Defending Angels Page 6

  Bree gathered up plates and cutlery, and a pair of wine-glasses. With some difficulty, she managed to carry all of it plus the food across the living room. If the professor had furnished his place anything like her Aunt Cissy, who was fond of whatnots, piecrust tables, and tufted hassocks, she wouldn’t have made it without dropping the lot. But Professor Cianquino had simple tastes. A cream leather sectional in front of the fireplace. A reading chair with a good lamp. Uncarpeted pine floors. At the farthest end of the living room was a set of carved double doors that led to his study.

  The journey across the floor was long. Time felt elastic, almost flexible. It was a disturbing feeling, an intensification of the unease she’d felt when she had visited the place. She reached the double doors with a sense of having come a long way.

  She didn’t want to go into the study.

  She stopped herself from looking over her shoulder; she thought of Professor Cianquino’s face, with its strange combination of sorrow and determination. She focused instead on the doors. They were made of rose-wood, and carved with an elaborate design of spheres so artfully shaped they seemed to spin the quiet light.

  She had seen those spheres before. On the fence surrounding 66 Angelus Street.

  Intensely curious, now, she opened the doors and went in.

  The simplicity of the living room made the chaos of his office all the more surprising. Taken aback, she stood for a second and just looked at it, whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. She had a curious sense of home-coming. She had a stronger sense of the need to run.

  Not sure where to put the load of food and dishes, and even less sure of what she felt, Bree forced herself over the threshold.

  The room was completely lined with bookshelves that ran from the twelve-foot ceiling to the floor. And the shelves were stuffed to overflowing. Books were everywhere. Leather-bound, paperback, hardcover, skinny, enormously thick—it was overwhelming. Bree recognized a complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Underneath it were rows and rows of books bound in tan leather with a red band across the spine. That weird sense of being pulled in two directions went away, to be replaced by a feeling of total contentment. This was a library, and Bree had always loved libraries. A leather chair stood in front of the bookshelves. She dumped the arm-load of dishes and food onto the seat, and ran her hands over the books. The thick gold lettering on the red band was familiar. It seemed to be a complete set of the Corpus Juris Secundum. Bree smiled with pleasure. Nobody but huge, white-shoe firms carried actual bound copies of the Corpus Juris Secundum anymore. It was much easier, and more profitable, to access case law online through Lexis, or any of the other online research services.

  Bree chuckled to herself. It was time to introduce Professor Cianquino to the ease of online research. It’d be pretty amazing to browse case law with an actual book—but it took forever. The global search function alone saved hours.

  She looked around for a place to set up lunch. An oak table that had to be fifteen feet long—maybe more—ran right down the center of the room. It was piled high with curiosities: clay pots, a pair of scales, a heap of clothes made out of what looked like fusty sacking. There was even a bulky scabbard with a banged-up sword.

  And in the middle of the table was a large cage with a bird in it.

  Bree blinked at it. The bird blinked back, then said, “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Bree said.

  “Hello.”

  She heard the soft whisper of the wheelchair behind her and turned to greet Professor Cianquino with a smile. “I suppose he’ll go on all day like that?”

  “I suppose not,” the bird said.

  “Is it an African gray parrot?” Bree asked with interest. “I read somewhere they can have a vocabulary of over two hundred words.”

  “Parrots!” the bird said, and spat. “I suppose not!”

  “Quiet, Archie.” Professor Cianquino held two bottles of wine in his lap. He gestured toward the corner where a card table was shoved against the wall. “I think we can settle in over there.”

  Bree cleared the card table of a ream of paper, a couple of file folders, and the day’s edition of the Savannah Daily. She wedged them into the nearest bookshelf on top of a series of books titled The Annotated Koran.

  “Not the blue file, and not the newspaper. I want you to read both while we’re eating.”

  Bree looked at him in surprise.

  He smiled. “You’ve rented the office space and hung out your shingle?”

  “Well, yes. Or very nearly. I bought some furniture today. And I’ve arranged for the office space, but the landlady doesn’t want a lease.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps you don’t need one. When you’re ready, I have a case for you, if you’ll take it. But we won’t discuss the details until after we eat.”

  Bree served the chicken-curry salad on split brioches, and accepted a glass of wine. She sat down on a truly uncomfortable carved wooden chair, plate in her lap, wineglass in hand, and decided it was now or never. “I appreciate the thought behind the gift of the stationery, Professor Cianquino. And the cell phone! It’s just wonderful ! Although I do have one already, and I’m not sure I can break the contract with Verizon to switch over to it. I thank you kindly all the same.”

  His smile broadened. “I do like Southern manners. They are quite Chinese sometimes, a people whose courtesy is exquisite. I, of course, hear the ‘but’ behind your civility.”

  “That takes the wind out of my sails,” Bree said ruefully. “It’s just that ...”

  “You can, of course, turn the gifts down. But I would like you to consider all the consequences your decision has before you do so. Particularly the cell phone. It is a means of communication you may not wish to abandon.”

  “I’m not sure I understand you,” Bree said.

  He rested his elbows on the wheelchair arms and steepled his fingers. “To be frank, it’s difficult to decide where to start.” He thought for a moment, and then said, “Did you take the call from Bennie Skinner?”

  Bree paused, her filled brioche halfway to her mouth, and said, “Excuse me?”

  Professor Cianquino waited, his head tilted a little, as if listening for something.

  Bree set her sandwich on her plate. She hadn’t been all that hungry to begin with. “Well, no. I didn’t.” She looked at him narrowly. “You know he up and died yesterday afternoon.”

  Professor Cianquino gestured at the copy of the Savannah Daily. The headline read: “Famed Billionaire Dead.”

  Bree took the sandwich up again, and peered at it rather doubtfully. “Now, UPS didn’t deliver the package until eight thirty. I opened the cell phone up around nine. The call came in about ten minutes later. What I think is, the call from him must have been delayed somehow.” She waved the brioche in the air, scattering bits of chicken into her lap. “Some technical glitch, I expect, because of course, the poor man couldn’t call after he was dead.”

  “He was allowed just one call,” Professor Cianquino said in a reflective way.

  Bree swallowed, choked, and laughed as airily as she could. “The other option, of course, is that some joker called and pretended to be him. I even thought that maybe you had some help picking the gift out.” She faltered. “From, you know, someone who knows me pretty well. And then maybe that someone thought it’d be hilarious to jerk my chain a little.”

  “You mean Payton McAllister?” Professor Cianquino smiled. “No. I had some help, but not of that kind. And it wasn’t a technical glitch.”

  Bree abandoned the sandwich and grabbed the glass of wine. Had everyone in the southeastern states heard that she’d been dumped by Payton the Rat? She took a healthy slug to hide her irritation. Professor Cianquino winced. It was, she silently agreed as it went down her throat, far too nice a wine to belt back, but so what? Then the rest of what Professor Cianquino said registered and she gulped at it again. She said politely, “Then what you’re telling me is that Benjamin Blackheart Skinner called me aft
er he died? The call was from a ghost?” She kept her tone gentle and very reasonable. Clearly, whatever ailed poor Professor Cianquino wasn’t limited to his leg. A line from Hamlet entered her head (and exited almost immediately), Oh, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!

  He looked at her sternly. “What is the single most valuable piece of information you learned from me?”

  Bree didn’t even have to think about that. He’d drummed it into all of his students. “ ‘You will find truth in experience.’”

  “And what can you conclude from that?”

  Bree looked at him, not sure where this was headed. “Well, I guess it means that you can talk yourself blue in the face, but you won’t know for sure until you try it yourself.”

  He nodded, “That the only way anyone truly knows is through direct experience. So I can talk myself blue in the face, about whom that phone call was from and why I would like you to take on this case, but until you have direct experience, you aren’t going to believe me.” He reached across the table, laid his hand lightly on hers, and withdrew it. “I can assure you, I do know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  “Hamlet, Hamlet, Hamlet,” the bird said.

  “Be quiet, Archie.” The bird subsided sulkily onto its perch. “I would like you to take Benjamin Skinner’s case, Bree. The start of your new practice is what this is all about.”

  Bree looked at the glass of wine in her hand. It was empty. She set it carefully on the table. “With all due respect, sir ...”

  In the distance, the door chimes rang. Professor Cianquino activated the wheelchair. “Our client’s early.”

  Bree stared at him. Benjamin Skinner was dead. Three C-SPAN reporters couldn’t be wrong. Could they?

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll bring her in. I may be some time. Please wait for me. And finish your lunch.”

  He rolled out the door and shut it behind him. Bree poked at her food. She poured another glass of wine. She tried not to think that the most respected teacher in her law school was stark raving bonkers.

  She applied logic.

  He did say “her” when he referred to the client.

  If he said “her,” he couldn’t be bringing the spook, ghost, haunt, revenant, decaying body, whatever, of Benjamin Skinner in for a case conference. Benjamin Skinner was a “he” as his pneumatic blonde sweetie had so breathily stated in her television interview.

  She sat back. This was stupid. Professor Cianquino wasn’t crazy. She was crazy. She’d built a few bad dreams, a prank phone call, and a couple of half-seen shadows into perversity. Had the professor said one word about ghosts? The afterlife? The undead?

  Not one.

  Bree picked up the blue folder and opened it. It was background information on someone named Liz Overshaw who, Bree realized, as she skimmed through the pages, was the surviving majority partner in Skinner Worldwide, Inc. Ha. Not only a rich client, but a client right up Bree’s particular alley. Bree thrived on corporate tax law. She tossed the folder back on the table and began to walk restlessly around the room. “You know what my major concentration in law school was, don’t you?” she said to the bird. “It was ...”

  “Business,” said the bird. “Corporate tax law.”

  Bree swallowed, took a breath, then moved to the table to get a closer look at—What did the professor call him? Archie.

  “Hey, Archie,” she said.

  The bird blinked one beady eye, shifted on its perch, then pecked frantically at a bit of cuttlefish hanging in his cage. If it was an African gray parrot, it was unlike any African gray parrot she had seen before. It was large, as such parrots are, but its plumage was a soft sepia brown mixed with streaks of black and gold. If it looked like any kind of bird at all, it was an owl. But, she knew (and why she knew this was a total mystery; she had an affinity for odd bits of facts) that owls didn’t talk. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, they were among the stupidest birds in the avian hierarchy.

  “Who’s stupid?!” Archie demanded and clicked his lethal-looking beak with the sound of a scythe through flesh.

  Bree noticed, first, that the door to the cage had been removed, and second, that Archie had two-inch talons on each claw. She backed away. She went to the door and hesitated at the murmur of voices beyond. Getting Liz Overshaw as her first client was quite a coup. Professor Cianquino had told her to wait. She would wait. She moved back to the bookshelves, whistling idly, and trying not to cast nervous glances over her shoulder.

  She picked up the first volume of the Corpus Juris Secundum and admired the soft feel of the calf leather. She ran her fingers over the raised gold lettering on the spine, and looked at the title in the soft office light. It wasn’t the Corpus Juris Secundum. The gold letters clearly spelled out:

  CORPUS JURIS ULTIMA

  The last, the ultimate in case law?

  A familiar bookmark leaped out at her. It was a copy of an old woodcut, a rubber stamp of a man in medieval dress, a pointed cap on his head, and a quill pen in his hand. Beneath the caption at the bottom, the words:

  FROM THE LIBRARY OF FRANKLIN WINSTON-BEAUFORT

  This set of books had belonged to Uncle Franklin? Bree ran her hand through her hair. Her memories of her uncle were of a stern, remote old man who treated everyone in his life with the same gentle courtesy. He’d sat on the seventh circuit court as a judge for many years. She couldn’t imagine anyone less interested in an elaborate, fantastical joke.

  Maybe it was just cases that had been heard in the Supreme Court? She flipped the book open and read:

  Lucifer v. Celestial Court (Year 1)

  Bree stared at the pages. What kind of lunacy was this?

  Uncle Franklin’s edition of the Corpus Juris Ultima was formatted exactly like the Secundum.

  Except that the cases cited were totally nuts.

  The cause of action in the case of Lucifer v. Celestial Court was wrongful dismissal. The plaintiff alleged rank prejudice, arguing for the enforcement of one of the Seven Celestial Virtues, caritas, which, if Bree recollected her Latin correctly, was the highest form of caring love. The arguments for the defense included all of the Seven Deadly Sins, but rested heavily—and most successfully—on the sin of Pride. Bree scanned the summary of the defense with mild astonishment; Lucifer had quite a rap sheet. Bree read on, chuckling—a forced, panicky sort of chuckle—but a chuckle nonetheless. As pastiche, this was pretty funny. Elaborate, but pretty funny. The disposition of the case was no surprise; Lucifer was remanded into custody, and sent back to hell for all eternity, with little, if any, hope of an appeal.

  Somebody had spent years putting this together. Probably a whole group of somebodies. And this sort of elaborate fantasy wasn’t without precedent. She could walk into any Borders bookstore and find scholarly volumes dedicated to unicorns, dragons, and witches. Not to mention vampires, fairies, and werewolves.

  Celestial law might even be a saner subject than most. It certainly had more academic heft than, say, elves, if one were inclined to whimsy. She looked up and down the rows of gorgeously bound volumes. Uncle Franklin’s collection was just more elaborate than usual. Clearly, this was a man who hadn’t done things by halves.

  The door from the living room opened. Bree jumped, as guilty as if she’d been caught reading personal mail.

  “Put-it-back, put-it-back, put-it-back,” Archie squawked.

  Bree gave the bird a nasty look, closed Volume One carefully, and slipped it back on the shelf.

  Professor Cianquino said, “We’re ready for you, Bree. If you would join us, please?”

  Bree picked up the blue folder containing the background information about Liz Overshaw, and followed his wheelchair into the living room.

  Six

  I do not ask to see

  The distant scene; one step enough for me.

  —“Lead, Kindly Light,” John Henry Newman

  Liz Overshaw sat on the cream leather couch in front of the fireplace, one thin leg crossed over the other.
Bree had seen pictures of her in newspapers and magazines. She was the chief financial officer of Skinner Worldwide, Inc. Corporate America flung her achievements in front of the media every time a gender discrimination suit was filed in federal court. She was in her late forties, too thin, with the polished, sort of tightened-up look of someone with a lot of money to spend on age-denying surgeries. She was dressed in Armani—a conventional, skirted suit of beige gabardine. She wore a sapphire and diamond Rolex, and her pearl drop earrings were huge and obviously real. Her graying hair was short, uncombed, and she was in need of a shampoo. She’d also chewed off most of her lipstick. And, as Antonia would have said had she seen them, you could put groceries in the bags under her eyes.

  Liz stared pensively at the floor and turned the Rolex she wore around and around her wrist with an agitated forefinger. She looked up as Bree approached her, then cast a sideways glance at Professor Cianquino. “She looks like some kind of albino.”

  “It’s her hair, Liz,” he said. “That silver blonde is, of course, unusual.”

  “I’d dye it, if I were you,” Liz Overshaw said to Bree. “But then, you probably like the attention. I’ll tell you something, young woman. You don’t want to stand out in a crowd if you want serious people to take you seriously. You especially don’t want to look like a dimwit model. Business life is hard enough for women as it is, especially in the South.”

  Bree drew a deep breath, opened her mouth, and then got a fit of the giggles. Talking owls, a multivolume encyclopedia of celestial law, and now positively the rudest woman she’d ever met in her life. It wasn’t memories of Payton the Rat that made Melrose an uncomfortable place to be; it was the lunatics in it. “Oh my,” she said. “I do apologize. I can tell you, Ms. Overshaw, I haven’t modeled a thing since I handled Play-Doh in kindergarten twenty-five years ago. As for the dimwit part, you’ll just have to judge for yourself, after we talk.”