by Tami Hoag
“I swear,” Glory Trahern gushed, leaning over to touch Danjermond's arm as if he were a lucky charm. “I hardly dare to set foot across the parish line, what with all these murders going on around us.”
Danjermond's green eyes glowed with amusement as he met Laurel's skeptical stare. “You see, Laurel, the advantage of having a politically ambitious district attorney? I have to do my job well, or no one will vote for me when I run for office.”
The comment drew chuckles all around. Vivian patted his sleeve, pleased with his benevolent good humor. Laurel managed a smile. Stephen Danjermond was hardly the first politician to train for the job in the district attorney's office. She was hardly up to arguing philosophy with him at any rate. She had come here to put in her required appearance, that was all. By the looks Vivian was sliding her, she figured she would do well to stick to that plan.
Be a good girl, Laurel. Don't rock the boat, Laurel. Always say the right thing, Laurel.
Olive slunk into the room, looking almost apologetic, and announced in a meek monotone that dinner was ready, flinching like a whipped dog as lightning flashed outside the tall French doors.
“Well, I certainly have an appetite!” Ross announced with a blazing smile. He slapped Reverend Stipple on the shoulder. “How about you, Reverend?”
The minister bobbed his head like a window ornament in the back of a hopped-up Chevy. “I surely do.”
Everyone moved on toward the dining room, Vivian leading Danjermond ahead, then returning without him to herd the rest of her guests out of the parlor. She snagged Laurel by the arm and held her back as the others continued down the hall, chatting amicably.
Laurel closed her eyes briefly and bit down on a sigh.
“Laurel Leanne! How dare you be rude to a guest in this house!” Vivian snapped, her voice a harsh whisper, her bony fingers biting into Laurel's arm. “Stephen Danjermond is an extremely important man. There's no telling how far he will go in politics.”
“That doesn't mean I have to agree with him, Mama,” Laurel pointed out, knowing it wouldn't do her any good. Her mother's code demanded that ladies be agreeable regardless. It wouldn't have mattered if Stephen Danjermond's politics had rivaled Adolf Hitler's for extremism.
Vivian pinched her lips together and narrowed her eyes. “Be civil to him, Laurel. I raised you to be a lady and won't tolerate less in this house. Stephen is educated, powerful, from a very good family.”
Translation: Stephen Danjermond was a prize catch. No doubt every debutante in the parish had her sights set on him. Laurel wanted to tell her mother that she wasn't fishing, but she kept the comment to herself. Somehow it had never occurred to Vivian that she might need time to heal in the wake of all that had happened to her.
“I'm sorry, Mama,” she murmured, not wanting to prolong the argument.
“Oh, well,” Vivian said with a sigh, her temper cooling as abruptly as it had flared up. “You've always had your headstrong moments. You're just like your father that way.”
She reached up to brush lightly at Laurel's bangs, her expression softening into one of her rare, truly motherly looks. “You do look pretty today, darlin'. This shade of pink becomes you.”
Laurel said thank you, hating herself for letting the compliment mean anything to her. She never seemed able to escape that childish need for her mother's approval.
A weakness. One of many.
She glanced at her watch as Vivian took her by the arm and led her out of the room, wondering how soon she could leave. This emotional tug-of-war wasn't what she needed to get herself back on track.
It's just a dinner, just a couple of hours. Get through it and go home.
The dining room was as elegant as the parlor, as filled with heirlooms and oil portaits of Chandlers dead and gone. The Hepplewhite table and shield-back chairs shone from two centuries of hand-polishing. Footfalls sounded against the cypress floor and bounded up to the twelve-foot ceiling. Glory Trahern stared up as if she were trying to see them rather than calculating the worth of the blown glass chandelier. Her husband snatched her arm and herded her toward a chair.
Not surprisingly, Laurel found herself seated directly across from Stephen Danjermond, who had the place of honor—at the right hand of Vivian, who sat at one end of the table, opposite Ross. Laurel slid into her chair and focused on her Wedgwood plate, uncomfortably aware of the handsome, elegant, articulate man across from her, wishing she had worn her glasses. She didn't want to attract his attention any more than she had wanted to attract the attention of her stepfather two decades ago. There was no room in her life for a man right now.
The image of Jack's mocking smile appeared before her mind's eye, and she frowned and speared a stalk of baby asparagus.
The topic of law and order had survived the trip down the hall, and the participants discussed the dynamic duo of Partout Parish—Sheriff Duwayne Kenner and District Attorney Danjermond—pleased and proud of the fact that crime here was being kept to a minimum.
“People can say what they will about Kenner's personality,” Ross said with his usual air of supreme authority, “but the man does his job. I daresay if those killings had taken place in our parish, Kenner would have had the man responsible by now.”
“Perhaps,” Danjermond murmured as Olive collected his salad plate and slunk away. “He would certainly do his utmost. He's a very capable man, and tenacious as they come. However, we have to remember that killers of this sort are notoriously clever. Brilliant even.”
“Sick,” Glory Trahern said, fussing with her bow as she shivered. “Crazy and sick, that's what he is.”
He tipped his head, conceding the possibility. “Or cold. Emotionless. Soulless.” He turned his intense, mesmerizing gaze on Laurel. “What do you think, Laurel? Is our Bayou Strangler crazy or evil?”
Laurel twisted her napkin in her lap, wishing herself away from this conversation, afraid that it would gradually turn her way and the Traherns and Reverend Stipple and Stephen Danjermond would want to hear all about her life as “the prosecutor who cried wolf.” “I . . . I couldn't say,” she murmured. “I don't have enough knowledge about the cases to form an educated guess.”
“There is a difference, though, don't you agree?” he prodded, the insistence in his voice subtle, smooth, strong. “While society deems all murderers insane to one degree or another, the courts have a different criterion. In the eyes of the law, there is a distinct difference.
“You believe in evil, don't you, Laurel?”
Laurel met his steady gaze, uneasiness drifting through her. She didn't want to be drawn into this conversation, but Danjermond held her attention, and the other diners waited expectantly. She could feel their eyes, sense the pressure of their held breath. Thunder rolled through the leaden skies outside. The rain came a little harder.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I do.”
“And good must triumph over evil. That is the foundation of our judicial system.”
Yes, but it didn't always. She knew that better than most, and so she held her tongue and glanced away, and Danjermond's cool green eyes held fast on her, speculating.
“Speaking of good and evil,” Laurel said, catching the eye of Reverend Stipple, “what do you make of Jimmy Lee Baldwin, Reverend?”
“As much as I hate to speak ill of anyone, my own opinion of him is less than complimentary,” the minister said as he served himself a portion of beef. “He's a bit too fancy for my tastes. However, his television ministry does reach out to the homebound and calls back those who may have left the fold of Christ on the wayward paths of life.”
One opinion was canceled out by the other, but Laurel bit her tongue on the urge to point that out. Just do your time and get the hell out of here.
“And he is campaigning against sin in the community,” Reverend Stipple went on, looking as though he might just convince himself to like Baldwin after all.
Laurel thought of Savannah's comment about Jimmy Lee Baldwin's twisted sexual pre
ferences and held her tongue as the potatoes came her way.
“I hear he's going to try to close down Frenchie's Landing,” Glory Trahern said, her eyes lighting up at the chance to pass on gossip.
“Yes,” Laurel said, “and the owners are very upset about it.” At least T-Grace Delahoussaye was upset. She had to take T-Grace's word for it that Ovide was upset.
“You've been there?”
Laurel winced inwardly at Vivian's tone, but pushed the fear of her mother's reaction aside. She was a grown woman, able to go where she chose. “I had to see a man about a dog,” she said, cutting the one thin slice of roast she had taken. “While Frenchie's doesn't compare with the country club, it hardly seemed the den of sin Mr. Baldwin is trying to make it out to be.”
“It's nowhere for respectable people to go,” Vivian commented, her face tight with disapproval.
“I see your point, though, Laurel, darlin',” Ross announced. “Skeeter Mouton's is by far the most notorious place in the parish. If Baldwin were serious about this war against sin, Mouton's would be the likely target. I suspect, however, that Mr. Baldwin knows too well the kind of trouble he'd be asking for poking at that hornets' nest. He'd get himself killed.”
“Instead, he's harassing a legitimate business.”
“Are you taking up the Delahoussayes' cause, Laurel?” Danjermond asked mildly.
Laurel met his steady gaze once again. “I'm not practicing at the moment, but someone should take up their cause.”
He shrugged slightly. “I can't act on their behalf unless they make a formal complaint. You might pass that information along. It isn't against the law to preach; trespassing is another matter.”
“Yes, I already have made that suggestion to them.”
He smiled slowly, as if to tell her he knew her far better than she knew herself. “So you are taking up their cause, aren't you, Laurel?”
The truth of his statement stopped her short for a second, but she shook it off. “I merely made a suggestion.”
“Stephen has more important causes to take up. Don't you, Stephen, dear?” Vivian said, reaching out to pat his hand approvingly. “Why don't you tell us about the state attorney general's appointing you head of the Acadiana drug task force?”
The meal progressed at a snail's pace. Laurel picked at her food and glanced at her watch every thirty seconds. Finally, they left the table and went back to the parlor for coffee. While Vivian bossed Olive around and the Traherns settled on the gold settee, Laurel roamed to the French doors and stood with her cup in her hand, staring out wistfully at the rain-washed garden. The thundershower had passed. When she escaped, she would go back to Belle Rivière and take a book out to the courtyard and sit in a corner reading and absorbing the quiet, the scent of rain, roses, and wisteria.
“Is the company really all that unpleasant?”
She started and glanced up, surprised to find Danjermond standing so close beside her. He had abandoned his coffee and stood with his hands tucked into the pockets of his fashionable pleated trousers.
“No, not at all,” Laurel said quickly.
Danjermond smiled like a cat. “You're not a terribly good liar, Laurel. Tell the truth now. You'd rather be elsewhere.”
“I admit I didn't come back to Bayou Breaux to socialize.”
“Then it's my good fortune you made an exception in this case. Unless I'm the reason you're staring so longingly out that window, wishing yourself away.”
“Of course not.”
“Good, because I was about to suggest we get together in a more intimate setting one evening soon. A candlelit dinner, perhaps.”
“I hardly know you, Mr. Danjermond.”
“That's the whole point of intimate dinners, isn't it? To get to know each other. I'd like to find out more about your views, your plans, yourself.”
“I have no plans for the moment. And I don't care to discuss my views. I'm not trying to be rude,” she said, lifting her free hand in a gesture of peace. “The fact of the matter is I was recently divorced and have been through a great deal in the past year. I'm simply not up to a date at this point.”
“Or a job offer?” he queried, lifting a brow, seeming not the least affected by her rejection of him personally.
Laurel tucked her chin back and eyed him with more than a hint of suspicion. “Why would you offer me a job? We've only just met.”
“Because I can always use another good prosecutor in my office. The Scott County case notwithstanding, you have an excellent record. Your work on the Valdez migrant worker case was outstanding, and you went far above and beyond the call of duty investigating the rape of that blind woman back when you were little more than a clerk for the DA's office in Fulton County.”
She had been barely out of law school. It was ancient history. The fact that he had for some reason dug that deeply into her past brought a return of the uneasiness she had felt earlier. She crossed her arms in front of her, careful not to dump coffee down the front of her sweater. “You seem to have an inordinate knowledge of my career, Mr. Danjermond.”
“I'm a very thorough man, Laurel.” He smiled again, that even, handsome smile. “You might say attention to detail has gotten me where I am today.”
To the DA's office in backwater Louisiana? It seemed an odd thing to say, considering Stephen Danjermond had Bigger Things written all over him. With his pedigree and family connections, Laurel would have expected him to be firmly entrenched in Baton Rouge or New Orleans.
“There is a method to my madness, I assure you,” he said, reading her silence with amazing accuracy. “Ambitious prosecutors are a dime a dozen in New Orleans. Acadiana offers me the chance to shine on my own. And there are unique problems here, problems I feel I can help control—drug smuggling, gun running. There is a certain element in the bayou country that remains largely uncivilized. Bringing that faction to heel and making them realize the days of Jean Lafitte are long past is a worthy goal.”
“And one that will attract the attention of the powers that be.”
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “C'est la vie. C'est la guerre. To the victor go the spoils.”
“I know how the game is played, Mr. Danjermond,” Laurel said in a cool tone. “I'm not naive.”
“No, you're an idealist. A much more difficult lot in life. Better to be a cynic.”
“Is that what you are? A cynic?”
“I'm a pragmatist.” He held her gaze and let the silence build between them until Laurel had to fight herself to keep from stepping back. “Will you consider my offer?”
She shook her head. “I'm sorry. I'm flattered, but I can't think about work yet.”
“But it's not just work to you, is it, Laurel? The pursuit of justice is a calling for you, an obsession,” he said. “Isn't it, Laurel?”
The question was too personal. She was feeling too sensitive. He stood a little too close, watched her too intently. He looked relaxed, and yet she had the impression of leashed power beneath his calm facade. He was too . . . everything. Too tall, too handsome, too charming. Too still.
She glanced at the platinum Rolex strapped to his wrist, and relief flooded through her. “I'm afraid I have to be leaving now, Mr. Danjermond. I promised my aunt I'd help her with some things this afternoon. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“Until we meet again, Laurel.”
When donkeys fly, she thought. She hadn't come home for challenges or entanglements or trouble. She backed away another step, some primal instinct keeping her from turning her back too quickly on Stephen Danjermond. He watched her, calm amusement lighting his green eyes, and she turned then, simply to escape looking at his too-handsome face, turned just as Savannah walked in the door.
Chapter
Nine
Tension, like electricity, filled the room instantly, tightening skin, raising short hairs, freezing breath. The initial shock held everyone motionless, speechless, then Olive rushed into the room, chalk-faced, eyes brimming with tears.
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“I didn't let her in, Mrs. Leighton!” she wailed. “I didn't! She shoved me!”
Vivian grabbed the maid by the arm and hustled her out into the hall. Savannah watched them go, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lush mouth. The initial responses to her appearance made it worth the trouble she had taken to get out here. She could have turned right around and left, only she wasn't satisfied. She wanted to tear through this little civilized, socially correct affair like a tornado and carry her baby sister off with her when she went. Damned if she was going to let Vivian dig her claws into Laurel or let Ross get within two feet of her.
She looked past the shocked faces of Glory and Don Trahern and Reverend Stipple, to her dear old step-daddy. Ross's expression was guarded, like that of a poker player bluffing on a busted hand. He still wanted her. She was sure of that, and she smiled at him to let him know she knew. To remind herself he had chosen her over his wife, over her mother. To reinforce the truth in her own mind—that she was a born whore and would never be anything else. And she reveled in the moment, in making him wonder, making him squirm.
Feeling smug, she strolled into the room, her gait loose, hips swinging. She had dressed for the occasion in a scandalously short, sleeveless dress that was white with large red amaryllis blossoms splashed across it, and fit her like skin on a sausage. Aside from her red stiletto heels, it was the only article of clothing she wore. She had looped a long strand of pearls carelessly around her neck to accompany her ever-present pendant, and brushed her hair upside down so that it was now like a cloud around her shoulders, wild and sexy. Her Ray-Bans completed the outfit, hiding her eyes, giving her an air of mystery.
“Savannah,” Laurel said, finding her tongue at last. She studied her sister and chose her words carefully. “We didn't expect to see you.”
“I had a change in plans,” Savannah said evenly. “I need to borrow your car, Baby. Seeing how mine is temporarily out of commission.”
“Of course.” Laurel took a step toward the door. “You can give me a ride back to Belle Rivière. I was just leaving.”
