Free Avenging Angels by Mary Stanton Page A

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