Defending Angels Read online

  Stubblefield looked as slick as his ads. His white hair was carefully cut, gelled, and sprayed. His cheeks were smooth-shaven. He wore a sapphire-studded Rolex on his left arm and a thick gold bracelet with his initials on his right. He sat at ease at one of the round aluminum tables near the fountain. One leg was crossed over the other, revealing black silk socks that didn’t show an inch of skin.

  Payton got up as Bree neared the table. Stubblefield stayed put.

  “Hey,” Payton said, rather nervously. “Glad you could make it.” He pulled out a chair. Bree sat down. Sasha folded himself onto the pavement at her side, his head up, his ears forward, and his eyes on Payton’s face. “Bree, I’d like you to meet John Stubblefield.” His voice was so reverent, Bree had to quell an impish desire to cross herself.

  “Miss Beaufort.” His voice was resonant. Bree knew enough about voice training from Antonia to realize that Stubblefield had studied with a voice coach. “I understand that you’ve been retained by a former associate of Bennie Skinner’s.”

  “That I have,” Bree said equably. She raised her hand to attract a waiter’s attention.

  “Of course, you’d like some refreshment.” Stubblefield’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I beg your pardon. What would you like to drink?”

  “An iced latte would suit me just fine.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Payton? See to the lady’s needs.” He smirked, “He’s been quite successful at that in the past, wouldn’t you say, Miss Beaufort?”

  Payton jumped up, his teeth flashing in an ingratiating grin. Sheer rage washed over her like a hot red blanket. Bree stuck her foot out just in time to catch him at the ankle. He fell forward and recovered himself with a tremendous jerk.

  “I do apologize,” Bree said, with precisely Stubblefield’s inflection. “You’ll make that a skinny latte, won’t you, Payton? And a lemon peel.” She turned her attention back to Payton’s boss. With luck, she’d get a chance to trip him, too. “Yes, I’m representing Ms. Overshaw. And in the interests of fairness, John, I should tell you that she has grave questions about your role in Benjamin Skinner’s murder.”

  As she’d hoped, this direct attack took the lawyer by surprise. He was far too old a hand to lose his temper, but he did drop the phony geniality. “What kind of evidence does your client have that it is murder?” His eyes narrowed. “And why the hell should she suspect me?”

  “Mr. Skinner had a lot of questions about the way you practice law, John. Uncomfortable questions. I’d like to know just how close to the bone he came with you and your firm.”

  Stubblefield leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs along the pavement. He took a sip of his drink—a julep, from what Bree could tell—and said reflectively, “That’s always been the trouble with a bitch in business.”

  “I beg your pardon?” At the ice in her voice, Sasha sat up abruptly and growled.

  “Women.” He sighed with a mock sorrow that put Bree’s teeth on edge. “Women don’t have the least idea how the game is played, Ms. Beaufort. Liz Overshaw has mistaken some friendly jousting for an all-out war.” He put his hand over hers. “Call it a guy thing. The bitch’s old, ugly, and if you’ll excuse the expression, a royal pain in the butt.”

  Bree didn’t trust herself to speak for a moment. The wind picked up and stirred the paper trash in the square.

  “Is she, now?” Bree said politely. “If you don’t remove your hand this second, John, I’ll ask my dog to bite you in that self-same butt.” She rose to her feet and leaned forward, so that her eyes were inches from his. “And if you use that word in front of me again, it’s not your ass, but your manhood you’re going to have to worry about. Trust me on that one.”

  She was so mad she could feel the hair on her scalp rise. The wind slammed against the square, spraying the water from the fountain across the flagstones. And then ... She felt herself connect to the wind. If she flung her hands to the sky, she could draw down the clouds and pitch lightning. She rose to her feet, hands outstretched, her body taut with rage. She drew breath...

  “Bree!” Payton’s panicked voice cut through her fog of rage.

  Some fifty feet behind John Stubblefield was Gabe Striker. His eyes shone like silver coins in the twilight. She stared at Striker. He shook his head, slowly.

  “Bree!” Payton’s urgency increased to a painful pitch.

  There was a stillness in Striker. A calm. It brushed her face, curled around the nape of her neck, gave her breath back. She stiffened and the dangerous moment was over.

  Striker turned and melted into the shadows.

  She turned to the men. Payton stood with a large glass of iced coffee in his hand and a petrified expression on his face. “Y’all have a problem?” she asked pleasantly.

  “Ah. No. Of course not. I’ve got your coffee.” He hesitated, and then set it gently on the table in front of her. He shot a nervous look in Stubblefield’s direction then said airily, “Everything okay here?”

  Stubblefield frowned, glanced at the empty square over his shoulder, and turned to face Bree. He shook his head a little, as if to rid himself of flies. Then he looked at Payton, surprise and annoyance in his face.

  “Can I get you another drink, sir?” Payton asked eagerly.

  “No. No. What you can do is get your ass back to the office. I want that Wal-Mart subpoena out before eight tomorrow morning.”

  “But ...”

  “Run along, Payton,” Bree said.

  “Yeah. Go on. Beat it.” Stubblefield’s tone was absent-minded. “The week’s not over yet. You’ve got time to get in a few more billable hours.”

  Payton slunk off with such a wounded air, Bree was almost sorry for him. Almost. It was going to be a long time before she forgave either one of them the crack about meeting her needs or for Stubblefield’s remark about Liz.

  “Now,” Bree said, “we were about to discuss the nature of the dispute between you and Mr. Skinner.”

  “Tempest in a teapot. He was pis—that is, upset over Fairchild’s deal with the county.”

  “The Island Dream condo project?”

  “Ah, yes.” Stubblefield took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “If Fairchild tried to screw him on that one, which was by no means clear, I have to say he succeeded. Douglas made no representation in the contract or anywhere else about what he intended to do with the property. Or if he did, it wasn’t in any form that was verifiable. I told Skinner that Douglas really had meant to convert the fort, discovered that it wasn’t feasible from an engineering standpoint, and adjusted his plans accordingly. It was just one of those things. For some reason, Skinner got a real bee in his bonnet about it.”

  “And he sued you for incompetence, failure to perform, and malfeasance.”

  “He did. Initially, Fairchild thought it’d be cheaper and keep down the negative PR if he and Bennie negotiated some. Fairchild offered him the penthouse, for his personal use, and the opportunity to buy it at a reduced price when the building was sold out.” Stubblefield smiled a little. “Bennie grabbed onto that at first. He liked to sue people, Bennie did. One of the things that made him such a good client for us. But he was in the middle of a complex dispute with Carlton Montifiore over a performance bond and he didn’t want to get too far embroiled in court cases. So he accepted use of the condo. Put that little chippy of his in there, as a matter of fact. But you probably already know that.” He frowned. “Then all of a sudden, he got his knickers in a twist about the penthouse. Wanted out of the whole thing and Fairchild’s hide to boot. So he plastered downtown Savannah with summonses, including a couple directed at me. There was no basis for the suit at all.” Stubblefield said this in a matter-of-fact way that was quite convincing. “I’ll be happy to send the contract in question over to your office. Are you an expert on contract law?”

  “Corporate tax law. My father’s the best there is on contracts.”

  “Well, give it to your father, then. He’ll tell you Skinner
didn’t have a leg to stand on. It wasn’t worrying me.”

  “Your position is, you didn’t have a motive to kill Skinner?”

  “Motive? My motive was to keep him sending me as much business as he sent me last year. Skinner’s a huge client of ours.”

  “Or was. He may have retained another law firm to handle his business.”

  “He could have, but he didn’t. We’re probating the will and administering the trust. Still attorneys of record.”

  “Maybe the only way to retain Skinner Worldwide, Inc. as a client was to knock Skinner off?” Bree knew this was a futile stab before she finished the sentence. Stubblefield merely grinned at her. She tried a different angle. “What about your own interest in Island Dream?”

  His sharp little eyes flickered to the left and back. “What about it? It’s a hell of a good deal. And I didn’t invest a dime until well after Fairchild closed the deal with Skinner.” The words “and you can’t prove otherwise” hung in the air. Stubblefield had recovered almost all of his self-confidence. He grinned. “You’re looking at one person who preferred Benjamin Skinner alive, well, and sending us his checks.” He drew a wad of cash from his pocket, slapped it down on the counter, and rose to his feet. He stared down at her for a long moment. Bree stared back. He nodded to himself, gave her a cocky salute, and turned to go.

  Bree watched him swagger off. “I’m not writing him off as a suspect just yet, Sash.” She looked down at the dog. “If only because he is so loathsome!” She shuddered. “Ugh! You know, I almost . . .” She bit her lip. Almost what? She’d been angry, that was for sure. As angry as she’d been at Payton the day before yesterday. If it hadn’t been for Striker and that weird sense of calm he’d given her, what would have happened? It’d flowed out of him like light.

  Sasha sat up and pawed eagerly at her knee. “You’re right. It’s time we went home.” She gathered her briefcase and stood up. She searched the crowd with her eyes, but Gabriel Striker was gone.

  Thirteen

  “I can’t believe that!” said Alice.

  “Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try

  again: take a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

  Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said,

  “one can’t believe impossible things.”

  “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the

  Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many

  as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  —Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll

  “Ron said some of the dead aren’t the least little bit peaceful ?” Antonia speared the last chunk of crab from her dinner salad and chuckled to herself. “You’ve had some first day, haven’t you? He’s a peach, Ron is, isn’t he? From the sounds of it, you’ve collected quite a staff. Lavinia sounds like a real sweetie, for example. I’d like to meet her.”

  “You could have, if you’d come into the office.” Bree hadn’t known whether she’d find Antonia home or not when she got back from the meeting with Stubblefield, but she’d brought a double helping of crab salad and sourdough bread for dinner with her, just in case. She was still too upset by the encounter to fill Antonia in, so she stuck to talking about the lighter parts of her day over dinner. She had half of her mind on the conversation; the other half was going over and over the appearances and disappearances of the elusive Gabe Striker.

  “I couldn’t find it,” Antonia complained. “If it hadn’t been for Ron running into me with his bicycle, I would have wandered up and down Houston for hours, like a little Flying Dutchman. Where did you say it was again?”

  “Angelus, a block beyond East Bay, one over from Houston. It’s five blocks from here, for Pete’s sake.” Bree buttered the last of the sourdough with exasperated swipes of her dinner knife. “What were you doing looking for me, anyway? I thought you were job hunting today.” Bree bit into the bread and said thickly, “Or maybe thinking about going back to school.”

  “I haven’t heard from Savannah Rep yet,” Antonia said with an air of long-suffering. “Good grief, Bree. Is my working or not working any of your business?”

  Bree took another bite of bread while she thought about this. “Probably not,” she admitted. “But you’re putting me into a bit of a bind with Mamma and Daddy. For one thing, where are you planning on staying when they come into town next week for the party? We’ve only got the two bedrooms. And I was here first. For another, when are you going to tell them you dropped out of school?”

  Antonia made a face. “I don’t have to tell them yet, do I?”

  “And when they want to know why you’re here instead of in Charleston?”

  “I’m here to help you with your party, of course,” Antonia said promptly. “I can set up some wine and cheese in your office—and handle all the new clients who want to see where you work. If the office exists anywhere but your imagination, of course.”

  Bree froze for a moment. Then, a little huskily, she said, “Oh, the office is real enough.” She shoved her kitchen chair back from the table and stretched her legs out on the tile floor. “It’s this case that’s unreal. I wish I knew why Liz Overshaw thinks Skinner’s ghost is haunting her. I wonder if we should do a background check on her. See if there’s any history of this kind of thinking in her past.”

  “You want to find out if she’s been in the booby hatch?”

  “I guess,” Bree said dryly. “Although I wouldn’t put it quite that way, myself. I was thinking more about something like post-traumatic stress syndrome. Maybe she’s under a lot of pressure from somewhere and this is how she’s dealing with it.” She got up and began to carry plates to the sink. “I’ll have to think about it some.”

  “Why don’t you think about it while we walk on down to Savannah Sweets?”

  “Now there’s a plan I like,” Bree said. “I could use a good praline and a cup of coffee. Besides,” she added, “I want to check out how the repairs are going down at Huey’s. I feel so guilty about that, it makes me itch. Do you think I should send them some money anonymously?”

  Antonia, already halfway out the front door, turned and looked at her. “Why in the world do you want to send money to Huey’s? Are you thinking we should maybe do a little charity fund-raising? They don’t have insurance?”

  “Well, it pretty much was my fault, wasn’t it?”

  “This little windstorm out of nowhere was your fault?”

  Bree didn’t say anything. She picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder. Sasha nudged her knee with an anxious whine. She fondled his ears, and then gave him a regretful pat. Flights of stairs were placed at intervals down Factor’s Walk. All led to the bottom of the wharfs and the shops and restaurants that lined River Road. And all of them were steep. “Those stairs are no place for the handicapped, Sasha. Sorry.”

  She followed Antonia out the door, and across the little bridge that spanned the road below. The closest stairway to River Road was right at the end of the town house, an almost vertical plunge of wrought iron with narrow treads.

  “People in olden times must have had little feet,” Antonia said. She walked sideways down the stairs, balancing herself lightly with one hand. “There’s no way my size-eight shoes fit these stairs.”

  “I believe they did have little feet,” Bree said. “Just look at the little teeny shoes in the clothing museums. They were short, too.” She took a breath. “Tonia?”

  “What?” She waited until Bree joined her at the foot of the stairs.

  “What did you see at Huey’s when it happened? I thought you blamed the whole mess on me.”

  “What did I see at Huey’s? You mean when the place got wrecked? You were at your feminine best, of course. Payton pushed it too far, and you reached over the table and grabbed him by the ears. You would have slugged him a good one, I bet, but all of a sudden ...” she trailed off. Then she put
her fingers to her temples and gave them a furious rub.

  “All of a sudden, what?”

  “I don’t quite recall!” she said with some surprise. “Maybe the air pressure dropped or something, the way it does before a tornado. Anyhow, next thing we all knew, the wind came through and tossed us all rearend over tea-kettle. You told me you were going back up to the town house and I hung around for a bit.”

  “I told you I was leaving?”

  “Well, it sure wasn’t SpongeBob SquarePants,” she said sarcastically.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t somebody else who told you that’d I’d gone? Some guy, maybe? Very good looking. Really built. Kind of odd-looking eyes. I mean, things were a little confused.”

  “You think I’d forget a really built, good-looking guy even in the middle of a mini-hurricane? Are you crazy? Why? Did you meet somebody that cool? Did you get his phone number? I’ve told you this before, the absolute only way to get over Payton the Rat is to find somebody else.”

  Bree felt like sticking her fingers in her ears and screaming. Instead, she said, “You’re sure?”

  “You know,” Antonia said confidingly, “I am this close to telling you to shut up. No, I didn’t see anybody like that, and yes, you told me you were going home and if you ask me one more time I’m going to pull your hair out by the roots!” She took a breath and said equably, “So. Are we going to get pralines or what?”

  Bree made her mind up. She wanted Striker off her case. Literally and figuratively. “Or what,” she said absently. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Go? Go where?”

  “I forgot about something.” She turned and started back up the steps. “I’m taking the car. Don’t wait up for me. And make sure you walk Sasha one more time before you go to bed.”

  “Bree!”

  Antonia’s frustrated wail followed her to the car, and as she pulled out onto Bay, she imagined she could still hear it. Nothing aggravated her sister more than being outside the action. Bree drove down to Montgomery and tuned into the Chatham County Courthouse lot. She parked under the sodium lights. Professor Cianquino had given her Gabriel Striker’s card. She was pretty sure she’d tucked it into her wallet. She was right. She’d stuck it between her driver’s license and an expired gym membership card.