Avenging Angels

by Mary Stanton

  “Makes a change, treating live people,” Dr. Lowry said. “I kind of enjoyed it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m assisting at the coroner’s office. Hoping to be full-time there as soon as a position opens up. It should happen soon. Dr. Falwell’s sixty-five and a smoker. He’ll either retire or,” she added cheerfully, “drop dead. In the meantime . . .” She waved her hand around her little examining room. “This keeps the bills paid. My older brother heads the practice here,” she confided. “This is just until Dr. Falwell . . .”

  “. . . retires or drops dead,” Bree said. “Right.”

  Dr. Lowry swung back to the computer. “I don’t really anticipate any anomalies in your blood work. But the office will mail out the results in a couple of days. If there’s any kind of a problem, my nurse will call and ask you to come back in.” She rotated in her swivel chair and faced Bree with a smile. “Any other concerns?”

  Well, let’s see. I’m basically worried about losing my humanity. What kind of tests do you have for that?

  “No,” Bree said. “Nothing. As I said, I’m just fulfilling a promise I made to my little sister. And I appreciate getting in to see you so fast.”

  Dr. Lowry nodded. “I owe your aunt Cissy a few favors. And I’m always glad to sit down with a new patient, especially the live ones. Ha ha!”

  “Ha ha,” Bree said.

  “Call me if you have any concerns.”

  Bree dropped fifteen dollars for the co-pay at checkout and stamped out into a damp, rainy morning in a mood as glum as the gray skies overhead.

  She’d spent the night before drawing up the steps for an investigation into Russell O’Rourke’s murder/suicide/ whatever. Part of the evening, at any rate. She’d lost a fair amount of time in fruitless speculation about her future. At the very best, it appeared she was doomed to be abnormally fit and sleepless as long as she was part of Beaufort & Company. At worst? What?

  She decided not to think about it. Not right now.

  “One thing, though,” she said to Sasha as she folded herself into the driver’s seat of her car, “the next guy that asks me out on a date is going to be in for a surprise. Got that, Sash? I may be doomed to end up a messy victim of the Pendergasts, or blasted away by some grisly spirit from who-knows-where, or turn into some ceramic version of myself, if Antonia’s to be believed, but I’m not resigning from the human race just yet. What did Archie say? Bibawhatsis? Death’s unavoidable, let’s have a drink? Well, there you are. Maybe I’ll take up vodka.” She thrust the car into gear and drove the short distance back to Angelus Street, stifling the impulse to racket down through the streets at seventy miles an hour.

  Once inside the office, it didn’t take angelic prescience on the part of her employees to sense she was in a dangerous mood. Ron deposited a carafe of French press coffee at her desk in tactful silence. Petru dropped a warm and sympathetic hand on her shoulder before he stumped off to collect the downloads Bree had requested on the background of her preliminary list of suspects. By the time she assembled everyone for a staff meeting in the little conference room at eleven, she felt less like a candidate for the booby hatch and more like a lawyer in charge of her own life. She faced her totally normal-looking employees with an air of professional competence honed by practice sessions in her bathroom mirror. The celestial questions could take care of themselves. She had a case to solve.

  “As you all know by now, we’re facing some issues about Russell O’Rourke’s death. The NYPD lieutenant initially assigned to the suicide is convinced O’Rourke was murdered by his wife. And Tully is convinced her husband was murdered by either a disaffected employee or a disgruntled investor. Our client himself”—Bree took a deep breath—“is, as you know, somewhat hampered in his ability to communicate with us, but we are operating on the assumption that he believes he’s been wrongly sentenced ... .”

  “A reasonable assumption,” Petru rumbled.

  “I never thought Purgatory was all that awful,” Ron said. “I mean, considering the alternatives . . .”

  “T’cha,” Petru said disapprovingly. “Compromise is not to be tolerated. We must consider the best interests of the client.”

  “Are you inferring I don’t care about our clients?” Ron said frostily.

  “I am not inferring a thing, except that you are, as usual, not well-informed.”

  “Yes, well, first things first,” Bree said. She was in no mood for a swatting match between the two. “Petru, how did you do on the background checks?”

  “Very interesting,” Petru said with a pleased air. “Perhaps the most interesting information I shall save for the last. First, you must know that Cullen Jameson is out on parole.”

  “Already?” Bree said. She had a vague recollection that the chief financial officer of O’Rourke Investment Bank had been sentenced to at least five years and that he had begun to serve time just before O’Rourke’s death three months ago.

  “Time off for time served while in custody,” Petru said. “And, of course, more germane is the fact that without Mr. O’Rourke to testify against him, the case is not so strong.”

  “And O’Rourke was planning to do that?” Bree rubbed the back of her neck thoughtfully.

  “Oh, yes. He made quite a business of it. His belief that Jameson was behind the fraudulent activity was unequivocal.” He laid the Jameson file in front of her. A neat summary of Jameson’s background in Petru’s elegant calligraphy was attached to the outside of the file. Jameson was fifty-three, divorced, and he had three children in their twenties; he was a bad to medium-poor golfer, if his handicap was any indication. He held an MBA from Wharton and an undergrad degree in economics from Brandeis. He’d been posted overseas for part of his career. He had a short rap sheet, to Bree’s mild surprise: two DUIs and a physical assault charge (dismissed), filed by his ex-wife thirteen years ago.

  Bree hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the scandal when it hit the media, but she recognized Jameson from the photo Petru had downloaded from the Wall Street Journal archives. He was a heavyset, self-satisfied-looking man in his early fifties. Dark hair was slicked back from a balding forehead. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his fleshy nose.

  “Kind of a belligerent-looking lower lip,” Ron observed. “Actually, a scary-looking guy altogether.”

  The next few photos showed Jameson, in handcuffs, being shoved into a police car by a poker-faced plainclothesman. The expression on his face wasn’t self-satisfied at that point; it was murderous. Bree skimmed the newspaper articles detailing the charges: fraud; illegal conversion of a securities instrument; that old standby, insider trading; and illegal transfer of funds.

  “Was he in jail when O’Rourke died?” Bree asked.

  “As a matter of fact, no,” Petru said. “He bounced in and out, as new sets of charges were brought by various jurisdictions. The FBI investigation into securities fraud was perhaps the final blow to this man. That carried the heaviest sentence. The picture here”—he tapped the arrest photo—“was taken the day after the client’s demise.”

  Bree set the Jameson file on the right-hand side of her desk.

  “And here is a collection of information about the Parsalls.” The file Petru handed her was several inches thick. “They are heavily involved in society matters, you understand, so there is much written gossip about them.”

  Harriet and Freddy “Big Buck” Parsall were third-generation oil, from Texas. Harriet was a familiar type to Bree, who was a born and bred Southerner herself. Many of her mother’s friends still went in for big hair, lots of red lipstick, and toothy, prosthetics-enhanced smiles. Harriet favored expensive print dresses with full skirts, and in each of the photos Bree rifled through (in People, USA Today, Redbook, and Ladies’ Home Journal) she wore uncomfortable-looking spike heels. She looked good-natured, in that genial Southern way, despite the fact that her feet had to be killing her. A half dozen women Bree’s mother Francesca entertained to tea every
six months or so looked just like Harriet. She played bridge, drank oldfashioneds, and must have visited a very good plastic surgeon more than once.

  “Big Buck” was big and broad and looked like a shouter. A good six inches taller than his wife, he favored string ties, cowboy boots, and deer hunting. He was a Texas Aggie, a member of the university’s second-string football team in his undergraduate days.

  And he was flat broke after a lifetime of trust fund money.

  “Wow,” Bree said. “He lost everything?”

  “So it seems,” Petru said. “He has been petitioning his brothers to support him and Madame Parsall, to no good effect, as yet. But that very large house in River Oaks?”

  Bree paged down to a photograph of a sprawling mansion.

  “It is up for sale at a distress price.” Petru leaned across the table and tapped his summary with a blunt forefinger. “You will note the bar brawls in the gentleman’s background.”

  Bree skimmed the charges in Parsall’s arrest records. Menacing with a deadly weapon. Assault with a deadly weapon. Battery. Some of it dated back more than twenty years. “A Texan with a temper,” she said. “Any of these charges actually turn into recorded felonies?” (Bree had discovered that Petru’s investigations were not limited to institutions that existed in the here and now. But they were accurate, nonetheless.)

  “None,” Petru said. “And the menacing with a deadly weapon—a twelve-gauge shotgun, by the way—occurred in a very public place.”

  Bree raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

  “Outside Mr. O’Rourke’s arraignment.”

  “And official charges were never filed?”

  Petru shook his head solemnly.

  “So he called in a few favors, our Mr. Parsall.”

  “Which may not be as forthcoming, now that he has lost his patrimony.”

  A cynical view, especially from an angel. But probably true. Bree stacked the Parsall file on top of the Jameson file. “We’ve got two great motives so far. Next?”

  “Mr. Russell O’Rourke, Junior.”

  This file was slim, and depressing. “Fig” O’Rourke was nineteen, going on twelve. He’d graduated at the bottom of his prep school and flunked out of his freshman year at NYU, and his employment was listed as Administrative Manager, Transitional Services. It looked like he mainly booked air tickets and cruises for his mother. He belonged to a country club, but his chief activities seemed to be drinking and playing poker. He seemed to have no friends, no skills, and very little interest in the world around him, except for a minority share in a movie production company located in California. “A college acquaintance,” Petru said, when he saw that Bree paused to take a second look at that. “Who appears to be interested in only the checks that support her experimental movies.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “An angry young man, however. His prep school recommended a course of psychotherapy. I will add the records to the file if you like. It is a classic case. Hates his poor mother, and was resentful of his father.” Petru looked at her over his wire-rimmed spectacles. “It is fashionable now to decry the insights of my friend Sigmund into the behaviors of such as Fig O’Rourke. But it is clear to me that he was right in many of his comments about temporal behavior.”

  Bree didn’t ask which Sigmund Petru referred to. She was pretty sure already.

  “Yes. Well. The poor kid.”

  “All that money growin’ up.” Lavinia shook her head and went “tsk.” “You’d think he’d be a happy boy.”

  “But a patricide?” Bree said. “That’s pretty extreme. He sounds pathetic, not homicidal. Still . . .” She hesitated, then dropped Fig’s file on top of the other suspects.

  “And now!” Petru said. “An extremely interesting report, indeed.” With an air of quiet triumph, he dropped the last file in front of her.

  “Oh, my gosh,” she said. “This is Eddie Chin’s file.”

  “A disgraced and dismissed policeman,” Petru said. “He is on disciplinary suspension for inappropriate investigatory techniques in the case of Russell O’Rourke.”

  And so he was. The union was filing to have him reinstated, but for the moment, the Ninja was badgeless, gun-less, and free to stay in Savannah as long as his credit cards held out. Bree paged through the file and set it aside.

  “And this”—Petru’s air of quiet triumph was well deserved—“the complete dossier on the suicide and subsequent investigation.”

  Bree looked at her assembled staff. “I’m going to read through this, guys. I’ll need about half an hour.”

  “We shall wait,” Petru said comfortably.

  Bree nodded. What was time, to an angel?

  It took more than half an hour because she read through the NYPD file twice. Then she read Eddie’s. Petru appeared to doze. Ron messed around with his laptop. Lavinia buzzed around the room dusting, and humming a small song under her breath. Finally, Bree squared the pages, closed the file cover, and placed it neatly on the left side of her desk.

  “We don’t seem to have a case,” she said flatly.

  “No murder?” Lavinia said. “The poor soul just shot his own self?”

  “First,” Bree said, “the New York City Police Department is one of the best in the world. I mean, every system has flaws, and stupid people, and botched investigations, and corruption, but I’ll be darned if I can see how the investigation fell prey to any of those things. Russell O’Rourke was a suicide.”

  “And Lieutenant Chin?” Ron said. “Is he crazy, or what?”

  “Well, that’s the second problem. Eddie Chin. And I vote for crazy,” Bree sighed. “Now, maybe I’m jumping the gun. I don’t know. Maybe he’s an ‘or what.’ That is, there’s something he knows that no one else does and for some reason he can’t tell anybody yet. But these”—she tapped the relevant papers—“are his psychiatric interviews, and the diagnosis isn’t real reassuring.” She shot a stern glance at Petru. “I get a little nervous once in a while about the legality of the ways you all get this kind of information.”

  “Any data that will end up in the public domain is ours for the asking,” Ron said. “The rules of procedure are quite clear. We are able, I admit, to get it released to us a little earlier than the State of Georgia would like, but it’s all in a good cause, isn’t it?”

  “Some of this stuff is really confidential. We’re invading this man’s privacy big-time. On the other hand . . .” She sat up. “The poor guy does seem to be a few light-bulbs short of a full chandelier. Ron? Could you find Sam Hunter for me? I want to take him to lunch again. And Petru? If we could get the complete NYPD case notes on the O’Rourke”—she hesitated—“incident, I guess we’ll call it—I want a complete timeline of the hours leading up to the death. I’d also like as complete a record as possible of the whereabouts of the suspects here. The investigating officers must have put them in with this other stuff.” She tapped the files at her right hand. “Let me know about gaps in any of the suspects’ interviews, and I’ll set up interviews with whomever I need to see. And really, Petru. This was excellent work, thank you.”

  It was Ron’s turn to make the noise “t’cha,” so Bree said, “And there’s something you’ll be able to handle better than any of us, Ron.”

  “Well, I’m sure,” he said crossly.

  “Goldstein.”

  “Goldstein?”

  “We’ve got the original disposition of O’Rourke’s case, don’t we?”

  “You mean his Judgment Day file?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “We do. We picked it up at the Hall of Records. You were with me.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember all that. But do you recall what he was sentenced for?”

  “Misdemeanor simony.”

  “Profiteering, then. In a small way. Hm.” Bree thought about this for a moment. In its heyday, the O’Rourke Investment Bank controlled twenty billion dollars, globally, and that was a conservative estimate. Of course, what was money, to an angel? Perhaps in the lo
ng run, celestially speaking, twenty billion was a mere bagatelle. Which would be a good thing, since his appeal would rest on proving that the misdemeanor hadn’t occurred at all. Or if it did, that it was insignificant when stacked against the good that O’Rourke had done during life. “I’d like the regulations regarding sentencing.”

  Ron’s eyes were large, and blue, and they got even larger and bluer. “All of them?”

  Bree had a brief vision of a Mount Ararat-sized pile of parchment. “No, no. Just those bits that are relevant to O’Rourke’s sentencing. It’s puzzling me some. O’Rourke appears to be guilty of robbing widows and orphans and then some. But he’s spending eternity in the same way as Benjamin Skinner, who never had so much as a traffic ticket as far as criminal behavior was concerned.”

  “Goldstein’s just going to get all condescending over the differences in law between the celestial and the profane,” Ron said. “But I’ll come right back at him about getting a decent electronic database. I mean, there’s more than a few of those clerks with parchment allergies, and what kind of work environment makes you sneeze? Not a very nice one.” He looked quite smug at the prospect.

  “Thank you. And before we go much further, I’ll need to have a heart-to-heart with Mrs. O’Rourke. I’d like to see her as soon as I can. Her assistant . . .”

  “Danica Billingsley.” Ron nodded. “I’ve got her number, of course. I’ll set up an appointment right away.”

  Bree pointed to the door. “Find Hunter for me. Set up an appointment with Mrs. O’Rourke, this afternoon, if possible. Then go tackle Goldstein.”

  Ron was first out, followed by Petru.

  “Anything I can do for us?” Lavinia asked, hopefully.

  Bree looked at her landlady with affection. She wore her usual droopy print skirt, with a woolly cardigan wrapped around her skinny frame. Her hair was a soft, wispy white halo around her wrinkled face. Her eyes were bright with intelligence. She hated not having anything to do. Bree looked down at Sasha, who had been sitting at her feet. He got up and wagged his tail in an anxious way.

  No baths.