by Tami Hoag
A crowd. Annie's wake. The thought that the killer might have come to his victim's wake was almost too ghoulish to contemplate. He might have stood in that room, as a hundred people had stood in that room, witnessed the kind of pain he had caused T-Grace and Ovide and their family, and felt what? Triumph? Amusement? It turned her stomach to think of it.
Half the town had crowded into the Serenity room to pay their respects to the Delahoussayes. She had wound her way through them, taking little notice of whom she passed or brushed up against. It literally could have been anyone.
A gleaming black, late-seventies Monte Carlo wheeled into Prejean's drive and pulled in behind the BMW. The tinted window on the driver's side slid down to reveal Leonce and a red leather interior. Beausoleil was playing on the tape deck, Michael Doucet's frenzied fiddle unmistakable. Leonce turned it down to a whine, then leaned out the window.
“Hey, chère, I heard about Savannah,” he said, frowning beneath the brim of his Panama hat. “I'm really sorry.”
“Thank you, Leonce.”
“She was kinda wild, dat one, but me, I always liked her.” He shrugged. On the leather-wrapped steering wheel his fingers absently drummed time to the music. “She just liked to pass a good time.”
Laurel couldn't find a suitable comment. Savannah had been far too complex to be described in one light sentence.
“Look,” he said. “Why you don' come with me out to Frenchie's, chère? The bar's still closed, but there's a few of us gettin' together to talk and lift a few in Savannah's name. It might make you feel better. You can ride out with me.”
She was standing beside a perfectly good car with the keys in her hand. Why would she want to ride with him?
Her mind was working like a prosecutor's. She started to chide herself for it, but stopped short. She had every reason to be cautious and suspicious. Six women were dead. A killer had singled her out. Leonce had known both Annie and Savannah. . . .
She looked at him, at the scar that slashed across his face, at the tilt of his dark eyebrows and the neatly trimmed Vandyke, scrambling to say something before the silence became strained. “Oh, I don't think so, Leonce. . . .”
“Come on,” he cajoled, motioning her closer with a flick of his wrist. “It's good to talk through grief with friends.”
“I appreciate the thought, but I'm really not up to it. It's been a very long, very trying day.” That was the truth. She couldn't remember ever feeling as drained in quite the same way.
Leonce frowned and gunned the engine of the Monte Carlo. “Suit yourself.”
“I should get home to Aunt Caroline. Thanks anyway.”
Without another word, he pulled back into the car, buzzed the window up, and wheeled out of Prejean's circular drive. The Monte Carlo hit the street and pulled away with an impressive show of horsepower and what Laurel imagined was a small show of temper.
The wheels of her mind began to turn again. Leonce. Jack's friend. Ovide and T-Grace treated him like a son. He took care of the bar in their absence and dispensed beer, shots, taproom wisdom . . . and milk. He had guessed at her stomach problems and given her a glass of milk the night they found Annie. Not the attitude of a homicidal misogynist.
Yes, he had known Annie and Savannah, but did she have any reason to suspect he killed them? Or was it only his appearance that made her see him in a sinister light? The scar that cut across his face both fascinated and repulsed her, but it wasn't proof of guilt. And she knew only too well that looks could be deceiving.
She was too exhausted to think straight; her beleaguered brain kept dropping the ball. Shaking loose the key to the car's door, she blew out a breath and tried to think of only one thing instead of ten—Belle Rivière. She would be in bed within the hour. If she was very, very lucky, she wouldn't dream.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Laurel almost cried when she saw the Jaguar parked in Caroline's drive. Danjermond. He was the last thing she needed to cap off the evening.
No, she amended, as Vivian's white Mercedes pulled in behind her at a drunken angle to the curb. This was the last thing she needed.
Ross bolted from the car, leaving the door wide open, and hurried toward her as she climbed out of the BMW. He looked a mess for the first time in the twenty years she had known him. His steel gray pompadour had been dismantled by numerous finger-combings. His expression, usually bland and smugly satisfied, was taut, thinned by stress, and his eyes seemed wider and darker—desperate.
“Laurel, for God's sake, you've got to talk to Vivian,” he said, grabbing for her arm.
She twisted away and took a step back. “I don't have anything more to say to my mother, and I certainly don't have anything to say to you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand across his mouth. He glanced away from her, toward the sunset that bled over the western horizon. In that light, with a stubble of evening beard shadowing his cheeks and that haunted look in his eyes, he appeared like a drunk in dire need of a bottle. In fact, the aroma of whiskey clung to him like cologne, and he was weaving a little on his feet. “You don't know what you've done.”
“No,” she said, taking another step back. “This is about what you did, Ross. All I did was tell the truth. I should have told it twenty years ago.”
“I can handle Stipple,” he muttered, still not looking at her. “The man is spineless. Besides, why should anyone believe you?” He turned his head and glared at her, hatred flaring bright in his eyes for one frightening moment. Laurel wished to hell Kenner hadn't confiscated her pocketbook with the handgun in it.
“Everyone knows you've got a screw loose,” he said. “Look what happened up in Georgia. It's Vivian I'm not sure about. She won't let me in her room.”
“What difference should that make to you?” Laurel jeered, her temper overtaking her common sense. “Pervert that you are, you've probably got some little fifteen-year-old on the side.”
He scowled at her, the thin, weak line of his mouth twisting. “It's not the sex, you stupid little bitch. I haven't slept with Vivian in years. Why would I? She's colder than a witch's tit. She never wanted it.”
“And why would you care, when you could rape her daughter instead?”
His fleshy face turned scarlet, the color creeping up from his neck like a tide that pooled in his narrowed bloodshot eyes. “I never raped anybody. Savannah was a little prick-teaser—”
“She was thirteen!” Laurel shouted, not caring if her voice carried through every screen in the neighborhood.
Ross waved it off, making an impatient face. “It's in the past—”
“I'll say. Savannah is dead. You don't get more past tense than that.”
“Well, I didn't kill her!”
“You as good as did, you snake! If you think for a minute I'm going to make this easy on you—”
“Just talk to your mother, for chrissake!” he bellowed, weaving toward her.
“Why?” Laurel demanded. “What do you need her for? She's all fresh out of teenage daughters for you to molest!”
“It's the money,” he snapped, admitting in his drunken rage what had been a secret all these years. He stalked her up the walk toward the house. “It was always the money. Jefferson left everything in trust, that bastard. I can't touch a goddamn nickel without Vivian knowing.”
Laurel wanted to laugh. She doubted Vivian would end up believing her in the end. Her mother had an amazing capacity for rationalization and denial. But in the meantime, at least, Ross was suffering. And he would suffer every time he wondered who else she might have told and whether or not they had believed her even a little bit. Cowards died a thousand deaths. Not one too many for Ross Leighton, as far as she was concerned.
He shook his head, his face contorting in disgust. “You're all the same. Whores and bitches to the end. That's what your sister was, you know,” he said tauntingly, poking a finger at her, his upper body listing heavily to the right. “Hot-tailed little whore. She used to beg
me for it.”
If she had had her gun, she would have killed him. Without hesitation. Without remorse. Screw “a thousand deaths”—one bloody, agonizing death would have suited her fine. But she didn't have her gun. She could only stand on the walk in front of Belle Rivière, shaking with rage and hate.
“You son of a bitch!” she spat. “She was a child!”
Ross sneered at her. “Not when she was in bed with me.”
Laurel didn't know what she might do. The idea of clawing his eyes out was dawning in her brain when the front door opened and Danjermond's voice cut through the tension.
“Is there a problem here, Laurel? Ross?”
“The problem is Ross,” Laurel said tightly. She turned and brushed past the district attorney and went into the hall.
Caroline came out of the parlor wearing copper silk lounging pajamas, no jewelry, no makeup. She looked tiny and fragile—a word Laurel had never associated with her aunt.
“Is everything all right, darlin'?” she murmured. “I thought I heard you drive up.”
Laurel heaved a sigh and snagged a hand back through her hair. “I'm as all right as I'm going to be.”
“Did I hear Ross's voice?” she asked, puzzled.
“Yes, but don't worry about it, Aunt Caroline. He won't be staying.”
Shades of her usual spunk glowed in Caroline's cheeks as she lifted her chin. “He certainly won't be. I haven't let that man in this house in twenty years. I'm not about to start tonight.”
“What's Danjermond doing here?”
“He wanted to speak with you about—” She broke off, pressing a small hand to her mouth as she struggled to search her brain for a word that seemed less threatening than “murder.” “The situation. He thought perhaps you'd be more relaxed without Sheriff Kenner present.”
“Mmmm.”
Needing something mundane to focus on, Laurel set her purse aside and shuffled through the mail that had been left for her on the hall table. It seemed wrong that she should have gotten mail on a day like this, but the post office didn't close down for personal tragedies. There was a letter from her attorney in Atlanta. A bill from the Ashland Heights Clinic. An ivory vellum envelope addressed in her mother's precise, elegant cursive. She tore it open carelessly and extracted an invitation.
The Partout Parish League of Women Voters
cordially invites you to a dinner with guest of honor
District Attorney Stephen Danjermond
Saturday evening, May the twenty-third
The Wisteria Golf and Country Club
Cocktails from 7 until 8
RSVP
The man himself came in from the lawn, looking mildly bemused. “I can't say that I've ever seen Ross in such a state,” he said, his gaze falling squarely on Laurel. “Were he and Savannah close?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Laurel grumbled, tossing the invitation back onto the table.
“Deputy Lawson is seeing him home. A stroke of luck that he was driving by.”
“You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Danjermond?” she asked, too exhausted to suffer small talk. “I don't mean to be rude, but can we get on with it? I'd really like to see an end to this day.”
He tipped his head like a prince granting her an audience and motioned for her to precede him into Caroline's office. He assumed the throne of command behind the feminine French desk. Somehow, it only made him look more masculine. In the amber light from the desk lamp his sexuality glowed around him like a holy aura.
Laurel wandered from bookshelf to bookshelf, too exhausted to be on her feet, too restless to sit. She felt his gaze follow her, but didn't turn to meet it.
“You had questions?” she prompted.
“How are you, Laurel?”
That one stopped her cold. She looked at him sideways. “How am I supposed to be? My sister is dead. Her killer is playing cat-and-mouse games with me. That's not my idea of a good time.”
He studied her more intently than she would have cared for in the best of circumstances. As always, he made her feel underdressed and underfed, and she resisted the urge to reach up and check her hair, pushing her glasses up on her nose instead. Sitting behind the desk, he looked like the handsome, trustworthy anchor of a nightly news program, straight and tall, jacket cut to emphasize his shoulders, lighting set to show off his perfectly even features.
“You appear to be bearing up well, all things considered.”
She gave a short, cynical laugh and walked from behind one green velvet wing chair to the other, wishing she smoked so she could at least have the comfort of something to do with her hands. “Don't be afraid to sound incredulous,” she said dryly. “I am.”
“I think you're stronger than you give yourself credit for,” he murmured.
Laurel thought the strength was an illusion, that she was being held together by pressure and fear, but she didn't tell Danjermond that.
“What does this have to do with the case?” she asked.
“Strength is essential if you're going to help catch your sister's killer.”
“I'll do whatever I have to do.”
He hummed a note of approval as he toyed with his signet ring. “Have you come up with any theories as to how or when your sister's necklace was deposited in your pocketbook?”
Tugging methodically on her earlobe, she called up what possibilities she had come up with earlier and sorted through them to pick and choose which she would give to Danjermond. “I think it may have happened at Annie Gerrard's wake. Could have been anyone in the room.”
Leonce came vividly to mind, but she wasn't ready to say his name. No evidence. She couldn't get a conviction without evidence. Danjermond wouldn't like to hear about hunches.
“What about earlier that day?” he said, rising. Sliding his hands into the pockets of his trousers, he rounded the desk and squared off with her across the cherrywood butler's table. “Who did you see that day?”
“Caroline, Mama Pearl, you, Kenner, Conroy Cooper. Jimmy Lee Baldwin—has Kenner spoken with him?”
“Yes, and he denies he's into kinky sex.”
She gave a sniff. “What did you expect him to do—show you snapshots?”
“He denied the charges.”
“He's lying,” she said flatly.
Danjermond's broad shoulders lifted in an almost imperceptible shrug. “Perhaps Savannah was lying.”
“No,” Laurel insisted stubbornly.
“You can be that certain?”
“I saw the marks on her wrists.” She dropped her gaze from his and did her best to concentrate on the polished surface of the table instead of the memory. “She told me the Revver liked to play whip-me, whip-me games.”
“Did you see anyone else that day, that evening?” He let a pause hang in the air, then struck with precision, his gaze on her like radar. “Jack Boudreaux, for instance?”
Laurel held herself steady, called on old skills, played her cards close to her vest. “Why?”
He pursed his lips and contemplated word choices for a moment, almost seeming to relish the hint of the game in their conversation. “He was . . . well acquainted . . . with Annie Gerrard,” he said carefully. “Who knows how well he knew your sister? He's a man with a dark mind and a violent past.”
“Jack's no killer,” Laurel stated unequivocally.
One dark brow sketched upward. “How can you be so sure of that, Laurel? You've known him how long? A week?” His logic was as cold as ice. When she didn't answer, his gaze narrowed, his voice softened. “Or is it that you think you know him so well? Intimately, perhaps?”
Laurel backed away from him, away from the heat of his body and the chill of his peridot eyes. “That's none of your damn business.”
She retreated, he pursued—physically, verbally, psychologically. “Your sister was found with a page from one of his books in her hand.”
“A plant,” she said, putting a wing chair between them. “Only a fool would incriminate himself that way.”
>
Danjermond ignored her supposition and pressed on. “He had a wife, you know—”
With one sharp slash of her hand, Laurel tried to end the discussion. “That's it,” she snapped, pushing past him and striding toward the door. She let him see the anger, but not the hurt. She didn't want to think of his knowing about Jack's tragedy. It was a violation, somehow. It was playing out of bounds. He fought slick and dirty. She would remember that if she ever had to face him in a courtroom. “I've had all I can stand for one day. This conversation is over. You know your way out.”
She started out of the room, but his voice pulled on her like the strings of a puppet master as she neared the door. “Kenner wants to talk to him, but he didn't seem to be anywhere around today,” he said softly. “I wonder why that is.”
There could have been a hundred reasons for Jack's absence, Laurel thought as she stood with one hand gripping the door frame. He had certainly been around this morning—long enough to break her heart.
“Not everyone is what they seem, Laurel,” Danjermond murmured. “You should know that. You should think about that.”
“I do know,” she said, staring straight ahead as his gaze bore into her back. “I also know that I lost my only sister today. I'd like to mourn in private, thank you.”
She walked out on him and down the hall, but she had the feeling that his eyes followed her all the way upstairs.
Sleep came in fits and starts. The dreams were dark and relentless. Faces floated through her mind—Savannah's, Jack's, Jimmy Lee Baldwin's, and Leonce Comeau's. Danjermond's voice and visions of jewelry. The sick dread that came with thoughts of Ross and her mother and childhood nightmares.
At one-thirty Laurel gave up and switched on the bedside lamp, remembering the night Savannah had come in to check on her and had teased her about her poor taste in nightwear. She got up and changed from one baggy T-shirt to another, and came back to bed with a notepad and pen. Methodically she began making lists and notes, considering suspects and possibilities.