Angel's Verdict Page 3

  Justine blinked away tears. “Professionally, I mean. Someone is dropping poison in Phillip Mercury’s ear about my performance. He’s threatened to void my contract. There’s more. Strange things have been happening to me on the set. A rug rolled up so that I’ll trip on it. A chair moved out of position so that I’ll fall.” She dabbed at the tears with the back of her hand. “There’s a concentrated malevolence there. Violence. Aimed at me. Aimed directly at me.

  “I want to know who is behind it.

  And I want to know why.”

  Two

  From ghoulies and ghosties and long leggity beasties

  that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.

  —Old Saying

  “Someone’s trying to physically harm you? Of course I’ll come by the set,” Bree said, alarmed. “I’ll come with you now if you like.”

  “You sit right down here,” EB ordered, planting the visitor’s chair next to her own desk. “Shall I get my steno pad, Ms. Beaufort? Shall I take notes?”

  “ ‘Alarms and excursions,’ ” Justine murmured. Then, loudly, “No notes, Mrs. Billingsley. I don’t want to say anything more right now, Bree. And before you ask, no, I don’t want to call the police.” She suddenly looked her full age, and exhausted as anyone Bree had ever seen. “If I may be frank, I need this part. You’re how old . . . twenty-five? Thirty?”

  “Twenty-eight,” Bree said.

  “So you haven’t a clue. About how the world looks at you when you have a few years on you. Actually it’s how the world doesn’t look at you when you’re old. They raise their voices, as if you were deaf. Their gazes slide right past you in a crowd. You’re treated like a child, or a mental defective. But I’m not losing it, as you young people say. My powers of observation are as great as they’ve ever been.” Her lower lip trembled. “The whole production seems to be in trouble. Things disappear. Equipment gets damaged. The cost overruns are horrendous. Something is very wrong on the set of Bitter Tide. And they are trying to blame it on me.” Justine breathed in and out slowly, visibly willing herself calm. “I beg your pardon. I’m a bit frightened. I’m not used to living in fear.”

  “Blaming it on you?” Bree said. “How can they blame cost overruns on you? Or damaged equipment?”

  “Phillip is an artist. He insists on multiple takes and that costs money. He can be a bit of a bully. Most great directors are, of course. Erich von Stroheim used to walk around with a riding crop in his hand. And he used it. So it’s no wonder I get a bit flustered and forget my lines. Anyone would. It’s impossible to be at one’s best under those circumstances. But as far as replacing me with Allison Buckley. T’uh!”

  “Allison Buckley?” EB said. “She was in that TV show The Silver Sneakers, Bree. You know, the one about the lady detectives in the nursing home.” She patted Justine’s shoulder “That Buckley’s not half the actress you are, Ms. Coville.”

  “She certainly is not.”

  Bree leaned back against the desk and folded her arms. “Mercury wants to void your contract and put someone else in the role. Is that it? Because he doesn’t feel you’re up to the job?”

  “He says I’m too old.”

  The word seemed to hang in the air like a curse. Bree felt swamped with pity.

  Justine held up her hand. “Listen to me, please. These incidents Phil blames on me could be viewed as the imaginings of a dotty old lady. I want you to come to the set because I want you to see for yourself. “

  “All right,” Bree said.

  “You appear to me to be both forthright and honest. If you think Phillip’s right, you will tell me.”

  “I will.”

  Justine held her head up with spirit. “But if what I think is correct—that someone is out to get me—I expect you to take all appropriate action.”

  Bree suppressed a smile. “You bet,” she said.

  “Then if Mrs. Billingsley can make those few—admittedly minor—updates to my last will and testament as quickly as I believe she can, I will expect you on the set tomorrow afternoon. About three o’clock.” She lifted her chin, looked slowly from Bree to EB and back again, and walked out of the office, closing the door firmly behind her.

  “Hm,” EB said after a long, startled moment.

  “That was quite an exit.” Bree sank down in the visitor’s chair. “Good grief.”

  EB tugged the yellow pad with the amendments to Justine’s will out of Bree’s hand and sat down at her desk.

  “You don’t think we should see her down the elevator?” Bree asked. “Make sure that the hire car’s waiting? That she’s safe?”

  EB looked at Bree over her reading glasses. “That’s one old lady who can take care of herself. You heard her. Wants help on her own terms, and my goodness if she didn’t dictate those terms like Joe Stalin bossing FDR at Yalta.”

  Bree blinked.

  “The teacher’s up to World War II in my night school class.” EB tapped at her keyboard with a self-satisfied air. “You better get yourself on home for lunch while I finish this will up. Antonia e-mailed me twice wondering where you are. Sooner I get this done, the sooner we can go get a gander at what’s happening on that movie.” She shook herself. “Lord! What a great place to work this is! Go on, now, Bree. Get some food in you. You’re getting thinner than a fence post.”

  “Lunch,” Payton McAllister said as he pushed the door open and stepped inside the office. “Precisely why I dropped by. Can’t have you assuming fence-post proportions, Bree.”

  Bree stared coldly at him. “If it isn’t Payton the Rat.”

  The second floor of the Bay Street building was given over to a satellite office of Payton’s law firm, Stubblefield, Marwick. Bree didn’t know which she despised more: Payton, with his gym-toned body and his insolent attitude, or his sleazy boss John Stubblefield. Payton himself was lithe, well dressed, smart, and very good-looking in a Hugh Jackman kind of way. One of the biggest regrets of her not particularly active love life was that she’d fallen for the outside of the man before she’d realized the snakiness of the inside. The affair had been short, painful, and an embarrassment to remember. “I take it you were listening outside the door?”

  “No lawyer worth his salt should pass up a good entrance line. Timing is all.” Payton crossed the carpeted floor, lifted the blind, and looked out the window. “I see the hire car’s already picked her up. I didn’t know you were advertising for has-been actresses as clients.”

  Bree picked up her briefcase and slung her tote strap over her shoulder. “Bye, Payton.”

  “Aw. Leaving so soon? Thought we might drop by Huey’s for a quick bite.”

  Since he wasn’t going to leave, Bree decided to pretend he wasn’t there. “Call me if anything important comes up, EB. I’ll be at the Angelus office later this afternoon.”

  Payton rattled the blinds. “Ah. Here comes the Chatham County patrol car. At last! I told them they’d miss her if they didn’t get a move on, and damned if they didn’t. Miss her, I mean. That’s our county Mounties for you . . . a day late and a dollar short.” He dropped the blinds against the window pane with a clatter. “I suppose they can always arrest her on the set. More fuss that way, and there’s always the possibility that Phil will have a real excuse to kick her off the movie. He’s been looking for a way out of that contract for a couple of weeks now.”

  Bree’s temper stirred, which was not a good thing. She dropped the briefcase to the floor in case the temptation to clock Payton over the head proved irresistible. “All right. You’ve got my attention. What’s up?”

  “Your new client is what’s up.”

  Bree shrugged. “You’ve lost me.”

  Payton linked his hands behind his back, strolled over to EB’s desk, and looked over her shoulder. She covered her computer screen with one large hand and said with majestic calm, “Don’t even think about it, white boy.”

  “Ooh,” Payton said. “Scary.”

  “These client files are confidential.” />
  “So the ABA tells me.”

  EB scowled.

  Bree flattered herself she was keeping calm. She said, evenly, “You’ve got two options, Payton. Option A is to beat it. Option B is to beat it faster than that.”

  “Option C would be to let you in on the real skinny about the old broad that just left your office?”

  Then he smirked.

  Bree considered that smirk. Payton was arrogant and conceited and thought ethics were for losers. But he wasn’t stupid and he was very good at manipulation. “So you’re pissing me off for a reason,” she said aloud. “Hm. My first thought is you’re scared. That’s my second thought, too. What do you suppose would scare Payton McAllister, Esquire, EB?”

  “My cousin Titus,” EB said promptly. “And there’s no supposing about it.” She pursed her lips and looked Payton over. “Goin’ balder might scare him, too.”

  “Balder?” Payton said involuntarily. He put his hand on the back of his head.

  “Going balder, definitely. What about our client? You think Justine Coville scares him, EB?”

  EB chuckled richly. “That brave old lady? Nah. But we do.”

  Payton shrugged. “Fine. Have it your way. I came down here with the intention of offering a little professional courtesy in the matter of Waterman v. Coville, but what the hell. You want to see your client end up in jail, that’s fine with me. And even finer with my client Mrs. Waterman.”

  “Waterman?”

  “Mrs. Henry Newton Waterman. Nee Samantha Rose Bulloch.”

  Payton was the only person Bree knew who’d actually pronounce the word “nee” aloud.

  “Sammi-Rose Waterman,” EB said, after a look at her steno pad. “One of Alexander Bulloch’s daughters.”

  Payton sneered. He had a good line in sneers. “More importantly, one of Consuelo Bulloch’s granddaughters. Most importantly, the owner of a valuable piece of jewelry now in your client’s possession. Illegally. Mrs. Waterman would like nothing better than to see the surgically enhanced Justine in the slammer.” He tapped his fingers against his lip. “Hmmm. Can you call it surgically enhanced when the result’s a freaking disaster? Maybe not.”

  Bree snorted. “In jail for what?”

  “Let’s try grand theft, for a start. Of a sapphire and diamond brooch, designed in the shape of a peacock by none other than the little worker-bee elves at Louis Comfort Tiffany and belonging to—”

  EB snapped the steno pad shut. “The matriarch. We got that. But Consuelo’s dead. How can a dead person own a piece of jewelry?’

  “Very well,” Payton said with an air of humoring small children. “The estate of the late Mrs. Consuelo Bulloch, if you want me to be precise.”

  EB shook her head. “Uh-huh. According to Justine, Mrs. Bulloch left her estate equally to her three granddaughters . . .”

  Bree gave Payton a delighted smile. “Mrs. Billingsley takes terrific notes.”

  “. . . . so how come only one of them is thinking about suing Ms. Coville? Because,” EB continued with the inexorability of a John Deere bulldozer, “unless this here brooch was left to Sammi-Rose in a separate . . .” She rolled her eyes at Bree.

  “Codicil,” Bree supplied. “There’d have to be a specific codicil.”

  “Codicil. Right.” EB made a note on her steno pad. “Wouldn’t all three grandkids have to be bringing suit? Not just this Mrs. Waterman?”

  Bree nodded. “Of course they would. The plaintiffs would be something like Bulloch, Waterman, et al. What was the name of the third granddaughter? The one who lent Mrs. Coville the brooch? Cicerone. No, wait. It was Ms. Dixie Bulloch that lent our client her jewelry. It’s pretty obvious Payton’s going for intimidation rather than facts, Mrs. Billingsley.” She eyed him coldly. “Harassment. Clear and simple.” She’d had some doubts about Justine’s claims of career sabotage. The doubts were disappearing.

  “Because she’s an elderly lady with no kin to help her. I got that.” EB fixed Payton with an intimidating glare of her own. “What’s next? Roasting puppies for Easter dinner? You know, Ms. Beaufort, I don’t think that patrol car out there was after Ms. Coville at all. He’s not only trying to intimidate old ladies. He’s trying to intimidate us. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Mr. McAllister.”

  “I believe you’re right, EB. He’s lying like a rug. Typical. So we’re back to options A and B,” Bree said cheerily. “Beat it. Sooner rather than later.”

  “You have no idea what you’re messing with here.” Payton’s face was pale. Two bright red splotches burned on his cheeks. He was furious. “You two bitches are going to hear from us.”

  EB frowned at him. “Language, language, Mr. McAllister. What would your mamma have to say about you talking like that?”

  There was only one other gender-related insult that made Bree angrier than “bitch,” and it was the next word out of Payton’s mouth.

  EB couldn’t suppress an offended gasp.

  Payton showed his teeth in a grin.

  Bree lost her temper.

  Air eddied in the far corner of the office, stirring the covers of the files on EB’s desk. Bree felt the wind rising and the presence of strong silver light. Time seemed to stop, and in that brief, suspended moment, Bree looked Payton over.

  Stubblefield, Marwick insisted its associates adhere to a dress code long dead to all but the most conservative members of Savannah society. Which meant Payton wore a tie, in addition to an extremely well-cut gray pin-striped suit. A rather garish tie, if truth were told.

  Bree sprang forward and grabbed Payton by the tie with her right hand. The wind roared about her head and shoulders. She jerked him off the floor, spun him around, backed up, and opened the office door with her left hand. She slung Payton into the hall like a Frisbee.

  He landed hard on his right knee, hands sprawled in front of him. Which spared him a broken nose at least, she supposed. Not that she gave a hoot in hell.

  She slammed the door shut, cutting off his yelps of pain.

  The wind died away.

  The brilliant light faded.

  EB stared at her, speechless.

  “Mercy,” she said finally.

  Then, “He all right?”

  Bree shrugged. She took a deep breath and tucked her hair behind her ears. Then she cracked the office door and peered out. “He’s halfway down the hall,” she reported. “And he’s only limping a little bit.”

  “I’m thinking maybe you overreacted,” EB said. She looked around the office in a puzzled way. “Goodness knows where that wind comes from. And the light?” She rubbed her forehead as if it hurt, then looked up at the ceiling fixture. “Maybe we ought to change that fluorescent overhead for something reliable. Look! The window’s open. See what that breeze done to my files. Did to my files,” she corrected herself absently. “Hm.” She got up and began to collect the papers scattered over the floor.

  Bree wasn’t sure where her fits of abnormal strength came from; they didn’t happen often, and only since she’d taken on the cases representing the souls of the damned. The only thing she was certain of was that EB wouldn’t remember anything unusual about her attack on Payton the Rat after a little more time had passed.

  Then the usual physical reaction set in. She sat down in the visitor’s chair before her legs gave way. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Shoved that little turkey outside like that? Don’t see why not. That man has a mouth on him, that’s for sure.” EB tapped the papers into a neat pile and looked at her employer. “Maybe you should go on home and get some food in your belly, though. You know what? I bet you had a drop in your sugar. That gives most folks a bit of a temper. Get yourself some good sweet tea. Put your feet up.”

  “I’ll be all right.” Bree, suddenly, was close to tears. This was part of the reaction, too. She pinched her leg hard, to distract herself. “I think I’d better get on over to the set of Bitter Tide, though. Just to check on Justine. Do you suppose this Mrs. Waterman really swore out a
warrant for her arrest?”

  “I wouldn’t bet a flat nickel on that boy telling you the truth. On the other hand, a visit might be a good idea. I’ll key in those will changes and print it on out. Then you have a genuine reason to go poking around. It’ll be about half an hour, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” Bree said.

  “You’ll have enough time to walk on home and have some sweet tea with your sister.”

  Bree clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh my Lord. I forgot all about Antonia.”

  The office door bounced open, and Antonia herself stood there, her cheeks pink with annoyance. “There you are!” She put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “I thought you were coming home for lunch? I went and used the last of this week’s paycheck to buy that shrimp salad from the Park Avenue market you love so much? And did I have to eat practically all of it myself because it, like, totally sucks if it sits around in the open air? The answer is yes.” She pulled a paper bag out of the tote hanging from one shoulder and tossed it to Bree. “Here’s the rest of it. I made it into a sandwich. Two ittybitty sandwiches, in fact. One for you and one for Mrs. Billingsley. Hi, Mrs. Billingsley. Have you decided to quit working for my scatterbrained sister and get a job working for a prompt and timely person yet?”

  “Not yet,” EB said placidly. “How are you, child?”

  “Fine. Haven’t seen you since before the holidays.” Antonia looked around for a spare chair, didn’t find one, and plunked herself onto the floor. “I’m back working as a tech manager for the Savannah Rep Theater, you know. Which is why I don’t have enough money to buy more than enough shrimp salad for an anorexic.” She dug back into her tote. “I forgot. Potato chips.” She tossed the bag to Bree, who regarded it doubtfully and gave it to EB.

  EB looked at the two of them in turn. “I swear if I didn’t know better, I’d never guess you two were kin. It’s not the looks so much as the attitude.”

  They were, in fact, first cousins, although neither EB nor Antonia knew it. Royal and Francesca Winston-Beaufort had adopted Bree on the death of Leah, her mother. Royal’s uncle, Franklin Winston-Beaufort, was her birth father. Bree knew a little bit about him. She knew almost nothing about Leah.