"Oh, Christ, that's rich! The pot calls the kettle black! You take everything on as if God Himself appointed you! You take the responsibility, you take the blame. Well, I've got news for you, sugar: I don' wanna be one of your great causes. Butt outta my life!"
Laurel stood there and watched him stalk away, so filled with pain and impotent fury that she couldn't seem to do anything but clench her muscles until she was trembling with it. "Damn," she muttered as a pair of tears slipped over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. The wall of restraint cracked a little, and another drop of anger leaked out.
"Damn, damn, damn you, Jack Boudreaux!" she snarled under her breath.
Without a thought to the consequences, she turned and slammed her fist against the rough bark of a persimmon tree, scraping the thin skin on her knuckles and sending pain singing up her arm. Good. It was at least a better kind of pain than the one burning in her chest.
She loved him.
"Damn you, Jack," she whispered.
Blinking against the tears, she lifted her hand and sucked on her knuckles, trying to think of what to do next. She had more important things to think of than her broken heart. She would go home and regroup. Spend some time with Aunt Caroline while her brain turned over clues and theories, trying to come up with a picture of a killer. Not because she didn't believe anyone else could do it, but because she was bound by duty and love for a sister who had sheltered and cared for her.
Danjermond was waiting for her beside Caroline's BMW. His coffee brown jacket hung open, the sides pushed back. His hands were in his trouser pockets. But if his stance was casual, his mood was not. Laurel sensed a tension about him, humming around him like electricity in the air.
"I'm surprised at you, Laurel," he murmured, his gaze as sharp and steady as the beam of a laser.
The word "surprised" translated to "disappointed," but Laurel wasn't particularly interested in what Stephen Danjermond thought of her, one way or the other. He was Vivian's choice for her, not her own, and she was through trying to please her mother. Without a word of comment, she dug a hand into her bag to fish out the keys.
"You lied," he said flatly.
She didn't bother asking him how he knew any of what had happened in the interrogation room; she had been a prosecutor, had stood on the other side of two-way mirrors herself. Poker-faced, she looked up at him. "I was with Jack the night Savannah died."
"But not all night," he insisted. "I could hear the hesitation in your voice. Slight, but there. And Boudreaux's reaction-good, but guarded. He was surprised you would lie for him. So am I. I thought you were a purist. Justice by the book."
"Jack didn't kill Savannah," she said, sorting out the proper key and resisting the urge to back away from him.
"How do you know?" he queried softly. "Instinct? Would you know the killer if you looked him in the eye, Laurel?"
She stared up at him, remembering the feel of a gaze in her dreams. Eyes without a face. Memory stirred uneasily. "Perhaps."
"The way you knew the defendants in Scott County were guilty? Instinct, but no evidence. You need evidence, Laurel," he persisted. "No one will believe you without evidence."
"The charges are being dismissed, Ms. Chandler… lack of sufficient evidence… You didn't do your job, Ms. Chandler… You blew it…" The voices echoed in her head, bringing with them shadows of the stress, the desperation. The combination threatened to shake her, but she held firm against them.
"You're the one who'll try this case if Kenner can make an arrest, Mr. Danjermond," she said evenly. "Maybe you should be more concerned about finding some evidence yourself instead of worrying about what I'm doing or not doing."
He said nothing while she unlocked the door to the BMW and pulled it open. She stepped around it on the pretense of tossing her handbag on the seat, but was just as glad to put the distance and the steel between them.
"Isn't that right?" she said, turning toward him once again.
He smiled slightly, a smile that for its strange perfection made the nerves tingle along the back of her neck.
"Oh, I am working on it, Laurel," he said softly, his green eyes shining as if he had sole possession of a wonderful secret. "Rest assured, I will have enough evidence to get a conviction. More than enough."
He let that promise ring in the air for a moment, then changed directions so smoothly and quickly, Laurel thought it was a wonder she didn't lose her balance. "Are you coming to the dinner tonight?"
"No," she said, appalled that he might think she would even consider it. "After all that's happened recently, I'm sure you understand that I'm not feeling up to it."
"Of course," he murmured, reaching into an inside jacket pocket to extract a long, slim cigar. He trimmed the end with a pocket-size device, snipping it cleanly and efficiently. "I understand completely. You've lost your sister. The best suspect we have is your lover-"
"What about Baldwin?" Laurel snapped, an odd, niggling feeling of panic fluttering in her stomach. "What about-"
"He isn't intelligent enough," Danjermond said sharply, cutting her off with his look as much as his words. His eyes were as bright and fervid as gemstones beneath the dark slash of his brows. "He's a petty con man with delusions of grandeur. Do you really believe he could have committed crime after crime without implicating himself?"
"I think there's enough evidence to suspect him-"
"Then you haven't been paying attention, Laurel." He shook his head almost imperceptibly, his eyes never letting go of hers. "You disappoint me," he whispered.
Slowly, almost sensuously, he slipped the tip of the cigar between his lips. Laurel watched, feeling oddly mesmerized, vaguely nervous. He dipped a hand into his pants pocket and came out not with the wafer-thin gold lighter, but with a book of matches.
A bloodred book of matches.
Laurel caught only glimpses of black lacework script beneath his meticulously manicured fingers as he went about the ritual of lighting the cigar, but somehow, she didn't really need to see the name of the bar. Her heart pounded in her throat, in her head. Nausea swirled through her, and she curled her fingers tighter over the edge of the car door.
"This killer is brilliant, Laurel," he said softly, smoothly. "Brilliant, careful, strong. Strength is essential for success in his avocation. Strength of mind, strength of will."
Laurel said nothing. Her eyes were glued to the matchbook. Already her brain had hit the denial stage. It couldn't be. There was an explanation. He'd taken it from the purse Kenner had confiscated.
Or he was a killer and he wanted her to know it.
Danjermond puffed absently on his cigar, turning the folder of matches over in his fingers like a magician warming up for a sleight of hand routine.
"Le Mascarade," he murmured. "Where no one is quite what they seem. We all wear masks, don't we, Laurel?" he asked, lifting a brow. "The trick is finding out what lies behind them."
He slipped the matchbook back into his pocket and strolled away, cherry-scented smoke curling in his wake like mystical ribbons.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Laurel sank down sideways on the seat of the BMW, her feet still on the concrete of the parking lot. All the questions, all the fears, swirled in her brain like a dirty, foaming whirlpool. Fragments of conversations, of feelings, of thoughts, bobbed and floated on the rest, one rising above the others-"You believe in evil, don't you, Laurel?"
"Oh, God. Oh, God," she murmured as she sat there shaking, remembering the flash of lightning, the rumble of thunder, those clear green eyes on hers across the dinner table at Beauvoir. Tears flooded her eyes, and she raised her trembling hands to press them over her face.
It couldn't be. Stephen Danjermond was the district attorney. The League of Women Voters was giving him a dinner. He was sworn to uphold the law.
"Not everyone is what they seem, Laurel. You should know that. You should think about that."
"Oh, Jesus."
He was a man above suspicion. Above reproach. From one of the finest families in New Orleans. She had to be wrong. She had to be. The matchbook was a coincidence.
"Le Mascarade… We all wear masks, don't we, Laurel? The trick is finding out what lies behind them."