Laurel looked from her aunt to the door, where the snake hung in a single loop and Deputy Pruitt leaned over the balcony disgracing himself all over the clematis vine. "I'm already in it, Aunt Caroline," she said softly. "And there's only one way out."
Jack woke with a pounding in his head and pounding on the front door of the house. He wished he could manage to ignore both. The banging in his head was the farewell gong of a substantial amount of Wild Turkey. The banging on the door turned out to be a very large deputy named Wilson, a man without sympathy or humor, who hauled him downtown to "have a little talk" with Sheriff Kenner.
Now he was sitting in a straight chair that had to be an antique from the Inquisition, staring across a scarred table at Kenner's ugly mug.
"Do you want a lawyer?"
"Do I need one?" Jack returned, arching a brow. "Am I being charged with something?"
"No. Should I be charging you?"
Depends, he thought. Heaven knew he was guilty of plenty. He dug a cigarette out of the breast pocket of his chambray shirt and dangled it from his lip. "You catch a lot of idiots with that question?"
"A few."
He struck a match and sucked crud deep into his lungs with the kind of greed known only to an ex-smoker fallen off the wagon.
"What do you call two thousand lawyers at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain?" He left the appropriate pause for an answer, even though Kenner just sat there glaring at him. Jack flashed him a wry grin and blew twin streams of smoke out his nose. "A good start."
Kenner didn't so much as blink. "Where were you this morning about four o'clock?"
"In my bed, dead sound asleep."
"Interesting choice of words."
Jack shrugged expansively. "C'est vrai. Words are my life."
"Yeah," Kenner sniffed. "I've been reading some of your best-sellers, Jack. Blood Will Tell. Evil Illusions. You've got a sick mind."
"I'm just doing my job," Jack said glibly. He rubbed the ruby stud in his earlobe between thumb and forefinger and gave Kenner a wry look. "You're the one plunked down six bucks for the pleasure of reading it."
"I got them from the library."
"Ouch." He winced. "No royalties from you."
Again Kenner ignored him, sticking to his own agenda. "Pretty reckless of you to steal ideas from your own work."
Dread hit Jack in the belly like a boot. Mon Dieu, not again, not another dead girl. He sat up straighter and abandoned his cigarette in the tin ashtray on the table. "What are you talkin' about?"
Kenner planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward, as well, jaw set, eyes narrowed. "I'm talking about slipping over to Belle Rivière while the deputies were changing shifts and wrapping a dead cottonmouth around the handle to Laurel Chandler's bedroom door."
A potent combination of rage and fear swirled through Jack, and he surged to his feet, sending the chair screeching back on the linoleum. A killer had been playing games with her. Apparently the game was not over. And on the heels of those feelings came the guilt that a truly twisted mind had borrowed from his imagination.
He stalked the cheerless box of the interrogation room with his shoulders braced and his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans, doing his best to fight it all off. What he really needed, he told himself, was to get the hell out of town for a while. Until the killer was behind bars. Until Laurel had packed up and moved on with her life.
He stopped his pacing in front of what had to be a two-way glass and stared hard at the reflection of himself, wondering who might be on the other side.
Kenner watched him with hard, cold eyes, trying to read every nuance of expression and movement. "You didn't happen to have anybody in bed with you can vouch for your whereabouts?"
Jack swung around to face him, brows pulling low over his eyes. "I wouldn't do anything to hurt Laurel."
The word "liar" rang like a gong in his head, but he ignored it. He had pushed her out of his life for her own good, not to hurt her. And damn but he missed her already. The thought of her finding that snake, especially after everything else she had gone through, made him want to go to her to protect her. But he couldn't do that. Wouldn't. He was nobody's white knight.
Something thumped against the door, breaking his train of thought, then came the sound of an argument loud enough to be heard quite clearly.
"I don't give a damn what Sheriff Kenner had to say. Mr. Boudreaux has a right to counsel."
"But, ma'am-"
"Don't you 'But, ma'am' me, Deputy. I know my way around a police station, and I know my way around the law. Now open that door."
The door cracked open, and the massive Wilson stuck his head in, looking browbeaten and sheepish. "Excuse me, Sheriff Kenner?"
Kenner was out of his seat and fuming. He went to the door, grumbling under his breath, and grabbed the knob, just barely resisting the urge to slam it shut on Wilson's head.
"What's the problem here, Deputy?" He ground the whisper between his teeth like dust. "You can't keep one goddamn little slip of a woman out of my hair for five minutes?"
Laurel's voice sliced through the crack in the door like a knife. "Denying people their rights is serious business, Sheriff. I suggest you open that door at the risk of having me really tear through your hair-what's left of it."
Jack rubbed a hand across his mouth to hide his smile. She was a spitfire-no two ways about it. Most women in her situation would have been home, hiding. They certainly wouldn't have come to his rescue after the things he'd said and the way he'd behaved, he thought, the smile dying abruptly.
"I don't need a lawyer, angel," he said as Kenner stepped back and let her into the room.
She shot him a look that had turned better men to ashes. "A man who represents himself has a fool for a client."
"Miz Chandler," Kenner began on a long, bone-weary sigh, "I'm speaking with Mr. Boudreaux about the case you're involved in. This is a conflict of interest."
"Not if I don't believe he did it," Laurel said. "Besides, this is a noncustodial interview, is it not?" She arched a brow above the rim of her oversize glasses, waiting for Kenner to refute the statement. "No charges are being filed. In the event it becomes a conflict of interest, I will recommend Mr. Boudreaux seek other representation."
Not giving a damn if either man wanted her there, Laurel marched across the room to the table and took the only seat that looked remotely comfortable-Kenner's. In her heart, she knew she wanted to be here for Jack, but she told herself she was really doing it for Savannah. The more she could find out about what was going on, the better her chance of helping crack the case, and the sooner it could all be laid to rest inside her.
Kenner scowled at her, then at Boudreaux, wishing fleetingly that he had listened to his old man way back when and gone into insurance. He pulled another straight chair out from the wall, set it at the end of the table, and planted one booted foot on the seat.
Jack slid lazily back down on the chair he had vacated and took up the smoldering butt of his cigarette between thumb and forefinger. He met Laurel's gaze for an instant and tried to read what she was thinking. She didn't flinch, didn't blink, didn't smile. There were delicate purple shadows beneath her eyes and a vulnerability around her mouth he was certain she didn't realize was there, but she didn't give him anything-except the impression that he'd hurt her badly and she was too damn proud to bend beneath the weight of it.
Kenner sniffed and cleared his throat rudely, digging a finger into the breast pocket of his uniform to pull a cigarette out from behind his badge. "So, you don't have an alibi for this morning."
Crushing out the stub of his smoke, Jack shot the sheriff a look. "Innocent people don't need alibis."
"You got an alibi for Wednesday night, ten 'til two A.M.?"