Defending Angels (28 page)

Doug Fairchild’s smile stiffened. “Okey-dokey. Anything for an old family friend.” Keeping his eyes locked on hers, he barked at Calvin, “Get hold of John Stubblefield, Tiptree.” He patted Bree’s knee a little too hard. “If she’s half the lawyer her daddy is, I might just need a little legal advice myself.”

“Gotcha, Mr. Fairchild.” Calvin began a flurried search of the credenza.

“What the hell are you doing, Tiptree? If there’s no goddamn phone book call the goddamn operator.” He turned his attention to Bree and switched his smile back on. “We’ll take the elevator. You look a bit woozy.” He put his hand under her elbow. Short of kicking him loose, Bree couldn’t see a way to disengage, so she allowed herself to be directed. Sasha followed them with the same unconcern he’d shown before.

The elevator bumped to a halt at the parking level. Bree flinched from the sudden stabbing pain in her head.

“You might think about having that bump checked out, Bree. You’re looking a bit pasty, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

Bree took a long step out of the elevator and Fairchild finally freed her arm. “What were you poking around here for, anyway?” he asked genially. “You thinking maybe of buying one of the units? We could probably come up with a pretty fair price, seeing as how you’re an old ...”

“I‘m sure neither one of us would want to presume on friendship,” Bree said tartly, “as real or imagined as it might be. I was taking a look at the wall here, when somebody—actually I believe there was more than one—came up from behind and slammed me over the head.” Bree walked over to Skinner’s parking space and stopped short. The sign was still there. So was the air compressor. So whoever had hit her hadn’t been after the evidence. She closed her eyes against another attack of dizziness.

She could be absolutely wrong.

“Did you actually see these guys?” Fairchild stood well away from her and from the spot where Skinner’s ghost still lurked, for all that Bree knew. “Did they snatch your purse? Go through your wallet? Take your credit cards and such?” He ran his eyes over her raincoat, T-shirt, and jeans, and asked doubtfully, “Did they take any jewelry?”

“It wasn’t a robbery.” Bree frowned at the sign. Somebody—she suspected Fairchild himself, who had only been five minutes away at the marina—had hit her over the head to keep her from collecting the evidence. And yet here it all was.

“You’re looking a bit peaked, Bree.” Sam Hunter strolled down the ramp. Rain glistened in his hair. He walked with the easy confidence of a man who knew where he was going and where he had been. He smiled at her. Bree’s world tilted a little, and she swayed on her feet. He caught her arm, and in direct contrast to Fairchild’s clammy grasp, his hand was warm and strong. He touched her head lightly. “That looks pretty nasty.”

“I am absolutely fine.” She jerked her arm free of his grasp and stood upright.

“Is that a fact. But as soon as we’re through here, I’m taking you in to get checked out. Now. What happened?”

Bree walked to the parking space, then turned and faced them both. “I’m convinced that Benjamin Skinner was killed right here.”

“That’s insane,” Fairchild said. “You’re out of your cotton-pickin’ mind. I saw Bennie Skinner die.” He jerked his chin in Sam’s direction. “He’ll tell you. I spent this morning giving an eyewitness account to the police. I was out in my boat, not six hundred yards from the
Sea Mew
, and I saw Bennie jerk back and go over the side as clear as daylight.”

“You saw Bennie Skinner’s corpse fall over the side, if you actually saw anything at all,” Bree said stubbornly. “I think he was killed here, and his lungs filled with seawater from your saltwater swimming pool.”

“You think somebody drowned him in my swimming pool?” He hawked and spat on the sidewalk. “I’ve never heard such bull crap in my life.”

Bree shook her head. “He had a heart attack. I’m pretty sure it was induced. He fell here”—she stood on the spot where Skinner’s ghost had called to her—“and when he was dead, the killer brought a gallon of seawater from the pool, stuck this piece of PVC pipe down his throat, and forced the water into his lungs with that.” She pointed to the air compressor. She looked at Sam. “I’ve got fifty bucks that you find Benjamin Skinner’s blood and lung tissue on this pipe, and another fifty that says you find seawater in the compressor hose.”

Skinner didn’t die in the sea.

Hunter’s expression was a study. Skepticism, irritation, and a faint, very faint interest warred with each other. The interest won. “That’s quite a story.”

“I know.” She smiled at him. “I wouldn’t believe a word I said, if I were you.”

He didn’t smile back. “You have an eyewitness you aren’t telling me about?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you kill Skinner?” His tone was urgent, commanding, and angry.

“I did not. I’ve never met the man. At the time he was killed, I had an appointment with my landlady to rent my current office space. I wasn’t anywhere near Island Dream.”

Although, if what she was beginning to suspect was true, he wouldn’t be able to find her office space, much less interview Lavinia Mather. A stab of irrational fear hit her. She had a brief, horrible vision of herself in hand-cuffs. “After I saw my landlady, I took my dog Sasha to the vet.” She shut up, aware that she was babbling.

Hunter walked carefully around the humped debris that covered the air compressor. Then, to Bree’s infinite relief, he took out his cell phone and called for a crime team. He flipped the cell phone shut and shoved it into the pocket of his anorak. “Where did you find the pipe?”

“I came by this way to get to my car. I was in a bit of a hurry, because of the rain, and I sideswiped the pile of junk. That dislodged the pipe. It rolled onto the sidewalk and I picked it up ...” She paused, knowing that she had to leave out her encounter with Skinner’s ghost. She cleared her throat. “And I picked it up so somebody else wouldn’t trip over it. Then, it just sort of hit me. Chastity said Skinner left her around ten thirty. He parked right here, as he always did, so he must have come down here to his car. I don’t think Chastity’s lying.” Her gaze swept over Fairchild, who was grimly silent. “I know you are, Mr. Fairchild, and I’m pretty sure Jennifer Skinner is, too.”

Fairchild opened his mouth to speak. Hunter held his hand up, forestalling him. “You think Mr. Fairchild here killed him?” Hunter asked.

Bree shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“What you don’t know, young lady, is what your future’s going to be like here in Savannah.” Fairchild was so angry that he only managed a whisper. “We’ll run you right back to North Carolina.”

“Take it easy, Mr. Fairchild.” Hunter’s voice was a whiplash. “Miss McFarland’s statement directly contradicts yours about Skinner’s whereabouts.”

“Chastity’s a lying little whore,” Fairchild said contemptuously.

“She also has independent verification of her story,” Bree said mildly.

Fairchild backed up until he hit the garage wall. “That’s a lie, too.”

Bree shook her head. “’Fraid not. They were both on the phone with her mother in Arkansas. Making plans for their wedding, as a matter of fact. The phone company records will bear out the phone call. And there were two people in on the conversation from the Arkansas end.”

“I want a lawyer,” Fairchild said. “This is a load of crap.”

“Your need for a lawyer depends on what you were doing that morning,” Hunter said. He gave Fairchild a reassuring smile. To Bree, who was beginning to know Hunter pretty well, the smile was as reassuring as the grin of a shark in shallow water. “Were you down here in the parking garage the morning of Mr. Skinner’s death?”

Fairchild swallowed, and then muttered, “I was in Savannah. In a meeting with two bankers and a goddamn lawyer. I left the meeting about eleven, and came down to the marina to take my boat out. I was never near this place that day.”

Hunter looked at him, his gaze steady and unrelenting. “Did you see Skinner at all that morning?”

“No.”

“And the phone call to Grainger Skinner? Was that a lie, too?”

Fairchild tightened his lips. Hunter kept it up, his questions a barrage. “The eyewitness account you gave the police—that you saw Skinner alive in the
Sea Mew
at noon—was that a lie?”

Fairchild took out his handkerchief and patted the sweat from his forehead. “I’m done here, Hunter. You want to talk to me, you talk to John Stubblefield first.” He ran his hand nervously over his tie. “You putting me under arrest?”

A clatter of sound outside the parking garage heralded the arrival of the forensics team. Hunter turned to meet them and said over his shoulder. “Not yet, Mr. Fairchild. But you’ll make yourself available.”

With a final glare in Bree’s direction, Fairchild scurried up the ramp. In a few moments, she heard the roar of his Mercedes.

She patted her pocket to make sure the pipe was still there, then leaned against the wall and waited for Hunter to come back to her.

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

—“Sonnet #3,” Shakespeare

“I brought some color samples along just in case you wanted to think about repainting,” Bree’s mother said. Francesca Winston-Beaufort was warm, rounded, and as unlike her oldest daughter as a rose from a lily. Bree’s father told and retold the story of how they first met; he caught sight of her red-bronze hair in the dining hall at Duke and fell in love with that before he ever saw her face to face. She had soft gray eyes, a rosy complexion, and charm like a fountain, bubbly, gentle, and constant. “And isn’t this clever? Your aunt Cissy did it for us. It’s a sketch of the living room and then you put the color transparency over it like this.” She laid a sheet of cellophane marked with deep green splotches over the computerized drawing of the living room. The splotches left bare spots for the furniture and the fireplace, so when the sheet was on top of the print, the color fit the walls exactly. She put a sheet with red splotches over that; the walls in the room turned purple.

“She can do a sketch of your office, too, Bree darlin’. I’d love to get a chance to fix that up a little bit for you.”

Bree laid the transparency over the drawing and took it away again. The reality of the room was different depending on which layer was on top. She imagined a map of Historic Savannah with the twenty-four squares laid out by Oglethorpe. Then the extra streets where the offices of Gabriel Striker, PI, Beaufort & Company, and Georgia’s own all-murderer’s cemetery sat laid out by ... whom?

“This nasty case gettin’ you down, Bree?” Her father eased into the leather chair next to the couch, and fondled Sasha’s ears. “Kind of a rough start to a solo practice.”

Bree tucked her feet underneath her. Her parents had arrived too early Monday afternoon, and she had to leave the office to meet them. Ronald was busily setting up the open house. Petru was investigating the financing of Island Dream. Lavinia had made a quick appearance downstairs with a measuring tape, and demanded to know exactly how tall Bree was.

“You can wrap this up now, can’t you?” her father continued. “That was your brief, wasn’t it? To prove Skinner was murdered?”

Bree nodded. “Sam Hunter called me this morning. The preliminary swabs on the PVC pipe and the air hose show human tissue, blood, and spit.” She took a sip of her iced tea. “I’m betting it’s Skinner’s. So’s Lieutenant Hunter.”

“You’ve let the client know?”

Bree smiled. “Oh, yes.” She’d hoped to impress Liz Overshaw. Liz had listened, and then grunted in assent when Bree offered to send an accounting of her time against the advance retainer. Then she’d said, “I knew it last night, you know. He’s stopped coming around. I had the first good night’s sleep since the whole thing started.” Then she’d hung up. Bree spoke aloud. “Liz wasn’t wild with gratitude, I’ll say that for her.”

Francesca patted her hand. “Clients can be incredibly rude. But now you can put the whole nasty thing behind you.”

“I don’t think I want to do that just yet.”

Royal raised his eyebrows.

“The man was murdered,” Bree said flatly. “I need to find out who murdered Ben Skinner.”

Her mother shook her head, her curls bouncing. “It was that Doug Fairchild, I suspect. I never did like that man. Not one little bit. But I’m surprised to find him a murderer.” She sighed. “It’s bound to affect how many people attend the open house tonight. Nobody cares too much about the Skinners, but Fairchild’s got friends. It’s a shame, that’s what it is.” She looked out the window at the river. A small tropical storm was heading up the Atlantic, and the rain was heavy. “Between that and the weather and the bump on your head, maybe we ought to think about heading back home.”

“I’ll be just fine,” Bree said absently. She looked at Sasha. “Besides, I don’t think Fairchild killed Mr. Skinner.”

“You think he’s covering up for Grainger?” Her father frowned. “Can’t think of a reason why he should.”

“The police aren’t saying much. But Grainger’s lawyered up and I know they aren’t getting spit out of him.”

“Seems hard to think Grainger killed his own father.” Royal Beaufort swirled his whiskey in his glass. He wasn’t happy. Like her mother, he wanted Bree to wind up the remainder of Uncle Franklin’s practice and come home. “I’m not sure what all this has to do with you, though. You’ve discharged your duty to Ms. Overshaw.”

“But not to myself, Daddy. They pulled Skinner back up before they shoveled the first bit of dirt on the coffin. The body’s off to Atlanta for a second autopsy. It’s more than likely that they’ll get enough forensic evidence to cast doubt on the accidental death ruling. They’ll hold an inquest this time, for sure. If it comes back murder by person or persons unknown, I can put ‘paid’ to Liz. But I have to find out who did it.” She made a face into her iced tea glass. Her father’d haul her back to Raleigh for sure if she told him she had one more client to satisfy, and that one a ghost.