by Sandra Brown
She had threatened him with exposure, citing how a romantic dalliance with her might hurt his cause. She had failed to tell him how damaging such a dalliance could also be to her.
She dressed in a pair of jeans and a white cotton pullover, not wanting him to think she had primped in anticipation of seeing him. She took the elevator down to the first floor. He was ringing the buzzer by the time she reached the door.
“You’re right on time,” she said when she opened it.
“One of my virtues.”
He hadn’t dressed up either. She’d never seen him in anything except a suit. Tonight he wore jeans, a casual shirt, an ancient Levi’s jacket, and jogging shoes. “Why did you want to see me?”
“Come out here.”
“Why?”
“I can think more clearly out here.” She looked at him quizzically. “There’s too much damn ambience in there,” he added brusquely.
The commercial district several blocks away was in full swing, but within two blocks on either side of French Silk the street was dark and still. When she turned after securing the door, Cassidy was at the curb, pacing the pavement where the protesters had marched.
“You look upset,” she remarked.
“You could say that.” He stopped and faced her. “This offering business—”
“I explained that.”
“Yeah. So did Yasmine. But it doesn’t seem plausible.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Temporarily,” he said shortly. “What time did you tell me you went to the Fairmont that night to pick up your mother?”
Claire hadn’t expected the sudden shift in topic. The question made her throat constrict. “I… I told you I wasn’t sure, but I guessed around midnight.”
“What took you so long?”
“Pardon?”
“Andre Philippi says he called you at eleven. At that time of night, it takes about five minutes to drive from here to the Fairmont. I know because I drove it tonight. Your trip took an hour longer than it should have. What delayed you?”
“Cassidy, I said I got there around midnight. It might have been eleven or eleven-thirty. I told you I wasn’t sure.”
“You’re lying!” He slammed his fist into his opposite palm. Claire fell back a step. “You didn’t leave for the Fairmont Hotel to collect Mary Catherine until almost midnight because you didn’t speak directly to Andre until then. When he called at eleven, he spoke to your answering machine, didn’t he? You had to call him back.”
He came toe to toe with her. “You weren’t here when he called at eleven. You said tonight that you answer your phone if you’re here, right? Andre left a message on your machine, so you’d know where Mary Catherine was when you came in and discovered her gone.”
Claire’s heart was hammering. “I can explain that.”
“Save it. I’m sick of your lies. I’m right, aren’t I?” He grabbed her arm and hauled her close to him. “Aren’t I?”
Coming into contact with the solid strength of his body startled her, but she resented his high-handedness and wriggled free of his grasp.
“Yes, you’re right,” she flung up at him. “I have a habit of checking Mama’s room when I come in. That night, her bed was empty and her suitcase was gone, so I knew what had happened. I was about to go out and look for her when I noticed the message light. I called Andre back immediately. He told me he had spotted Mama in the lobby of the Fairmont, taken her to his office, and given her some sherry. She was groggy and disoriented when I got there, as she often is after the worst of her spells. I drove her home and put her to bed. That’s the truth.”
“Oh, I believe you, Claire,” he said. “I just want to know where the hell you were between the conclusion of the crusade and midnight. Did you make two trips to the Fairmont? One to murder Wilde and another to pick up your mother?”
She said nothing.
“You could drive a barge through the space of time you’ve got to account for,” he said, raising his voice.
“I went for a walk.”
Obviously he’d been expecting a more elaborate lie. The simplicity of her explanation caught him off guard. “A walk?”
“That’s right. A long walk. Alone. Through the Quarter.”
“At that time of night?” he asked skeptically.
“I often do. Ask Yasmine. She chides me about it all the time.”
“Yasmine would cover any lie you chose to tell.”
“It’s not a lie. It’s the truth.”
“Why’d you pick that particular night to take a walk?”
“I was upset.”
“Murder is upsetting.”
Pivoting on her heel, she stalked toward the door of French Silk. “I don’t have to take that from you.”
“The hell you don’t.” His arm shot out and caught her sleeve, bringing her back around. “I’m royally pissed off at you, Ms. Laurent. I should have you downtown right now being fingerprinted and fitted for jail issue. You won’t look so hot in puke-green broadcloth, Claire. And the undies don’t come from the French Silk catalog either.”
A tremor of fear rippled through her. Her greatest fear was of being incarcerated. It wasn’t claustrophobia that panicked her, but the loss of freedom. She wouldn’t be able to tolerate the constant supervision, the inability to make choices, and the deprivation of privacy and independence.
Cassidy’s face was taut with anger. One lock of dark hair had fallen over his brow. His eyes shone with a demanding and piercing glint. For the first time, Claire was actually afraid of him. He might lose patience with her and make good his threat. She needed to talk, and talk fast, because she couldn’t spend one night, one minute, in jail.
“I came home from the crusade and—”
“What time?”
Nervously she ran her fingers through her hair. “I swear to you, I don’t know the exact time. Shortly after ten, I think.”
“I can live with that. The service concluded at nine-twenty. By the time you fought Superdome traffic, that would put you here around ten.”
“Harry had stayed with Mama. When I got in, I dismissed her, although later I wished I hadn’t. I was restless, couldn’t sleep. I tried to work, but all I could think about was Jackson Wilde.”
“Why?”
“I’d seen him on TV, but that was nothing compared to seeing him in person. He was a dynamic speaker. He exuded such power, exercised such control over the minds of his audience. Even though I disagreed with everything he preached, I was impressed by the charisma with which he preached it. The people sitting around me were enthralled. Until that night I hadn’t fully grasped the strength of his influence. I became afraid that he might actually be able to destroy French Silk. When I went down to the podium and looked him in the eyes, I felt like David looking into the face of Goliath.”
She looked up at Cassidy with appeal. “You’d have to understand what this business means to me to know how I felt that night. I can only describe it as panic. Everything I’d worked so hard for was being threatened by an overwhelming force. I had visions of all that I’d struggled to build being knocked down.”
Cassidy said softly, “I can understand that, Claire, better than you know.” Then once again his eyes focused sharply on her. “Did you feel so threatened that you sneaked into his hotel suite and shot him?”
She looked away. “I told you, I went for a walk.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
“It’s true! I felt like the walls were closing in on me. I felt smothered. Couldn’t think. Jackson Wilde’s words kept ringing in my ears. I had to get out.” Suddenly her gaze swung back to him. “I’ll take you.”
“Where?”
“We’ll retrace the route I took that night. I’ll show you exactly where I went. I’ll try to keep the same pace so you’ll see how I missed Andre’s call.”
Frowning, he pondered it a moment. “Okay. Where to?”
His hand was riding beneath her elbow as she
stepped off the curb and crossed the street. Most of the buildings on that side of Conti Street were vacant and dark. Recessed doorways were deeply shadowed and sinister-looking. Windows and doors were covered with wire mesh.
“Aren’t you afraid to walk alone around here at night, Claire?”
“Not at all.” She looked up at him. “Are you?”
“Damn right,” he muttered, casting a quick glance over his shoulder. She laughed and steered him past a dip in the ancient sidewalk. “I see you know the topography pretty well.”
“Very well. I grew up playing on these sidewalks.” Pointing out a candy factory with pink awnings, she said, “They make delicious pralines. Sometimes they’d give us kids the ones that got broken and they couldn’t sell. We take a right at the next corner.”
They walked in silence, past the gray stone building that at one time had been the Louisiana State Supreme Court. They turned right onto Royal Street and she paused outside an antiques shop. “I stopped here that night to browse in this window. There was a marcasite and emerald brooch…”
“Marca what?”
“There it is. Third row down, second from the left. See?”
“Hmm. Pretty.”
“I thought so. I meant to come back and take a closer look but never got around to it.” She lingered for a few moments more, gazing at the array of beaded reticules, oxidized silver services, and estate jewelry, before continuing.
Across the street, two policemen emerged from the Vieux Carré district headquarters of the NOPD. They nodded politely. One spoke to Claire in Cajun-accented French. His partner said, “Evenin’, Ms. Laurent.” The first did a double take on Cassidy, but if the patrolman recognized him, he didn’t call him by name.
They moved past the salmon walls and green shutters of the famous Brennan’s restaurant. Claire became aware that Cassidy was watching her closely. She turned the tables and began to study him. “You aren’t married, are you, Cassidy?”
“Does it show?”
“No. It’s just that most wives wouldn’t approve of your working hours.” She kept her expression impassive, although she was glad to learn that her sins didn’t include kissing a married man.
“I was married,” he told her. “I blew it.”
“Regrets?”
He shrugged. “Not about her. It worked out best for both of us. I guess you could say I was married to my career. Sort of like you.” He paused, giving her an opportunity to comment.
Instead she asked another question. “Any children?”
“No. We never got around to it. Guess that worked out best, too. I wouldn’t have wanted to inflict a divorce on my kids.” He stopped outside a store front and gazed through the burglary-proof windows. “A gun shop. How convenient.”
“Is that the best you can do, Cassidy?”
“Come to think of it, you’re too smart to buy a weapon so close to home and in a neighborhood where you’re so well known.”
She gave him a shrewd look. “You checked, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
From there they moved to a shop whose entire inventory consisted of earrings. “Yasmine is one of their best customers,” Claire told him as he stared in awe at the vast variety.
In this elite shopping district, most of the stores were already closed. The silence on the street seemed to envelop them. Bourbon Street was only a block away, but it could have been a hundred miles. Occasionally a few piercingly sweet notes of a jazz trumpet wafted on the sultry air, but they drifted away like lost souls in search of refuge. The wrought-iron grilles that surrounded the overhead balconies added to the aspect of seclusion. Filigree iron gates provided glimpses into inner courtyards where mossy fountains trickled, gas hurricane lamps sputtered, and scarred brick walls guarded secrets.
They came upon a cat scrounging for dinner in a bag of garbage at the curb. Two couples wearing LSU sweatshirts staggered down the street, laughing, talking loudly and profanely, sloshing the Hurricanes they’d taken out in paper cups from Pat O’Brien’s. An old man with a mangy beard and wearing an unseasonably heavy overcoat nonchalantly relieved himself against the wall of an alley. An elegant elderly couple, walking arm in arm, passed them, saying, “Good evenin’.” A young man wearing tight black jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and heavy makeup swished past and made a kissing motion toward Cassidy with his glossy scarlet lips.
They turned onto St. Peter Street in front of the Royal Café. Claire pointed out its double balcony to Cassidy. “I think it’s the prettiest one in the Quarter.”
Jackson Square was closed for the night, but the shops and eateries surrounding it were still open. “I thought about getting a cappuccino here,” Claire told Cassidy as she halted in front of a small, intimate bar tucked beneath the historic Pontalba Arms apartments. Two of the outdoor tables were occupied by lovers who were engrossed in each other and impervious to the rest of the world. “But I could smell fresh beignets, so…”
She pointed him toward the Café du Monde. They waited for traffic at the curb, where a solo saxophonist was playing for the money passersby tossed into his hat, which lay on the sidewalk. The driver of a horse-drawn carriage and a sidewalk artist who had retired his pallets for the night were having a friendly argument over the football season.
“I agree with the artist,” Claire remarked. “The Saints have got to beef up their offensive line if they hope to get in the playoffs this year.”
“You could understand those guys?” Cassidy asked.
“Couldn’t you?” The sleepy nag harnessed to the carriage was wearing a big floppy hat with bright pink plastic geraniums encircling the crown. Claire stroked her muzzle as she stepped off the curb.
“Not a word. For almost a year after I moved here it was like living in a foreign country. It took a while for my ears to adapt to the accent. I still have trouble sometimes.”
“You don’t have any trouble understanding me.”
“You, Claire, I have the most trouble understanding.”
She indicated a table on the open-air terrace of Café du Monde. He held the chrome chair out for her. A waiter in a long white apron approached, his hands outstretched in welcome.
“Ms. Laurent, bonsoir. How lovely to see you.”
“Merci,” she said when he bent to kiss her hand.
“And this is?” he inquired, looking at Cassidy.
She introduced Claude, the waiter. “An order of beignets, please, Claude. Two cafés au lait.”
“Very good,” he said, briskly moving toward the kitchen.
“Obviously you come here often,” Cassidy observed.
“It’s almost been overrun by tourists, but Mama still enjoys coming here, so I bring her at least once a week.”
Claude delivered their order. The yeasty smell of the square, hole-less doughnuts and the aroma of the coffee made Claire’s mouth water. She dug in, unabashedly licking the powdered sugar off her fingers. Looking across at Cassidy, she laughed at the powdered sugar ringing his mouth and passed him a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table.
They demolished the beignets, splitting the third one, and sat silently sipping the scalding mixture of coffee and milk. Claire was content to sit and savor the flavor of New Orleans at its best. Too soon, Cassidy got down to business.
“That night,” he began, “how long were you here?”
“About thirty minutes, I guess.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That long?”
“This is the Vieux Carré, Cassidy. Like the Europeans who originally lived here, we can linger over a meal for hours. The pace is slow. When you cross Canal Street, you should leave behind the American’s tendency to bustle, and enjoy life. I resisted eating another order of doughnuts, but I did have two cups of café au lait and spent at least ten minutes with each one.”
At her request, Claude replaced their empty cups with full ones. Watching the steam rise from her cup, Claire said, “I had a lot on my mind that night. Jackson Wilde was only one thing t
hat was troubling me.”
“What else?”
“Mama. I worry about who would take care of her if something happened to me. For instance if I went to prison.” She gave him a puissant look, then lowered her eyes to her coffee, which she swirled in the thick white mug. “And the new catalog was on my mind. I always want the current one to top the last and am afraid the ideas will dry up.”
“That fear is common to creative people.”
“I suppose. And I was worried about Yasmine.”
“Why?”
“It’s personal.” Her expression dared him to ask her to betray her friend’s confidence, but he didn’t.
“That was quite a walk.” He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his long legs. The old jeans fitted them well, cupping his sex and gloving his thighs. Claire tried to keep her mind on what he was saying. “I suppose if I asked, Claude here would swear on his sainted mother’s tombstone that you spent at least half an hour here that night.”
“Do you think I’m lying, Cassidy?”
“No,” he said. “I think you brought me along tonight so I’d see how well known and respected you are in this community and what I’m up against if I try to convict you. You’re even on speaking terms with the neighborhood cops. A good defense attorney would line up all these character witnesses, and even if they couldn’t swear that you were walking in the French Quarter that night, they couldn’t swear that you weren’t.”
“If you were my defense attorney, is that what you’d do?”
“Precisely. If the prosecutor didn’t have an indisputable piece of physical evidence, I’d make you look like a saint and confuse the jury with facts that weren’t pertinent.”
“You know all the tricks, I see.”
His lips narrowed and his expression turned grim. “All the tricks.”
There was more to Cassidy than what she knew, Claire decided. The newspapers reported on the A.D.A., not on the inner man. She wanted to pursue that inner man, to discover what made that introspective and regretful expression come across his face occasionally, but she had her own problems.
“You still believe I committed that murder, don’t you?”
