Angel's Advocate Read online

  Bree put her lunch dishes in the sink, snapped on Sasha’s lead, and set out on the short walk to Angelus.

  It was a fine late October day. The high humidity that plagued Savannah in late spring and summer was gone. The family town house sat above the warehouses and naval stores that had been built into the bluffs overlooking the Savannah River these two hundred years past. The town house was part of a series of converted offices connected to one another and to Bay Street by a series of wooden bridges and cast-iron arches.

  Bree paused at the top of the cobbled ramp leading down to River Street. Huey’s beckoned. So did Savannah Sweets. Huey’s made a great cup of coffee and Savannah Sweets had the best pralines east of New Orleans. Sasha nudged her knee in a mildly reproving way.

  “You’re right. And yes, I’m going to work. And no, I’m not stopping for pralines.” Bree inhaled the scent of the river, wondering if she caught a faint touch of brine from the Atlantic three miles to the east. With a sigh, she turned and headed across East Bay to Mulberry, walked one block down, turned east, and found herself facing Georgia’s very own all-murderers cemetery and the small Federal-style house that contained the office of Beaufort & Company, advocates for those who had died and gone to Hell (or, often as not, Purgatory).

  Somebody, most likely her secretary, Ron Parchese, since he was the fussiest—and most able-bodied—of her employees, had weeded around the wrought-iron fence and sunken graves and tidied the kudzu from the grave-stones. The azaleas, camellias, roses, and rhododendrons that made such a glory of Old Savannah in spring and summer weren’t flowering now, of course. But Savannah in autumn had its own peculiar beauty. Silver-gray Spanish moss draped the live oaks like graceful shawls. Hedges of Russian olive, boxwood, and bougainvillea flaunted the full spectrum of greens, from pale celery to near black. It was a lovely spot, if you could ignore the noxious odors from the graves. Bree took a cautious breath. The dank, earthy smell was charged with a horrid undercurrent of decay this afternoon. She narrowed her eyes against the sunlight and looked under the magnolia tree. Was it her imagination, or did a faint smear of poisonous yellow smoke foul the air?

  No. She wasn’t going to talk herself into a case of the heebie-jeebies. Bree shook her head, walked up the crumbling brick steps to the front door, and let herself in.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Ron caroled. “Did you stop for pralines or not?”

  “Not,” Bree responded. She was in the foyer, and Ron’s desk was out of sight around the corner in the living room, at right angles to the brick fireplace. He didn’t need to see her to know who it was. He always just . . . knew.

  She set her briefcase on the first step of the stairs leading to the second story. Her landlady, an elderly woman with the energy and mischievousness of an eight-year-old, had painted the stairs with a parade of brightly colored Renaissance angels. The figures marched up the treads and disappeared into the shadowy recesses of the second-floor landing, a blaze of gold, red, purple, and royal blue.

  Bree caught the odor of strange and exotic flowers and heard the faint skittering of paws on wood floors. Lavinia must be up there, tending to her “littlies.”

  “I’m not going to stay long,” Bree said as she walked into the office area. “Cissy talked me into going out to see a new client on Tybee Island. I’m just going to call . . .” She stopped and looked around. “What happened to Petru’s desk? As a matter of fact, what happened to Petru?”

  “He’s in the kitchen,” Ron said primly. “Him and his pesky desk.”

  “He and his pesky desk,” Bree said; sloppy grammar sometimes made her itch slightly. “What about him and his desk?”

  As usual, Ron was dressed in impeccably ironed chinos, a striped shirt, Countess Mara tie, and loafers without socks. He folded his hands on top of his own desk—also, as usual, furiously neat—and gave her a wounded look.

  “When I said ‘him and his pesky desk,’ the clause was the object of the sentence,” Bree explained. “When you said . . .” She struck her head lightly with the palm of her hand. “Never mind. Just tell me why Petru’s moved his stuff into the kitchen.”

  “Break room.” Ron corrected her with an air of mild triumph. “You did say that it’s more professional to refer to the living room as the reception area and the kitchen as the break room. And the reason he’s in the break room is I couldn’t stand one more minute of that Russian’s mess. And Bree, he hums to himself when he works.”

  “So you made him move to the kitchen?”

  “I didn’t make him move. He volunteered.” Ron wrinkled his nose. “I may have made a pretty heavy suggestion, though.”

  Bree had discovered very quickly that working with angels did not guarantee angelic temperaments. Ron liked things pathologically neat. Petru worked best as a little mole, hiding behind teetering stacks of files. And he did hum when he worked, a lugubrious drone that made her think of peasants starving to death in the revolution of 1917. She drew a breath and yelled, “Petru!”

  There was a brief pause from beyond the door to the break room, and then the shuffle-thump that told her Petru was walking across the floor with his cane. Her paralegal came into the reception area, stopped, folded his hands over his cane, and peered benignly at her through his thick black beard.

  “You moved your desk into the kitch—that is, the break room?”

  He shrugged. “Ronald was reacting ke-vite badly to my singing, perchance.” Petru’s spoken English was heavily accented, and somewhat idiosyncratic. His written English was exemplary. “Also, he kept filing those papers which I did not wish to be filed.”

  “Because his idea of a filing system is to throw everything all over the floor,” Ron said. “Honestly, Bree. Why should I have to put up with that?”

  Bree cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she began.

  Petru thumped his cane onto the pine floor. “I am ke-vite happy in the kitchen. It’s closer to the coffeepot, for one thing, and it is quieter, for another. I like it.”

  “You do?”

  Petru nodded.

  “And Ron?”

  “As long as I don’t have to stare at his mess or listen to him hum,” her secretary said crossly, “it’s fine. Just fine. Though I suppose if we don’t get a case pretty soon, I won’t have anything to file anyhow, so never mind.”

  “About new cases . . .” Bree settled herself onto the leather couch that faced the fireplace. She cast an involuntary glance at the painting propped on the mantel. It was similar in style and content to Turner’s Slave Ship: a three-masted schooner surrounded by drowning men struggling in the depths of a roiling sea. It was a horrible subject, and it hung there as a reminder of Beaufort & Company’s mission to save those unfortunates, abandoned by fate, who came to them for help. Even though, as Bree had learned with their last case, their clients might not have been the kindest of men and women in life. “Although I’m not sure if this is our case or my case.”

  Ron looked confused. Petru blinked at her wisely. “You have, perhaps, a question about the scope of our cause? Do we defend the living as well as the dead?”

  “Exactly,” Bree said.

  “That’s easy,” Ron said promptly. “Souls in the temporal sphere don’t need us. There are thousands of real-time lawyers out there.”

  “Oh, dear,” Bree said. “I suppose I’ll have to turn this one down, then.” She tugged irritably at her ear. “To be blunt about it, it would have been a pretty decent fee, too.”

  “On the other hand,” Ron said, “the living are the pre-dead, so to speak. Souls in transit.”

  “ ‘Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living,’ ” Petru said. “Sir Thomas expresses it ke-vite well, I think.” Ron scowled at him. He scowled back. “Although, of course, he was not thinking of the need to pay the electric bill.”

  Bree’s head began to ache. Whoever Sir Thomas was—More? Could Petru be referring to Thomas More? Anyhow—she’d bet he was a soul departed and not a shado
w of death. Petru had an unsettling way of referring to long dead poets and philosophers as though he’d just met them for lunch. For all she knew, maybe he had.

  “Which is to say,” Petru went on, “that you may take on cases outside the venue of Beaufort & Company. And that we can assist you in the normal way.”

  “Nonangelic,” Ron explained. “No extras, if you know what I mean.”

  Bree didn’t have a clue what Ron meant. She did have a million questions about what her employees did—and where they were—even what they looked like—when they weren’t helping her at the office. All of the questions seemed incredibly rude and impossible to ask. She had once asked Lavinia the actual form and function of her “littlies” and received, accompanied by an ominous roll of thunder, a sweet, impenetrable smile in response. She supposed they’d let her know when the time was right. In the interim, she roundly cursed herself for a well-mannered coward and let all of her questions boil around in the back of her mind.

  “A paying client?” Ron urged. “Go ahead. Do tell.”

  “Well, this one’s a doozy,” she said. She explained, briefly, about the cheerleader, the Hummer, and the victimized Girl Scout.

  “Dearie me,” Ron said. “What a little witch it is. Lindsey Chandler, you say? I’ve read about her. Richer than she should be and nasty with it, from all accounts. Bree, you can’t pass this one up.” He reached forward and waggled his fingers. “You have the phone number? Hand it over. I’ll set up an appointment right now.”

  Two

  Più non ti dico e più non ti respondo.

  I will tell you no more and I no longer answer you.

  —The Inferno, Dante

  Ten minutes later, Bree drove onto President Street, which would take her to 80 East to Tybee Island. Sasha sat in the passenger seat, head out the window, eyes blissfully closed against the breeze, ears flying in the wind. The Chandler place was on the south end of the island, facing Little Tybee. A pricey neighborhood, but not Old Savannah. The Chandler place was set back from the main road, surrounded by a ficus hedge more than twenty feet high. Ficus was rare in lower Georgia; Bree was willing to bet a large amount of money went each year to replacing frost losses. But it was an elegant hedge, no doubt about it.

  The house was a Mizner clone. Like its sister houses in Palm Beach, it had a comfortable elegance all its own. The red tile roof, pink stucco, and elaborate wrought-iron fencing spoke of quiet good taste. The lawn was lush, with that velvety green cropped grass that was as soft as moss to walk on. She caught a glimpse of a pool out back surrounded by brick paving. Well-cared-for teak chairs and tables offered an oasis of comfort around the pool. Amazingly modest when you knew how much the Chandlers were worth. Bree felt a flicker of genuine interest in Lindsey’s behavior, in spite of herself. The family obviously downplayed their huge wealth, which argued for pretty good values, as a rule.

  Or maybe not.

  She settled Sasha in the front seat of the car, left both windows open, and walked up the brick pathway to the colonnaded front porch. Carrie-Alice Chandler opened the mahogany front door as Bree came up the steps.

  “Brianna? I’m Carrie Chandler.” She took in Bree with a brief glance and said dryly, “My goodness. You’re related to Cissy? You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?”

  As this complimented Bree at her much-loved aunt’s expense, she wasn’t sure how to respond, so she didn’t.

  Carrie-Alice was shorter than Bree, but then, many women were; Bree was five-foot-nine in her stocking feet. Bree knew the woman couldn’t be more than forty-five, but she looked older. Her face was tired. She hadn’t bothered to tint the gray out of her brown hair and she wore foundation that was a slightly lighter color than her actual skin tone. Her lipstick was an old-fashioned matte red. She was dressed neatly, if unimaginatively, in a well-cut linen skirt and cotton twinset in pale pink. A pearl necklace, small pearl earrings, and flat Todd loafers completed a look that was fine for the over-sixty set, but odd in a woman with a teenaged daughter. When Bree thought about it later, she decided it was a defensive way to dress.

  Carrie straightened up, as if it were an effort to be courteous, and stood aside to let Bree pass. “Thank you for coming so promptly. Please come in.”

  Bree followed her through the wide, black-and-white-tiled foyer to the rear of the house. The house had a refrigerated flower smell, like an expensive florist. The furniture consisted of good-quality reproductions. The flooring was narrow-planked oak with faux pegs, a composite wood over subflooring, popular now in expensive homes.

  “Would you like to sit in the sunroom or the study?” Carrie paused in the hallway and glanced over her shoulder. The door to her left was halfway open. Bree saw a room arranged with desk, bookshelves, and some very nice watercolors on the walls. The sunroom was straight ahead. The French doors were open to the pool area. A streaked blonde head peeked over the top of one of the recliners.

  “Whatever you think best,” Bree said politely.

  “The study’s where Probert used to have his little talks with Lindsey. The sunroom’s where she and her little buddies hang out when she isn’t harassing innocent Girl Scouts.”

  “Little talks?” Bree said. The phrase had unpleasant overtones. Involuntarily, she rubbed her arms.

  “Lindsey’s been a handful since she was a toddler,” Carrie said briefly. “I left most of it up to Probert to handle. But of course, now that he’s dead, it’s up to me, isn’t it? The study might give you a home court advantage, that’s all.” She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Why don’t we let Lindsey decide?” Bree made it a question.

  “Fine. She’s out by the pool, I think.” Carrie walked ahead into the sunroom. “You coming along?”

  Bree left her briefcase in the hall and followed Carrie through the large, sun-filled room and out to the pool. The streaked blonde head was gone from the recliner. Except for a tote bag tumbled in a heap on the patio bricks, the area was empty.

  “Now where did that child get to?” Carrie murmured fretfully. “She was just here.”

  Bree scanned the backyard. “Is there another way into the house without going back up front?”

  “No.” Carrie gestured. The sunporch wrapped around the entire rear of the house. “She’d have to pass us in the hall to go anywhere.”

  “Then she must have walked around to the front.” The west side of the house was dense with shrubbery. The east side had a fine path of raked gravel and slate steps. Bree set off down the path, rounded the side of the house to the front, and saw a slender blonde figure leaning into her car. Her right elbow swung in and out of the window.

  “Lindsey!” Carrie said in exasperation.

  Lindsey jerked upright. “Is this your dog?” she demanded. “She’s, like, totally awesome.” She had a peeled wooden stick in one hand. It looked as if it’d come from one of the willows at the side of the house. Casually, she tossed it onto the ground.

  Bree bent and peered into the passenger-side window. Sasha gazed alertly back at her with an “I want out” expression. The remaining tenderness in his hind leg made him sit at an awkward angle and he shifted uncomfortably in the front seat.

  “Looks like she hurt her leg,” Lindsey said. She wiped her hands down the sides of her jeans, which were skin-tight, low-slung, and exposed a fair amount of skin from her waistline to her hips. She was too thin, her neck rising from her cropped T-shirt like a baby bird’s. She had a butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder, a gold nose stud, and clever, wary blue eyes. The pupils were slightly dilated. Uh-oh, Bree thought.

  “He,” Bree corrected gently. “And his name is Sasha. As for his leg, he had a cast that just came off. And he’s glad of it, aren’t you, boy?”

  “She wants to come out,” Lindsey said helpfully. “You can just see it. She probably wants to pee.” Her giggle was high-pitched. She shot a nervous glance at her mother.

  “Do you mind?” Bree asked Carrie. She wanted Sasha with her, where she could
keep an eye on him.

  Carrie shrugged. “Certainly.”

  Bree opened the passenger door and Sasha hopped to the ground. He inspected Carrie with a courteous wag of his tail. Bree, fearful, ran her hands over his coat, looking for spots where this miserable child might have poked him with a stick.

  “We haven’t had a dog in the house for ages,” Carrie said. “Not since we had to give away our Irish setter.”

  “Oh?” Bree said. It was her firm belief you could tell a lot about people from their relationship with animals. And she sure didn’t like what she’d seen so far. “Why was that?”

  “Too nervy,” Carrie said briefly. “We couldn’t stop him running away from home. Found a nice farm for him to live on in the country.”

  Sasha looked at Bree.

  That’s a lie.

  “She’s beautiful!” Lindsey knelt on the gravel drive and flung her arms around Sasha’s neck. “And not a thing like that old neurotic Maxie. You’re a nice sane dog, aren’t you, girl?” She rubbed Sasha’s head with frantic fingers. Sasha bore this with the kind of calm possessed by only very large, self-confident dogs. Lindsey burrowed her head into his neck and cooed.

  “She’s a ‘he,’ Lin,” Carrie said. “And don’t hang around the old boy’s neck like that. It’s a meddlesome thing for a dog.”

  Sasha sneezed, and then wriggled out from under Lindsey’s grasp.

  “See?” Carrie said. “I told you.”

  Lindsey narrowed her eyes and stared at her mother. Sasha shifted on his feet and growled a little.

  Bree waited a moment, to see if this tension was going to go anywhere, and then said, “Let’s go into the house. I’d like to sit down and get to know you better, Lindsey.”

  “Ma hates dogs in the house.”

  “I do not,” Carrie protested. “I had dogs in your grandmother’s house all the time I was growing up.”

  “In Portland, Oregon,” Lindsey chanted. “In a little three-bedroom ranch with a big stupid oak tree in the back.”