by Mary Stanton
Bree suppressed a whoop of relief. “You did?” Then, meekly, “I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll see to that. Anyhow, that Chambers called you. Wants to talk settlement, he said.”
“About the Photoplay cover? Did you tell him he needs to go through his lawyers?”
“Said he fired his lawyers.”
“Ah. Excellent. We need documentation of that. He’s got to march on down there, give them a formal letter, have them acknowledge the letter, and give a copy to us. He’s also got to pay his bill.”
EB drew her brows together. “I didn’t know about havin’ to pay his bill. I told him to send an e-mail, keep the answer, and forward it on to us.” She took a sheet of paper from the printer tray. “Thought that’d be enough.”
Bree read it. Chambers’s e-mail to Caldecott was brief: I do not want the firm of Barlow & Caldecott to represent my interests in the matter of Chambers v. White, Kennedy and the Frazier Museum. Please forward the case file to my business address. Caldecott’s reply was briefer: Acknowledged.
“That do?”
“Probably.” The chance that Caldecott would make an issue of retaining the file was slim. But a good advocate reduced the chance factor to zero when she could.
On the other hand, the day was getting better and better. She had the Cross back. Charles Martin’s motive to murder White was looking strong. If Caldecott was out of her aunt’s orbit, the field would really open up. She could interview the Chamberses without running into ethics violations. “I have to talk to Jillian and Allard as soon as I can about their involvement in White’s death. The settlement can wait. Besides, I’ll need more solid verification that Caldecott’s off Cissy’s case than this e-mail before I can offer him any money. And we haven’t gotten him dismissed as coexecutor of her will yet, either.”
“I’ll take care of both these things. I’ll go right down there to Caldecott’s office and get whatever we need.”
“No!” Bree said. “I’ll do it.”
EB looked startled. Then she looked hurt.
“I don’t want you anywhere near those guys.”
“All right.” EB straightened a stack of papers that didn’t need straightening. Her dark skin was a little darker than usual. “Professor Chambers asked you to call him as soon as possible to set up an appointment. You going trust me to do that?”
“Don’t get all ruffled with me, EB. Have you actually met Caldecott? Or Dumphey?” Bree brushed irritably at her hair, which was falling into her eyes. “They’re creeps.”
“I can handle creeps. I’ve been handling creeps all my life. What kind of paralegal am I going to be if I can’t? You only let decent folk into this office, you’re going be waiting a long time for business.”
“You’ve got a point. Okay. But you don’t need to go down there. E-mail them. Copy in Allard and Jillian Chambers. When we’ve got absolute verification, let me know.”
“All right.” She watched as Bree got up and began collecting her stuff. “Where you going now? I’m not finished with you. I’ve got the Dunleavy lease ready for you to look over. And Ms. Blackburn’s office called. They want you to come in and answer some questions from the police. As a personal favor to her, Ms. Blackburn said.”
“Could you tell Cordy I’ll drop by in about an hour, if that’s convenient?”
“I’ll do that, sure.”
“And try and track down the Chamberses. Both of them. I’d like to see them as soon as possible. Tonight, if not sooner. Just go ahead and set up a meeting time; then text me. Okay?”
“I can do that, as long as you take the Dunleavy lease with you. It’d be good, we could find the time to keep the regular business going. That’s going to be around long after we get your auntie off.”
Bree snatched it out of her hand. “This is me, taking the damn lease. I’ll read it, okay? As soon as I get half a chance. And EB?”
“What!”
“You tell Lewis McCallen the next time I see him, I’m going to snatch him balder than he is already. The nerve of him, trying to swipe my staff.”
Eighteen
The Celestial Courts were on the seventh floor of the six-floor Chatham County Municipal Building on Montgomery. It was six long city blocks from Bay, but Bree decided to walk. As she crossed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, she became aware that Sasha was gone and that Ron swung easily along beside her.
“I got the Cross back.”
“So I hear.”
Bree looked sideways at him. Angels knew what they knew. “I have a ton of stuff on White’s background for Petru. There’s some very promising leads. Did you know that Chambers had White in class thirty years ago? Flunked him, according to the college transcript.”
“That’s very interesting.” Ron looked satisfied. “I took a look at the some of the other footage from the surveillance cameras. We’ve got a nice clear shot of Chambers and his wife trying to slip out by way of the parking lot in the back. One of the lieutenant’s minions grabbed them. Foolish, really, on their part. It might be easier to crack this case than the others.” The crossing light at Market Street turned red, so they stopped. “I take it we’re headed over to the Celestial Hall of Records to pick up Schofield Martin’s closed-case file?”
“Yes. I haven’t had a chance to try and raise him again yet. I’ll try it when we get back to the office. Did I tell you he came through pretty clearly at first? I think that petition I filed requesting more direct interviews with the clients must have been approved.”
Ron looked doubtful. He stood aside to let Bree go into the big concrete building ahead of him. Bree wasn’t sure if he was visible to the throngs of people in the lobby or not, so she fell silent. She passed through the metal detector, waved to a couple of on-duty cops who were friends of Hunter’s, and wedged herself into the elevator. When the car reached the sixth floor, she hung back, smiling at the blonde attorney who held the door open so that she could exit first. “Forgot something. I’ll have to go down again.”
“You said the same thing the last time I rode up to the sixth floor with you.”
Bree, who had been trying to decide if she could risk tackling the Chambers interview without a definitive response from Caldecott, came to attention. “Hey! It’s Karen Rasmussen, isn’t it?”
“And the time before that.” The door bumped rudely into Karen’s hip. Bree knew her from the monthly meetings of the Georgia State Bar Association. She was a new member of Cordy Blackburn’s staff. “What is it you keep forgetting, Bree?”
“Coffee, this time. I bought some from the machine and left it there. On the top. Of the machine.”
A quiet chuckle drifted past her ear. So Ron was still with her.
“I’ve got a pot in my office. It’ll be a lot fresher than the junk from the machine. Why don’t you come by? It’ll save you a trip. I . . . Ooof.” She stumbled outside the car. The doors closed. The elevator continued on its quiet way up.
“That wasn’t very nice, Ron.”
“It was a very gentle shove.”
“Yeah. But she couldn’t see you, right? So I’m the only one in the car. She’s going to think I pushed her out. Thanks a ton.”
The car swayed to a halt. They stepped into the hallway. A large emblem on the wall had a bronze image of the scales of justice surrounded by angel’s wings. The letters that circled the seal read:
CELESTIAL COURTS
The directory beneath listed the rooms for Justice Court, Circuit Court, the Court of Appeals, the Appellate Division, the Hall of Records, and the Detention Center.
The seventh floor looked exactly like the other six floors of the Municipal Building. The walls were off-white. The doors were made of steel and painted bridle-brown. The floor was laid with sixteen-by-sixteen tiles in a terrazzo pattern that didn’t show dirt. But the air was different, in the way that club soda was different from water. And the ambient light seemed brighter. It glowed with colors better than sunlight.
Ron opened the door to
the Hall of Records and stepped back. A part of Bree always worried that Goldstein would bow to the pressures of his celestial governors and computerize the Hall of Records and that the Hall of Records itself would change. But he hadn’t, not this time at least. The place still looked like a monastery from the Middle Ages. The walls were made of huge blocks of cut stone. The vaulted ceilings soared to a soft darkness. The stained-glass windows let multicolored sunlight in. The recording angels stood at their oak daises, wings folded neatly under their rough monk’s cassocks, quill pens busily scratching at parchment.
Ron clicked his tongue in annoyance. “I see Goldstein still hasn’t got the IT guys in.”
“Efficiency isn’t everything,” Bree said a little primly.
“True.”
She followed him to the huge back wall, which was filled with small wooden cubicles containing rolls of parchment. Goldstein stood behind the chest-high oak counter. It looked like he was eating yogurt. Ron sauntered up and folded his arms on the counter. “What is that stuff, Goldstein?”
“What does it look like?”
“Yogurt.”
“It is yogurt.” He patted his belly, which was round and occupied a larger portion of his monk’s robe than it had when Bree had seen him last. “Thought this body ought to lose a few pounds.” He smiled. “Hello, Bree. It’s good to see you here. We heard you were thinking of passing on this client.”
Bree glanced at Ron, who blushed a little.
“But I see you’ve changed your mind.” He bent down and pulled a roll of parchment from beneath the counter. “Here it is. Schofield Martin versus Celestial Courts. Sentenced to eternity in the seventh circle for the theft of a sacred relic, conversion of a sacred relic for malign purposes, consorting with nephiliam, suicide, theft of intellectual property, and I don’t know what all. You ask me, it’s going to be hard to find grounds for appeal here.”
“He claims he was murdered.” Bree unrolled the parchment. “And he says he was tricked.”
“You think you’re going to find evidence of—what’s the mortal term—‘entrapment’?” Goldstein’s eyebrows, which were as thick as caterpillars and bushy black, rose almost to his tonsure.
“If by entrapment, you mean that someone on our side set him up, of course not,” Ron said. “But the Opposition could have tricked Martin into doing what he did—whatever it was. And the Opposition can be pretty sneaky about testimony. Throw in a defending attorney who’s maybe new at the job, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the right questions didn’t come up on Judgment Day. Perfection is only found at the highest levels of the Sphere.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the monks behind them, as if this was a mantra often repeated.
Bree, absorbed in the case notes, made an exclamation of disgust.
“True,” Goldstein said. “What is it, Bree? You look balked.”
“There’s no description of the sacred relic in here. Just a citation from the Corpus Juris Ultima. Ron, if you can send the citation on to Petru, it might help him on the hunt for what it looks like.” She bit her lip. Balked? She was more than just balked. She was frustrated. This case was all about the key. The sooner she got a handle on the key, the sooner she could begin to clear this up. What if the key wasn’t in the form of the Cross of Justinian? How would she know? If it was, who or what would turn it back into a key? If it wasn’t . . . what then? Bree made her hands into fists so she wouldn’t clutch at her hair. “Balked, frustrated, annoyed, and in the dark. Let’s get moving, here.”
Ron took out his Blackberry, cast a glance at the case number, and tapped at his keyboard.
“May I see?” Goldstein asked.
Bree spread the roll of parchment on the countertop. Goldstein read for a few minutes, tugging thoughtfully at his lower lip. “The relic is the key to the eighth circle of Hell. It says so right here.”
“But it doesn’t say what it looks like,” Bree said impatiently.
“What it looks like?” Goldstein rubbed the bald spot on his head. “You mean does it have a form that temporals can identify?”
“Of course that’s what I mean. What else would I mean?”
“That’s an impossible question. It has no meaning. The key is . . . well . . . the key. It can ‘look’”—at this point, he wiggled his forefingers on either side of his head, which infuriated Bree—“like a can of tuna. It all depends. What’s important is what it’s made of. The sacred keys are made of concentrated, consecrated energy.”
Bree rolled the parchment up, knotted the ribbon twice around the scroll, and tied it in a double knot. “Damn it all.” She ignored the rustle of disapproval from the angels behind her. “Well. At least we have grounds for appeal, right there. My client may not have known that he had a sacred relic.”
“These things are hard to mistake, Bree,” Goldstein said a little stiffly.
“Schofield Martin is—was—is—a mortal. A human being. We human beings live in a concrete universe, Goldstein. We name things. We have shapes for things. We are not equipped to understand or identify formless objects of—what did you call it?—concentrated, consecrated matter. I’ll bet my client didn’t have a clue that the Cross could be holding energy that made it a sacred key.” She tucked the scroll into her tote. “Ron? Why don’t you go back to the office? Take this background report on Prosper White while you’re at it. It’ll save Petru some time.”
“You know better than that, Bree,” Goldstein said. “After all, what is time to an angel?” He smiled benignly at her. Bree resisted the impulse to whack him over the head with the parchment. “I’m going down to see Cordy Blackburn.” She scowled. “Just for the moment, I’ve had it up to here with angels.”
Nineteen
“Ms. Blackburn’s not here,” Karen Rasmussen said coldly.
“She had to leave for a deposition.”
“I’d better set up an appointment, then. I know how busy she is.” Bree set her tote on Karen Rasmussen’s desk and pulled out her iPad.
Karen cleared her throat in what could only be described as a marked manner.
“Oh! Sorry.” Bree blushed, removed her tote to the floor and tapped the iPad screen. “Does she have any time tomorrow?”
“I have no idea. I am not her secretary.” Karen swiveled in her chair to her desktop computer and began to type.
Bree smacked her forehead with her palm. “Of course you’re not. I’ll just go along and find her.”
“You do that. And when you do that, you’d better check with your secretary. You forgot more than your coffee downstairs. There are some people here to see you. They’ve been poking their noses into the offices up and down the corridor for the past ten minutes. Why you can’t set up your own meetings in your own office is beyond me. Have you forgotten where that is, too?”
“Karen, I didn’t shove you out of the elevator.”
“No? An act of God, perhaps?”
“Maybe you just sort of lost your balance?”
“You. Put. Your. Hand. On. My. Butt. And pushed. I felt it distinctly.”
Bree stuck her hands in her suit-coat pockets. “I’m sorry we had this misunderstanding.”
“Yeah, well. Forget it.”
Yes. Forget it. Bree concentrated hard. She’d been able to pull Dumphey over his desk; maybe she had the angelic ability to erase memory, too.
“If you’re going to be sick,” Karen said, with spurious sympathy, “the bathroom’s down the hall. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got a brief to write.” She bared her teeth in an insincere smile. “Unless you want to push me out of my chair, too?”
“Of course not. Honestly. I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, but I am well and truly sorry.”
“Fine.”
Bree waited. Karen’s fingers flew over her computer. “Um, Karen?”
“What!”
“These people you said were here to see me?”
“In the waiting room. Out front.”
The district atto
rney’s office occupied the whole of one floor in the Municipal Building, and the waiting room was large. Bree walked down the hall and pushed open the double glass doors to reception. The place was crowded with potential witnesses, defense attorneys, messengers, cops, and perpetrators. Jillian and Allard Chambers were tucked in a corner, almost concealed by a potted plant.
Bree’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out; the text message was from EB:
CHAMBERS AT DA OFC 2PM. (sorry).
The “sorry,” Bree assumed, was because she hadn’t texted Bree sooner.
Chambers caught sight of her, jumped to his feet, and waved. “Athena! Over here!”
Bree wound her way through the crowds.
“This is my wife, Dr. Jillian Chambers.”
Jillian had the bones of a beautiful woman: high cheekbones, an elegant aquiline nose, and slender, well-shaped hands. She was thin to emaciation. She wore her thick gray hair in a braid down her back. It was in need of a good shampoo. Her eyes were black and bright, with an almost avian quality. She moved in a series of awkward jerks, elbows out, knees splayed. She seemed almost feral, like an ibis or a crane. Bree felt she’d fly away if startled.
“I’ve been meaning to meet you, Dr. Chambers.”
She extended her hand with a slight air of bewilderment. Bree shook it, carefully. Her voice was hoarse and not unattractive. “Allard says you can help us.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Bree said. “I would like to talk to you both though.” She turned to Allard, who was gazing at Bree with something like despair. “You’ve both decided to fire your current lawyers?”
“You’re talking about Caldecott?” he said impatiently. “Yes. We have. I copied your assistant on the e-mail.”
“That’s not quite enough, I’m afraid. Have you received the case file?”
“I’m sure it’s on its way.”
“And have you settled your bill with them?”
He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “I’ll work it out with them.”
“Then we can’t discuss the suit you’re bringing against White’s estate. Not yet. I can tell you that my aunt is executor of the estate, and amenable to a fair offer to settle. But I would like to talk with you and Dr. Chambers about your past relationship with White. Right now, if you have the time.”
