Defending Angels (3 page)

“You, there,” Bree called, “hang on a minute.”

The figure turned at the sound of her voice. She caught a brief glimpse of a white face, the mouth split in a terrible grin. The scent of decaying corpses was stronger now. Bree took an involuntary step back. She heard a thud, then another, and the sound of a bat or a stick falling onto flesh. The animal shrieked again. Bree shouted and sprang forward, fury almost overwhelming her common sense.

The shrieks stopped. Then whoever it was, whatever it was, jumped the wrought-iron fence and disappeared behind the brick warehouse that sat next to 66 Angelus Street. The whimpering remained behind and trailed off into a hoarse, painful panting that struck at her heart.

Bree raced back to her briefcase and slipped her cell phone into her skirt pocket. She grabbed one of the thick, dead branches that littered the pathway. She ducked under the Spanish moss that hung from the magnolia like hair, brushing the damp tendrils aside with an impatient hand.

A dog lay huddled against the far side of the trunk. It raised its head as she approached, its teeth drawn back in a snarl. Bree crouched a short distance away and used the voice that had calmed both foals and lambs when she was home at Plessey. “There now,” she said. “There now.”

The dog struggled to sit up. It was large, perhaps the size of a Labrador retriever. The dingy gold coat was snarled with burrs and twigs. It was horribly skinny, as if it hadn’t eaten for days.

Bree put the branch down. The dog’s hind leg was caught in a steel-jawed trap. At least it couldn’t lunge far, if fear and panic drove it to bite.

“Easy,” Bree said in a calm and cheerful voice. The dog sank back into the pile of leaves. Its tail gave a feeble thump. Bree edged forward on her knees, half-singing a constant “there now, there now.” She laid one hand on the dog’s head. It licked frantically at her wrist. She ran the other hand over the dog’s matted ribs and down to the trapped leg. She knew this kind of trap. Her grandfather had banned it from Plessey years before, but not before he’d taught both Bree and her sister, Antonia, how to release animals captured in its teeth. She pressed the spring release and the jaws relaxed with a sudden twang. The dog jerked away from her soothing hand and struggled to its feet.
His
feet, Bree realized after a moment.

“Well, boy,” Bree said. “You just steady on, now. Steady.”

The dog’s dark brown eyes met her own, briefly. Bree cupped her hand around his muzzle, and gently probed the injured leg. “It’s broken, for sure,” she said softly. “I’ll have to carry you, pup. You going to mind that?”

The dog looked up at her, as if to deliberate. Then he sank limply back into the leaves. Bree slid one arm under his chest, and supported his hindquarters with the other. She struggled to her feet with a whoosh of effort. She hauled a hundredweight of horse feed around the barns at home, and the dog weighed less than that, but not by much. She staggered slightly as she left the cemetery and headed to the curb where she’d parked her little Fiat. No good at all to drag Lavinia into this. She’d call the police and the Humane Society from her car.

The dog just barely fit into the backseat. He lay quietly, not, as she feared, unconscious, but simply accepting her attempts to make him comfortable. She settled him as best she could, then went back to retrieve her briefcase and her suit jacket. Should she take the trap for evidence? Better to leave it, perhaps. The police usually wanted crime scenes undisturbed, didn’t they? The trap was new; the stainless steel jaws blotched with the dog’s blood. And it rested on a toppled gravestone. She knelt and brushed aside the leaves that covered the inscription, careful to avoid adding more of her fingerprints to the trap.

“A relative of the restless Josiah,” Bree mused aloud. “Yikes.”

She rose to her feet and looked beyond the fence for the white-faced thing, or at least some trace that it’d been there. She found nothing, and after a second, even briefer search of the area around the magnolia, she keyed 911 into her phone and requested police presence to investigate a case of animal abuse, just off East Bay at Mulberry.

A squad car turned the corner almost before she’d slipped the cell phone back in her pocket. Bree lifted her hand and stepped off the curb. The siren was off, but the red lights flashing red-orange-red were scarier than the siren would have been. She cast a worried look up at the second story of the little house, but the curtains remained drawn and motionless. She wanted to keep this from Lavinia, if she could. The old were fragile. And there was something particularly horrifying about animal abuse. As tough as she was, it’d likely scare poor Lavinia into the next county.

The squad car drew to a noiseless stop next to her. The officer inside was young, pink-faced, and alone.

Bree smiled at him. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Officer.”

“I was just around the corner, ma’am.”

She looked past his shoulder to a tray of Starbucks coffee on the front seat next to him. He followed her glance and blushed. “The guys sent . . . that is, I volunteered for the coffee run. Since I was right close when the call came in, I said I’d take it.” He put the cruiser into park and emerged from the driver’s seat. His uniform looked as if it’d just been unwrapped from the box it came in. His black shoes were shiny and new. And he carried a brightly painted baton, and no gun. He stuck his hand out, and said, “Officer Dooley Banks, ma’am.”

Bree took his hand a little dubiously. She hadn’t much experience with the police. But this guy surely didn’t behave like the cops on
Law & Order
. “Brianna Winston-Beaufort,” she said. Then added, “Attorney-at-law.”

He touched his cap, “Miss Beaufort. You had some complaint about animal abuse?”

“I suppose,” Bree said into the phone some hours later, “that I was purely lucky that Officer Banks had been on the force all of oh, five minutes. Maybe less.”

“Lucky?” her mother echoed. “Lucky? I don’t want you anywhere near that place, Bree honey. It sounds dangerous. And you said it’s in the middle of a cemetery?”

“It’s a very pleasant cemetery,” Bree said, fingers firmly crossed. “And Mrs. Mather’s as sweet as can be. In her late seventies, if I’m any judge. Just a nice old lady, Mamma.”

“And what do you mean, lucky?” her father demanded. “You have any trouble at all getting the right kind of attention from those people in Savannah, you let me know, hear?”

Even on the extension, two hundred miles south of the town house, her father’s nosy concern set Bree’s back up. And she’d edited out the truly eerie parts of her day’s adventure. But she said mildly, “Well, a dog with a broken leg’s more a case for the ASPCA than the police. But Officer Banks filled out a report just as nice as you please. So if it was a malicious act, and I do catch the guy, they can charge him.”

“You took the poor thing to the pound, didn’t you?” her mother said. “You know the town house rules about dogs.”

Bree gazed at the ceiling. She was calling from the living room. The Oriental carpets on the pinewood floors were faded with age. Her grandmother’s grand piano occupied the corner closest to the fireplace. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined either side of the French doors to the balcony. Beyond the balcony, the Savannah River drifted by. It was all familiar, and much beloved. “The crown molding’s getting a little chippy,” she said. “Do you think I should have the painters in?”

This diverted her mother’s attention, as she’d hoped it would. “Why, we just had the whole place repainted not five years ago,” she said indignantly.

“Ten,” her father said impatiently. “It’s been ten years or more, Francesca. But maybe we should have the painters in, Bree honey. We can hurry right down and see for ourselves, if you like. We can be in there in five hours. Less.”

“No need,” Bree said hastily. “Now that I look a little closer, it’s just cobwebs.” She got a firmer grasp on the phone. “Now, look. I’m so glad y’all called. But I’ve a couple of résumés to look over tonight.”

“It’s well after eight,” her mother protested.

Bree didn’t say anything. This kind of intrusive, loving, crazy-making concern was one of the reasons she was here in Savannah, and not practicing law at home.

“You know how you get.” Francesca pressed on. “You’ve been sleeping okay, Bree darlin’? She hasn’t been eating again, Royal. I just know it.”

“I’ve been eating just fine,” Bree said firmly.

“You’re going to keep on working after the kind of day you had?” Francesca demanded.

“I’m going to need someone to answer the phones, at the very least,” Bree said. “I’ve been getting some pretty good responses to the ad I put in the
Savannah Daily
. And since I’ll be moving into the new offices tomorrow, it’ll be a good thing to have someone around to give me a hand sooner rather than later. So I need to start interviewing.”

“For all of that, sweetie,” her father said instantly, “we can come on down and give you
four
hands.”

“Yes, indeed,” her mother said. “And you’ll want someone to help you pick out the right color paint. And what about drapes?”

Bree suppressed a groan. “I appreciate that. I truly do. But I have to go now. And thanks for calling, y’all. I’ll talk to you later in the week.”

“But Bree . . .” her father said.

“Now, Royal,” her mother said. “Don’t scold. Bree, you just let me know what your color scheme is going to be and I can bring down a couple of samples . . .”

In desperation, Bree jiggled the call button in the handset and shouted, “Hello? Hello? Mamma? You’re fading on me!”

“We’re losin’ you, Bree!” her mother shrieked. “Royal, it’s that cheatin’ phone company again! I swear that company has it in for you, Bree.”

“Sorry, Mamma! You’re breaking up! Bye, Mamma!” Bree set the phone into its rest and sank into a nearby armchair with a sigh of relief. “Woof,” she said.

“Woof,” said the dog at her feet.

She sat up. “And
you
,” she said to the dog, severely, “are an illegal alien, pup.”

The dog looked into her eyes and gently wagged his tail. He lay nested on an old duvet she’d found tucked in the back of the linen closet. A neat acrylic cast encased his injured leg from hock to ankle. The veterinary clinic she’d taken him to had bathed and clipped him, too. Free of burdocks and dirt, his coat was a yellow that would deepen to burnished gold once she got him onto healthy food.

“The town house covenants don’t allow pets over forty pounds,” she added. “So you’re looking at a temporary stay. Just till you get on your feet.”

The dog flattened his ears and cocked his head sorrowfully. Bree suppressed a stab of guilt.

“When you get a bit better we see about taking you home to Plessey. Mamma and Daddy could use a project other than me and Antonia.”

The dog cocked his head in the other direction, looking, if possible, even more sorrowful than before. Bree scowled at him in exasperation. “For heaven’s sake, dog. I’m just—” She stopped in mid-sentence. Was she really sitting here trying to justify her actions to a dog?

She rose briskly from the armchair. “Think you can eat a bit more, pup?” The vet had been gravely shocked at the animal’s condition. A few ounces of digestible food every three hours was the most the dog could handle for the first few days. Bree had given him a cup of cooked rice and hamburger when she’d brought him home a few hours ago. It was time to give him another.

The dog struggled to his feet.

“No, no. You lie back down. You don’t want to jiggle that leg any.”

The dog sank back against the duvet with a resigned sigh. The vet had guessed he was a cross between a Russian mastiff and a golden retriever. “That round skull is a characteristic of the golden, Miss Beaufort. And the square, rather intelligent face is wholly mastiff.”

“Rather intelligent,” Bree said aloud, remembering the conversation. “You smart dog, you.”

The dog grinned, reminding Bree of her own long-dead golden, Sunny Skies. He’d smiled at her in just that way until the day he slid into a final peaceful sleep.

“You sweet old thing,” Bree said affectionately. This dog did remind her of Sunny, at least a little. “I’ll just bet you had a good owner at one time, didn’t you? You surely do respond to people. And I can’t just keep calling you ‘pup.’” Bree tugged thoughtfully at her ear. “What about Sam?”

The dog looked at her, tongue lolling.

“No? What about Goldy? That’s what color your coat’s going to be when we get you all cleaned up.”

The dog closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

“Well, I don’t suppose
you
have any ideas,” Bree said with some exasperation.

The dog sneezed twice. It was an odd sort of sneeze. Almost sibilant.

“Sneezy,” Bree said instantly. “Like one of the Seven Dwarves.”

The dog curled his lip in a truly expressive sneer. Bree laughed. Her little sister, Antonia, would love this dog. And she’d come up with a good name, too. But Antonia was many miles and a state away at the University of South Carolina. “So I’ll just have to come up with something all on my own.”

The dog sneezed again, almost deliberately. “Sha! Shaa!”

“Sasha,” Bree said. “That’s it. For the Russian in you.”

Sasha gave a great sigh of relief and settled his head on his paws. Feeling pleased with herself, Bree brought him another small bowl of food, and settled down in the armchair next to him with the stack of résumés and her own meal of salmon and salad.

The ad she’d placed in the
Savannah Daily
was straightforward:

The responses ranged from the hopelessly hopeful: “I think it would be, like, very cool to work for a lawyer. I can come every day after school” to the comically desperate: “I’ve got a PhD in English literature from the University of North Carolina. Will work for food.”