Ten
Begin at the beginning...go on till you come to the end; then stop.
—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
“Was Benjamin Skinner murdered?” Bree asked her new employees. She sat at the head of the twelve-foot table in the conference room. Ronald Parchese was at her left. Petru sat at her right. Sasha sat in the corner. Mrs. Mather perched on a chair at the end, a dust cloth in one hand and a can of furniture wax in the other. (Keeping the place clean, she’d told a skeptical Bree, came with the rent. Bree thought it was just plain nosiness.) “That question’s at the heart of the case. Our client, Liz Overshaw, is convinced he was. It’s our job to find out.”
“Too exciting,” Ronald murmured. “I watch Law & Order, but that’s about it for my investigative technique.”
“This Skinner fell off a boat and drowned, I thought,” Petru said.
Bree rubbed her forehead. “Yes. I know. Maybe he was pushed? I don’t know.”
“If he was pushed, the son musta done it,” Lavinia said. “That’s all who was on the boat he fell off of. A disgrace, that’s what it is. A chile killing his own pa.”
“Liz doesn’t think it was the son. Or rather,” Bree corrected herself, “she believes the murderer is one of four people.”
“There was somebody else on the boat?” Ron asked.
“Not as far as I know. We’re looking at investigating these four people.” Bree looked at her notes. “Douglas Fairchild, Carlton Montifiore, John Stubblefield, and Chastity McFarland.”
“Who-ee,” Lavinia said. “Some big names you got there.”
Bree nodded ruefully. She referred to the extensive notes she’d made after a preliminary Internet search on Skinner. “Yes. Douglas Fairchild is a prominent investor here in Savannah and a partner in a lot of Skinner’s local projects. This condo called Island Dream, for one. John Stubblefield is the senior partner of one of Georgia’s most prominent law firms. They represent Skinner and his family.” She paused. “We’ve already been warned off that guy. Which makes me wonder if there isn’t something to Liz’s suspicions. Anyhow—Carlton Montifiore is a local builder. He puts up a lot of Skinner’s buildings here in Georgia, including Island Dream. And Chastity McFarland is, or rather was, Ben Skinner’s mistress.”
“Most times it’s the wife,” Lavinia said wisely. “This Ben got a wife? Olivia done for Josiah in just that way. He’s got some grudge against women, that Josiah. You got to watch yourself with him, Bree.”
It took Bree a minute to figure out that Lavinia was referring to the bodies buried in the cemetery outside.
“He’s a widower,” Bree said. “Skinner, that is.”
“Any of them suspects on the boat?” Lavinia asked.
“No,” Bree said firmly. “None of them were on the boat.”
Lavinia subsided with a thoughtful air.
“We need to add the son and his wife to the suspect list, don’t we?” Ronald asked. “I mean, I know it’s screamingly obvious that they would be the murderers. So obvious that they might be after all, if you catch my drift.”
“So obvious that it can’t be them that it must be them,” Petru said. “Hm.”
“I guess we should,” Bree said. “But Liz was pretty sure it was one of the four on the newscast.”
Ron lifted both his eyebrows. “Did she say why?”
“Yes,” Bree said.
“And?”
She sighed. “She said Skinner’s ghost told her.” She raised both hands to forestall the storm of skepticism. “I know, I know. It’s totally insane.”
“It’s important to know how he told her,” Lavinia said seriously. “In a dream? In a daytime appearance? All these things matter, with ghosts.”
“I’ll ask,” Bree said dryly.
“I have to admit, this is ke-vite a good reason to ignore the relatives as suspects,” Petru said. “It is not often that the dead are allowed to speak.”
“Still and all,” Ron said. “Skinner could be wrong. It’s happened before. The dead aren’t exactly infallible.”
“Don’t I know it,” Petru grumbled.
Everyone nodded wisely except for Bree, who sighed and said, “We’ll take a close look at Grainger and Jennifer Skinner. Actually,” she added, “I know Jennifer Skinner, formerly Jennifer Pendergast, and if she’s as much of a screaming pain in the neck now as she was in school, I wouldn’t put it past her to kill her father-in-law.” She wrote Jennifer’s name in capitals at the bottom of her suspect list. “Now. The question is, where to start?”
“Perhaps we should recruit a professional,” Petru suggested. “In my country, there are many unemployed persons from the KGB who would be ke-vite anxious to help. This is not so true here, perhaps. Has anyone recommended a good private eye?”
Everyone at the table looked expectantly at her. Bree thought of the card Professor Cianquino had given her with a flash of irritation. It was time she started making her own decisions. And Gabriel Striker was a little too bossy for her taste. This was her case, her client, her employees. “Let’s see how well we do on our own first.”
“You want to find out about those Pendergasts first thing,” Lavinia said. “Hm, hm. There’s bad blood in that family.”
“Excellent suggestion,” Bree said, with false enthusiasm. Positive reinforcement was a management technique she intended to use a lot, to help offset the lousy pay. And since Lavinia seemed to have joined the staff for free, she might as well roll with it. “But we need to gather some facts first. We need to get the coroner’s report and everything the police have on the case. Ron, perhaps you can take care of that. And Petru, I’d like you to research Skinner himself. We need a complete picture. Google him. Start with magazine articles, books, newspaper stories, and make a list of his relatives, business partners. Pay special attention to anyone he’s annoyed. There’s a ton of lawsuits. He spent half his life in court either being sued or suing somebody else. Concentrate on the big cases, within the last year. Take a good look at those he won. I’d skip over anything with a corporate plaintiff or defendant. Murder’s usually a personal thing, and I doubt that anybody on the board of Pepsi-Cola, for example, would be out for Skinner’s blood for real. If you need any case references, go online with Lexis and hunt them up. We’re looking for connections between Skinner and our four main suspects. Fairchild, Montifiore, Stubblefield, and Chastity McFarland. And Google those guys, too.”
Ronald made neat notes into his BlackBerry. Petru scrawled on a legal-sized yellow pad in cryptic Russian.
“I’m going to tackle our suspects, one by one,” Bree said. “So if you guys come up with anything urgent ...” she waved her cell phone. “Call me, okay?”
“Anything else, ‘ma-am’?” Ronald asked, giving her a mock salute.
Bree nodded. Her parents had called that morning, with a whole raft of suggestions about the open house for the firm the following week. Ron could take care of most of them while she was out sleuthing around. And she’d been worried about having enough work to keep Petru and Ron busy full time.
“Oh, my. You do look grim,” Ronald said. “Nothing real to worry about, I hope.”
“It’s my mother.”
Petru looked extremely mournful. Bree didn’t want to ask him why. She was sure Russians had strong feelings about their mothers, along with everything else.
“She put a notice in the business journal about the opening of the practice.”
“So we may be getting new clients?” Ronald said. “Excellent. That’s nothing to be grim about.”
“Of course not,” Bree said. “I mean, that’s the idea behind announcing a new practice. It’s the invitations to the open house.”
“What invitations?” Ronald asked. Then, as the penny dropped, “Oh! Is that terrific or what! A party!”
“It’s for next week. The tenth. From five to seven, and I will want to introduce you all, of course. My mother’s booked 700 Drayton.”
“The Mansion at Forsyth Park!” Ronald said. “Is this exciting or what!”
“So please, everyone, put it on your calendars.”
“I’ll have to see about flowers and food, of course,” Ronald said. “You know, my own mother’s absolutely delighted that I left Dillard’s for a more professional career. But I still have the designer’s touch, Bree!” He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “You leave all of that to me.”
“I’d love to leave it all to you,” Bree said frankly. “Use Savannah Designs for the florist. Talk to the party guy at 700 Drayton about the food. Knowing my mother, we should probably plan for sixty guests. And if there’s nothing else?”
“Y’all want me to tell you about those Pendergasts?” Mrs. Mather said. “You got that Josiah laying in wait everytime you walk out that door.”
Bree smiled at her and said kindly, “Let’s the two of us sit down later today, Mrs. Mather.” She glanced at her watch. “I have an appointment with Liz Overshaw at eleven. Okay, guys. Here we go.”
The headquarters of Skinner Worldwide, Inc., occupied fifteen of the floors in the twenty-story Skinner Tower in Atlanta. But from what Bree could gather, most of the top executives in Skinner’s organization had followed Skinner’s example and bought or built vacation homes on Tybee Island. “Most of the key decisions,” Liz Overshaw said as she led Bree into her sunroom, “are made in the bar at the island country club.” She pointed at a wicker chair facing windows that overlooked the shoreline. “Sit down.”
Bree sat. Sunshine flooded directly into her eyes. She got up, moved the chair at an angle, and sat down again. Liz’s house was old, built in the Southern Plantation syle with a wraparound porch and gray clapboard. The interior had a hasty look, with an indifference to color and style very much like Liz herself. The bones of the house were good, though, and the view of the Atlantic was superb.
Liz looked even more unkempt than she had when Bree met her at Professor Cianquino’s. Her face was sallow. Her short, graying hair was swept back with a carelessly tied scarf. She wore a baggy pair of trousers and a light pullover top with the sleeves shoved up past her elbows. She paced up and down the length of the sunroom with short, agitated steps and shot a malevolent glance at Bree. “I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want to be bothered with this until you had some results.”
“I’m not going to ask you about ...” Bree hesitated a moment. In for a penny, in for a pound. So she said bluntly, “... the haunting. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with the case or what I can do for you.” Unless, she added to herself, you’re crazy as a bedbug and this whole thing’s an exercise in nuttiness. “So let’s set that aside.”
Liz’s shoulders relaxed a little; her restless pacing slowed.
“But I’m going to need some background material before I can go any further. And we can get on a little more efficiently if you wouldn’t mind sitting down.” She smiled. “I’m gettin’ dizzy just watching you wear a path in the carpet.”
Liz looked at her feet with a bewildered air. There was a dun-colored love seat at right angles to Bree; she sat in it abruptly, as if somebody had shoved her.
“Maybe a little coffee would help things along?” Bree suggested. “That nice housekeeper who let me in probably makes a pretty good cup.”
Liz stared at her. A shadowy smile lit her face, and for a moment, Bree caught a glimpse of the pretty woman she must have been twenty years ago. She turned her head over her shoulder and shouted, “Elphine! Coffee!” She ran her hands through her hair and leaned back with a sigh. “Satisfied? Can we get on with it?”
Bree took a yellow pad from her briefcase and prepared to take notes. “Let’s start with some possible business enemies. You’ve been with Mr. Skinner a long time, haven’t you? Were you closely involved in his affairs from the beginning?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
Bree shrugged. “I won’t know until you tell me. But I’m walking into this absolutely blind, Liz. I’ve been thinking about how to wade into this case. If the police believe Mr. Skinner died of drowning secondary to a heart attack, there’s not going to be a lot of forensic evidence against it. So I’ve sent for the coroner’s report, the autopsy, and the rest, but it’s all going to scream ‘drowning secondary to a heart attack.’ Don’t you think?”
Liz pursed her lips. “Maybe. And maybe there’s been a cover-up. Or just plain incompetence.”
Bree shook her head. “The man’s too well known for a botched investigation. The media’s all over it. And if there’s been a cover-up, the big question is why? The ‘why’ is what I’m after.”
“And you think tramping around in the past is going to turn up a lot of maggots?” She bared her teeth in an unlovely grin. “Well, hell. You could be right.” There was a soft rustling at the lanai doors, and her housekeeper came in with a tray. She was a motherly looking woman in comfortable shoes and a crisp housedress, with shrewd eyes. She handed Bree a cup of coffee and said, “You’re Miss Beaufort?”
Bree smiled up at her. “I am.”
“You know my auntie, I think. Miss Lavinia?” Her eyes, dark, unreadable, looked into Bree’s for a long moment.
Bree wriggled a little under the scrutiny, then nodded, “Yes. I do.”
“She thought maybe you could give me some he’p with a problem of mine. My stepson Rebus. Got himself killed, Rebus did.”
“Of course,” Bree said cordially. She didn’t much like personal injury cases, but she couldn’t turn down a relative of Lavinia’s. She reached into her purse and handed her business card to the housekeeper. “Just call my office and either Mr. Lucheta or Mr. Parchese will set an appointment up for you.”
“Anything else I can help you with?” Liz asked sarcastically. “A couple of new client referrals, maybe?” She looked over her shoulder at her housekeeper. “That’ll do, Elphine.”
Elphine left the sunroom with the same graceful dignity. Bree watched her go thoughtfully, then asked Liz, “She’s been with you awhile? Mrs. Mather, I mean?”
“Who, Elphine? No. As a matter of fact, I signed her on the day before Skinner died. My last housekeeper came down with some damn fool thing and quit. Or did she break a leg? I don’t remember what happened. They all come from an agency. Anyway, the agency sent Elphine when the other one crapped out on me.” She drummed her fingers on the chair arm. “I’ve got a meeting later this afternoon with some possible investors. Can we get on with this?”
“You’d started to tell me about Mr. Skinner’s business enemies. Did you know him well early on?”
“I didn’t start to tell you a damn thing. But there’s no secret to my career, at least. God knows the business magazines have been over it enough. He hired me twenty years ago. I was just out of Wharton, and wanted to make CFO with somebody, anybody, as fast as I could. He was just starting to expand the business overseas, then.” She fell silent, her gaze turned inward. “Skinner,” she said after a long moment, “was not a nice guy. He was a user. He was demanding. And vengeful. If you crossed him, only the devil could help you, because God sure wouldn’t. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass for his wife or kids or anybody else’s.”
“You have a family of your own?” Bree asked.
“Me?” She snorted. “What the hell would I do with a family? Business is all I need. It was all Skinner needed, too.” She shook her head admiringly. “I’ll tell you something, Miss Beaufort. He was one hell of a businessman. Everything he touched turned green. I left Wharton with a hundred thousand dollars in school loans and the clothes on my back. Within five years, I was worth two million. In twenty, I became really rich.” She lifted her hand and held it palm out. “I’ve got a place in Palm Beach, a flat in London ...” She trailed off. “What are you looking at me like that for?” she snapped. “Do you have any idea how much I’m worth? I’ve got ...” She stopped and bit her lip. Then, with a defiant air, “everything I’ve ever wanted out of life.”
Bree looked down at her yellow pad, where she’d absentmindedly doodled a weeping face. She didn’t know if she felt sorry for Liz Overshaw or not. She for sure didn’t like her much. “It’s an impressive achievement, surely.” She took a deep breath. “In all that time, Mr. Skinner must have made a lot of enemies.”
“You know,” Liz said with an air of surprise. “I don’t believe he did. Oh, there were a half dozen people over the years who might have wanted to see him dead. But not many more than that. He was a son of a bitch, but he was an honest son of a bitch. He never shafted anybody, or at least,” she amended, “anybody who didn’t deserve it.”
Bree blinked a little.
“Yeah,” Liz shifted in her chair. “I know what his reputation is. I didn’t say he was nice. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t a crook. And he didn’t tolerate crooks.”
“You said maybe half a dozen sincere enemies over the years. Let’s start with the most recent ones. And the ones who were around Savannah when he passed on.”
“On the theory that the ones in the far past would have knocked him off by now?” Liz shook her head. “You don’t need to look there. I told you where you need to look. Skinner was murdered by one of those four. Fairchild, Montifiore ...”
“Stubblefield and Miss McFarland,” Bree finished for her. She took a deep breath. “Okay, then. What about motive?”
“Beats me.”
“Is there an ongoing connection among the four of them?
“Of course.” Liz frowned with exasperation. “I thought everybody in Savannah knew about it.”
“I’ve only been in town a week or so.” Bree had practiced law in her father’s firm for five years. She’d been exceptionally good at handling difficult clients. She called on those skills now. “So if you could fill me in, I’d appreciate it. Let me guess. I know they were working on a project together?”
“That’s right. Island Dream. It’s a fifteen-story condominium about three miles from here. Beachfront. Fairchild and Skinner bought up the twenty acres surrounding an old fort on the channel quite a while ago. Skinner was thinking about restoring the fort—well, turning it into a family home, anyway. But Lyn died, his wife, and his son wasn’t interested, so Fairchild bought him out. Tore the fort down and built Island Dream. Skinner was livid.”
The Savannah Historical Society was fiercely protective of historic buildings. Bree was surprised that the county had allowed the demolition of the building and said so.
“There was a bit of a stink about it. But Fairchild’s able to twist a lot of arms in town. Or maybe it’s because his family’s been around for ages and he knows where the bodies are buried. Anyhow, he got around the Historical Society. Skinner was bound and determined he wasn’t going to get around him.
“So, Skinner had his knickers in a twist because Fairchild told him he was going to rebuild the fort into six town homes, and the project turned into a hundred and fifteen multimillion-dollar condos. He didn’t have a legal leg to stand on, but he sued Fairchild and Montifiore, the builders, just the same.”
“I didn’t realize Mr. Skinner was fond of old buildings,” Bree said.
Liz snorted. “Not him. He was frantic over the lost profit.” She smiled reminiscently. “That was Ben all over, though. He was worth close to a billion dollars when he was killed and he got hot under the collar over ten million or so.”
“So Montifiore and Fairchild were defendants in the lawsuit,” Bree said. “What about John Stubblefield?”
“He’d drawn up the original contract turning the fort over to Fairchild. His firm represents Skinner, or did, until Skinner sued him for incompetent representation. That firm skates on the thin edge of the wedge anyhow. Skinner swore to put Stubblefield, Marwick out of business for good.”
“Some significant motives here,” Bree observed. “Would you say any of these lawsuits had a legitimate cause of action?”
“Is that a mealymouthed way of asking if these were spite cases? These were spite cases, no question. Part of it was Skinner thought Fairchild had pulled one over on him and part of it was the fact that Fairchild had the pull to get the fort pulled down and Skinner didn’t. So he didn’t need a legitimate reason, as you call it. Not Skinner. He never was one to lie down and let anybody walk over him, much less a bunch of tight-assed, brainless parasites running through their granddaddies’ fortunes.” She smiled—a rather mean smile. Bree’s family knew the Fairchilds, and she had to admit there was some truth to Liz’s malicious assessment.
“Grainger and Jennifer,” she said. “I know they aren’t on your list of suspects ...”
“Skinner’s list. Not mine.”
“Yes,” Bree said noncommittally. “Did he get along with his son?”
“Could have been worse. Skinner expected a lot of the kid. I think he was pretty proud of him when he graduated from medical school. Certainly had no objection to footing the bills to get him set up in his practice in Savannah. Now, he didn’t lavish tons of money on the boy. Grainger has a trust fund, a modest one, considering Skinner’s own net worth. And he won’t get a dime more now that Skinner’s dead. That was all settled years ago. So I wouldn’t say there was any problem on Skinner’s side.”
“That implies Grainger had a problem with his dad.”
“Grainger. Yes. Good old Grainger.” Liz squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. “You know that Skinner pretty much came from nothing. Dirt-poor Georgia farmer, yada, yada. And Grainger married up.”
“Jennifer Pendergast that was,” Bree said. “Sure. Her family’s been in Georgia since Oglethorpe banned all the lawyers.”
“I suppose you knew her.” Liz smiled that wintry smile. “You debs stick together, huh? Well, Miss Jennifer didn’t quite approve of dear old dad’s country ways. Especially when she discovered Grainger had inherited all he was going to get, and there wasn’t any more where that came from.”
“So she may have had a grudge.”
“May have. Ha! I’ll tell you one thing, that young lady was doing her damndest to get Skinner to change his mind about the Skinner Foundation.”
“I’ve heard of the Skinner Foundation,” Bree said. “It subsidizes all those PBS programs.”
“That’s the one. And a lot more besides that. Anyhow, that’s what benefits from Skinner’s death. Miss Jennifer wanted to change all that.”
“Did she?”
Liz shrugged. “Maybe. Why don’t you ask her?”
“I just might.”
Liz rose, yawned, and stretched her arms over her head. “That’s it. God, I’m beat.” She sat down abruptly and ran one hand over her face. “So is your curiosity satisfied? You’re going to get on with finding out who murdered Skinner? Cianquino assured me that you’d get results. Are you going to get results? I’m not real impressed with what you and your firm have accomplished so far.”
Bree tucked her yellow pad back into her briefcase. There was, after all, a limit to how much a lawyer had to indulge a client. She kept her tone as polite as she knew how. “May I ask you something? About this idea Mr. Skinner was murdered?”
Liz scowled.
“Mr. Skinner was on board the Sea Mew when he had his heart attack and fell into the ocean. The only two people on board were his son and his daughter-in-law. I know what ... um, Mr. Skinner told you. But what about you? Do you think they killed him and lied to the police? Do you think the two of them are innocent, and that he died of a slow-acting poison somebody slipped into his drink at the country club?” Bree allowed herself a hint of exasperation. “Was somebody else on board invisible to his son and his wife? Not aliens, I hope.”
“He didn’t drown in the sea,” Liz said, after a long minute.
“He didn’t?” Bree said.
“He didn’t drown in the sea.” Liz shivered, although the heat of the sun was winning the battle with the air-conditioning and the sunroom was warming to an uncomfortable temperature. Her eyes widened until the whites surrounding the pupils were visible. Her voice was barely above a whisper, and for the third time, like an incantation:
“Skinner didn’t die in the sea.”