Angel's Advocate (15 page)

“I don’t understand. Treated for what, exactly?”

“She didn’t fit in. She was a disruptive influence on the family. Do I need to make myself any clearer?”

Bree made a face into the depths of her wineglass. “Let’s take a look at this from Lindsey’s point of view. I know that Mr. Chandler and you were close . . .”

“Close enough,” he said. “We met at school. We were all chem majors with minors in business admin. Funny, when you think about it. Not that usual, the combination of business and science, you see. So it was natural for us to gravitate to one another.”

“Mrs. Chandler is a chemist, too?” Bree said in some surprise.

“Carolyn?” he snorted. “Not on your life. Where in the name of God did you get that idea?”

Bree knew she shouldn’t let this guy get under her skin. “You said you were all chem majors,” she pointed out rather tartly. “ ‘All,’ not ‘both.’ So of course I assumed you were talking about three people and not just you and Probert. And why shouldn’t Carrie-Alice be a chemist?”

“Steve Hansen was with us for a time,” Lindquist said with a “gotcha” air. “And Carolyn’s never had much interest in anything outside the home and the kids. The kids, mainly.”

Bree bit down on her lower lip, to keep herself from continuing this inane verbal competition. “What I really would like to discuss with you, Mr. Lindquist—”

“It’s Doctor Lindquist,” he snapped, suddenly testy. “I added an MD to my PhD in pharmacology.”

Bree nodded agreeably. “Dr. Lindquist. I’m going to give Lindsey the best defense I possibly can. And to do that, it’d help to know as much as I can about her background. Do you have an opinion about Mr. Chandler’s parenting skills?”

“He was a good and devoted father. He loved his children.”

Right out of the press kit prepared for you by your New York PR firm,
Bree thought. Aloud, she said, “And Carolyn—Mrs. Chandler—you’re closer to her? Or am I making another assumption?”

“I don’t think I care for the tone of your voice, Miss Beaufort.”

Bree shook her head in mock sympathy. “It’s a problem that’s plagued me all of my life, Mr. Lindquist. My tone of voice. So. You and Mrs. Chandler were how close? Too close?”

He looked at her in contempt and paused for a long, long moment. “She’s my sister.”

“Your sister.” Bree’s cheeks got hot. She remembered, too late, the hoary advice to defense attorneys: never ask a question to which you don’t already know the answer. His sister! Something she should have known, for sure. Well, she deserved the embarrassment; never, never, never get cocky without being willing to pay the price.

“My younger sister. I only have the one. No brothers.”

Bree drew a circle in the grass with the point of her shoe. “Hm. So. As the concerned uncle of this child, what can you tell me that might help me explain to a jury why she mugged an eight-year-old Girl Scout and stole her cookie money?”

“Genes,” he said, in an unconscious echo of Hartley Williams’s addled diagnosis. “It begins and ends with what you inherit.”

“Bullshit,” Bree said.

Lindquist made a small adjustment to his tie and gazed at her, his face utterly expressionless. “I don’t think I can help you, Miss Beaufort.”

“I don’t think you can, at that, Mr. Lindquist.”

He turned on his heel and marched off across the grass.

“Well,” said her father, from behind her shoulder, “that went well.” He looked sympathetic. Bree supposed he’d heard the entire conversation.

“It did, didn’t it?” Bree swallowed the remains of her wine and set the glass on the top of the brick wall. “Serves me right, I guess. That sanctimonious so-and-so.”

Royal chuckled.

“Honestly, Daddy. I suppose I should have handled that better.”

“No ‘suppose’ about it. You surely should have. You let your convictions get in the way of building a good case for your client. It’s a charming failing, Bree, but it’s definitely a failing. I’ve told you before, a good lawyer—the best lawyer—suspends her personal beliefs in defense of her client. You’re an advocate, my dear. It’s an important role.”

“It’s a lot more honest to be an advocate for the innocent.”

At that, her father looked seriously displeased. “I don’t need to remind you our whole legal system’s built on the presumption of innocence. And the question of guilt is
not
your job. You are not a judge.” He tugged at her ear affectionately. “Not yet, at any rate.” He glanced at his watch. “Nearly midnight. Time for the fire. I’ll get your mother.” He turned to walk away, and then turned back. “You’re going to be all right, you know. You’ll handle this case as well as you’ve handled all the others. I’ve got a lot of faith in you, Bree.”

She went forward and hugged him.

Royal smiled, patted her back, and then strolled over to the pianist, who struck a series of loud, trilling chords on the piano. He waited until the crowd of partygoers settled into expectant silence. She let her father’s speech to the guests wash over her, thinking of all the celebrations like this one, in the past. She wondered if she’d be around for the ones in the future. Sasha’s familiar warmth was at her knee, and she bent to stroke his head.

Help, Professor Cianquino had said. He was going to send help. Well, she hoped it got here soon.

She tilted her head back and looked up at the stars. The moon carried herself across the sky like a little ship. A feathering of clouds washed across the very top of the heavens, veiling the Pleiades and the Dipper. When her mother tossed the flaming brand on the fire, the flames shot up with a whoosh! The bright glow pitched the moon and stars into dark relief.

And from the heart of the pyre, two huge black dogs leaped over the wall and landed at Bree’s feet.

Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.

—
Julius Caesar
, William Shakespeare

“You’ve got to be kidding. They’re giants! The town house people don’t mind looking the other way when it comes to Sasha—I mean, he’s such a peach. But these guys? We’re going to get fined. Maybe even kicked out.” Antonia rubbed her arms nervously. It was early Sunday evening. Bree had left Plessey just after breakfast, her two new guardians jammed into the backseat of her little car like two sumo wrestlers in a rickshaw. “What breed are they, anyway?”

Bree looked at her new companions with some doubt. “Newfoundland, partly. I’m not sure about the other part. Maybe more mastiff, like Sash.”

Both dogs stood fifty inches at the shoulder. Their chests were massive and their paws tipped with sharp white claws. Belli opened her mouth and grinned at them. She had a mouthful of sharp white teeth. She seemed to have more of them than the usual canine allotment. Bree was opposed to the flaunting of aggressive, macho behavior on principle, but she was glad to suspend her principles in this instance. These guys made her feel safe.

“Bella. And that’s Mee-lace, you said?” Antonia patted the other guardian nervously on the head.

“It’s spelled Miles. M-I-L-E-S. And her name’s Belli, with an
i
.”

“Belli. Kind of a nice name, I guess. Italian?”

“In a way.” For the first and only time in her life, Bree was glad that Tonia had flunked Latin.

“But Bree, they can’t stay here.”

“I’ll take them to the office. They’ll be there most of the time.” She eyed her sister. “You usually like dogs. Do they really make you that nervous?”

“They’re just so . . .
still
. You know. They don’t move around a lot. They just sit and stare at you.”

The dogs had taken positions on either side of the fireplace. There they sat, upright, their watchful eyes following back and forth as Antonia paced around the living room. Sasha pranced around with her, his tail wagging cheerfully. He’d greeted the arrival of his two compatriots with the air of a general reprimanding the late arrival of the troops. Occasionally, he directed their movements with a snap of his jaws and a preemptory bark. Mostly he looked at them with a proprietary air and left them alone. They didn’t eat, or if they did, they hadn’t, yet. Maybe they ate once a month, like pythons. They didn’t like to be petted or brushed, although they accepted both from Bree with an air of indifference.

And they didn’t leave her side.

“You found them wandering along the side of the road at some rest stop?” Antonia said again, as if Bree hadn’t already lied to her twice about the appearance of the dogs. Although it was only partly a lie. They’d been waiting for her in the parking lot of the Saturn Diner that morning after their brief, reassuring appearance at the bonfire and they had slept beside her bed at night. “I can’t believe you just picked them up and brought them back with you. How do you know they don’t belong to somebody?”

“They’d been abandoned,” Bree said, shortly. “Don’t keep going on about it, Tonia. I figured it’d be a good idea for them to keep an eye on things at the office.”

“Sash keeps an eye on things just fine.”

“He’s not tough,” Bree said, ignoring Sasha’s reproachful look. “These guys are warriors. Ignore them. Pretend they’re a pair of porcelain Fu dogs. You know, those Chinese temple dogs. Come on, Tonia. Sit down and tell me all about last night’s show. Everything go well?”

Her sister perched on the arm of the couch, and then got up, unable to stop staring at the dogs staring at her. “Let’s go into the kitchen. They can stay in here, can’t they?”

Bree looked at Sasha.

“I think as long as they know I’m within shouting distance, they’ll be fine in here. And I brought you back some barbecue and some of Adelina’s pecan pie. I’ll heat some dinner up for you. You should eat before you go back to the theater.”

Antonia trailed her into the kitchen and pulled a stool up to the kitchen counter. Bree bustled about, putting the barbecue into the microwave and serving the pie up on a small plate. Her sister watched her with the same grave attention as the dogs. “You’re, like, totally cheerful.”

“Am I?”

“I mean, totally. I can’t believe the difference in you.”

“I wasn’t that much of a gloomy Gus, was I?”

Antonia poked at the pie with her fork. “Not gloomy, no. But really anxious.” She swallowed a bite with an air of pleased surprise. “Yum. Nobody makes pecan pie like Adelina.”

“I keep telling her she should quit housekeeping at Plessey and go into the pie business. She and General would make a fortune.”

“Hm. And she said, ‘G’wan with you’ and kept on baking, I bet. So, anything particular happen at home? Other than you picking up a pair of elephants to bring back with you?”

The elephants. Thank God for the elephants. “Not really,” Bree said evasively. “Mamma looks well. So does Daddy. And I got a chance to interview John Allen Lindquist.”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

“Lindsey’s uncle. I’d hoped he’d give me some help for her defense, but no soap.”

“You’re still thinking about taking on that case?”

“I have taken on that case. Hers and her father’s, both.”

“Her father’s?” Antonia’s eyebrows went up. “I thought he was dead.”

“He
is
dead. But there’s some question about how he died.” Bree folded a dish towel into neat quarters and leaned against the kitchen counter. “I can’t help thinking the two things are linked somehow—Lindsey’s behavior and her father’s death.”

Antonia shrugged. “Whatever. You seem to be attracting a lot of corpses, sister.”

Bree shivered. “Yes. Well. I’m going to put Ron and Petru on an intense search for some background on the guy, that’s for sure. It’s going to be a busy week.”

“Anything else?”

“Anything else what?”

“Anything else happen at home I ought to know about.”

Bree flushed.

“Mamma called after you left this morning.”

Bree bit her lip.

“Said you ran into Abel Trask.”

“So I did.”

“Said he was moving here to Savannah?”

“Just for a bit. He’s taking over the Seaton Stud until his sister-in-law decides what to do with the business.”

“Hm.”

“Hm, what?” Bree demanded testily.

“Just putting that together with you being so cheerful, sister. That’s all.”

Bree bit her thumbnail. “Look. I can take care of myself.”

Antonia got up and put her plate in the sink. “You’ve said that from the day I was born. And you know what? You mostly can. But I’m not so sure about this time. Mamma isn’t either.”

There were times when as much as Bree loved her little sister, she wanted to smack her silly. This was one of those times. Antonia took a quick look at her expression, rolled her eyes, and grabbed her tote bag from its place by the back door. “I’m off to the job. I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”

Bree thought of Miles and Belli, guarding the mirror. “I won’t have to, will I? Thank goodness.”

But she said it to the air; Antonia was gone.

The evening passed quietly; the night was still and the nightmares held at bay by the stern bodies of the dogs at her bedroom door. Her cheery mood held well into the next morning, when she arrived at the office so early, even Lavinia wasn’t downstairs yet. Sasha went directly into the little kitchen, while Miles and Belli stationed themselves beneath the painting that had heralded so much grief: the
Rise of the Cormorant.
Bree stared at the sinking ship, the hands grasping at air from the depths of the roiling sea, and dared to hope, a little. The scene revealed in that picture had haunted her childhood and brought her gasping awake from dreams of drowning too many nights to count. “And if that bird flies out of there to get me, you two’ll bite him, won’t you?”

Miles blinked his solemn yellow eyes.

Bree stared at the painting, unafraid, or pretty nearly. There was one face on that ship, one figure, she actually longed to see. The pale-eyed, dark-haired woman who had given birth to her, only to die a few days later, leaving her to Francesca and Royal.