Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

  “No kidding!”

  “Fact,” Bree said. Then, for the sake of thoroughness, she asked, “This other guy. The one who told you to keep quiet about the pay—that is, the money. What did he look like?”

  “Now, he was pretty cute, too. Older, though. And he had a scar under one eye. Kind of romantic looking, actually. And the business about keeping quiet about the money—he just sort of added that on.”

  “Added it on to what?”

  “Those warehouse robberies,” Shirley said patiently. “He didn’t want us to talk about them, either. I’d been working late shift the night of the last one, and he was all over me about what I saw, and whether I could point out any employees that maybe had something to do with it. I didn’t say a word about Chad, of course. Poor kid.”

  Bree mentally ran through the roster of the attorneys at Stubblefield, Marwick. The description didn’t fit anyone she knew, but it was bound to be one of the many lawyers assigned to handle George Chandler’s affairs. He sounded pretty distinctive. She could track him down if she needed to. And if she decided it would be pretty satisfying to nail Payton’s cute little behind to the wall, she might just do that.

  “What color are they for real?”

  “Sorry?” Bree said.

  “The cute guy that gave us the check. What color are his eyes for real?”

  Bree gritted her teeth. “Rat gray, Mrs. Chavez. Rat gray.” A rat for sure, and slimy enough to assign the threat to keep quiet to somebody else altogether.

  She stamped back across the courtyard, at first barely noticing the rain, which had increased from a mist to a shower. By the time she reached the office, her hair was soaked. Rain dripped down the back of her neck, and her white silk tee clung to her chest in an annoyingly revealing way. She knocked briefly at the front door and pushed it open, unwilling to stand in more wet.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Missy Trask said. She turned to the man sitting behind the office desk. “She looked pretty good before the rain got to her.”

  “Hello, Bree.”

  Bree sighed and set her briefcase down. “Hello, Abel.”

  Thirteen

  What is character but the determination of incident?

  —Partial Portraits, Henry James

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Ron said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go home and change? You’re soaked.”

  “I’m fine,” Bree said glumly. She draped her jacket over the back of her chair. Her tee had dried quickly, once she’d put the heater on in the car, but it’d dried all wrinkly. Her shoes squelched, and she kicked them off. She was very thankful that her generation had put a stop to wearing panty hose. Wet panty hose would have been the limit.

  “Anything of interest to report?” Ron said brightly. “Because I’ve got a carload, a truckload, a trainload of new info. I’m brilliant!” Petru, who had appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, gave him a look.

  “In a minute,” Bree snapped. “I’ve got some leads of my own.”

  Ron raised his eyebrows. “And that’s what put you in a snit? Solid leads on each case? We’re making progress by leaps and bounds.”

  “I am not in a snit,” Bree snapped. She hadn’t been, at least, until the hotly uncomfortable meeting with Abel and Missy. Both were in overprotective mode, demanding to know that Shirley Chavez and her daughter were safe from the machinations of wicked city lawyers. Bree wanted to spit. She had, she hoped, handled herself with aplomb. Both knew about the payoff. Both were suspicious, and rightly so. The spot of light in the gloom wasn’t too bad, though; Payton was bound to land in a peck of trouble with the bar association if Shirley continued to keep her news of her found money to “just a few people, honest to God.” Of course, the downside was that she, too, could be caught in the mess, just by virtue of association. And Abel thought she was party to that kind of crap! How could he!

  “Grrr!” Bree said. She covered her face with her hands. She wanted to cry.

  She looked out her small office window. It overlooked the cemetery, which the rain made even more dank and drab. The Spanish moss dripped sullenly over the grave-stones. The magnolia tree drooped like a petulant wraith. She tossed her car keys on the desk and stretched back in the chair. “Let me bring you up to speed on Lindsey’s case, since that one’s time-sensitive. I saw two witnesses today. First, Madison Bellamy, who gave me a lead to a possible defense. It looks like Lindsey’s involved in drugs, in a very low-key way, admittedly, but at least I’ll have a little bargaining power with the juvenile courts. My talk with Shirley Chavez was even more interesting, although less productive as far as our client is concerned. The Chandlers paid the Chavez family off. Or rather, Payton McAllister the Third, Rat Fink of the Universe, did. I don’t know who’s going to make it to the finals of Sleazy Lawyer of the Year. Payton, or that skunk boss of his. My money’s on Payton. Anyhow, I need you, Ron, to dig up what you can from Lindsey’s pediatrician. If she’s been taking uppers or downers or whatever, my guess is that her doctor would have some kind of record. And you checked her juvenile records?”

  “Nothing,” Ron said. “Not a whisper.”

  “I’m not surprised. Her family’s insanely committed to keeping things out of the public eye.” She looked at him. “You used The Smile, didn’t you? With the police, I mean. It’s even more important with the doctor’s office. It can be a little dicey, getting medical records, and even worse when it’s a juvenile.”

  “I would hope,” Ron said a little stiffly, “that I am always polite and professional when I deal with Company business.”

  “Of course you are!” Bree said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about regarding my smile,” Ron continued. “But I can assure you that what information needs to be gathered will be gathered.” He looked at her with an expression close to seraphic.

  “Terrific.” Bree sighed. “Now for the rest of what I’ve found out. Shirley had some truly valuable information, although I’m not sure yet how it fits into solving Probert’s murder. There have been a string of robberies at the warehouse in back of the Marlowe’s store on Route 80. The thieves are stealing pseudoephedrine, which, as you all probably know, is a primary ingredient in making crystal methamphetamine.”

  “Oh, dear,” Petru said.

  “Oh, dear is right. Chandler seems to have ordered a cover-up. As far as I know, he succeeded.”

  “Why?” Petru said. “Why the cover-up?”

  Bree lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “Who knows? Worst case, he was involved in the meth labs himself.”

  “Surely not,” Ron murmured. “He would hardly have asked for an appeal if that were true.”

  Bree put both hands over her eyes and rubbed hard.

  “Coffee,” Ron said sympathetically. “Good for what ails you. And Lavinia had a cooking frenzy and made us all some shortcake. You want some?”

  “Sure.”

  Ron trotted out to the break room behind Petru, who retreated from the doorway. Bree stared at the cemetery, which depressed her even further. She could see Josiah Pendergast’s headstone from where she sat. The grave beneath it yawned empty, like a horrible grin in the face of the dirt. She drummed her fingers on her desk. The Beastie Boys were on patrol in the front room, thank goodness, posed beneath the Rise of the Cormorant like sphinxes before a tomb. Dog food. She was going to need a lot of dog food.

  “Phone messages!” Ron caroled from the break room. “You might want to call Miz Eastburn back. She’s called twice.”

  Bree picked up the stack of While You Were Out message slips: her mother—no surprise; her sister—no surprise; Cordelia—hmm; Sam Hunter—excellent. She needed to talk to him about Chad Martinelli’s drug record, if any, and shake loose any information he had about the robberies. And there was a call from Payton—Sssst!

  Her duty to her living client came first. She dialed the DA’s office, gave her name, and waited while the strains of “A Horse with No Name” pulsed too loudly in he
r ear. “Why,” she demanded, when Cordelia came on the phone, “does America have to sing through its collective noses? And why do I have to listen to it, anyway? What’s wrong with having a small series of reassuring little beeps when you’re on hold? Like a nicely ticking EKG.”

  “I do feel your pain,” Cordelia said. “Listen, girl. You want to meet me for a drink after work?”

  “You don’t drink,” Bree reminded her. “You have high blood pressure. But sure, I’ll meet you for a drink. Should I be prepared for anything in particular? It’s the Chandler case, I take it.”

  “Mm. Shall I pick you up at your office?”

  The only people who could find 66 Angelus were dead, or living in a body borrowed for the purpose. Neither case fit Cordelia. “Umm, no, that’s not going to work for me today. Why don’t I meet you down at the courthouse?”

  “No, sir.” Cordy’s reply was immediate and firm. “What do you say to Huey’s around six? We’ll run into each other there.”

  Bree caught the undercurrent. A casual meeting, at a popular after-work spot. And there were quiet booths in the back. “Okay. Got it.”

  Cordy dropped the phone into the cradle, which cut Bree off with a thud. Cordy didn’t believe in unnecessary or prolonged farewells.

  “Here we go.” Ron swept in with a tray in his hands. Petru thumped along behind, a thick file under one arm. Ron set the coffee tray with a plate of cookies on her desk.

  “It’s my shortbread,” Lavinia said, peeping in the office door. “Figured you’d need a little sugar boost right about now.” She carried a duster, to maintain the fiction that she wasn’t attending meetings but was the landlady, tidying up. She walked in and set to work on Bree’s sole bookshelf, which was a spindly thing, set under the office’s only window.

  Bree bit into the cookie, which was delicious, and then took a cautious sip of coffee. “You figured right, Lavinia.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I can feel the energy just pouring into me. And our client is innocent. Both our clients. I’m practically positive.” She looked her staff over. “So. What about you guys? Who wants to go first?”

  “I do,” Ron said promptly.

  “Okay. But you’ll wish you’d heard what I’ve got to say first. What have you got?”

  “We’ve got a method of murder,” Ron said with enormous satisfaction. “Are you people ready to applaud like mad? Because I deserve it.” With an air of enormous triumph, he laid a sheet of paper in front of Bree.

  “Tush,” said Petru in disgust. “You have already fallen prey to several of the seven deadly sins in this life, Ronald. You are about to add vanity to the list?”

  “Guys,” Bree said absently, “cool it for a second, okay?” She looked up at Ron, unable to suppress her own grin of triumph. “Hotcha!” she said. “And three cheers for you, Ronald Parchese!”

  “What’s he got there?” Lavinia demanded.

  “A witness statement!” Bree said. She waved it excitedly in the air. “Listen to this:

  “ ‘My name is Helen Ford Nussbaum. I am seventy-two years old. I’ve lived on the corner of Skidaway Road and Parsons for over forty years. It is the white house located at the bend of the elbow, as Skidaway turns south. I was sitting at home watching Frazier on TV at eight thirty on the evening of July the third. It was the episode where . . .’ ” Bree broke off, read a few sentences on, and then said, “Blah, blah, blah. Okay, here’s where it gets real, people. ‘There was someone in my rose garden. A man, with a hat pulled low over his head. Maybe a woman? I don’t know, would a woman do such a thing? He crouched just inside my white picket fence. A car came around the bend, where Skidaway turns south. It was not going too fast. The man behind the fence jumped up and shone a light right at this car’s windshield. It was a bright light, the kind my late husband used to use to jack deer.’ ” Bree shuddered. “Ugh. Anyway. ‘The car spun off the side of the road and into the ravine on the other side. There was a terrible crash. The man jumped over the fence and ran down to the ravine.’ ” She looked up, her face grim. “Oh, my. The ghost of Probert Chandler said he didn’t die in the car. Do you suppose he was whacked over the head? I’ll bet you a basket of beignets he was. Ugh. Ugh. And Mrs. Nussbaum didn’t go outside to check on him, I suppose. Anyway. To continue: ‘My neighbors called the police, I think, because about ten minutes later an ambulance and a police car came. The man in the car was killed, I think.’ ”

  Bree dropped the statement onto her desk. “Why in the name of heaven didn’t the police interview this witness?”

  “This lady hasn’t been outside her house in years,” Ron said. “She’s agoraphobic. The cops did come to the door to get a witness statement, but she locked all her locks—she’s got at least a dozen on her front door and more than that on the back—and yelled at them to go away.”

  Bree frowned. “Is she mentally competent?”

  “Oh, yes. Just scared of the big bad world out there. And who’s to blame her?” Ron’s face grew grave. “You’re not going to like the rest of this. The day after the crash, she started to get threatening phone calls. She took the phone off the hook and ordered locks for the windows.”

  “Would she be able to identity the voice?”

  Ron thought about this. “Probably. But it’s not going to be admissible evidence, Bree. We’re going to have to get this statement verified by someone from the police department if we’re going to use it in the temporal courts, and I don’t know if I can coax her into going into it all over again.”

  Bree didn’t need to ask how he’d gained Helen Nussbaum’s confidence. It was the smile. Everything and everyone melted before that angelic smile. “Wow,” she said. Then again, “Wow. This is brilliant. We’ve got confirmation, guys! Probert Chandler was murdered!”

  “I, too, have had some success with my Internet searches already,” Petru said. He placed his cane crosswise on his knees and placed the file he’d brought carefully on top of it. “The plaintiff told you Marlowe’s had a role in his demise, did he not?”

  “We’re making an assumption,” Bree said carefully. “But I think it’s a safe one. Especially because of the robberies.”

  She sat back in her chair and grinned at them. “Ron? How would you like to go undercover?”

  Ron beamed and said, “Can I wear my fedora?”

  “You can wear a bag over your head for all I care,” Bree said recklessly. “Just get a job at the Marlowe’s, and find out all you can. I want to know what was stolen, when it was stolen, and why there’s been a terrific effort at a cover-up.”

  “No fedora,” Ron said. “But I’ve got a great bowling jacket I can wear with my J.Crew jeans.”

  Petru cleared his throat.

  “And yes, Petru. Now your summary.”

  “If we are to make a list of those connected with Mar lowe’s who wished to see Mr. Probert Chandler consigned as quickly as possible to the afterlife, it will be extensive. So I focused particularly on recent lawsuits, of the bitterer kind, on persons who lived here in Savannah on or about June third, and on men, of course, after I demanded that Ron share the results of his interview with Mrs. Nussbaum with me.” He looked disapproving.

  “How did you decide the depth of the bitterness?” Bree asked.

  “The amount of fear expressed by persons in news articles and media interviews.” Petru shook his head. “La, la. It is quite remarkable, the hatred this man inspired, and equally remarkable that it has been most discreetly handled. Only the larger journals described these things. The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal.”

  “If it doesn’t concern a rocker or a movie star, there’s not a lot of interest from the public,” Ron observed. “So you can forget about a lot of TV or Internet media time. But we can depend on the biggies.”

  “Perhaps. It is better for us. These unnoticed items will allow us to be clever.” Petru took the top sheet from his file and handed it across the desk to Bree.

  “Oh, my,” she said in dismay. “You’ve listed wha
t, eleven names here, Petru. All these people live here in Savannah and have an active motive for murder, so to speak?”

  “I have divided the motives according to the most statistically probable reasons for same,” Petru said. “We will set aside domestic and gang reasons. You would agree that this is not a domestic?”

  Bree thought about it. “We can’t rule it out. But I don’t think Carrie-Alice cares enough about life to murder anyone, even a husband. And even if she did, well, she doesn’t have the sneakiness, if you see what I mean. As for poor Lindsey, she doesn’t seem to have the discipline. This murder was planned, and it was clever. And I’ll bet you anything it was over money.”

  “I agree,” Petru said. “And this light, that is used to terrify the deer, and indeed that terrified Mr. Probert Chandler, it is used by deer hunters, is it not? So I thought it would be an excellent thing if we began by eliminating those who love animals and begin with those that hunt them down. Thus, my preliminary list.”

  Bree wasn’t too sure about the deer hunter angle, but it was as good a place to start as any. Petru could factor in the robbery motives after she had a good talk with Sam Hunter.

  She looked at the names on Petru’s sheet. Most of them small businessmen, it appeared. In four cases, Petru had appended a brief description of the lawsuits. Two of the men had criminal records, one for felony DUI, the other for fraud. “It’s as good a place to start as any. We’ll divide it up. Four for you, Petru, four for you, Ron, and three for me. Since we have an eyewitness that places the murderer at the scene, we’ll begin with alibis. If any of these people were in Topeka on the night in question, for example, we can put him at the bottom of the list.”

  “Now you just give me them three,” Lavinia said firmly. “We want to establish alibis for the night in question, ain’t that so? I got me a great line in telephone interviewing. As a matter of fact, if you two come a-cropper with your interviews, you just leave those folks to me.”