Avenging Angels (3 page)

“Which part?” Antonia asked skeptically.

“Eliza,” Bree said promptly. “And Irene Adler, before that.” She waved her arm in a grand gesture. “All of them.”

Antonia shook her head. But she smiled.

“You’re gorgeous. You’re talented. You’re superb. But!”

“But?”

“But maybe you want to think about finishing your degree before you commit to the stage full-time.” Bree held her hand up. “Just wait. Have you thought about ageism?”

“Ageism?”

“Sure. You know what I think? I think you’re a victim of ageism. John Allen Cavendish knows you’re twenty-two, and these parts you’ve been auditioning for are for much older—
Ow!
” Bree rubbed her arm. “I’ve warned you about pinching. Haven’t I warned you about pinching?”

“Look who just walked in!”

“I don’t care if it’s the pope,” Bree said crossly. “Where do you get off pinching me like that?”

“That’s Tully O’Rourke! She’s here!” Antonia looked rattled. “Gosh. I didn’t actually think she’d show up. And—I don’t believe it! Do you see who’s with her?!” This time she pinched Bree really hard, just above the elbow. Bree hated being pinched.

“It’s Aunt Cissy!”

“Oh?” This was not enough to justify battery, in Bree’s opinion. “And my opinion is worth something,” she said aloud, “given my law degree and all.”

“Hush up.” Antonia’s fit of depression was gone, melted like snow in July. She quivered with excitement. “Of course Cissy’s going to come through for me! She’s always smack in the middle of anything that really matters in this town.”

Bree left off rubbing her arm—Hell would freeze over before Antonia apologized, and it’d freeze over twice before she promised never to do it again—and turned in her chair and watched Tully O’Rourke pick her way down the aisle to the front row seats.

Like a lot of celebrities, she was smaller in person than on the TV news channels. But she was unmistakable. Her hair had gone completely white in her midtwenties, and it cupped her cheeks in a severe bob in a look that hadn’t changed for thirty years. Her eyebrows were dark, her eyes darker, and she wore her signature gold choker close around her throat. She was thin, too, but without the sinewy gym look. She chatted in a languid way to Cecilia Carmichael, who chatted animatedly back. Aunt Cissy, who was blonde, and even thinner than Tully, did look like a gym rat, mainly because she was one. She practically lived at the Athletic Club. She was their mother’s youngest sister and all of the Carmichael charm and softness had disappeared with Cissy’s second husband, who in turn had disappeared with his much younger secretary some years ago.

“I just told you that I’m not cut out for the Savannah Rep, didn’t I?” Antonia shone in the overstuffed, overcrowded confines of the warehouse. Her sister was beautiful—Bree had been truthful about that, if less truthful about her acting talent—and when she was alight with enthusiasm, she was flat-out gorgeous: blue eyes, auburn hair, and camellia-petal skin. “What I am cut out for is the Savannah Shakespeare Players.”

“Oh, my,” Bree said.

“Even you have to agree it was the best rep theater outside of the Royal Shakespeare Company.”

“What do you mean, ‘even’ me?”

Antonia patted her arm in a kindly way. “You’re so caught up in your cases that I’m amazed you even know it’s November.”

Her new career defending the dead
had
been absorbing all of her time lately. This was absolutely true. But you’d have to be living on the moon not to know about the Shakespeare Players. Russell O’Rourke and his wife had been patrons of the usual charities when they lived in New York—the Met, MoMA, and the New York City Ballet—but their most famous excursion into the arts was the subsidy of the Savannah Shakespeare Players. Under the direction of a very hot, very talented young Egyptian director named Anthony Haddad, the Players’ productions of
Hamlet
,
Shrew
, and the
Henry
s had gotten amazing reviews. The Players had collapsed, of course, with the bankruptcy of O’Rourke Investment Bank.

Antonia grabbed Bree’s hand. “What was that you just said? About the ageism thing? That I’m too young for those old fogey plays John Allen Cavendish loves to death? Well, whoo-ee, sister, I’m exactly the right age for the kind of plays the Savannah Players are going to stage. Modern. Cutting edge. A marriage of high tech and high drama. Stuff that London and New York have never seen before.”

“I thought the Shakespeare Players would put on, well, Shakespeare,” Bree said.

“Are you crazy? How old is Juliet? Viola? Portia?”

“Fifteen, twenty-six, and thirty-four,” Bree said, who had no idea but was willing to guess.

“Bull,” Antonia said inelegantly. “The average life span of a person in Renaissance Europe was twenty-seven. Heck, Bree, I’m practically too old for the parts.”

“Well, that’s a point.”

“I heard she’s putting ten million dollars into the Players,” Antonia said in an awed undertone. “And I work cheap.”

“I wonder where she got the money.”

“Her husband was rich.”

“Her husband went bankrupt. All the assets of O’Rourke Investment Bank were seized by the feds.”

Antonia shrugged. “Insurance?”

“Maybe.” Bree wasn’t an expert in bankruptcy law, but the feds should have seized the policy along with the furniture.

Bree nudged her sister. “That older guy she’s with looks familiar. I think that’s Rutger VanHoughton. Maybe it’s his money.”

Tully and her entourage had paused at the foot of the auctioneer’s stage and turned to survey the audience. She and Cissy were trailed by two men in gray slacks, blue blazers, and cotton shirts and a browbeaten young black woman with the air of a hyperefficient assistant. Bree recognized the taller, older man from coverage in the
Wall Street Journal.
Rutger VanHoughton was Dutch, a banker, and one of the superrich who’d survived the volatilities of the international financial markets. He had white-blond hair, intense blue eyes, and a boxer’s body. There was something in the stance of the younger man with him that reminded Bree of Tully herself. She poked Antonia again and whispered, “They had a son, didn’t they? The O’Rourkes?”

Antonia shrugged.

“I’m pretty sure they do. Did. Whatever. He’s Russell the Second. I think they call him Fig.”

“Fig?” Antonia leaned forward a little. “Looks like a spoiled brat.”

“Like you can tell,” Bree said.

“Actors,” Antonia said, “are good at sizing people up instantly. It’s part of our craft.”

Aunt Cissy caught sight of them and waved wildly. Antonia waved enthusiastically back. Cissy nudged Tully and said something. For a brief moment, Tully’s eyes rested on Antonia and Bree. She bent her head sideways and, without directly addressing the young black woman who trailed behind her, spoke briefly.

“Her assistant,” Antonia said. “I’m good at sizing up occupations, too.”

Bree slouched back in her chair, shoved her feet under the chair in front of her, and sighed. Antonia leaned forward eagerly, her eyes locked on the group as they settled themselves in the front row seats. “So what do you think? I mean, I know her husband went bankrupt and all, but these superrich types are good at squirreling money in the Caymans and places like that. I’ll bet she’s got the bucks and I’ll bet she’s going to use them.”

“She’s raising ten million dollars, from what I heard, not funding the whole thing herself,” Bree said in a near whisper. “She hasn’t actually said she’d put her own money into the Players. She got whacked by the SEC for lying about her participation in some of her husband’s other business schemes, so she’s being pretty careful now. I wonder if she thinks Cissy’s going to cough up a pile.” Like Bree’s mother, Cissy had been left a respectable fortune by the grandparents. “But I’ll bet you the Dutchman’s involved in some way.”

VanHoughton’s bright blue glance met hers, and he smiled. Then he sat down next to Tully and put his arm casually over the back of her chair.

Tully sat with her straight, tailored back facing them. The auctioneer, with a stiff nod in Tully’s direction, signaled the start of bidding again, this time on a huge oil painting of Oglethorpe Square in Old Savannah.

Bree wasn’t sure what she should do when the O’Rourke assets came up for bid. She paged through the catalog. The desk was part of a lot that contained almost all of O’Rourke’s home office: a fine rosewood credenza, a set of worn leather chairs, a box of odds and ends, and a surprisingly utilitarian gray metal filing cabinet.

The auctioneer disposed of an imitation Louis Quatorze lounge, a ten-foot resin replica of the Sphinx at Giza, and a large silk ficus before he got to the O’Rourke collection. First up was a twenty-six-piece set of Rosenthal china. The reserve was at eight thousand dollars. Tully opened the bidding at five thousand and dropped out at seven. The bidding reached eight and then stalled. The lot went to a quiet, gray-suited man in the last row of seats. The pattern was repeated each time an O’Rourke lot came up for bid. Tully started the bidding, dropped out just before the reserve was reached, and then sat in equable silence as the lot went to the man in the corner.

Antonia nudged her sharply in the side. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” Bree said crossly. “I’m fine. What’s the matter with you?”

“You’re scowling.”

Bree put her hands to her face. “I am?”

“You’re scowling and you’re muttering under your breath and you look like you’re going to jump somebody.”

“I’m not going to jump anybody.”

Antonia eyed her doubtfully. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Bree shook her head impatiently. “I gave all that up, anyway. I told you.”

“Thumping people?”

“Yes.”

Antonia patted her hand sympathetically. “At least you usually thump people who’re in the middle of thumping somebody else.” Bree tried not to think about it. She did have a history of letting her temper get the better of her common sense, dating back to Antonia’s first day in kindergarten when a fellow sixth grader had smeared playground mud all over her sister’s Miss Kitty backpack. In return, Bree had smeared playground mud all over him. At thirteen, she’d coldcocked a shoplifter at Radio Shack who’d pushed over a little old lady on his way out the door. At seventeen, she’d blacked the eye of a guy beating on his seven-year-old son in the plumbing aisle at Home Depot. As a law student dealing with a sexist linebacker in Moot Court—well, everyone in her family preferred not to talk about that. Besides, Bree had paid for all the medical expenses herself, feeling honor-bound not to land the school clinic with the costs of a felony misdemeanor she’d committed voluntarily. Then there was the spectacular tackle of her much-loathed former lover, Payton the Rat—at Huey’s restaurant on the River Walk a month ago. The fallout from that particular escapade was so humiliating she’d sworn off losing her temper for the rest of her natural life. “I think she’s cheating.”

“Who?”

“Tully O’Rourke. She was supposed to come here to retrieve her husband’s former possessions, right? Well, she’s bidding up to a certain point, and then she drops out. And either that guy”—Bree indicated the gray man in the corner with a sideways movement of her chin—“or that woman over there ends up with whatever’s up there.”

Antonia half rose in her chair and stared frankly at the woman seated at the opposite end of the room from the man in gray. “Jeez!” Antonia said. “Do you know who that is?”

Bree grabbed her and shoved her back into her seat. “Will you hush up, for heaven’s sake?”

“That’s Barrie Fordham!”

“Barrie Fordham?” It took Bree a minute, and then the penny dropped. “Ciaran Fordham’s wife? Wow.” She resisted the temptation to stand up and stare the way Antonia had. Ciaran Fordham was the most famous Shakespearean actor since Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud.

“Oh, my gosh.” Antonia gasped, gulped, and went into a coughing fit. Bree pounded her on the back until the coughing subsided and she sat back up in her chair. “Sorry,” she whispered, “I just thought of something and I got so excited I swallowed my spit. You don’t suppose that Tully O’Rourke is going to get Sir Ciaran Fordham for the Shakespeare Players! Oh. My. God.”

Bree shook her head. “You wouldn’t think so. But classical theater’s fallen on pretty hard times and maybe he needs the money. Ciaran Fordham. Good grief.” She’d had a major crush on him since she was twelve years old and saw him in a PBS production about Cleopatra. He’d played Julius Caesar, and Bree hadn’t seen anyone that sexy her entire life. He had peculiarly penetrating blue eyes, a tormented brow, and a husky, golden baritone that made music out of a script that forced him to growl lines like, “Cleopatra! My love! My life! Caesar salutes you!” Bree choked back a laugh. “I can’t believe it. I’m too intimidated to turn around and look at her now that I know who she is.” She paused. “Um . . .
he’s
not sitting there with her, is he?”

Antonia looked over her shoulder. “Not a chance.” Then, with the insouciance of the true theater professional, she added, “She’s a terrific actress in her own right, you know. I saw them in
The Winter’s Tale
. She was terrific. His Leontes wasn’t half bad. None of us thought he was anywhere near par, I remember that. But it was awfully soon after his heart attack, so nobody expected too much out of him, but still. He’s Ciaran Fordham.”

Antonia’s theater gossip slid in one ear and out the other. Bree had never really paid attention to Barrie Fordham—she supposed it was actually Lady Fordham, since the great actor had been knighted—but she did now. Fragile. That was the word. The actress was slender, with a ballerina’s grace of movement and a mobile, expressive mouth. Her eyes were huge, sunken, and faintly shadowed. She raised her auction paddle, and Bree turned back to the bidding with a start.

The lot containing Russell O’Rourke’s desk was up for auction.