Angel Condemned (6 page)

This flood of interesting, but irrelevant, information made think Bree of Petru, who’d turned didactics into high art. She smiled. “You’d enjoy a conversation with an associate of mine. He’s Russian and very interested in antiquities.”

“I might, indeed.” He ran one hand nervously through his thinning hair. He was shorter by several inches than Bree, who stood five foot nine in her bare feet. His shoulders and arms were thick. He was dressed for the cold weather, in rumpled chinos, a worn denim shirt, and battered Frye work boots. He looked like every archeologist Bree had ever seen on the Nature channel, down to the wire-rimmed spectacles, L. L. Bean fishing vest, and weathered skin. All he lacked was a bush hat. She pegged his age at somewhere in the midsixties.

He didn’t look possessed, evil, damned, or otherwise part of the darker areas of Bree’s life as a celestial advocate. He looked like an archeologist shopkeeper on the verge of going down for the count.

“You are Professor Allard Chambers?”

His pupils widened, momentarily changing his eyes from washed-out blue to black. “The last person who asked me that, in that tone of voice, with that sort of specificity, was a process server.” His voice remained cordial. If it hadn’t been for his eyes, Bree wouldn’t have known he was angry. “But you don’t look like a process server. You look . . .” He shoved his glasses up his nose with one forefinger and peered at her. “You look like one of those statues of Athena the old Romans erected in imitation of the Greeks. Perfectly proportioned. Straight nose, broad brow, level gaze. You’re too slender for your height, though. The Greeks wouldn’t have approved. But the hair! More Norse than Greek, that white blonde. Hm. At a guess, I would say you’re a lawyer? Here on behalf of that load of codswallop Prosper White?”

Bree raised her eyebrows. Chambers smirked. “I see my guess was an accurate one. Come in, please, to the shop. We can talk there more comfortably.”

A bell over the door lintel rang loudly as she followed him inside.

The shop was a mess. That was the first thing to strike her. The second was the smell: a papery, moldy, very pleasant odor that was somehow familiar. Bree placed it, suddenly. Her family home smelled like that. Plessey had belonged to the Winston-Beauforts for more than two hundred years. It was the scent of age and history.

Reclaimables was long and narrow, perhaps sixty by twenty, with sixteen-foot ceilings. Cheap pine bookshelves stuffed with books, stacks of moldering magazines, narrow boxes, and a jumble of pots and other small objects lined the side walls. The uneven floor was covered in stained indoor-outdoor carpeting. It might have been hunter green, once. But maybe not. Three oak-framed, waist-high display cases ran down the center of the aisle. The glass fronts were smeared with thumbprints. Careless stacks of clay artifacts spilled from the interior shelving. Bree caught an occasional glimpse of bronze and silver metals among the piles.

“There’s a couple of chairs in the back where we can sit, Athena.”

“It’s Brianna Winston-Beaufort.” Bree dug into her tote for a business card as she followed Chambers to the back of the shop. He stopped at his desk—which was bare except for a laptop and a landline—and shoved a stack of catalogues off the desk chair onto the floor. “Have a seat, Athena.”

Bree had only been practicing law for four years, but the first three and a half had been in her adoptive father’s office in Raleigh, and he’d taught her well: the guy who stood had a psychological advantage over the guy who sat. She settled one hip on the edge of Chambers’s desk and laid her business card on the cover of the laptop. Chambers looked bemused for a second, and then he sat in his office chair.

“I have your attorney’s permission to come by,” Bree said. “But I have to ask you if you’re sure you’re comfortable talking to me without him. And we can’t discuss the particulars of your case with Prosper White.”

“Zeb gave me a call. Said it’d be fine.”

“Zeb?”

“Zebulon Beazley. Interesting name, isn’t it? I’m wondering if his background includes one of those fundamentalist sects that adhere to a strict interpretation of the Christian Bible.”

“I don’t know,” Bree said. “I wouldn’t be surprised, though.”

“Dirty fighter,” Chambers said with cheerful spite. “Kind of lawyer who’ll stand a lot of heat. Just who you want in the rough-and-tumble of a court case. I’m a lot more comfortable with him and Caldecott than that sniveling piece of work at Marbury, Stubblefield. Payton? Payton McAllister? Reminded me of a grad student I once had that plagiarized part of his thesis. Anyhow, Marbury’s the biggest firm in town, so I thought they might be cheaper. I was wrong about that, too. Bastards have already e-mailed me an outsize bill, and they only turned me over to Beazley this morning.” He patted his vest pocket and pulled out a well-used briar pipe. “Bad habit, I know. D’ya mind?” He didn’t wait for her polite demurral but fished in another pocket for his tobacco.

“And you’re at ease with them? Caldecott, I mean?”

“Don’t like ’em much, if that’s what you’re asking. But who says you have to like your lawyer? Long as they hang White out to dry, I don’t care about their character.”

Bree regretted not bringing Sasha. Chambers seemed untainted by Dark Sphere forces, but who really knew? “You taught at a university before you bought this shop?”

He tamped the tobacco carefully into the bowl, struck a kitchen match against the sole of his boot, and lit his pipe. He puffed away for a second or two and then regarded her through the clouds of smoke. “How old are you? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine?”

“Twenty-nine this year.”

“Hm. Your expression’s older than that, Athena. Bet you’ve seen a lot in those twenty-nine years. Which means you ought to figure the fools from the get-go. Do I look like a fool to you?”

“How can I possibly tell at this point?”

His bark of a laugh wasn’t amused. “Take it from me, I’m not. Was, maybe, at one time. I learned my lesson about the kind of lawyer to hire a little too late. So if I look like a former fool to you, then you’d be right on the money. Yes, I taught at a university, and yes, your client Prosper White was instrumental in my teaching there no more. The bastard.” His teeth clenched around the pipe stem so hard, she heard the wood crack. “You know he’s called a press conference tomorrow? To tout his bloody magazine exhibit? With
my
cover? The man’s a poseur and a fraud. We’ll see just how far the bastard gets with the press.”

Bree nudged Chambers back to the task at hand. “When did this all happen? The business over the provenance of the Cross of Justinian?”

“Started about eight months ago. I’ve been searching for the Cross for thirty years. And finally, finally . . .” He looked at Bree, without really seeing her. He was looking, she decided, at a memory. “My wife and I found it. In the back of a cave along the Dalmatian coast.”

“Outside authentication was required by the university?”

“Yes,” he said abruptly. “For the insurance. Insurance companies know damn-all about antiquities, much less the so-called experts they hire as consultants. It was my bad luck that they believed in White’s bullshit credentials.”

Bree made a mental note to check out White’s background if this thing went to court—White’s credibility might very well be on the line.

“He thought the Cross was, umm, not from the period.”

“Said it was a fake. A twenty-first-century fraud.” He rapped his pipe on his boot, spilling ash on the floor. “What’s your interest in this case? You really represent Prosper White?”

“Yes,” Bree said cautiously.

“Hope you got your retainer up front.”

“That’s not an issue. He’s engaged to marry my aunt.”

“You have to trust me on this, Athena. He’s not a man you want in the family circle.”

“I can understand your desire for vindication,” Bree said. She would have to step carefully here. She couldn’t discuss the actual case. “But why choose this way to do it? Surely there’s a better opportunity to get Mr. White’s attention than to quarrel over something like a magazine cover.”

“Oh, it’s more than that.” Chambers smiled rather charmingly. “I didn’t have any idea the bastard would show up here in Savannah two months after I bought this shop. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he came waltzing in here looking for old magazines. And”—he pointed the stem of his pipe at her dramatically—“true to form, the bastard tries to chisel me. The opportunity presented itself. How could I pass it up?”

Bree bit her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. “It might be worth reflecting on whether you want to confuse the two issues, sir. While I sympathize with your career difficulties over the relic—”

“The relic,” he said. “A good man lost his life in pursuit of what you call ‘the relic.’ My wife lost any hope of a comfortable old age because of what Prosper White did to us over ‘the relic.’” His face flushed dark red. He clenched one hand into a fist. “I’m going to take White down. I’ll take you and your aunt down with him, if I have to.”

Bree didn’t like threats. She pulled herself up, concentrating on the man before her, pulling on the strength of will that made her what she was. A breeze came up from nowhere and stirred the catalogues piled at their feet. Her voice was icily level when she finally spoke. “If my aunt’s determined to marry him, what I want or don’t want doesn’t matter. You should know—you need to let your lawyers know—that I’ll defend him against anything they might try. Is that clear, sir?”

Chambers drew back and paled. “Who are you, anyway?” Then, as if ashamed of his momentary fear, he blustered, “What is this, some kind of threat? You can’t bully me!”

Bree felt her lips part in a smile. She’d caught a glimpse of her face once, when she was angry like this. She hadn’t liked herself much. “No threat. Just a statement of fact.”

Chambers shoved his office chair as far away from her as he could get without standing up and running away. He hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms across his chest as if he were cold. “My wife says . . .”

Bree waited.

“My wife says the thing’s cursed.”

“The Cross?”

He nodded, mute.

“You’re a scientist, Professor. I didn’t think scientists believed in curses.”

“Haven’t had a day’s luck since I found it again.”

“Again?”

“Long story.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Bad story. Want to see the artifact that caused it all?”

“The Cross of Justinian?”

“Prosper would say the
purported
Cross of Justinian.” He bent sideways and pulled open the lower desk drawer. He scrabbled around in its depths and then emerged with a small wooden box. He tossed it to her. Bree caught the box in midair. “Go ahead. Open it up. I . . .” The door chime rang, and he leaped to his feet, clearly glad for a chance to get away from her. “A customer, by gum! Here’s a rare chance! Take a look at the piece of crap that started it all. I’ll be right back.”

The box didn’t weigh very much. Bree hefted it in her hand. It was made of pine, with a cheap brass latch. She flipped the lid open with her thumb and took out the small jeweled cross and held it up.

White had described it perfectly, although the cedar base was so heavily inlaid that her first impression was that it was solid silver. The work wasn’t refined, at least not to twenty-first-century eyes, but it was very beautiful. Semiprecious stones were inset with great care into the metal. The green must be jasper, and there were tiny bits of coral and lapis lazuli. Bree held it up . . .

And a wisp of dark shadow rose from its center.

Bree closed her fist. The Cross was warm, almost hot, in the palm of her hand. Her clients came to her through objects that had been near them when they died. She didn’t want another client. Not now. Not this case, with her mother’s cherished sister at the heart of it.

The dark light seeped through her fingers and coiled around her wrist with a touch that was almost loving. Bree closed her eyes. She didn’t have to take every case that came along, did she?

“It’s not a customer; it’s a damn dog!” Allard Chambers shouted from the front of the store. “Ha!”

The shadow was an absence of light. A shape of nothingness. It crawled up her forearm and then rose in a slender pillar, taking shape in front of her eyes.

“Whoops! Heads up!” Chambers shouted. “It’s headed your way.”

Bree put the Cross back into the box, slid the cover shut and put it back on the desk. A familiar nose nudged her hip. Bree smoothed her hand over the golden head. “Hey, Sasha,” she said. “Sniff out any demons, lately?”

Sasha looked up at her, his feathered tail waving a gentle welcome.

Take it
.

“I can’t just take it,” she said. “It’s not mine. Besides, I don’t want to.”

“Sorry about that.” Chambers said. He was slightly out of breath. “Slipped right past me. The lock on the front door doesn’t catch unless we slam it shut. All kinds of street people wander in when it’s cold, but this is the first time I’ve had a dog take advantage. The street people drive Jillian crazy. The dog would really put her over the edge.”

“Mrs. Chambers? She’s joining you in the suit against my client?”

“Yeah.” He looked at her hand on Sasha’s head. “Dogs send her right around the bend. I see that dogs don’t bother you, though.”

“Not as a rule,” Bree said. “Besides, I know this one.”

“Yours, is he? Handsome animal.”

“He is, isn’t he?”

Sasha stood thirty inches at the shoulder. His chest was all mastiff: broad and heavily muscled. His thick, glossy coat was a color between amber and gold coins.

“Where’d he come from? He know how to open car doors, too?”

“I have a town house on Factor’s Walk. I think he just decided to take a stroll and find me.” She ran her fingers over his silky ears and stood up. “I’d better take him on home.” She extended her hand and said politely, “I’m glad to have met you, Professor Chambers. I’ll be in touch with your lawyers. I hope we can resolve this dispute amicably.”