Angel Condemned (21 page)

Bree rapped on the lintel of the main door and said, “Hello,” very loudly.

A faint scratching behind Caldecott’s door was her only response.

“Caldecott!” she said. “I want to speak with you.”

“Not here,” came a muffled voice. “Out to lunch. Come back later.”

Bree looked down at Sasha. “Dumphey?” Without waiting for an answer, she went to Caldecott’s door and pulled it open.

The security guard from the Frazier huddled behind the battered oak desk. Face-to-face with him, Bree decided that he did look like a toad. It wasn’t so much his physical appearance—which was unprepossessing—as the way his head poked out from his hunched shoulders. She resisted the impulse to holler, “Stand up straight.” Instead, she glared at him. “Mr. Dumphey. I’m Brianna Winston-Beaufort.”

He looked at her spitefully. For a second, she thought he might spit. “I know who you are.”

“Then you’ll know what I’ve come for.”

His eyes were small, beady, and black. They darted from side to side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Mr. Caldecott isn’t here. Mr. Caldecott’s out to lunch. Come back when Mr. Cald—”

Bree leaned over the desk and grabbed him by the collar. She had never been able to rely on the abnormal strength that had come to her after she’d assumed Franklin’s practice. Or at least, she’d never actually tried to summon it up. She did so now. She pulled Dumphey over the desk and dumped him at her feet. “You took something from my tote yesterday,” she said pleasantly. “It doesn’t belong to you. It was given to me for safekeeping. I want it back.”

“I don’t . . .”

Bree hauled him to his feet. He was shorter than she was. She raised him off the floor until she could look him in the eye. “Give it to me.”

“Mr. Caldecott won’t like it.”

She shook him. He gurgled a bit. “Mr. Dumphey. I don’t know if you were the one who killed Mr. White yesterday. If you did, I’ll find out. If you had anything at all to do with that crime, I’ll find out. But what I want from you now is the Cross, and if you don’t give it to me right this minute, I will hold you like this until you turn purple and faint dead away. Got it?”

He nodded in a strangulated way. Bree noted with mild interest that his face was turning red. “I’m going to set you on your feet. Then you are going to retrieve the Cross from where you stashed it and hand it over to me. Got that?”

“Yes,” he said.

She set him on his feet. He put his finger around the inside of his shirt collar and loosened it. Bree focused the power of her considerable will on him.

Dumphey thrust his hand in his pocket and pulled out the pine box. Bree took it and opened it up. The Cross shone a little in the shadow. She dropped dropped the box in her tote. “I’ll want to see Mr. Caldecott shortly,” she said.

“He’s not here.”

“Then Mr. Barlow will do.”

“He’s not here, either. They’re gone. They left yesterday.”

“When are they due back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Leave a message for them, please.”

“Can’t do that, either,” he said fretfully. “If I’d been able to leave a message, I could have told them . . .” His eyes darted toward her tote.

“That you stole this from me?”

He shuddered. He had small, oily hands. He clutched her sleeve. “Lissen,” he whispered. “Lissen. Can you do me a favor? Please?”

Bree fought down her distaste. “What sort of a favor?”

“Don’t tell him I got it. Don’t tell him you took it. I can just say . . . I can just say I didn’t get a chance to grab it. Please. Please.”

Sasha nudged her knee. Bree patted his head. “This is the second time this week I’ve behaved badly,” she said to Sasha. “I’m turning into a bully.” She eyed Dumphey. “I apologize for scaring you. And of course I won’t tell Caldecott.”

“Not Caldecott,” Dumphey hissed urgently. “Barlow. You can’t tell Barlow.”

“Okay.” She reached out and adjusted his ratty tie, which had come partially unknotted in the unequal struggle. “I’d like you to take a message for me, and I want to be sure you deliver it one way or another. Mr. Beazley was an executor of Prosper White’s estate. Mr. Caldecott represents Allard and Jillian Chambers, who are suing Mr. White’s estate. Partners in a firm can’t do both and still practice in the state of Georgia. He needs to give one of those clients up. I’m suggesting that he turn over all executor duties to Celia Smallwood, who is currently coexecutor. That’s the simplest way out of his current difficulties. Whatever he decides, I want an answer.” She gave Dumphey a farewell pat on his shoulder. He staggered under the weight of it. “Soon, Mr. Dumphey. Soon.”

EB looked up from her computer as Bree walked in the door. “There you are. I was just about to call you. You got Sasha with you? Good.”

“Is Lewis McCallen here?”

“Nope. We aren’t fancy enough for him. Walked in. Took a look around. Said he’d do better in his suite at the Hyatt. Wanted me to come along to give him a hand. Said he couldn’t count on the secretarial services from some temp agency.”

“Oh, dear,” Bree said. She tried to squash her immediate reaction: dismay and resentment in equal parts. “That’d be a great opportunity for you, EB. Lewis McCallen is the best criminal defense attorney in the state. His partner’s even better. You’d learn a lot.”

“So he told me.” EB tried to look indifferent. It didn’t work very well.

Bree knew EB was flattered by the offer. Bree cleared her throat with some difficulty. “It’s okay, you know. If you want to go.”

EB’s smile was a little smug. “Anyway. He brought by the investigator’s report on Prosper White’s background. Your daddy hired some firm out of New York City to do it.”

Bree tossed her coat on the floor and sank into the visitor’s chair. “Did you read it?”

“Sure did.” EB handed over a three-ring binder.

“Anything we can use?”

“There surely is. You’ll see. I used that yellow highlighter.”

Bree looked at the first page index: “Family/Early Years”; “Academic History”; “Employment History”; “Financials”; “Criminal Record”; “Marriages/Relationships”; “Businesses, Failed”; “Businesses, Successful”; “Known Associates.” She flipped immediately to “Criminal Record”: two bad-check convictions and a ton of parking violations.

“Look at the marriages. Man had a past,” EB said disapprovingly. “I checked the names in the report with the witnesses you talked about this morning. There’s one name that jumps out at you like a pig in church.”

She flipped to the marriages. White had been married twice before. Yellow highlighter splashed across the second name. “Whoa,” she said. “White was once married to Charles Martin’s sister? And she died?”

“White inherited the whole shebang. She was rich, too.” EB frowned as heavily as Bree had ever seen her. “Killed in a car crash. That man was in the car with her. He walked away. She didn’t.”

Bree’s heart constricted. For a moment, she needed to breathe. “He was Aunt Cissy’s heir.”

“Yes, he was. And he used some low-life lawyers nobody’d ever heard of to do it, too. That ought to tell you something. How long you think your auntie would have lasted after they got married?”

“It’s bad, EB.”

“Not as bad as if he weren’t horizontal in the county morgue this very minute.”

“True. So. Charles Martin moves up on the suspect list.”

“There’s more,” EB said. “It’s about those Chamberses. You see that index tab for academics? It’s green. Prosper White was a student of Allard Chambers more than thirty years ago.”

“He was?”

“Chambers flunked him. The class was called Roman Antiquities—AD 400 to AD 1000.”

Bree flipped through the pages. The investigating team had done a thorough job, although not as thorough as Petru’s. White’s school transcripts were there. The course description was there. EB had highlighted Chambers’s name. A short description of White’s exposure of the fake cross was there, too. Petru needed to see this. It offered some very promising leads. “I’m going to take this report with me, EB. If that’s okay with you.”

“Sure is. I got an e-file from those investigators. Made checking off our suspects’ names a lot quicker. Why anybody uses paper nowadays is a mystery to me. You want to know what else?”

“There’s more?”

“Uh-huh. That there report’s not the only thing that made my eyes pop open this morning. Things are moving on this case at a pretty good clip. Way things are going, I’ll bet you’ll get this murderer locked by Thursday. Friday at the latest. Which is why I told Lewis McCallen thank you very much but no thank you after I thought on it. I’m staying right here makin’ sure you crack this case.”

Bree suppressed a whoop of relief. “You did?” Then, meekly, “I’ll do my best.”

“I’ll see to that. Anyhow, that Chambers called you. Wants to talk settlement, he said.”

“About the
Photoplay
cover? Did you tell him he needs to go through his lawyers?”

“Said he fired his lawyers.”

“Ah. Excellent. We need documentation of that. He’s got to march on down there, give them a formal letter, have them acknowledge the letter, and give a copy to us. He’s also got to pay his bill.”

EB drew her brows together. “I didn’t know about havin’ to pay his bill. I told him to send an e-mail, keep the answer, and forward it on to us.” She took a sheet of paper from the printer tray. “Thought that’d be enough.”

Bree read it. Chambers’s e-mail to Caldecott was brief:
I do not want the firm of Barlow & Caldecott to represent my interests in the matter of Chambers v. White, Kennedy and the Frazier Museum. Please forward the case file to my business address
. Caldecott’s reply was briefer:
Acknowledged.

“That do?”

“Probably.” The chance that Caldecott would make an issue of retaining the file was slim. But a good advocate reduced the chance factor to zero when she could.

On the other hand, the day was getting better and better. She had the Cross back. Charles Martin’s motive to murder White was looking strong. If Caldecott was out of her aunt’s orbit, the field would really open up. She could interview the Chamberses without running into ethics violations. “I have to talk to Jillian and Allard as soon as I can about their involvement in White’s death. The settlement can wait. Besides, I’ll need more solid verification that Caldecott’s off Cissy’s case than this e-mail before I can offer him any money. And we haven’t gotten him dismissed as coexecutor of her will yet, either.”

“I’ll take care of both these things. I’ll go right down there to Caldecott’s office and get whatever we need.”

“No!” Bree said. “I’ll do it.”

EB looked startled. Then she looked hurt.

“I don’t want you anywhere near those guys.”

“All right.” EB straightened a stack of papers that didn’t need straightening. Her dark skin was a little darker than usual. “Professor Chambers asked you to call him as soon as possible to set up an appointment. You going trust me to do that?”

“Don’t get all ruffled with me, EB. Have you actually met Caldecott? Or Dumphey?” Bree brushed irritably at her hair, which was falling into her eyes. “They’re creeps.”

“I can handle creeps. I’ve been handling creeps all my life. What kind of paralegal am I going to be if I can’t? You only let decent folk into this office, you’re going be waiting a long time for business.”

“You’ve got a point. Okay. But you don’t need to go down there. E-mail them. Copy in Allard and Jillian Chambers. When we’ve got absolute verification, let me know.”

“All right.” She watched as Bree got up and began collecting her stuff. “Where you going now? I’m not finished with you. I’ve got the Dunleavy lease ready for you to look over. And Ms. Blackburn’s office called. They want you to come in and answer some questions from the police. As a personal favor to her, Ms. Blackburn said.”

“Could you tell Cordy I’ll drop by in about an hour, if that’s convenient?”

“I’ll do that, sure.”

“And try and track down the Chamberses. Both of them. I’d like to see them as soon as possible. Tonight, if not sooner. Just go ahead and set up a meeting time; then text me. Okay?”

“I can do that, as long as you take the Dunleavy lease with you. It’d be good, we could find the time to keep the regular business going. That’s going to be around long after we get your auntie off.”

Bree snatched it out of her hand. “This is me, taking the damn lease. I’ll read it, okay? As soon as I get half a chance. And EB?”

“What!”

“You tell Lewis McCallen the next time I see him, I’m going to snatch him balder than he is already. The nerve of him, trying to swipe my staff.”

The Celestial Courts were on the seventh floor of the six-floor Chatham County Municipal Building on Montgomery. It was six long city blocks from Bay, but Bree decided to walk. As she crossed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, she became aware that Sasha was gone and that Ron swung easily along beside her.

“I got the Cross back.”

“So I hear.”

Bree looked sideways at him. Angels knew what they knew. “I have a ton of stuff on White’s background for Petru. There’s some very promising leads. Did you know that Chambers had White in class thirty years ago? Flunked him, according to the college transcript.”

“That’s very interesting.” Ron looked satisfied. “I took a look at the some of the other footage from the surveillance cameras. We’ve got a nice clear shot of Chambers and his wife trying to slip out by way of the parking lot in the back. One of the lieutenant’s minions grabbed them. Foolish, really, on their part. It might be easier to crack this case than the others.” The crossing light at Market Street turned red, so they stopped. “I take it we’re headed over to the Celestial Hall of Records to pick up Schofield Martin’s closed-case file?”

“Yes. I haven’t had a chance to try and raise him again yet. I’ll try it when we get back to the office. Did I tell you he came through pretty clearly at first? I think that petition I filed requesting more direct interviews with the clients must have been approved.”