Angel's Advocate (30 page)

“I don’t think I will, either,” Bree said quietly. “As a matter of fact, my guess is that you and your brother-in-law were dosing the child with a variety of antidepressants in an effort to change her behavior. And those are legal. What you did is contemptible. Treacherous. But not illegal. Not when prescribed by Lindsey’s physician. Which is you. And aided by her father—her legal guardian and the person responsible for the state of her health. Some of the stuff you gave her undoubtedly has grave medical consequences, especially in patients under eighteen. The reason for the blood draws, I imagine.”

Lindquist’s face suffused with rage. He stood up, his hands clenched. “You have no idea! You have
no
idea of the trial that miserable ‘child,’ as you call her, has been to my sister! She’s a devil! A spawn of the devil!”

Bree, who could identify spawns of the devil better than most, shook her head. “She’s made a practice of living her life on the edge, Dr. Lindquist. There’s no denying that. But I can’t help but wonder how much easier her life would have been in a family less concerned with discipline and more with affection. Did you ever think once about taking her for outside help? As for buying her silence with threats about a disease . . .” She wanted to spit, but didn’t.

“Don’t be absurd. You saw how the media leaped on this business with that eight-year-old. And she does have a disease. She’s a malignant blot!

“People like us live in a fishbowl, Miss Beaufort. You can put a little pressure here, lean on a few people there, but by and large we’re at the mercy of the ghouls with their cameras.” His face had paled to an ashen color. “And you know what happens when the great American public turns against you? You start to lose, and you start to lose big. First thing you know, you’ve got unions organizing the workforce. That drives prices up. You have protest groups urging a change in the tariff. That drives prices up. You start getting huge punitive damages in jury trials, and they’re held up on appeal. And prices go up. And you know what happens when prices go up? People buy somewhere else. And the stores close. And nearly three hundred thousand employees are out of work, and you end up with nothing. Nothing.”

Bree had absolutely no response to this. She stood up and said quietly, “I’m leaving now.”

“To do what?”

“Contact Child Protective Services, for one. And I’m going to get Lindsey a good lawyer, someone well versed in juvenile law.

“Then I’m going to do my best to solve a pair of murders.”

She headed to the outer door. She could feel his glare between her shoulder blades.

“This isn’t over yet, Miss Beaufort.”

The glass paperweight flew past her head and crashed into the wall. Furious, Bree picked it up, whirled, and held it out to him accusingly.

Lindquist backed up, his hands flung wide. “Hey,” he said, “hey. All I can tell you is, I didn’t go near that thing. The construction vehicles do strange things to the stability of the building.”

“Temper, Mr. Lindquist, is going to get you nowhere at all.”

She slammed the door on her way out.

Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.
I found myself again in a dark wood.

—
The Inferno
, Dante

“Tiffany Burkhold works at a bar on Whitaker,” Petru said. “The Spur It On.”

Bree tucked the cell phone against her ear while she scrabbled in her purse for her notepad. “What’s the nearest cross street?”

“West Broughton.”

“Near the market, then. It’s eleven thirty. Do you think she’ll be there?”

“They are open for lunch,” Petru said. “It is possible, yes. And your interview with Mr. Lindquist? Successful, perhaps?”

Bree sighed and stared out the car window. Traffic was heavy. It threatened rain. She was suddenly discouraged. “He’s a jerk. But he’s got zero motive to do Probert Chandler in. And he doesn’t know Shirley Chavez from a hole in the ground.” Bree tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully.

“By the way, Mr. Payton McAllister made the noon news. I have taped it for you.”

Bree grinned. “Things are looking up, Petru. Things are definitely looking up. Any word on where we can find Stephen Hansen?”

“Not yet. But I anticipate success.”

Bree said good-bye and drove up Whitaker to the Spur It On.

The bar was tucked into the first floor of an old extension of the Cotton Exchange. A narrow neon sign ran the length of the storefront. Silver spurs cupped the lettering like spiky hands. At some point in the past, some hopeful owner had installed large windows. An Open sign glowed red in the one nearest the solid steel door. A Dos Equis sign blipped on and off underneath it.

Bree parked on the street. The dogs poked their noses out the passenger windows and looked hopefully outside. “An hour, no more,” Bree promised them. “And then we’ll go for a walk near the river.”

The front door opened outward. The rush of air was filled with familiar scents: beer, the undercurrent of disinfectant, fried foods, and a moldy, woody odor that was characteristic of old bars everywhere. The inside was dimly lit. Bree made out a line of booths against the wall opposite the long wooden bar top. A mass of old pine tables stood jumbled together in the center. The place was almost empty: a few retirees, mostly, older men in golf shirts and shorts despite the coolness of the day and their placid wives in pantsuits and bright costume jewelry. Behind the bar, a woman in a white shirt and black pants slapped at the countertop. She looked up when Bree walked in.

Bree figured she’d stick out like a sore thumb in her city suit. She took a seat in the booth closest to the door. The plastic-sheeted menu was sticky. Bree read down the printed page. Hamburger, quesadillas, French fries, and onion rings. Hunter would love this place, if he hadn’t found it already.

“Help you?” The bartender stood with one hip out-thrust, an order pad in one hand. She didn’t have a name tag. The bio Ron had provided for Tiffany Burkhold said she was in her early forties, divorced, with one son, who was grown and out working on his own. This woman could fit the profile.

“BLT on wheat, please.”

“Coke-cola?”

“Iced tea. Unsweetened.” The waitress nodded and sauntered off. A couple at one of the center tables got up and headed toward the cash register at the front corner of the bar. Bree’s waitress looked over her shoulder, stuck her head in the open doorway that let to the kitchen, and yelled, “Front!”

A woman in her forties bustled out of the back and up to the register. She was thin, with nervous, birdlike movements. Her hair was dyed a stark dark brown. A slash of red lipstick cut across her face like a warning sign. “Is that your bill?” she chattered at the couple. “I see you had the hamburg. Wasn’t it good? They make the best hamburg here. No. Sorry. We don’t take American Express. Visa or MasterCard only.”

“Pay her in cash, Harold,” the female customer said. She addressed the cashier. “I swear, I’m going to ditch that AmEx card. Nobody takes it.”

Harold muttered, and plunged his hand into his shorts pocket. He withdrew a money clip and began to count the money out.

“You’ve got cash today? Good. Good. Makes it easy, doesn’t it?” The cashier took the bills Harold offered. “Thirty? On a twenty-five forty bill? You want to leave a little something for Trudy?”

“Just give me two back,” Harold said.

“Got it right here.” The cashier dug her hand into her skirt pocket and handed the two dollars over. “ ’Bye, now!” She watched the couple leave. She busied herself at the register. She refilled the bowl of mints, neatened the pile of matchbooks, and, so quickly that Bree almost missed it, put the thirty dollars into her pocket.

Bree’s waitress came out of the kitchen balancing a sandwich plate and a glass of iced tea. She set both in front of Bree, and then went to clear the dishes from the table where Harold and his AmEx-hating companion had been sitting.

“Damn,” she said. “The cheap bastard didn’t leave a dime.”

The cashier made a sympathetic sound.

“I swear to God, Tiff, I’m going to get me a job over to the Pancake Hut.”

“Too close to the old folks’ home,” Tiff whispered brightly. She darted into the dining area and began to straighten up the little piles of salt, pepper, and ketchup on each table. “The old buggers tip worse than the folks here.” She twinkled at an elderly couple in the far corner.

“Keep your voice down,” Bree’s waitress said in mild reproof.

“Deaf as a post, the two of them,” Tiff said scornfully.

“
She
ain’t.” Bree’s waitress nodded in her direction. Bree smiled, waved, and then beckoned at Tiffany.

Tiffany bit her lip, and then picked her way across the room to Bree’s booth. “Help you?” she said.

“I’m sure you can,” Bree said pleasantly. “Although I have to tell you in advance all I’ve got with me is an AmEx card.”

“Oh, we take . . .” She stopped and flushed. “Look, I don’t know who you are or what you’re up to, but we don’t take kindly to your sort here.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Art!” she shouted. “Artie!”

Bree heard a clang of pots from the kitchen. Artie’s belly preceded him through the doorway to the kitchen. Artie himself was moonfaced, with a beard problem.

“She made a pass at me!” Tiffany said indignantly. “She scared me to death! I want her out of here!”

Bree put her head down and laughed. Then she pulled out her wallet and flipped it open to her Bar Association card and held it up. “I’m an officer of the Chatham County court system, Artie. And I need to talk with her. And I promise I’m not about to give her a big fat kiss. Although,” she added, as Artie disappeared back into the kitchen, “I might just give you a slap up the side of the head. Sit down, Tiffany.”

Tiffany perched on the edge of the seat opposite her, her hands clenched.

“You’re quick,” Bree said, with no small degree of admiration. “You must have driven the folks at Marlowe’s absolutely crazy.”

“Is
that
what this is about! I didn’t have a thing to do with those robberies. Not a thing!” Her voice quivered with outrage.

“The warehouse robberies?”

Tiffany looked at her suspiciously. “You know who’s behind them, don’t you? I told them. It’s that geeky kid who sits in front of the computers all day. He’s got a record, you know. His daddy’s a big-deal lawyer in town. So do they go after him? No. They go after me. Just because of some little trouble I got in years ago. I was barely a kid myself.”

“You’re talking about Chad Martinelli? Is there any proof that you know of, Tiffany?”

Tiffany leaped to her feet. “Everybody’s always on about proof. Proof! I told you! I didn’t have a thing to do with it! There’s no way you can take me to jail.”

“I believe you.” She wasn’t going to get anywhere with this lunatic if she didn’t get her past the fear of arrest. “But you know all about what happened, don’t you? I have to say, you seem pretty smart to me. I’ll bet not much gets past you.”

“Not much does,” she said with a trace of smugness.

“Was it Mr. Jensen, the store manager, who first looked into the robberies?”

Tiffany worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “I guess. I don’t know.”

“You worked the night shift?” Bree guessed. “And at the bank during the day?”

“That’s right.” Tiffany glanced nervously around the room, then sank back into her side of the booth. “I was cashiering. We were open twenty-four/seven, and Mel, that’s Mr. Jensen, was pretty understanding about my not being able to work the late late shift from eleven to three. Because I had to get up for the bank in the morning.”

“Right.”

“But once in a while, I’d get stuck. We had to rotate, see, and no matter how much coffee I drank, I’d get sleepy.” She jiggled her foot rapidly up and down. “See, caffeine has absolutely no effect on me.”

Something sure did. Either Tiffany had ADD or a severe adrenaline imbalance.

“So once in a while, I’d just need to take twenty minutes, or I was just going to drop where I stood. And that’s when the first robbery happened.”

“What was taken, exactly?”

“Drugs. A lot of drugs, from the warehouse. Mr. Jensen figured somebody had a duplicate set of keys.” Her eyes shifted away from Bree’s. “And the pharmacy. Some bitch worker planted the ones from the pharmacy in my purse, so I got nailed for that one. It was a total crock, that was. Total setup.” She smirked. “She got hers a little later on, that bitch. It was nothing to do with me.”

Bree wasn’t so sure. But she said, merely, “Did Mr. Jensen ever discover who had the duplicate set of keys?”

“Sure. The boss’s kid. The one who stole that money from the cute little Girl Scout.”

Bree gaped at her. “Lindsey Chandler?”

“That’s the one.” Tiffany giggled, a sharp, high sound like a bird cracking a nut. “Kid claimed somebody framed her. Yeah, right. You think she’d’ve come up with a better story than that.”