Angel's Verdict (12 page)

“The old family plantation. That right?”

“As your sponsor, is it okay for me to point out that it’s rude to sneer?”

He scratched his head. “Sneer, huh.”

“Yes. You managed to shovel a world of contempt into your tone. About what you think you know about my family, and what you think about me. Not what you know. If you have a legitimate reason to sneer, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, it’s just attitude. There’s Huey’s. Let’s get you something to eat. Maybe you’ll cheer up.”

Bree and Antonia were regulars at Huey’s, and Antonia, at least, was always welcome. Bree had had another rather too physical encounter with Payton the Rat at Huey’s several months ago, and the staff tended to deliver her meals and her bill in record time and encourage her not to linger.

Bree greeted Maureen the bartender with a wave, and headed for her usual booth. Dent took off his hat, settled himself on the side that faced the front doors, and looked the place over. When the waitress came up—even before Bree had sat down—he said abruptly, “Got a burger?”

“Sure do.” The waitress, whose name tag identified her as Chelsea, handed Bree a menu but said, “Maureen wants to know if you want the regular?”

“Greek salad. And a cup of the black bean soup.”

“Burger for you, sir?”

“With raw onions and fries. Make it a double.”

Chelsea glanced from Bree to Maureen and back again. “That’ll take a bit of time. Maybe ten minutes.”

“So what if it does, sweetheart? You can bring us a couple of cups of coffee while we’re waiting.”

It was too late for coffee. Bree had enough trouble sleeping as it was. “Make mine a chardonnay, please. If you would bring my salad at the same time you bring him his sandwich, and not right away, I’d appreciate it. Please tell Maureen I’m in no hurry. None. I’d prefer not to be rushed.”

“Okay, I guess.” Chelsea hesitated for a minute and then walked rapidly away.

Dent leaned back with a sigh. “You come here a lot?”

“At least once too often, I guess, as far as they’re concerned,” Bree said. “But I’m trying to make up for it.”

He nodded seriously. “Making amends. Step Nine in most programs. It’s number two in mine. The first is to make a list of all the persons I’ve harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.” He gestured at his suit-coat pocket. “I’ve got the list right there. It starts with Bobby Lee Kowalski.”

Bree frowned. “He was one of the cops on the Haydee Quinn case.”

“That’s right. I’ve got to get to Bobby Lee. It’s important.” Dent’s big hands fiddled with the packets of Equal in the little ceramic jar. “How come they won’t let you smoke anywhere anymore?”

“You know the answer to that. Same reason they give you the calorie and fat count on your food. It’s better to be alive than . . .” Bree bit her lip. “Yes. Well. So. Mr. Dent. I agreed rather hastily to becoming your sponsor.” At his look of dismay, she said, “No! No! I’m happy to help. I just didn’t fully understand . . .” She stopped herself in midcourse. “You know, I’ll ask you straight out what I want to know, shall I? What do you need from me?”

“I have to find out who killed Haydee Quinn. And I’ve got to get to Bobby Lee.”

“So do we. The Company and I, that is. As the only surviving temporal involved in the Haydee Quinn case, Sergeant Kowalski’s high on the list. Although I’m not sure what solving this old case has to do with your rehabilitation.” She waited a moment while Chelsea set the wine and a coffee cup down. She filled Dent’s cup from the Bunn carafe and slapped creamer on the table. Dent frowned at the creamer and barked, “Where’s the sugar bowl, sweetheart?”

Chelsea blinked at him, then pointed at the packets of Equal. “Right there, sir. And please don’t call me sweetheart.”

“Maybe you could check in the back? Bring me some real sugar?” Dent reached up and patted her on the behind.

“Dent!” Bree said. “Stop that!”

“Stop what?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

Chelsea stepped away from the table, signaled to Maureen, and walked off.

Dent scowled after her. “What the hell was that all about?”

“For one thing, I think we’re going to have a change in waitstaff. Probably EB’s cousin Titus, if Maureen has anything to say about it. He’s six-foot-six and played tackle for Georgia State when he was in school.” Bree leaned across the table. “Dent, you cannot, cannot harass women in that way. No inappropriate touching. Got it? All that macho guy stuff went out in the ’60s. Or it should have, anyway.” She looked over her shoulder. Chelsea leaned over the bar, talking vehemently to Maureen. Maureen looked at Bree, her glance skidding away when she saw Bree looking at them. She disappeared into the back kitchen. Chelsea went around to the back of the bar, poured two glasses of red wine, and then served a couple at the far end of the bar. Moments later, a very tall guy in a chef’s toque splattered with tomato sauce pushed through the swinging doors. He carried two plates, one in each hand.

He set the plate with the two hamburgers in front of Dent, the soup and salad in front of Bree, then leaned over and hissed in Dent’s ear, “Cool it with the waitress, Jack.”

Dent got to his feet. “Please tell the young lady I apologize.”

“Yeah? Any more of this kind of hassle, you can apologize yourself right out of here.” He turned and nodded to Bree. “Miss Beaufort.”

“Titus,” Bree said. “I’m sorry. My client here didn’t stop to think.”

“You aren’t thinking of maybe switching your regular restaurant?”

“Of course not,” Bree said earnestly. “I love Huey’s, Titus.”

“All I can say is goody, Miss Beaufort. As long as we keep things nice and quiet.”

“Absolutely,” Bree promised. “Sorry, again.”

“Yeah. Right. Enjoy the food.”

Dent sat back down as soon as Titus went back to the kitchen, and grinned at her. “You know, I don’t think he was all that concerned about losing a loyal customer. I think you just got a heavy hint to move on.”

Bree stared at him, dismayed. “Oh my. You’re right. He was hoping I’d go somewhere else, wasn’t he?” She craned her neck around. Maureen ignored her. Chelsea ignored her. Two middle-aged women splitting a pizza glowered at Dent. One of them said loudly, “Huh!”

“Lord,” Bree said. “I can’t believe I almost got banned from Huey’s. My mother would just die. Antonia would kill me. EB would never let me hear the end of it.” She sank a little lower in the booth. If she wasn’t in sight, maybe everyone would forget about her.

“About the case,” Dent prompted. “Where are we at?”

“The preliminary stages. I’ll know more about the direction the case is going in a few days. But Dent.” Bree hesitated and then said gently, “I’m not sure there’s anything you can add to the investigation. I appreciate the offer, but we seem to have most of the bases covered pretty well. Why this case in particular?”

“If you haven’t figured it out, you’re not much of an investigator.” He placed his hands flat on the table. “Do you know who William Dent was?”

“You mean, when you were . . .” Bree didn’t know quite how to phrase this, so she said, “When you were a temporal, you mean?”

“William Dent was my favorite pulp writer. Bar none. Better even than Zane Grey. He wrote pretty damn good detective stories in magazines like the
Black Mask
and
Astounding Tales.
Back in the ’50s. I can’t believe they aren’t publishing those magazines anymore.

“I’m not William Dent, Miss Beaufort.

“I’m Eddie O’Malley. The cop who sent an innocent man to the chair back in 1952.”

He put one hand over his eyes. It took Bree a moment to realize he was weeping.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

—The Hon. Justice Learned Hand

 

 

 

 

“La, la,
la
,” Petru said. He tsked again in dismay. “The poor fellow. The poor fellow.”

“Dent said he was drunk most of the time he was on duty,” Bree said. “He doesn’t remember much about the case at all. He started drinking when he was fifteen, never really stopped, and died drunk, he said, in a car crash six years after Bagger Bill Norris was executed.”

The conference room was bright with sun this morning, although there had been a light frost the night before. Savannah in January was a place of muted greens, soft browns, and silvery gray; rainy days and sunny days each had their own wintery kind of beauty. That beauty never came to the cemetery outside the windows. No matter how often Ron and Lavinia swept up the dead leaves around the gravestones, planted new sod over the graves, and weeded the flagstones, the place reverted to ugliness and decay within days.

Worst of all, it smelled. Of old grief, old sins, decayed bodies.

“Dent’s sure Norris was innocent?” Ron asked. He poked at the slim file of information Petru had pulled off the Internet. “According to these old newspaper stories, they found Norris passed out in the back of the Tropicana Tide nightclub with a bloody knife in his hand and blood all over his clothes. They didn’t have much in the way of forensics in those days, but they did match the blood type to Haydee’s. And the two of them had been arguing for days. Norris had her signed to an iron-clad contract. She wanted out—possibly to marry Alexander Bulloch. She was a dancer, mostly, although the articles were coy about just what kind of dancing. Cootchie-cootchie, apparently.”

Petru cleared his throat, which was usually the preface to a lecture. “The media was much less open then than it is nowadays. If a rape occurred, the reporters would write that the victim was ‘interfered with.’ This comes perhaps from a culture that was closed in upon it—”

“Really, Petru,” Ron said crossly. “Enough’s enough. It’s perfectly clear what the newspapers meant.”

Petru’s thick eyebrows contracted. “What is this ‘cootchie-cootchie,’ then?”

“Hubba-hubba?” Ron said. “Don’t ask me.”

“Strippin’,” Lavinia said. “Poor girl took her clothes off for men. Or most of ’em, anyway. Seems to me they had those little pasties things here and here.” She gestured in the appropriate places.

“In Russia, I believe, they had these dances also.” Petru stroked his beard. “So, does Mr. Dent know who is guilty if it was not Bagger Norris?”

Bree, who had been waiting patiently for her employees to sort themselves out, shook her head. “He says he hasn’t a clue.”

“He is sure Norris is innocent because why?”

“He was a little vague on that. He’s, um . . . Out, as he refers to his condition, until he makes amends on his performance in the Haydee Quinn case. That’s all they told him at his intervention.”

“Goldstein might be able to help us there,” Ron said. “I’ll ask him.” He tapped at his Blackberry to make a note and then clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Look at the time. It’s almost ten o’clock. I’d better get over to the Municipal Building.”

“I’ll go with you,” Bree said. “I want to talk to Goldstein myself. Petru? Is there a way for you to get the microfiche files on Alexander Bulloch’s sanity hearing from Mrs. Billingsley while I’m gone?”

“There is indeed.”

“There are a couple of more things. Would you set up a time for me to see Mrs. Waterman? It’ll have to be with Stubblefield, Marwick’s permission, worse luck. They represent her. I’ve got to get that brooch back so they drop the theft case against Justine. I need to see Florida Smith, too. Schedule dinner with her if you can, as soon as possible. I’m assuming that Mercury gives her time to eat. I’ll take her to B. Matthew’s if you can get us a reservation. She’ll like that. You can ask Dent to pick her up from the set and bring her here.”

Petru’s beard bristled with indignation. “This is a secretary’s duty, I think. To schedule appointments and make dinner reservations is Ronald’s task. I am a paralegal. I have been studying. I am almost ready to take the Georgia Bar examination.”

“Um,” Bree said unsympathetically. This was all about a long-running rivalry between the two. Petru and Ron had frequent spats. Petru was angelic enough to avoid falling into pride or arrogance, but he wasn’t above a little petty nit-picking. Neither was Ron. “Ron’s going to be busy recovering records with me this morning. I’d like those appointments set up as soon as possible.”

“I will attempt to do so.”

“What I’ve got to attempt is to clean,” Lavinia said. “Y’all finished in here?” She wore two sweaters this morning instead of one. A brightly knitted cap perched on her halo of white hair. It was clear she felt the cold. “This conference room wants sweeping out.”

Bree gathered up her winter coat. “Ron and I are off to the Municipal Building.”

Lavinia tucked the collar of her sweater closer to her throat. “Y’all wrap up, now. It’s bitter out there.”

It was cold. Bree was feeling the lack of exercise over the past few days, and she’d walked to the office from the town house, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to walk the eight blocks to the Municipal Building. “I left my car at the town house,” she said as they went through the gate to the street. “Do you want to brave the cold? Or shall I walk back and get my car?”

“I think our transportation problem’s solved.” Ron pointed down the road. The black Lincoln Continental was parked just past the intersection of Angelus and Mulberry. “That must be Mr. Dent. Or do we call him Lieutenant O’Malley now?”

“We call him Dent. He doesn’t want anyone to start asking questions about him.”

“Good grief. There can’t be many temporals alive who would recognize him after all this time. It’s been sixty years.”

“There’s Florida Smith. She’s been looking at old newspaper stories about the case. Justine’s still around and she remembers the coverage. And Dent says his old sergeant is still alive. His name is Robert E. Lee Kowalski. He’s in a nursing home. Dent wants to see him, but he wants a witness present when he does, just in case Kowalski says something that breaks the case.”