Angel's Verdict (10 page)

“You’re sponsoring him,” Ron said. “No question about it.”

“So he just gets to show up in my head like that?” Bree frowned. “I don’t care for it. I don’t care for it one little bit.”

Lavinia patted her hand. “He didn’t stay long, did he?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“You can always tell him to leave,” Petru said, “but under the circumstances, if the poor soul is attempting to achieve rehabilitation, it would be a kind thing to welcome him.”

“Yes,” Lavinia said, “you can tell him to hang up, like. Anytime.”

“Perhaps in a softer way,” Petru said. “I would advise Bree to have a candid conversation with Mr. Dent about the responsibilities of a sponsor, Lavinia. They are significant. Bree should be aware of this before she takes this on. Dent might be in a fragile state.”

“Nobody seems to care about my fragile state,” Bree snapped, a little unfairly. “I’ll bring it up the next time I see him. I’ll be sure to set some ground rules.”

“If we are finished with Mr. Dent, I would like to say that my borscht is waiting.” Petru laced his fingers across his substantial belly and peered at them over his spectacles. “May I ask that the new cases meeting proceed apace? We must first establish if there are grounds for an appeal.”

“Of course, sorry. Hang on a sec. I made a list of action items while Dent drove us back in the car. I made him drop off Tonia and EB before he brought me to the office. Both of them wanted to see it . . . again.” Bree sighed. Too many people in her life wanted to know why she never took them to the Angelus Street office. She dug into her briefcase and took out her Blackberry. “Ron, I’ll need you to get the Bulloch case file from Goldstein. Early tomorrow morning is fine. Petru, if you can do the usual Internet search about the Haydee Quinn case, that’ll be useful, but don’t spend a ton of time on it. The scriptwriter’s done a year’s worth of original research, and I’m hoping she can help us. Thing is . . .” She paused. “She wants to interview me about Franklin.”

“Hm,” Ron said. “How smart is she?”

“Florida Smith? Very. Ambitious, too. She’s writing a book about the murder. And she wants to interview me about Franklin’s role in Alexander Bulloch’s sanity hearing.”

“I remember that, too,” Lavinia said. “He grabbed her body right out of the funeral home and burned it up on the banks of the Savannah River. Right about where your town house is, Bree dear. There was a lot of hollering about that. Folks wanted to see him do some time.”

“He ended up in a private hospital for a bit,” Bree said.

Lavinia shook her head. “Not just because he burned the body up. There was talk he murdered that poor girl. That there was a cover-up.”

“Yes,” Bree said drily. “It’s possible, isn’t it? Can you see why I’m not wild about being grilled by Florida Smith about Franklin’s part in all this?”

Lavinia looked stern. “You thinking that Mr. Franklin would have been involved in something like that? Setting up the boy Alexander as a lunatic so he’d escape justice?”

“I don’t know what to think at this point.” Bree’s muscles were complaining. She felt like she’d been sitting all day. She got up, walked restlessly around the small room, then stopped and looked out the west window at the gloomy scene outside.

She’d rented the first floor of the house at 666 Angelus Street four months ago. It was beginning to feel like four years. She’d turned the dining room of the small house into this conference room, which was just big enough to hold a long oak table and six chairs. The window on the west wall, where she stood now, faced Angelus Street itself. Angelus was a tiny asphalt road set between Liberty and Mulberry. It was not to be found on any city map.

She rarely looked out the north window. That window overlooked Georgia’s only all-murderers cemetery. When she’d first responded to Lavinia’s ad for a tenant, she thought the rent was cheap because of the disordered graves surrounding the house. It didn’t take her long to discover that the cemetery was there to accommodate the murderers she and the Company tracked down.

“You are concerned, perhaps, that a proper investigation of this case might reflect poorly on Great-uncle Franklin?” Petru asked.

“He’s not my great-uncle. He’s my father. Or was. And yes, I’m concerned.” Bree turned back to them. “Lavinia, do you remember anything at all about the time Franklin represented Alexander at the sanity hearing?”

“I do remember that Mr. Franklin said that the Bullochs’ a-hiring of him gave his business a boost.”

“Great.” Bree rubbed her forehead. “The Bullochs got his foot in the door of what turned out to be a very successful practice.”

“It was hard for him, just starting out. You didn’t have any of this lawyer advertising then, you know. With their faces on every bus in town. T’uh! ABA didn’t allow it. Mr. Franklin didn’t have money early on. Even if he was a Winston-Beaufort. That came later.”

“The real money in the family came from Mamma,” Bree said absently. “Francesca, I mean. The Carmichaels are loaded. Lavinia, is there any way we can get our hands on the client file from back then? I know we lost the dead souls’ files in the fire that killed Franklin, but the temporals’ files are in excellent shape. But they only go back for the last ten years.”

“No need to keep the paper ones longer than that, unless it’s an estate,” Lavinia said. “I do recall putting a lot of stuff on microfiche, and the secretaries that came after me must have done it, too.”

“I haven’t looked at the microfiche tapes. I’ll bet EB has. I’ll ask her to do a search.”

“A curious case,” Petru Lucheta said. “We do not have to take on every client who comes our way. Perhaps this is one to refuse.”

An expectant silence fell.

Bree drummed her fingers on the tabletop impatiently. “Of course we do.”

Nobody moved, but she felt the relief like a breeze in the room.

“You didn’t really think I’d back off because I might find out something I don’t want to know about my father?” She didn’t wait for an answer—her angels were painfully honest, but she held up her hand and ticked off the points one by one. “So far we’ve got three theories of this case: Consuelo did it; Bagger Bill Norris did it; Alexander Bulloch did it. We’ve got one client who may or may not be guilty of murder. If she is, we try our best to find mitigating circumstances and get her sentence reduced. If she isn’t, we find out who did kill Haydee Quinn and present it in evidence. That sound about right?”

They nodded.

“Good.” She shoved her chair against the table and picked up her briefcase. “I need some time to think about how we’re going to approach this. I told Tyra Steele’s representative I’d meet her at the Mulberry Inn right about now. It’s just going on five o’clock. They agreed to give me half an hour. I’ll be back in a bit.”

The Mulberry Inn wasn’t the grandest hotel in Old Savannah, but it was extremely comfortable, and situated so that the cast and crew of
Bitter Tide
were steps away from the river. It was also right around the corner from Angelus Street. The sun was down when Bree put on her coat and let herself outside, but the twilight that lingered meant she’d have little to fear from the Pendergasts. She glanced at the grave site as she passed by; Ron had closed it with a pile of rocks and good clay soil, and the mound looked undisturbed. Bree didn’t know why Josiah was giving her a respite, but she was grateful for it.

The air was soft and chilly, heavy with threat of rain. Bree rounded the corner onto Mulberry. The entrance to the hotel was surrounded by clipped hedges and potted ferns. The foyer was small, carpeted in a pattern of dark navy squares with a floral design in the middle. Bree went through the double glass doors to a large atrium. A pleasant piano lounge with overstuffed sofas and chairs sat between the hotel restaurant and the long mahogany-faced reception desk. On her left, the lounge emptied into a proper bar. Bree had encountered Tyra Steele only once, but her voice wasn’t easily forgotten. She heard it now, soaring over the rumble of conversation from the bar.

Bree checked her watch: five o’clock exactly. The meeting had been scheduled for the relative quiet of the lounge. She wasn’t used to interviews with movie people, but she was willing to bet Tyra Steele would be late.

She was wrong.

The actress came out of the bar with her cell phone in one ear. She waved at Bree. Startled, Bree waved back. Tyra trotted across the expanse of celery-colored carpet and thrust the cell in Bree’s face.

“Give a big hello to Team Tyra!”

“Team Tyra?” Bree said.

“You’re that Justine’s attorney aren’t you? Winston something?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then say hello to my Facebook fans!” She settled into a comfortable chintz-covered chair and crossed her legs. She wore very brief denim shorts, a tight T-shirt that exposed her beautiful, astonishingly upright breasts, and flip-flop sandals.

Up close, she was exquisite, if overwhelming. Her skin was flawless, her teeth blinding white and perfectly shaped. She made Bree think of very high-quality polyester.

“Tyra, Ms. Beaufort didn’t agree to the Facebook thing. So it’d be cool if you said ‘bye-bye’ and checked in with them a little later.” Tyra’s publicist, Mila Canterbury, had followed Tyra out of the bar. A nice-looking woman with short dark hair and a pleasant smile, she winked at Bree, took the cell from her client’s hand, and said into it, “Check with the Big-T later, gang. This is Mila giving you all the big ‘bye-byeee.’ ” She folded the phone, tucked it into a slim aluminum briefcase, and then shook hands with Bree. “Nice to see you again, counselor. We’ve got about a half an hour before we need to split. How can we help you?”

“This is about that old bat, isn’t it?” Tyra said. “Mila said I had to talk to you, because otherwise we could get sued. The shoot’s got a lot of problems already, Mila says, and Phil’s not cool with any more lawsuits. So, like, ask me whatever.” Her eyes were a true, limpid turquoise, as clear as seawater.

“Okay.” Bree sat down across from Tyra and did her best to swing into prosecutorial mode. “Mrs. Coville is concerned about your attitude toward her. She fell this morning because you pushed her. She has bruises on her throat this afternoon because you put your hands around her neck and attempted to strangle her. I’d like to get to the cause of this behavior.”

“Jeez . . . us,” Tyra said. “Like, I don’t know, okay? I mean, Justine is what, a hundred and three or something. She’s older than my grandma. About as tough as my old grandma, too. But, like, you don’t hurt old people. It’s not something you do. It’s Haydee you have to ask. Not me. I honest-to-God don’t understand a thing about it.”

“Okay,” Bree said. “I’d like to talk to Haydee, if I may.” She looked around the lounge. Some of the hotel guests had started to gather for the late-afternoon piano performance of Johnny Mercer songs. Some elderly couples, a few young families, and a sprinkling of men and women in business suits. They had all left a respectful space between where they sat and Tyra. “Is this the best place?”

Tyra’s oak-colored hair hung to her waist. She flipped it back over her shoulders with a toss of her head. “I don’t, like, choose the place. She just shows up.”

“Any unusual circumstances surround her ‘just showing up’? Are you holding something of hers, perhaps? Or near the place where she . . . um . . . passed away?”

“It’s usually around Facebook time,” Mila said. She dropped another wink in Bree’s direction.

Tyra’s turquoise eyes opened wide. “Like, you’re right, Millie! Team Tyra is totally awed with Haydee. And that’s what she likes, you know? She had fans when she was alive, and she needs fans now that she’s dead.” She leaned forward and said earnestly, “Team Tyra can’t believe I’m so into the spiritual side of life. It’s very awesome.”

“You’re the awesome one, Tee.” The hearty voice was male, somehow middle-aged, and carried a hostile edge. Bree glanced up at a man in his midforties. He wore a tailored suit jacket and trousers in a slim European cut and a white shirt, open at the throat. He carried what looked to be a scotch on the rocks in his left hand. “This is the lawyer, Mila?”

“Mr. White.” Mila got to her feet. “This is Miss Beaufort, yes. Bree, this is Vincent Victor White, one of our producers.”

He didn’t offer his free hand, so Bree didn’t offer hers. He jerked his chin toward the chair Bree had been sitting in. “Sit down. I’ll get you a drink.”

“Now, why should I have a drink with you, Mr. White? As pleasant a prospect as that seems to be.”

“Millie,” Tyra said, “are we finished here? I gotta go.” She uncurled herself from the chair. Her hair swung forward over her face. Bree noticed that she kept the chair between herself and Vincent White. She also noticed that White kept his eyes on Tyra. He had a greedy look, like a fat bully after a cake.

“We’re finished here, Miss Steele. Thank you. I’d like to suggest that you have a little talk with Haydee, next time the two of you are in touch. Just remember that Mrs. Coville is a very old lady. She’s fragile. Physically and emotionally.”

“You mean she bruises real easy.” Tyra nodded wisely. “My grandma does, too. I have to watch it when I hug her. I’ll let Haydee know.”

“Thank you,” Bree said.

“You going to give me my cell back, Millie?”

“Only if you stop calling me Millie.” But she said it with a smile. She dug the cell out of her briefcase and flipped it in the air. Tyra caught it with an easy, deerlike grace and turned to go back into the bar.

“Catch you around later, Tee?” White said.

She waved her hand without looking back. The guests whispered as she passed by, and the piano fell silent. Tyra disappeared into the depths of the bar. The piano started up again and gradually, the room filled with the subdued rumble of conversation.

“Amazing, isn’t she?” White sat down in the chair Tyra had just vacated and wriggled obscenely. He grinned at her. “It’s still warm from that cute little butt.”