turned. Sure enough, there was the artfully styled white hair, the clean-shaven chin, and the beady blue eyes of John Stubblefield, Esquire, whose TV infomercials, soliciting class action plain-tiffs the world over, ran on the airways of late night TV in Savannah.

“Miss Winston-Beaufort,” Stubblefield said, his eyes cold. He made a mock bow. “Sleazy at your service.”

Bree nodded, unsmiling.

“The thing is”—Payton took her arm and led her up the aisle to the foyer—“we may be seeing a lot of each other in the next couple of months, and John wanted me to sort of sit down with you and clear the air.”

The penny dropped. Of course. “The Chandler case,” Bree said. “Stubblefield represents some of the store’s interests? Your firm isn’t large enough to handle anything of real corporate importance, Payton.”

“The family, however,” Payton said smoothly, “is another story altogether. We represent George Chandler’s personal interests in Savannah.”

Carrie-Alice’s son—and Lindsey’s brother. Well, Bree thought. Well, well.

“And ‘sort of’ sit down with me? What’s that supposed to mean? Why?” Bree turned to face him, wondering for the hundredth time what she’d seen in those sculpted cheekbones and athlete’s body. Lust, that’s what it’d been, which just went to show you that lust was rarely a good thing. Behind those good looks was the soul of a sewer rat. “You aren’t going to try to warn me off an investigation into Probert’s death, are you? The way you tried to keep me out of Ben Skinner’s murder investigation?”

Payton’s electric blue eyes widened. Their color had charmed Bree, until she’d learned that the deep violet blue owed everything to his contact lenses. “You’re looking into Probert’s death?” His grip on her arm tightened. “His death was an accident, pure and simple.”

Bree cast a swift glance around the crowd. They were surrounded by well-dressed, happy playgoers. At least three of her distant relatives were within hollering distance. She dropped her voice to an angry, ominous whisper. “If you don’t let go of my arm right this minute, I will toss you out the front door and splat onto Magnolia Street.”

Payton backed off. Bree calmed down. She had no real control over the fierce, whirlwind power that was occasionally at her command, but Payton didn’t know that. The last time he’d provoked her, he’d ended up chin over teakettle on a barroom floor. She knew he wouldn’t want to chance that again.

“So what’s up with my client?” she said briskly.

“We’d just like to be kept current.” Payton rubbed the back of his neck. “And John. That’s Mr. Stubblefield, of course. John wants to be sure that any residual feelings over . . . you know . . .”

“Over what?”

“Over my dumping you. He wants to be sure that you’re not keeping anything back. Out of spite.” He chuckled. “John and I know how women are.”

The back of her neck prickled. A slight wind stirred her hair. A tall, silvery shape slid past the corner of her eye. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Gabriel Striker, private eye and nosy angel who seemed to show up every time she threatened to lose her temper. She kept her head with an effort, since Gabriel’s presence meant everyone in the foyer was at risk if she lost it. “You couldn’t possibly be implying that I’d withhold information critical to the well-being of my client.”

Payton shifted from one foot to the other. “I suppose not.”

“We’ll plan on sending you a weekly progress report.”

His shoulders sagged in relief. “Really? That’s great. You promise?”

“Don’t push it, Payton. You’ll get the reports.”

The houselights dimmed, and then brightened.

“There’s the signal for the interval. You’ll want to be going back to your seat.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Give John my sincere wishes for the state of his health.”

Payton looked momentarily puzzled, but turned obediently and disappeared back into the theater.

Bree waited until the foyer was empty, and then went to the corner opposite the box office, where Gabriel leaned negligently against the wall. “So here you are,” she said.

He nodded soberly. “Here I am.”

Gabriel was tall, with the heavily muscled body of a boxer. He moved like a dancer, lightly and with precision. His eyes were the color of the Savannah River at dawn. “Interesting new case.”

“Mr. Chandler’s, I suppose you mean, since he’s the one that’s dead,” Bree said. “Yes, isn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to go through the pleadings yet, but it looks a lot”—she searched for the right word—“
graver
than the Skinner file.”

“Armand is a little concerned.”

“Really?”

“Really. We’d like to talk it over with you.”

“Well, sure,” Bree said. “Would Monday morning be okay?”

“Now,” Gabriel said.

Bree looked at her watch. Nine thirty, and she had to get up early to get to Plessey.

“It can’t wait?”

He shook his head. “The Pendergast graves are empty.”

Can these bones live?

—Ezekiel 37:3

Armand Cianquino lived six miles out of town in a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old cotton plantation named Melrose. It had been converted to apartments aimed at those people who wanted elegance, seclusion, and the beauty of the Savannah River. The plantation house was a classic example of architecture in the wealthy Old South: two stories high, with wraparound upper and lower verandahs that completely surrounded the building. The main building was well over eight thousand square feet. A wealthy banker had rescued the property from rot, mildew, and decay in the late 1970s and converted each floor of the main house into three spacious apartments. The outlying buildings—former slave quarters and the original kitchen—had been converted into little cottages.

Surrounded by lush gardens of azaleas, roses, and hydrangeas, the sprawling white mansion brooded on the riverbank. Savannah had the reputation of being the most haunted city in America, and Melrose was believed to have its fair share of “haints.” Marie-Claire was the cast-off mistress of a late-eighteenth-century river pirate. Like Virginia Woolf, she filled her dress pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river. The other ghost, a son of the original builder, Augustine Melrose, was hanged in 1805 by an outraged populace after a murderous attack on the wife of a fellow planter.

Bree, who had reason enough to believe in the existence of the ghosts of the newly dead, was not as convinced about the presence of either the wailing Marie-Claire or Augustine Melrose’s vicious offspring. But she wasn’t anxious to run into either one of them. As she drove up the long, semicircular driveway to the front door, the late night mists of a Georgia autumn evening drifted over the lawns and twined around the boles of the cottonwood trees. Spanish moss trailed from live oaks like seaweed floating in an ocean of earthbound clouds. Bree surveyed the Gothic scene somewhat glumly. Then she got out of the car and walked up the shallow front steps to the large basswood front door. It was open. Bree walked into the foyer. The floor was wide-planked pine, polished to a high shine. The air was fragrant with the scent of freesia. A classic Sheraton lowboy stood against the back wall. The large vase on it held fresh flowers, as always. A wide, graceful staircase rose from the center of the foyer up to the second story.

Armand Cianquino’s apartment was to her immediate right. She tapped on the door. Gabe Striker opened it, and stepped back to let her in.

“He’s in the library.”

Bree nodded and followed Gabriel across the living room floor. The paneled door into the library was made from an exotic wood. Rosewood, Bree thought, or perhaps a lacquered cedar. Artfully shaped spinning spheres were carved into the panel, the same shapes that formed the wrought-iron fence surrounding Bree’s office at 66 Angelus Street.

Gabriel knocked twice, opened the door, and Bree followed him into the familiar room.

The library was in stark contrast to the spare elegance of Armand Cianquino’s living room. A leaded window looked out over the gardens. All four walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The shelves were crammed with books of all kinds: thick ones, thin ones, old ones bound in dark, crumbling leather, and new ones in shiny covers. Bree glanced at the shelves that had held the professor’s set of the hundred-volume
Corpus Juris Ultima
, that body of celestial case law that had first alerted her to the fact that her old law school professor was not quite what he seemed. The books were still there; the set he had sent to the Beaufort & Company offices must be a copy.

A long table occupied the middle of the library. It was loaded with files, more books, a couple of lamps, and a bundle of old material covering most of a long sword. A wire cage sat smack in the middle of the table. The cage door was open, and a large, owl-like bird sat on the perch inside. His beady black eyes regarded Bree with a somewhat baleful air.

“Hello, Archie,” she said.

“About time, about time, about
time
,” Archie said.

“Hello, Bree.” Armand Cianquino rolled his wheelchair into the light. He was a slender man, wholly Chinese, despite his Italianate name. Bree had known him forever, it seemed. She remembered his visits to the house at Plessey when she was small. And, of course, she remembered him from her years at law school. Highly respected (and much feared), he occupied the Religion in Law chair for most of his tenure. Retired from teaching just after Bree had taken her bar exams, he still gave an occasional lecture, wrote an article or two for the
American Bar Journal
, and consulted on international case law, especially those cases that involved religious freedoms. In the short time from retirement to this, he had changed a great deal. His once black hair was now totally white. And something—he had never told Bree exactly what—had put this vital, challenging man into a wheelchair.

He rolled forward into the light, and Bree was dismayed to see that in the few short weeks since she had seen him last, he had aged further still. She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder. “I hope you’re keeping well, Professor.”

He grimaced slightly and moved his shoulder away from her touch, not in distaste, but in discomfort. “Sit down, Bree.”

She drew a carved wooden chair a little way from the table and perched on the edge. Gabriel stood just out of the circle of lamplight, arms folded across his chest.

She spoke into the silence. “I’m glad to see you. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk since we settled the Skinner case.”

“Successfully handled,” Cianquino said. There was a hint of approval in his eyes.

“Thank you.” Bree took a breath. “But it would have been a lot smoother going if I’d been better prepared. I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here, Professor. If I could just—”

“Curiosity killed the cat, the cat, the cat,” Archie squawked. He snapped his beak greedily. Professor Cianquino held one frail hand up, and the bird subsided into cranky mutterings. “If you could just?” he prompted.

“Well, interview my client properly, for one.” Bree plunged on, not sure how far she would get before the professor reminded her of what she’d had to accept at the beginning of this new—and unwelcome—career: she could only learn the ins and outs of this job through experience. He and the other angels in her company were there to guide and protect—not inform.