Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

  “You know how to get there? It’s not far. You get onto 80, on the way to Tybee Island.”

  “I know the way, Mr. Jensen. Thank you. I appreciate your help.”

  She retreated to the parking lot and her car. Bree dumped her briefcase in the backseat, then poured Sasha, Belli, and Miles each a bowl of water from her water bottle. Sasha lapped it up. Belli took a tentative sniff, then emptied the entire bowl with great scoops of her huge pink tongue. Miles put one outsized paw on the water bottle after he’d emptied his bowl. Bree refilled the bowl for him and wondered if she should stock up on a couple of hundred pounds of dog food. Like the rest of the Company, Belli and Miles had temporal requirements when in temporal bodies, and they’d have to eat pretty soon. She’d offered each of them a fast-food hamburger on the way back from Plessey the day before, but they’d turned up their massive noses at it. Maybe they just hated Burger King.

  Sasha put his paw on her knee and barked.

  “Right,” Bree said. “I’m dithering. This is me, putting the key in the ignition and me driving straight to the Seaton Stud.” She stroked Sasha’s ears. “He’s probably not even there. Off on a buying trip.”

  It was a lowering day, with a threat of rain to come. Bree rolled the windows down, and all three dogs stuck their heads out and faced into the breeze, ears flying. The sight of two huge, fierce faces sticking out of either side of her car caused more than a few double takes from the other drivers on the road. Sasha, as usual, merely looked beautiful.

  Abel’s brother, Charles Trask, had married into the Seaton Stud, which was an old, long-established racing farm for Thoroughbred horses. His widow, Missy Seaton Trask, had a side interest in three-day eventing. She’d branched out into the light draft breeds, with an emphasis on Trakehners and Swedish Warmbloods. As a result, the Seaton racing reputation had ebbed, and winners at the track were scarcer now than they had been in the past. According to Aunt Cissy, at least, who had been full of information at Saturday’s party, Missy was facing some pretty significant cash flow problems.

  Bree pulled into the long flat road that led up to the main house and the barns. The place looked a lot shab bier than when she had been here last. Which was what? Eight years ago, at least. Maybe ten. Three-railed fences ran for a mile or more on either side of the asphalted drive. The fences were in poor repair, and the edges of the verge needed mowing. The slightly rolling pastures were filled with mares grazing under sycamores and oaks. By this time of year, the year’s crop of foals had long been weaned, and the mares bred back. They grazed peacefully under the gray skies, their bellies rounded with the foals to be delivered in spring. They, at least, looked in great condition. Whatever her cash situation, Missy wasn’t skimping on the feed.

  Bree pulled to a stop at the head of the drive. The sign announcing the farm was still there, considerably weathered. Letters picked out in dark green said: SETON HORSE FARMS, INC., CHARLES AND MELISSA SEATON TRASK, PROP., EST. 1883.

  The barns lay to the left, the house to the right. The office was directly in front of her. The barns were long and low, with green metal roofs and gray metal siding. The house and the office building dated from the mid-nineteenth century. Both were brick, with Carpenter Gothic white trim and small mullioned windows. Bree parked and got out and addressed the dogs. “The three of you are going to stay here, right? No roaming around and scaring folks.”

  She grabbed her briefcase, with a rather confused idea that if she did run into Abel, he’d see at once that she was here on business. The blinds on one of the office windows moved, as if someone had looked out at her. Then a short, muscular woman came out the front door and trudged down the steps. She wore jeans, green rubber boots, and a flannel shirt. She had short, bristly hair and a pugnacious jaw. Missy Trask. And she hadn’t changed a bit. Bree hadn’t known her well, but her looks were memorable. “No salesmen, no salesmen!” She stumped up to Bree, her eyes slitted against the daylight, and stopped dead in her tracks. “My God. It’s Bree Beaufort. I haven’t seen you in years.”

  “Ten at least,” Bree said. “I was here for the Hunt Ball.”

  Missy’s gaze shifted past Bree to the dogs, who were looking around with interest. “And what the hell are those?”

  “My dogs,” Bree said. “Totally quiet. Totally obedient. They’ll stay right there.”

  Missy squinted so hard her eyes almost disappeared between folds of flesh. “What kind of breed are those big black ones?”

  “Newfies,” Bree hazarded. “Nicest dogs on the planet.”

  “Newfies, my ass,” Missy said. She swung her tur retlike gaze to Bree. “And what are you up to these days?”

  Bree mentioned her need to see Shirley Chavez, and offered her card.

  “Attorney-at-law,” the woman mused. Then, accusingly, “You’re kin to Cissy Carmichael.”

  “My mother’s sister.” Then, in case this wasn’t enough, she added, “My aunt.”

  “Those Winston-Beauforts. Abel ran your cotton farm a few years back. It’s all coming back to me now.” She gave Bree a knowing, very unpleasant look.

  “That’s right.”

  “Good to see you again, I guess.” She stuck out her hand, and Bree took it. It was hard and calloused, the rather grubby nails clipped short. Her eyes were small, bright brown, and very sharp. “So,” she said, as if she’d come across an unusual and not particularly useful artifact, “you’ve come out to see Abel?”

  “No!” Bree said, rather more violently than she’d intended. “I thought I mentioned that up front. I’m working on a case. I’m representing Lindsey Chandler, and one of the witnesses to the incident works here for you. Shirley Chavez.”

  “Shirley? Yes. She’s a stable hand. Part-time. And a good worker, too.” Her face was weathered, in the way of those who work outdoors, and the dry wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she looked Bree up and down. “So poor little Sophie found herself mixed up with a bunch of snotty girls all in the name of the cookie charity. Huh. What’s your business with Shirley?”

  “If you don’t mind my taking a few minutes of her time, I’m afraid I’ll have to discuss that with her.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind.” She looked at Bree’s leather pumps. “You might not like what’s going to happen to your good shoes, but that’s all in a day’s work for you lawyers, eh?” Without another word, she turned and stamped off toward the barn.

  Missy Trask’s legs were short, but she moved like a runaway train, and Bree found herself almost jogging to keep up.

  The barns formed a square around a paved courtyard. The buildings were all one story high, with the exception of a gambrel-roofed structure filled with hay. Each of the one-storied buildings held twenty horse stalls, with Dutch doors that opened to the center yard. The top halves of the doors were fastened open. About half of the stalls were occupied, and a row of brown, gray, black, chestnut, and bay heads bobbed up and down as Bree followed Missy to the farthest building. A couple of workers were mucking out, dumping the manure and straw into wheel-barrows. “Yo! Shirl!” Missy shouted. “Someone here to see you!”

  A small, skinny figure propped her pitchfork against the barn wall. Wiping her hands down her jeans, she trotted toward them.

  “This is Brianna Winston-Beaufort, Shirl.”

  “We’ve met. Or rather, I know who she is. I saw her when I was in court.”

  “Right. Well, you know then that she’s been hired by Probert Chandler’s widow to represent Lindsey Chandler’s criminal case. You don’t have to talk to her, but she won’t lie to you, from what I know of her. You have any questions, you can come and talk to me anytime. Would you like me to stick around?”

  “No,” Shirley said quietly. “But thank you just the same, Mrs. Trask.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it. If you wouldn’t mind, Bree, would you stop on and see me before you go?”

  “Surely.”

  Missy whirled and stamped in the direction of the office.

  A soft, misty rain
started to fall. Shirley drew the cowl of her hooded sweatshirt over her head and gestured toward the stall she’d been cleaning out. “We can stand partway in there. But you’ll get your shoes all messed up.”

  “I should have thrown a pair of boots into the car. I would have, if I’d known I’d be stopping here.”

  “It’s a nice place to work.” Shirley stepped all the way inside the stall, which was empty of horse but full of straw, and turned to regard Bree with candid gray eyes. “I like it. They treat the animals real good, and the people, too.”

  Shirley had handled herself with a certain amount of dignity in court, although Bree had seen that the judge, the phalanx of officials, and the high, imposing ceilings of the courtroom itself were intimidating to her.

  “Is that Lindsey in jail still? I saw that the cops came and got her again, after I stood up and told the judge I didn’t want to press charges.”

  Bree set her briefcase onto the straw. “No. She’s out on bail. In the custody of her mother, and supervised by the juvenile court. She has an ankle bracelet.”

  Shirley smiled faintly. “Bet she finds a way to ditch it.”

  Bree looked at her closely. “You don’t like her much, do you?”

  She shrugged. “Kid that’s got all she got—why’d she have to go after my Sophie?”

  “Beats me,” Bree said frankly. “Your Sophie’s adorable, Mrs. Chavez.” And wasn’t that the truth. Sophie had big dark eyes, long curly black hair, dimples, and an amazing sangfroid in the face of the TV cameras. Although Bree had noticed that most kids under twenty seemed totally at ease in front of cameras. Maybe it had something to do with a life lived on YouTube. “And I can’t see her going the way of the Lindsey Chandlers of this world. You take awfully good care of her.”

  “We try, Luis and me. We’ve got five, you know. Both of us work the two jobs to keep the right kind of money coming in. My oldest, Luisa, does a lot more babysitting than I’d like. ’Course, now . . .” She stopped and sucked her lower lip.

  “Now what?” Bree asked patiently, although she was pretty sure what was coming.

  “Nothing.”

  “Mrs. Chavez, you know that I’m Lindsey’s lawyer. That I’m on her side. Not the side of the courts. Necessarily,” she added, since a lawyer was, in fact, an officer of the court. “I’ll get to the point, shall I? I’d like to know if anyone from the Chandler family gave you money to drop the charges against Lindsey and the family itself.”

  Shirley looked at her feet.

  “I’m not here to take it back or anything.” She held her hand up. “And I’m not here to give you any more. If you sued the family in civil court, you’d probably collect damages. So if someone did give you a check, it was a private settlement, anticipating a court-ordered one. At least, I could defend it that way if I had to. I just need to know if . . .” Bree stopped and tried to think of a phrase less provocative than “paid off.” “If you’ve received some consideration.”

  “Yes.”

  “You did receive money.”

  “For Sophie.”

  “Of course, for Sophie.”

  “And for Luis and me, too. Since we had all that hassle.”

  “May I ask how much?”

  Shirley smiled. “Half a million dollars.”

  Bree had long ago learned to keep a poker face when dealing with her cases. But she almost lost it now. “Half a million dollars?”

  “We’re investing it, Luis and me. Some people, see, when they win the lottery, they, like, quit their jobs, buy a lot of fancy cars, like that. Not us. We’re putting the money in the bank so all the kids can go to a good school, and we’re going to look at maybe a house with four or five bedrooms instead of the one we got now.”

  Bree put both hands on the back of her neck and pressed her palms into her head. “Whoa,” she said. “Well.”

  “But alongside of that, we aren’t supposed to say anything to anybody. And we got to keep our jobs, so it don’t look like we all of a sudden got rich.” Her smile widened. “But we sure enough did.”

  “Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Chavez, for letting me know.”

  “You being the family lawyer and all, it’s okay to tell you, right? I figure it’s okay to tell you.”

  “Right. I should advise you not to mention to anyone else, though.”

  “Heck, no.” She shifted uncomfortably. “Just a few people, who won’t say a word, honest to God.”

  “Sure.” Bree took a deep sigh. “I just have a couple more questions for you. You knew Lindsey by sight, before she grabbed that money from Sophie.”

  “Oh, yeah. She used to come into the store. We all knew who she was. The boss’s boss’s daughter. The big cheese.”

  “Did she come in for any particular reason?”

  Shirley looked away and rubbed her lips with one hand.

  “I was wondering if it was to see her boyfriend. Chad Martinelli.”

  “Him,” Shirley said. She leaned forward, in a confiding way. “They said his folks and her folks didn’t get along. Thought he was some kind of bad influence, that Chad.”

  “And is he? A bad influence?”

  Shirley snorted. “You’re kidding, right? You know how often our warehouse’s been robbed?”

  “Your warehouse?”

  “Yeah. It’s huge, you know. And it’s part of the research center, which is way in the back of the Marlowe’s lot. We carry all kinds of drugs, and tons of them. Ever since our store started offering those cheap generics, we got the whole state of Georgia coming in to fill prescriptions in this one store here alone. Just imagine what the rest of the U. S. of A. uses. So, in the past six months, the warehouse gets robbed, like, once a week.”

  “Once a week!” Bree was stunned. “But there hasn’t been a word about this with the police. Or in the papers. Has there?”

  Shirley shook her head wisely. “The old man. Probert. He didn’t want a word of it to get out. So it didn’t.” She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together in a provocative way. “Money talks, Miz Beaufort. And Mr. Probert, I guess he figured we could crack down on those crooks ourselves. So. No cops. No police report. Just a pile of extra security and a lot of the bosses poking around into all the employees’ business.”

  “And Chad Martinelli is one of the people they’re taking a look at?”

  Shirley rolled her eyes. “Who knows? But me, I got my suspicions.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m his backup.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “His backup. You know, for inventory. We’re all trained for two or three different jobs at the store, so we can back each other up. That Chad calls in sick one, two, maybe three times a month. So I take over tracking shipments for him. You know what I found out? Last three times that warehouse was robbed it was the day after we got the containers in from China. It was like the robbers knew ahead of time. And the only person that knows that from our end is the inventory dispatcher. Which is Chad. And me. Like I told . . .” She stopped and looked confused. “Never mind,” she muttered.

  “What do the robbers take?” Bree asked. “Anything in particular? I mean, they can’t just waltz in with a truck and roar off with the whole warehouse.”

  “Nah,” Shirley said, with the pleasantly officious air of someone who knows something you don’t. “It’s the PSE. Comes in pallets about yea big.” She held her hands about two feet apart, and four feet off the ground. Easy enough to load on a pickup.”

  “And PSE is what when it’s at home?”

  “I can’t pronounce it, but I can spell it,” Shirley said promptly. “P-S-E-U-D-O-E-P-H-E-D-R-I-N-E. I looked it up on the Internet. It’s some drug they use to make meth.”

  “Pseudoephedrine,” Bree said. “Good grief. But how . . . ?” She realized she was gaping at Shirley and closed her mouth. She had no idea how the Marlowe’s powers had managed to keep this from the police. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. For one thing, legitimate sale of the drug was tracked through at le
ast one federal agency, not to mention the attorney general’s office of the State of Georgia.

  “No police?” she said to Shirley.

  “Not a one,” Shirley said. She smiled cheerfully. “No skin off my nose, is it? Mind your own business and nobody will mind yours. That’s what Luis says.” Her smile faded. “I can tell what you think of that, Miz Beaufort. About mindin’ my own business. I can tell you this. The one time I didn’t mind my own business, it came back to bite me in the ass.”

  Bree wasn’t about to pass judgment. She stood in the straw and turned this new information around in her head. It’d have to be verified, of course. But the Chandlers were a secretive bunch. And what connection could this have to Lindsey and the Girl Scout heist? With Probert Chandler’s murder? Lindsey. Marlowe’s. Blood. Blood. Blood. Her client knew the connections. And her client had had his one phone call, so to speak. So it was up to her.

  Time to talk to Sam Hunter about the robberies.

  Bree picked up her briefcase and stuck out her hand.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Chavez. I really appreciate your help, here. I’ve just got one more question, if you don’t mind.”

  Shirley nodded agreeably and shook her hand vigorously. Bree held it for a moment.

  “Who actually gave you the check? For Sophie?”

  “One of you lawyers,” she said. “A real good-looking guy. Built. Gorgeous sort of violet blue eyes. You know who I mean.”

  “Oh, yes, I know who you mean.” Bree released Shirley’s hand and smiled at her. “When he gave you this check, this lawyer, did he tell you that you had to keep quiet about it?” That would compound Payton’s misdemeanor. Bribery. Hah! “Did you sign anything that said you had to keep quiet?” It was okay to keep quiet about the amount. It was absolutely not okay to deny the fact of the payoff.

  “No, not him. Some other guy came along later and told us to keep our mouths shut. Not the cute one.” Her sigh was regretful.

  So the rodent had known exactly what he was doing and sent someone else to do the dirty work. Couldn’t pin coercion on him, worse luck. Bree snorted. “Those gorgeous blue eyes, Mrs. Chavez? Contact lenses.”