Defending Angels Read online

  The station ran a months-old clip featuring Skinner himself—a thin, blue-suited figure with a newspaper held up his face to keep the cameras away. He’d emerged victorious from the Chatham County Courthouse after yet another class action suit over lead paint in his New York slums. His lawyer, John Stubblefield, offered “no comment.” Skinner dropped the newspaper, his bright blue eyes glaring into the camera. He snarled, “You want a comment? I’ll give you a comment. I told those bozos they could shove it up their (bleep!) when they first tried to sue the pants off’n me.” The newspaper shielding his face quivered as he chuckled. “So our great justice system done it for me.”

  The camera cut to the perky blonde reporter standing on the beach at Tybee Island. Behind her rose a multistory condominium. The pink stucco wall at the entrance sported a sign that read: ISLAND DREAM. “Benjamin Skinner’s death is only the latest in a series of problems that have plagued the multimillion-dollar Island Dream. Early this morning, county building inspector Rebus Kingsley plunged to his death from the penthouse . . .”

  With a brief “poor soul” for the unfortunate Rebus Kingsley, Bree switched the TV off and thought about Benjamin Skinner.

  He had a distinctive voice. Raspy, high-pitched, easy to imitate. She frowned at the blank screen. Who’d set her up? And why?

  The “who” part was easy. There was only one person who made a part-time career out of making her crazy.

  “Antonia,” she said crossly.

  Her tone of voice jerked Sasha out of a sound sleep. He raised his head, thumped his tail anxiously on the floor, then thudded over to the couch and put his head on her knee.

  “You haven’t met her, dog. Antonia’s my adorable little sister.”

  She had Antonia’s number on speed dial. She glanced at her watch. Quarter to eleven. Antonia had a bit part in the current revival of Oklahoma! at the Richmond Hill Community Theater. The cast should have finished up the final “Okla-Okla-Homa-Homa” fifteen minutes ago. She caught her sister on the third ring.

  “Breenie!”

  “Don’t call me Breenie,” Bree said automatically. “Where are you?”

  “At the theater.”

  “I know you’re at the theater. Where are you in the theater?”

  “Headed out to Tybalt’s for the cast party. This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o. Do you know why half the audience stood up?”

  “To get a head start on the traffic,” Bree said.

  “To get a head start on the traffic,” Antonia agreed in indignation. “I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you. Whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn’t anybody care about craft anymore? On top of that, it’s not even nice.”

  “Speaking of common courtesy, speaking of good manners, speaking of nice,” Bree said, suddenly furious. “I do not in any way, shape, or form appreciate the little joke you played on me.”

  “What little joke?”

  “I have two words: Benjamin Blackheart Skinner.”

  “That’s three words. And who’s he?”

  “I suppose that you and Professor Cianquino couldn’t know he was going to up and die on me,” Bree said, conceding that, at least. “But the old geezer did, this afternoon, and of course I called him back, and of course I got somebody from the family and I was absolutely, totally humiliated.” Bree felt herself choke up. She wasn’t surprised. What with the tortured dog, the weird little old lady at the cemetery, the police, and the scare put into her by the UPS delivery woman, she’d had a pretty bad day. “It wasn’t funny!”

  “Are you crying?” Antonia demanded. “Bree, I can count the times you’ve cried because you were sad since high school on one hand. Well, maybe two,” she conceded. “There was the breakup with Payton the Rat. And when the old dog Sunny passed on. Now, if you count the times you cry when you’re totally pissed off, that’s another kind of crying altogether and doesn’t truly count. I’d have to be a centipede to keep count of those.”

  “Just chill for a minute, okay?” Bree scrounged in the pocket of her jeans for a tissue and blew her nose. “I’ve had a long day, that’s all. And I wanted to let you know that your little joke backfired.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Honestly. Whatever it is, you want to tell me about it? You want me to skip the cast party and drive on over?”

  “It’s hours to Savannah and it’s going on to eleven. No, I don’t want you to drive on over. Besides, haven’t you got class tomorrow?”

  “School,” Antonia said thoughtfully, and then clammed up.

  Bree rolled over the silence on the other end of the phone, noting, in passing, that it was a guilty kind of silence. Her aggravating little sister had probably dropped out of another school. This would send their parents into fits. Bree wasn’t going to worry about that now. “You’re telling me you didn’t get together with Professor Cianquino and set this up?”

  “You mean that old geezer from law school? I haven’t seen him since you had the third-year reunion out at the house.”

  “Don’t call him a geezer,” Bree said. “And that’s exactly who I mean. And why did you think I wouldn’t want to pick out my own stationery?”

  “Why don’t you start by telling me what’s going on,” Antonia said, suddenly practical.

  Bree told her.

  “No! Of all the skunky things to do. And the old fart kicked off this afternoon? Holy gee. Well, it wasn’t me. I’m insulted that you thought it was.” Antonia sighed, her voice gentle. “It was a mean old trick to play on you, sister. I’m truly sorry.”

  “If it wasn’t you, who, then?” Bree demanded.

  “Gee, I don’t know. Try Payton the Rat? Nothing like an ex-boyfriend with vengeance in his heart.”

  “Payton,” Bree said. “Good glory. You might be right.” That relationship had ended badly. It even went some way toward explaining why Professor Cianquino let Payton buy the phone, as he must have done. Payton graduated magna cum laude the same year she did. Professor Cianquino had a genuine respect for brilliance. And he wouldn’t have known about the breakup, which had been all of three weeks ago.

  “You still there?” Antonia demanded. “If it was Payton, are you going to get mad and go after him with a garden rake?”

  “I’m still here. And if it was Payton, I’m not going to go after him with any kind of gardening tool.”

  “You went after that shoplifter at Home Depot with a garden rake,” Antonia reminded her.

  “He knocked over that little kid on his way out the door,” Bree reminded her. “And I’m so over losing my temper these days it isn’t funny.” She stuffed the tissue back into her jeans pocket. “Sorry about bein’ weepy. I guess I lost my professional cool.”

  “Save it for the clients,” Antonia advised. “Nobody’s better at professional cool than you. But you can cry into my ear any old time.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Of course, nobody’s better at losing it than you, either.”

  “You can stop there right now,” Bree said.

  “Forget the garden rake. Remember that time you dived over the desk at that guy in moot court? Had him by the throat in two seconds flat, that’s what I heard.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  “And they suspended you for how long?” Antonia asked innocently.

  “A day. And I apologized. Actually, I crawled like a slug and ate dirt,” Bree said ruefully. “But that was years ago, and have I pulled a stunt like that again? No, I have not.”

  “And I think I will drive on over, if you don’t mind. I was thinking about comin’ to stay with y’all for a few days anyhow. And it sounds like you need a hand settling in.”

  “I do mind. And I don’t need a thing,” Bree said firmly. “I’ll stop in to see Professor Cianquino tomorrow, and he can clear this up
. And then I’ve got a pile of people to interview to set the office up. You get on back to UNC.”

  “School,” Antonia said in that thoughtful way. “About school.”

  “You drop out of UNC, you’re going to have both Mom and Dad on your back like fleas on a hedgehog. And don’t count on me to stop them.”

  “So much for sisterly solidarity.”

  “You finish up your degree,” Bree said, “you might end up knowing how to spell it, at least.”

  Antonia clicked off with a derisive shriek.

  Bree swallowed the last of her wine, and addressed the dog. “We’re going to think about this tomorrow.”

  She took a hot shower, pulled on an oversized T-shirt, and got ready for bed. She was drifting off to sleep when the face at the French windows popped up in her mind’s eye like a card trick. She sat up, suddenly chilled. It hadn’t been the UPS woman. She was sure of it. It’d been a man’s face on the other side of the glass, with the coldest blue eyes she’d ever seen, wrapped in a graveyard shroud.

  Four

  Grrr—there go, my heart’s abhorrence!

  —“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” Robert Browning

  She slept. And as she slept, the old nightmare came back to haunt her.

  Bree dreamed of drowning, and the shrieks of drowning men. She woke up with a shout, just as the birds were stirring in the trees outside her window, her right hand stretched out to pull the shrieking figures from a dark and turbulent sea. She wrapped the duvet around her shoulders, then rubbed her face furiously with both hands.

  She’d had this dream when she was young. It was always the same. She floated in an ocean she’d never seen before. Someone loomed over her. A woman, she thought, with black hair and pale eyes, whose features were hidden by a smear of dark shadow. A sound of wings disturbed the air. No—not a sound. A percussion of wings that beat inside her head, chest, and lungs.

  And then, suddenly, there was a creation-splitting explosion in the vastness of the sky and the sea rose up to take her. Sometimes the heavens burst with dark and deadly looking fire; sometimes with a light so brilliant that she wept at the beauty of it.

  Both fire and light foretold the deaths. The bodies rose up from the depths of the sea and fell from the storm-cloud sky. They swirled soundlessly, lightly around her, their fingers trailing across her cheeks, their hair brushing her hands. They fell like leaves in a forest. And she dived and dived again to save them, and each time the bodies slipped away and the faceless woman with the black hair called “Bree!”

  She hadn’t had the nightmare for years.

  It was back? Now, after all these years, here, in this luxuriously comfortable bed where she felt so safe?

  Bree shuddered with panic and drew the duvet closer around her shoulders. When she was very young, and Antonia a toddler, her mother would come to her in the night and bring her hot, sweet tea to drink, and talk away the nightmare. But the dream had gone away when she’d turned twelve, gone, she’d thought, for good.

  And now it was back.

  “Well, that’s a hell of a note,” she said aloud. She pulled on a robe, then stared at her face in the bureau mirror. Her own adult face stared back at her. There was a furrow between her eyebrows and her lower lip trembled. And behind her, looking over her shoulder was ... what? She whirled around to see nothing at all except the canopy bed with its rumpled bedclothes and pillows scattered on the rose-carpeted floor. “Too many weird things all at once,” she said aloud. “So just straighten up, Beaufort. And lay off that third glass of wine from here on in.” She ran her hands through her hair, then tugged hard at it.

  She went into the kitchen to make a cup of strong coffee. She helped Sasha into the backyard and back into the house again. Then she pulled on a pair of sweats and went for a jog by the river. By the time she came back, pleasantly loose from the exercise, she’d pushed the nightmare memory back where it belonged, all the way back to her childhood. She would forget it. She absolutely would forget it.

  She spooned a can of dog food into Sasha’s bowl, put two cartons of yogurt into a bowl for herself, added a huge handful of Sugar Crisp, and sat down at the kitchen table. The two of them ate in a companionable silence. Sasha finished first, then limped over to the table and looked up at her with an expression that said as clearly as anything did: Now what?

  Bree looked back at him. “Now what, is work. You’re going to want more of that dog food as time goes on, I expect, and it doesn’t come free.”

  She decided to spend the first half hour of her day on the phone and set up an initial round of employee interviews. She’d use the rest of the morning to shop for office furniture and supplies.

  Both her choices were at home. Ronald Parchese was pathetically eager for a chance to leave window-dressing at Dillard’s for the more sterile environs of a law office. (“It’s Par-chay-zay,” he said earnestly, “like the board game, only more aristocratic.”) Rosa Lucheta mentioned rather diffidently that she’d been taking evening paralegal courses and she missed the excitement of the legal life. Bree set up interviews with both for Wednesday afternoon at the Angelus office, confident she could at least partially equip the place by then. She left a message on Professor Cianquino’s answering machine, thanking him for the gift. She also suggested lunch as soon as he was free, at the restaurant of his choice. Then she sat down at her computer and dashed off a polite form letter to the others who’d responded to her ad for an assistant and addressed the envelopes. She showered, changed into one of the elegant suits that was her work uniform, and at nine o’clock sat down for a second cup of coffee. She’d accomplished quite a lot already.

  “Except for what to do with you, Sasha.”

  He looked up alertly when she spoke his name aloud. He was curled up on his duvet. His bandaged hind leg stuck out at an awkward angle and the healing sores on his flanks looked itchy. She was mindful of the vet’s orders of small amounts of food every two to three hours for the next couple of days. How could she do her interviews, get her office set up, and take care of him, too? She didn’t know how women with kids handled them and a career, too.

  She couldn’t skip the feedings. The sores on his haunches had begun to clear already. His eyes were bright and hope-filled. Even his coat looked less scruffy. Amazing what a good night’s rest and the right kind of food could do.

  A mental review of the state of her checking account made her drop the idea of day boarding. “I could take you in the car, I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “The weather’s just fine.” The day had dawned bright and cool. October in Savannah meant the end of the enervating heat, and if she put his improvised bed on the backseat, he’d be comfortable enough. The alternative was dashing back to the town house at intervals during the day.

  A third option suddenly occurred to her and she smiled. She should have thought of it before.

  “You make no never mind about that dog,” Lavinia said confidently as Bree set the dog at her feet with a grunt of effort. “I’ll see to those nasty scratches right enough. And you feedin’ him that store-bought dog food?” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “I got me some stewed chicken and rice. That’ll put a spring in his step, no doubt about it.” She looked at Sasha sternly. “You know what they put into that canned stuff? If I told you, it’d turn your stomach for sure.”

  Bree went back to her car, and returned with the rolled up duvet, the water bowl, and a cardboard box filled with dog food, ointment, and fresh bandages. She set them at the foot of the stairs in the foyer. Sasha limped once around the living room’s perimeter, then came back and curled up at the foot of the stairs.

  “I truly appreciate this, Mrs. Mather.”

  “Lavinia. You need to go back to callin’ me Lavinia.” She’d changed her soft wooly gray sweater for a soft wooly lavender sweater. Her black skirt drooped around her slippered feet. A bit of what looked like chamomile was stuck in the hair piled into a knot on the top of her head. She crossed her arms and beamed at her
scruffy-looking patient, like some raffish fairy godmother.

  “Lavinia,” Bree said obediently. “You’re certain it’s not too much of a bother? You said something about your own pets yesterday morning, and I thought you might not mind giving him a bit of a hand.” She looked up and past the brightly painted stairs, where her landlady’s apartment sat overhead. The pleasant herby smell was much in evidence, but no sound came from the second floor. “I surely don’t want to take advantage.”

  “Tougher folks than you have tried,” she said. “This here’s nothing at all.”

  “Thank you.” Bree took the rent envelope out of her briefcase and handed it over. “I’ve written out a check for one month’s security deposit and two months’ rent. And you’ll find a lease in there. I wish you’d take a look at the terms and think about signing it.”

  Lavinia took the envelope with a pleased expression.

  “I’ll be off now, to find office furniture and make a start on supplies.”

  “Can’t do better than that Second Hand Rows for furniture,” Lavinia said. “That there’s a charity for the Sinai Temple. You’ll find those folks right off of Whitaker Street, near Montgomery. Got them a bunch of good bargains. You’d be amazed at what folks just throw away. Perfectly good sofas and all, just tossed out for the poor folks, God bless ’em.”

  Bree thanked her for the idea, not sure whether Lavinia had blessed the poor folks or the folks at Second Hand Rows. The few pieces of office furniture her uncle left her were in storage while the offices were renovated. She planned on using his chair and desk for herself. But she needed to equip the place for her assistant. “I’d like to start moving in tomorrow morning? And then I’ve scheduled some employee interviews for tomorrow afternoon.”