Angel's Advocate (26 page)

“And then,” Hunter prompted.

“I called 911, of course. Then I came up to the office and called her home phone and talked to”—her voice faltered—“talked to Luis. Abel went out to where the part-time help park, and her old Chevy was still there.” She held her hands up and let them fall back into her lap. “And we waited for the police.”

“Anyone unfamiliar come onto the farm today?” Hunter asked.

“Just her.” Missy jerked her thumb at Bree. “Miss Winston-Beaufort.”

Hunter gazed over the top of Bree’s head. “Did anyone see Shirley after Miss Beaufort left the premises?”

Bree made a noise like “Phuut!”

“I did. I had a short talk with Bree—Miss Beaufort. After she left, I went down to barn four and asked Shirley if she needed any help, any advice. She said no, that Miss Beaufort wanted to know who’d given her the money. She was worried that she’d told us—Abel and me—about it, and I told her not to worry about it. Then I went on with my day. The last I saw her, she was scrubbing out the water bucket in stall four-six.”

Hunter turned the tape recorder off.

“Did Shirley seem unusually worried about who knew she and her family had gotten the check?” Bree asked.

“We’ve got her cell phone,” Hunter said. “And yes, she put in a call to your friend Payton at Stubblefield, Marwick. And no, I want you to stay out of that particular briar patch.”

“Any calls you can’t trace?”

“Apparently she only got as far as the receptionist at the law firm. And yes, there was one call after that.”

Bree’s heart beat a little faster. “And?”

“We’re on it.”

“But, Hunter!” Bree took a deep breath. “The timing’s so close! An hour, maybe less. That means the murderer . . .”

“Could be twenty miles from here, in any direction. That’s a surface area of six hundred miles, give or take.”

“Oh,” Bree said, deflated.

“And if I had to guess, I’d bet the call was to a phone that’s at the bottom of the Savannah River right now.”

“You’re probably right.” Bree looked up at the kitchen clock. Fatigue hit her like a hundred-pound sack of oats. “It’s going on one o’clock in the morning. I think I’m done.” Missy had purple splotches under her eyes, and Bree looked at her with concern. “And you need sleep. I’m calling it a night.”

“Morning rounds at five,” Missy said. She shoved herself away from the table. “Lieutenant? Any idea how long your troops are going to be tramping around my property?”

“We ought to be wrapping up now. Sergeant Markham will bring me up to speed.”

“Then I’ll show you both out.”

“I don’t think I’ve met Sergeant Markham,” Bree said, as she and Hunter followed Missy down the short hall to the front rooms. “Is he new?”

A scrappy-looking redhead in uniform stood at the front door, scribbling in a notebook. She straightened up as the three of them came forward, and sketched a salute.

“Markham? This is one of the Chandler lawyers, Brianna Beaufort.”

Bree looked at Hunter indignantly, but she shook hands with Markham. She was a year or two older than Bree, with a lot of freckles and cold hazel eyes. “Ma’am,” she said.

“You got the statement from Mrs. Trask?” Hunter asked.

“Yessir.” She gestured toward the ceiling with her pencil. “He got her upstairs to bed, finally. But I’m not sure why—”

“That’ll do, Sergeant. This Mrs. Trask is going to bed, too. Bree? I’ll see you to your car.”

Outside, the mist had thickened, and the night was damp and cold. Bree shivered.

And an eerie howl split the air.

“Jesus Christ,” Hunter said. “What the hell is that?”

Her car was entirely wrapped in a white fog. The dogs’ yellow eyes gleamed eerily from the rear windows. Sasha growled. A horribly familiar stench wafted through the air.

“Stay there,” Hunter ordered.

Belli and Miles roared. There wasn’t another word for it. It was a wild, feral scream that stilled the small night sounds into silence. Hunter tensed, shoved Bree behind him, and put his hand on his pistol. The mist around Bree’s car whirled in a sudden eddy of freezing wind, then drifted up and thinned to nothing.

“Miles and Belli,” Bree said, her voice shaky. “I sort of inherited them.”

The dogs subsided.

“Some relative left you those things?” Hunter demanded.

Bree put Sasha into the passenger seat. Then she got into the car and fumbled for her keys. The corpse smell was stronger here. A gobbet of dirt smeared the floor near the accelerator pedal. She bent down, shuddering at the slimy feel, and tossed it out the window. Hunter peered into the backseat. Miles and Belli regarded him unblinkingly.

“Sort of.”

Hunter slapped the car door, and then backed away. “Jesus,” he said again. Then, with a glimmer of a smile, “Don’t speed on the way, okay? I’d hate to have one of the uniforms come across those guys in the dark. It’d scare the pants off him.”

Bree smiled back. Markham glowered at them from the front steps of the house. “Or her,” she said pointedly. “Stay well, Lieutenant.”

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.
Leave behind hope, you who enter.

—
The Inferno
, Dante

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Goldstein said frankly. “No offense meant, of course.”

“None taken.” Bree had slept badly, troubled with dreams of the ship in the painting and her mother’s face shadowed by a great winged bird. Not Francesca, but Leah. She hadn’t braided her hair, the way she normally did, and tendrils curled around her ears from the knot of hair she’d swept up on the top of her head. “This is quite a case, Goldstein. I need some help.”

The recording angel pursed his lips. “I’ll see what I can do. There are limits, of course.”

The Hall of Records on the seventh floor of the six-story Chatham County Courthouse looked exactly as it had four days before, when Bree and Ron stopped by to pick up the pleadings on the Probert Chandler case. The monks were bent over their wooden daises, scribbling away with quill pens. The torches shone brightly, throwing pools of light on the well-scrubbed flagstone floor. Sunshine came through the stained-glass windows that lined the great hall, dimmed to a mere glow by the fantastically colored glass. Bree wondered what she would see if she looked out of one. A celestial city? The Celestial City? Or that most familiar Savannah sight, the Front Street Market and the street musicians who played there?

Goldstein cleared his throat in a marked manner. “Maybe you ought to go home and get some sleep.”

Bree came to with a start. “Sorry. This is quite a peaceful place, isn’t it? Easy to sleep here.”

“Not a good idea,” he said firmly. “Trust me on that. We’ve had a few temporals snooze over their research. Look over there.”

Bree turned around. A middle-aged man in judicial robes dozed over a thick stack of parchment. “Judge Crater,” Goldstein said in a near whisper. “He’s going to be very, very surprised to discover what century he’s in when he does wake up.”

“Oh, dear.” Bree suppressed a giggle. “Hm. Well, if you catch me dozing off, pinch me, will you?”

“Maybe,” Goldstein said primly, “and then again, maybe not. Now, what kind of questions do you have?”

“I’m wondering about the celestial penalties in law. My first client, Ben Skinner, was consigned to Purgatory. You may know this already,” she added modestly, “but I won that case.”

Goldstein looked unimpressed.

“Probert Chandler has been consigned to the ninth circle of Hell.”

Goldstein looked very grave. “Yes.”

“I reviewed the pleadings early this morning. He was condemned for the sin of treachery.”

Goldstein hunched his shoulders in agreement. A small, pearly feather drifted upward on a current of air.

“In the temporal legal system, the worst punishment is execution, in many of our states, at least. The next most severe is life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. I’m guessing here, but the ninth circle of Hell is the equivalent of that?”

“Yes.” Goldstein half closed his eyes and thought a bit. “You want a handout? You could use a handout.” He bent down behind the counter, and then came up with a stack of laminated cards, about the size of the refrigerator calendars Bree got from her insurance company every year. He flipped one at her. On one side was printed in screaming red:

Bree flipped the card over. The opposite side read:

“They’re pretty aggressive about promotional mail ings,” Goldstein said with an expression of slight distaste. “On government money, too. Nothing illegal about it, you understand. Just tacky.”

Bree studied the card with a feeling of unreality.

“But helpful. The card, I mean. It should orient you a bit.”

“Yes,” Bree said. “Thank you.” Thoughtfully, she stuck the card in her purse. “And the specifics of Chandler’s crime—sins—crimes—whichever . . .” Bree pulled her yellow pad from her briefcase and referred to her notes. “Treachery and betrayal of family, specifically his daughter, Lindsey. Goldstein, it doesn’t say what he did.”

“It does.”

“It doesn’t,” Bree said, exasperated. “It doesn’t say
how
.”

“No,” Goldstein admitted, “it doesn’t say how. It says what. Why should it say how? We’re not concerned with how. We’re concerned with what. Do you have any idea how long the pleadings would get if we recorded every single bleeping sin this guy committed in fifty-eight years? That’s twenty-one thousand one hundred and seventy days, over five hundred and eight thousand hours, thirty million . . .”

Bree held her hand up. “Stop.” She rubbed her temples with both hands. “So how is the gravity of the crime established, if not through facts entered in evidence?”

Goldstein clasped his hands together and opened them. A foot-high balance scale stood on the counter. It was made of gold, or a substance very like it, and it shimmered in the torchlight. “It goes like this,” he said, rather testily. “Helping little old ladies across the street, so many ounces on this side.” One of the plates dipped, slightly. The little arrow on the base pointed up. “Stealing the little old lady’s pension fund, so many ounces on this side.” The other plate dipped way down, and the arrow on the base pointed down. “It goes like that. On your own personal Day of Judgment, You Know Who looks at the balance. You’re allowed a trial if you ask for it. Chandler asked for it, obviously, or he wouldn’t be filing for a retrial now, would he? It’s the accumulation of acts and behaviors that leads to salvation or damnation.”

“I can’t work with that,” Bree said. “It’s not fair! I need specifics! I can’t defend my client against a vaguely established weight of evidence!”

“You’ve got the physics of this all wrong,” Goldstein said in an annoyingly superior way. “We rely on Summaries and Condensations. You aren’t foolish enough to think there’s a precise analogy between celestial law and the temporal?”

Bree scowled at him. “I might be foolish enough to smack an angel upside the head.” Then, as Goldstein looked seriously offended, she said, “Ha-ha. Just kidding,” although she hadn’t been. “But really, Summaries and Condensations! With no access to the facts stipulated to, either. What a crock!”

Goldstein smiled, rather gleefully, Bree thought. “So you’ll just have to get St. Parchese and Father Lucheta nosing around a little harder. Ha! Ha!” He leaned forward and patted her hand in a kindly way. “Look. We’ll listen to reason. We always do. Go out and dig into what weighed heavily enough on Probert Chandler’s scale to send him to the worst part of Hell and see if you can mitigate it. If I were you, I’d start with the murder of that poor soul Shirley Chavez.”

“Yes,” Bree said soberly. “Yes. Has she . . . I mean, is she okay?”

Goldstein smiled at her. Bree felt the comfort and the warmth of that smile. And she knew, with utter certainty, that wherever Shirley was, it was a safe and peaceful haven. This was some consolation, although not nearly enough to outweigh the outrage of her death. “Well,” she said. She gathered up her yellow pad and picked up her briefcase. “Thank you.”

Goldstein bent forward in a courtly bow, sending yet another small feather ceilingward. “My pleasure.” He eyed her in a kindly way. “And how is the investigation progressing?”

Bree heaved a deep sigh. “I’m mired, Goldstein. Mired.”

“Yes. Well. The patient accumulation of data. That’s the trick.”