Angel Condemned (28 page)

“At any rate. You’re right. Scooey was onboard the
Indies Queen
with a load for Prosper White when she killed him. I don’t know why she pushed him overboard—lovers’ quarrel, caprice, the fact that Scooey, of all people, would have refused to be part of a smuggling operation . . . Who knows? When she was in the manic stage, all bets were off.

“I was trapped then. And for the next thirty years, I gave Martin what he wanted. And White what he wanted so they wouldn’t expose her.

“It could have gone on like that until I retired from the university. I was so close. But the funding got pulled. So Jillian came up with the idea to fake the Cross and get the university interested again. White was an idiot about relics.” Chambers paused and knocked the bowl of his pipe against the rim of the wastebasket. The ash flew upward in the currents of air. “I flunked him for good reason, you know. Not just because he was screwing my poor mad wife at the time. Anyhow. He wasn’t an idiot about the Cross. So he called it a fraud. And it was over. We were pushed out. Jillian couldn’t handle it. She saw White’s actions as a personal betrayal. And she brooded about it and brooded about it. When the announcement about White’s engagement to your aunt appeared in the paper, it triggered something. Her obsession about White grew to include Cissy, too.” He darted a shamefaced look at Bree. “I’m sorry about that. I truly am. I should have known something was up when she insisted on the demonstration at the press conference at the steps of the Frazier.”

Bree held her hand up. “Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“So, you guys are back on duty,” Bree said, after she had gone over Allard’s revelations with her angels. “The case against Jillian Chambers is directly linked to Schofield Martin’s appeal.”

“I believe so,” Petru said.

“Is there some kind of document I need to get? Shall I trot on over to Goldstein?”

“It’s not complicated,” Ron said. “We’ll start investigating. If we’re barred from the case, we’ll know right away.”

“How?”

“We won’t get anywhere. Honestly, Bree, it’s simple.”

Lavinia ran the feather duster over the leather couch near the fireplace—her fallback tactic was office cleaning when she wanted to be in on a meeting and there was no real reason for her to be there. “So Professor Chambers was in cahoots with White all along.”

“Yes.” Bree drummed her knuckles impatiently on the top of Ron’s desk. “No proof, though, no proof, no proof. If I could talk to the customs guys about the investigation into the
Indies Queen
and her cargo, I’d be a lot further ahead.”

“That Martin’s skipped town?”

Bree grimaced. “Yes. I called Hunter on the way back here from Reclaimables and told him about the connection between White and Martin. But temporal law depends on process, and there isn’t any. No evidence. Just supposition. There was no way to keep Martin in Savannah short of running him over with a truck, and Hunter said no when I asked him.”

“You were joking, of course,” Petru said.

“Maybe not.” Bree bit at her thumbnail in annoyance. “Anyhow, Martin’s halfway to Havana by now, or wherever crooks go when where there’s no extradition. Damn. I had to push it, didn’t I? He and White and Allard were in the illegal import business together. White travelled all over, buying stuff. That was his job as a curator. What if White had threatened him somehow—maybe asked him for a bigger cut? I may have let a murderer run free. So much for our track record.”

Petru and Ron exchanged looks. “Uh, Bree,” Ron said. “You’re still convinced of Dr. Chambers’s innocence.”

“I am.”

“But . . .”

Bree held up her hand in warning. “No. I’m not going there. Everything Allard told me is unsubstantiated. I’ve got to get corroborating evidence. If I can nail Bullet Martin along the way, so much the better. He had quite a motive to kill White, you know. It’d impress the heck out of a jury. After all those years, White wrecks the source of a very lucrative business?”

Ron was busy at his computer. “I’ve got something.”

“Really?” Bree looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“You thought the one piece of hard evidence directly related to the killing was the knife from Cissy’s kitchen. I’m checking Martin’s airline and car travel for the last couple of months. This screen is his gas receipts for his credit card; this screen is his airline tickets. He was in Savannah three times in the past month, including this visit. Did EB interview Lindy, the housekeeper, today?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I think so. I’ll give her a call.”

“Let me check and see if she’s logged anything into your Bay Street files. Yep—she did. Just the date and time, though. No notes as yet. I’ll bet she hasn’t had time to breathe, what with all the stuff you asked her to do today.”

“I did load her up, didn’t I,” Bree said guiltily. “Just goes to show how much I depend on you all. Which is
not good.
Shouldn’t I be able to do most of this myself?”

“So Martin’s still in the picture,” Ron pushed himself away from his computer and stretched out. “What next, Bree?”

“Alicia Kennedy. She’s got to know more than she’s telling me or the police. And we’ve got a lot of catch-up to create this file. The psych records for Jillian—all of them. A list of all the shareholders of the
Indies Queen
, and her shipping history from thirty years ago, just for verification of what Allard dumped on me an hour ago. Let’s see who else may have been in on this.” She grinned, suddenly. “We’ll need the murder book of course, from the Savannah PD and all the forensic reports . . . My goodness, it’s great to be operating with all the lights on.”

Petru wriggled his shoulders, as if adjusting his aura, which made Lavinia break into uncharacteristic giggles. “Like a dancing bear,” she said. “Oh, my. It’s good to see you happy again, child.”

Bree glanced at her watch. “It’s five thirty. With luck, I’ll find Alicia at the Frazier. After that, I’ve got a quick meeting with Cordy Blackburn.”

“Her office has called twice, to confirm the appointment,” Petru said. “Mrs. Billingsley has forwarded the phones. The young man also wishes to know what you will bring for dinner. He is somewhat callow, I find.”

Bree shrugged impatiently. “Sandwiches, I guess. Gavin sure thinks a lot about his stomach.” She headed for the foyer, noticing that the angel at the end of the frieze still gestured thumbs-up.

She hoped it was a good augur.

“I don’t have to talk to you,” Alicia Kennedy said sullenly. She slouched huddled in White’s office chair. When Bree walked into the office, she’d been weeping into a blue cashmere sweater. She suspected it was White’s.

“No, you don’t.” Bree pulled a straight chair away from the conference table and sat next to Alicia, so they were on a level. “But you want his murderer caught, don’t you?”

“You
know
who murdered him! They arrested that crazy woman.”

Bree shook her head. “My client? My client’s innocent.” Even if Jillian had stabbed Prosper White to death thirty yards from where they sat—she wasn’t culpable. A lot of other people were. She let the pause drag on; then she said, “Did you kill him?”

The shock tactics worked. Alicia stared at her, eyes narrowed. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Do you know what an ‘alternate theory of the case’ is?”

“I don’t have a freakin’ clue.”

“The defense comes up with a solution to the crime that doesn’t involve the accused.”

“You mean you point the finger at somebody else?” Her cheeks flushed. “You’re going to go after me?”

“That depends.”

“On whether I answer your questions?”

“On whether you tell me the truth.”

Alicia rubbed her face with both hands. Her cheeks were smeared with mascara. She’d chewed off most of her lipstick. Bree leaned over and opened drawers in White’s desk until she found a box of tissues. She set the box on Alicia’s lap. “Here. You’ll want to tidy your face up a bit. Now. Listen to me. How long have you known Prosper White?”

“Forever. He and my dad were friends from way back. They went to school together.”

“Were they in business together?”

“Business? No. My father’s the president of a division of a copier company. Mr. White was an artist.”

“Your father wasn’t interested in Roman antiquities?”

“That? Sure. He studied archeology before he went on to his MBA. He says the best time of his life was when he was out on a dig in graduate school.”

“And that’s where your interest springs from?”

“I suppose.”

“So your connection to White is circumstance,” Bree said, more to herself than to the girl in front of her. “What about Charles Martin?”

“Bullet?” Alicia dabbed carefully at her face with the tissues. “I came to work for Mr. White right out of Columbia. That was three years ago. They’d known each other a while, I guess. Bullet’s a collector, and he’s very well funded—very. Very well known. Mr. White was a genius at finding pieces for him.”

“Did Bullet have a large collection?”

“Not huge,” Alicia said. “Sometimes he didn’t keep things very long.”

“You mean he resold them?”

“I suppose so.” She bent from the waist and began to scrabble in her purse.

Bree picked the purse up and set it on the desk, which forced Alicia to look at her. “At a profit?”

“Of course at a profit. Art can’t exist without money. Art . . .” She chewed at her lower lip. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I’m getting a clearer picture by the minute. Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Prosper White was a genius at finding undiscovered Roman relics.”

“Not just Roman. Greek, Ottoman, Arabic, Turkish.”

“All from areas where Allard Chambers conducted his excavations.”

Alicia folded her arms against her chest.

“Who supplied White with the relics?”

No answer.

“Was it Allard Chambers?”

No answer.

“Why did White repudiate the Cross of Justinian?”

Alicia’s chin went out. Her eyes glowed. “It was a fake.”

“So they had a falling out?”

“Mr. White,” Alicia said proudly, “had his standards.”

Bree regarded her thoughtfully. Alicia had just confirmed a good portion of Allard White’s statement. As for the late blossoming of Prosper White’s integrity? You just never knew about people. Cissy would feel vindicated.

She caught sight of the desk clock on White’s expensive desk. Almost seven o’clock, and Cordy Blackburn was not a patient woman. She let Alicia go and headed out for the Municipal Building at a rate that would have displeased the traffic cops, if there’d been any around to catch her.

Bree arrived at Cordy’s office twenty minutes late for her seven o’clock appointment.

“Where’s dinner?” Gavin said.

“I beg your pardon?” Bree’s hair had loosened around her ears. She tucked it back.

“You said you were going to bring dinner. I told Cordy not to worry about dinner, because you were bringing it along. I checked with your office. Twice.”

“Sorry, Gavin. I completely forgot. It’s been a busy day.”

“So I hear.”

“But a successful one, thank goodness.”

“I wouldn’t call letting a notorious criminal escape justice a howling success, would you?”

“Excuse me?” Bree said stiffly. Formality between office staff and assistants had relaxed a lot since her father’s day, but Gavin was pushing it.

“Charles ‘Bullet’ Martin? Smuggler?”

“That,” Bree said, “is a matter of conjecture. But I expect to prove it soon.”

“Right.” Cordy’s office door was closed. Gavin pointed at it with his pen. “She’s waiting. And she’s hungry.”

“I’ll order pizza.”

“We hate pizza.”

Bree knocked on the office door before she edged it open. Cordy sat at her desk with a legal pad. She looked up, unsmiling, and gestured at the chair that faced her desk.

If there were an Olympic competition for Most Intimidating Assistant DA When Annoyed, Cordelia Blackburn would take the gold, hands down. She was in her midforties, a well-dressed, comfortably sized African-American woman with a pleasing contralto voice. When she wasn’t mowing down defense lawyers, she spent a lot of time with community-service groups. An array of framed photographs over her bookcase showed Cordy with the current president, two past presidents, the governor of Georgia, and a T-shirted, baggy-pantsed basketball team from the projects down on Magnolia Street.

“Sit,” Cordy said.

Bree sat.

Cordy put her elbow on her desk and leaned forward, her chin in one hand. She held a heavy buff piece of stationary in the other. “You know what I have here in front of me?”

“I assume that’s a rhetorical question? No? It looks like a letter.”

“A copy of a letter to the Georgia State Bar Association Grievance Committee. It’s about you. The allegation is improper behavior in regard to your clients Allard and Jillian Chambers. The complainant requests immediate action on the part of the committee. You understand the Grievance Committee’s powers, do you not? They can issue a Letter of Censure. They can recommend that you be disbarred. They can, and will, ruin your life.” She sat back in her chair, her gaze level.