by Mary Stanton
Petru and Ron exchanged looks. “Uh, Bree,” Ron said. “You’re still convinced of Dr. Chambers’s innocence.”
“I am.”
“But . . .”
Bree held up her hand in warning. “No. I’m not going there. Everything Allard told me is unsubstantiated. I’ve got to get corroborating evidence. If I can nail Bullet Martin along the way, so much the better. He had quite a motive to kill White, you know. It’d impress the heck out of a jury. After all those years, White wrecks the source of a very lucrative business?”
Ron was busy at his computer. “I’ve got something.”
“Really?” Bree looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”
“You thought the one piece of hard evidence directly related to the killing was the knife from Cissy’s kitchen. I’m checking Martin’s airline and car travel for the last couple of months. This screen is his gas receipts for his credit card; this screen is his airline tickets. He was in Savannah three times in the past month, including this visit. Did EB interview Lindy, the housekeeper, today?”
“I don’t know. Yes, I think so. I’ll give her a call.”
“Let me check and see if she’s logged anything into your Bay Street files. Yep—she did. Just the date and time, though. No notes as yet. I’ll bet she hasn’t had time to breathe, what with all the stuff you asked her to do today.”
“I did load her up, didn’t I,” Bree said guiltily. “Just goes to show how much I depend on you all. Which is not good. Shouldn’t I be able to do most of this myself?”
“So Martin’s still in the picture,” Ron pushed himself away from his computer and stretched out. “What next, Bree?”
“Alicia Kennedy. She’s got to know more than she’s telling me or the police. And we’ve got a lot of catch-up to create this file. The psych records for Jillian—all of them. A list of all the shareholders of the Indies Queen, and her shipping history from thirty years ago, just for verification of what Allard dumped on me an hour ago. Let’s see who else may have been in on this.” She grinned, suddenly. “We’ll need the murder book of course, from the Savannah PD and all the forensic reports . . . My goodness, it’s great to be operating with all the lights on.”
Petru wriggled his shoulders, as if adjusting his aura, which made Lavinia break into uncharacteristic giggles. “Like a dancing bear,” she said. “Oh, my. It’s good to see you happy again, child.”
Bree glanced at her watch. “It’s five thirty. With luck, I’ll find Alicia at the Frazier. After that, I’ve got a quick meeting with Cordy Blackburn.”
“Her office has called twice, to confirm the appointment,” Petru said. “Mrs. Billingsley has forwarded the phones. The young man also wishes to know what you will bring for dinner. He is somewhat callow, I find.”
Bree shrugged impatiently. “Sandwiches, I guess. Gavin sure thinks a lot about his stomach.” She headed for the foyer, noticing that the angel at the end of the frieze still gestured thumbs-up.
She hoped it was a good augur.
“I don’t have to talk to you,” Alicia Kennedy said sullenly. She slouched huddled in White’s office chair. When Bree walked into the office, she’d been weeping into a blue cashmere sweater. She suspected it was White’s.
“No, you don’t.” Bree pulled a straight chair away from the conference table and sat next to Alicia, so they were on a level. “But you want his murderer caught, don’t you?”
“You know who murdered him! They arrested that crazy woman.”
Bree shook her head. “My client? My client’s innocent.” Even if Jillian had stabbed Prosper White to death thirty yards from where they sat—she wasn’t culpable. A lot of other people were. She let the pause drag on; then she said, “Did you kill him?”
The shock tactics worked. Alicia stared at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Do you know what an ‘alternate theory of the case’ is?”
“I don’t have a freakin’ clue.”
“The defense comes up with a solution to the crime that doesn’t involve the accused.”
“You mean you point the finger at somebody else?” Her cheeks flushed. “You’re going to go after me?”
“That depends.”
“On whether I answer your questions?”
“On whether you tell me the truth.”
Alicia rubbed her face with both hands. Her cheeks were smeared with mascara. She’d chewed off most of her lipstick. Bree leaned over and opened drawers in White’s desk until she found a box of tissues. She set the box on Alicia’s lap. “Here. You’ll want to tidy your face up a bit. Now. Listen to me. How long have you known Prosper White?”
“Forever. He and my dad were friends from way back. They went to school together.”
“Were they in business together?”
“Business? No. My father’s the president of a division of a copier company. Mr. White was an artist.”
“Your father wasn’t interested in Roman antiquities?”
“That? Sure. He studied archeology before he went on to his MBA. He says the best time of his life was when he was out on a dig in graduate school.”
“And that’s where your interest springs from?”
“I suppose.”
“So your connection to White is circumstance,” Bree said, more to herself than to the girl in front of her. “What about Charles Martin?”
“Bullet?” Alicia dabbed carefully at her face with the tissues. “I came to work for Mr. White right out of Columbia. That was three years ago. They’d known each other a while, I guess. Bullet’s a collector, and he’s very well funded—very. Very well known. Mr. White was a genius at finding pieces for him.”
“Did Bullet have a large collection?”
“Not huge,” Alicia said. “Sometimes he didn’t keep things very long.”
“You mean he resold them?”
“I suppose so.” She bent from the waist and began to scrabble in her purse.
Bree picked the purse up and set it on the desk, which forced Alicia to look at her. “At a profit?”
“Of course at a profit. Art can’t exist without money. Art . . .” She chewed at her lower lip. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m getting a clearer picture by the minute. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Prosper White was a genius at finding undiscovered Roman relics.”
“Not just Roman. Greek, Ottoman, Arabic, Turkish.”
“All from areas where Allard Chambers conducted his excavations.”
Alicia folded her arms against her chest.
“Who supplied White with the relics?”
No answer.
“Was it Allard Chambers?”
No answer.
“Why did White repudiate the Cross of Justinian?”
Alicia’s chin went out. Her eyes glowed. “It was a fake.”
“So they had a falling out?”
“Mr. White,” Alicia said proudly, “had his standards.”
Bree regarded her thoughtfully. Alicia had just confirmed a good portion of Allard White’s statement. As for the late blossoming of Prosper White’s integrity? You just never knew about people. Cissy would feel vindicated.
She caught sight of the desk clock on White’s expensive desk. Almost seven o’clock, and Cordy Blackburn was not a patient woman. She let Alicia go and headed out for the Municipal Building at a rate that would have displeased the traffic cops, if there’d been any around to catch her.
Twenty-five
Bree arrived at Cordy’s office twenty minutes late for her seven o’clock appointment.
“Where’s dinner?” Gavin said.
“I beg your pardon?” Bree’s hair had loosened around her ears. She tucked it back.
“You said you were going to bring dinner. I told Cordy not to worry about dinner, because you were bringing it along. I checked with your office. Twice.”
“Sorry, Gavin. I completely forgot. It’s been a busy day.”
“So I he
ar.”
“But a successful one, thank goodness.”
“I wouldn’t call letting a notorious criminal escape justice a howling success, would you?”
“Excuse me?” Bree said stiffly. Formality between office staff and assistants had relaxed a lot since her father’s day, but Gavin was pushing it.
“Charles ‘Bullet’ Martin? Smuggler?”
“That,” Bree said, “is a matter of conjecture. But I expect to prove it soon.”
“Right.” Cordy’s office door was closed. Gavin pointed at it with his pen. “She’s waiting. And she’s hungry.”
“I’ll order pizza.”
“We hate pizza.”
Bree knocked on the office door before she edged it open. Cordy sat at her desk with a legal pad. She looked up, unsmiling, and gestured at the chair that faced her desk.
If there were an Olympic competition for Most Intimidating Assistant DA When Annoyed, Cordelia Blackburn would take the gold, hands down. She was in her midforties, a well-dressed, comfortably sized African-American woman with a pleasing contralto voice. When she wasn’t mowing down defense lawyers, she spent a lot of time with community-service groups. An array of framed photographs over her bookcase showed Cordy with the current president, two past presidents, the governor of Georgia, and a T-shirted, baggy-pantsed basketball team from the projects down on Magnolia Street.
“Sit,” Cordy said.
Bree sat.
Cordy put her elbow on her desk and leaned forward, her chin in one hand. She held a heavy buff piece of stationary in the other. “You know what I have here in front of me?”
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question? No? It looks like a letter.”
“A copy of a letter to the Georgia State Bar Association Grievance Committee. It’s about you. The allegation is improper behavior in regard to your clients Allard and Jillian Chambers. The complainant requests immediate action on the part of the committee. You understand the Grievance Committee’s powers, do you not? They can issue a Letter of Censure. They can recommend that you be disbarred. They can, and will, ruin your life.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze level.
“Barlow and Caldecott,” Bree said.
Cordy didn’t say anything.
She thought a minute. That buff stationary was familiar. She came to a conclusion that was improbable, but not impossible. “Not Marbury, Stubblefield?”
Cordy blinked.
Marbury, Stubblefield made more sense. They loved trouble—the more public, the better. She doubted that Caldecott wanted any kind of visibility in the local bar association. She frowned. “You’re not on the Grievance Committee, Cordy. How did you get a copy of the letter?” Letters like this one were never revealed to sources outside the committee.
“It was in the afternoon mail.” She held the envelope up. “It’s addressed right—the mail room said it’d been ‘misdirected.’ Gavin didn’t pay attention to the addressee—just opened it up. Part of his job is to read and file mail.”
That went some way toward explaining Gavin’s cheeky behavior. He thought she was scum.
“I should send the letter on to the committee, Bree. But somebody wanted me to see it before the donkey poop hit the fan. I’m making a couple of guesses as to why.”
“You could have sent it on without talking to me, first. I’m glad you didn’t.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it? John Stubblefield’s a sneaky son of a gun. My guess is he wants me to suggest you send Jillian Chambers to somebody else. What do you want to bet that if you drop her, Stubblefield’s going to withdraw the letter?”
“He can send a boatload of letters,” Bree said crossly. “There’s nothing improper about my representing Jillian Chambers.”
“No conflict of interest?”
“If you’re talking about the lawsuit against Prosper White’s estate, Allard Chambers fired the lawyers handling it, then dropped the suit altogether.”
“You’ve got a paper trail documenting that, of course.”
“Not exactly. An e-mail from Caldecott acknowledging Chambers’s request for the file. And Allard Chambers’s verbal promise to drop the claim for damages against White’s estate. That’s about it.”
Cordy didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to.
“I’m not dropping Jillian Chambers, Cordy.”
“You’re new at litigation, Bree. This is a high-profile case. You sure you have the chops to take it on?”
“Lewis McCallen’s on the farm team, if I need him.”
“Is that a fact.” Cordy drummed her fingers on the desktop. “Maybe you ought to move him on to the majors. Like, right now.”
“She’s innocent of premeditated murder. I’m sure I can prove it.”
“On what grounds?” Cordy said, with a lack of curiosity Bree didn’t believe for a minute. “That she didn’t do it and somebody else did? Maybe Charles Martin? That she did it, but there are mitigating circumstances? That she’s nuttier than my grandma’s Christmas fruitcake?”
Bree grinned at her. “Nice try. But I’ll save my plea for the arraignment.”
“The murder’s been playing on the six o’clock news for two days straight. You know what I notice most about those film clips? That you’re right in the middle of the action. You planning on calling yourself as a witness?”
“I assume that’s another rhetorical question.”
“I asked you here so I could go over your statement to the cops. I asked you here as a witness for the Prosecution.” Cordy’s full lips thinned. “I take it you’re claiming privilege?”
“The suspect’s my client. You know you can’t compel me to testify.”
“Fine. Go ahead. Jump off that cliff.” Cordy picked up the letter to the Grievance Committee, tore it in half, and let it fall into the wastebasket. “Be interesting to see if Stubblefield calls wondering what happened to his misdirected letter. The man’s got the balls of a buffalo.” She frowned. “It’s not going to keep him from sending it again and dropping it off at the right address this time. Expect a lot of sympathy from me when the papers start smearing your name from here to Topeka. You’re going to need it. Now. We’re coming to the third reason I’m sitting here with you when I should be home eating my dinner. Charles Martin.”
“Dinner,” Bree said guiltily. “Let me call out for something.”
“I already did,” Gavin said as he came into the room. He held a large paper sack in one hand and a large bottle of Coca-Cola in the other. “Not pizza. Shrimp po’boys from Savannah Seafood.” He set the bag on the credenza, unwrapped the sandwiches, and set them on paper plates. “I got extra coleslaw and some of that cheesecake brownie that you like, Boss.”
He set Cordy’s plate down in front of her. He held the second plate out of Bree’s reach. “That’ll be forty-five dollars, please.”
Bree took her emergency cash out of her suit-coat pocket and handed him fifty dollars.
“Do you need change?”
Cordy rapped her knuckles on the desk. “What are you doing, Gavin, training for the wait staff at 700? It’s late. Go on home. I’ll see you in the morning.” She shook her head as the door closed behind her assistant. “How mad would you be if I made Mrs. Billingsley an offer she couldn’t refuse?”
“Pretty mad.”
“Guess I won’t risk it, then.” She took a large bite out of her sandwich. “How hard should I be trying to get Charles Martin back here? You think he had something to do with White’s death?”
“Do you have the forensics back on the blood spatter pattern on his coat?”
“Heck, no. It’ll be weeks.” She glanced at Bree sidelong. “Your daddy paid to have a private lab do the tests on Ms. Carmichael’s coat. They verified the fingerprints on the knife, too. Liberty and justice for all. The Winston-Beaufort motto. We poor folks who labor for the state have to wait while the underfunded state lab takes its own sweet time.”
“Don’t needle me, Cordy.”
“Why not?”
“No special reason, I guess. Maybe because we mean well?”
Her expression softened. “Yes, you mean well. Tell me about Charles Martin.”
“You know what I know to be fact; he owns shares in a ship that was the scene of a murder thirty-odd years ago in Istanbul. The victim was his younger brother, Schofield.”
“No statute of limitations on murder. But what kind of treaties do we have with Turkey? Do I care? And even if I do, do I want to spend Gavin’s valuable time chasing down a thirty-year-old murder case? Unless Martin killed his brother.”
“No. He didn’t.”
“Do you know who did?”
Bree didn’t say anything.
“So give me another reason to chase Martin.”
“I may be able to prove that he’s involved in the illegal shipment of antiquities.”
“Not my jurisdiction.”
“I’m almost certain he contributed to White’s death.”
“How?” Cordy demanded. “I need how, why, and when.”
Bree rolled up the leftovers of her sandwich in her paper plate and tossed the remains on top of the letter to the Grievance Committee. “I’m doing my best to find out.” She picked up her coat. “And when I do, you’ll be among the first to know.”
Twenty-six
It was late. She didn’t realize how long the meeting with Cordy must have lasted until she walked outside the Municipal Building and headed toward her car. The sky overhead was pallid with veiled stars and a washed-out moon. The lights from the Municipal Building were dimmer than usual. She wondered briefly if the city was in the middle of one of its periodic cost-cutting measures.
She looked at her watch; it couldn’t be six o’clock. The sun set at half-past six, and it was as dark as a tomb beyond the car. The second hand was fixed at twelve. She shook the watch. The hand didn’t move.
