Bree took a good look at herself in her bathroom mirror before she went to bed. She was thinner; there wasn’t much doubt about that. Her cheekbones stuck out. The skin around her eyes had a silver-gray cast to it. She glanced down at Sasha, a warm and reassuring presence at her side.
There is a price. Nothing occurs without cost.
And Antonia, who just wouldn’t shut up:
How long since you’ve had, like, a regular date? Gone out like normal people? Had a normal life? You want me to lay off? Fine. Then start living like a person.
“This case will take a few weeks,” Bree said to the mirror. “I can think about it then.”
At her feet, Sasha sighed and looked away.
Five
You’ve got to ask yourself one question: “Do I feel
lucky?” Well, do you, punk?
—H. J. Fink, R. M. Fink, and D. Riesner,
Dirty Harry
“We’re going to have to open a satellite office sooner or later,” Bree said to her office staff early Monday morning, “and this may be the best time to do it.” She moved restlessly in her chair. She hadn’t slept well again. She felt like she hadn’t slept well for weeks.
“They’ll want a pot of money for the rent, those folks,” Lavinia said. “If you’re talking about Franklin’s old place. Nowhere near as good a bargain as this.”
“Yes,” Bree said. “But it’s a normal office, isn’t it? I mean, my friends and family will be able to come and visit me there? They’ll be able to find it? Walk in? Sit down? Have a cup of coffee? And I’ll have a semblance of a normal life?”
“Ah,” Petru said.
“Oh, dear,” Ron said. “It’s getting to you, isn’t it? This life. Beaufort & Company.”
Her landlady clucked disapprovingly—Bree hoped at the prospective cost of the new office space, and not at her bid for a little freedom—and moved the cream pitcher within Bree’s reach.
The five of them sat around the long oak table that served the little conference room in the office on Angelus Street. Bree rented the first floor of the two-hundred-year-old house, and, as Lavinia had just pointed out, the rent was indeed cheap. The house sat smack in the middle of Georgia’s only all-murderers cemetery. Despite the fact that they were a mere three blocks from the Savannah River in the highly desirable Historic District, the weedy graves and pallid oaks surrounding the house were distinctly off-putting. Bree sometimes wondered why she had to pay rent at all, since the office location served only the dead, but she didn’t have the nerve to address Lavinia about this directly. She went ahead and paid Ron’s and Petru’s salaries, too, even though she wasn’t at all sure what the two other angels did with the money. Ron was exceptionally well dressed, so she suspected he spent a lot of his salary on custom pima cotton shirts and elegant ties, but Petru wore the same dingy black suit to work day after day. And if the state of his thick black beard was any indication, he did all his own barbering. As for Sasha . . . her dog lay curled next to her chair, and she bent down and scratched behind his ears. He yawned happily, rolled one golden eye up to her, and went back to sleep. Sasha didn’t have any expenses at all, since she bought his dog food herself.
“Uncle Franklin’s old lease was voided by his death,” Bree said. “And what with the brouhaha over the Benjamin Skinner case, I never did get around to talking to the owners about a new one. If you could check on that, Ron, I’d appreciate it.” Great-Uncle Franklin, who had left Bree her unusual law practice and her even more unusual set of employees, had a small one-room office in a refurbished brick warehouse six blocks from Angelus Street. Like many of the great old brick buildings lining the Savannah River, it was in constant need of updating. The latest remodeling had been lengthy and expensive. The entire brick façade had been pointed, the terrazzo floors ground and waxed, and the elegant basswood moldings and balustrades stripped and refinished. But the renovation was almost complete, and she needed to address the issue of moving in.
Ron entered a brief note into his BlackBerry and looked at her expectantly. “Office furnishings?” he said hopefully. “Do we have a budget for that?”
Franklin had died in a fierce fire, which had been contained within his office on the sixth floor. The only things that remained were his desk, which Bree used in her Angelus office, and an old leather chair. So the new space would have to be furnished from scratch. “A small one,” she said. “Maybe you can find a few things at Second Hand Rows off Whitaker. Not too much—a little conference table for the corner window and a desk and a chair for me. We’ll keep most of the files here.”
“The widow O’Rourke?” Petru rumbled. “She has offered a retainer? This should help the finances.”
Bree set her coffee cup down, and then crumbled the remains of her piece of Lavinia’s cinnamon cake into even littler bits. “I’m still not sure we should take her on as a client.”
“A conflict of interest, perhaps? If we are to represent the husband it would be against the widow’s interest?” Petru tapped his cane on the floor with a thoughtful air.
“Well, he’s dead and she’s not,” Ron said crossly. “We’re not filing an appeal for her. We’ll be reviewing contracts and setting up leases. Two different areas of law entirely. You’re the paralegal. You should know that.”
“I am ke-vite well aware of the areas of law in question,” Petru said. When he was upset, his Russian accent became more pronounced. “And as you are merely a secretary, I doubt that you should be offering an opinion at all.”
“Stop,” Bree said. She had no idea what had started the two angels sparring with one another this time, but she wasn’t about to let it affect affairs in the office. “I’m not concerned with conflict of interest. I just don’t like the woman or the way she operates.” She held up a hand to forestall any protests. “I know. An advocate’s role is just that. We stand up for the client’s interests and we have no business passing judgment on personalities. But honestly, the way she stiffed that poor auctioneer was brutal. A client like that will try and stiff us, too. You can bet on it.” Bree rubbed her face briskly. “Anyhow. Let’s finish up the coffee and get started. Petru, I’m going to need all of the background material you can find on Russell O’Rourke, especially the circumstances surrounding his suicide. He died in New York, at their penthouse. It was somewhere near Central Park, I think, but I don’t remember much more than that. So if you can get onto the Internet and start creating a file, I’d be grateful. Ron? The two of us better get over to the records department at the courthouse and see Goldstein. We’re going to need a copy of the appeal that’s been filed.”
“Anything I can do for you this morning?” Lavinia asked hopefully. Her landlady was tiny. Bree was willing to bet she was no more than ninety pounds soaking wet, and her bones were as fragile as a bird’s. She was dressed in her usual droopy skirt, worn woolen cardigan, and soft print blouse. Her cloud of white hair drifted around her mahogany face like a halo. “I was thinking that maybe Sasha could use a good bath.”
Bree looked down at her dog. After the auction yesterday, Bree had taken him for a nice long run by the river. He could, in fact, use a good wash and a brush. “Good idea.”
Sasha lifted his head and looked reproachfully at Bree.
“That’s settled, then,” Lavinia said with a contented sigh. “I’m givin’ some of my littlies a scrub this morning, too. He’ll come out smellin’ just as sweet.”
Bree wasn’t sure about the exact nature of Lavinia’s littlies, but Sasha’s expression seemed to indicate they were beneath his dignity as a noble mastiff-retriever cross. But he got to his feet with a good-natured grunt and padded to Lavinia’s side.
Bree collected her briefcase and followed Ron out to the tiny foyer that fronted Angelus Street without looking at the grim painting that hung over the fireplace in the living room. It showed a ship plunging in the midst of a stormy sea, surrounded by the dead and dying. The painting was both a reminder and a statement of the mission she and her Company were on, but she loathed the sight of the thing. She did pause on her way out the door to look at the painted frieze of angels that marched up the wall of the staircase to the second floor. Where the
Rise of the Cormorant
terrified her, the parade of brightly colored Renaissance angels lifted her heart. The figures had wings the color of beaten gold and were robed in scarlet, royal purple, vibrant turquoise, and rich velvety browns. Bronze halos shone about their heads. The angel at the very foot of the stairs, dressed in brocaded robes of sapphire and cardinal red, was crowned with braids of white-blonde hair the color of Bree’s own. A small whippetlike creature danced at its side.
“Looks like rain,” Ron said from the front stoop. “Do you want to walk or drive?”
Bree peered around his shoulder. The records for the Celestial Courts were on the seventh floor of the six-floor Chatham County Courthouse on Montgomery, which was about ten blocks straight down Bay Street. Bree liked to walk, especially on cool November days. The Historic District was one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the world, in her opinion, and a walk down Bay, with its pockets of emerald grass shaded by live oaks, was endlessly interesting. But the sky over the nearby river was clouded over and the air held the scent of rain.
“We’d better drive.” Her car was parked curbside at the end of the brick path that led from the porch to the street. Despite herself, she kept her gaze firmly ahead as she followed Ron to the car. The Pendergast graves gaped open underneath the dying oak that stood in the middle of the cemetery, and she was never sure what was going to beckon to her from its depths.
She settled into the driver’s seat next to Ron and grumbled, “One of these days, we’re going to have to do something about those Pendergasts. I can’t scuttle down the path to my own office like a scared rat every time I go in and out.”
Ron looked at her with interest. His blond hair feathered over his forehead and his light blue eyes were guileless. “Why not? At the moment, the Pendergasts are nothing to fool with. I don’t know if you noticed, but I was scuttling faster than you.”
Bree started the engine. “It’s not dignified.”
“You know what they say about pride,” Ron said, rather primly. “You may choose dignity over getting dragged somewhere awful by a rotting corpse, but I vote scuttle every time.”
“You’re pretty smug, for an angel,” Bree said. “Do you suppose that’s why you and Petru snipe at each other?”
Ron shrugged and then smiled. “Possibly,” he said. His smile, like all angels’, was impossible to resist. The smile sent warmth from the top of your head to your feet.
“Don’t smile at me,” Bree warned. “I’m getting wise to your ways, Ron Parchese.”
But she arrived at the Chatham County Courthouse in a much improved mood.
Bree had been at the courthouse at all hours during the day, and it was always filled with a cross section of citizens of the state of Georgia. Young kids swaggered through in baggy pants and oversized T-shirts. Blue-uniformed policemen of the Town of Savannah rubbed shoulders with the brown-uniformed officers of Chatham County. Couples with children wandered the lower floors, peering at the office listings on the notice boards. Guys with straw hats and saggy coveralls ambled up to the coffee cart.
And the lawyers were everywhere.
Bree and Ron passed through the metal detector and got into the middle elevator. They rode to the sixth floor and then, after the last fellow passenger, a tired-looking cleaning lady, got off, headed up to the seventh. The doors swooshed open, and Bree faced the familiar gold medallion on the opposite wall that read:
CELESTIAL COURT OF APPEALS
The Scales of Justice, cupped by a pair of feathery wings, were embossed in the center.
She led the way down to the door marked RECORDS and pushed her way inside.
The Hall of Records was an exact replica of an old monastery—although for all Bree knew it
was
a section of a monastery—with flagstone floors, torch sconces, and stained-glass windows topped by Gothic arches. Massive oak beams buttressed the soaring ceilings. Angels robed like monks stood in front of waist-high oak podiums, scratching on vellum with quill pens. There was a faint, winged rustling as Bree and Ron walked down the aisle to the big oak counter at the back. Hundreds of cubbyholes filled with rolls of parchment lined the far wall. Goldstein, his bald head glinting in the torchlight, twiddled his fingers in greeting as they approached.
“Still resisting the computer age, I see,” Ron said. He leaned on the waist-high counter and shook his head.
“I like it,” Goldstein said. “And you think I’d get any kind of productivity out of these guys under fluorescent lights? Phooey.” He rubbed the back of his neck, and a silvery feather floated upward. “So, what can I do for the two of you this fine morning?”
“Russell O’Rourke,” Bree said. “I’d like a copy of the Request for Appeal.”
“O’Rourke.” Goldstein frowned and then tugged at his ear. “O’Rourke. Doesn’t ring a bell, I’m afraid, but let me check.” He bent down, rummaged under the counter, and emerged with a leather-bound book. He flipped the pages over with a thoughtful air. “Russell O’Rourke,” he said, with a slight emphasis on the cognomen. “I don’t see a Russell O’Rourke. Nope.” He slammed the book shut.
“But he contacted me yesterday,” Bree said.
Goldstein raised one eyebrow. What was time, to an angel?
“He did get in touch,” Bree said firmly. “He killed himself several months ago at his desk, at his place in New York. The desk ended up in a job lot at an auction house here in Savannah. I ended up at the auction. I put my hands on the desk and bingo, there he was, or part of him, asking for help. Just like all the others.”
Goldstein reopened the ledger and paged through it again. “Benjamin Skinner. Check. Probert Chandler, check. Both cases pleaded and disposed, quite professionally, I might add, dear Bree. But no Request for Appeal has been filed for Russell O’Rourke.”