by Mary Stanton
“Allard says you can help us,” Jillian repeated. “We need money. Your aunt’s rich. She’s going to marry White. She owes us.”
“Prosper’s dead, Jillian,” Chambers said gently. “He was killed yesterday, in front of the Frazier. You saw it on the news.”
Jillian’s eyes widened. “We were there.”
“Yes, dear, we were there.”
Bree looked down at her feet. She was overwhelmed with a sudden, fierce pity. Chambers touched her arm. “The doctor gave her something for the shock. You know. White getting stabbed right in front of us like that. I think it might have been too much of whatever it was.”
Jillian’s behavior didn’t look like a drug overdose to Bree—but who knew?
“Jillian, dear. Would you mind sitting down again for a moment? I have something to ask Ms. Winston-Beaufort, here.”
Jillian’s eyes narrowed. She drew her teeth back. “Is she another one of your sluts, Allard?”
“Jillian. Please.” He took her arm and guided her back to the chair. She sat down, feet together, hands in her lap, and glared fiercely at Bree. Chambers ignored the curious glances from the people around them. He drew Bree apart from the crowd, all the while keeping an eye on his wife. He blurted, “I think the police are going to arrest her.”
“For White’s murder.” Bree didn’t make it a question.
“We need your help, Ms. Winston-Beaufort. I’ve checked around. You’ve been involved in the successful resolution of four murders. Can you help us? Can you take on her case if she’s accused of this crime? I promise I’ll drop the lawsuit against White’s estate if you do.”
Bree sighed. She looked at the desperate figure huddled in the corner. “Okay,” she said finally. “Just to be clear, here. You’re representing yourself, pro se.”
“That’s correct.” He smiled wanly. “My Latin’s still up to snuff. That means ‘for self’?”
“Yes. And you will drop the suit against White’s estate if I agree to represent Jillian against any charges brought by the state of Georgia in the matter of Prosper White’s murder.” Which, Bree thought grimly, was bound to happen sooner or later.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll ask my assistant to draw up a stipulation of discontinuance. Celia Carmichael will sign it. You will sign it. That should take care of the matter.”
“Thank you.” He moved, as if to grab her hands. Instead he said again, “Thank you.”
Bree wanted to ask if Jillian had killed White. She didn’t. A successful defense was sometimes based on what the defense didn’t know. “I’ll need to talk with her. When did she take this drug?”
“A couple of hours ago. She wouldn’t eat anything this morning. If I got something into her stomach, I think it would help.”
“We can do that.” Bree took him by the arm, and guided him back to his wife. She smiled at Jillian. “I missed lunch, Dr. Chambers, and I’m famished. There’s a wonderful restaurant in the market very close by. Savannah Seafood Company. Famous for its crab cakes. May I take you and your husband there?”
“We both like crab cakes,” Chambers said heartily. “And I know the place you’re speaking of. It’s got quite a reputation. She’ll eat something there. I’m sure of it.”
“Good. Why don’t I meet you both there in about half an hour? I have a couple of matters to clear up here.”
She waited until Chambers had steered his wife into the hallway and into the elevators. Then she found her way to Cordy Blackburn’s office. Cordy had a new assistant, a good-looking guy who couldn’t have been more than a year out of community college. Bree darted a quick, surreptitious look at the nameplate on his desk. “Hey, Gavin,” she said. “Bree Winston-Beaufort.” She reached across his desk and gave his hand a friendly squeeze. “Nice to see you again. Cordy’s not in?”
Gavin rose to his feet, clearly trying to remember where he had seen her before. “No, ma’am.”
“Darn. She asked me to check on the arrest warrants for the Prosper White murder. Has the warrant for Jillian Chambers been issued yet?”
“Ah.” He glanced nervously at his computer. Bree smiled, trying for the exact expression Ron, Petru, and Lavinia had when they wanted to be particularly reassuring. If she didn’t—like the Shadow—have the power to blur men’s minds (or make them forget they’d been shoved out of an elevator), at least she might be equipped with the angelic equivalent of a good dose of Prozac.
“I don’t think we’ve met before, Ms. Winston-Beaufort.” He set his jaw. “And I’m sorry, but information relating to ongoing cases is confidential.”
So she could scratch that particular angelic advantage, too. “Of course it is. Then if you would, please set up a meeting time for me.”
“Ms. Blackburn’s schedule is pretty packed. Winston-Beaufort, did you say? Oh. Sure.” He scowled, much like a threatening puppy. “Ms. Blackburn’s been looking for you.”
“And here I am. What about tomorrow, early. I can meet her for breakfast at Huey’s at seven, if she’d like.”
“She’s big on breakfast meetings,” Gavin said gloomily. “I mean, like, early. Half the time I gotta be there, too.” He tapped at his keyboard. “Nope, seven A.M. is not a good time for her. She can squeeze you in at seven P.M. Here in her office. You sure this can’t wait until sometime next week? I’ve missed dinner three nights in a row already.”
“Seven tomorrow night is fine. Thank you. Put a note in the file—I’ll bring some dinner with me.”
“Just so you know, we hate pizza.”
She smiled at him. “Got it.”
Bree went out of the Municipal Building and across the street to the market with a feeling that events were unfolding at a satisfactory clip. She texted EB:
CHMBRS V WHITE DROPPED. S. CHMBRS RETAINED US RE WHITE MRDR. TELL MCCALLEN TO CK W. DA RE DRP CHRGS CISSY.
Savannah Seafood Company sat at the very edge of the downtown market. Like almost all of the buildings in historic Savannah, it had been remodeled over and over again during the past two hundred years. Unlike all but a few of the old parts of the city, the building had always been a venue for seafood. In the early eighteenth century, it’d been a packing plant for cod, whitefish, and other food drawn from the Atlantic. It was still a market for fresh fish and shrimp, but the front half of the building had been converted to an excellent restaurant. The narrow-planked pine floors were slightly sticky with the city’s omnipresent humidity. A row of mullioned windows on the west and north ends of the room let in the daylight. The tables were well spaced so that you didn’t feel you were joining the table next to you for lunch. It was a good place for an interview with her new clients.
The Chamberses were seated at a back table. Jillian sat against the wall. Allard sat at her right. Bree took the chair directly across from her, so she could look into her face when they talked.
“We ordered the chowder,” Allard said.
“Good choice.” Bree looked up at the waitress who hovered, menu in hand. “I’ll have the chowder, too. And sourdough bread, if you would. Thank you.” She settled herself back in the chair. “I’d like to know everything about your association with Prosper White. From the time he was a graduate student in your antiquities course thirty years ago to the moment he died in front of you at the Frazier Museum.”
Twenty
“I think Jillian Chambers killed Prosper White.” Bree’s voice was high with strain. She sat at the head of the conference table. Petru was at her right, a thick pile of printouts in front of him. Ron fussed with the tea tray. Lavinia herself was in her usual spot at the far end, running a currycomb gently along Sasha’s back.
Bree was wound as tightly as a violin string. Jillian Chambers had been arrested for the murder of Prosper White shortly after her lunch at the Savannah Seafood Company. Bree had spent the remainder of the afternoon with a distraught Allard and an unsympathetic prosecutor.
It was dark outside. A quarter moon rode in the sky above the live oak sheltering
Josiah Pendergast’s grave. Shadows pooled among the graves in the All-Murderers Cemetery.
Petru shook his head gloomily. “A bad business.”
“A very bad business,” Bree agreed.
“Your auntie’s cleared,” Lavinia said softly.
“Yes, thank God. They dropped the charges early this afternoon.”
Petru nodded. “The spatter patterns on your aunt’s coat were mostly tomato. They showed she was farther away from White’s body than either Charles Martin or Alicia Kennedy. The fingerprints on the knife were not your aunt’s. There were two sets only. The housekeeper’s and Jillian Chambers’s. And Alicia Kennedy, after refusing a lie detector test, recanted her statement. This Lewis McCallen is very good at his job.”
Bree wondered why she was bothering to debrief when her angels seemed to know everything anyway. She knew that the immediate access of the Company to facts revealed during the investigation was limited to the here and now, but it was still unsettling.
“The charge is premeditated murder,” she said.
“Because of the attempt to set your auntie up as the killer? By using a knife from her kitchen?” Lavinia shook her head. “Oh my, oh my.”
“Academics are notoriously underpaid,” Ron observed. “It probably didn’t occur to Mrs. Chambers that your aunt hadn’t touched a kitchen utensil in twenty years. I’m sure she thought that Cissy’s fingerprints would be on the knife.”
“Aunt Cissy cooks,” Bree said. She was a little nettled at the assumption that her aunt was an overprivileged member of the upper classes. Although it was true. “But you’re right. If Jillian took the knife and if she took the knife with the idea of implicating Cissy in the murder, she may have just assumed Cissy’s prints were on it. But who knows?” She sighed. “The poor woman’s nuttier than a fruitcake, to put a well-known clinical diagnosis on it.”
“You are thinking a plea by reason of unsound mind, perhaps?” Petru asked.
Bree got up and stared out the window. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her if she did it. Allard thinks she did. I just . . .” She realized that she was clenching her fists so tightly that her fingernails drew blood from her palms.
“It is the mark of a fine advocate, to believe in her client’s innocence,” Petru said.
“Thanks, I guess.” She sat down again. “Okay. Let’s go over what we have here. The Chamberses lost everything when they lost their positions at the university. The Prosecution’s got one heck of a motive.”
“You want to start with the hard part,” Lavinia interrupted quietly. “Best get it over with.”
“Leave me alone!” Bree snapped. She took a deep breath. “Just let me back into it, okay? I’ll get to it.” She willed herself calm. Then, with another deep breath, she began with the lunchtime interview with Allard Chambers and his wife.
“Up until six months ago, Allard Chambers was a professor of archeology with an emphasis in the field of Roman antiquities. His PhD thesis topic concerned artifacts from the court of the empress Theodora and her husband, Justinian. Justinian was the first Christian emperor in Rome. Theodora urged him to convert. She was a remarkable woman. Very beautiful, according to contemporary accounts, and very smart. She started life as a courtesan, with lavish tastes, and she brought those tastes to the throne. She commissioned a number of Christian artifacts; jeweled crosses were a particular favorite. Thirty years ago, Chambers got a grant from his university to conduct a dig for those artifacts in Istanbul during the summer term. At the time of the dig, Chambers taught a seminar for graduate students; there were five or six in the class—Allard doesn’t remember how many. Three accompanied him on the dig—Prosper White; Schofield Martin, Bullet Martin’s younger brother; and Terrance Kennedy, who would later father a would-be archeologist, Alicia.
“There was a fourth grad student with them, a volunteer looking for a short vacation from law school.
“Jillian also went with them, of course. She and Allard had married in graduate school. Did I tell you guys how beautiful she must have been then? You can see the remnants of the beauty in her now. Although it’s been distorted—almost destroyed—by her illness.” Bree paused, and worried her lower lip with her teeth. “She’s suffered from bipolar disorder for years. She was treated through the university, but Chambers claims that when he lost his position, he lost his benefits and his pension, too. Their current medical insurance doesn’t offer much coverage for psychiatric disorders.”
“Bree, dear,” Lavinia’s voice was soft but insistent.
“I’m getting there!” Bree shouted. “Just let me get there in my own time.” She scrubbed her face with both hands. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” She breathed deeply and forced herself to go on.
“The dig was successful as far as relics went. They recovered some pottery, a few earrings, and part of a statue of Christ. And the Cross of Justinian. It wasn’t so successful from the people side. The first signs of Jillian’s illness began to show up. She had periods of extreme lows—sleeping too much, not eating—followed by weeks of extreme highs. She lost her inhibitions during the highs and had affairs with both Martin and White. Late one night, after a lot of wine, I guess, a quarrel developed between Martin and White, over the provenance of the Cross, Allard says, although it’s easy to guess that jealousy was behind it, too. Anyhow, Chambers ordered Schofield Martin to take all of the stuff they’d dug up to the hold of the Indies Queen for safekeeping. Martin went onboard during a storm and was swept overboard. The Cross disappeared. Martin’s death put that summer’s dig to an end. After the Turkish police investigated, everybody went home.
“Except for the student on sabbatical from law school. She disappeared, too.” Bree looked at her friends around the table. She was crying now. The tears fell from her cheeks onto the table. “You know who it was, because Allard told me this afternoon and you knew, you knew as soon as he said it.
“It was Leah.
“My mother. Now I think she might be involved in Schofield Martin’s murder.”
There was a soft click of dismay from Lavinia. Petru cleared his throat with a heavy annoying hack. Ron poured himself a cup of tea but didn’t drink it.
“You are upset,” Petru said.
“Petru’s a charter member of the School of the Blindingly Obvious,” Ron said. “If there’s something we can do for you, just say so.”
“Spit it out child,” Lavinia said. “You’ll feel better.”
Bree mopped her eyes with the back of her hands. “I’m tougher than this. I didn’t even know Leah. She died when I was born. The only mother I’ve ever known is Francesca, and she’s terrific at it.”
“Your own blood . . .” Lavinia said. “Natural that you’d have feelings about it.”
“It’s what I don’t know that’s scaring me, Lavinia. What did you call it, Ron? The School of the Blindingly Obvious? Try this on. The Cross may be the key to a gate to Hell. Martin had it. He’s dead. He died in the kind of storm at sea that’s given me nightmares ever since I was little. Leah was on the dig. She’s in the nightmares I have about the sea. She had the Cross right here in Savannah. It’s obvious she knew what it was, isn’t it? Did she kill Martin for it? No matter how justified she may have been, no matter how important the key is to the Sphere—am I going to plead Schofield Martin’s case only to discover Leah is a murderer?”
The silence in the room was total.
Lavinia was the first to move. She got up, wrapped her woolly sweater more tightly around her frail body, and tugged at Bree. “Let’s go see.”
She led Bree to the fireplace, where The Rise of the Cormorant sat over the mantel. The lamps in the room were on, but the painting outshone them like a dull, throbbing bruise. Lavinia rose to her tiptoes, to get nearer to the painting, and held her palm out.
The quiet, violet glow that characterized her as Matriel, the Angel of the Beasts of the Field, the Birds of the Sky, the Fish of the Ocean, spread over the ship and the souls crying out for help in the water. The
light obscured the scene, then, like a cloud, moved on.
“Look there,” Lavinia said.
The pale-eyed dark-haired woman had moved out from the rigging. She was stretched over the side of the ship, both hands reaching down.
“She’s helpin’, not hurtin’.” Lavinia patted Bree’s back with a soothing, circular motion. “You don’t have to be afraid of what you’re going to find out. She was a good person. A strong person. If you have faith in that, then things are going to come out for the best.”
Bree stared at the painting, willing the figure to look up.
“This painting doesn’t lie. It’s a camera, like. Just shows what is. Your Leah is not a murderer, Bree. No advocate has ever killed, except in defense.”
“Got it.” Bree mopped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It was a shock, is all. To find out she was connected with this. Schofield Martin was murdered while stowing the Cross on the ship. Leah disappeared from the dig, and the Cross was in her possession before she died here in Savannah. Did she kill Schofield Martin thirty years ago?”
“So you got yourself two cases where family runs smack up against your duties as an advocate.”
Bree’s chuckle was a little watery. “Well, one’s disposed of, anyhow. Cissy’s safe.”
“I think Leah’s safe, too. You’re going to find out, aren’t you? No matter what?”
She didn’t answer.
Lavinia drew Bree down to sit beside her on the leather couch. Her hands were light, almost insubstantial. “You was probably feeling mighty strong. Maybe a little bit proud of what it is you do here? Like you could take on the mortal world and a little bit beyond that, too? Natural enough, those feelings. It’s good sometimes to remember that pride goeth before a fall. Balance,” she added thoughtfully. “It’s always about finding your feet in the right place. Anyhow, you set your grief and worry aside and get to the bottom of this case. We’re going to go back in the conference room and set up the investigation like we always do.”