Angel's Advocate (5 page)

“My mamma used to say that if I didn’t quit frowning, my face was going to freeze like that,” she said cheerfully. “Not to say that a frown doesn’t improve your looks, Lieutenant!” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I’m a little late, am I? I apologize.”

He nodded, then cast a look over his shoulder at the bartender, who came halfway toward the table with an inquiring look.

“Just a spritzer for me,” Bree said. “With a lot more soda than white wine, if you please.” She smiled at Hunter. “Can I get you another beer?”

“All this charm is in aid of something,” Hunter said. “Let me take a wild guess. Lindsey Chandler.”

“You saw the six o’clock news.”

“Not your usual sort of case, is it, Bree? I thought the Winston-Beauforts specialized in civil law.”

“More of a favor for a friend of my aunt’s,” Bree said. “But this isn’t your usual sort of case either, Hunter. According to my sources, you did the intake interview.”

“True enough.” He shifted back in his chair. He had good shoulders, Bree thought, and an even better chest. It was hard to tell just how much better since she’d never seen him without his leather jacket.

“So, maybe we can exchange a little information?” she said hopefully.

That made him grin, which lightened his face and did in fact make him better looking. “Now, what kind of information have you got about this case that I don’t?”

“Not a thing,” Bree said promptly. “That was just an opening ploy, to get you off your guard so that you’ll lighten up a little. This isn’t a big deal. I’m going to try and plead the child out, get her some counseling, maybe. Do my best to make it go away. I’m just wonderin’ if there’s more to this than meets the eye.”

He ran one hand through his hair, which was thick and curling a little with the evening damp. “Like what, for example?”

“Like maybe Probert Chandler?”

“Daddy?”

“Daddy.” The bartender placed her drink in front of her, and she took a cautious sip. “I understand he was killed in a single-car crash about four months ago?”

“That’s right.”

“And, I’m guessin’ here, so don’t go thinking that you’ve got a leak in the police barracks, but was there something funny about the crash?”

“Funny how?”

Bree took a deep breath. This was the tricky part. “Like maybe he didn’t die in the car?”

Hunter ran his hand over his mouth and didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “You’ve got mobile corpses on the brain, maybe? You didn’t think Ben Skinner died in the sea, either.”

“I don’t have anything on the brain other than my own good sense,” she said tartly. “And I was right about Skinner, wasn’t I? And you’re Homicide, Hunter. Senior Homicide, at that. Four months after the man dies in a car crash—which last I heard was Traffic’s business, and nobody else’s—you’re asking his daughter questions about a snatch-and-grab at the mall.” She took a larger sip of the spritzer and choked. “Now that would have been a real zinger of a point if I didn’t have spit dribblin’ down my chin.”

Hunter’s laugh was reluctant, but genuine. “You’ve spent some time with the family. What do you think?”

“Not an appealing child,” Bree said. “But she’s seventeen, and it comes with the territory.”

“And you’re how old, Beaufort?”

“Twenty-eight,” Bree said. “What’s that got to do with anything? Oh! Was I sounding wise beyond my years?”

“More like full of yourself,” Hunter said unkindly. He sighed. “Go on.”

“Wild child, and not playin’ at it. She’s on the road to some kind of self-destruction, that’s for sure. As to why . . .” She frowned. Something about Carrie-Alice’s reference to those “little talks” gave her the creeps. “Her mother’s disengaged. Gave up a long time ago. The two of them sure don’t like each other.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I suppose I am. My own mother . . .” Bree broke off. She didn’t know her own mother. But the mother who’d raised her from a two-day-old infant, Francesca Carmichael Winston-Beaufort, would have died for either one of her daughters. “Francesca wouldn’t have given up on me, no matter what.” She looked down at the table, suddenly depressed. “What am I talking about? This kind of family dysfunction comes down all the time.”

“We were lucky to get good ones,” Hunter said easily. “Here’s to Mom.” He raised his glass. Bree raised her own; the glasses chimed together, and Bree swallowed the last of the spritzer.

“So at first glance we’ve got the standard American dysfunctional family,” Bree said. “Or do we? From all we hear through the media, Probert Chandler was a down-home kind of guy. Let out that he drove a Buick when he wasn’t driving Pontiacs. Didn’t like the high life. Believed in all those Boy Scout virtues and then some: honesty, thrift, and love of God, country, and his mamma. Mean Lindsey doesn’t fit this picture. Carrie-Alice doesn’t fit this picture. The Hummer doesn’t fit this picture. There’s a lot of wriggly little questions under this supposed rock of stability. I’m not at all surprised there was something about the car crash that made you antsy.”

Hunter shook his head in feigned admiration. “You’re good, Beaufort. But not that good. I didn’t say a thing about the car crash.”

Bree thought about batting her eyelashes again, and didn’t.

Hunter grinned unpleasantly. “How did you express it? You’re planning on pleading the child out? You’re going to make it go away? I think that’s a smart thing to do.”

“Look,” Bree said, “you know Cordelia Eastburn.”

“We all know Cordy Eastburn.” Hunter nodded approvingly. “One hell of a prosecutor.”

“She’s a glory hound,” Bree said bluntly. “I love her like a sister, but the woman’s got ambition like a hound has ticks. Did you hear her on the six o’clock news? I had the radio on all the way back from Tybee Island, and this woman’s out to shiny up her reputation at the expense of this miserable little cheerleader. You would think,” Bree said more to herself than to Hunter, “that she’d pick on somebody her own size. Did you hear what Cordy said? Well, did you? She’s thinking about adding assault with a deadly weapon to the robbery charges. Says the security tape clearly shows Lindsey menaced that poor little Girl Scout with the Hummer.”

“Lindsey seems to be her own worst enemy,” Hunter pointed out. “She’s a heartbreak waiting to happen. But I can see that’s not going to stop you riding to the rescue. You ought to think about stabling your horse, Bree. Nothing good’s going to come from this case.”

“Cordy’s playing to the cameras,” Bree said indignantly. “Where’s the
fairness
in all this?”

“Fairness. Not only do you need to stable your horse, you need to hang up your sword and shield.” Hunter looked at her a long moment. Then he leaned forward and said with an intensity she hadn’t seen in him before: “Let it go. Do whatever it is you have to do to keep the kid out of jail this time—and I say
this
time, Bree, because with a kid like that there’s going to be a next time and a time after that. But let it go. Chandler skidded on a wet road and ended up on a slab in the morgue. A lot of drunks end up—”

Bree sat up. “He was drunk?”

Hunter clenched his teeth. “He had been at the Miner’s Club much of the afternoon. After a round of golf.”

“The children of alcoholics . . . ,” Bree began, then stopped, pleased. Here was a darned good defense. Except it went against everything the media had presented to the world about Probert Chandler. Harry Truman drunk? Hmm.

“Drop it, Bree. The guy had a bit more to drink than usual, that’s true. We checked it out. It wasn’t a habit. Maybe if he had been a drinker, he’d’ve been smarter about driving home while under the influence. As far as you’re concerned, Chandler’s case is closed.” He pointed at her. Bree hated it when people pointed at her. “If I find out you’ve been screwing around with it, I’m coming down hard. Got that?”

The bartender, a reserved young black man who’d been quietly polishing glasses behind the bar, suddenly raised his voice. “Hey! Shoo out of here, you.”

“Guess he doesn’t like raised voices any more than I do,” Bree said with deceptive amiability. “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”

Hunter stared over her shoulder. “It’s not me he wants out of here. It’s your dog.”

“My dog?” Bree turned around. Sasha trotted toward her. Some trick of the half-light made his eyes glow a deeper gold than usual. He came up to her and put his head on her knee.

“Hey, Sasha,” Hunter said.

Sasha looked up at her, panting slightly.

“You’re lookin’ for your crab cake,” Bree said, conscience-stricken. “I totally forgot.”

“Miss?” the bartender said. “That your dog? We can’t have no dogs up here. Not allowed.”

“Yes, it’s my dog, and of course it’s not allowed. Sorry, sorry. Come on, Sash. We’ll get on home and get you some food.” Bree gathered up her purse and got up. Hunter got up, too.

“I’ll walk you out.”

“You just never mind about that,” Bree said sweetly.

Hunter grimaced. “You’re going Southern on me.”

Bree raised innocent eyebrows.

“It’s something I noticed,” he said with a grin. “You get your temper up, you get more . . . regional.”

“Regional,” Bree said. She took a deep breath through her nose.

Beside her, Sasha rumbled a little. Then he nudged his great head against her hip. Bree tamped down her annoyance and reached for a reasonable tone of voice. “Look, Hunter. I
know
there’s something wonky about the way Probert Chandler died. And surer than sunshine, if you lie to my face, I’m going to look into it all the harder. So why don’t you save both of us a couple of pounds of aggravation and tell me right out? Last time I looked, this kind of information ends up in the public domain anyhow. Unless,” she added triumphantly, “the car crash case is still open. Is it?”

Hunter rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He glanced in the direction of the bartender, who had stopped wiping down the bar with a rag and was frankly listening. He grabbed her arm and directed her to the stairwell. He didn’t speak again until they were outside on the pavement. “Where’s your car?”

“A block away, down Park.”

“Good. I want you to walk to it. Get into it. And go home.”

Bree took another deep breath and slowly let it out. Then she said, “You’re a pestilential man, Lieutenant. But am I letting that get to me? No. I am not. I am, as you see, calmly and happily headed off to my car. You, on the other hand, are in about as much trouble as you deserve.”

“What?”

She jerked her chin toward the restaurant stairs. The bartender stood glowering on the bottom tread. He had his cell phone to his ear. “I’ve got a five-dollar bill that says he just called 911.”

“What?!”

“Because
I
didn’t pay for those drinks. And it looks like you didn’t, either.” She bit back a giggle at the chagrin on his face, then turned and walked down the street to her car. Sasha pressed close to her, his big body so close that she nearly stumbled over him.

“You upset about that crab cake?” She reached down, grabbed his collar, and pulled him to her side. He gazed up at her with an intent, worried expression. Bree drew a breath to tell him to heel, when the stench hit her.

She jerked her head up in alarm. Under the glow of the streetlights, the place was deserted. Her car sat a few hundred yards away. At the far end of the block, an ominous pillar of smoke took shape against the night. It grew, man-high, and the scent of decaying corpses grew stronger. A low growl gathered in Sasha’s throat. With her left hand, Bree grabbed her briefcase more tightly and swung it, like a weapon. With her right, she closed her fist around her car keys, so the sharp metal ends of the keys stuck out between her knuckles.

One by one, the streetlights went out. And the whirling tower of dark, shot through with a sickly yellow, advanced toward her down the street.

Sasha drew his lips back in a snarl, crouched low, and crept toward the apparition. Bree judged the distance between the thing and the safety of her car. Sasha bounded forward. Bree yelled, “Heel!” in sudden terror for her dog, and sprinted down the sidewalk. The tower of oily smoke grew taller, wider, as if gathering itself for a ferocious charge. Bree flung herself at the driver’s door, pushed Sasha in ahead of her, and slammed and locked it. Wildly, she jammed the key into the ignition.

The smoke swirled around the windshield. In the midst of the shifting mass, Bree caught a glimpse of a grinning white face.

She slammed the motor into life, gunned the car forward, and left the mist behind.

And I smiled to think God’s greatness flowed around our incompleteness—round our restlessness, His rest.

—“Rime of the Duchess May,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Who was Probert Chandler? Where did he come from? What was he like as a man? And how did he really die?”

Bree folded her hands on the conference table and looked at each of her employees in turn. It was, she felt, an impressive start to Beaufort & Company’s morning meeting. Four of her colleagues were there: Lavinia Mather, her landlady; Petru Lucheta, her paralegal; and Ronald Parchese, her secretary. Sasha lay asleep in the corner.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I walked dogs for a living?” Ron set a tray filled with the coffeepot, a plate of beignets, and four coffee cups in the middle of the conference table and settled into his chair. He was more than usually well dressed this morning: cream-colored linen trousers, a pale blue dress shirt, and a pink and blue rep tie.

“Dog walker? No. It wasn’t in your résumé,” Bree said. “As a matter of fact, neither was your otherworldly address.”

Ron blinked and smiled at her.

Bree sighed. Her dramatic opening comments had fallen flat. She’d practiced the lines in front of the bathroom mirror just that morning, too. She accepted a cup of coffee and took an absentminded sip. “None of you listed angelic employment. But did that get you fired when you finally fessed up? It did not.” She pointed at herself with a demure twinkle. “You’ve got a pretty good boss in me, if you don’t mind a little bragging. So I figure I’m owed a little respect. If we can get to the point here, I’d appreciate it.”