Angel's Advocate Read online

  Hunter crossed his arms and rested his head against the office wall. “Okay. Quite a sum. But I suppose they can afford it. This led to someone blowing a hole through Shirley Chavez’s skull?”

  Bree ignored Hunter’s bluntness. “The Chandlers can afford to buy the state of Rhode Island. I don’t know which Chandler it was. And it’s important. Because I think Shirley was killed because of what she knows about a series of robberies at the warehouse.”

  “I haven’t heard—”

  Bree cut him off with an upraised hand. “This is all conjecture, Sam. Can you just let me think aloud for a second?”

  Something in her voice—which was almost shrill with her tension—made him back off. Or maybe it was his given name, which she rarely used. “It was George who authorized the payoff, possibly. He seems to have a little more influence with the corporation than I’d been led to believe. And he’s Stubblefield, Marwick’s client.”

  Hunter focused on her statement. “Wealthy heir to the family fortune starts in the mailroom and works his way up?”

  Bree’s smile was wider this time, and genuine. “Well, that’s just it. I called my paralegal as I was driving over here, to see if we had any information on who inherited what when Probert Chandler died. He’d already settled a relatively modest amount of money on each of his children as soon as they hit twenty-five. The remainder of the family fortune is left in trust to his wife, who in turn will leave it to the three kids, although Lindsey’s will be in trust until she’s twenty-five, too. The mind boggles at the thought of that kid with a third of twenty billion. Anyhow. This is a traditional family—can you imagine leaving twenty billion dollars to your widow? That just isn’t done with these huge fortunes, Hunter. Trust me. There are all kinds of tax issues. Anyway, so none of the three kids benefited by his death. At least, not on the surface. If Carrie-Alice had been in the car with Probert, that would have been another issue altogether.” She broke off, thinking about this. Hunter cleared his throat impatiently. “These trust funds include huge amounts of voting stock. So, of course George will get whatever George wants in that company, despite the fact that his job title is junior mailroom clerk, or whatever it happens to be. A lot of the wealth is in stock.” Bree took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what’s impressed me so far about this case. The spin. The fact that the public perception of Probert and his clan is poor boy makes good. That George is the humble scion of a thrifty hardworking billionaire. The complete silence around the warehouse robberies. Squashing Cordelia, which is almost impossible to do. And this is all after Probert himself has died.”

  “So George calls the shots?”

  “That’s my guess. But it’s a guess, at this point. Now for more puzzles. You know as well as I do that buying off a victim is illegal, the way that Payton McAllister did it. Which is stupid. Because if they’d gone the private-settlement route to settle a civil suit, nobody would think twice about it. Just another rotten-rich family buying justice. You see what I mean? So that’s an anomaly. The only possible reason to buy off the Chavezes this way is speed. The Chavezes withdraw the complaint and boom! the case drops off the radar. Shirley said Payton McAllister was out at her house by four o’clock the afternoon of the assault on Sophie. George—if it is George behind this—hadn’t counted on his sister loving the limelight. Instead of the case being decently buried, next thing he knows, she’s on Savannah’s most notorious talk show, being as bad a kid as she can possibly be. And they can’t snatch her off to a nice little clinic somewhere, because the police and DA’s office are already involved, and she’s under arrest.” Bree suppressed a laugh. “George must have felt as if he was playing Whac-a-Mole.”

  “And the murder?”

  “Which one?” Bree got up and began to pace around the room.

  “Cordy gave me a call,” Hunter said after the silence had stretched on.

  “She did,” Bree said. She darted a glance at him. His face was forbidding. But he wasn’t yelling at her to turn over the name of the witness. At least not yet.

  “Unofficially,” he said wryly. “And I had to agree to sit on it until you delivered on your promise. She said something about forty-eight hours?”

  Bree made a face. “If that’s what she said, that’s what I get.”

  “So you think this guy, the one that jacked Chandler’s car in Skidaway Road and then went down into the ravine after, is the same guy who showed up later to keep Shirley quiet?”

  “It leaps out at you, doesn’t it? I mean it tracks.”

  Hunter yawned. “Sorry. I had a late night yesterday, and tonight’s not going to end early. No, it doesn’t necessarily track. It’s a theory. And you’re making way too many assumptions.”

  “Which is why you should let me go forward with investigating this case. So I can clear up these assumptions.”

  “Here’s something to investigate.” There was more than a trace of sarcasm in the tone of his voice. “Why kill Shirley Chavez? So word leaks out there’s been a payoff. So what?”

  “Well, that should leap out at you, too, Lieutenant,” she snapped. “Because I’ve been poking around into Probert Chandler’s murder, that’s why. If I find the guy that killed Shirley, I find the guy that smashed Probert over the head with the high-beam flashlight.” She bit her lip to keep her tears back. The image of Shirley Chavez’s shattered skull was as real to her as the look on Hunter’s face. “Missy was right. I stirred this whole thing up.” She cleared her throat loudly. “This should make it easier to catch him, anyhow. He must have left some forensic evidence this time. And you guys are good and thorough, right?”

  “Maybe.” Hunter flipped his cell phone open and spoke into it. “Markham? I want you to include something else in the background check on everyone who set foot on the farm today. I’m looking for a connection to Marlowe’s or the Marlowe’s lawyer. Stubblefield, that’s right.” He grinned sourly into the phone. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice? But he’s got a gofer on point for this one. Lawyer by the name of Payton McAllister.” He slipped the cell phone back in his pocket. “Interesting leads. There’d be more than a few of us on the force that’d be happy to nail Stubblefield.”

  Bree’s own opinion was that it’d be a true community service, but she said, “What can you tell me about the case here? Missy Trask found the body? Is that right? Did anyone see anything? Do you have any leads?”

  Hunter stood away from the wall and stretched. “I’m going to get Mrs. Trask’s written statement right now. I can’t stop you if you want to go with me.”

  This, from Hunter, was a major concession. But Bree hesitated. Abel was with Missy. And Virginia, too. Bree was tired. It’d been a long day with a truly hideous end. If she had to confront Missy’s accusing face one more time, and in front of Abel, too, she’d die on the spot. Virginia would be there, too, who’d loathed Bree from the moment she’d set eyes on her all those years ago at Plessey. But God hates a coward, and most policemen do, too.

  “Fine,” she said aloud. “I’ll just tag right along, if you don’t mind.”

  She trailed Hunter out into the dark. The rain had cleared, and the sky was swept with mist. The moon showed palely through the wisps, and the night was still, except for the clatter from the barns where the forensics team tramped up and down. There were no media yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  When Ashbury Seaton invested in racehorses in 1883, he’d had a lot of cheap labor to run his stable and a lot of land to build on. Seaton House was a two-story, rambling structure that had started out as a small, six-room plantation house in the late eighteenth century. Succeeding generations of Seatons grew cotton, then tobacco, and finally, with a prescience not usual to Southern businessmen at the time, moved into railroad stock and freed their slaves just at the start of the Civil War. The brick office building had been sort of a dower house, where a succession of strong-minded Seaton matriarchs found themselves banished as their sons and daughters married and took over the business. It was located less
than two hundred yards from the big house. The shortest route between the buildings was this brick-paved path that led to the kitchens in the back.

  The light from the office windows spread a faint glow over the ground outside. Bree looked for the little wooden gate that fenced off the brick path to the house, and unlatched it, letting Sasha go through first. She motioned Hunter to follow. “We’ll go this way,” Bree said. “It’s shorter, and maybe we can coax Missy into the kitchen, away from the crowd.” She stepped onto the path. Late rambling roses reached out for her ankles, and she tripped a little over a particularly obtrusive root. Hunter caught her arm and eased her upright. “You’ve been here before?”

  “This afternoon, obviously,” she said tartly.

  Hunter glanced at her, the same sharp, penetrating look he’d given Abel. “You know the family well?”

  “No. Not well. When I was younger . . .” She ignored his derisive snort. “Okay, a few years back, when I was still riding, I was here drag hunting a couple of times. It’s a good hunt. And the horses are marvelous. My folks bought more than one hunter from the Trasks, and not a dud in the bunch.”

  She could almost feel Hunter’s withdrawal, as he walked along the path behind her. Well, he’d asked, hadn’t he? And she couldn’t change her family, or her own past experience, and it was just too flippin’ bad if he didn’t like it.

  The lights were on in the kitchen, as she’d expected them to be. She knocked lightly at the back door, and smiled at the woman who opened it. “It’s Delight Rawlings, isn’t it?”

  “That it is,” she said gravely, “and you’re Miss Bree Beaufort. I remember you from the hunt breakfasts a few years back.”

  Bree stepped inside the kitchen, Hunter and Sasha both at her heels. “This is Lieutenant Hunter from the police. Lieutenant, Delight Rawlings is the woman who holds the household here together. We’re here to see Mrs. Trask, Delight. We thought we’d come in the back way and avoid creating too much of a fuss. Everything must be at sixes and sevens up front.”

  “That it is,” Delight said with an explosive sigh. “Such goings-on, I never did see. Well, now, I’m a liar. It’s just like Law & Order. But that’s TV, if y’all know what I mean, and this here’s real life. You want I should fetch Miz Trask?”

  “Please.” Bree sank down in a chair at the huge pine kitchen table.

  “I’ll just do that. You help yourselves to coffee if you want some. And there’s some oatmeal cookies, fresh baked.” Her eyes slid to Hunter. “I sent some of the cookies out to your folks. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Very kind of you, ma’am. Very.”

  “I’ll be back directly.”

  Hunter wandered around the kitchen as the house-keeper rolled out the swinging doors that led to the front of the house. The kitchen was large, perhaps twenty by forty, and it was dominated by a large brick fireplace with an old iron spit. An ancient ten-burner gas stove sat under the windows that looked out over the back gardens. The cabinets were a hodgepodge of styles, ranging from battered pine cupboards, painted a peeling white, to a couple of Home Depot specials faced with synthetic thermo glaze.

  “Not quite what I expected,” Hunter said. He stared up at a ham that dangled from the rafters.

  “There’s a smokehouse out back. It’s still in use. But Missy cares more about the barns than the house. Most of her family did, too. They never did spend much on the inside of their houses, the Seatons.” She raised her head and listened. Sasha, sprawled at her feet, raised his head, too.

  Four of them coming; one’s in a wheelchair.

  Wonderful. Virginia was still up.

  And still a shrieking pain in the neck. She was first through the doorway, shoving the swinging doors aside with an impatient hand. She barreled through at top speed, or so it seemed to Bree, who jumped out of the way as Virginia rolled to a halt.

  “Bree Beaufort, as I live and breathe.”

  “Hi, Virginia. You’re looking well.”

  Virginia had been a beautiful girl when Abel married her fifteen years before, and she was beautiful still. She had the soft, peachy complexion of a camellia petal, with wide, velvety brown eyes fringed by thick, curling lashes. Her mouth made Bree’s hackles rise; it was sweetly curved and full and somehow repulsive. Her lower lip protruded as she considered Bree’s remark. “Kind of you to say that. That I’m looking well. When I’m just lookin’ a hag, especially after this horrible event today. But you’ve always been kind, Bree.” She smiled slyly. “Makes a sort of a religion of it, don’t you think, Abel? But you’re not sayin’ what you’re surely thinking, Bree: ‘What’s this poor child doing in a wheelchair?’ ” She smoothed her legs, as if petting a cat. She wore a dark blue silk pantsuit, with a brilliant turquoise tee that set off her complexion and her dark blonde hair. “A turn for the worse, the doctors said. Stress, most likely. That’s a real trigger for this disease. Multiple sclerosis,” she said, in Hunter’s direction. “Intermittent relapsing MS. Came on just after I married my Abel.”

  Hunter observed her silently, and then said, “Very sorry to hear that, ma’am. It’s fortunate that you’re here, however. You were here on the farm all day today?”

  “I was.”

  “And you didn’t leave at all.”

  She flirted up at him. “Now, do I look like I could have taken myself off anywhere, Lieutenant? My husband was out all day, and I was here all by myself . . .”

  “Except for me, Miz Trask,” Delight said. “I was here right along.”

  “Well, yes. Delight and I were here alone until sup pertime. Abel and Missy came in to eat around seven. And then, of course, Missy went out to do evening rounds and this all happened.”

  “Then we’ll need a statement from you,” Hunter said smoothly. “Mr. Trask? If you could take your wife to the front—parlor, would it be?”

  “That’s right, Lieutenant,” Virginia said graciously. “These fine old Southern homes do indeed have parlors.”

  Hunter smiled. He had, Bree realized, quite an attractive smile, when he chose to deploy it. And that’s what he was doing now. “I’m a city boy—New York City—and this style of living is all new to me.”

  “Well, it would be, wouldn’t it,” Virginia said. “And you need a statement from me, you said?”

  “From all of the family members,” Hunter said smoothly. “If you’ll make yourself comfortable . . .”

  “Comfortable!” Virginia indicated her wheelchair with a sweep of one red-nailed hand.

  “As is possible, with your situation. I’ll send Sergeant Markham to you right away.”

  Virginia shot Bree a malevolent glance. “Abel. I’ll need you there with me.”

  Abel turned to Missy, who had washed her face, combed her hair, and exchanged her flannel shirt for long-sleeved cotton. “You going to be okay with all this?”

  She jerked her chin in a gesture of acceptance. Abel opened the swinging doors and Virginia rolled through. Hunter waited until the doors banged closed, then pulled out his cell and called Markham.

  Missy stuffed her hands in her jeans and rocked back and forth on her heels. She addressed Bree without looking at her. “Sorry,” she said shortly.

  “It’s all right. You just voiced what I’d been thinking.” Bree shook her head helplessly. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither of us, Abel or I, think you had a hand in poor Shirley’s death. I didn’t mean what I said. About you having murdered her. I did mean what I said about dealing with that dreadful kid Lindsey and her family, Bree. How could you?”

  “Everyone’s entitled to the best representation the courts can offer,” Bree said stiffly. “I won’t apologize for that.”

  Missy tried to smile. “Now you sound like your daddy.”

  “And you sound like you’ve had more experience with Lindsey than seeing her strutting her stuff on TV.” Bree looked encouraging. “Well?”

  Missy sat across from her with a sigh, and accepted a cup of coffee from the silentl
y sympathetic Delight. “You’ve noticed things look a little run-down around here.”

  Bree demurred, then said, sympathetically, “Hard times?”

  Missy grimaced. “You could say that. I made a mistake going into hunters, Bree. Charles was great about it. He was always good about letting me make the big decisions. But it diverted attention from the track, and the track paid the bills. You know what happens when you let things slide. First you start placing second and then you show third, and then you don’t come into the money at all. By the time I woke up and smelled the coffee, we were thinking about selling off some of the land.”

  Bree made a sympathetic noise. With the sudden jump in the number of retirees looking for second homes, land around Savannah had doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in value in the past few years. Missy was sitting on a fortune.

  Behind them both, Hunter stowed his cell phone, leaned against the stove, and listened.

  “I thought maybe the quickest way to pay the bills was a riding school. You know what has to happen with those horses that don’t make it at the track.”

  Bree did. It was a hard fact of life that a stud like Seaton sent horses off to the knackers several times a year.

  “So we reschooled a couple of the old boys who had the temperament to make it as hacks, and took on students.” An impish twinkle lit her eye. “Girls with mammas with more money than sense, most of them. And they knew squat-all about horses, but that’s another story. So, to cut to the chase. Lindsey and her two friends signed up for the basic English hunter classes. Madison and what’s her name, Hartley. They were okay. Madison in particular has the makings of a pretty good rider. And she’s a good kid. But Lindsey.” Her lips tightened in disgust. “Pulled her off the horse, called Carrie-Alice, and banned her from the property. For life.”