"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."