Angel's Advocate

by Stanton, Mary

  Then she punched Hartley’s address into her GPS. The trip time was less than twenty minutes. “So, you guys, we’ve got time for the walk after all.”

  Belli placed her huge head on the backrest and slobbered gratefully in Bree’s ear.

  By the time she reached the turnoff for Valley View—which had neither a valley nor a view of anything but the back end of the Oglethorpe Mall, Bree was running a little late, and the weather had worsened. It was going to storm again and storm hard.

  Madison’s little red Miata was already in the driveway. The housing development was new, and the landscaping was sparse. There seemed to be three different styles of houses. Twenty-two Trail View was at the more modest end of the scale. It was two stories, with a small front porch and an attached garage. A For Sale sign sat on the lawn. Bree parked at the curb, just past the mailbox, and got out of the car. The front door opened and Madison Bellamy waved at her. Bree waved back. Madison wore a bright pink T-shirt. The Savannah Sweethearts Social Club logo was picked out in sequins and the lowering sun struck metallic flashes off her chest. Bree squinted against the fractioned light; there was somebody behind Madison. Some guy, she thought. Hartley’s stepfather, perhaps.

  She reached into the rear seat for her briefcase, shoving aside Belli’s huge forepaws to get it. As she backed out of the car, the briefcase awkwardly positioned under one arm, she collided with the mailbox.

  “Watch it,” Madison said in her ear.

  Bree jumped. She shut the door. The dogs looked out at her. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up. And it looks like I whacked the mailbox a good one. Sorry.” The cheap wooden stake lurched to one side and the metal door to the mailbox gaped open. Bree gave the stake a firm shove to keep it upright, and palmed the door shut, idly noting the name as she did so.

  The name on the mailbox was Hansen.

  Bree froze.

  Hartley’s stepfather, Stephen, is a real asshole, Lindsey had said.

  Marv Kleinmetz. Tiffany Burkhold. Stephen Hansen.

  “Nice to meet you at last, Miss Beaufort,” Stephen Hansen said.

  “Oh, Madison,” Bree said. She felt sick.

  Hansen had a scar on his cheek.

  Shirley: He had a scar under one eye.

  Hansen was the third man in the old photograph in Probert Chandler’s office.

  Lindquist: We were all chem majors . . . Steve Hansen was with us for a time.

  Madison stepped away from the car. The man behind her stepped forward. His hair was cropped close to his head. He had to be at least forty-eight, Bree thought, but he looked a lot younger.

  Madison: I prefer older guys myself.

  He was tall and rangy, with cold gray eyes. He draped one hand familiarly around Madison’s shoulders. In the other, he held a gun. Madison glanced down. Bree didn’t know as much about handguns as she did about shot-guns, but it was a .38. “I thought you got rid of the damn thing,” Madison said. “Damn it, Steve. That’s just plain dumb.”

  “You’re all in this,” Bree said. Involuntarily, she glanced at the house. A third figure stood at the open door. Short, chunky, with that irritating giggle that cut through the heavy air like a squalling baby’s. “And Hartley, too.”

  Madison snapped her fingers rhythmically and began to sway back and forth. “Sweethearts send a sen-ti-mental sound to the guys to the chicks to the people all around. If you’d like another version that’ll get you off the ground, it’s the singin’ Sweet Savannahs where the happy can be found.” She brought the back of her hand to her nose, sniffed heartily, and grinned.

  Bree looked at the gun in Hansen’s hand. She was furious. Coldly furious. “Lindsey said you knew all about it. I guess she was right.”

  Madison laughed. It was genuine, gleeful laughter. Bree didn’t think she’d ever heard anything so chilling. “Lindsey, my ass. The only thing that little bitch is good for is the keys to her father’s pharmacy.”

  “Hey!” Hansen said. “That’s my kid you’re talking about, here.” He cuffed Madison on the ear, not too gently. Hansen was Lindsey’s father.

  The ninth circle. Treachery. Poor, friendless Lindsey.

  “Probert discovered all of this that day at the Miner’s Club,” Bree said. “About the robberies, at least. Is that why you killed him?”

  “I didn’t have a damn thing to do with that. Bert never could handle his liquor. And he was worth more to us alive than dead. No way was he going to turn in his own kid. Not to mention my little meth lab and the kids here, who help me get the goods to the customer.” He grinned at Madison.

  “But if he’d just discovered that Lindsey wasn’t his daughter . . .”

  Hansen looked surprised. “He knew that?”

  “You mean he didn’t?”

  Hansen shrugged. “Why cut off the source of the golden eggs?”

  Bree frowned. “You mean you were blackmailing Mrs. Chandler?”

  “You know,” Hansen said, “I think this conversation is over.” His eyes narrowed, and he looked meaner than any junkyard dog Bree had ever seen.

  “And Shirley? What about Shirley?”

  Hansen’s eyes shifted away from hers.

  “Got in the way.” Madison shrugged. That all-purpose, in-your-face, so-what shrug. “And that was your fault, Miss Rich Bitch Beaufort. If you hadn’t asked her that question about the store robberies, Shirley wouldn’t have put two and two together. She tracked me down after you left, wanting to know if I thought Lindsey had anything to do with them. ’Cause Lindsey had the keys, see, from her dad.”

  Shirley’s call to an unknown number. The keys. Bree wanted to punch something. She looked at Hansen. “So you shot her? Shirley Chavez?”

  His face was stone. Flint.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing you did hold on to the gun, Stevie,” Madison said. “I think you’re going to have to shoot her, too.”

  Hansen cupped Madison’s neck with a proprietary caress. “We’ll ditch it after this,” he said. “I told you it’d be dangerous to be in this kind of work without a weapon. I’m sure you’d agree, Miss Beaufort.” He raised the gun to the level of Bree’s forehead and aimed between her eyes. “Inside the house. Now!”

  Sasha growled. Bree’s hand tightened around her briefcase.

  “The dogs!” Madison shouted. “Steve! The dogs!”

  Bree swung the briefcase and knocked Madison sideways. Hansen leaped back and shot Sasha in the chest.

  “Sasha!” Bree flung herself at her dog. She clamped her hands over the blood pumping out of Sasha’s chest. Hansen leaned around Madison, crouched slightly, took aim through the backseat window, and pulled the trigger twice. One bullet for Miles. One bullet for Belli.

  Behind the shattered glass, Belli and Miles roared in fury. Striker was a vast, silvery presence behind them.

  Sasha’s dying eyes locked onto hers.

  Bree’s rage burst its bounds.

  She flung her hands wide, the dog’s blood splattering the car, her hair, Madison’s contorted face. The air around her began to spin with the ferocity of a rip tide. She grabbed it, held it between her spread hands and arms like a living animal, and molded it, directed it, spun it . . .

  And she was at the top of a mountain, with the winds of Heaven at her command.

  Nineteen

  A deed of dreadful note.

  —Macbeth, William Shakespeare

  “How’s Sasha?” Hunter shut the front door of the veterinary clinic behind him and paused uncertainly in the middle of the waiting room.

  “Come and have a seat,” Antonia said. “Bree, the lieutenant’s here.”

  Bree looked up. Antonia had scrubbed Sasha’s blood from her face and hands with a damp Kleenex but it hadn’t helped much. Her skin was stiff and grainy. “He lost a lot of blood,” she said. “Too much, they think. But he’s going to make it.” Hunter and Antonia exchanged looks. “He’s alive,” Bree said stubbornly. “And he’s going to make it.”

  “They transfused
him,” Antonia said in a near whisper. “But he’s got a different blood type than most dogs. They used a whatsit—a universal donor—but we’re waiting to see if his system rejects it.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” Bree said. “They’ll know for sure after twenty-four hours.”

  Hunter looked at Bree, and then away.

  “They’ll let me sit with him as soon as they get the bullet out.” Bree crossed her legs, and then uncrossed them. “They have a recovery room.”

  “Just like for people,” Antonia said brightly. “Is that cool, or what?” She put the backs of her hands against her eyes to blot the tears.

  Hunter rubbed his chin. His jaw was set tight. His eyes were narrowed. Anger? Frustration? Bree didn’t really care. “We need to talk,” he said.

  “It can wait, can’t it?” Other people had followed Hunter into the waiting room, Bree realized. The red-haired sergeant, Markham. And another uniform. Taylor, she thought. His name is Taylor.

  “No,” he said evenly. “It can’t wait. We get a call that shots have been fired in a suburban area. We show up to find two terrified teenagers and a roughed-up adult being menaced by those two huge dogs of yours. Not to mention the blood all over the pavement outside this quiet suburban home. Not to mention the fact that you’ve taken off after firing two shots at these people—”

  “Me!” Bree said indignantly. “You’re crazy! Hansen shot my dog!”

  “He claims you ordered the dogs to attack him.”

  “What?!”

  “Hansen said if it weren’t for some freak windstorm that swept through the neighborhood you would have shot him dead.” Hunter leaned over her, his voice loaded with an emotion Bree couldn’t identify. “This tornado, he says, kicked up such a windstorm of debris that you lost the gun. He picked it up. Then he claims you set those two monsters on him, took the gun back, and tore off down the street like a bat out of Hell.”

  “I don’t own a gun,” Bree said. “It’s Hansen’s gun.” Her briefcase sat by her chair. She shoved it forward with her toe. “I picked it up off the lawn when this . . . windstorm spun it out of his hand.”

  Hunter looked into the briefcase. “God damn it.” He jerked his head at Taylor. Taylor came forward, pulled an evidence bag from his hip pocket, and carefully loaded the gun into it.

  Bree sighed. “You won’t find my fingerprints on it, Hunter. You’ll find Hansen’s.” She glared up at him. “And as soon as the veterinary surgeon gets the bullet out of Sasha’s chest, you’ll find it’s the same gun that killed Shirley Chavez.”

  “Lieutenant!” Markham thrust her cell phone in the air. “I’ve got the captain and he’s royally pissed. Are we going to get this woman downtown, or what?”

  “Outside,” Hunter ordered. His tone brooked no argument. Markham cast Bree a look of loathing. Hunter swung around and faced them, his jaw thrust forward. “Both of you.” He waited until she and Taylor had retreated onto the front steps outside, and then turned to Bree. “Spill it.”

  “Drugs,” Bree said. “It’s all about drugs, this part of the case, anyway. The Savannah Sweethearts Social Club is a drug ring, with Hansen at the head. The girls acted as mules—that’s the expression, right? Hansen booked the group into high schools, and Madison, Hartley, and Lindsey carried the drugs to contacts Hansen had established there. Pills, mostly. When Hansen’s business was shut down, he lost his laboratory, too. The Marlowe’s robberies were a stopgap until he got up and running again. That’s my guess, at any rate.”

  “And the murders?”

  “The gun, of course. I told you. The bullet that hit Sasha.” Bree’s cheeks were wet, and she blotted them with the back of her hand. “It’s the same as the bullet that killed Shirley Chavez.”

  “This is bullshit. There’s no evidence. None. This is all supposition.” He shook his head in disgust. “If, and it’s a very big if, your wild-assed guess turns out to be right and that is the same gun that fired the bullet that killed Shirley Chavez, what have we got?”

  “We’ve got Hansen!” Bree said indignantly. “This is the only thing that makes any sense. I’ve just delivered the members of his little gang to you on a silver platter. Not to mention the fact that you now have a way to link the distribution of the drugs in the high schools. I’ll bet your week’s paycheck that there’s a clear pattern between the Savannah Sweethearts concerts and drug activity in the schools where they sang.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  “There’s got to be. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.” She smiled, faintly. “You’re one heck of an investigator, Hunter. I’ll bet you a second week’s paycheck that if you put Markham, there, on the computer for a couple of hours, you’ll make those connections by tomorrow morning.” She ran her hands over her hair. “Not to mention the confessions. Madison’s going to be a tough nut to crack, but Hartley will talk as soon as you get her into one of those foul little rooms and threaten to cut off her supply of herbal shampoo.”

  “All three of them have lawyered up.”

  Bree dismissed this with a wave of her hand.

  “Not only have all three of them lawyered up, but Hansen wants you and your license to practice law. He wants you arrested for assault, menacing, and intent to commit grievous bodily harm. Not to mention the charges we want to throw at you. Leaving the scene of a felony assault . . .”

  “Just shut up,” Bree said tiredly. “Please. And I’ll come down to the station as soon as I see to Sasha. Please.”

  He shook his head. “No way, Bree. Sorry. I’ve got to take you in.”

  “You don’t have to take me in right now. You have to wait for the bullet.”

  “The bullet?”

  Bree looked at him. At her right, Antonia shifted uneasily in her seat. “Go ahead,” Bree said. “Arrest me. I don’t care. Just let me stay here until I see Sasha through this. Please.”

  Hunter rubbed his face with both hands and swore. He pointed his finger at her, his face grim. “Don’t you leave this clinic. You understand me? You stay right here. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  He slammed out the front door. Bree let her breath out in a slow sag of relief. There was only one other client in the waiting room—a small, elderly lady with a cat in a blue plastic carrying case. She cast a scared look at Bree and scuttled after Hunter. The door closed gently behind her.

  Bree leaned back in her chair. Antonia took her hand and patted it.

  The Chatham County Small Animal Clinic was like most others of its kind; doors off the reception area led to the examination room and the operating theater. The door farthest from Bree opened, and a woman in green scrubs with a surgical mask hanging around her neck beckoned. Bree got to her feet. “I can go sit with him now.”

  “Breenie.” Antonia stood up with her. “You want me to come with you?”

  “Don’t call me Breenie. I’ll be fine. To tell you the truth, I’d sooner you were out of this and back at the show.” Bree was moving toward the open door, and Sasha.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  Antonia hesitated. “You want me to call Daddy?”

  “You do that, I’ll shave you bald, first chance I get. I can take care of myself, Tonia.”

  A brief giggle escaped her sister, then she said, rather fearfully, “Those dogs you set on Hansen and the girl . . .”

  Bree did stop at that. She turned halfway round. “They kept it up until the police got there, didn’t they?”

  “That’s part of the trouble, isn’t it?” Antonia said with spirit. “Bella and Millis . . . ?”

  “Belli and Miles,” Bree said, giving the latter the correct pronunciation. “What about them?”

  “They took off, God knows where, and I can’t say I’m all that comfortable with the idea of those two roaming the streets of Savannah.”

  “They’ll turn up,” Bree said as Antonia left the clinic.

  And of course, there they were, waiting for her, sitting outside the little
recovery area where Sasha lay, perfectly whole and hearty. Belli greeted her with a snuffle. Miles raised his head, regarded her briefly, and got to his feet with a grunt. Bree sank to her knees and put her arms around their necks.

  The veterinarian looked up as Bree came into the room, the dogs at her heels. Sasha lay flat out on a gurney. Someone had placed one of the hard plastic chairs from the waiting room next to it.

  A shaved patch bisected Sasha’s chest. The bullet wound itself was a small clean hole just over his heart. Bree sat down in the chair.

  “I’m so glad your secretary thought to bring your other dogs by,” Dr. Steiner said. “The female, Bella?” She nodded in Belli’s direction.

  Bree didn’t correct her. She sank into the chair next to her comatose dog.

  “She’s a universal donor.” Dr. Steiner was young, thin, and the kind of woman who would have looked totally unnatural in any kind of makeup. She pushed her spectacles up with one finger. “And we’re equally lucky Bella’s so big. Sasha lost at least thirty percent of his whole blood volume. He needed all the help that Bella could give.” She fondled Bella’s ears. The huge dog regarded her with a grave, unwinking stare.

  “You saved the bullet?” Bree asked. She sat up and put her hand lightly on Sasha’s flank. He felt cold. “It’s evidence in a homicide.”

  “My assistant bagged it up. He’s probably handed it over to the police out front already.” Her glasses had slid partway down her nose again, and she pushed them up. “You’re sure you want to stay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “We’ll check on him from time to time. There’s a bathroom right down the hall, if you need it. And the coffee machine out front. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “My sister will bring a sandwich by in a bit,” Bree said.

  “If you notice any change at all, let one of us know, okay? The anesthesia’s going to wear off in another hour or so. If he starts to thrash, give us a holler.”

  “That soon?” Bree said. Her heart beat faster. “You’ll know that soon?”

  “We don’t expect him to regain consciousness for quite a while,” the vet said kindly. “But yes, if the rejection is going to occur, the symptoms should start in a few hours. I’ll be on call, if you need me. And, of course, we’ve got an all-night attendant on duty.” She waited, awkwardly. Bree looked at her helplessly.