Angel's Verdict Page 2

  Bree doodled pensively on her yellow pad. She didn’t know if her own last three clients had been ghosts or not, but they definitely had been dead. She knew better than most that Haydee could have visited her grieving lover from beyond the grave. As for Franklin himself . . . “Surely not Judge Franklin then,” Bree said mildly. “He wouldn’t have been more than thirty years old. He wasn’t named to the bench until the late ’70s.”

  “I believe the family retained him to represent Alex at the commitment hearing.”

  “Alexander claimed an insanity defense?” Bree sat up. Franklin’s other law practice, the hidden one, specialized in handling appeals for dead souls condemned to Hell. She knew that to her cost. She’d inherited his practice after he died. She’d inherited this one, too, with its office on Bay Street for the convenience of his mortal caseload.

  “That the boy was mad—temporarily at least—was the only possible interpretation of his bizarre behavior. The family had better sense than to claim he was actually visited by a ghost,” Justine continued cheerily. “They wanted to send the poor young man away to the booby hatch in lieu of a prison sentence. A private sanatorium. I suppose it would be called rehab these days. Either way, it’d be nothing so non-PC as booby hatch, would it?” Her crimson lips stretched in an over-collagened smile. “He got out after a year or two and eventually married one of the Bulloch cousins. Maria? Madeline? Something like that. She was from Charleston, I believe. They had the three daughters, Samantha Rose Bulloch, who is a Waterman now; Alexandria Charles Bulloch, who never married; and Marian Lee Cicerone. Some dago name like that.”

  Bree winced at the slur.

  The old lady continued merrily on. “Yes, Marian Lee married down, as they say. Alexander had a pretty successful career as a mortgage broker in the family bank. That part isn’t in Phillip’s script, of course. Too ordinaire for the movies.”

  Behind the bamboo divider that separated her corner of the Bay Street office from her assistant’s, Bree heard Mrs. Emerald Billingsley start to type on her computer keyboard again. Then, because the body in the handcart seemed a weird conclusion to an equally weird story, (and because she was sure EB was dying to know, too) she asked, “Did he ever say why Haydee asked him to burn her body?”

  “Purification,” said EB from behind the screen. “Stands to reason. Isn’t that what that Alex said?”

  “Poor deluded boy,” Justine said with a dismissive air. “If there was ever a sane reason, I didn’t hear of it myself. Phillip’s script has some hoodoo explanation that makes very little sense at all.” Then, “Do come around that screen and see me, young woman. I’m not fond of spectral voices at the best of times.”

  There was a sound of a chair being hastily shoved back, and in a moment, EB’s face appeared around the edge of the screen. She smiled. “Been a long time since anyone’s called me a young woman, Ms. Coville. Thank you. And I do beg your pardon, Ms. Beaufort. And yours, Ms. Coville. Couldn’t help but listen in.” She wore an old but neatly ironed beige suit and a carefully starched white shirt with a handmade ribbon collar. Her Afro was combed in a perfect neat puff around her head. “It’s your voice. Just like listening to music. Don’t know anyone doesn’t like to listen to music. And you have a way of telling a story, Ms. Coville. You surely do.” Her eyes, brown and shamelessly guileless, met Bree’s green and skeptical ones. “Was your voice something you had as a baby? Or did it come on a bit later, like? I remember you on that cop series on TV. I wondered about that beautiful voice of yours then, and I wonder about it now.”

  “Years of stage training, Mrs. Billingsley. I began on the stage, you know.”

  “That is something,” EB said. She edged a little further into the area. “Really something. On the stage, you say? Now, how’d you get from the stage to this TV movie they’re making down on the river?”

  Justine waved an arthritic hand toward the corner. “Perhaps you’d like to bring a chair and hear a little bit about it? If you don’t mind, Miss Winston-Beaufort.”

  Bree didn’t mind. Clearly, EB didn’t, either. Usually EB had firm views about being professional—and gossip rated high on her list of what was unprofessional—but she was as interested in the activities of Sundowner Productions as anyone else in Savannah. They wouldn’t charge the old lady for time spent listening to reminiscing. It wasn’t as if mortal, paying clients were beating down the door to the Bay Street office anyway. Bree’s alternate office at 666 Angelus, which was just around the corner, had another set of problems altogether. There was no shortage of souls wanting to reverse their sentences to Hell; but those cases didn’t pay the bills.

  Something else nagged at Bree; Justine Coville didn’t behave like a client who had accomplished what she’d come in for. There was something else on the elderly actress’s mind. Whatever it was, Bree hoped she’d get around to it soon.

  EB stretched out one hefty arm, pulled her desk chair into sight, and sank into it with a grateful sigh (which meant, Bree knew, that her feet were bothering her again).

  Justine smiled at her audience. “My initial training, of course, was for the theater. Of course you are aware that in the current climate . . .” She paused, one eyebrow raised. “But surely you don’t want to hear about all this.”

  EB quirked her own eyebrows encouragingly. “I surely would.”

  “Well, the current theater has this maniacal emphasis on youth. Any actress over forty will tell you how hard it is to get decent parts these days. It doesn’t seem quite fair. My early days were hard enough, and then to end them with a small but telling role in a made-for-TV movie . . .” She let a shadow come and go over her face. EB murmured in sympathy. “I’m sure you know what I mean, Mrs. Billingsley. It was hard for your people, too. In a different way, naturally. But both of us, you and I, having to take jobs we weren’t suited for. Jobs that were quite beneath us, just to make ends meet.”

  Bree bridled a little at the term “your people,” but if EB wasn’t going to call Justine on it, neither would she.

  EB said, “Isn’t it the truth.”

  “Of course, you can’t get anywhere without a bit of talent, too,” Justine said modestly.

  “And hard work,” EB said.

  “Very hard work. Now for women? Women in the acting profession, there’s a prejudice even harder to combat than color, Mrs. Billingsley. Especially for actresses who’ll admit to being a little over sixty.” She paused.

  “Sixty? Never!” EB said, right on cue. She caught Bree’s eye and winked. “You don’t look a day over forty. Not a day.”

  Bree murmured, “A-hum!” in spurious, but kindly, agreement. She sneaked a look at her watch. Almost noon. EB had scheduled an hour’s appointment beginning at eleven. Bree had to meet her sister, Antonia, at home for a quick lunch and then get on to the Angelus office.

  Justine patted her artfully streaked hair. “One has to work at it.”

  Justine was one of the first of Franklin’s former clients to make an appointment. She’d called in response to the letters EB had sent out announcing Bree’s assumption of the Bay Street practice. Like Bree, the judge had two case loads, one mortal, one not. Franklin’s files on his mortal clients were scrupulously accurate: Justine’s stated purpose was to come in and make changes to her will. The changes were minor. Bree had wondered at first if the old lady was merely bored and looking for a way to spend some time. This was fine with Bree. Justine’s birth date was January 1930, which made her exactly eighty this month. She was a gallant old lady—her attempts at looking young with the outlandish makeup and too much plastic surgery were brave stands against the erosions of time. Regardless of what she said about her difficulties in the business, Justine was pleased with her part in the movie being made about the 1952 murder of Haydee Quinn the B-girl. She reported to the set every day, despite the severe arthritis that gnarled her wrists, hands, and ankles. She deserved a little slack.

  Besides, there was that nagging sense that something else was on her mind. B
ree sat back and prepared to listen.

  “There’s no getting around the fact that I’m older than the current kingpins would like. Fortunately, people like Phillip Mercury are not ageists. Phillip Mercury is interested in talent and talent alone.”

  “I heard that,” EB said disingenuously. “Sundowner Productions is his company, isn’t it?”

  “His and the bank’s,” Justine answered cynically. “Although there are a couple of backers, I believe. At any rate, dear Phillip absolutely refused to have anyone else play Consuelo Bulloch.” Justine patted the pearls at her throat with an air of mild complacence. “ ‘It’s not just that you’re Savannah-born and bred,’ he said to me. ‘It’s that aristocratic air.’ ”

  “This Consuelo was that boy Alexander’s mamma,” EB said. “And you say she hated that poor Haydee like poison?”

  “Worse than poison,” Justine said with relish. “There were no tears from her when the poor girl’s body was found floating in the Savannah River. One of the finest scenes in the script is when that policeman O’Malley shows up at the door of Bulloch House to tell Consuelo and her son that Haydee’s been stabbed. The camera comes in for a close-up.” She spread her hands on either side of her face and opened her eyes wide. Her collagen-filled lips formed an “O” of dismay. “Closer, closer, closer ... and I’m to gaze into the distance with a purr of triumphant satisfaction. That’s what the script calls for.” She closed her eyes slowly and opened them again. “Like that.”

  Bree and EB exchanged doubtful looks. EB clapped her hands together and said, “Isn’t that something? Did you catch that, Ms. Beaufort?”

  “I did,” Bree said. “It was great.”

  “Wonderful. Wonderful,” EB said with kindly emphasis.

  “Of course,” Justine added, “Bitter Tide is only television, after all. Not what you would call the legitimate theater.”

  “I watch television,” EB said. “I watch it all the time. So does Ms. Beaufort. Tell you what. Point of being a famous actress is to get your face on out there, isn’t it? And how many people know you on account of that TV role you had, I mean—as that cop’s mamma.”

  Justine sighed theatrically. “Dear old Bristol Blues. It will be how I’m remembered. Not for my Lady Bracknell! Not for my Medea! But for that cheesy cop series.”

  Bree had loved Bristol Blues. It’d gotten a slew of Emmys. “Craig Oliver was great in that. I had a huge crush on him when I was sixteen. He’s here in town, too, isn’t he?”

  “Dear Craig,” Justine purred. “We go way back. Charming man. He was the one who brought my suitability for the role of Consuelo to Phillip’s attention. He’s playing O’Malley. The police lieutenant who cracked the Haydee Quinn case. A fine actor, of course. Very fine. But never quite achieved the fame he felt he deserved after Bristol Blues ended.” She glanced obliquely at Bree, curved her hand as if holding a glass, and tipped it toward her mouth. “And there’s the liquor, of course.”

  “Drink,” EB said. “Takes some of the finest, drink does. What a shame.”

  “Not nearly as disastrous as drugs.” Justine shook her head. “I could tell you stories . . .”

  Bree and EB maintained a hopeful (if slightly guilty) silence.

  “Tyra Steele,” Justine said flatly. “And Hatch Lewis, of course.”

  “Huh.” EB let her breath out. “There’s been more than a few stories about that. Is she really holding up the movie, like the papers say? And having it on with Hatch Lewis? That boy is about the best-looking thing I’ve seen in a long while.”

  “The only love affair Hatch Lewis has is with himself,” Justine said dismissively. “As for Tyra. Well! Drugs took down Marilyn, took down Judy, and very nearly did for Liz.” Justine settled back in her chair with a judicial air. “Tyra’s not in their league, of course. I’ve seen high school cheerleaders with better talent, and if you think that body’s a gift of God, I can give you the names of her plastic surgeons. But there’s no denying she’s captured the public imagination.” Justine paused, crossly, and took another sip of tea. “As for casting her as Haydee . . . Phillip must have been out of his mind. According to the script, Haydee is magical. Alluring. Tyra’s just tacky. As for her other behavior . . .” Justine trailed off, a grim look on her face.

  “But very beautiful,” Bree prompted.

  Justine seemed to give herself a mental shake. “Vincent White certainly seems to think so.” Justine glanced from Bree to EB. “Vincent White’s one of the producers. The man has a great deal of money and very little sense. Quite insistent about casting Tyra in the part, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  EB chuckled. “Not much changes about this old world, does it?”

  Justine’s faded eyes narrowed. “Truer words were never said, Mrs. Billingsley.” Her twisted hand trembled as she set her teacup down on Bree’s desk. She clasped her wrist with her other hand to steady it, pretending to look at her watch. “Heavens! Is that the time?” She fumbled at the thin gold band. “Phillip will have my head on a plate if I’m not on set in two minutes. I must leave you now, I’m afraid.”

  Bree gave Justine a gentle assist out of her chair. “As far as your legal business is concerned, we’ll get right on those revisions to your will, Mrs. Coville.”

  “Justine, please.”

  “Of course. Justine. It shouldn’t take too long to update your assets. And you’re sure about the changes in your beneficiaries?”

  “Quite sure,” she said firmly. “Dixie Bulloch has been marvelous to me. Any director will tell you that I’m an absolute fiend about research, and when I wrote to the family asking for information about Consuelo, she responded immediately. It’s only right I leave her a little something. She lent me a brooch that used to belong to Consuelo. When I play real characters, I always like to have something that helps me connect to the essence of the character. Dixie said her grandmother simply cherished it. Wore it all the time and had it on when she died. They even considered burying her with it, but thank heavens they thought the better of that! I make quite a ceremony of pinning it on when I’m dressing for the part. I feel her spirit right here.” She pressed her open palm against the lapels of her dark blue linen jacket.

  EB handed the actress her navy clutch, her lace-trimmed handkerchief, and a neatly folded umbrella. “Are you going over to the set right now, Ms. Coville? Would you like me to call you a taxi?”

  “The hire car should be waiting downstairs,” Justine said. “And I’d be pleased if you’d call me Justine, Mrs. Billingsley. So many great performers can be identified that way. Sarah. Cher. Liza. Marilyn.”

  “Haydee,” Bree pointed out with a slight smile.

  Justine blinked. “Oh dear. And look what happened to the poor thing. I hadn’t thought of that.” She patted Bree’s arm. “That’s quite a good point. I find myself quite pleased that you’ve taken over Judge Beaufort’s practice.” She worked her lips for a moment. “Do you specialize in estates, my dear? I mean to say, do you handle other kinds of law?”

  “We handle it all,” EB said.

  “Is there something else you’d like to discuss with us?” Bree asked.

  “If there is, you just come right out with it,” EB said. “You got a problem, we can help you with it.” She walked the few feet to the office door and opened it. “Now that we’ve got the Bay Street office up and running, we’re ready to handle a few select cases of any kind, Ms. Coville. Be sure and tell your friends about us.”

  “I surely will. Thank you both for your assistance. And, oh!” She lifted her chin. “I’d appreciate it if you’d bring the paperwork directly to the set.”

  “I’ll make sure to send it by courier,” EB said. “In case Ms. Beaufort’s in court, or with another client. This is a growing practice, and you just never know what the day will bring.”

  “That’s just it.” Justine stood still, trembling a little, her gaze on the floor. “I never know what the next day will bring.” She brought her head up and seemed to have
come to a decision. “May I sit down again? I haven’t been entirely candid with you about the extent of my concerns.”

  “Oh my,” EB said. “One thing you have to be is honest with your lawyer.”

  Bree waited a moment and then said gently, “We’d be happy to help if we can.”

  “It’s an ugly story.” Justine brushed her hand lightly over her forehead and perched on the edge of the chair. “Those changes to my will aren’t at all essential, as I’m sure you realized. I could have phoned them in to you. As busy as I am, I probably should have. But I may need some help.”

  She took a deep breath. “I’m being cowardly about this. And of all the things I’ve been in my life, I’ve never been a coward. No. I do need some help. I wanted to meet you. See if you were . . . sympathetic. Not the I’m-so-sorry-for-your-loss sort of sympathetic. The we-understand-you kind. Do you see what I mean?” Her gaze was unexpectedly sharp. “There’s a lot of steel underneath you. Don’t think I don’t see it. You would have made an excellent Eleanor of Aquitaine. Except for your hair. Hers was reputedly red, not silver-blonde. It’s The Lion in Winter I’m speaking of. One of my finer roles.”

  Justine wasn’t dithering, Bree realized. She was trying to avoid addressing something painful. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.” She made a conscious effort not to look at her watch. Antonia might spit tacks if this appointment took too much longer, but there was a lot she could occupy herself with at home. Walk Bree’s dog, Sasha, for instance. And it was Antonia’s turn to do the laundry. “Shall we all sit down again, and you tell us what’s troubling you?”

  Justine stood up. “What’s the matter with me? I can’t sit down. I must get going. It doesn’t do to stay away from the set for long. But I will tell you this. Someone on that set is trying to kill me”

  “Kill you?” EB gasped. “Lord, Lord.”