Defending Angels Page 7

  Liz Overshaw looked at her coldly. “Cianquino, this is a mistake.”

  “You’ll find that she’s exactly the lawyer you need for this particular case.” He turned to Bree and nodded at the far corner of the couch. “Sit down, please, Bree.”

  Professor Cianquino’s cool professionalism doused her fit of hilarity like a dash of cold water. Bree sat down.

  “This is Liz Overshaw.”

  Bree nodded. “How do you do?”

  “Not goddamned well, as you might guess.” Liz cleared her throat with an irritating sort of gargle. “This business with Skinner ...” She cleared her throat again. “We’ve got to do something about it.”

  “You were—and still are, I imagine—a senior partner with his most well-known company, Skinner Worldwide, Inc.?” Bree asked. Bree’s mother was fond of reminding both her daughters that honey was a far more effective flycatcher than vinegar, so Bree added, “And an admired and effective CFO, as all women in business know.”

  Liz ran both hands through her hair. “Yeah. Actually, if I can come up with the funding, I’ll be the majority shareholder, too. Skinner left options on his stock to his partners. We—that is, I—just have to decide whether I want to buy him out, or find an appropriate buyer.”

  This kind of arrangement wasn’t unusual when the stockholder in a corporation wanted to bar family heirs from getting control of a company. Bree made a note in the file. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Liz flung her hand up irritably. “Christ, no. I’m not here about that. If I needed business counsel you think I’d be talking to you?” She glanced at Bree sideways and pursed her lips. “Not that you aren’t perfectly competent, I’m sure. Cianquino doesn’t deal with idiots.”

  “Then how can I help you?”

  “I told you. I’ve got to do something about Skinner before I end up in the ha-ha room at the sanatorium.” She glared at Professor Cianquino. “You sure I can trust her?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “There isn’t anyone else I can recommend to you. Her qualifications are unique.”

  “All right,” she said crossly. “Just fine.” She inhaled, and then let her breath out with an explosive “Pah!” “You’ve read the reports of Skinner’s death?”

  “The newspaper account, yes,” Bree said. “And of course, the television news channels covered it quite extensively.”

  “The coroner’s office is calling it a heart attack. He had a heart attack and drowned. Skinner didn’t drown.”

  “Heart attacks take a lot of assertive men in their early sixties,” Bree said in a mild way. “And is it likely that the medical examiner would make a mistake? Especially with such a prominent man as Mr. Skinner?”

  “Prominent son of a bitch, you mean,” Liz said. She made that hawking noise in her throat, like Felix Unger in those endless reruns of The Odd Couple. Bree looked down and studied her own toes. Liz Overshaw couldn’t help it if she had postnasal drip. But she sure could be less noisy about it.

  “He was murdered.”

  Bree looked up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He was murdered. He won’t tell me how. He can’t tell me how, because the next thing he knew after getting kicked in the chest with a heart attack, he was floating over his own corpse on a mortuary slab wondering what the hell happened. Did you see the interviews the press did after his death? One of those four is a murderer.”

  Bree didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “Carlton Montifiore, Douglas Fairchild, John Stubblefield, and Chastity McFarland,” Liz said impatiently. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes, I saw the interviews.” Bree refused to look at Professor Cianquino. If she looked at the professor, she was going to make a horrific face at him. “That’s what the young woman who’s his current companion seemed to feel,” Bree said diplomatically. “That he was murdered.”

  “That little idiot,” Liz said without heat. “Hell, maybe she actually knows, too.” She clamped her mouth shut and stared at her hands, apparently unwilling to say any more.

  “And you know he was murdered because ...” Bree let her voice trail off.

  “Because he’s haunting me!” Liz burst out. “The bastard won’t leave me alone!”

  You betcha. Liz was being haunted. Right. Quite a Savannah-like circumstance, that was for sure. Best place to claim a haunting was in the most haunted city in America. If nothing else, her admission explained some of her rude behavior. It’d take more confidence than Bree possessed to tell a perfect stranger this kind of hooey. No wonder she was defensive.

  Bree didn’t comment aloud. Instead, she nodded thoughtfully, and said, “I see.”

  “I can damn well tell you don’t believe me,” Liz snarled. “You think I’m crazy.”

  The first thing a lawyer learns in law school is that representation is sacred. A lawyer has an absolute duty to defend her client, and to represent that client’s interests with every legal weapon at her disposal. There isn’t an equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath for lawyers, but Bree knew that if there were, it would run something like: I swear to uphold the interests, rights, and well-being of the client to the last drop of my blood, without personal prejudice or bias of any kind.

  But she was stuck with a nutcase, that was clear. If Professor Cianquino hadn’t been in a wheelchair, she’d whack him over the head with something large enough to get his attention. He wanted her to take this case. He’d recommended her to one of the most influential women in Georgia business circles. If Bree had sat down and made a laundry list of the type of clients she wanted for Beaufort, LLC, this crazy woman was it.

  Unless she stood up and told her no. Which would be professional suicide before she even had her desk delivered and her phone lines put in. She thought ruefully of her stationery. At least she was set up with that. So Bree said merely, “I think you’re under a tremendous amount of stress. I’m truly sorry for that. And I’d like to help you if I can.”

  “Cianquino says you can.” Liz took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t take much more of this. I haven’t slept since it happened.”

  Bree looked at her bitten nails, her unwashed hair, but most of all her air of desperation. She was truly sorry for her. The woman was at the end of her rope. If nothing else, maybe she could persuade her to see her doctor and get a few sleeping pills. She said with genuine kindness, “I’ll certainly try to help. What kind of outcome were you looking for? What can I do?”

  “Stuff Skinner back wherever he came from, for one,” Liz Overshaw said. “But Cianquino says that can’t be done. At least not right now?” She lifted an eyebrow inquiringly.

  “Not right now,” Professor Cianquino agreed.

  “Stuff him back?” Bree said.

  Professor Cianquino gave her an admonishing glance. Bree took the hint and shut up.

  Liz was back at her watch turning. “So if we can’t stuff him back where he came from, I want you to prove he was murdered. That’s what he wants me to do. Catch his murderer. He wants revenge. He wants justice. And like he did all the time when he was alive, he won’t get off my behind until I do find out who killed him, or at least hire someone to do it.” She closed her eyes briefly, and then opened them. “This is the brief: I’m retaining you to find out who murdered Bennie Skinner.” She bent down, drew her checkbook from the briefcase at her feet, and uncapped her pen. “What’s your usual retainer?”

  Bree opened her mouth. Absolutely nothing came out. She felt like Alice, falling down the hole to Wonderland. Finally, she managed, “I’ve haven’t quite settled on...”

  Liz waved her hand in a “shut up” gesture. “I’ll make it for ten thousand. That should be enough to get you started with a private investigator and pulling all those reports from the cops and the coroner’s office.” She narrowed her eyes. “I just want one thing from you and that’s that you keep your mouth shut about me. I can see from your face that you’re wondering why I don’t hire a private eye myself. God knows we pay enough to those le
eching corporate security firms already.” She leaned forward, and pointed at Bree like an irate traffic cop. “Because I don’t want anyone to know I’m behind this. The Wall Street Journal gets hold of the fact I’m taking orders from a dead man, I’m never going to find anybody to buy Bennie’s stock. Worse than that, the board will fire me for moral weakness, or whatever.”

  “Unsound mind,” Professor Cianquino said. “And I must say, Liz, you have one of the finest minds I know.”

  Bree pulled a pen from her jacket pocket and pretended to take notes on the margins of the file.

  “Is this perfectly clear?” Liz demanded. “My name’s kept out of this.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Cianquino said I can trust you.”

  “Yes,” Bree said simply, “you can.”

  Liz ripped the check out of the checkbook, tossed it onto the coffee table in front of her, and collected her briefcase. “I’ll be off then, Cianquino.” She stopped halfway across the floor and frowned at Bree. “Call me when you’ve got something, and not before.”

  She banged the door shut when she left.

  Bree picked up the check. There it was: Pay to the order of Brianna Winston-Beaufort Ten Thousand Dollars ($10,000.00) and drawn on the First Bank of Savannah. On the little line on the lower left hand corner Liz had written, In Re: Skinner. There was a very long pause.

  “Well,” she said. “I’d like to know what’s going on here.”

  “It’s as you see.”

  Bree cleared her throat. “I have a couple of questions.”

  “I’ll try to answer them.”

  “You don’t believe Benjamin Skinner is haunting Liz Overshaw. Do you?”

  “She’s your client. You have an absolute duty to act in her best interests.”

  “Does that include setting up a visit to a good therapist?”

  Professor Cianquino frowned. “Liz is very much in her right mind. She’s under a great deal of stress. That’s obvious. I would suggest that you take the responsibilities of the case more seriously. I would hate to think I was wrong in referring you to her.”

  This from a man with a truckload of angelic case law in his office? Bree opened her mouth to ask about it. She wanted to know about the parrot/owl/whatever. She wanted to know if any of this had to do with the painting that had terrified her into a faint. She wanted to know if this man who intimidated future Supreme Court justices was as crazy as a June bug.

  “Your first case,” Professor Cianquino said, with a clear air of dismissal. “If you run into any problems, you’ll call me?” He turned his wheelchair and rolled toward the front door.

  Bree’s early training in Southern girl politeness held. That, and the feeling that you just didn’t ask sassy questions of a powerhouse professor emeritus from one of the world’s leading law schools. She slung her purse over her shoulder and rose to her feet. “It’s actually doable, you know,” she said to the back of his neck. “Liz Overshaw may be crazy, but the case itself isn’t.”

  He pulled the front door open, and then turned aside to let her through. Bree was about to mention her uncle Franklin’s books but Cianquino looked stern, and highly unapproachable.

  “I mean, I can certainly pull together the resources to do a private inquiry into Skinner’s death. Do you suppose that she’ll be satisfied if I prove he did die of natural causes?”

  “Anything is possible,” he said coolly. “Oh. If you need a good investigator, I can recommend this agency.” He pulled a business card from his suit coat pocket. “The principal is named Gabriel Striker.”

  She reached out and took it, then tucked both card and check into her purse. The professor smiled at her. “Good. Excellent.” Then, “Good luck to you, my dear. Do you have an idea of what you want to do first?”

  Bree ran her hand through her hair. Dimwit model, my foot. “You bet I do.”

  “Thing is, honey, there’s just too much of it.” Fontina gathered the mass of Bree’s silvery hair into her hands and tugged at it. Bree was willing to bet that the hairdresser’s given name was something good old Southern like Ashley or Sarah-Anne. But the name in small, discreet lettering on the front door of the salon was Fontina, and she’d been recommended by Bree’s chic Aunt Cissy as the best hairdresser in Savannah.

  Bree wasn’t about to tell Fontina she’d chosen the name of an exceptionally good cheese for her salon; she was willing to bet more than a few customers had sniped at her already. Fontina was tall, skinny, and her hair was shot through with bright purple streaks. “Don’t be put off by the gum chewing or the color she’s dyed her own hair,” Aunt Cissy had said. “She’s a genius. And if you tell all your friends about her and I end up havin’ to wait months for an appointment, I’ll put a curse on you and you’ll be bald before you’re thirty.”

  “Honey?” Fontina said. “You’re not tellin’ me you want me to cut this off?”

  “Sorry.” Bree sat up a little straighter in the cushy chair. “I had a short night and a very weird day and I’m a little drifty. About my hair—I don’t know what to do, except not have it be a distraction for clients. I got my first case today, did I tell you that?”

  Fontina nodded. “You sure did. And you told me it was an emergency.”

  “Well, it is. I don’t want anyone thinking that I look too young, or too unserious to do my job, and I’m going to be dealing with private detectives, the police, and the coroner’s office for the first time in my professional life. I want to look like I count for something. Something serious, because my first case is a little ... a little ...”

  “Offbeat?” Fontina suggested kindly.

  “Offbeat. That’s it. So I called Aunt Cissy and then I called you. Aunt Cissy said to put myself totally in your hands. What do you think?”

  “About your aunt Cissy or your hair?”

  Bree rolled her eyes.

  “I do like your aunt Cissy,” Fontina said. “Sends me more work than I can handle most weeks. Next thing you know, I’ll be having to expand. And if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s expand.” She said abruptly, “So you don’t want to cut this off, praise be.”

  Bree poked despairingly at her head. “I just want it to behave. I’m opening a law practice. I want to look cool and professional. I’m interviewing prospective employees tomorrow morning. I’ve got my first case. I’m planning on being ready for more clients by the end of the week, if I can. Doing something about this hair is kind of a necessary first step, if you see what I mean.” She sighed. “I thought that a short bob might work.”

  Fontina shook her head. “No way. I’ll show you what’s gonna work.”

  Seven

  If a step should sound or a word be spoken,

  Would a ghost not rise at the strange guest’s hand?

  —“A Forsaken Garden,” Algernon Charles Swinburne

  “Braids!” Lavinia Mather exclaimed when Bree walked into the foyer half an hour late, to pick up her dog. “Don’t you look like something. Hm, hm. I surely like that effect, Bree.”

  Bree patted her head a little nervously. “Are you sure you like them?” Fontina had divided her hair into four thick braids, and then wound them artfully around her head. She felt extremely professional; better than that, she felt armored.

  “You look like a queen,” Lavinia said. She put her hand on Bree’s arm and turned her gently toward the stairs. “You’re lookin’ more like Her every day.” She pointed at the Renaissance angel with the crown of silver hair.

  Bree shook her head and laughed. “I’d forgotten about your painted angels, Lavinia. Well, I’m not an angel, but I do think the hairstyle suits me.”

  “Noble,” Lavinia said. “You look noble.”

  “Thank you,” Bree said meekly. She bent and patted her happy dog. “And thank you for taking care of Sasha. He’s looking better by the minute.”

  “He had him a good day, too,” Lavinia said. “Made sure that those men who delivered the furniture didn’t take any advantage of
this old auntie.”

  “The furniture’s here already?”

  “Step in and see.”

  Bree followed Lavinia to the entrance to the living room. The leather sofa and chair made a nice ell in front of the fireplace. And the oak table took up just the right amount of space in the dining room. “It looks just great. But what did you mean when you said the delivery men tried to take advantage of you?”

  “They almost forgot that picture, didn’t they?”

  Bree stepped all the way inside and froze. The picture was there, propped against the mantel. Her head swam. Her senses darkened. For a minute, it looked like the water was moving. As if the hands were beckoning to her. And in the raging crimson sky above the wrecked ship, the great bird flew with a slow, deadly “snick” of his wings. She staggered, unsteady on her feet, and Lavinia gripped her arm again, with both hands.

  She stood on tiptoe and whispered in Bree’s ear. Her words were almost lost in a rising sound of wind. “They tried to tell me you hadn’t paid for it. But I knew better, and so did Sasha. You’ve been payin’ for that picture for years.” She looked at Sasha. “You told him, dog. Didn’t you, boy? Growled like some movie monster until they went back to the store and brought it in.”

  Sasha barked, sharply, and Bree came to herself with a start. She stared at Lavinia. The old woman stared back, her black eyes unreadable. “Thing is, honey,” she said after a long moment, “those things you want to hide from sight? They’ll get bigger and bigger all by themselves in the dark. You want to look those things right in the eye. Put ’em out there where the light can get at ’em. Only good things grow in the sunshine.”

  Bree walked up to the painting and put her hand on the surface. Paper and paint. That’s all it was, paper and paint.

  “That all right with you, Bree?” Lavinia’s voice was soft.

  For one, wild moment, Bree didn’t dare to turn around. Lavinia didn’t stand behind her. Something else stood there. Something so big, it filled the room and shut out the afternoon light streaming in the windows. It grew and grew again, and then with a rush of giant wings, it was gone.