Defending Angels (30 page)

He’d sought her out twice; she’d found him once. “Each time you’ve come to me,” she said, “it’s been to keep me from harm.” She thought about that, then added, “Or to keep me from whacking somebody.”

He smiled. “So you know a bit more.”

“I know way too little,” she retorted. “I knew Uncle Franklin; at least, I thought I did. And I haven’t a clue about my mo . . .” she stumbled over the word, and said instead, “Leah.”

She’d fastened the talisman pendant around her neck. It lay against her skin, cold and disproportionately heavy.

He didn’t say anything, just continued to walk beside her with a warrior’s ease as they approached the cemetery. They rounded the corner at Angelus. A whirl of magnolia leaves eddied around her feet. The sky darkened with a furious rise of black storm clouds. The wind gusted suddenly. Rain fell in a vast rush, as though a giant spigot had opened in the heavens.

The house stood solidly firm against the wind and the rain. Bree shaded her eyes with one hand against the rain and broke into a run. She ran smack into Gabriel’s broad back.

“STAND BEHIND ME.”

Gabriel’s voice. And not Gabriel’s voice. It had grown to a vast echoless sound that filled her head with nothing else. The sound of it blocked the wind and the rain. She put her hands to her ears and shut her eyes for a long moment.

“DON’T MOVE.”

“I’m getting awfully wet,” Bree protested. She stepped around him and fell back with a shout. A thin, questing stream of pustulelike yellow light poured from the grave beneath the live oak tree. As it had before, the river rose, snakelike, turning this way and that. Bree stared at it, engulfed with a terror that came from outside her own mind and spirit. She choked, “What? What does . . . ?”

“Run now!” Gabriel shoved her hard in the small of the back. She stumbled as he shot past her and faced the yellow light and the great horned figure that slowly rose beyond it, beneath the tree.

Gabriel seemed to grow in size, until his white, shining form blocked the river and its attendant spirit from sight.

“Bree!”

She staggered toward the sound of the voices: Ron, Lavinia, and Petru.

“Bree!”

They called again, and again, and she stumbled past the front door into the safety of the foyer. Ron slammed the door shut behind her.

“You
are
wet,” Lavinia clucked. “Come into the bathroom and let me dry you off some, chile.”

Gently, Bree pushed Lavinia’s hands away and faced the door. Petru stood in front of it, his arms folded. Bree stepped up until his face was inches from her own. “You have to let me pass, Petru.”

“Striker’s just fine out there,” Ron said. “C’mon. Lavinia’s right. You can’t meet new clients with your face wet all over.”

Bree ignored them both. “Petru!”

He cocked his head, as if listening. Then, with a satisfied nod, he opened the door and backed away. Bree sprang to the front porch. The rain was coming down in warm, thick sheets. The hideous river of light was gone. She could barely see the outline of the oak tree through the rain, but no presence lurked there.

Gabriel was gone.

Bree whirled around and went back inside. “What happened out there?” She looked at each of them in turn. “You work for me, don’t you? It’s Beaufort & Company. It’s my name on the door ...”

“My Lord, you’re right,” Ron murmured. “I forgot all about an address plaque. Somebody remind me about that.”

“... so, dammit, report to me!”

“Of course,” Petru said, nodding his head. “Of course you want to know. There has been some ...”

“Opposition,” Ron supplied.

Petru thumped his cane on the floor approvingly. “Excellent word. That is correct. Opposition to the opening of the law firm.”

Bree didn’t think she wanted to ask who the opposition was. She had a pretty good idea. “So we’re ruffling some feathers?” she said. “Is that good?”

Petru spread his hands wide in a “what do I know?” gesture. “We believe this is why you have been harried more than is usual. That Pendergast, for one. A Tempter, that one, and sly as they come. And the horned one, too. Metatron.”

A short, cold silence fell over the company.

Petru, looking inward, sighed and came to himself. “Yes, you have been harried by the Hounds of Hell. That, in Russia, would be alliteration.
Harried
,” he repeated with some satisfaction, “is an excellent word.”

Bree shuddered. “Not if you’re the quarry.” She glanced over her shoulder involuntarily. “Gabe is all right, isn’t he? Should we go look for him? Would he have been ... um ... injured in some way?”

Petru’s broad belly shook with laughter. “Gabriel? Injured by that thing? Not a happenstance.”

“He means not likely,” Ron said. “You, on the other hand, ducky, are not so invulnerable. You keep an eye out in the future, okay?”

Bree led the way into the reception area. “But why now? Is it to keep me from going to the open house?”

“Open?” Ron said. “Oh! No! Why would they care about that? It’s a temporal thing, nothing to do with them. I mean, I care, of course, but purely because I love a party. And,” he said after a moment’s reflection, “your mother.”

“Which one?” Bree said flippantly.

“So they tole you,” Lavinia said. “About time. She would have wanted that, Leah would have.”

They looked at her, their faces warm and welcoming.

“You knew my mother?” Bree said.

Petru chuckled. “George wrote of her that she had a face that launched a thousand ships. Like yours, Bree.”

George? George Gordon, Lord Byron? Petru’s casual references to long-dead poets and artists as if he’d met them personally were just a character quirk. Weren’t they? He couldn’t really have met them all.

“And
brave
like you, too,” Lavinia said. “We missed her a good bit, until you came to head us up.”

“But why ...” Bree stopped, and began again. “What is all this? What am I? Who are you, really?”

Petru smiled benignly. “We’re a Company of angels, with a temporal leader. The leader is you, now. It was Leah, in the past. And it will be your daughter, in the future.”

“Angels,” Bree repeated. Then, “My daughter?”

“Assumin’ things go as planned,” Lavinia said. “You just never know.”

“Right,” Bree said.

“We got that there to worry about.” She jerked her thumb to the outside.

“Right,” Bree said.

“There will be time for you to sort this through,” Petru said kindly. “As much time as you need. An eternity, if all goes well.”

Suddenly, Bree didn’t want to hear any more. She’d had enough. She’d learned too much, in too short of a time. It was all she could do to look at the faces of her company, ringed around her as they were.

“Enough!” Ron clapped his hands together, breaking the silence. “We have work to do. Time’s a-wasting. We have a client to defend. Now!” Ron said briskly. “Petru’s ferreted into the finances behind Island Dream. Our Mr. Fairchild owes money all over south Georgia, and parts of South Carolina, too.”

“Really,” Bree said, with deep interest. “Did you get a rough figure for me?”

“To the tune of twenty million,” Ron said. “It took a bit of digging, but I’ve got a list of the principal creditors for you. Poor old Mr. Skinner was on the hook as guarantor, by the way.”

“Is there any one creditor that stands out?”

“Montifiore, of course. He’s owed a ton.” Ron wriggled his eyebrows. “There’s something else about Montifiore. A couple of his last projects have been shut down temporarily by the building inspectors. I couldn’t find out if there was anything in it—but from all accounts, he’s in pretty tough shape.”

“Now, that is interesting,” Bree said thoughtfully. She became aware that Lavinia was tugging at her sleeve. “I do apologize, Lavinia. Did I forget something?”

“Only my poor niece. If y’all don’t mind? She’s been waiting some time. Yes.”

“Golly,” Ron said. “I almost forgot about her. She’s in your office, Bree.”

“Lavinia’s niece is in my office?”

“New client.” Ron hustled her gently to her office door, opened it, and ushered her in. “Business is picking up!” he beamed. He backed out and left Bree to face a broad black woman with a familiar face. She sat in the worn leather chair, with her purse settled firmly in her lap.

Bree extended her hand. “How do you do? I’m Bree Beaufort, but you probably know that already. And I believe we’ve met. At Liz Overshaw’s? You were giving her a hand with the housekeeping. It’s Mrs. Mather, isn’t it?”

“Elphine Mather. It’s Rebus Kingsley who’s kin to me and, through me, kin to Lavinia. I’m Lavinia’s niece. That’d be it.”

Rebus Kingsley. The name struck a faint bell. Bree frowned thoughtfully and settled herself behind her desk. “How can I help you, Mrs. Mather?”

“It’s my husband’s boy. My stepson.”

Bree nodded. “Rebus Kingsley?”

“You heard about that county building inspector fallin’ off the tower and getting killed?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t, no.” Bree thought a moment. “Wait a second. There was an item on the news, yes. About a county employee who was killed on the job.” She looked thoughtfully at Elphine. “That was your stepson? And he was a building inspector for Chatham County?”

“That’s him. And he was murdered. Or so he keeps on tellin’ me and tellin’ me.” Elphine heaved a deep, somewhat exasperated sigh. “Now I’m here to tell you that the boy was a thorn in my side when he was alive, and he’s an even worse thorn in my side now that he’s dead.”

Bree swallowed hard. “You mean he’s haunting you.” There. It was out. And it didn’t feel too weird. It felt almost ... routine.

“That’d be the case, Ms. Beaufort. Claims he was murdered. Won’t rest until there’s another just grave in the cemetery out there.”

Georgia’s only all-murderers’ cemetery.

Of course.

Bree felt a little dizzy. She didn’t think it was because of the bump on her head yesterday. Her head felt just fine. But her law firm was located right in the middle of murderers’ graves. And it wasn’t by accident. Of that she was certain.

“Ms. Beaufort?”

“I do apologize, Mrs. Mather. You’d like to retain Beaufort and Company to find the murderer and set your stepson’s soul at rest,” Bree said.

“I don’ know if that alone will do it,” Mrs. Mather said. “The boy has a lot of sin to answer for, and perhaps he’s hoping that you’ll plead his case the way you’re going to plead Mr. Skinner’s.”

Since Bree had absolutely no idea how this was going to be accomplished, she merely said, “Hmm.”

“We won’t know that until you sit down and talk to him.”

“Yes,” Bree said. She had to take a moment to swallow, and then she said, “Of course. You’ll take me to him, I suppose?”

“Ms. Beaufort, if I never see that boy again, it’ll be too soon.” Mrs. Mather folded her lips in a grim expression. “I expect you’ll find him on your own, the way you did Mr. Skinner. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”

“Yes,” Bree said. “That’s been a common problem for our clients. An unfortunate consequence of the hauntings. We will do what we can.”

“I can write you a retainer check right here.” Mrs. Mather dug into her purse, rustled around, and brought out a checkbook. “If you’ll suggest an amount?”

“There is some professional courtesy here,” Bree said. “Lavinia, I mean, your aunt, is a member of our company. I’m not even sure I should ...”

“Elphine!” Lavinia’s voice came through the office door loud and clear. “You write that girl a check for five hundred dollars. Don’t you even think about takin’ advantage.”

Elphine wrote the check. Bree accepted it with thanks. “We’ll do the best we can, Mrs. Mather.” She looked at her watch. Half an hour to the open house. “If you can tell me where your stepson died? I’ll be out there to inter ... um ... that is, I’ll be out there first thing in the morning.”

“That’s no secret, Miss Beaufort. It was out at those condos of Mr. Skinner’s. The place they call Island Dream.”

The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.

—
Hamlet
, Shakespeare

“Now, who would have thought with all this weather there’d be such a wonderful turnout!” Francesca was in her element. Dressed in a softly elegant suit of blue silk shantung, the family pearls at her throat, she hummed with pleasure. She twinkled up at Bree. “And that shimmery red velvet dress, honey. You look like a queen. As for the food—the chef deserves every one of those five stars. The food’s magnificent.”

700 Drayton was part of the Mansion in Forsyth Park, and Francesca had chosen well. The restaurant had a series of smaller dining rooms on the second floor that were ideal for Bree’s introduction to Savannah legal circles. The walls were painted a deep eggplant. The dangling light fixtures had various shades of gold and red, and silver lamé draped the windows. The interior shouldn’t have worked, but it did.

Francesca poked Bree in the side. “Now, who’s that good-looking young man talking up a storm with your sister? You suppose he’s with one of the big law firms from Atlanta? He looks so downtown.”

Bree craned her neck. Antonia, splendid in a black cocktail dress with no back and a plunging front, was in close conversation with a stunningly handsome man with long hair and a black leather jacket. “Sorry, Mamma. It’s the lead actor from the Savannah Rep. I met him when she hauled him in here. Cute as bug and poor as a church mouse.”

“I should have guessed it,” her mother grumbled. “How come all the good-looking ones are broke?”

“Daddy was broke when you married him,” Bree pointed out. “I hate to mention it, Mamma, but the money’s all on your side.”

“There’s broke and then there’s broke,” Francesca muttered. “Your daddy had
prospects
.”

Bree prowled the room, feeling like a sliced potato on a red-hot griddle. John Stubblefield held court at the small mahogany bar. Every so often, his little gray eyes slid sideways in her direction. Payton skulked at his elbow. Douglas Fairchild was conspicuous by his absence; Hunter had decided to press obstruction charges, and either Fairchild or his wife had decided to skip the whispers that would follow a public appearance. The gossip wouldn’t last for long; with the possible exception of a murder indictment, Southern society tended to be most forgiving of its own. Bree accepted condolences on her uncle Franklin’s death from a fellow judge and the senior partner in a local accounting firm, fielded some nosy questions about Jennifer Skinner from a mutual friend, and ducked questions about the actual whereabouts of her current practice.