Angel Condemned by Mary Stanton Page A

much to go on there,” Ron observed. “Anything else?”
    “An interview with Chambers in his local paper, upon his return to the United States immediately after the event. He vows to dedicate his career to the recovery of the artifact and the body of our unfortunate client.” Petru placed a second piece of paper on the conference table. It was a photo of a younger, somewhat haggard Chambers. A thin, fierce-eyed woman stood next to him. The article was a few short paragraphs iterating Chambers’s commitment to recovering the Cross. The photo caption read, Professor Allard Chambers and wife Jillian . Bree wondered at that. Jillian was a professor, too, wasn’t she?
    Petru smoothed his rough black beard with one hand. “There are few mentions of the professor’s search for the artifact throughout the years. I did not bother to print them out as they provided little of substance to the case at hand—other than proving that the search continued. There were no results until eight months ago, when Chambers e-mailed his university that he had successfully recovered the Cross. But not, alas, the bones of our client. It may be worthwhile to note that the university had just notified those on the dig that the funding for these trips was to be cut.”
    “Oh, dear,” Ron said.
    “Yes. The professor had quite a motive for fraudulent representation.”
    “If he was the one who made the fake cross,” Bree said. “White has a lot of contacts in the art world. He’s more likely to have commissioned a fake, don’t you think?”
    Petru pursed his lips. “From my own time in Istanbul, I can tell you that there are many, many opportunities to have elegant copies made by those more interested in preserving historical continuity and the past than in the strictness of an actual artifact.”
    “It’d be easy to find someone to make a good copy?” Ron said. “If that’s what you mean, why don’t you just say so? Honestly, Petru. You’d think we bill by the word here.”
    Petru ignored him. “I then retrieved increasingly acrimonious communications between Chambers, Prosper White, and eventually, the university authorities who stripped the man of his position, denied him his pension, and cast him adrift to run the antiques store, Reclaimables. The correspondence is noteworthy for the passion with which Mrs. Jillian Chambers attacks all concerned.” Petru closed the manila folder and tapped it. “No mention of the lad Schofield Martin at all.”
    “Did he have brothers and sisters?” Lavinia asked softly. “A mamma and daddy to mourn him?” She shivered a little, although it wasn’t cold. Bree was concerned to see that she was looking faded. The soft gold light she carried with her was dimmer than it had been.
    “I have not come across such as yet, Lavinia. The lad appears to have had a brother. He was a scholarship student. That I did ascertain.”
    “What about a report from the Turkish police?” Bree asked.
    “That is here.” Petru flipped to the back of the file and retrieved a yellowed parchment-like document. “It is in Turkish, of course. It is fortunate that I read Turkish. I made a translation for you, Bree. It is attached. I can sum it up, if I may. No witnesses. No foul play. No body. No clues. Disposition of case: accidental death.”
    “He’s claiming he was murdered?” Ron said.
    “Chambers told me that a good man died in pursuit of the Cross,” Bree said. “If he was referring to Schofield Martin, he was wrong about the good part.”
    Ron raised his eyebrows. “You have taken against this client, haven’t you? We don’t know why he was condemned to the seventh circle, do we? For Violence against Art he said? An odd sort of felony, seems to me.”
    “Not to Signor Dante Alighieri, who catalogued many of the crimes that we appeal,” Petru said. “I have researched Dante, also. The felonies range in degree from first to third: to wit, desecration of a work of art and artist; perversion of a