by Tami Hoag
“You believe in evil, don't you, Laurel. . . . And good must triumph over evil. . . .”
“Yes, Mr. Danjermond,” she whispered. “It must.”
The sun was just setting when she finally slipped from the house. The dinner had begun at eight, but Laurel had been to enough functions of the same ilk to know that, while the baked Alaska would be served by nine, no one would get out of the Wisteria Club before ten-thirty. Then whoever would be usurping Vivian's role for the evening would whisk Danjermond off for drinks and inane small talk with the power elite of the group.
She calculated she would have a solid ninety minutes to search the house and get out safely. Provided she could escape from Belle Rivière without being caught.
Kenner had a deputy watching the house. The massive Wilson, who strolled the grounds like an overprotective Rottweiler. Laurel changed into dark jeans and a navy blue T-shirt, and prowled the balcony, waiting. In the end, Mama Pearl unwittingly came to her aid, coaxing the deputy into her kitchen for coffee and a piece of chocolate stack cake.
With Wilson out of the way, it was a simple matter of creeping down the outer staircase and slipping out a side gate.
Simple . . . except for the pair of eyes that followed her out of the courtyard and away from Belle Rivière.
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Danjermond lived in a gracious old brick house three doors down from Conroy Cooper. Once part of a row of town houses, the building was three stories high and very narrow. The rest of the town houses had long ago fallen to the wrecking ball, leaving this one tall, elegant reminder of more genteel times. The front yard was graced with a pair of live oak heavily festooned with Spanish moss. The interlaced branches of the trees created a bower above the walk to a front entrance that boasted a black lacquered front door with a fanlight above. The only light that glowed in the gathering darkness came from the brass carriage lamp beside the door.
Laurel cut through Cooper's lawn and approached Danjermond's house from the rear, where the properties gradually backed down to the bayou. The neighborhood was quiet, populated primarily by older couples whose families had long since grown up and moved on. There were a few lights in windows up and down the block, but no one was outside to see her slip through a break in the tall hedge that surrounded Danjermond's backyard.
As at Belle Rivière, the small backyard had been paved with bricks more than a century ago and turned into a private courtyard where a small stone fountain gurgled and bougainvillea climbed what was left of the original brick wall. But there the similarities ended. There was no jungle of plant life here, no clutter of tables and chairs. The area had a very spare, austere, almost vacant feel to it. A single black wrought-iron bench sat dead center, directly behind the house, facing the fountain.
Laurel envisioned Danjermond sitting there, staring, contemplating, saying nothing, and a chill crawled over her despite the heat of the night. She had the strangest feeling she could sense his presence here, even though she knew he was away, and the idea of going into his home brought a sense of dread that lay in her stomach like a stone. Her skin was clammy with sweat, making her T-shirt stick to her in spots, drawing mosquitoes that she waved away impatiently as she forced herself to take one step and then another toward the house. She didn't have a choice and didn't have much time. There was no sense in dawdling just because she was spooked.
Even as she thought it, something rustled in the shrubbery at the back of the courtyard, and she whirled, wide-eyed to find—Nothing. A bird. A squirrel. Her imagination. Heart thumping at the base of her throat, she turned back to the house.
The last of the day had faded to black. Stars were winking on in the sky above, but their pinpoints of light did nothing to illuminate the courtyard. The hedge, a thicket well over six feet high, blocked out the surrounding world so completely that Laurel had to remind herself there were people in their living rooms watching television on either side.
The back door was locked. There had been a time when no one in Bayou Breaux would have dreamed of locking a door. Then crime had seeped out from the cities. Then Stephen Danjermond had come.
Nibbling on her thumbnail, she descended the stairs, trying to think of an alternate way in. The front would be locked, as well, not that she could risk going in that way. He might have a spare key hidden somewhere, but she didn't want to take time to search for it. The first-floor windows were way out of her reach—but the ground-floor windows weren't.
Like many old homes in south Louisiana, this one had been built with a ground floor used for storage; the living areas were above, high enough to thwart the inevitable floodwaters from the bayou. Laurel checked the nearest window, finding it jammed shut and stuck with age and old paint. Quickly she moved around the other side of the stairs and found a door that led beneath the stoop and presumably into the storage space.
She closed her fingers around the knob and tried to turn it, her hand slipping, slick with sweat, and her fingers weak with nerves. She wiped her palm on the leg of her jeans and tried again, holding her breath as the hardware caught, stuck, then, with an extra twist, released, and the door creaked open, revealing a space that was thick with cobwebs and dust. And who knew what else, Laurel thought as she pulled a flashlight from the hip pocket of her jeans. Shaded, undisturbed space close to the bayou. There wouldn't be anything unusual in finding a copperhead or two . . . or more. The famous scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark slithered up from the depths of her memory and crawled over her skin.
Shuddering, she steeled herself, drew a deep breath, pushed the door open—and a hand clamped over her mouth from behind. An arm banded around her middle, as strong as steel, and hauled her back against a body that was lean, rock-solid, and indisputably male.
Panic exploded in Laurel, shooting adrenaline through her veins, pumping strength into her arms and legs. She tried to bolt, tried to kick, tried to jab back with her elbows all at once, twisting violently in her captor's grasp. He grunted as her heel connected with his shin, but her satisfaction was small and short-lived as he tightened his hold around her middle.
“Dammit, 'tite chatte, be still!”
As quick as a heartbeat, all the fight in her froze into paralyzing disbelief. Jack. She went limp with relief, and he loosened his hold in response. Jack had come. Jack had followed her. Jack had scared the living hell out of her.
She twisted around in his embrace and smacked his arm as hard as she could with the barrel of the flashlight. “You jackass!” she hissed under her breath. “You scared me near to death!”
Jack jumped back to avoid a second thumping. He scowled at her while he rubbed at the rising welt on his arm. “What the hell are you doin' here?” he demanded in a low, graveled voice.
Laurel gaped at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I followed you,” he admitted grudgingly, still cursing himself for it. If he hadn't been standing on the balcony when she had crept down the back steps of Belle Rivière . . . If he hadn't wondered why and let his imagination loose on the possibilities . . . If he had a lick of sense and the brains God gave a goat, he would have gone back in and sat down to work.
“Why?” she demanded, glaring up at him with fire in her eyes and a smudge of dirt on the tip of her upturned nose.
“'Cause even money said you were gettin' into trouble.”
“So what do you care if I am?” Laurel snapped. “You looked me in face this morning and told me in no uncertain terms you didn't want me in your life. Make up your mind, Jack. You want me or you don't. You're in this or you're out.”
He set his jaw and looked past her into the dark of the storage space beneath the house. He wanted her. That wasn't the question, had never been the question. The question was whether he deserved her, whether he dared take the chance to find out. The answers eluded him still, lay inside him beneath a dark cloak he hadn't worked up the courage to look beneath. It was easier not to, simpler to let her walk out of his life.
&
nbsp; “Why are you here?” he asked again, bringing his gaze back to her.
“Because I think I know who killed my sister.” Fin-
gers tightening around the flashlight, eyes locked hard on his face, she took the plunge. “Stephen Danjermond.”
Laurel held her breath, waiting for his reaction, praying he would believe her, certain he would not. Needing him to believe her.
Jack blew out a breath, tunneled his fingers back through his hair, feeling as if she had knocked him upside the head with a lead pipe. “Danjermond!” he murmured, incredulous. “He's the goddamn district attorney!”
Laurel's jaw tightened against the first wave of hurt. “I know what he is. I know exactly what he is.”
He swore long and fluently. “Why? Why do you think he's the one?”
“Because he all but told me he was,” she said, turning her back to him to shine her light under the stairs and to hide the disappointment. “I don't have time to explain. You either believe me or you don't. Either way, I'm going into this house to look for some kind of proof.”
Jack took in the rigid set of her shoulders—so slim, so delicate, too often carrying a burden that would have crushed a lesser person. He thought of the burden that had broken her. She had lost everything—her career, her credibility, her husband—because she had believed justice had to win at all cost. And she would fight this fight, too, alone if she had to, because she believed.
Dieu, he couldn't remember if he had ever believed in anything except looking out for his own hide.
Laurel suffered through the silence, refusing to let her heart break. She didn't have the time for it now. Later, after she had figured out a way to nail Danjermond, then she would let herself deal with this. Now she had a job to do, and if she had to do it alone, so be it.
She choked down the knot in her throat and took a step into the space beneath the house. Jack clamped a hand over her shoulder and held her back.
“Hey, gimme that light, sugar. There might be snakes under here.”
They emerged on the first floor of the house, through a door tucked under the main staircase. Laurel toed her sneakers off to avoid tracking in sand and dirt. Jack, in boots, opted to dust them off on the legs of his jeans.
The house was dark, all looming shapes and sinister shadows. The smells of lemon polish and cherry-tinted tobacco hung in the air. A grandfather clock marked time in the hall, ticking the seconds away, chiming the half hour. Nine-thirty.
“What are we looking for?” Jack whispered, keeping a hand on Laurel's shoulder in deference to the protective instincts rising up in him.
“Trophies,” she answered, shining the narrow beam of the flashlight on the floor. Her breath hitched in her throat as something tall caught her eye near the front door, then seeped back out as she recognized the lines of a coat tree. “We know the killer kept jewelry as souvenirs because he sent some to me. I'm betting he kept some for himself, as well, as keepsakes.”
“Jesus.”
She shone the light into the front room—a parlor—backed out of the doorway, and continued down the hall, past a small, elegant dining room, past a bathroom. A blocky ginger cat bolted out of the next room and streaked past them, growling, making a beeline for the stairs. Laurel paused to get her heartbeat down from warp speed, then ducked into the room the cat had dashed out of.
Bookcases covered the walls from the twelve-foot-high ceiling to the polished pine floor. Here the scent of Danjermond's expensive tobacco was strongest, the furniture polish an undertone to leather chairs and the faintly musty-sweet aroma of old books. A handsome cherrywood partners desk dominated the floor space. Behind it, an entertainment center held shelves of sophisticated stereo equipment.
Laurel skirted around a wing chair and took a look at the desktop. She was afraid they would have to go upstairs to find what they were looking for. Her instincts told her a killer would keep items that secret, that meaningful, in his most private lair—his bedroom. But a study was a close second, and Danjermond obviously spent a good deal of time in his.
Slipping around behind the desk, she cast the light over a humidor, a tray of correspondence, an immaculate blotter. She slipped two fingers into a brass pull and tried the slim center drawer.
“Damn, it's locked.”
Jack scanned the bookshelves by the thin, silvery light from the window, looking for a title that might strike a spark. People often hid things in books. Hollowed them out and filled them with treasures and secrets. He assumed there wasn't time to look through all of them, and searched for a likely candidate instead, but there were no titles like The Naked and the Damned, or The Quick and the Dead, or anything else that might appeal to a twisted sense of humor, just tomes on law and order, classics, poetry.
“Where's Danjermond?” he asked, pulling out a Conan Doyle first edition.
Laurel tried the drawers on the file cabinet with no luck. “Being toasted by the royal order of pearls and girdles as a man they can all look up to and entrust with the chastity of their debutante daughters.”
She checked her watch and swore. They needed to find something soon, before the window of opportunity slid closed and locked them inside.
“What happens if we find something?” Jack asked as they climbed to the next floor. “We don' exactly have a warrant, angel. No judge in the country would allow evidence obtained this illegally.”
“All I need is one piece,” Laurel said as she crept past a small guest room and a linen closet. “Just one damning piece I can take to Kenner and hit him over the head with. He's probably turning your place upside down as we speak. Danjermond is trying to build a case against you.”
The news stopped Jack in his tracks. He had thought Kenner was grasping at straws, not that anyone in the courthouse had a plan. “He really thinks he can pin Savannah's murder on me? And Annie's?”
“And four others. And don't think he won't figure out a way to do it. The man has a mind a Celtic knot would envy.”
And she was going to stop him, Jack thought, watching as she shone the beam of the flashlight into another bedroom. She was risking what was left of her reputation in part to protect him.
“Bingo,” she muttered, and pushed open the door.
The bed gave the room away as Danjermond's—a massive mahogany tester with ornately carved posts and a black velvet spread trimmed in gold. The underside of the canopy was decorated with shirred white silk. Jack reached up and pushed a section of fabric aside to reveal a mirror. Laurel said nothing to his arched brow. She didn't allow her mind to form any kind of scenario. She didn't want to imagine where Danjermond's sexual tastes ran, because one thought would lead to the next and on to delicate wrists bound and screams for mercy and—
“You okay, sugar?” Jack whispered. He didn't even try to stop himself from slipping his arms around her and pulling her back against him. She had gone pale too suddenly, her eyes were too wide. He bent his head and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Come on. We'll take a look and get the hell outta here.”
Like every other room they had seen, this one was immaculate, impeccably decorated, strangely cold-feeling, as if no one lived here—or the one who did was not human. Not a thing was out of place. Every piece of furniture looked to be worth a fortune. Nothing appeared to have sentimental value. There were no photos of family, no small mementos of his youth. A barrister's bookcase between the windows held another collection of antique books—first editions of erotica that dated back to Renaissance Europe. But there was nothing else, no jewelry, no weapons, no photographs.
Disappointment pressed down on Laurel. She should have known better than to think Danjermond would make it easy on her, but she had hoped just the same. Now that hope slipped through her grasp like sand. If the evidence she needed wasn't here, then it could be anywhere in the Atchafalaya.
And with the disappointment came self-doubt. What if she was wrong? What if the killer was Baldwin or Leonce? Or Cooper. Or some nameless, faceless stranger.
&nbs
p; No. She closed the last drawer on the dresser and straightened, rubbing her fingers against her temples. She wasn't wrong. She hadn't been wrong in Scott County; she wasn't wrong now. Stephen Danjermond was a killer. She knew it, could feel it, had always felt something like wariness around him. He was a killer, and he thought he was going to get away with murder.
If she couldn't find one way to implicate him, Laurel knew she would have to find another. And the longer it took her, the more women would die, and the more time Danjermond would have to build a case to frame Jack. The longer he would play his game with her, destroying her credibility, her confidence, her belief in a higher law than survival of the fittest.
“Let's go,” she whispered, hooking a finger through a belt loop on Jack's Levi's and pulling him away from the bookcase. “I doubt he'll be back from the dinner for another hour, but we can't take chances.”
“Wait.”
It hit Jack like an epiphany as the flashlight beam swept across the collection of books. A trio bound in faded red leather sitting side by side by side on the upper left-hand shelf. L-Petite Mort, volumes one, two, and three. The Little Death. His eyes had scanned past them when he'd first realized that this collection was erotica. Erotica—the little death—orgasm. The title hadn't seemed out of place, but as he guided the beam of the light across the bindings, a sixth sense tensed in his gut like a fist.
Gently, he lifted the glass panel on the front of the case and slid it back out of the way. The three volumes came off the shelf as one.
Emotion lodged like a rock in Laurel's throat as she shone the light across a tangle of earrings and necklaces. More than six pieces. Many more. Tears swimming in her eyes, she reached in with a tweezers she'd pulled from her pocket and lifted out a heavy gold earring. A large circle of hammered gold hanging from a smaller loop of finely braided strands of antiqued gold.
