Angel Condemned (33 page)

“No problem. Nice to see you again, Ron. You ever decide to leave private casework for the state, you let me know.”

Bree didn’t say anything to Ron until they were in the elevator—which was, for once, empty of other people. “I suppose I should be flattered that that’s twice in two days somebody’s tried to swipe my staff.”

Ron smiled. It was the kind of smile that never failed to lift her spirits.

“Why did you decide to be visible to Cordy today?”

“I like Cordy. And I’m a little jazzed. Always am before a courtroom appearance.”

The elevator went past the sixth floor and stopped. The doors hissed open. Bree stared at the bronze medallion on the wall. The winged scales of justice seemed to glow more brightly than usual. “Lavinia was spending herself out. If I’d known from the outset that each time she appeared in temporal form it took energy away from her, I would have . . .”

“What? Asked her to slow it down?” Ron set the box on the floor, then shook out the red velvet robes and held them out, ready to drape them around her shoulders. “Not a decision for you to make, Bree. Not for her, not for Petru, and not for me.” He twitched the stiff collar up, so that it framed her face. “There. Shake out the lapels a little bit. Lavinia finished the border, by the way. Take a look.”

Bree lifted the hem. An exquisitely stitched figure embroidered in gold thread filled the last empty space on the edge of the robe. It looked a little like the painted angel on the foyer wall. It looked more like Bree herself.

“Ready?”

She tucked the parchment roll more firmly under her arm. “Ready.”

Ron led the way down the hall to the door marked CELESTIAL COURT COURT OF APPEALS. ANGEL JUSTICE AZREAL PRESIDING.

The door opened into a vast, cavernous room that always reminded Bree of an airport terminal. An escalator took them down three flights to the courtroom below. The painted murals on the walls showed scenes from Schofield Martin’s life. Bree wanted to pause at the scene that showed Martin on the deck of the
Indies Queen
, but the mural faded to his family at his graveside before she could catch more than a glimpse of the shadowy display.

She stepped off the escalator at the bottom. The marble aisle led up to a huge dais, empty of the judge’s presence at the moment. The defense’s and the plaintiff’s areas were on opposite sides of the aisle, and were identical. Each had a long oak table with carved wooden chairs that faced the dais. Bree went to the right-hand side, sat down, and unrolled the parchment containing the motion to review Schofield Martin’s sentence. Ron busied himself with the pitcher of water that was the only other item on the table, and poured them each a glass. A few moments later, Lloyd Dumphey and Caldecott took their places on the left.

Somewhere in the reaches of the courtroom, a brass gong sounded. A soft voice announced that the Celestial Court was now in session. A gold replica of the scales of justice appeared on the dais. Behind it, a soft glow grew to twice the height of a man.

“All rise for the Honorable Angel Azreal,” the disembodied voice said.

The four of them got to their feet.

“Be seated.” Then, “Miss Winston-Beaufort, the Honorable Justice wishes you to present your case.”

“We are representing the soul of Schofield Martin, Your Honor, and requesting a review of his current sentence, an eternity in the seventh circle of Hell. The plaintiff will be offering facts not in evidence when the case was first adjudicated. These consist of statements made by witnesses privy to parts of Schofield Martin’s activities not made available to the defense at the time of this trial.

“But these statements are unsupported. In order to verify them, I ask that the Court call an independent witness to these events, and that her testimony be entered into evidence.

“I ask that the court call Leah Villiers Winston-Beaufort to the stand.”

 

Bree stood in front of Lavinia’s grave. The stone angel’s gaze was turned to the heavens. Her wings were folded around her slight, fragile figure. Bree felt, for a fleeting moment, as though the feathery lightness was wrapped around her, too. A breeze stirred the flowers clustered at the base of the stone pedestal. The welcome scent of out-of-season roses filled the air. The smell of lavender was intense. Outside the circle of green hope and sorrowful joy, the graves surrounding the Angelus office lay as dank and grim as ever. Safely inside the circle, Bree was at peace.

“I couldn’t speak to Leah, of course. Not personally. Not mother to daughter.” Her cheeks were wet with tears, but it wasn’t grief that drove them. “The important thing was that I saw her. I heard her voice. In her death, she was as real to me as if she were alive and here in the world of mortal men.

“Leah is beautiful, Lavinia, at least to me. It’s not a soft face. It’s a very wise one. High cheekbones. Her eyes are a very pale blue, like the water at the edge of a clear, calm beach. Her hair is very dark. No reddish lights in it at all—more blue, like a blackbird or a raven.

“Ron thinks that we sound alike. So I have her voice. And at the very last, before she stepped down from the stand and went back to whatever part of the Sphere that her soul resides in, she looked at me. Really looked at me.”

Tears collected at the corner of her mouth, and she swiped her sleeve across her face to dry them. “You know how Goldstein always spouts off about ‘what is time to an angel?’ I got what he meant. Finally. That look we shared was a lifetime. All that I missed of her growing up—it was there, as if there had never been a hole to fill at all.

“I know everything now. There’s nothing missing. That she liked the Beatles. That she wanted to be an archeologist because her adoptive father loved old things. That she had a little sister, like Antonia, who drove her crazy, just like Antonia makes me crazy. And that her mother, my grandmother, loved a man who was killed in Vietnam, and never loved another.”

Bree scrubbed the tears away from her face. “There’s one last thing, which you knew, I think, before you left me, too. That I will have a daughter. All of us have daughters. The advocates.”

The thought of Hunter filled her with a fierce, momentary flare of pure joy.

“At any rate. I wanted you to know.” She reached out and touched the cold stone. It seemed to warm to life under the palm of her hand. She stood there, under the gray sky of a Savannah winter. She was never more at peace.

“Bree?” Ron stood at the cemetery gate. His fair hair was ruffled so that it stood up in tufts around his face. His smile made her feel even better. “I got hold of Goldstein. We’ve got a ruling.”

She left the protected circle of flowers and scented air around Lavinia’s grave and stepped into the mire of the cemetery itself. “How’d we do?”

“There was the little matter of adultery with Mrs. Chambers . . .”

“Dr. Chambers,” Bree said, momentarily diverted. “I’m thinking that this particular secular case is going to bear down on how much the poor woman was marginalized, both in her marriage and her profession.”

“It sounds like a tactic EB will greet with joy,” Ron said. “She’s left a couple of messages on your cell phone. She’s tracked down a colleague from the Chamberses’ former university who’s more than willing to talk about how Allard’s behavior hindered Jillian’s recovery. That’s going to help a lot with your petition to be appointed guardian.”

“Good. I’m feeling more optimistic about this case by the minute. And you said you called Goldstein about the disposition of Schofield’s plea?”

“The Court’s agreed to a thousand years in Purgatory for the adultery. Piece of cake, considering.”

“Good,” Bree said. “That’s one for the good guys.”

“There’s more news. Hunter found another body. Same place as poor Beazley, the parking lot behind the Bay Street building.”

“Caldecott?”

“You’d better hurry. Hunter wants to talk to you. And no, it’s not Caldecott.”

She stepped back, to allow Ron to open the gate so they could leave, and caught sight of a new grave, next to the headstones for the murderers she had brought to justice before.

ALLARD CHAMBERS

1947–2011

I AM JUSTLY KILL’D WITH MINE OWN TREACHERY.

 

The First Sphere—The Guardians of the Light

 

The Second Sphere—The Governors of the Spheres

 

The Third Sphere—Messengers in the Temporal World

 

The Fourth Sphere—Temptors in the Temporal World

 

The Fifth Sphere—Governors of Hell

 

The Sixth Sphere—The Warriors of the Dark

 

Mary Stanton
is the author of eighteen novels, including five in the Beaufort & Company Mysteries, and the senior editor of three short story anthologies. Writing as Claudia Bishop, she is the author of more than twenty novels, including the bestselling Hemlock Falls Mysteries. A dedicated horsewoman, Mary divides her time between a working farm in upstate New York and a small home in West Palm Beach, Florida. Mary loves to hear from readers, and she can be reached at her websites:
www.marystanton.com
and
www.claudiabishop.com
.

Money’s been tight ever since Brianna Winston-Beaufort inherited Savannah’s haunted law firm Beaufort & Company—along with its less-than-angelic staff. But she’s finally going to tackle a case that pays the bills, representing a spoiled girl who robbed a Girl Scout. But soon enough Bree finds that her client’s departed millionaire father needs help, too. Can she help an unsavory father/daughter duo and make a living off of the living?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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