Angel's Advocate (3 page)

“A paying client?” Ron urged. “Go ahead. Do tell.”

“Well, this one’s a doozy,” she said. She explained, briefly, about the cheerleader, the Hummer, and the victimized Girl Scout.

“Dearie me,” Ron said. “What a little witch it is. Lindsey Chandler, you say? I’ve read about her. Richer than she should be and nasty with it, from all accounts. Bree, you can’t pass this one up.” He reached forward and waggled his fingers. “You have the phone number? Hand it over. I’ll set up an appointment right now.”

Più non ti dico e più non ti respondo.
I will tell you no more and I no longer answer you.

—
The Inferno
, Dante

Ten minutes later, Bree drove onto President Street, which would take her to 80 East to Tybee Island. Sasha sat in the passenger seat, head out the window, eyes blissfully closed against the breeze, ears flying in the wind. The Chandler place was on the south end of the island, facing Little Tybee. A pricey neighborhood, but not Old Savannah. The Chandler place was set back from the main road, surrounded by a ficus hedge more than twenty feet high. Ficus was rare in lower Georgia; Bree was willing to bet a large amount of money went each year to replacing frost losses. But it was an elegant hedge, no doubt about it.

The house was a Mizner clone. Like its sister houses in Palm Beach, it had a comfortable elegance all its own. The red tile roof, pink stucco, and elaborate wrought-iron fencing spoke of quiet good taste. The lawn was lush, with that velvety green cropped grass that was as soft as moss to walk on. She caught a glimpse of a pool out back surrounded by brick paving. Well-cared-for teak chairs and tables offered an oasis of comfort around the pool. Amazingly modest when you knew how much the Chandlers were worth. Bree felt a flicker of genuine interest in Lindsey’s behavior, in spite of herself. The family obviously downplayed their huge wealth, which argued for pretty good values, as a rule.

Or maybe not.

She settled Sasha in the front seat of the car, left both windows open, and walked up the brick pathway to the colonnaded front porch. Carrie-Alice Chandler opened the mahogany front door as Bree came up the steps.

“Brianna? I’m Carrie Chandler.” She took in Bree with a brief glance and said dryly, “My goodness. You’re related to Cissy? You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?”

As this complimented Bree at her much-loved aunt’s expense, she wasn’t sure how to respond, so she didn’t.

Carrie-Alice was shorter than Bree, but then, many women were; Bree was five-foot-nine in her stocking feet. Bree knew the woman couldn’t be more than forty-five, but she looked older. Her face was tired. She hadn’t bothered to tint the gray out of her brown hair and she wore foundation that was a slightly lighter color than her actual skin tone. Her lipstick was an old-fashioned matte red. She was dressed neatly, if unimaginatively, in a well-cut linen skirt and cotton twinset in pale pink. A pearl necklace, small pearl earrings, and flat Todd loafers completed a look that was fine for the over-sixty set, but odd in a woman with a teenaged daughter. When Bree thought about it later, she decided it was a defensive way to dress.

Carrie straightened up, as if it were an effort to be courteous, and stood aside to let Bree pass. “Thank you for coming so promptly. Please come in.”

Bree followed her through the wide, black-and-white-tiled foyer to the rear of the house. The house had a refrigerated flower smell, like an expensive florist. The furniture consisted of good-quality reproductions. The flooring was narrow-planked oak with faux pegs, a composite wood over subflooring, popular now in expensive homes.

“Would you like to sit in the sunroom or the study?” Carrie paused in the hallway and glanced over her shoulder. The door to her left was halfway open. Bree saw a room arranged with desk, bookshelves, and some very nice watercolors on the walls. The sunroom was straight ahead. The French doors were open to the pool area. A streaked blonde head peeked over the top of one of the recliners.

“Whatever you think best,” Bree said politely.

“The study’s where Probert used to have his little talks with Lindsey. The sunroom’s where she and her little buddies hang out when she isn’t harassing innocent Girl Scouts.”

“Little talks?” Bree said. The phrase had unpleasant overtones. Involuntarily, she rubbed her arms.

“Lindsey’s been a handful since she was a toddler,” Carrie said briefly. “I left most of it up to Probert to handle. But of course, now that he’s dead, it’s up to me, isn’t it? The study might give you a home court advantage, that’s all.” She smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes.

“Why don’t we let Lindsey decide?” Bree made it a question.

“Fine. She’s out by the pool, I think.” Carrie walked ahead into the sunroom. “You coming along?”

Bree left her briefcase in the hall and followed Carrie through the large, sun-filled room and out to the pool. The streaked blonde head was gone from the recliner. Except for a tote bag tumbled in a heap on the patio bricks, the area was empty.

“Now where did that child get to?” Carrie murmured fretfully. “She was just here.”

Bree scanned the backyard. “Is there another way into the house without going back up front?”

“No.” Carrie gestured. The sunporch wrapped around the entire rear of the house. “She’d have to pass us in the hall to go anywhere.”

“Then she must have walked around to the front.” The west side of the house was dense with shrubbery. The east side had a fine path of raked gravel and slate steps. Bree set off down the path, rounded the side of the house to the front, and saw a slender blonde figure leaning into her car. Her right elbow swung in and out of the window.

“Lindsey!” Carrie said in exasperation.

Lindsey jerked upright. “Is this your dog?” she demanded. “She’s, like, totally awesome.” She had a peeled wooden stick in one hand. It looked as if it’d come from one of the willows at the side of the house. Casually, she tossed it onto the ground.

Bree bent and peered into the passenger-side window. Sasha gazed alertly back at her with an “I want out” expression. The remaining tenderness in his hind leg made him sit at an awkward angle and he shifted uncomfortably in the front seat.

“Looks like she hurt her leg,” Lindsey said. She wiped her hands down the sides of her jeans, which were skin-tight, low-slung, and exposed a fair amount of skin from her waistline to her hips. She was too thin, her neck rising from her cropped T-shirt like a baby bird’s. She had a butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder, a gold nose stud, and clever, wary blue eyes. The pupils were slightly dilated. Uh-oh, Bree thought.

“He,” Bree corrected gently. “And his name is Sasha. As for his leg, he had a cast that just came off. And he’s glad of it, aren’t you, boy?”

“She wants to come out,” Lindsey said helpfully. “You can just see it. She probably wants to pee.” Her giggle was high-pitched. She shot a nervous glance at her mother.

“Do you mind?” Bree asked Carrie. She wanted Sasha with her, where she could keep an eye on him.

Carrie shrugged. “Certainly.”

Bree opened the passenger door and Sasha hopped to the ground. He inspected Carrie with a courteous wag of his tail. Bree, fearful, ran her hands over his coat, looking for spots where this miserable child might have poked him with a stick.

“We haven’t had a dog in the house for ages,” Carrie said. “Not since we had to give away our Irish setter.”

“Oh?” Bree said. It was her firm belief you could tell a lot about people from their relationship with animals. And she sure didn’t like what she’d seen so far. “Why was that?”

“Too nervy,” Carrie said briefly. “We couldn’t stop him running away from home. Found a nice farm for him to live on in the country.”

Sasha looked at Bree.

“She’s beautiful!” Lindsey knelt on the gravel drive and flung her arms around Sasha’s neck. “And not a thing like that old neurotic Maxie. You’re a nice sane dog, aren’t you, girl?” She rubbed Sasha’s head with frantic fingers. Sasha bore this with the kind of calm possessed by only very large, self-confident dogs. Lindsey burrowed her head into his neck and cooed.

“She’s a ‘he,’ Lin,” Carrie said. “And don’t hang around the old boy’s neck like that. It’s a meddlesome thing for a dog.”

Sasha sneezed, and then wriggled out from under Lindsey’s grasp.

“See?” Carrie said. “I told you.”

Lindsey narrowed her eyes and stared at her mother. Sasha shifted on his feet and growled a little.

Bree waited a moment, to see if this tension was going to go anywhere, and then said, “Let’s go into the house. I’d like to sit down and get to know you better, Lindsey.”

“Ma hates dogs in the house.”

“I do not,” Carrie protested. “I had dogs in your grandmother’s house all the time I was growing up.”

“In Portland, Oregon,” Lindsey chanted. “In a little three-bedroom ranch with a big stupid oak tree in the back.”

“That’s right,” Carrie said without expression.

“It’s nicer outside,” Lindsey said. She smirked at Bree. “And if you want to sit down and get to know me better, it ought to be a place where I feel comfortable, right?”

“Right,” Bree said.

They ended up by the pool, seated around one of the tables sheltered by an umbrella, Sasha curled up at Bree’s feet.

“Would you like some iced tea?” Carrie said. “It’s a little late in the day for coffee.”

Bree declined, with perfunctory thanks, and said, “Do you know who I am, Lindsey?”

“Some kind of lawyer.” Lindsey slid down in her seat and tucked her hands around herself. Then she leaped to her feet, scrabbled in her tote bag, and sat back down, this time with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in hand.

“Cecily Carmichael asked me to look into the incident at the mall on your behalf.”

Lindsey blew a plume of smoke into the air and shrugged. “I guess.”

“I take that to mean you’d like me to represent you?”

Lindsey shrugged.

“Yes,” Carrie said. “We would.”

Bree took a notepad from her purse. “I’d like to get a sense of what we’re dealing with here. As I understand it, the police have been talking to you about the theft of some Girl Scout money?”

Lindsey dropped the cigarette and ground it out with the toe of her shoe. “It just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“What did?” Bree asked patiently.

“Like, me and Hartley Williams and Madison Bellamy were at the Oglethorpe Mall, okay? Just to, like, check things out. And we were cruising for a parking spot closer to the entrance than, like, Iowa, and Hartley’s going through the wallets to count up the cash we had on hand, and there was, like, nada.”

“You
all
forgot your wallets?” Bree asked skeptically.

Lindsey snorted. “Madison forgot hers. Hartley and I had our purses, stupid.” She shot her mother a look of intense dislike. “I’m on restriction, so I get, like, zero cash a week, and Hartley’s stepfather, Stephen, is a real asshole when it comes to, like, allowances and stuff. There just wasn’t anything in them. And, honest to God, I could have killed for a double latte. So there was this snotty-nosed kid selling those freakin’ cookies, and I remembered how much cash the little buggers collect and we just decided to borrow the cash. Just,” she said, “so’s we could get a cup of freakin’ coffee. I mean, you would have thought we were a bunch of freakin’ terrorists, the way this thing’s been blown up. Way out of proportion. Way out.”

“The charges are assault, battery, and misdemeanor theft,” Carrie said without emphasis. “She was arrested by two patrol officers and they took her down to the Montgomery Street courthouse and kept her there until I came by. I talked to a detective there—Sam Hunter, I think his name was.” She made a vague motion. “Something like that. I have his card around here somewhere.”

“I know Lieutenant Hunter,” Bree said, then added, with some surprise, because she hadn’t really thought about it before, “he’s a fair man.” And way too senior an officer to deal with a mere juvenile. She drew a question mark on her yellow pad.

“Whatever.” Lindsey pulled her knees up to her chin and lit another cigarette. “They put me in a room with some dyke cop until Mamma came running to the rescue.” She reached over and punched her mother’s arm, with no affection. “Came through for me again, Ma.”

“And the two other girls with you? What happened to them?”

“Those two. My best friends. My former best friends.” Lindsey expelled smoke through her nose. “Backed each other up, didn’t they? Said it was all my fault.” She leaned over and whispered in Bree’s ear, “Hartley’s dad’s a judge, and even though her mom’s remarried, he’s, like, not about to let his little darling get in trouble with the law.”

“I know Judge Williams,” Bree said. The judge wouldn’t be averse to making a few pointed phone calls, but she doubted he’d resort to outright pressure. She also knew Sam Hunter. He was the last man you could accuse of playing politics. If Lindsey’s two buddies had been set free, it was more than likely somebody believable had witnessed the whole sorry episode and that the thing was Lindsey’s fault.

Bree sighed. It wasn’t her job to judge Lindsey; it was her job to represent her interests as best she could. And if the kid were to confess to something, the confession should be protected by attorney-client privilege. Which meant that before this went any further, Carrie would have to sign an
ad litem
agreement and arrange for a retainer.

But first, Bree would have to agree to represent this brat.

Life was too darn short.

She clasped her hands on the table and leaned forward. “Lindsey, Carrie-Alice, I’d like to make some phone calls on your behalf to see if we can find exactly the right lawyer to handle this case.”

“I thought
you
were going to get me out of this,” Lindsey said.