Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

Carrie-Alice’s son—and Lindsey’s brother. Well, Bree thought. Well, well.

  “And ‘sort of’ sit down with me? What’s that supposed to mean? Why?” Bree turned to face him, wondering for the hundredth time what she’d seen in those sculpted cheekbones and athlete’s body. Lust, that’s what it’d been, which just went to show you that lust was rarely a good thing. Behind those good looks was the soul of a sewer rat. “You aren’t going to try to warn me off an investigation into Probert’s death, are you? The way you tried to keep me out of Ben Skinner’s murder investigation?”

  Payton’s electric blue eyes widened. Their color had charmed Bree, until she’d learned that the deep violet blue owed everything to his contact lenses. “You’re looking into Probert’s death?” His grip on her arm tightened. “His death was an accident, pure and simple.”

  Bree cast a swift glance around the crowd. They were surrounded by well-dressed, happy playgoers. At least three of her distant relatives were within hollering distance. She dropped her voice to an angry, ominous whisper. “If you don’t let go of my arm right this minute, I will toss you out the front door and splat onto Magnolia Street.”

  Payton backed off. Bree calmed down. She had no real control over the fierce, whirlwind power that was occasionally at her command, but Payton didn’t know that. The last time he’d provoked her, he’d ended up chin over teakettle on a barroom floor. She knew he wouldn’t want to chance that again.

  “So what’s up with my client?” she said briskly.

  “We’d just like to be kept current.” Payton rubbed the back of his neck. “And John. That’s Mr. Stubblefield, of course. John wants to be sure that any residual feelings over . . . you know . . .”

  “Over what?”

  “Over my dumping you. He wants to be sure that you’re not keeping anything back. Out of spite.” He chuckled. “John and I know how women are.”

  The back of her neck prickled. A slight wind stirred her hair. A tall, silvery shape slid past the corner of her eye. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was. Gabriel Striker, private eye and nosy angel who seemed to show up every time she threatened to lose her temper. She kept her head with an effort, since Gabriel’s presence meant everyone in the foyer was at risk if she lost it. “You couldn’t possibly be implying that I’d withhold information critical to the well-being of my client.”

  Payton shifted from one foot to the other. “I suppose not.”

  “We’ll plan on sending you a weekly progress report.”

  His shoulders sagged in relief. “Really? That’s great. You promise?”

  “Don’t push it, Payton. You’ll get the reports.”

  The houselights dimmed, and then brightened.

  “There’s the signal for the interval. You’ll want to be going back to your seat.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Give John my sincere wishes for the state of his health.”

  Payton looked momentarily puzzled, but turned obediently and disappeared back into the theater.

  Bree waited until the foyer was empty, and then went to the corner opposite the box office, where Gabriel leaned negligently against the wall. “So here you are,” she said.

  He nodded soberly. “Here I am.”

  Gabriel was tall, with the heavily muscled body of a boxer. He moved like a dancer, lightly and with precision. His eyes were the color of the Savannah River at dawn. “Interesting new case.”

  “Mr. Chandler’s, I suppose you mean, since he’s the one that’s dead,” Bree said. “Yes, isn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to go through the pleadings yet, but it looks a lot”—she searched for the right word—“graver than the Skinner file.”

  “Armand is a little concerned.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. We’d like to talk it over with you.”

  “Well, sure,” Bree said. “Would Monday morning be okay?”

  “Now,” Gabriel said.

  Bree looked at her watch. Nine thirty, and she had to get up early to get to Plessey.

  “It can’t wait?”

  He shook his head. “The Pendergast graves are empty.”

  Seven

  Can these bones live?

  —Ezekiel 37:3

  Armand Cianquino lived six miles out of town in a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old cotton plantation named Melrose. It had been converted to apartments aimed at those people who wanted elegance, seclusion, and the beauty of the Savannah River. The plantation house was a classic example of architecture in the wealthy Old South: two stories high, with wraparound upper and lower verandahs that completely surrounded the building. The main building was well over eight thousand square feet. A wealthy banker had rescued the property from rot, mildew, and decay in the late 1970s and converted each floor of the main house into three spacious apartments. The outlying buildings—former slave quarters and the original kitchen—had been converted into little cottages.

  Surrounded by lush gardens of azaleas, roses, and hydrangeas, the sprawling white mansion brooded on the riverbank. Savannah had the reputation of being the most haunted city in America, and Melrose was believed to have its fair share of “haints.” Marie-Claire was the cast-off mistress of a late-eighteenth-century river pirate. Like Virginia Woolf, she filled her dress pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river. The other ghost, a son of the original builder, Augustine Melrose, was hanged in 1805 by an outraged populace after a murderous attack on the wife of a fellow planter.

  Bree, who had reason enough to believe in the existence of the ghosts of the newly dead, was not as convinced about the presence of either the wailing Marie-Claire or Augustine Melrose’s vicious offspring. But she wasn’t anxious to run into either one of them. As she drove up the long, semicircular driveway to the front door, the late night mists of a Georgia autumn evening drifted over the lawns and twined around the boles of the cottonwood trees. Spanish moss trailed from live oaks like seaweed floating in an ocean of earthbound clouds. Bree surveyed the Gothic scene somewhat glumly. Then she got out of the car and walked up the shallow front steps to the large basswood front door. It was open. Bree walked into the foyer. The floor was wide-planked pine, polished to a high shine. The air was fragrant with the scent of freesia. A classic Sheraton lowboy stood against the back wall. The large vase on it held fresh flowers, as always. A wide, graceful staircase rose from the center of the foyer up to the second story.

  Armand Cianquino’s apartment was to her immediate right. She tapped on the door. Gabe Striker opened it, and stepped back to let her in.

  “He’s in the library.”

  Bree nodded and followed Gabriel across the living room floor. The paneled door into the library was made from an exotic wood. Rosewood, Bree thought, or perhaps a lacquered cedar. Artfully shaped spinning spheres were carved into the panel, the same shapes that formed the wrought-iron fence surrounding Bree’s office at 66 Angelus Street.

  Gabriel knocked twice, opened the door, and Bree followed him into the familiar room.

  The library was in stark contrast to the spare elegance of Armand Cianquino’s living room. A leaded window looked out over the gardens. All four walls were covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The shelves were crammed with books of all kinds: thick ones, thin ones, old ones bound in dark, crumbling leather, and new ones in shiny covers. Bree glanced at the shelves that had held the professor’s set of the hundred-volume Corpus Juris Ultima, that body of celestial case law that had first alerted her to the fact that her old law school professor was not quite what he seemed. The books were still there; the set he had sent to the Beaufort & Company offices must be a copy.

  A long table occupied the middle of the library. It was loaded with files, more books, a couple of lamps, and a bundle of old material covering most of a long sword. A wire cage sat smack in the middle of the table. The cage door was open, and a large, owl-like bird sat on the perch inside. His beady black eyes regarded Bree with a somewhat baleful air.

  “Hello, Archie,” she said.

  �
��About time, about time, about time,” Archie said.

  “Hello, Bree.” Armand Cianquino rolled his wheelchair into the light. He was a slender man, wholly Chinese, despite his Italianate name. Bree had known him forever, it seemed. She remembered his visits to the house at Plessey when she was small. And, of course, she remembered him from her years at law school. Highly respected (and much feared), he occupied the Religion in Law chair for most of his tenure. Retired from teaching just after Bree had taken her bar exams, he still gave an occasional lecture, wrote an article or two for the American Bar Journal, and consulted on international case law, especially those cases that involved religious freedoms. In the short time from retirement to this, he had changed a great deal. His once black hair was now totally white. And something—he had never told Bree exactly what—had put this vital, challenging man into a wheelchair.

  He rolled forward into the light, and Bree was dismayed to see that in the few short weeks since she had seen him last, he had aged further still. She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder. “I hope you’re keeping well, Professor.”

  He grimaced slightly and moved his shoulder away from her touch, not in distaste, but in discomfort. “Sit down, Bree.”

  She drew a carved wooden chair a little way from the table and perched on the edge. Gabriel stood just out of the circle of lamplight, arms folded across his chest.

  She spoke into the silence. “I’m glad to see you. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk since we settled the Skinner case.”

  “Successfully handled,” Cianquino said. There was a hint of approval in his eyes.

  “Thank you.” Bree took a breath. “But it would have been a lot smoother going if I’d been better prepared. I’m at a bit of a disadvantage here, Professor. If I could just—”

  “Curiosity killed the cat, the cat, the cat,” Archie squawked. He snapped his beak greedily. Professor Cianquino held one frail hand up, and the bird subsided into cranky mutterings. “If you could just?” he prompted.

  “Well, interview my client properly, for one.” Bree plunged on, not sure how far she would get before the professor reminded her of what she’d had to accept at the beginning of this new—and unwelcome—career: she could only learn the ins and outs of this job through experience. He and the other angels in her company were there to guide and protect—not inform.

  “You had several conversations with Mr. Skinner, I believe.”

  “Very spotty,” Bree said. “It was like being at the end of a tunnel. I think I solved that case through sheer dumb luck. And I’m running into the same problem with the ghost of Probert Chandler. I can barely understand what he’s asking me to do.” She hesitated, pretty sure that she didn’t want to know the answer to her next question. “Is there a . . . a place where I can sit down and talk to him properly?”

  Archie shrieked, as if he’d been burned.

  “There is,” the professor said dryly, “but it’s unlikely that you would return to continue his defense.”

  “You mean I can get there but I can’t get back?”

  “Not precisely.” The professor thought a moment, his eyes shuttered. “Probert Chandler’s keepers would be delighted to keep you with him. You would be an enormous asset.”

  She recalled the black flames and the taloned claws that tore at Probert Chandler’s shade and shuddered. “Couldn’t Gabriel and maybe Petru and Ron go with me? Kind of like bailiffs? Or security guards?”

  “No.” He lifted his finger to forestall her next demand. “We’re not keeping things from you out of choice,” he said testily. “Do you remember how you learned to swim?”

  “I . . . huh?” Bree blushed. “Sorry. That was rude. Yes, I surely do. But I don’t see . . .” She stopped. The professor lifted his eyebrow. “You’d like me to say? Well, Mamma took me into the water and floated around with me. She held me up until I was able to figure out the strokes.”

  “There is no one to walk into the water to keep you afloat until you learn the strokes.” He made an impatient movement. “Don’t you see? You do not. Very well. If there was no one to teach you to swim, how would you learn?”

  “I’d wade into the water and paddle around until I figured it out, I suppose.”

  “And if I were on the shore, shouting instructions?”

  “I’d be listening!” Bree said indignantly.

  “You would be concentrating on me and not on the task at hand. And, what’s more, you might take chances in the expectation that I would jump in and pull you out if you started to drown. You are a prudent and resourceful woman, Bree. And you like to win. You only go ahead when you are reasonably sure of a victory. I cannot prepare you for what lies ahead. It’s your decisions, your choices, and your free will that push you forward here. Those decisions must be unhampered by any considerations other than the success of the case and your own survival.”

  The only possible reply to this was a polite variant of “That sucks,” so Bree kept her mouth shut, partly out of respect, but mostly because she’d get something along the lines of “Tough!” as a response, and that’d get her dander up for sure.

  “Can I quit?” she said suddenly. “I mean, what if I don’t want to do this anymore?”

  “There are those that would be delighted if you quit,” Cianquino said equably.

  Bree thought about the pronoun: “that” as opposed to “who.” “That” applied to nonhumans. To things, not people. She thought of the yellow mist that chased her, and what terrifying thing it might conceal. “I see,” she said, although she didn’t, not quite. “So. Getting a sit-down interview with Probert Chandler is a no-go.”

  “Your investigative skills are considerable,” Cianquino said with his characteristic obliqueness. “I have every confidence that you can answer the questions revolving around his death, and that you can prepare a spirited and truthful defense. He will get in touch with you when he is able to do so.”

  “How tough is it? For him to talk to me, I mean? We’re dealing with a legal system here, and he seems to have the usual kind of rights. If he’s got the right to representation, how come he hasn’t got the right to use it?”

  “You remember your logic classes and the argument against argumentum in circulo?”

  Bree squinched her face up. She’d been a hardworking student, but not an inspired one. “That’s one in Aristotle’s list of flaws in logical argument, and it has something to do with the argument going around in circles.”

  Gabriel muffled a laugh. Archie flapped his wings, stretched to his full height on his perch, and shrieked, “La-ment-able!”

  “More or less. Mr. Chandler’s awareness of his own mistakes in life keeps him from giving full disclosure to you.”

  “You mean, that’s the static interference I get when I talk to these guys? Their sins, so to speak? Sort of a visual pollution?” She rubbed the back of her neck in frustration. “The only thing he said that could possibly be a clue is that his death was connected somehow with his business. Marlowe’s. The static interfered with everything else.”

  “Static. That’s as apt an interpretation as any of what prevents the dead from speaking to us clearly. It is the sense of sin carried within us. All men—and I use the term advisedly, Bree, since it applies to women, too—are error-filled. It is a perquisite of being human. And if he was not human and free of mankind’s sins of greater and lesser degree, he wouldn’t be in need of a lawyer like yourself.”

  “‘Perquisite,’” Bree said. “That’s an odd word to choose.”

  “A benefit and a boon, human failings,” Cianquino said. “As well as a curse and a damnation. As you might say yourself, dear Bree: ‘You betcha!’ ”

  Gabe spoke from the shadows behind the desk, a let’s-get-on-with-it tone to his voice. “It’s close to midnight, Armand. Something urgent has come up. It’s why we came to see you.”

  “And we’re nearing All Hallows Eve,” Cianquino agreed. “Yes. To the business at hand. You are aware, Bree, that there are those
who want to”—he paused and thought for a moment—“disrupt your activities.” He smiled. “We are aware of all that happens, you know.”

  “Yes!” Bree said indignantly. “I am. And it’s hardly fair, is it? Somebody on the defendant’s side is violating some kind of canon of ethics, aren’t they? At least, I presume there is a canon of ethics in celestial matters. I mean, where better? So I’d like to file a complaint against the harassment.”

  “Do so, by all means,” the professor encouraged. “Petru should be able to draw up the necessary Summons and Complaint. But I doubt it will have much effect.”

  “Those Pendergasts,” Lavinia said from the shadows. Bree jumped a little. She hadn’t realized Lavinia was in the room. She looked into the corner of the library. Gabriel’s tall, silvery form spun next to a short, lavender-tinted whirl of light. “Never did take much account of the law when they was alive. Even less so when they died off.”

  “Ah, yes. Josiah.” The lamplight dimmed, as if a hand had passed over the flame. Cianquino frowned.

  “The Pendergasts are an old Savannah family,” Bree said. “I was in prep school with one of them. Jennifer.”

  “Who married that no-good son of Mr. Benjamin Skinner,” Lavinia said tartly. “Mm-hm. Josiah was her great-granddaddy. And a real no-good, for certain. Not much out of the ordinary for the times, though, since there were a lot of no-goods walkin’ the streets of Savannah back then.” Lavinia’s shade coalesced into her temporal form and she moved into the light. “My first sight of him, I’ll not forget, not for all the time left in this world and the next. I was a-playing in the Nile with my cousins.”

  “The Nile?” Bree said.

  “The part that’s in Africa,” the professor answered.

  “He took the head off of N’tange with one sweep of his sword, and put the rest of us in chains.” Lavinia’s voice trailed on the air like soft dark silk. “And I spent the rest of my earthly days near this very place. Melrose. Melrose.” She fell silent. “Not too long after I come here, Josiah sold me to Melrose’s oldest boy. I didn’t see too much of the sunlight for the longest time.” She shut her eyes and hummed softly, all the while rocking gently on her feet. “There now,” she said to herself, “there now.”