by Tami Hoag
Annie Delahoussaye was on a lot of minds today.
Was she on Jack's mind?
“Shit,” Laurel whispered, her lashes drifting down as weariness weighed like lead on her every muscle—most especially her heart. His image drifted into her mind without her permission, that haunted, brooding look in his eyes, his face hard. She'd seen that look all night, heard his harsh, smoky voice. “I've got enough corpses on my conscience. . . .”
He might have been referring to his work, but he had played the cynical mercenary hack every time she brought the subject up. He wrote horror for the money. He would claim he had no trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Her thoughts turned back to what little mention he'd made of his life as corporate attorney for Tristar Chemical. Hardly a violent occupation. Still, every time she started to dismiss it, something pulled her back. He had crashed and burned, he'd said, and taken the company down with him. Why?
Intuition told her she would find some of the answers she was looking for in Houston, where Tristar had its headquarters. She had acquaintances there, could make a phone call. . . . Practicality told her not to look. She was far better off leaving Jack and his moods alone. He obviously had problems he needed to work out—or wallow in, as seemed to be his choice. They would be disastrous together, both of them wounded, looking to each other for strength that simply wasn't there. He didn't want her anyway. Not in any permanent sense. They had had some fun together, “passed a good time” as the Cajuns said. That was all Jack wanted.
She ignored the way that knowledge stung, and reached for the ignition, firing the car's engine and airconditioning to life. How many times had she said she wasn't looking for a relationship? She was in no emotional condition to enter into one. That she had taken him as a lover was a whole other matter, a matter of letting herself live, of taking something for her own pleasure. She told herself she wanted nothing more than that from him, and did her damnedest to forget the way his arms had felt around her while she cried.
Lunch consisted of stuffed tomatoes and garden-fresh salad that no one seemed to have an appetite for. They sat at the glass-topped table on the back gallery, looking out at the courtyard where old growth was flourishing, now that it was free of choking weeds, and new flowers were growing fuller and more vibrant by the day.
Whether deliberately or subconsciously, Laurel thought Caroline had chosen to eat out here so they would be surrounded by positive affirmations of life and beauty when talk around town all morning had been of death and ugliness. They could sit and feel the breeze sweep under the shade trees and along the gallery, bringing with it the heavy perfume of sweet olive and gardenia. They could listen to the songs of the warblers and buntings and look out on the abundance of life in the garden and try to counterbalance thoughts of death.
“Me, I dunno what dis world comin' to,” Mama Pearl grumbled, wagging her head. She dug a good-size chunk of chicken out of her tomato with a ferocious stab of her fork, but she didn't bring it to her mouth. Setting the fork aside, she heaved a sigh and rubbed a plump hand across her lips, as if to push back the words that might have spilled out. As tears rose, her eyes darted to the courtyard and she stared hard at the old stone fountain with its grubby-faced cherubs cavorting around the base.
Caroline toyed with her salad, turning a ring of black olive over and over with the tines of her fork. Her usual air of command seemed dimmed, subdued by the weight of events, but she was still the head of Belle Rivière, their leader, their rock, and she rose to the occasion as best she could. Drawing in a deep breath to fortify herself, she squared her dainty shoulders beneath the soft white chiffon blouse she wore.
“The world has been a violent place since the days of Cain,” she said quietly. “It's no worse today. It only seems so because the violence has hit so close to home.”
Mama Pearl gave her a sharp look of disapproval and hefted her bulk up from the table, scraping her chair back. “You tell dat to T-Grace Delahoussaye. I gots to check my cake.”
Grumbling under her breath, she waddled into the house, her red print cotton shift swishing around her with every step. Caroline watched her go, feeling helpless to do anything to alleviate the grief and worry and anger that had tempers running short and fears running close to the surface of everyone she knew. She turned her gaze to Laurel, who was picking at her chicken salad.
“How are you doing, darlin'?”
“Fine.” The answer was automatic. Caroline ignored it and waited patiently for something closer to the truth.
Resigning herself to the inevitable, Laurel set her fork aside and rested her forearms on the cool glass of the tabletop. “I feel stronger than I did,” she said, a little amazed by the admission. “But with all the things that have happened . . . everything I feel myself getting dragged into . . . A part of me would like very much to run away to a resort someplace where I wouldn't know a soul.”
In a gesture of love and an offer of support, Caroline reached across the table and twined her fingers with her niece's. “But you won't.”
To leave now, with her word given to the Delahoussayes, with tension between her and Savannah, would be the coward's way out. She couldn't walk away and live with herself. “No, I won't.”
Caroline squeezed her hand, her heart brimming with love, with sympathy. “Your father would have been so very proud of you,” she said, her voice suddenly husky with emotion. “I'm proud of you.”
Laurel couldn't think of a single thing she had done to be proud of, but she didn't say so. She didn't say anything for a minute for fear she would burst into tears. For a long moment she stared off at a particularly beautiful cluster of purple clematis that was twining around one of the gallery pillars, and just hung on to her aunt's hand, savoring the contact and the strength that passed to her from someone who loved her unconditionally.
She suspected a great many people in Bayou Breaux were paying special attention to family today, having been struck aware that loved ones could be snatched away in a heartbeat with feelings left unspoken and dreams never realized. Today, life would seem more precious, more urgent, something to be clung to and relished.
Bringing her emotions back in line, she gently extricated her fingers from Caroline's and reached for the stack of mail she had picked up at the post office on her way to the courthouse. “You've got some interesting-looking letters today,” she said, sorting through the stack. She plucked out several fine-quality envelopes, each with a different postmark—Biloxi, New Orleans, Natchez—all of them addressed in flowing, feminine script, one smelling faintly of jasmine.
Caroline accepted them, a soft smile turning her lips as she perched her reading glasses on her slim, upturned nose and scanned the addresses. “How lovely to hear from friends on such a terrible day.”
“Old friends from school?” Laurel asked carefully, watching closely as her aunt used a table knife to open the pink one. “Or business?”
“Mmm . . . just friends.”
Laurel chided herself for her curiosity. Caroline's privacy was her own. Of course, Savannah might have just asked her outright.
“I can't believe Savannah is sleeping in so late,” she murmured, wondering if today might not be the perfect time to start mending the tears in their relationship. Arguments seemed petty and pointless in the face of death, and life seemed so finite. They could take the rest of the day and drive down to Cypremort Point for bluepoint crabs and a view of the gulf at sunset. They would sit together with the salty breeze on their faces and in their hair, and talk and watch the saw grass sway in the shallows while gulls wheeled overhead. “Do you think I dare wake her up on the pretense of delivering her Visa bill?”
“Hmm? Oh, a—” Caroline glanced up from her letter. “Savannah isn't here, darlin'.”
“Where did she go?” Laurel asked, annoyed that the perfect day that had painted itself in her mind was going to be put off. “More to the point, how did she go? I had the car all morning.”
“I'm not sure. Perhaps she h
ad a friend pick her up. I couldn't say; I was at the store. Did you have plans?”
“No. It's just that we've been talking about spending some time together. She wanted to do something yesterday, and then Jack showed up.”
“She left here in a state yesterday, I do know that,” Caroline said, folding back a sheet of pink stationery. “I take it she doesn't approve of your seeing Mr. Boudreaux.”
“I don't think Jack is her problem.” Concern tugged at the corners of Laurel's mouth and furrowed her brow. She wrestled for a moment with the thoughts that had been troubling her since Savannah's blowup, finally deciding they were best shared. “I'm worried about her. She seems so . . . volatile. Up one minute and down the next. She got into a fight with Annie Gerrard Sunday. A fist fight! Aunt Caroline, I'm frightened for her.”
And for myself, she thought, in a small way. The child in Laurel had always depended on Savannah. That child felt lost at the prospect of Savannah's not being dependable anymore.
Caroline set her letters aside and slipped her reading glasses off, her expression somber. “She was seeing a psychiatrist in Lafayette for a while. I think she might have gotten help there, but she wouldn't stay with it.”
Naturally. Just as she never stayed with a job or anything else that might have given her help or a sense of purpose that didn't involve sex. Laurel's hands fisted on the tabletop, and she wished for something she could hit to let off some of the impotent anger that was building inside her. “She's determined to let the past rule her life, dictate who she is, what she is. We had an awful fight about it the other day. I lost my temper, but it makes me angry to see her throw her life away for something that ended fifteen years ago.”
For a moment Caroline said nothing. She sat quietly toying with one of the heavy gold hoops that hung from her ears and let Laurel's statement hang in the air, let it sink in not for her own benefit, but for her niece's.
“Tell me,” she said at last. “Do you not still see those children from Scott County in your sleep?”
The abrupt change of subject jolted Laurel for a second. The question brought the faces up in her memory, and she had to force them back into the little compartment she tried to stow them in during the day. “Yes,” she murmured.
“But that's over and done with,” Caroline said. “Why can't you let them go?”
“Because I failed them,” Laurel said, tensing against the guilt. “It was my fault. I deserve to be haunted by that—”
“No,” Caroline cut her off sharply, her dark eyes bright with the strength of her feelings. “No,” she said again, softening her tone. “You did all you could. The outcome was not in your hands. You had no control over the attorney general or the lack of evidence or what other members of the community did, and yet you blame yourself and let that part of your past torment you.”
Laurel didn't try to argue her culpability; she knew what the truth was. The point her aunt was making had little to do with her, anyway.
“Are you saying Savannah blames herself for the abuse?” she asked, incredulous at the thought. “But what happened was Ross's fault! He forced himself on her. She couldn't possibly believe that was her fault.”
Caroline stroked a fingertip thoughtfully along her cheekbone and raised a delicately arched brow. “You think not? Savannah is a beautiful, sensual, sexual creature. She always has been. Even as a child she had a certain power over men, and she knew it. You think she hasn't blamed herself for being attractive to Ross or that Ross hasn't taken every opportunity to blame her himself? He is and always has been a weak man, taking credit that isn't his due and shedding blame like water off a duck's back.”
A fresh spring of hate for Ross Leighton welled up inside Laurel, and she recognized that a large part of her anger was for the fact that Ross had never been made to pay for his crime. Justice had never been served. Some of the blame for that was hers, she knew, and the guilt for that was terrible.
If only she had found the courage to tell their mother or go to Aunt Caroline. But she hadn't. Vivian was still in ignorance of her husband's atrocities. Caroline had found out the truth years after the fact. There had been no justice for Savannah . . . so Laurel had spent her life seeking justice for others.
I'm not trying to atone for anything!
God, what a lie. What a hypocrite she was.
Caroline rose gracefully from her chair, tucking her letters into a patch pocket on the full yellow skirt that hugged her tiny waist and swirled around her calves. She came around the table and slipped her arms around Laurel's shoulders, hugging her tight from behind. “The past is always with us, Laurel,” she said gently. “It's a part of us we can't ignore or abandon. And it's not always easy to keep it behind us, where it belongs. You'd do well to remember that for yourself, as well as for your sister.”
She pressed a kiss to her temple and went inside, leaving Laurel alone on the gallery to listen to the birdsong and to think.
When her thoughts had chased one another around her brain sufficiently to give her a headache, Laurel turned her attention back to the mail, thumbing through the bills and pleas from missions. At the back of the stack was a plain white envelope with no address, return or otherwise.
Puzzled, she opened the flap and extracted not a letter, but a cheap gold necklace with a small golden butterfly dangling from it. She lifted the chain and watched the butterfly turn and sway, and a strange shiver passed over her, like a chill wind that had slipped out of another dimension to crawl over her skin.
The wheels of her mind turned automatically, searching for the most logical explanation for the necklace. It was Savannah's—though Savannah's tastes were much more expensive. Laurel had forgotten it on the seat of the car—but why was it sealed in an envelope?
No answer satisfied all the questions, and none explained the knot of nerves tingling at the base of her neck.
In his office in the Partout Parish courthouse, Duwayne Kenner leaned over his desk, hammers pounding inside his temples, acid churning in his gut. He leaned over the fax copies of crime reports from four other parishes. His eyes scanned the photographs the sheriff from St. Martin had brought along with him of Jennifer Verret, who had been found dead Saturday morning, strangled with a silk scarf and mutilated. On the other side of the desk, Danjermond stood looking pensive, twisting his signet ring around on his finger.
“There's no doubt in my mind,” Kenner growled, his voice turned to gravel by two packs of Camels. “We're dealing with the same killer.”
“Everything matches?”
“So far. We'll have more details when the lab reports on Annie Gerrard come in, but it's all there—the silk scarf, the same pattern of knife wounds. Most importantly, details that were kept away from the press match, eliminating the possibility of a copycat.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the markings on the wrists and ankles, and the fact that each woman had items of jewelry taken off her body. Sick bastard likely keeps them as souvenirs,” he mumbled, his eyes narrowing to slits as he took in the savagery one human being could commit against another. “Well, by God, I'll find out when I catch him. I swear I will.”
Chapter
Nineteen
One of Vivian's more annoying traits was her sporadic attempts at spontaneity. Laurel recalled the times during her childhood when her mother would snap out of her day-in-day-out routine of clubs and civic responsibilities and life as mistress of Beauvoir, and scramble frantically to do something spontaneous, something she thought terribly clever or fun, which the events seldom proved to be. There was always an air of desperation about them and a set of expectations that were never achieved. Not at all like the spur-of-the-moment notions of Laurel's father, which had always been unfailingly wonderful in one way or another, never planned, never entered into with a set of criteria or goals.
“Seize the moment and take what it gives you,” Daddy had always said with a simple joy for life glowing in his handsome face.
Vivian had alway
s seized her moments with grasping, greedy hands and tried to wring out of them the things she wanted. Laurel had always felt sorry for her mother because of it. It wasn't in Vivian's makeup to be spontaneous. That she felt compelled to try, and tried too hard, had always left Laurel feeling sad, particularly when one of Vivian's failed attempts led her into yet another spell of depression.
Perhaps that was why, when Vivian had called to invite her to have dinner out with her—dinner and “girl talk,” God forbid—Laurel hadn't managed to find an excuse during that slim five-second window of opportunity when lies can go undetected over the phone lines. Or perhaps her reasons had more to do with the day and the thoughts she had had of family and the fickleness of life.
Savannah would have no doubt had a scathing commentary on the subject. But as Savannah had yet to return from wherever she had spent the day, Laurel didn't have to listen to it. She accepted the invitation with an air of resignation and did her best to turn off the internal mechanism of self-examination.
They sat in one of the small, elegant dining rooms of the Wisteria Golf and Country Club, chatting over equally elegant meals of stuffed quail and fresh sea bass. The club was housed in a Greek revival mansion on what had once been the largest indigo plantation in the parish. The house and grounds had been meticulously restored and maintained, right down to the slave cabins that sat some two hundred yards behind the mansion and now served as storage sheds for garden equipment and between-round hangouts for the caddies—who were quite often black youths. No one at Wisteria worried about offending them with the comparison between caddies and slaves, and there were no other people of color to be offended other than hired help, because Wisteria was, always had been, and always would be an all-white establishment.