Defending Angels (31 page)

“You’ll think about moving into Franklin’s old offices as soon as the restoration’s done, if you mean to stay here in Savannah,” Royal said during a lull in the chatter. “This address on Angelus seems pretty out of the way. I’ve been telling people it’s temporary.”

“I may split my time between the two,” Bree said, deliberately vague. “That’s Carlton Montifiore over there.”

Her father was tall, and he squinted over the heads of the crowd. “Yes, I believe it is. Franklin’s old colleagues did right well by you, Bree. There’s a lot of money and power in this room.”

“Excuse me, Daddy. I’ll just go say hello.”

Bree wound her way through the mass of people. Montifiore stood with his back to the wall. His gray sports coat strained over his broad back. He’d loosened his tie. Unsmiling, he watched Bree’s approach. Her relaxed and genial guide to the Pyramid Office Building had disappeared. In these surroundings, he looked tense and angry.

“Is there anything I can get for you, Carlo?” she asked politely. “I hope you’re finding everything to your satisfaction.”

“Stubblefield tells me you’re the woman who nailed Doug Fairchild’s butt to the floor.”

“I guess I am.”

He smiled, shifted his Manhattan to his left hand, and squeezed her by the upper arm in a congratulatory way. His grip was hard. Irritated, Bree shook herself free. “It’s time someone took Dougie down a peg. Glad to see it.”

“You thought he was getting a little too big for his britches?” Bree said.

“Let’s say his eyes were bigger than his ability to borrow.”

“Your company’s listed as one of his chief creditors,” Bree said. “Must be a bit troubling for you.”
And,
she added silently to herself,
you lied like a rug, Carlo
. Plenty of money around, indeed.

Montifiore’s eyes darkened, but he said genially, “Oh, we end up getting our pound of flesh, one way or the other. Don’t you worry about us.”

Bree bet that the banks were real worried about Montifiore. But her mother would skin her alive if she started a brouhaha at a social event. She said merely, “Maybe we should talk about that, Carlo.”

He stiffened, glared at her, and turned on his heel to walk away.

Someone struck a wineglass with a fork. The “ting” rose above the clatter, and conversation slowed, then stopped. The waitstaff began circulating through the crowd with trays of champagne. Bree turned and faced the hors d’oeuvres table. Her father and mother stood hand in hand, smiling. Royal cleared his throat, raised his wineglass, and said, “Bree? Come up here, darlin’.” Bree nodded to Carlton Montifiore and made her way up to the front of the room. Her father clasped her hand, and tucked it into his arm. “I’d like to welcome you all to this celebration. It’s a happy day for Francesca and me. Our oldest daughter has taken up the reins of Franklin’s practice, and begun a new life and a new career here in Savannah. My family and I would like to thank you all for being here with us. Here’s to you all. And to the fine practice of law in Georgia!” He raised a glass in a toast.

“To the law!” Everyone followed his lead and drank.

Francesca turned with a flutter to the towering cake that occupied the center of the table. Ron had outdone himself. The cake was a miniature replica of the Hall of Justice on Montgomery. A gust of wind rattled the windows as Francesca cut into the cake, and she shuddered dramatically.

Then, with a slow, crumbling slide, the cake toppled onto its side. Francesca turned to the crowd with a look of mock dismay and laughed. Antonia called out, “Now, sister! I sure hope Georgia law’s got a firmer foundation than that!” Bree turned around to make a face at her aggravating little sister.

Carlton Montifiore stared back at her. He drew his teeth back in a feral grin. Malice glittered in his eyes.

Bree stood stock-still. Foundation. When she’d been hit on the head, she was kneeling in front of the basement foundation. She had a plastic bag in one hand, and she was exploring the base of the wall with the other. As if she was going to take samples of the concrete?

She was surrounded by whispers, too faint to hear clearly. The staticlike sound rose to a peak, then trailed off.

...
murder
...

She shook herself free of the tormented sounds. Facts. Logic. Reasoned analysis. That’s what Professor Cianquino had taught her, and that’s what she needed to apply now:

The building inspector was dead.

Skinner had desperately wanted out of what should have been a very lucrative deal. He was in the process of stopping the project in its tracks.

Fairchild was in a lot of financial trouble.

Montifiore had been in trouble with building inspectors before.

Bree didn’t know much about construction, but she did know that the new hurricane codes were ruinously expensive. You could save hundreds of thousands of dollars by substituting sand for concrete in a foundation; and thousands more by reducing the bolts and supports in the walls by half. Or even more than half.

She set her champagne glass on the table and started toward Montifiore. He turned his back and forced his way through the crowd. Bree started after him, and then stopped short, as if she’d slammed into a wall. The whispers rose around her in an agonized cry:
Save her ... save her . . .save her ...

The wind belted against the side of the Mansion and a roar of rain shook the windows.

Bree came to herself with a jolt.

She had to get Chastity out of Island Dream—before it turned into an island nightmare.

“How sure are you of the facts?” Sam Hunter drove with seeming indifference to the wind rocketing around his car. Rain sluiced down the windshield like an incoming tide; Bree could barely make out the lights of the emergency truck in front of them.

“You should have seen Montifiore’s face. Guilt all over it like kudzu in a field of wheat.”

Sam grunted, unamused. “Facial expressions aren’t admissible proof in any court in Georgia. Texas, maybe.”

“Very funny. The proof will be in the building itself. Will you
hurry
?” Bree’s impatience was edged with guilt. Publicly, her mother had taken Bree’s abrupt abandonment of her own party with her usual grace. But she was sure to hear about it later.

“You’d better have a damn good reason to get the rescue crew out on a night like this one. The whole island’s been evacuated. There’s nobody left there.”

“Chastity’s still there,” Bree said stubbornly. “She said she wasn’t going to leave unless she got thrown out, and I got cut off before I could tell her the whole building was going to fall down around her ears. She doesn’t have a cell phone, the lines are down, and the wind would knock a helicopter six ways from Sunday. We’ve got to save her.”

“But you haven’t any proof that she’s in danger.”

“That building isn’t going to stand up to a storm like this one.”

Sam’s sigh was both exasperated and annoyed. “You’re arguing like a revolutionary. All emotion and no facts. Maybe you could try looking at it like the lawyer you are?”

“Okay, it’s an educated guess,” Bree said impatiently. “But no other explanation fits the facts as well as this one: Montifiore and Grainger Skinner were skimming money from the project. Montifiore indulged in the fine old practice of chiseling on the quality of the building materials.”

“I can think of at least two other reasonable explanations,” Sam said. He steered the car expertly through a knee-high drift of water.

“Well?” Bree said after a long silence.

He glanced at her with a grin. “Okay. So I can’t think of anything else that doesn’t leave some loose ends. Damn!” Both of them ducked involuntarily as a tree branch whirled by the driver’s door. “And Chastity’s just brainless enough ...”

“She’s not stupid,” Bree snapped. “She’s just never had a chance.”

Sam muttered something that might have been “heard that one before.” Bree hoped not.

The wheels took on a thrum of tires on metal. They were headed over the bridge. Bree looked out her window. Huge waves lashed at the bridge pilings. “I’m not very good at estimating heights,” she admitted. “Did the weather report say anything about the surf?”

“Up to twenty feet. The storm surge is estimated at fifteen.” He glanced at his watch. “It’ll be along in about twenty minutes or so.”

Bree leaned forward and peered into the darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. She leaned back in the seat with a sigh. Sam’s car was a mess. Old Styrofoam coffee cups, crumpled burger wrappers, and empty bottles of water cluttered the floor. She nudged a Dunkin’ Donuts box aside with her toe. “Have the Skinners talked yet?”

“Just through their lawyer. Stubblefield’s a sleazy son of a bitch.”

“No kidding.”

“The story goes something like this:
If
Dad was dead before they took the
Sea Mew
out—and they aren’t admitting to a thing—it was because they got a panicked phone call from Fairchild to give him a hand disposing of the body. And
if
they felt it was incumbent upon them to help an old family friend, it was only because everyone’s investment was at risk. If Skinner had succeeded in pulling his money out of Island Dream—and his new lawyers were planning on going ahead with that, even though he was dead and gone—Fairchild stood to lose everything. Grainger isn’t admitting how much he personally was going to lose, but I’ll bet it was a lot.”

“And Fairchild didn’t kill him?”

“Fairchild has an alibi. Grainger and Jenny have an alibi. That dumb-ass Tiptree found Skinner’s body, called Fairchild in a panic, and Fairchild called Grainger, since Grainger was already two minutes away at the arena.”

“You don’t suspect Calvin Tiptree.”

“Nope. He was there at the right time, all right. But he was with a sales prospect until ten o’clock, we verified that. And he called Doug from his cell five minutes and thirty-two seconds after the suckers left. The ME says it’s highly unlikely he had time to clout the poor guy over the head, pump his lungs full of water, and arrange his death. Besides, he doesn’t fit the profile.”

“You have an instinct about these things, do you?” Bree asked dryly. “Well, so do I. It’s pretty clear to me that Montifiore’s behind Skinner’s murder and the murder of that poor Elphine Mather’s stepson.”

“Hang on.” He put his arm out across her middle and braked hard. The car skidded, turned, and stopped. “Tree down,” he said briefly. He cut the engine, but kept his headlights on. The emergency truck ahead of them hadn’t been so quick to respond. The truck was piled nose first into the trunk of a huge live oak that lay across the road. The red lights blip-blip-blipped through the sheets of rain.

“Where are we?”

“About halfway up the back road to the building. Can you see it? It’s about a quarter mile ahead of us.”

“I’ll be surprised if I can see my hand in front of my face,” Bree said. She retied her raincoat around her, pulled on her rain hat, and prepared to get out.

“Whoa.” Sam grabbed her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Up to the building, of course.”

“Are you crazy?”

She looked at him. He scowled, shook his head, and began to mutter under his breath. But he shrugged himself into his rain gear, and pushed the driver’s door open.

At least it isn’t cold
, Bree told herself. The air was thick and humid and the rain seemed to be everywhere at once, up her sleeves, down the back of her neck, in her eyes. Three rubber-suited figures clumped around the emergency truck, clearing debris away from the tires. Bree and Sam struggled past them and scrambled over the tree trunk. Abruptly, the rain lessened and the wind dropped off. Bree was able to breathe again. With the flashing red lights behind them, they were able to see the dim outline of the marina a half mile to the east. Many of the boats had been moved farther inland in anticipation of the storm. Those that were left were inundated with waves.

Directly ahead, she made out the towering outline of Island Dream. Against all odds, the electricity was on, and the building was ablaze, like a giant cruise ship in the ocean of the night. Bree made out the lights in the penthouse, even at this distance.

Suddenly, Sam drew her to his side. His voice was grim. “Look out. Here it comes. The storm surge.”

A huge wall of water traveled up the causeway. It swept over the boats, toppling the masts into the water. It swept over the docks and the piers, onto the sand, and up the dunes.

Bree grabbed Sam’s hand and held it.

The wall of water surged like a slow, lazy beast of huge, immeasurable size. It rolled across the drive, a juggernaut. It flowed up the drive, surrounding the building, and slapped against the foundations. A second wall of water followed the first, and boiled against the building.

A huge groan rolled through the air. And with painful, agonizing slowness, the building listed, tilted, and began to fall.

The death of the Island Dream was a noisy one. The roof tiles tumbled into the sea. Windows smashed and sprayed glass into the air. The steel girders shrieked as they were torn from the earth.

Then all the lights went out.

The growling of the destruction continued in the dark. Bree trembled with shock, and sudden cold. Her knees gave way, and she sat back against the bole of the tree. “Too late,” she said quietly. “Too late. I’m so sorry, Mr. Skinner.” Her teeth began to chatter. Sam pulled his cell phone from his pocket and spoke urgently into it. He jammed the phone back into his pocket, and helped her to her feet. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you back to the car.”

Bree pressed her hands to her eyes, then straightened herself up. “That poor girl,” she said fiercely. “I’ll never forgive myself, never! We should have done something, Sam!”

“We did what we could.” His voice was low and so quiet she almost didn’t hear him. “I called this in. We’d better get back before the rain and the wind pick up again.”