Angel's Advocate Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Epilogue

  A Note on the Celestial Spheres

  Terrifying Tailgater

  One by one, the streetlights went out. And the whirling tower of dark, shot through with a sickly yellow, advanced toward her down the street.

  Bree’s dog, Sasha, drew his lips back in a snarl, crouched low, and crept toward the apparition. Bree judged the distance between the thing and the safety of her car. Sasha bounded forward. Bree yelled, “Heel!” in sudden terror for her dog, and sprinted down the sidewalk. The tower of oily smoke grew taller, wider, as if gathering itself for a ferocious charge. Bree flung herself at the driver’s door, pushed Sasha in ahead of her, and jammed the key into the ignition.

  The smoke swirled around the windshield. In the midst of the shifting mass, Bree caught a glimpse of a grinning white face.

  She slammed the motor into life, gunned the car forward, and left the mist behind.

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Mary Stanton

  DEFENDING ANGELS

  ANGEL’S ADVOCATE

  Titles by Mary Stanton writing as Claudia Bishop

  Hemlock Falls Mysteries

  A TASTE FOR MURDER

  A DASH OF DEATH

  A PINCH OF POISON

  MURDER WELL-DONE

  DEATH DINES OUT

  A TOUCH OF THE GRAPE

  A STEAK IN MURDER

  MARINADE FOR MURDER

  JUST DESSERTS

  FRIED BY JURY

  A PUREE OF POISON

  BURIED BY BREAKFAST

  A DINNER TO DIE FOR

  GROUND TO A HALT

  A CAROL FOR A CORPSE

  The Casebooks of Dr. McKenzie Mysteries

  THE CASE OF THE ROASTED ONION

  THE CASE OF THE TOUGH-TALKING TURKEY

  THE CASE OF THE ILL-GOTTEN GOAT

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  ANGEL’S ADVOCATE

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Mary Stanton.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

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  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-05374-4

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  For Nathan Stanton Schwartz

  One

  A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes.

  —Tour to the Hebrides, James Boswell

  “This seventeen-year-old high school cheerleader stole one hundred sixty-five dollars and twenty-six cents from a Girl Scout?” Most lawyers learned to keep a poker face early on. Bree was no exception. She sat up a little straighter in the kitchen chair, but otherwise didn’t react. “What happened, exactly?”

  Bree’s aunt Cissy zigzagged around the kitchen in a distracted way. “Lindsey—that’s the grabber—and a couple of her girlfriends were tootling around the mall parking lot in her daddy’s Hummer. She pulled up to the front entrance, jumped out of the car, pushed the little girl flat, and grabbed the shoebox that had the money in it. Then she got back into the Hummer and buzzed off with the loot.” Aunt Cissy rolled her eyes. “There were a couple of eyewitnesses, including the Girl Scout’s mamma. The teeners thought the whole thing was a hoot. Hung out of the Hummer’s windows, laughing their keisters off.”

  Cissy was eight years younger than Bree’s mother, but where Francesca Winston-Beaufort was soft, round, and red-haired, Cecily was blonde and angular. Her sun-streaked hair was courtesy of Fontina, Savannah’s most popular beautician; her wiry frame owed a lot to the gym on Front Street and weekly games of tennis. Cissy hopped onto the blue tile counter that topped the kitchen island and bounced her heels against the lower cabinet. “Thing was, some kid with a fancy cell phone videoed the whole thing, called up WKYR as quick as lightnin’, and you can just bet the sorry mess is going to hit the six o’clock news. Carrie-Alice is just beside herself.”

  “And Carrie-Alice is Lindsey the cheerleader’s mother,” Bree said, just to keep the narrative straight. She added a few notes to the yellow pad in front of her. “I don’t think I’ve met Carrie-Alice. She’s a close friend?”

  “Not all that close,” Cissy admitted. “But the police called her right there in the middle of our Thursday afternoon bridge game. Carrie-Alice and I were playin’ partners. I was dummy. We were,” she added with a broody air, “about to make a small slam. Carrie dropped the cards and pitched a fit. That blew any chance of a slam.” She leaped off the counter and onto the floor. “So what was I supposed to do? Just leave her all distraught in the middle of the card room at the club? No, sir. I have a niece, I said, who’s probably the best lawyer in Savannah and she can get your Lindsey out of jail quicker than blink.”

  Bree raised an eyebrow. “Lindsey’s in jail?”

  “As near as makes no difference. The police took her down to the station on Montgomery after they caught up with her. Impounded the Hummer and for all I know, impounded Lindsey,
too.” She shook her head. “Well, now, I’m a liar. The kid’s back home, come to think on it. Carrie-Alice hared off down after her and I hared off to find you.” Her aunt narrowed her bright blue eyes. “I would have met up with you at your office, but damned if I couldn’t find it, Bree. And I’ve lived in Savannah pretty near all my life. Just where is Angelus Street?”

  “I’d come home for lunch anyway,” Bree said evasively. Very few people knew that the only clients who could find 66 Angelus were the dead ones. The law firm of Beaufort & Company had another office on Bay Street for those clients currently among the living, but renovations were still in progress after a deadly fire. Bree offered her usual diversionary fib: “Mamma might have told you the Angelus Street office is temporary until Great-Uncle Franklin’s old offices are ready for me to move into. Anyhow, it’s much more comfortable here.”

  “Here” was the family town house overlooking the Savannah River. It sat at the end of a row of rehabbed brick buildings, two stories above the cobblestone-lined River Walk. Bree loved the location. She could clatter down the steps, with their wrought-iron rails, and walk to the brick bulwarks of the centuries-old wharf and her favorite shops in less than three minutes.

  “I hardly think you’d want to meet Carrie-Alice in the kitchen instead of a nice professional-looking office,” Cissy complained. She shook her head. “Whatever. I guess you can get on out to Carrie-Alice’s place on Tybee Island just as easy.” She reached over, twirled Bree’s yellow pad, and wrote down an address and phone number. “Be best if you followed me there. I’ve got a late afternoon massage over at the spa.”

  Bree needed new clients, but she wasn’t wild about representing a kid who’d ripped off an eight-year-old Girl Scout. “I’m sure the family lawyer is well equipped to handle something like this. If not, I can give her a refer ral to an attorney better suited to criminal law than I am. I’ll be happy to meet with Carrie-Alice and tell her so. And what’s the family name, Aunt Cissy?”

  “Chandler.”

  Now that was interesting. “As in Probert Chandler? The drugstore king?”

  “Marlowe’s. That’s the one. Pots of money, of course, which is another reason I thought about you right off. It can’t be easy starting out all on your own. And it’s a case that will get you a lot of attention. I was thinking about a defense, Bree honey. Probert’s been dead less than four months and here his little girl is stealing cookie money in broad daylight.”

  “I heard something about Chandler’s death. He wasn’t very old. Late fifties, I think?”

  “Fifty-eight. Car accident,” Cissy said with a shake of her head. “All by his lonesome on Skidaway Road in a rainstorm.” She flung her hands wide. “Clearly—clearly the child is suffering from some kind of displaced grief.”

  “Delayed some, too, since it happened four months ago,” Bree said. She remembered the accident, now. It had made international news, the way anything Probert Chandler did. Marlowe’s Drugstores, Inc., had annual revenues that rivaled the GNP of a small South American nation. Probert Chandler was famous for building the megacor poration up from a nothing drugstore located in Portland, Oregon. That, and for his unpretentious lifestyle. The car he’d been driving when he went off Skidaway Road to glory was a Buick.

  Cissy beamed. “This kid’s case is just the sort of thing that can put you on the map, lawyer-wise.”

  Bree tapped her pen against her teeth. She didn’t want cases that got her a lot of attention. She had her hands full with the weirdness of her current caseload. The last thing she needed was a spotlight on the activities of Beaufort & Company. On the other hand, at least some of her clients had to be alive and ready to pay reasonable fees. She looked down at her feet, where her dog, Sasha, lay curled up, nose to tail. Somebody had to keep him in kibble and the office rent paid. Not to mention keeping up with the pitifully small salaries of her secretary and paralegal. And that somebody would be her. But she said, “The Chandler family’s got lawyers up the wazoo, Aunt Cissy. I don’t see what I can bring to the party.”

  Cissy put her hands on her hips and snorted. “You’re kidding me, right? Is this seventeen-year-old teenager going to relate better to you, or some middle-aged, potbel lied banker type who’s only interested in protecting the family name? You’re twenty-eight and gorgeous. You’re somebody she can talk to, Bree.”

  Bree made a face.

  “And besides, it’s something of a challenge, isn’t it? It’s going to be quite a trick to make this little girl look sympathetic.” Bree took a deep breath. Cissy raised both hands and yelled, “Sorry, sorry, sorry! You’ve got the same look your mamma gets when she’s about to give me a lecture on the overprivileged, which she thinks is you, me, and anybody with the least little bit of a trust fund.”

  “We are overprivileged,” Bree pointed out. “You, me, Mamma, and Antonia, too.” She thought a minute. “I take that back about Antonia.” Her little sister lived at the town house on the incredibly feeble wages she made as a tech director at the local repertory theater. Somehow, she managed to pay her half of the living expenses and for acting and singing lessons, too.

  “This is why you should take this case on,” Cissy said. “This is what I should have said from the beginning. What I really mean, Bree, is that this girl needs your help.”

  Bree nudged her dog with her toe. There were times when her dog was more than a dog to her. “What do you think, Sasha?”

  Sasha lifted his head and shoved his nose into the palm of her hand. Bree looked into his amber eyes. He panted happily, tongue lolling, lips drawn back in a doggy grin. Under her steady regard, he glanced away, glanced back, and barked. A wait-and-see sort of bark.

  “That’s an awfully big dog to keep in here,” Cissy said, her attention momentarily diverted. “Haven’t the other owners gotten a little hissy? I thought the covenants didn’t allow any pets over forty pounds.”

  Sasha stood thirty inches at the shoulder and weighed over a hundred and twenty pounds. His broad chest and powerful hindquarters came from his mastiff forebears. The gentleness of his expression and golden coat were all retriever. “Nobody’s noticed anything yet,” Bree said truthfully. And very probably, nobody would. The dog had a unique ability to make himself scarce when necessary. It was nothing short of . . . angelic. “As for representing this case”—she rubbed her nose—“I think I’ll take a pass. This girl sounds like she needs a shrink more than she needs a lawyer.”

  “Your daddy didn’t raise a daughter fool enough to turn down a case from the Chandler family.” Cissy slung her tote over her shoulder with a knowing air. “So are you going to come out with me to Tybee Island?” She drew her eyebrows together. A Botox devotee, her forehead never wrinkled. “If you can’t find the time to give this little girl a hand, Bree, honey, you need to make the time. I suppose you’re all booked up this afternoon?” A trust fund baby herself, Cissy had a touching pride in the success of her professionally employed niece.

  Bree didn’t have to look at her Day-Timer to know that the rest of her afternoon was depressingly free of client appointments. And she knew her aunt Cissy. She was as determined as a bulldozer. She sighed and threw both hands in the air. “Okay. I give. But I’d rather set up an appointment than show up unannounced.” She pulled out her cell phone and glanced up at her aunt. “And I don’t mean to come over rude, Aunt Cissy, but we’d both be better off if you didn’t come with me.”

  To her mild astonishment, Cissy nodded agreement. “Be embarrassin’ for everybody if Carrie-Alice didn’t want to hire you after all.” She stooped over and kissed Bree on the cheek. “Thank you, darlin’. I’ll be off. Will I see you at Plessey this weekend?”

  “At Plessey?” Her family’s estate was in North Caro lina, a good six-hour drive from the Savannah town house. Bree loved her family, but one of the reasons she’d settled in Savannah was because she was a six-hour drive from her loving, intrusive relatives. She shut her eyes in sudden recollection. “Hoo. I forgot. Saturday’s Guy
Fawkes night.” For reasons lost in some time around the Civil War, the Winston-Beauforts had a huge party for it, but November fifth fell on a Thursday this year, so her mother had set the party for Halloween weekend. Bree’s excuses for staying put were lamer than usual. Everybody knew she was dateless since Payton the Rat dumped her three months ago. “I don’t think so, Cissy. I’ve got a ton of work stacked up.” Her aunt’s shrewd blue eyes twinkled, and Bree added feebly, “Research.”

  “I thought that’s what your paralegal’s for.”

  “Petru’s Russian,” Bree said. “Needs a little help with his English now and then.”

  “Hm,” Cissy said. “That’ll not cut ice at all with Francesca. But it’s on your head and not mine. Go ahead. Stay home. Just don’t answer your phone, that’s all I can tell you.” She rummaged in her large tote, pulled out her compact, and examined herself critically in the little mirror. “I’m wonderin’ if I shouldn’t step up the Botox a little. What do you think?”

  “I like faces that make faces back at me,” Bree admitted.

  “You think? Wait twenty years. Once you’re nudging fifty you get a whole different perspective.” She snapped the compact shut, dropped a kiss on Bree’s head, and slammed out the back door.

  Bree ran her hand over Sasha’s neck. It had been several weeks since she’d rescued him from an animal trap in the depths of the cemetery that surrounded her office. The cast had just come off his leg this morning. He’d put on a healthy amount of weight. His muscles rippled under his golden coat. Pink, healthy skin replaced the sores that had covered his hindquarters and chest. “This is another kind of rescue, dog. So I suppose I could at least give the poor woman a call. We’ll walk back to the office and do it from there.”