French Silk

by Sandra Brown

  “It varies. Sometimes there’s a buildup. Sometimes it occurs out of the blue. Some days she’s perfectly lucid. Others, like the first time you met her, she seems to be confused, senile.” Her voice turned gruff. “Sometimes she’s as you saw her tonight, completely detached from this world, living in another one.”

  “What triggers it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “That they don’t know either. It’s happened for as long as I can remember, and her lapses have gotten progressively deeper and more frequent the older she gets. The first I remember them, they were little more than bouts of depression. During her spells, as Aunt Laurel referred to them, Mama would retire to her room and cry for days, refuse to leave her bed, refuse to eat. Aunt Laurel and I catered to her.”

  “She should have gotten treatment when it started.” Claire bristled and turned a glare on him. “That was an observation, not a criticism,” he said.

  Claire studied him for a moment. When she was convinced that he was sincere, she relaxed her hostile posture. “I know now that she should have been placed under a doctor’s care immediately. A depression that deep is abnormal. But I was a child. And for all her good intentions, Aunt Laurel didn’t know how to deal with mental illness. She didn’t even recognize it as such. Mama was a young woman whose love had forsaken her. Her family had disowned and disinherited her. Aunt Laurel mistook her illness as nothing more than a broken heart.”

  “A broken heart that wouldn’t heal.”

  Claire nodded. “One day Mama did what she did tonight. She dressed up and sneaked out of the house with a packed suitcase. I was very young, but I remember Aunt Laurel becoming frantic with worry until a policeman brought Mama home. He knew us, you see. He had spotted Mama walking along Canal Street, lugging her suitcase. When he approached her and offered assistance, he could tell she wasn’t rational. Thankfully, he brought her home instead of taking her to the police station. She was spared that degradation.”

  “During these spells, she imagines she’s eloping?”

  “Yes. My guess is that before my father deserted her, he proposed that they elope. He must have gotten cold feet and left her stranded. Mama imagines that he’s coming for her at the designated place. Tonight I’m sure she took a bus as far as the trolley, then rode it the rest of the way out St. Charles to the Ponchartrain.”

  “That’s always been where they were to meet?”

  “No. The meeting place changes. She’s never quite clear on when or where she’s supposed to meet her young man. Rather than facing what’s obvious, she always blames herself for not getting the instructions straight.”

  Claire turned away from the windows and looked at Cassidy. “The night Jackson Wilde was murdered, Mama sneaked out and went to the Fairmont. Andre called and told me that she was in the hotel lobby waiting for her beau, so I went to fetch her. That’s why I was there. After I learned what had happened, I asked Andre not to mention my being there. Since my presence there had nothing to do with Wilde, he agreed to safeguard my privacy. I’m sure that you and your colleagues got a thrill out of eavesdropping on our conversation, but you misinterpreted it.”

  Cupping the bowl of the snifter between her palms, she drained it. Cassidy took it from her and returned it to the sideboard. “Wouldn’t it be easier on everyone if you had your mother institutionalized?” he asked.

  Claire had anticipated the question. It had been posed to her hundreds of times over the years. Her answer was always the same. “Undoubtedly it would be easier. But would it be best?”

  “I can see you’ve got definite opinions on the subject.”

  Agitated, she began pacing in front of the windows. “For as long as I can remember there have been people from the medical community, from the social services, and from law-enforcement agencies trying to force me to commit her.”

  “And before that, they tried taking you away from her.”

  Claire stopped pacing and whipped around to confront him. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you, Mr. Cassidy?”

  “No, I couldn’t. That’s my job.”

  “Your job sucks.”

  “Sometimes,” he admitted. “Instead of feeding me that hearts-and-flowers rendition of your childhood, why didn’t you level with me and tell me about your run-ins with the authorities?”

  “Because they’re too painful to recall. I still have nightmares about them. I dream the social workers are dragging me, kicking and screaming, from Aunt Laurel’s house. Mama’s confused and upset. I don’t want to go.”

  “According to the records, little Claire Louise Laurent gave them hell. I can well believe it.”

  “Things would be going fine,” she said. “Then Mama would have a bad spell and do something to stir them up.”

  “What about your great-aunt? You described her as a loving, caring parent.”

  “She was, but the experts,” she said, emphasizing the word contemptuously, “didn’t think so. She was peculiar and therefore didn’t fit their textbook criteria for a perfect parent. They’d come for me. I’d be taken away. On three separate occasions I was placed in foster homes. I ran away time after time, until I exhausted them and they let me return home.

  “When I was about twelve, Mama wandered away and was lost for several days. We finally located her in a sleazy hotel, but by then the police were involved. Human Resources got wind of it and came for me. I wasn’t being brought up in a healthy environment, they said. I needed direction, stability.

  “I swore I would run away from wherever they took me and would continue running away, and that no matter what they did, they couldn’t keep me separated from my mother. I guess they finally believed me because they never came back.”

  All her pent-up resentment was turned full force on Cassidy. “I don’t give a damn what the records downtown say about me. I gave them hell, yes. I would still give hell to anybody who tried to separate us. I belong with her. I welcome the privilege of looking after her.

  “When she got pregnant, she could have done the easy thing—and at that time the fashionable thing among the wealthy. She could have gone to Europe for a year and put me up for adoption. According to Aunt Laurel, that’s what my grandparents urged her to do. Or she could have gone across the river to Algiers and found an abortionist. That would have been even simpler. No one would have known, not even her parents. Instead, she chose to have me and to keep me, even though it meant sacrificing her inheritance, her entire way of life.”

  “Your sense of responsibility is admirable.”

  “I don’t feel responsible for her. I love her.”

  “Is that why you don’t lock her in where she can’t possibly get out?”

  “Exactly. She doesn’t need locks, she needs love and patience and understanding. Besides, that would be cruel, inhumane. I refuse to treat her like an animal.”

  “She could get hurt out wandering the streets alone, Claire.”

  She slumped down onto the padded arm of the white-upholstered sofa. “Don’t you think I know that? Short of locking her in, I take every precaution to guard against her wanderings. Yasmine does, too. So does Harry. But she has the cunning of a young girl about to elope. Sometimes, in spite of our diligence, she gets past us, like tonight when I thought she was safely asleep.”

  For a long moment, conversation died. Distant thunder broke the silence, but it wasn’t intrusive. Claire folded her arms across her middle and looked up to find Cassidy regarding her with that damned absorption of his. His stare made her uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, and she wondered if he was as aware of the quiet darkness as she.

  “Why do I always feel like you’re looking at me through a magnifying glass?” she asked resentfully.

  “You invite close inspection.”

  “I’m not that much of an oddity, am I?”

  “You’re an enigma.”

  “My life’s an open book.”

  “Hardly, Claire. I’ve
had to pry every scrap of information out of you. You’ve lied to me every step of the way.”

  “I went to the Fairmont that night to get my mother,” she said wearily. “There was no reason to tell you that.”

  “You lied about your childhood, which you would have had me believe was bloody terrific.”

  “Is anyone completely honest about his childhood?”

  “And you lied when you told me you’d never been arrested.”

  She dropped her head forward and exhaled around a bitter laugh. “You have been thorough, haven’t you?”

  “The day we met, you told me not to underestimate you. Don’t ever underestimate me, either.” Placing his finger beneath her chin, he tilted her face up. “Tell me about it, Claire.”

  “Why? I’m sure you already know. I assaulted a policeman.”

  “The charge was dropped.”

  “I was only fourteen.”

  “What happened?”

  “Wasn’t it in the records?”

  “I’d like to hear your side.”

  She pulled in a deep breath. “A friend of mine from school was staying with me.”

  “You were hiding her. She was a runaway.”

  “Yes,” she said sharply. “I was hiding her. When the policemen came to take her home, she became hysterical. One tried to handcuff her. I tried my damnedest to stop him.”

  “Why were you hiding her? Even when they threatened you with jail, you never told the police why your friend was hiding in your house.”

  “I gave her my word that I wouldn’t. But that was years ago and she…” She made a gesture with her hands that said it didn’t matter anymore. “Her stepfather was sexually molesting her. She was being raped, sometimes sodomized, every night while her mother looked the other way and pretended it wasn’t happening.”

  Muttering swear words, Cassidy dragged his hand down his face.

  “It got to a point where she couldn’t take it anymore. There was no one for her to turn to. She was afraid that if she told the nuns, or a priest, they wouldn’t believe her. She was also afraid of reprisal at home. When she told me, I offered to hide her for as long as she wanted to remain hidden.”

  Claire stared into space for a moment, recalling how furious she’d been over the futility of her own actions. “Two weeks after they returned her home, she ran away again. She must have left the city. No one ever heard from her again.”

  “You could have spared yourself a police record and told them what was happening.”

  “What good would it have done?” she asked scornfully. “Her stepfather was a millionaire. They lived in a gorgeous house in the Garden District. Even if someone had believed her, it would have been swept under the rug and she’d have been sent back. Besides, I had promised her I wouldn’t tell.” She shook her head. “The consequences I suffered could hardly compare to what she went through, Mr. Cassidy.”

  “Tell me about Andre Philippi.”

  She gazed at him belligerently. “What do you want to know?”

  “You both attended Sacred Heart Academy.”

  “Grades seven through twelve,” Claire said. “Sister Anne Elizabeth is Mother Superior. Or she was when Andre and I were students there.” She tilted her head; her hair brushed her shoulder. “Is it incriminating that we were classmates?”

  “Tell me about him,” he said, ignoring the dig. “He’s a funny little man.”

  Instantly her aspect changed. She dropped all vestiges of fun and flirtation. Even her voice assumed a hard edge. “I suppose that athletic, macho types like you might think Andre is ‘funny.’ ”

  “I didn’t mean anything derogatory.”

  “The hell you didn’t.”

  “Is he gay?”

  “Is that important?”

  “I don’t know yet. Is he?”

  “No. In fact, he’s got a schoolboy’s crush on Yasmine.”

  “But he’s not intimately involved with anyone, male or female?”

  “Not to my knowledge. He lives alone.”

  “I know.”

  “Of course you would.”

  “I have a file on him,” he said. “I have a file on all the employees of the Fairmont Hotel, even those who weren’t on duty that night.”

  “Do you have a file on me?”

  “A fat one.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  Cassidy was frowning. “What about Andre’s parents? What’s his heritage? I couldn’t tell.”

  “Is that question racially motivated?”

  “Shit,” Cassidy said. “No, it’s not. And would you stop being so goddamn defensive?”

  Claire weighed her options and saw the advantage in telling Cassidy about Andre. If she didn’t, he’d go prying on his own, and it seemed that the more he pried, the more precarious her situation became.

  “Andre’s mother was a quadroon. Are you familiar with the term?” He nodded. “She was an exceptionally beautiful woman, somewhat like Yasmine. Although she was intelligent, she never graduated from high school. Instead, she trained herself in the skills necessary to her profession.”

  “Which was?”

  “To be a companion to men. She learned the techniques from her mother. She began taking clients when she was fifteen.”

  “She was a prostitute?”

  The word offended Claire and she let him know it. “A prostitute hangs out on street corners and hustles passersby. There’s a distinction here. Andre’s mother cultivated multidimensional relationships with gentlemen that often lasted for years. In return they compensated her well.”

  “Were these ‘gentlemen’ white?”

  “For the most part.”

  “And one of them was Andre’s father.”

  “That’s right. He was a prominent businessman who couldn’t claim the child but accepted responsibility for him.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  “Andre does, but he’s never disclosed his identity to me.”

  “And even if you knew, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “No. I wouldn’t.”

  Cassidy ruminated on that for a moment. “Because his father was well-to-do, Andre could attend the finest schools.”

  “Yes, but he was an outcast. The other children said unkind things about his maman and taunted him with ugly names. I was considered somewhat of an oddball too, because I didn’t have a normal family life. It was natural that Andre and I develop a friendship.

  “His mother was devoted to him and vice versa. Just as her mother had done for her, she coached Andre on food and wine, etiquette, how to dress, how to differentiate between quality and junk whether it be jewelry, linen, or antique furniture.

  “Before Andre’s father set her up in a house, she took Andre with her when she met her gentlemen. He waited for her in the lobbies of luxury hotels where people of color weren’t even allowed until the early sixties.

  “Perhaps because he was granted that privilege, he fell in love with the hotels. To him they were finer and more sacred than cathedrals, because not everybody could enjoy them. He had a place in them that was prohibited to other children. He dreamed of managing one.” In a faraway voice, she added, “I’m glad his dreams came true.”

  “What about his mother?” Cassidy asked. “Does she still have a clientele?”

  “No, Mr. Cassidy. She took her own life by slashing her wrists with a straight razor. Andre found her in the bathtub one afternoon when he came home from school.”

  “Jesus.”

  “If you aren’t prepared for the stink, you shouldn’t exhume the past.”

  He pulled an angry frown. “Do you think I’m enjoying this?”

  “If you don’t, then why do you persist in dredging up the ugliness in everyone’s life?”

  “It’s one of the least pleasant aspects of my work, Claire. But it’s still my work.”

  “Answer a question for me,” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Should you be calling me Claire?”
/>
  They stared at each other for a long moment, the tension thick. At last he turned away from her. “No, I shouldn’t.”

  “Then why are you?”

  He turned back around slowly. His eyes seemed to acquire tactile qualities; they touched her everywhere at once. “You may be a liar, Claire, but you’re not stupid,” he said huskily. “You know why.”

  She held his stare until the pressure in her chest became unbearable. The only thing worse would have been to stop looking at him, and she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She felt drawn to him, linked by invisible tethers.

  They had remained so still that when he finally moved, she jumped reflexively. But he only raised his hand to rub the back of his neck as though the muscles ached.

  “Back to Andre. He called you that night and told you your mother was at the Fairmont.”

  She nodded. It was difficult to speak. Her heart was still racing.

  “You went to pick her up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. In my car.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I’m not sure.

  “Claire.”

  “I don’t know,” she cried, shaking her head impatiently. “It was after the crusade, because, as you know, I attended that earlier.”

  He held his temper in check, but she could see it wasn’t easy. “Give me an approximate time.”

  “Midnight, maybe. No later.”

  “How did Mary Catherine get out of here without your knowing?”

  “I told you she can be very resourceful. She went downstairs, undid the locks, and disengaged the alarm before opening the door.”

  “Even during one of her ‘spells,’ she can be that lucid? That functional?”

  Claire avoided looking at him. “Sometimes.”

  “Okay, so you drove to the Fairmont.”

  “I illegally parked across the street. I knew I wouldn’t be but a minute, and I wasn’t. I rushed to Andre’s office, he handed Mother over to me, and we left. I probably wasn’t there more than two minutes.”

  “Did anyone else see you? Other hotel personnel?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose you could ask.”

  “Count on it.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared out the rain-streaked windows. In spite of the grilling he was subjecting her to, Claire noticed that he had a very masculine profile, a manly stance, from his damp hair to the toes of his shoes. “You saw Wilde that night at the Superdome. Then later you were in the hotel where he was found murdered. And you took pains to keep it a secret.”