Angel's Verdict (28 page)

Antonia pulled back. “You’re kidding, of course.”

EB smiled at Bree. “You ask your sister, Tonia. She knows.”

Bree nodded. “You’ve never encountered old-style racism, Tonia. With a little discreet pressure from the commissioner’s office to get the autopsy over and the body buried as fast as possible, you don’t think that could have happened? I do. Charis was female, the same age as Haydee, and about the same height. A coroner who just wanted to get it over with wouldn’t look much past that.” Bree got up and stretched. She was beginning to feel the effects of her all-nighter. “I’ve got one more thing to do this afternoon. I’ll see you all later.”

“Hey!” Antonia rapped her knuckles on the table. “What about Craig Oliver killing Florida Smith?”

“Florida was getting too close to the truth. She was putting the pieces together, just the way we did. Flurry learned about the white Buick that picked up Haydee the night of the assault, traced the Buick to Creighton Oliver, and called Craig about it Saturday night. Craig called his mother. When Sammi-Rose Waterman whacked Flurry over the head on Monday, Justine—Haydee—grabbed the opportunity to confront Flurry in her trailer. Craig Oliver says Flurry ran out of the trailer clutching the manuscript and fell into the river. Me? I think Haydee pushed her and kept Craig from calling for help. Either way, they have the manuscript.”

“Any water marks on it?” EB asked.

Bree’s smile was tight. “Not a one.” She’d left her tote bag on the floor near the kitchen table. She picked it up and slung it over her shoulder. “I have one last thing to do. I’ll see y’all in a bit.”

Most of the cemeteries in Savannah were serene, well-tended spaces. The Belle Glade cemetery wasn’t one of them. It was small, the landscape ill tended, and the graves themselves neglected or forgotten. Bree stood outside the wrought iron gate for a long moment. Justine stood under a live oak, half hidden by a sweep of Spanish moss. She stared down at a small headstone.

Bree let herself in and followed the weedy gravel path on its winding way through the tombstones. She passed Haydee’s angel weeping over the flat stone, and paused to run her hand over the angel’s marble wing.

Justine looked up, startled at Bree’s approach.

“You look surprised to see me,” Bree said.

“What do you want?” Her voice was ugly.

“Did you think I was going to let things stand as they are?” Bree’s hand went to the back of her head, where the hair was growing back too slowly. Maybe she could charge the woman with assault, if nothing else.

Justine fingered the peacock pin at her throat. “You can prove nothing,” she said. Her voice was harsh.

“Maybe not in this life,” Bree said pleasantly. “But surely in the next.” She stood beside Justine and looked down at the headstone:

 

CONSUELO BULLOCH BELOVED MOTHER 1929 TO 1978

 

“Stuck-up bitch,” Justine said.

Bree wasn’t sure whether Justine was referring to her dead client or to her. It didn’t really matter.

“ ‘Beloved Mother.’ What a joke. Look at this place.” She swept a contemptuous glare around the decrepit grounds.

Bree propped herself against a nearby tomb and slung her cane over one arm. “Dixie had a curious story to tell me.”

“Another stuck-up bitch.”

“She said you worked for Consuelo in the early ’70s.”

Justine raised her head. Her gaze was steady. A nasty smile curled her lips. “I had a bit of a dry spell in the thee-ay-ter. Movies, too. You might remember it. There were a couple of years when drama was moving from the grand old stories that I grew up on, to this modern stuff. For a while, nobody wanted me. So I was broke. Nothing new in that. I’ve been broke off and on most of my life. But Savannah had been good to me, one way or another. It was a place to get renewed.” Her smile got nastier. “And to get myself a family lawyer.”

Bree’s gaze was just as steady. “You’re lucky no one recognized you.”

“Consuelo did.”

And Franklin? Had Franklin known? Bree clenched her hands so tightly she could feel her nails sink into her palms.

Justine dropped her eyes to the ground. “The brats were too young, of course.” Her fingertips brushed her cheeks. She ran her hands over her chin and nose. “And I’d had a little work done, right off. Wouldn’t do to have the world recognize me as Haydee Quinn, would it? So Haydee had to go. Justine took her place.”

The triumph in her voice chilled Bree to the bone. “So you came back and blackmailed Consuelo Bulloch into a job.”

Justine wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Blackmail. Blackmail. Ugly word. But you see the world in an ugly way, Miss Fancy Lawyer Beaufort. The way I saw it. The way I see it now, that woman owed me. I didn’t have a whole lot to lose right then. Didn’t matter to me if the whole town knew about the trick I’d pulled off. Consuelo Bulloch feared scandal more than anything. Stuck-up bitch.” The smile got uglier. “You know I met her for the first time that night. After Billy pitched a fit in the Tropi and tried to mess me up. She was just like I thought she’d be. Nose in the air. Jealous. All in a hoorah over her precious baby boy. You know she had the nerve to tell Alex we could get married after all?” Justine lifted her chin, flung out her arms, and for an eerie moment, Bree saw what Consuelo must have looked like in life. Her voice took on a soft Southern drawl. “Now that I see how it is with you, Alex, I won’t stand in your way. Go ahead. Marry her!” Justine let her arms drop with a contemptuous snort. “What does that little slut Tyra say? ‘As if!’ That’s it. As if she really would have let baby Alex marry! As if I wanted to stick around this backwater town when I could go to New York City.”

“It might have been true,” Bree said quietly. “That she dropped her objections to your marriage.”

“She didn’t want to give me any money,” Justine said. “That’s what that was all about. She didn’t want to fork it over then, or when I came back almost twenty years later.”

“Which was when you thought you might tempt Alexander back into your life.” This was a guess. Bree saw immediately that it’d hit home. “But that didn’t work. Creighton Oliver didn’t want to have anything to do with you, either.”

“Most men do and did,” Justine said reflectively. “Alexander? He was weak and crazy to boot. Creighton, he was different. Took me a little time to get him to come around with a proper amount of money to set me back up in Hollywood. But when he saw I meant to stick around at the Bullochs’ ...” She raised her hands, palms up, and clenched them. “He paid up. Didn’t want to mess up that nice life he had with his wife and my son. But, don’t worry, I’d find my baby boy again when he became a star,” Justine said. “And you know the damn Bullochs were near broke themselves? Couldn’t believe it. All that money gone. All that holier-than-thou attitude. And they didn’t have a dime.”

“Consuelo paid in a different way, didn’t she?” Bree said. “So did Charis Jefferson. Do you come to gloat over her grave, too?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea of what you’re talking about.”

“ ‘Buried right next to each other.’ Isn’t that what you told me that first day in my office? Efficient, if nothing else, having two of your victims next to one another in death.”

Justine’s expression didn’t change, but she hissed like a snake. “You can’t prove a thing.”

“You know how sophisticated forensic science is. Your work on
Bristol Blues
should have given you a pretty good idea of what a determined pathologist can do.”

“Don’t be absurd.” She shifted impatiently. “What is it you want, Miss Beaufort?”

“Of course, it depends on how you killed her. She had a weak heart, the family said. She became dizzy. Slipped and fell in the bathtub. Struck her head. And she eventually died of it. Because somebody held her under. Just like Florida Smith.” Bree took the tin box out of her pocket and opened it up. “Do you know what’s in here? Bobby Lee Kowalski keeps mementos of his unsolved cases. Consuelo Bulloch had a fistful of hair in her hands when she fell in that tub. I wonder if Charis does, too.” She held up the sealed evidence packet. The coil of hair inside was as black as a crow’s wing. As black as a starless night. “Look familiar?”

“Damn you to hell,” Justine said. “Get out of here. Get out!”

“So I got out,” Bree said into the cell phone. She was sitting in her car, outside the cemetery. Her first thought had been to call Hunter. “Left her standing alone in the cemetery, by the graves of two of her victims. I suppose Bagger Bill Norris is in a pauper’s grave somewhere. Or the equivalent. Anyhow, she’s gone now. A cab drew up a little while ago and picked her up.”

“It’ll be a tricky case to prove,” Hunter said.

“Impossible, I should think. But she knows I know, Hunter. That’s something, isn’t it? And I made her turn over that peacock pin.” The pin lay next to her, in the passenger seat. It seemed to her that the bird’s ruby eye looked reproachful.

“We’ll look into it. To tell you the truth, I don’t think the county would have held on to evidence from a sixty-year-old murder case. We’ll see.”

“It’s like hunting old Nazis.”

“Come again?”

Bree sighed. “Once in a while, even now, there’ll be a news story about how somebody’s identified a ninety-year-old guy who was a guard at Bergen-Belsen or some other awful place. Justice demands accountability. But there again, there’s this ninety-year-old guy, frail, sick,
old
. So the state puts him through a trial, and he can barely sit upright on the witness stand.” Bree rubbed her forehead with her free hand. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Leave it to me. It’s not your problem anymore. I’m not sure why you made it your problem in the first place. You need to come home. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard. It’s late. I’m a little worried about you. I’m going to pick up something for us to eat, and I’ll meet you at the town house. That okay with you?”

Suddenly, she wanted nothing more on earth than Hunter’s arms around her. “That sounds more than okay. That sounds wonderful. But could we make it tomorrow? I’ve got pleadings to write tonight and a court appearance in the morning.”

“Tomorrow, then. Will Antonia be at the theater?”

She could hear both the smile and the hope in his voice. “Every day and every night for the rest of the week.”

“Just wanted to know how much food to bring.”

“Till then.” Bree clicked off.

She had a Celestial Court case in the morning. Finally, she had a defense.

It was getting dark. She picked up the jeweled peacock and slipped out of the car. Without the sun, the air was cold. The wind picked up, bringing the scent of rain. Bree held the brooch in the palm of her hand and said firmly, “Mrs. Bulloch? Consuelo?”

At first, Bree was sure she wasn’t going to get through. Then, Consuelo’s shadow stirred and shifted, wrapping her hand in a dark swirl of something that Bree could only think of as Not. Not human, not earthly, not real, as she knew reality. She didn’t have words to describe it. She had no reference point.

“Yes,” Bree said. “It’s me. I discovered how you died, Mrs. Bulloch. I’m extremely sorry.”

“Yes. The worst kind. Mrs. Bulloch, I’m going to schedule your appeal. I want to let you know what I’m going to say in your defense.”

“Genuine penitence is a very good thing for the court to hear, Mrs. Bulloch. So that will help. There’s something else, though.” Bree hesitated. “You hated Haydee Quinn.”

“Yes, she probably was. Haydee claims you would have allowed them to marry, the night she came to you for help after Bill Norris stabbed her. Is that so?”

Bree nodded. “You loved your son Alexander. That’s really clear. And it seems to have been unselfish. I just wanted you to know that I’ll do my best for you.”