Avenging Angels (4 page)

Bree nudged her sister. “Give me your paddle.”

“What for? You’re not going to bid on anyth . . .” Antonia stopped in midsentence, and then her voice rose to a shriek. “You’re kidding. You’re going to bid on that desk? Why?”

“Will you keep your voice down, please?”

“But, Bree!”

“Hush.” Bree grabbed the auction paddle and held it out of reach. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She doubted she could get the desk for anything close to what she could afford to pay, but she owed her new client an attempt, at least. And besides, she was very interested in how Tully O’Rourke would view the intrusion of a new bidder in the middle of what looked to be a not very expert scam.

She raised the paddle. “One thousand dollars, for the Empire desk and contents.”

Barrie Fordham jerked around in her chair and stared at Bree with the wide, startled gaze of a rabbit caught in the headlights. “Seven thousand,” she said in her beautifully modulated voice. “Seven thousand dollars. And I’m not going to stop with that.”

La propriete c’est le vol.
(Property is theft.)

—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,

 

 

 

 

“Whatever in the world possessed you to bid on that damn Russell’s desk?” Aunt Cissy was a lot shorter than Bree, who was five-nine in flat shoes, and she had to stand on tiptoe to reach her niece’s ear.

“I didn’t get it,” Bree pointed out.

“Well, no, of course you didn’t. But Tully ended up paying twenty percent over the reserve for her own furniture. And it isn’t even authentic Empire!”

“I thought Barrie Fordham bought that stuff,” Bree said. “Or did she?”

“You know very well what I mean, Bree Beaufort.”

“It wasn’t Tully O’Rourke’s furniture,” Bree pointed out. “It belonged to the federal government. You’re a tax-paying citizen, right?”

“Lord, yes.”

“In a sense, Aunt Cissy, then, it was your furniture more than Tully O’Rourke’s.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Well, there’s a little bit of skullduggery going on, don’t you think? Mrs. O’Rourke’s just purchased all this stuff for a lot less than she should have. And nobody else seems to have had a chance to bid on it at all.”

“I hope you’re not turning into a little prig, Bree.”

Bree thought about this for a second and then made a rueful face. “Ouch. Well, there’s little danger of that, with you to remind me, and all. I apologize for sounding like a prig. But not for thinking it’s wrong to cheat. And Tully’s hardly overpaid for that stuff. The desk is fake, but the credenza that comes with it isn’t. The credenza’s worth a fair bit.”

“Still,” Cissy fussed. “Oh, I don’t know. This whole thing is just as tacky as can be. And you’re just adding another layer to the tackiness, niece.”

Bree, half listening, was watching Antonia charm Rutger VanHoughton and Fig O’Rourke. She was also watching Tully O’Rourke watch Antonia charm Mr. VanHoughton and the heir to whatever remained of the O’Rourke fortune.

“And that nice cloisonné jar and the inkstand came with the job lot. Those items are worth a fair bit, too. Besides . . .” She glanced sideways at her aunt. “Mrs. O’Rourke made out pretty well on the other stuff, Aunt Cissy. I’m assuming that the successful bidders were putative.”

Cissy blinked a little, so Bree clarified. “The gentleman in the gray suit and Lady Fordham were both bidding on behalf of Mrs. O’Rourke, right?”

Cissy pursed her lips and said with some heat, “If Tully’s friends want to make up for that absolutely awful time she went through, who’s to complain?”

“Well, the auction house, for one, and the federal government, which was expecting to recoup a reasonable amount of the money lost to the O’Rourke bankruptcy, for another.” Bree shook her head. “Y’all are skating on some pretty thin ice.”

Twenty feet away, Antonia burst into a delightful trill of laughter. Rutger VanHoughton laid a proprietary hand on her arm. Fig, whose features were a watery shadow of his mother’s, glared at VanHoughton and laid a hand on Antonia’s opposite arm. Tully O’Rourke’s pale white skin flushed pink and her eyes narrowed to nasty slits. Bree took an involuntary step forward. “Cissy? We’d better go rescue Antonia.”

“Oh, Lord,” Cissy said. “I didn’t notice. When Tonia puts her mind to vampin’, there’s not a man in the room that’s going to shake loose. Tully’s not going to like that at all.” She tucked her hand under Bree’s elbow and pulled her toward the group clustered at the auction podium.

The O’Rourke estate had been the final items up for bid, and the warehouse had emptied out pretty quickly after the last item had sold. The food and drink had been whisked away and the sold items wheeled out to the loading docks. The only people remaining were Tully and her friends, the head auctioneer, who was looking very unhappy, and a lone cameraman from the local TV station. Cissy approached them with a cheerful “Whoo-ee!” and shoved Bree between Antonia and Rutger VanHoughton, so that the two of them faced Tully O’Rourke and left VanHoughton standing rather awkwardly all by himself.

“This is my other niece, Tully,” Cissy said proudly. “This is my sister’s oldest girl, Brianna. The best attorney in Savannah, if not the whole state of Georgia. This girl here”—and she shook Bree’s arm so energetically Bree lost her balance—“was the one that got that dreadful Chandler child out of trouble just a few days ago. I assume you read about that.”

Tully’s face showed mild interest. It may have been more than mild interest, but like Cissy, Tully seemed to be a Botox devotee, so it was hard to tell. “Well, I never,” she said politely. “I could use a good Georgia lawyer right now. Unless”—she turned to the auctioneer with a consciously charming smile—“you’ve reconsidered your position, Mr. Finnegan?”

“Bert,” Finnegan said. “Y’all call me Bert.” He mopped the back of his neck with a large handkerchief. “The thing is, Miz O’Rourke, it’s that I’ve got to account to the feds for the price on all this stuff. And my own bosses, too.”

“You made the reserve every time,” Tully said. There was an edge to her voice. “And in one case, you made well over the reserve.” Her eyes were a deep, almost plum-colored black, and they slid over Bree in cool speculation. “What’s your legal opinion, Miss Beaufort?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have a clear understanding of the question,” Bree said pleasantly. “Not only that, I’m sure your own legal team could provide you with better counsel than I can, at this point.”

Tully’s coal-black gaze drifted to the man in the gray suit, who, with Barrie Fordham and the oppressed-looking assistant, had somehow segregated the TV cameraman from the main group. Smart move, Bree thought. The last thing Tully O’Rourke needed was more bad press. “You mean Barney? He’s headed back to his New York firm on the noon flight. As for Barrie—well, what can I say? I have such wonderful friends.” She shook her head in mock wonder. “I had no idea they were going to show up here today to help me get my things back. Besides”—her voice chilled a few degrees—“it isn’t as if there were a ton of other bidders.” That speculative gaze brushed Bree again. “So I’m afraid I don’t quite understand Mr. Finnegan’s problem, either, Miss Beaufort.”

“We should have cleared fifty k profit on this auction, easy,” Finnegan said loudly. “If the right bidders had shown up, we could have made more, maybe.”

“Well, Mr. Finnegan,” Bree said reluctantly, “speaking strictly as a private citizen and not as counsel to Mrs. O’Rourke, she does seem to have a point. There weren’t any other serious bidders.”

“Except you,” Tully said.

“Except me,” Bree agreed.

“There, you see!” Tully squeezed Finnegan’s hand.

“This was property of the federal government. They expected to make more than they got, too. It’ll be a cold day in Tahiti when they let me handle another government job after this.”

“And why should you give a hoorah in hell about some old government busybody?”

“As for the fact that there weren’t any other bidders,” Finnegan said, with increasing heat, “y’all are right. There weren’t any other bidders except you, Miz Beaufort, and that man there in the gray suit, who seems to be a New York lawyer who knows you pretty well, Miz O’Rourke, and that Miz Fordham, who knows you pretty well, too. An auction like this one, we send out special invitations, if you get my drift. To our good customers.” He exposed his teeth in a cheerless grin. “Got the invitations printed up at our usual print shop, like always, and you know what?”

Nobody said anything.

“Misprint about the date.” Finnegan tapped Bree on the shoulder. “Those special invitations all went out saying the O’Rourke auction was a week from now. So the customers we were counting on are all gonna be here bright and early next Sunday morning, and there’s not a thing for any one of them to buy. And you know what else? The second round of notices saying that the auction was this afternoon at two P.M. got changed around to eight in the goddamn morning. Who shows up for an auction at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning?”

“You did,” Tully said.

“Yeah, well, word come on down that we had to. I’d sure like to know who you talked to at my headquarters, Miz O’Rourke.”

“I’m not sure why you think any of this is my problem,” Tully said. “The stuff’s sold. I’m not responsible for a screwup at your printer’s. My advice to you is to suck it up.”

“Right.” Finnegan mopped the back of his neck again.

“Right. Well. We’re looking into it.” He nodded to Bree, seemingly unable to meet Tully O’Rourke’s triumphant black gaze. “You’ll be hearing from us, Miz Beaufort.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

“But I’m not representing Mrs. O’Rourke,” Bree called after him.

“Sure you are,” Cissy said comfortably. “This is a local problem and you need local representation, Tully. And I can’t think of a smarter lawyer than my niece. You just go ahead and write her a check with a nice retainer and she’ll take care of that old grouch Finnegan in nothing flat.”

“I’m very sorry,” Bree said pleasantly. “But I’m not able to take on new clients at the moment. I can offer you a few names, if you’re in need of local representation.”

“What stuff, Bree,” Cissy said. “Tully, talk some sense into my crazy niece.”

Tully shrugged. “I could use a friendly face here in Savannah. I’m so excited about starting up the Shakespeare Players again. And there’s bound to be all kinds of contracts and such that will crop up. There’s the lease of the theater, for one thing, and the contracts for the actors.”

“You’d need a specialist in entertainment law for that,” Bree said.

“It’ll be a wonderful thing for the community,” Cissy agreed. “And a marvelous chance for Antonia.” She smiled meaningfully at Tully. “You do know that Antonia’s a wonderful actress. She’s my other favorite niece.”

“Absolutely I can arrange an audition,” Tully said. Her smile was firmly in place, but her eyes were glacial. “No guarantees, of course. Haddad is a perfect demon about that. Artistic integrity. But the poor thing deserves at least a chance. Now, what do you say to that, Bree?”

No guarantees my foot, Bree thought. She’d sooner have rabies than give Antonia a job. But her sister was glowing like the sun at high noon.

Tully cocked her head and added shrewdly, “I do believe you’re in a bit of a state over Mr. Finnegan’s little controversy. You realize the man’s just after a bigger commission.”

Bree’s temper stirred, which was not a good thing. Tully’s persistence didn’t surprise her; she’d met a lot of spoiled rich people in her time, and the best of them hated to be balked. The worst of them believed you could buy anyone, if the price was right, and Tully had that familiar cynical glint to her expression. She would be hell to work for, and worse to represent.

But then there was Antonia, vibrating with hope. Silently, Bree counted backwards from twenty-five. When she reached eleven, she said, “I can make some recommendations for local counsel, Mrs. O’Rourke.”

“As good as you?” Tully switched on her charm as easily as slipping on a pair of shoes. She tucked her arm into Bree’s. “Just when Cecelia here is telling me you’re the best. I never settle for second best, Miss Beaufort. Never. I tell you what. Cissy, you bring Bree here and her sister on over to my house this afternoon about two o’clock. I’m having a late lunch for some of my friends. Haddad will be there. I’m sure you’d like to meet him.”

Antonia’s eyes widened.

“And Ciaran, too, of course.” She hugged Bree’s arm close to her side and said confidingly, “He’s promised to become a permanent part of the Savannah Shakespeare Players. Sir Ciaran Fordham. The greatest Shakespearean actor of our day. You’re one of the first people to know. So you’ll keep it to yourself for the time being, won’t you? But it’s truly exciting news for Savannah.” She stepped back, her expression wistful. “If only my Russ were here to see this. I think you would have been one of the few people who’d really understand my Russell, Bree. If ever a man was unjustly accused, he was. If ever a man deserved better, he did.”

Well, she was about to find out about Russell O’Rourke, wasn’t she? That—and if Tully O’Rourke was the kind of person who had driven a man to suicide, and to a place in the circles of Hell.

Just a little touch of star quality.

—Tim Rice, “Buenos Aires,”
Evita

 

 

 

“How do I look?” Antonia tugged nervously at her black bustier. She’d been so nervous at the thought of meeting Ciaran Fordham and Anthony Haddad at the same party that she’d only changed once, into an outfit that had brought her luck at three auditions: black leather pants, black bustier, and a pair of long gold mesh earrings that tangled in her red hair when she tossed her head.

“Fabulous,” Bree said absently. She parallel parked her little Ford Fiesta into a place not much larger than the length of a shopping cart, in front of a row of clapboardsided town houses, all painted white. Oglethorpe Square was less than a quarter mile from their town house overlooking the Savannah River, but Antonia had gotten shrill about sweat, so she’d reluctantly agreed to drive. St. James Episcopal Church towered over them at the east end of the square, the carillon clanging out “Abide with Me” at the cadence of a funeral march. A mid-nineteenth-century Carpenter Gothic mansion, painted pink, sat elegantly opposite the church. It had been a restaurant for the past fifty years, named, with a kind of direct and unambiguous naïveté, the Pink House. A clutch of churchgoers came down the steps of the restaurant, looking well fed and contented with the cool and sunny November afternoon.