Defending Angels Read online

  “All right?” Lavinia repeated.

  Bree didn’t turn around. If she did, she’d demand the rent check back. She’d walk out of here without that dog, without an office, and leave the damn painting behind. She’d drive the three hundred and fifty miles to Raleigh-Durham, sit at her old desk in her father’s law firm, and think seriously about marrying a nice guy and starting a family. Instead, she reached up and took the painting down. “Well, if that’s true, there’s a lot more light at home, Lavinia. This painting will be the last thing I see at night, and the first thing I see in the morning.”

  Lavinia gripped her arm. “No. No, Bree. That’s something you’re going to want to leave here.”

  “Nonsense.” She hefted it in both hands. It was lighter than it looked. “I can always burn the damn thing if I want to.”

  “If I were you, I’d burn the damn thing,” Antonia said. “What was wrong with that mirror that was over the mantel? That’s been in the family for a million years?”

  It was Uncle Franklin’s mirror; Bree remembered the day he hung it over the mantel. The frame was curiously worked in gilt. When she moved it to put the painting in its stead, it’d been unexpectedly heavy.

  “I liked it,” Antonia complained. “And I don’t like that thing.”

  “I stuck the mirror in the hall closet. And I don’t want to talk about the painting.” Bree turned, looked at her sister lazing on the chintz couch, and made a heroic effort to keep her temper. “I cannot believe that you waltzed in here without so much as a phone call.”

  Antonia sprawled at ease on the sofa. Her backpack was on the rocker by the fireplace. A large, overstuffed duffel bag stood by the front door. Bree’d practically broken her neck stumbling over it when she’d come home.

  “Last time I looked, no one gave you the deed to this place,” Antonia said rudely. “I’ve got a set of keys just like everybody else in the family.” She swung herself flat onto the couch with her head at one end and her feet at the other. Bree stood at the fireplace with the painting propped at her side. Sasha hopped back and forth between them.

  “Lie down, Sasha,” Bree said. She pointed at the floor.

  With a heavy sigh, he settled by the coffee table.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You’re upsetting the poor dog.” Antonia patted the cushions and made a chirping sound. “Come on, sweetie. Lie down here with me.”

  “As if he can jump up on the couch with that leg.” Bree tossed Antonia’s backpack aside and sank into the rocker by the fireplace. She looked at her sister and sighed with a sound so like Sasha’s that both her sister and the dog jumped a little.

  Antonia was six years younger than Bree, and they looked nothing alike. She had brown eyes to Bree’s green, chestnut hair to Bree’s silver blonde, and she barely topped five feet three. The only familial resemblance was in their voices, which one of Antonia’s more chuckle-headed boyfriends described as mellowed honey.

  Antonia decided she was going to be an actress when she was fifteen, after sitting through five consecutive performances of a touring company’s production of Grease. Years of voice training had deepened Antonia’s speaking voice and amped up the volume, but even now, it was easy to mistake one for the other on the phone.

  “You must have set a record for dropping out at UNC,” Bree said. “Classes have been in session how long? Two days?”

  Antonia flattened herself on the couch, then raised both legs over her head, keeping her back perfectly flat. “A couple of weeks. And I got the tuition money back.” She lowered her legs, and then repeated the exercise effortlessly.

  “And your reason was what again?” Bree asked rhetorically. She smacked her forehead lightly. “Of course. Silly me. A chance at an audition with the Savannah Rep. Not a for-certain-please-show-up-at-six-o’clock appointment, but a chance.”

  “It’s a chance at a call-back,” Antonia corrected her equably. “I auditioned this afternoon. Bree, they loved me!”

  “Of course they loved you. You’re absolutely sensational. Not to mention gifted. Although it looks like you’re going to be sensational, gifted, and semiliterate if you keep dropping out of school. And what’s the part again?”

  Antonia swung herself upright. “The actual part is for Irene Adler in this fabulous new play about Sherlock Holmes.”

  “THE woman for Sherlock Holmes.” Bree had read all of Arthur Doyle in high school. “The most beautiful woman in London.”

  “Yep. Now, the career part of it all is a chance to become a member of the permanent repertory.”

  Bree didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  “So, okay. The chances of that are, like, one in ten.”

  “Factor that by a hundred,” Bree suggested.

  “But the chance of a job as assistant stage manager is more, like, one in two.”

  “Really?” Bree said. “Is that a paying job?”

  “Yep.”

  “And it would pay how much?”

  Antonia told her.

  “Which means you’d be staying here?!”

  “It’s either that or a park bench.” She looked anxious. “You don’t mind, do you? I mean, even when you were dating Payton the Rat and we were sharing the apartment in Raleigh, we managed to stay out of each other’s way.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Well, what, then?”

  Bree stared at her. How could she tell Antonia of this feeling she had—a feeling getting stronger by the hour—that she was getting into something she couldn’t control. Something strange. And dangerous.

  She shivered, suddenly, convinced she was being watched, that both of them were being watched, that the sound of wings had followed her here, to the only place where she could be safe. She turned her head away, and encountered Sasha’s grave, unblinking gaze.

  The cormorant. It lies in the cormorant.

  “I don’t understand,” Bree said aloud. “I don’t get it. What do you want from me? What?!”

  “Hey! Bree! You okay?” Antonia was halfway across the room, her face pale.

  “Of course I’m okay. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.” Antonia rubbed her forehead, and then sat back down on the couch. “You scared me half to death.”

  Bree got up and turned the painting so it faced the wall. “Don’t be a smart-ass. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me. You looked like the last act of The Duchess of Malfi.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know, it’s that perfectly grisly revenge play by Webster. Where everybody ends up covered in blood and screaming with horror.”

  Bree rolled her eyes dramatically. “You’re imagining things.”

  But she’d turned the painting to the wall. So who was imagining things now?

  She’d take it back to that shop in the morning.

  “I don’t know,” Antonia muttered. “Maybe it’s the braids. I’m not sure if I like the braids. You look fierce.”

  “The braids are so I don’t look like a dim-witted model.”

  “Somebody said you looked like a dim-witted model?”

  Antonia’s giggles were infectious. “Is that the coolest insult ever, or what?!”

  Over pizza at Huey’s, Bree gave Antonia an edited version of the last thirty-six hours. She left out the spooky stuff, and talked a lot about Liz Overshaw and Benjamin Skinner.

  “It’s an omen,” Antonia said through a mouthful of thin crust four-cheese pizza. “I mean, how cool is this? I’m auditioning for a Sherlock Holmes play. And your first case means that you get to play at being Sherlock Holmes. It’s prophetic, that’s what it is. Not to mention that you’re starting off with a pretty fancy client, right off the bat. I mean, if Overshaw’s even halfway as loaded as Benjamin Blackheart Skinner, you’ll be able to retire before you’re forty! As long as you catch the murderer, that is.” She levered a third slice from the plate sitting between them, paused with
the slice halfway to her mouth, and said, “Oh. My. God. Nemesis. That’s what it is. Nemesis.”

  “The beer’s gone to your brain.” Bree moved the pitcher of Stella Artois out of Antonia’s reach.

  “Here!” Antonia grabbed the oversized menu and shoved it into Bree’s hands. “Pretend you’re reading that! Put it up higher! Higher!”

  “What in the world are you doing?” Bree asked crossly. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “It’s Payton the Rat!” Antonia hissed. “No! Don’t turn around! He’s right behind you!”

  Huey’s was right on the riverfront, the trendiest of the trendy stores and restaurants that occupied the old Cotton Exchange on the wharfs. And if there was one thing Payton was good at, it was finding trendy spots.

  “What’s he doing?” Bree asked tensely. She kept her eyes studiously on the list of appetizers.

  “He is standing at the bar with an absolutely foul-looking drink in his hand. It’s pink.”

  “A girly sort of a drink?”

  “Very girly. There’s fruit in it.”

  “Then he’s waiting for somebody. Payton only drinks twelve-year-old or older single malt whiskies.”

  “What a jerk,” Antonia said briefly. “Wait. Yep. You’re right.”

  “He’s with somebody?”

  Both of them knew what she meant.

  “Yeah.” Antonia’s eyes met Bree’s. “Under thirty, but just. And a hard-body. A gym rat. I mean, she’s got arms like wire cables on a suspension bridge. You can look. He’s got his back to us.”

  Bree turned halfway around and then back again. “She’s gorgeous,” she said flatly.

  “In a Bionic Woman sort of way, yeah.” Antonia shook her head in mild disgust and refilled her glass from the pitcher. “Didn’t take him long to hook up.”

  “He was hooked up before we broke up.” Bree decided to refill her glass, too.

  “Oh, bummer. Look happy. Look busy! He’s seen us!” Antonia broke into a trill of laughter, and said very loudly, “I hope you told the guy where to get off! Really, Bree, you’ve had to beat guys off with a stick since you dumped that fat—” She broke off and her voice dropped several degrees to an icy chill. “Why, Payton! If it isn’t the fathead himself.”

  “Hey, Bree,” Payton said. “You’re lookin’ good.”

  Bree looked up from her menu and said casually, “So you’ve found this place, too. How’ve you been, Payton?”

  He held a glass of what was probably Laphroaig in one hand, and the shoulder of Ms. Suspension Bridge of 2007 with the other. He gave the woman a pat on the back, and said, “Got a little business, here, Sean. I’ll meet you back at the bar.” Then he addressed Antonia, “Shove over, Toni. Let me sit and talk to Bree here for a second.”

  Antonia smiled sweetly at him and moved farther into the booth. Payton perched comfortably on the outer edge and looked into Bree’s eyes with a warm sincerity that was as genuine as a blizzard in Tahiti. “You’re looking well,” he said, and sighed. “And it’s good to see you, Bree.” He cocked his forefinger and thumb to make a pistol. “Love the hair. Found any office space yet?”

  “On Angelus,” Antonia said, “right on the river, practically.” Then she added, loyally, if inaccurately, “Gorgeous view.”

  Bree took a small sip of beer. Payton was gorgeous. A lot of the gorgeousness emanated from his eyes, which were a brilliant sort of blue violet (due, she had discovered, to the kind of contact lenses he wore)—and a lot more due to the chiseled line of his cheekbones and his incredibly fit body. His hair was clipped short, and he had an attractive line of stubble on his chin. Her stomach was fluttery. Her heart was a little sore. But she didn’t want to cry, scream, or throw things. Most of all, she didn’t want to be sitting in this booth looking at him.

  “I hear you took on an offer with Stubblefield, Marwick,” she said. “Congratulations. Looks like we’ll be seeing each other in the courtroom now and then.”

  His smile widened, which meant he was aggravated. “I didn’t realize until just today that you’d decided to open a practice here, too.”

  Bree wondered at the speed with which the word had gotten around. “You remember my uncle Franklin.”

  “The weirdo?”

  “The judge,” Bree corrected, coldly. “He had a small practice after he retired from the bench. He left it to me. Certainly nothing like Stubblefield, Marwick,” Bree added sweetly.

  “Couldn’t have surprised me more, when I got the offer,” Payton said. “Not that I would have turned them down—I mean, honestly, Bree, the best law firm in the Southeast ...”

  “The most profitable, anyway,” she said dryly. Stubblefield, Marwick specialized in class actions. Infomercials soliciting dying smokers, brain-damaged children, and breathers of asphalt ran routinely on late-night television.

  “We’ve got a pretty impressive list of clients,” he said easily. “Yes, we’ve made a reputation standing up for the rights of the unjustly oppressed ...”

  “For forty percent of the settlement fee,” Bree said. “Really, Payton.” She bit off the rest of what would be quite a harangue, if she let herself go, and said only, “So they made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  “Over three hundred K a year,” he said.

  Antonia made a noise like a fork in a food grinder. “You are such a tacky fathead, Payton.”

  “I hope you’re very happy,” Bree said politely. You certainly won’t have to worry about your Am-Ex bill.”

  “... and our client list, as I was about to tell you, has some of the best people in Savannah.”

  Bree frowned. This was leading up to something.

  “Among them,” Payton said easily, “Dr. and Mrs. Grainger Skinner.”

  “And they are?” Bree said. Then the penny dropped. “Benjamin Skinner’s son and his wife.”

  “His son,” Antonia said doubtfully. “Oh! The guy who answered the phone when you called Mr. Skinner back.”

  Payton shrugged in a deprecating way. “Grainger Skinner himself isn’t that big a deal—it’s not money that counts in Savannah. But his wife is a Pendergast, and that does count for something.”

  Antonia paid no attention to this. “Huh. That was such a weird thing to have happened, Bree. I mean, I had no idea cell phone calls were stored like e-mail.” She forgot, temporarily, that she hated Payton the Rat and said to him. “Some glitch in the cell phone tower made Bree get a phone call from Skinner after he died. Isn’t that bizarre?”

  “That’s bullshit, is what it is,” Payton said. “You know, Bree, there’s ways of soliciting clients, and then there’s ways of soliciting clients. You kind of stepped over the line, there, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Oh, I mind,” Bree said. The small, regretful ache in her heart was rapidly turning into a large urge toward violence. She hadn’t dumped beer over anyone’s head in years. Maybe it was time she took it up again.

  “I’m glad I ran into you here, instead of having to look you up in that place on ...” he stopped, dug into his suit coat pocket, and pulled out his BlackBerry. He tapped it, then said, “Angelus, you said? I can’t find it.”

  “Very edgy,” Antonia said loyally. “That location is the start of a new trend.”

  “Not if your clients don’t know where the hell it is.”

  Antonia glared at him. “She’s going to be the hottest lawyer in town in no time.”

  “That’s good to hear,” Payton said smoothly, “because I certainly wouldn’t want anything to stand in the way of that rush of new clients.”

  “Anything like what?” Bree asked.

  “Like a totally futile investigation into the death of Benjamin Skinner.” He hunched forward, his hands folded on the table, his brow furrowed in earnest concern. “Trust me on this one, Bree. Liz Overshaw is a well-known crank. Sort of the epitome, if you don’t mind my being frank, of the postmenopausal, hysterical female.”

  “Oh, I mind,” Bree said politely. She smiled. />
  Antonia looked at the smile and said nervously, “Uh, Bree?”

  Payton’s tone became even more confiding. “I mean, what possible good can it do you to begin your career in this town by antagonizing the biggest player in the city?”

  “I don’t know,” Bree said, with dangerous calm. “What good do you think it can do me?”

  “Well, that’s just it. No good at all. Look here, Bree. We’re in a position to send a lot of good cases your way. You did pretty well in corporate tax law, as I recall. And that can be a gold mine for you if”—he tapped her wrist with an admonitory forefinger—“you decide to play ball.”

  Later, Bree figured it was the tap on the wrist that did it. She didn’t really remember anything too clearly. She was furious, that she recalled. She jumped up with some idea of grabbing both Payton’s ears and banging his head sharply against the table. The next thing she knew, she was on her feet in the middle of the room, and Payton was on his back against the bar ten feet away, looking dazed.

  A tall, powerfully built man with colorless eyes had his hand on her shoulder. Antonia sat huddled at the back of the booth, her face pale.

  “You really shouldn’t have done that,” the man said.

  Bree wanted to say, “Done what?” but she didn’t. The glass doors to the restaurant swung wide open. Most of the customers huddled under the tables. Dishes, glasses, bits of pizza, salad, and napkins littered the floor. It looked like the aftermath of a hurricane. Instead, she said, “What happened?”

  Two policemen walked in the door; the one in the lead, a surly-looking guy with a potbelly and a shock of greasy blond hair, shouted, “Everybody freeze!”

  “This way.” The man with the colorless eyes, which were not, Bree realized, colorless at all, but silvery, put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her without effort into the hall to the kitchen.

  “Wait a minute.” Bree tried to duck out from under his grip and get back into the restaurant. Somehow, she kept on moving, down the back hall, out the back door, and into the alley that led to the parking lot. It wasn’t that she couldn’t resist. It was that her resistance didn’t make any difference. He was very strong, not at all rough, and smelled pleasantly of the outdoors. Once in the alley, he closed the door to the kitchen behind them, and let her go.