Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

  Bree looked at her new companions with some doubt. “Newfoundland, partly. I’m not sure about the other part. Maybe more mastiff, like Sash.”

  Both dogs stood fifty inches at the shoulder. Their chests were massive and their paws tipped with sharp white claws. Belli opened her mouth and grinned at them. She had a mouthful of sharp white teeth. She seemed to have more of them than the usual canine allotment. Bree was opposed to the flaunting of aggressive, macho behavior on principle, but she was glad to suspend her principles in this instance. These guys made her feel safe.

  “Bella. And that’s Mee-lace, you said?” Antonia patted the other guardian nervously on the head.

  “It’s spelled Miles. M-I-L-E-S. And her name’s Belli, with an i.”

  “Belli. Kind of a nice name, I guess. Italian?”

  “In a way.” For the first and only time in her life, Bree was glad that Tonia had flunked Latin.

  “But Bree, they can’t stay here.”

  “I’ll take them to the office. They’ll be there most of the time.” She eyed her sister. “You usually like dogs. Do they really make you that nervous?”

  “They’re just so . . . still. You know. They don’t move around a lot. They just sit and stare at you.”

  The dogs had taken positions on either side of the fireplace. There they sat, upright, their watchful eyes following back and forth as Antonia paced around the living room. Sasha pranced around with her, his tail wagging cheerfully. He’d greeted the arrival of his two compatriots with the air of a general reprimanding the late arrival of the troops. Occasionally, he directed their movements with a snap of his jaws and a preemptory bark. Mostly he looked at them with a proprietary air and left them alone. They didn’t eat, or if they did, they hadn’t, yet. Maybe they ate once a month, like pythons. They didn’t like to be petted or brushed, although they accepted both from Bree with an air of indifference.

  And they didn’t leave her side.

  “You found them wandering along the side of the road at some rest stop?” Antonia said again, as if Bree hadn’t already lied to her twice about the appearance of the dogs. Although it was only partly a lie. They’d been waiting for her in the parking lot of the Saturn Diner that morning after their brief, reassuring appearance at the bonfire and they had slept beside her bed at night. “I can’t believe you just picked them up and brought them back with you. How do you know they don’t belong to somebody?”

  “They’d been abandoned,” Bree said, shortly. “Don’t keep going on about it, Tonia. I figured it’d be a good idea for them to keep an eye on things at the office.”

  “Sash keeps an eye on things just fine.”

  “He’s not tough,” Bree said, ignoring Sasha’s reproachful look. “These guys are warriors. Ignore them. Pretend they’re a pair of porcelain Fu dogs. You know, those Chinese temple dogs. Come on, Tonia. Sit down and tell me all about last night’s show. Everything go well?”

  Her sister perched on the arm of the couch, and then got up, unable to stop staring at the dogs staring at her. “Let’s go into the kitchen. They can stay in here, can’t they?”

  Bree looked at Sasha.

  They stand guard at the mirror.

  “I think as long as they know I’m within shouting distance, they’ll be fine in here. And I brought you back some barbecue and some of Adelina’s pecan pie. I’ll heat some dinner up for you. You should eat before you go back to the theater.”

  Antonia trailed her into the kitchen and pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter. Bree bustled about, putting the barbecue into the microwave and serving the pie up on a small plate. Her sister watched her with the same grave attention as the dogs. “You’re, like, totally cheerful.”

  “Am I?”

  “I mean, totally. I can’t believe the difference in you.”

  “I wasn’t that much of a gloomy Gus, was I?”

  Antonia poked at the pie with her fork. “Not gloomy, no. But really anxious.” She swallowed a bite with an air of pleased surprise. “Yum. Nobody makes pecan pie like Adelina.”

  “I keep telling her she should quit housekeeping at Plessey and go into the pie business. She and General would make a fortune.”

  “Hm. And she said, ‘G’wan with you’ and kept on baking, I bet. So, anything particular happen at home? Other than you picking up a pair of elephants to bring back with you?”

  The elephants. Thank God for the elephants. “Not really,” Bree said evasively. “Mamma looks well. So does Daddy. And I got a chance to interview John Allen Lindquist.”

  “Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  “Lindsey’s uncle. I’d hoped he’d give me some help for her defense, but no soap.”

  “You’re still thinking about taking on that case?”

  “I have taken on that case. Hers and her father’s, both.”

  “Her father’s?” Antonia’s eyebrows went up. “I thought he was dead.”

  “He is dead. But there’s some question about how he died.” Bree folded a dish towel into neat quarters and leaned against the kitchen counter. “I can’t help thinking the two things are linked somehow—Lindsey’s behavior and her father’s death.”

  Antonia shrugged. “Whatever. You seem to be attracting a lot of corpses, sister.”

  Bree shivered. “Yes. Well. I’m going to put Ron and Petru on an intense search for some background on the guy, that’s for sure. It’s going to be a busy week.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Anything else what?”

  “Anything else happen at home I ought to know about.”

  Bree flushed.

  “Mamma called after you left this morning.”

  Bree bit her lip.

  “Said you ran into Abel Trask.”

  “So I did.”

  “Said he was moving here to Savannah?”

  “Just for a bit. He’s taking over the Seaton Stud until his sister-in-law decides what to do with the business.”

  “Hm.”

  “Hm, what?” Bree demanded testily.

  “Just putting that together with you being so cheerful, sister. That’s all.”

  Bree bit her thumbnail. “Look. I can take care of myself.”

  Antonia got up and put her plate in the sink. “You’ve said that from the day I was born. And you know what? You mostly can. But I’m not so sure about this time. Mamma isn’t either.”

  There were times when as much as Bree loved her little sister, she wanted to smack her silly. This was one of those times. Antonia took a quick look at her expression, rolled her eyes, and grabbed her tote bag from its place by the back door. “I’m off to the job. I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”

  Bree thought of Miles and Belli, guarding the mirror. “I won’t have to, will I? Thank goodness.”

  But she said it to the air; Antonia was gone.

  The evening passed quietly; the night was still and the nightmares held at bay by the stern bodies of the dogs at her bedroom door. Her cheery mood held well into the next morning, when she arrived at the office so early, even Lavinia wasn’t downstairs yet. Sasha went directly into the little kitchen, while Miles and Belli stationed themselves beneath the painting that had heralded so much grief: the Rise of the Cormorant. Bree stared at the sinking ship, the hands grasping at air from the depths of the roiling sea, and dared to hope, a little. The scene revealed in that picture had haunted her childhood and brought her gasping awake from dreams of drowning too many nights to count. “And if that bird flies out of there to get me, you two’ll bite him, won’t you?”

  Miles blinked his solemn yellow eyes.

  Bree stared at the painting, unafraid, or pretty nearly. There was one face on that ship, one figure, she actually longed to see. The pale-eyed, dark-haired woman who had given birth to her, only to die a few days later, leaving her to Francesca and Royal.

  The dogs growled. A slow, subterranean rumble like an aural earthquake. Bree whirled. Her secretary and her paralegal stood at the foyer.


  “Oh, my God,” Ron said.

  “Do not move, dear Bree,” Petru said. He raised his cane as if it were a weapon. “I will fend them off. And where is Sasha?”

  “He’s in the break room,” Bree said cheerfully. “I thought you’d know these two. Miles and Belli.”

  “ ‘War’ and her ‘Soldier’ brother.” Trust Petru to know his Latin. “And where have they come from?”

  Ron edged into the room. “Oh, dear,” he said fretfully. “I don’t know, but I can guess. Armand sent for them, didn’t he?”

  “You don’t know them?” Bree said in surprise. “You haven’t met them before?”

  “Something has happened,” Petru said glumly. “Something not so good, I trust.”

  “It’s all right,” Bree said to the dogs. “Hush now, hush.” The rumbling died away, as if an avalanche had rolled out of hearing. “Come into my office, then, you two.” She didn’t wait to accompany them, but forged ahead, and sat down behind her desk. Petru thumped in and took the sole chair. Ron perched on the edge of her desk. “Friday night, I went out to Melrose. Lavinia called on Striker to tell him that . . .” Bree paused and bit her lower lip.

  “Somebody’s gotten over the Bridge,” Ron guessed. “But who?”

  “Josiah, I guess,” Bree said lightly. “Anyhow, somebody, Archie, I think, suggested these guys as protection, and here they are.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m a little puzzled that you two don’t know about it.”

  “Well, we had no idea,” Ron snapped. “Honestly. You should know, Bree, that this entire organization is run on a need-to-know basis. It’s something I’ve complained about for centuries.”

  “This is a distressing turn of events,” Petru said glumly. “There is a hierarchy, to be sure. We are all aware of that. But I would have been glad to have been in the noose.”

  “The loop, Petru, the loop,” Ron said crossly. “I’m not surprised nobody told you, but I’m somewhat flabbergasted that no one thought fit to tell me.”

  “Now you both know. And let’s not borrow trouble until it shows up at the door,” Bree said briskly. “We’ve got a case to investigate. Two of them. And I, for one, feel much safer going on now that those two are in the picture.” She tapped her pen on her desktop. “We’ve got a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it in. Cordelia Eastburn is pushing Lindsey’s case as fast as she can. I haven’t seen you since Friday afternoon, but you should know that Lindsey’s absolutely refused to allocute to the robbery and Cordy’s headed for trial like a flipping locomotive. So you, Petru, need to dig up as much as you can on Probert, particularly anyone who had a grudge against him. Use the Internet and make me a list. And Ron? We need a complete reinvestigation of the accident out on Skidaway Road. And I want both of you to read over the pleadings for Chandler’s request for a retrial. I need a summary of all the cases cited in the original indictment.”

  “This summary is a paralegal’s job, perhaps,” Petru said. “Ronald is not equipped to render an opinion on the pleadings.”

  “I want all of us to read them,” Bree said firmly. “One of us may pick up something the others have missed. I’m including myself in this, too. Okay? Are we all set with the assignments? We’ll have a progress report tomorrow morning about this time.”

  “I do not see the connection between this young girl’s case and our client,” Petru said. “But I will search diligently for such, dear Bree.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be searching, too. I’m going to talk to Miss Madison Bellamy.” She smiled at the looks of in-comprehension on the faces of her colleagues. “Nobody knows a girl like her very best friend. And if Lindsey doesn’t want to dig herself out of the hole she’s in, let’s hope Madison does.”

  Petru and Ron went off on their separate tasks. Bree recalled enough about juvenile law to know that everyone’s interests would be better served if she went through Madison’s parents first, so she called Madison’s mother to set up an appointment.

  “She’s at school, of course, until just after three this afternoon,” Andrea Bellamy said over the phone. “Why don’t I ask her to leave school and come home right now?” She sounded anxious, and her tone held the sort of exasperation most parents reserve for their teenagers.

  “I’ll be happy to come by later this afternoon,” Bree offered. “There’s no need to interrupt classes.”

  “Classes,” Andrea Bellamy snorted. “It’s her senior year and she’s already been accepted at Pepperdine. Maddy’s body may be in class but the rest of her is in la la land. The school’s done a pretty good job of keeping the TV people off school grounds, but they’re waiting like a pack of vultures the minute the bell rings to let the kids out. All this attention isn’t doing anybody any good.”

  Bree, realizing that Andrea Bellamy wasn’t going to come up for air anytime soon, interrupted firmly. “Then I’ll see you and Madison at three thirty this afternoon?”

  “Sure! I’ll make you some latte. And maybe you can give me a clue about when all of this is going to die down.”

  “Soon, I hope.” If I can keep the miserable Lindsey from more grandstanding.

  Bree rang off with relief. Madison had looked like a smart, sensible kid in the surveillance videotape. Maybe, just maybe, she was going to get somewhere with Lindsey’s defense. In the meantime, she wanted a clear idea of Probert Chandler’s movements on the last night of his life. There was just time enough to get a handle on that, before she was due out at the Bellamys’.

  She’d begin with where Probert Chandler spent his final hours as a temporal: the Miner’s Club.

  The Miner’s Club, a bastion of the Savannah Old Guard, was on Abercorn facing the Colonial Park Cemetery Square. James W. Oglethorpe had left a variety of legacies behind him, but the best was the layout of Historic Savannah herself. He’d divided the village into twenty-four town squares. Originally, each square was created as a center for some good civic purpose, like a church, a school, a park, or a government house. Each of the squares was surrounded by homes.

  In the three hundred-some years of her history, Savannah had been burned to the ground, ravaged by hurricanes, and bombed by pirates. A hodgepodge of architectural styles was intrinsic to the city’s heritage. Queen Anne, Georgian, Victorian, Greek Revival, Spanish, and Art Deco homes existed peaceably cheek by jowl. The Miner’s Club occupied a large, New Orleans- type building that had housed, successively, an expatriate French duke, a whorehouse, an orphanage, and a flour tycoon. Bree drove the half mile down Liberty and parked on Abercorn, not far from the old mansion itself. The exterior was blue-green stucco. Scarlet bougainvillea wound its way across the wrought-iron porches and balconies and the last of the hydrangea bloomed like puff-balls against the wrought-iron fence.

  Bree pushed open the heavy mahogany door and walked into a small foyer, covered in a thick blue wall-to-wall carpet. A second mahogany door led directly off the foyer. It was partly open. Bree heard the clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation. She pushed the door open all the way and walked into a wood-paneled bar and dining room.

  The ceilings were low. A clutch of small round tables sat scattered next to the row of windows that overlooked the street. There were perhaps half a dozen people seated there, mostly men, mostly dressed in suits. Bree waited by the long polished bar until the man behind it finished polishing the doubles glass he held in his hand and put it on the shelf. “Montel,” she said, “how have you been?”

  He turned and cocked his head a little. “Miss Beaufort,” he said, as if satisfied he’d identified the right species of bird. He came toward her, folding his bar towel into a neat square. “I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you how much we miss the judge.”

  “The judge” was Bree’s great-uncle Franklin. His death, and the subsequent inheritance of his caseload, was the reason Bree had the practice on Angelus Street. She’d loved him, but been unnerved by what she’d learned about him after his death. She still wasn’t wildly happy about his legacy.
/>   “He did enjoy coming here after sitting on the bench all day,” she said.

  “May I get you something to drink?” Montel was a grave, slender black man who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, a well-known, well-liked fixture at the club.

  Bree perched on the nearest bar stool. “Just a club soda, if you would.”

  Montel took a slim Tom Collins glass from the shelf and filled it with ice, lemon, and club soda. Bree accepted it with thanks and sipped it gravely. She let the silence run on a bit. Then she said, “Uncle Franklin never talked much about Mr. Chandler. I understand he was a member here, too?”

  Montel nodded thoughtfully.

  “You recall he had that tragic accident just after he left here, the last night of his life.”

  “Some four months ago, that would be.” Montel nodded. “Mm-hm. I do remember that.”

  “Do you remember who he was with?”

  “Now, the po-lice asked me that,” Montel said cautiously. “And he met with a number of folks, as I recall. Didn’t really sit down with nobody, though. Sat right where you are right now.”

  Bree looked down at the bar stool. She hoped Probert wouldn’t choose this moment to make an appearance.

  “Had him more than a few, he did.”

  “Drinks?” Bree said.

  “Drinks. Manhattans, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hm,” Bree said. “His usual?”

  “Not like the man at all. No, sir. Strictly a draft beer, if he was here during the week, and on one or another great occasion, a champagne cocktail. But that was about the extent of it. Until that night.”

  “Did he seem upset at all?”

  “That he did,” Montel said. “That he did.”

  “Did he say anything to you? Perhaps mention why he was upset?”

  A peculiar look chased itself across Montel’s face. “Well, Mr. Chandler was from up North,” he said. “He wouldn’t be of a mind to talk to me about that, now, would he? Or the members, either.” Bree remembered what her mother had said about Probert not being “local.”