Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

  “I don’t know.” Bree stood in the theater aisle, thinking hard. She didn’t want to make the drive back up to Cliff’s Edge Academy, but she didn’t see how she could avoid it. What she wanted to know from Lindsey, Lindsey didn’t want to tell her. If she called, the kid could just hang up. And it was harder to lie when your interrogator was looking you straight in the eye. “What time is it?”

  “Just quarter to one.”

  “I’m going to the office. Then . . . I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “We’ll probably end up at Huey’s tonight, if you want to drop by late.”

  But Bree, halfway up the aisle, didn’t have time to reply.

  There wasn’t anyone at home at 66 Angelus Street. Bree let herself into a darkened office. Outside, the wind was rising, and a slow roll of storm clouds headed into Savannah from the west. She fed the three dogs, and then, in response to Belli’s imperative scratch at the back door in the kitchen, let them all out into the cemetery. Sasha relieved himself against the magnolia tree, then sniffed busily around the fence surrounding the graves. Miles and Belli went about their business in a more dignified way, then settled themselves down between the Pendergast graves. Tomb guardians, Bree thought.

  She settled herself at her desk and began a methodical search through the Chandler file. A neatly lettered note from Ron was first.

  I talked to Luis Chavez. To the best of his recollection, there have been three robberies at the warehouse. The first was in early June, the evening before PB’s death. The other two occurred at ten-day intervals after that.

  Then, from Petru:

  Cell phone calls, day of client’s demise:

  Mr. Mel Jensen 6:00 a.m.

  Dr. John Lindquist 6:07 a.m.

  John Stubblefield 6:10 a.m.

  Jensen, the store manager, must have discovered the robbery when he came on duty at six in the morning and called his boss. Then Chandler marshaled the troops, Lindquist and Stubblefield first. A long list of calls followed those. Bree skimmed through the phone calls—the man must have had the phone permanently implanted in his ear, from the number of them Petru listed. She stopped at the calls that must have occurred at the Miner’s Club in the early evening. An incoming call from Chad Martinelli. An outgoing call to Peter Martinelli, his father. Another call from Probert to Chad, and then to Lindsey.

  Bree sat back. So Chad called Probert first. Why? To make threats? She shook her head, puzzled. The kid didn’t make sense to her. Not yet.

  She moved on through the file, the witness statements, the accident report, the summary of her talks with the rest of the Chandler family. She read through the autopsy report again, noting, as she did, that Probert Chandler’s blood type was OO.

  That stopped her.

  Bree was realistic enough to know that as a corporate tax lawyer—the area of law she’d specialized in before she’d been dragged into this loony defense work—the only real talent she had was a memory for minutiae. And something about that blood type bothered her.

  She still had the lab report on Carrie-Alice’s blood type crumpled in her pocket. She smoothed it out.

  Carrie-Alice was OO, too.

  And Lindsey . . .

  Bree thumbed through the girl’s medical history. There it was. AB-.

  “Whoa,” Bree said aloud. Lindsey wasn’t Probert’s daughter. She couldn’t be. There was no way two double-O parents could have an AB- child. Bree remembered enough Mendel to know that.

  Bree lifted her head and stared out the window, thinking hard, wondering why this bit of information seemed so critical. She reached for the phone. Carrie-Alice. Lindsey’s mother was the place to start for answers.

  A shout of thunder shook the house. Outside, the wind picked up with a shriek. Miles and Belli sat as if carved in stone. Dead leaves and dust whirled around them. Bree got to her feet—Sasha, at least, shouldn’t be out if it was going to rain.

  The swamplike mire that covered Josiah’s grave opened up, slowly, a dread eclipse of movement across the ground. Miles whirled and faced the opening. Belli backed up slightly, head lowered, lips pulled back over those fearsome teeth, eyes glowing red.

  A strange, furnace glow sprang to eerie life in the depths of the open grave. And then, with the sly, stealthy movement of a creeping snake, a path of filthy green light crept over the lip of the hole and onto the ground.

  Bree discovered she’d backed up against the desk. A figure jerked horribly up the path. The shape was manlike, but distorted, as if she saw it through the shield of a scum-filled pond. It seemed to be made of flesh and bone, but a pallid, dead white flesh that crawled with corpse-mold. The man, Bree saw, or what had once been a man, raised his arms in a dreadful summons.

  “Bree!”

  Sasha appeared out of nowhere, tail thrashing furiously over his back, barking as if to raise the dead.

  Which had been raised already.

  Miles and Belli leaped forward. The ground caved under their feet. They fell, soundlessly, and disappeared from sight.

  Sasha jumped backwards, avoiding the pit by a hairs-breadth. Josiah—who else could it be but Josiah?—lifted his head and stared directly at Bree. His eyes were a hideous, human blue in the ruins of his face. He grinned, horribly. Then he whirled and kicked. His boot caught Sasha under the chin. The dog screamed and flew backwards and hit the magnolia tree with a shattering thump.

  Bree raced to the back door and flung it open. The wind smacked into her like a train. She staggered, got to her feet, and pushed herself against the roiling air like a swimmer coming out of the depths of the sea. Sasha shook himself, rolled to his feet, and raced to Bree’s side.

  She had nothing. No weapons. No way to fight him. Josiah shuffled over the dank and rotting grass. The stench of rotting flesh forced itself down her throat. Bree fought the fear that engulfed her, and sent up a wild, wordless prayer for the power that was her Company’s gift to her and her kin.

  Josiah’s hands reached out to grab Bree. Sasha leaped full at him. Josiah fell back, flat onto the green miasma of the Bridge from the grave, and tumbled back, back, back to the ashy glow of the depths.

  The grave closed in over itself, but not before Belli and Miles jumped out.

  Bree was alone in the cemetery with her dogs. A gobbet of decayed flesh clung to her hands and the smell of the dead was in her hair.

  “What I want to know,” she said furiously into the phone, “is where was everybody?”

  Professor Cianquino let a moment of silence pass before he responded. “The rules are fairly clear,” he said, finally.

  “Not to me, they aren’t.” Bree’s hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel. She made a conscious effort to relax them. She was headed up to Cliff’s Edge to confront Lindsey. Belli and Miles sat behind her in the back. Sasha sprawled in the passenger seat next to her.

  “Like meets like.”

  “Like meets like?” Bree wasn’t scared anymore. But as often happened when she’d been frightened out of a year’s growth, she was angry. And that interfered with the ability to think clearly. So she said, as calmly as she could, “Does this mean I’m the temporal equivalent of a corpse?”

  “Very good,” Professor Cianquino said. His approval was a rare thing.

  “No extras, then,” she said. “I get it. The Pendergasts don’t have any extra help, and neither do I.”

  “Precisely.”

  “So it’s mano a mano?” She scrabbled around for her long-forgotten Latin and said, “Or corpus a corpus?”

  “You would not,” her professor said, “want it any other way. If you were able to call on the Company, they, in turn, would be able to call on . . .” He paused. “You would not like that. Not at all.”

  Bree rolled her eyes. Says you, she thought, but aloud she said, “Thank you. I guess.”

  “How is the case progressing?”

  “Slowly. I don’t have any real leads. And it’s insane to try to solve this murder without any real communicati
on from my client.”

  “But he has communicated with you,” he said. “The paperweight, the keys, the blood test, and the photograph.

  “The blood test has already led you to an essential key to the case, dear Bree. Listen to what else your client has to say.”

  She made it to Cliff’s Edge Academy in under two hours. The big wrought-iron gates to the school were closed. The fence surrounding the property was as firmly planted in the ground as ever. Bree drove past the grounds at a leisurely pace, as if looking for an address or admiring the Spanish moss that dropped from the live oak trees that dotted the landscape like so many sentinels.

  “The thing is,” she said aloud, to the attentive dogs, “I want to avoid Miss Violet Henry like the plague. The only hope I’ve got of getting Lindsey to Tell All is if I convince her no one knows for sure about the robberies but me—and as her attorney, I’m bound to keep my mouth shut about stuff that can put her in jail.”

  Sasha put his paw on her knee and yawned.

  “As for you two”—Bree glanced in the rearview mirror, where Belli and Miles sat as immobile as a pair of temple dogs guarding a Chinese emperor’s palace—“I just hope you’ll come runnin’ if I end up needing some help with nosy security guards. Ah. There we are.”

  There was a gap in the fence. More properly, there was a stile in the fence, which horses with the local hunt could jump over. There was a security camera perched on one of the fence posts. The camera would capture anything over five feet tall. Bree pulled up on the grass and parked the car. She got out, then released Miles and Belli. “Heel,” she said to Belli, and pointed to her right. Belli stood at her right shoulder. If Bree bent over, she was concealed behind the big dog’s shoulder. “Miles,” she ordered, “heel!” She pointed to her left, and Miles took his position on her other side. She hitched her purse over her shoulder and took a deep breath.

  “Up and over!” Bree commanded. She took off for the stile at a dead run, the two dogs running silently on either side. They scrambled over the stile in unison. Bree fell to the grass, rolled over, and lay there for a moment, to catch her breath. She got to her feet and ordered the two dogs back over the stile. They jumped back onto the grass verge by the road with ease, and stood looking at her doubtfully. From the safety of the front seat, Sasha cocked his head and looked on with interest.

  “Stay,” Bree said. All three of the dogs dropped to a stay position, and Bree took off across the lawn, toward the sprawling mass of the school building. With luck, she’d have twenty minutes or so before the guards who went out to check on the dogs thought to check on the owner of the car.

  She found Lindsey in the dining hall. Cliff’s Edge treated its students well. The room was large, sunny, and carpeted. The round tables, each seating eight, were draped in white cloth. Lindsey was slouched at a table in the corner. She was alone, picking listlessly at a hamburger. Bree threaded her way through the tables, nodding with confidence at the several teachers seated with the students. She reached Lindsey unchallenged, and paused and looked her over. Lindsey’s color was good. Her skin was more pink and less gray. Her hair was washed. The circles under her eyes were less pronounced. The girl looked up at Bree in mild surprise, quickly replaced by her usual sullen, hostile sneer.

  “I need to talk to you,” Bree said without preamble. “And I don’t want to do it here.”

  “There’s grass stains on your skirt,” Lindsey said.

  “Yeah, well.” Bree grinned. “My entry was a little unorthodox. Nobody knows I’m here.”

  “My brother didn’t send you?”

  “No. I came to talk to you. Come outside with me, will you?” She held her hand out, and added gently, “Please. It’s about your father.”

  Lindsey shrugged. Then she shoved the hamburger aside and got to her feet. She followed Bree through the French doors to the terrace fronting the lawn outside.

  “Let’s sit here, shall we?” Bree pointed to a stone bench set under one of the ubiquitous live oaks. Lindsey perched on the very end, then drew her knees up to her chin and stared at Bree.

  “Do you have a dollar?”

  Lindsey blinked at her.

  “I’ve quit my job as your brother’s lawyer. I’m signing on with you. But I can’t represent you unless you give me an official retainer.”

  Bree knew she desperately needed to gain the girl’s confidence.

  “I think you got a raw deal, Lindsey. I want to help you.”

  A peculiar smile flickered across her face. She shrugged—that shrug!—dug into the pocket of her jeans, and handed Bree a dollar.

  “Good.” Bree folded the dollar and tucked it away in her suit coat. Then she plunged her hand into her purse and brought out her set of car keys. She held them loosely in her hand, so that Lindsey couldn’t see anything but the keys to the front and back doors of the town house. “Keys to the pharmacy and the warehouse at Marlowe’s,” she said gravely.

  Lindsey sat up, her eyes wide.

  “Your dad found out about the robberies.”

  “My dad?”

  “Easy as pie, I suppose. Coming into the store, late at night, with a set of these.” She jiggled the keys and they chimed faintly in the thick air.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She hunched over and rubbed her arms, as if she were cold.

  “I’m on your side,” Bree said. “I’m not turning any of this over to the police. I just need to know who else was in on it with you.”

  Lindsey looked frantically from side to side. “Nobody,” she said. “Just fuck off, will you? Just fuck off.”

  Bree grasped Lindsey’s hands and held them, hard. “Don’t lie to me, Lindsey. If you lie to me, I can’t help you at all.”

  “Leave me alone!” Lindsey screamed suddenly.

  “This boyfriend of yours, Chad Martinelli . . .”

  Lindsey sucked her teeth.

  “I’m looking at him for some bad stuff, Lindsey. If he helped you with this, it’s possible he was responsible for your dad’s death. Possible that he killed poor Mrs. Chavez, too.”

  “Killed my dad?” Lindsey said. “Somebody killed my dad?”

  “Miss Winston-Beaufort. Stop right there!”

  Bree sighed. Less than twenty minutes. The security team was sharper than she’d thought. She stood up and waited for Miss Henry and the two burly guards trundling after her. “I’m going to see what I can do to fix this, Lindsey. I’m going to have to talk to Chad. You have any idea where he might be today?”

  Violet Henry plowed to a heaving dusty halt in front of them, reminding Bree of the Road Runner in the cartoons. She stifled the impulse to say “beep beep.”

  “How did you get in here?” the headmistress demanded. She was furious. A very Southern Lady sort of furious. Her voice was low. Her smile was fixed. There wasn’t a hair out of place. But she’d buttoned her suit jacket up starting with the wrong button, and a smear of gravy was on her chin. Clearly, she’d been interrupted while eating. Behind her, the two guards put their hands on their gun belts and looked menacing.

  “She’s my lawyer,” Lindsey piped up. “She’s my lawyer and I asked her here.” She folded her arms defiantly. “So just fuck off, okay?”

  Bree bit her lip. “I’m sure Lindsey’s sorry for the language, Miss Henry. But I can’t help but agree with the sentiment.”

  Lindsey rolled her eyes. “Talk to Madison, Bree. Okay? She’ll tell you Chad didn’t have a thing to do with it.” She swallowed hard. “She’s my best friend. She knows I didn’t have anything to do with it, either. I know you won’t believe me. But everybody believes her.”

  “Get out, Miss Beaufort,” Miss Henry said between her teeth. “Right now.”

  So Bree got.

  “She’s not here,” Andrea Bellamy said, when Bree got her on the cell phone twenty minutes later. “She didn’t come straight home. She volunteers at the hospital on Wednesdays. She’s a candy striper.”

  “Until what time?”

/>   “Four thirty. Then she heads out to the Y to swim. She picks up Hartley first.”

  Bree sat in the driver’s seat of her car. She’d made it back to Savannah around six, having been evicted from the Cliff’s Edge premises in record time. Sasha yawned beside her. Behind her, Belli and Miles sat upright, staring at the street. She’d postponed the promise of the walk to blank looks from all three of them. She said, now, to Andrea, “Hartley Williams? The judge’s daughter?” Cordy’d backed off the whole Sophie Chavez mess with amazing speed, due, Bree had suspected, to a couple of discreet phone calls from that same eminent gentleman.

  “Is her father a judge?” Andrea said, impressed. “You’re kidding. I thought he ran a business of some kind. You know what? I’m a liar. It’s her stepfather who runs the business. A judge. What do you know?”

  “Does she live with her mother or her father?”

  “Oh, her mom. I’ve met her. I can’t believe Dorcas dumped a judge. ’Course, from what I hear, she’s dumping this new husband, too.”

  Bree made an effort to control her impatience. “Do you have the address?”

  “Sure. Hang on.” Andrea put the handset down with a clatter, and then picked it up again. “It’s a housing development out by the Oglethorpe Mall. Twenty-two Trail View. I’ve been there once. It’s right off the main entrance. There’s this pair of stone monuments with the name carved in them: Valley View. Trail View’s the first right as you come in the front.”

  She’d rather talk to Madison in a venue less public than either the hospital or the Y. “May I have Madison’s cell phone number? I’d like to meet her at Hartley’s, if I could.”

  Andrea rattled it off. Bree scribbled it down, promised to let Hartley know her father was welcome at the Bellamy residence anytime, and phoned Madison. She went straight to voice mail. “It’s important,” she said. “I need to talk to you about Lindsey and the robberies at the warehouse. If you and Hartley know anything at all about this, Madison, I really need to talk to you. Lindsey needs your help.”