by Mary Stanton
“We have a fair amount in the checking account,” Ron said. “I deposited Mrs. O’Rourke’s check early this morning.”
“It didn’t bounce?”
“Don’t think it will. Bank seemed impressed with the Cayman address.” Ron’s desk sat in the far corner of the living room, and he got up to go over and rummage in the top drawer. “Here we go. I make it a total of forty-five thousand dollars deposited since we opened up three months ago. Our monthly expenses, including payroll, utilities, insurance, and the like, run to about eight thousand.” He shrugged. “Up to you, boss. Actually, I think we’re doing pretty well. And with the opening of the Bay Street office, you’re sure to get more temporal clients.”
Bree’s draw on the Company account had been just to keep up her personal expenses. She wasn’t taking a salary. Her angels were. She took a breath. “Do you all . . . I mean . . . Do you actually need . . .” She stopped, momentarily flummoxed.
“You’re going to cut our paychecks?” Ron said.
“You goin’ to stop payin’ rent?” Lavinia said. “Oh, my. And the social security doesn’t cover all it should.”
“My sister, Rose, depends upon my contribution to the household,” Petru said heavily.
Ron, Petru, and Lavinia stared at her in blank dismay. Sasha yawned and went back to sleep. Miles and Belli didn’t move a muscle. But then, Sasha didn’t get a salary, unless you counted his dog food, and Miles and Belli were guns hired by somebody else. So her clumsy proposal—not that it was a proposal—didn’t affect them one little bit. But it clearly affected her human-styled staff.
“Of course Rose needs your help, Petru,” Bree said hastily. “And of course social security is just this pitiful little amount, Lavinia. I didn’t mean that I can’t pay you. I just wondered if you needed . . .” she trailed off.
“If we spent our off-hours on some other plane of existence?” Ron said. “We don’t.”
“We have lives of our own, you see,” Petru said.
Bree’s head started to throb, and it wasn’t due entirely to lack of sleep the night before.
“Sorry,” Ron said, with very little sympathy. “So your little effort at reducing expenses by slashing payroll is not going to work. Unless you think we’re not worth a paycheck.”
“Of course you are! You’re invaluable.”
“My goodness,” Ron said. “I should hope so. Two successful cases, and we’ve only been in business three months.”
“We have not yet had performance reviews,” Petru reminded Ron. “We do not actually know how invaluable we are. It seems not so much.”
“I think you’re splendid at your job, Petru,” Ron said forcefully.
“And I, you, Ronald.”
When it came to employee-management relations, it was clear that the two angels formed a temporary alliance. Bree wanted to clutch her hair and pull it, but she didn’t. “I absolutely did not mean anything by my question about pay. You are all doing a terrific job. I wish I could pay you tons more. But I can’t. I’m close to broke as it is.”
“And there’ll be the new hire, too,” Ron said thoughtfully. “But any bank in town will give us a line of credit.”
“The new hire?” Bree said. “For the Bay Street office, you mean? I thought we’d split our time between the two.” This time she did clutch her hair. “I can’t afford another employee.”
“You essentially have two separate practices,” Petru said kindly. “It is only practical to set them up that way. We cannot help you in any significant way on the strictly temporal cases.”
“We’ll run an ad in the newspaper for a part-time employee,” Ron said. “And I’ll ask around. Or better yet, I’ll call the temp services place. They always have people looking for permanent employment. I’ll take care of that right away. And I think a part-timer is best, don’t you? We’ll use a messaging service for the phones, at least until we can afford someone full-time over there. And that furniture. Ugh. Strictly awful. I’ve already scouted some much nicer stuff at Second Hand Rows. As soon as you get the lease squared away, I’ll have it sent on over.” He sat at his desk and reached for his phone. “Do you have time to meet with the facilities manager this morning?”
“Sure. Fine. Whatever.” Bree got to her feet. She needed some downtime or she was going to go up like a rocket, right where she stood. “I’m going to go over those NYPD notes Eddie made on Russell O’Rourke’s death. I’ll be in my office.” She took a breath. “And Ron? Hold my calls.”
She shut the door to the small room that held her desk and her uncle’s battered leather chair with a definitiveness just this short of a slam.
Then Sasha scratched imperatively at the outside. She reopened it to let him in and looked out into the living room. Petru had gone into the break room, where he had moved his desk after a spat with Ron. Ron was making phone calls. Lavinia had pulled the vacuum cleaner out and was preparing to do some cleaning. Miles and Belli were gone—which seemed to confirm everybody else’s belief that the current crisis was over.
Sasha hopped up on the leather chair and looked at her with patient, affectionate eyes. Bree stuck one finger up in the air. “These are the problems: One. Monsters in the closet—or behind the office door at least.” She raised her second finger. “Two. Not enough money in the checking account.” And a third. “Three. And of course, the perennial problem of the Pendergasts, not to mention the thing that jumped me last night, which everyone else seems to think is a mere blip on the radar screen.” She ran both hands over her face. “You want to run away with me, Sash? Maybe move to Detroit? Or to the Hundred Acre Wood? We could live under the name of Saunders.”
You take yourself with you wherever you go.
“Oh, put it on a T-shirt,” Bree said crossly. She sat down behind her desk and picked up the O’Rourke file. What she needed was some practical, real-time detective work. And that’s what she was going to do.
She took a deep breath, counted backwards from ten, and settled down to work.
There was really only one question to answer:
If O’Rourke was murdered, who pulled the trigger? Bree took out her yellow pad and a pen and went through the NYPD file carefully and methodically. She wasn’t a great mystery reader, but she had gone through a Sherlock Holmes phase in her teens, and she remembered being struck by a point made over and over again by the first great fictional detective: after you’ve eliminated the impossible, you should focus on the improbable. And the only thing that made sense—as improbable as it seemed—was that Russell O’Rourke had sat in his office chair and stared down the barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun until his wife opened his office door and walked in with a crowd of his friends. He pulled the trigger. The shot took off the top of his head and most of his brains with it.
The time of death was incontrovertible. Despite the horrific damage to his head, his heart had kept beating, and the official time of death occurred twenty-two minutes after the gunshot, as he was on his way to the emergency room.
And Eddie Chin hadn’t been totally candid about how many people had come through the door with Tully and Barrie Fordham. Bree had written the names down as she read through the file, and she looked at them now.
Tully herself
Barrie Fordham
Fig O’Rourke
Buck Parsall
Harriet Parsall
Rutger VanHoughton
One of these five people—six, if you included Tully herself—must have set off the gun as the crowd had entered the room.
But how? O’Rourke just sat there, waiting for the gun to fire and take off his head? He hadn’t been tied up.
Had Russell O’Rourke been drugged?
The toxology reports were as thorough as the autopsy had been: he’d had a Scotch or two several hours before his death—and there were traces of a mild antidepressant that had been prescribed for him some months before—but there were no sedatives, no narcotics, nothing. No bruising consistent with a blow that would have made
him unconscious, either.
So either he just sat there with a shotgun pointed at his head or—what?
Somebody was hidden in the room with another gun on him? Maybe the .22? And the six people who’d burst in hadn’t noticed?
Bree didn’t buy that for a minute.
All six people were conspiring to cover up the murder?
Bree didn’t buy that, either. Why had Tully hired her if not to bring the murderer to justice?
Bree sat back with a sigh. “Well, Watson. It’s a pretty little problem.”
Sasha yawned, resettled himself, and went back to sleep.
Bree leaned forward and buzzed Ron on the phone intercom. “Can you track down Eddie Chin for me?”
“You bet.”
“See if he’ll let me buy him dinner. At B. Matthew’s, about seven?”
“Will do. And I made an appointment for us with the facilities manager at the Bay Street office. Three o’clock this afternoon.”
“Us?”
“We need to make some decorating decisions.”
“We do?”
“We do.”
“Okay. And thank you.”
“And you had a couple of phone calls.”
Bree waited a long moment, and then said, “Well?”
“Just seeing if you’re ready to rejoin the universe. One from a Mr. Cullen Jameson. And two from Mrs. O’Rourke.”
“Get Tully for me, please. I’ll call Jameson later.”
“And your mother called.”
Bree suppressed a groan.
“And your sister.”
“I’ll call them back after lunch.”
“Then hold for Mrs. O’Rourke. I’ll put her on line two.”
Bree sat with the receiver at her ear. To anyone on the outside looking in, it would seem as though she had a real law firm, with real clients and with professional, competent, normal employees. If she shut her eyes, she’d believe it herself.
“Bree?”
The strident, demanding voice was unmistakable. “Hello, Tully.”
“Where in the world did you get that assistant?”
“Ron, you mean?”
“He has such a pleasant voice, Bree. Not pleasant, that’s not the right word. It’s rather lyrical.”
“Angelic,” Bree suggested dryly.
“Well, yes! You must bring him by sometime. Haddad would be enchanted.”
“Ron’s quite an asset,” Bree agreed. “Is there something urgent, Tully?”
“They’re all headed into town,” she said flatly. “The suspects. Buck and Harriet will be coming in on the mid-morning flight today. They’re booked at the Forsyth.”
Bree wondered if Buck Parsall’s brothers were footing the bill. The Forsyth was Savannah’s only five-star hotel.
“And Cullen should have been in touch with you by now. He’s at the Mulberry Inn. I told them all you’re handling the new partnership agreements for the Shakespeare Players and I wanted them to review it with you.”
“But I’m not.”
“As of now you are. I gave you the contract copies when we last met.”
They were in her briefcase. She hadn’t read them over. She needed to read them over right now.
“Rutger’s lawyers drew up those preliminary drafts and I need somebody representing my interests. It might as well be you.”
“Rutger’s lawyers?”
“Rutger’s a sweetie, but he’s investing a fair bit in this thing, and he wants his pound of flesh.”
“But what does Cullen Jameson have to do with the Shakespeare Players?”
“I’m calling it reparations.” Bree’s silence must have communicated her bewilderment because Tully said impatiently, “I’m giving him a small share in the company. The Parsalls, too. Never mind why. But it ought to be crystal clear that I’ve given you a superb cover to find out if any of those three were the ones who killed my husband.”
But Cullen Jameson was the only suspect who hadn’t been present at the scene. Bree set her teeth, but managed to ask politely, “Have you set up the same cover story with the Parsalls? About the contract?”
“They’re a pair of fools,” Tully said dismissively. “I’m sure you can figure something out. And Harriet’s dying to invest. We neeed to be consistent, here, don’t you think?”
“A fool didn’t commit this murder, Tully. If it was murder. I’ve just been reviewing the case evidence, and it seems so unlikely.”
“I believe my husband,” Tully said. “And I’m hiring you to believe him, too.”
She dropped the phone into the cradle with a crash.
Bree listened to the dial tone for a moment and then hung up the receiver. Sasha raised his head and looked at her alertly.
“I just need a reality check, here. There is a logical, real-time solution to this case, right? Russell either killed himself or somebody else did it for him. Somebody human, I mean.” Bree stood up and stretched. She was fidgety from sitting so long. “There’s another thing to consider. Maybe Russell’s visitations are a product of Tully’s imagination, not from beyond—wherever beyond is—at all. What do you think, Sash?”
“He thinks we should work with what we’ve got. So do I,” Ron said as he came into the room. “Mr. O’Rourke’s death was either murder or suicide. Only temporal involved. Anything else is another department altogether, and nothing to do with us. Are you ready to go look at the Bay Street office space?”
Bree looked at her watch. “Is it three o’clock already? I’ve missed lunch.”
“You did,” Ron said, sympathetically. “So I picked up something at the Front Street deli. Lieutenant Chin won’t be able to meet you until nine o’clock tonight, but you won’t be eating dinner until late, late, late in any event.”
Bree looked at him suspiciously. “How come?”
“Because Antonia’s auditioning for Tony Haddad tonight at six and you absolutely have to be there and so do I.”
“Oh, dear,” Bree said guiltily, “I should have called her back.”
“Well, I called her back on your behalf. We owe her moral support. I promised we’d be there. Both of us. And I’ve set up an interview for our part-time help, right after you talk with the building manager. So you won’t have time to eat before six. This chicken salad sandwich will have to do.”
He dangled a paper bag with the familiar logo in front of her.
There was something blessedly normal about a chicken salad sandwich from the Front Street deli. It’d be her third or fourth one this week. She didn’t care.
Bree ate all of it and was grateful.
Thirteen
The mirror cracked from side to side—
“The curse is come upon me,” cried
The Lady of Shalott.
—Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott”
“Billingsley,” Bree said to the only applicant who had shown up for the position of part-time secretary to Beaufort & Company, Bay Street address. “Are you related to Danica?”
“My brother’s girl,” Emerald Billingsley said. “Yes.” She was in her midforties and comfortably built. Her hands were work-roughened, but the nails were carefully tended. She held her purse in her lap. It was patent leather and, like her hands, worn, but well cared for. She wore a navy blue suit that strained a little at the seams, and a carefully ironed white blouse. “I’ll be direct with you. I’ve been working down to the Hilton on Front Street. In the kitchen. Dani, she put me on to this online school? For secretarial work. I graduated last month.”
She had a lovely speaking voice, a rich contralto. Bree liked it a lot. Clients would like it a lot, too.
They were in the newly leased premises. The office looked perfectly ordinary in the afternoon light streaming in the window. The ceiling was eleven feet high. The room was twenty by twenty, which was spacious enough to put in a divider and make two work areas, one for the support staff and one for Bree herself. Nothing gruesome lurked underfoot except the indoor-outdoor carpeting, which was
a glum gray color. The whole place smelled like fresh paint. The horrors of the night before might never have been.
Bree sat in the desk chair. Mrs. Billingsley sat on the straight-backed chair placed at the side of the desk. Ron stood at the window. Mrs. Billingsley hadn’t registered his presence at all (and neither had the building manager who had asked Bree to sign the lease), which meant he was in angel mode. Mrs. Billingsley had acknowledged Sasha with a timid nod and a tentative pat, though.
The building manager had been willing to reduce the rent a little, to account for the removal of the existing office furniture that so offended Ron. Bree had flung a brief prayer to the Gods of Future Clients and signed a six-month lease.
“Dani said I should give you my particulars,” Mrs. Billingsley said. She worked a manila envelope out of the purse and handed it to Bree, who opened it up. It contained a short résumé and a printed document from the Tucson College of Secretarial Science certifying that Emerald Billingsley was adept at word processing, bookkeeping, and appointment scheduling.
“I know this is a law firm,” Emerald said, “and there are a lot of these specialized words, and all. But I’m a pretty good reader and I learn pretty quick. Quickly,” she amended. “They had a grammar portion of this course I took online.”
“We haven’t established office hours yet,” Bree said. “But it will probably be three mornings a week to start. You knew this was part-time work?”
“Can I afford to take part-time on, you mean? I ain’t—haven’t quit the Hilton yet, Miss Beaufort. Not yet. Dani, she thinks I need to work into the secretarial position by starting low on the ladder. No offense meant.”
“No offense taken,” Bree said cheerfully. “The pay’s pretty awful. I’m sorry about that. We’ll be able to afford more if things pick up.
“And we would want the secretary to start tomorrow morning. The new office furniture is coming, and the phones will be hooked up. We’ll need someone here for that. I do have a small staff at the other office, but they aren’t going to be available to help out here on any kind of routine basis.”
