Authors: Tami Hoag
Regardless of the answer, she was caught with the burden of guilt; someone died either way. Responsibility pressed down on her, just as it had in Scott County. She thought she would have given anything for the chance to get out, but she knew she wouldn't take the chance if it were offered. She was trapped by her own sense of duty and honor, stuck here in yet another nightmare.
“I'd undo it for you if I could,” Jack said softly.
Jack, who claimed to be nobody's hero, would have gone back and changed history for her. Laurel slipped her arms around him and held on, knowing he wasn't the man to anchor her life to. But the need and the knowledge clashed inside her, and need won out for the moment.
“We can go away for a few days,” he whispered. “Get away from it. I know a cabin over on Bayou Noir—”
“I can't.” Laurel sat back a little, blinking up at him through her tears. She swiped a hand under her eyes and combed her hair back with her fingers. “I—I can't go anywhere. There are things to do—arrangements—” She swallowed hard and let the real reason come to the fore. “I have to find out who did this. Someone has to pay.”
“And you have to be the one to catch him?” Jack said sharply, her sense of responsibility rubbing against the grain of his selfishness. He wanted her safe and all to himself, if not forever, then for a little while. “We've got a sheriff for that.”
“The killer isn't sending the sheriff trophies from his conquests,” she said bleakly. “He's sent me three.”
The news hit Jack with the force of a baseball bat, leaving him incredulous, a little dizzy, a little sick. A murderer had singled her out. He sat back on his heels, his jaw slack, his fingers tight as he held her at arm's length. “He's sent you what?”
“An earring. I don't know whose. And Annie Gerrard's necklace. This morning I found a necklace of Savannah's in my pocketbook.”
“Jesus Christ, Laurel! That's all the more reason to get the hell out!”
“That's what you'd do, Jack?” She arched a brow, studying him hard enough that he dropped his hands and glanced away. “Cut and run? I don't think so. For all you like to play it that way, I don't think you would. I know I can't.”
“You'd rather end up with a silk scarf knotted around your throat?” he said brutally, his hands shaking at the idea of anyone's hurting her. The concern set everything inside him shaking. He never should have gotten involved with her. Of all the women he could have had, he'd fallen for the one who carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“I don't fit the pattern,” she said. “I'm not promiscuous.”
“You been sleeping with me, haven't you,
'tite chatte
?”
Laurel scowled at the sardonic edge in his voice. “That's different.”
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “How is that different? You hardly know me, we go to bed together, we have sex. How is that different? You think this killer is gonna split hairs?”
“Stop it!” she snapped, hating him for belittling what they had had together. Even if he didn't want to call it love, it was more than sex. It certainly wasn't in the same category as what Savannah had shared with the likes of Ronnie Peltier and Jimmy Lee Baldwin. Her fingers curled over some of the papers he had swept off his desk in his rage, and she snatched them up and threw them at him, a gesture that was more symbolic of futility than fury.
“You amaze me,” Jack said, grabbing hold of his anger with both hands. Better to be angry than afraid. Better to push her away than to cling to her when he knew he'd lose her in the end anyway. “You think you're Wonder Woman or something. Every bad thing that happens, you think you could have stopped it, you think you have to solve it, win the day for justice.”
“Oh, excuse me for being a responsible person!”
“That's not responsibility, that's arrogance.”
Laurel gasped as the jab stuck deep. “How dare you say that to me!” she said, her voice a trembling whisper that rose in pitch and volume with each word. “You sit up here in this private prison you bought yourself, drinking your liver into a knot, taking the blame for someone else ending their own life! Everything that happened was
your
fault—but, no, it's not really
your
fault because your father was a son of a bitch. Let's get him up here and we can have us a real finger-pointing session.”
“We can't,” he shouted, leaning over her.
“Why not?” she yelled, meeting his glare.
“Because I killed him!”
Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, Laurel plopped down on the floor amid the drift of manuscript pages and scribbled notes, stunned speechless.
“With my own two hands,” Jack whispered, lifting his hands for examination, the long, elegant fingers spread wide as he turned them this way and that.
He rose slowly to his feet, a strange calm settling inside him. He had wanted to be rid of her. Wasn't that what he had told himself as he walked the deserted streets of town in the gray mist before dawn? Loving her hurt too much, and the end, which was inevitable, would be excruciating. This was his chance to make the break, his chance to show her once and for all just what he was. Then
she
could walk away from him.
“He hit Maman one time too many. He knocked me aside too many times without ever thinking one day I wouldn't be puny and weak.”
He stared right through her, into his past, seeing it all once more—the shabby kitchen that smelled of grease, his mother cowering by the stained sink, Blackie going after her with his arm raised.
“I grabbed an iron skillet off the stove—it was the first thing that came to hand—and I hit him, smashed his skull in like an eggshell,” he said flatly, as if he needed to unplug all emotion to be able to tell the story. “I don't think I meant to kill him,” he said, though after all these years he still wasn't sure. Christ knew he had wished Blackie dead often enough, to put an end to the fear and the shame. “I just wanted him to stop hitting Maman. I was finally big enough to make him stop. That's all I wanted—for him to stop, for him to leave us alone.”
He sniffed and held his breath a moment, fighting the rise of childhood feelings and gathering the old bitterness as fuel to go on. “And while my mother sat on the floor with blood running out of her broken nose, crying over this man who had abused her and her children for seventeen years, I dragged his body out to our
bâteau
. I took ol' Blackie for a ride into the swamp, tied an anchor around his middle, and dumped him in the deepest, darkest water I could find. No need for a decent burial when he was going straight to hell anyway. No need to drag the sheriff into it. We all just pretended he went out on a bender and never came back.
“That's the kind of man you think you fell in love with, sugar,” he said, his voice low and rough. “You think you know me? You think you've got me pegged? You think mebbe there's something worth loving under all the scars? Think again. I killed my own father, drove my wife to suicide. I went from a profession where I got paid to lie and cheat to one that inspires twisted minds to commit murder.” A bitter smile twisted his mouth. “Yeah, I'm a helluva guy,
chère
. You oughta fall in love with the like of me.”
She didn't say a word, just sat there staring up at him with those wide eyes, and he knew he would have given anything to be the kind of man she needed. A bitter thought. A foolish thought. He was the last man she needed. Laurel deserved a champion, a knight in shining armor, not a jaded mercenary, not a man with ghosts. He was nothing but the worst kind of bastard. What he was doing to her now was absolute proof of that.
Dieu,
she'd just lost her sister, and here he was breaking her heart just to save what was left of his own.
One of the papers on the floor caught his eye, and he bent and grabbed it up, a sad parody of a smile pulling at his lips as he read his own handwriting. He had forgotten all about his ulterior motive for getting to know her. Such a poor ruse, he hadn't made more than a token effort to convince himself. But here it was in black and white, just in time to finish the job of cutting his own throat.
“Here,” he murmured, handing it to her. “Here's the kind of man you come to in your hour of grief, angel. I'm sorry you didn' believe me the first time I told you.”
Laurel didn't look at the piece of notebook paper she held in her hand. She stood up slowly on rubbery legs and watched Jack walk away from her. He went out onto the balcony without looking back, and she felt as though he had taken her heart out there with him. When she finally dropped her gaze to the carelessly scrawled notes, she knew he had pitched it off the balcony and into the murky waters of the bayou.
Laurel—obsessed with justice. A burden of guilt from past sins, real or imagined. Subdues femininity (unsuccessfully) with baggy clothes, etc. Represses sexuality (perfect conflict with prospective hero). A fascinating dichotomy of strength and fragility. Strong ties to dead father.
Need to get details on case that sent her over the edge. Were the accused guilty? Did she just want them to he? Why? Could write abuse into background.
A character profile. He'd been studying her, making notes for future reference. Her gaze fell to the floor, picking out the odd newspaper clippings among the sheets of typing paper and lined paper. The headlines jumped up at her as if they were three-dimensional:
Scott County Prosecutor Cries Wolf. Charges Dismissed, Chandler Resigns.
She wouldn't have believed it was possible to hurt more than she already did. She would have been wrong. A new spring of pain bubbled up inside her. It was on a different level than the pain of losing Savannah, but it was no less sharp, no less acidic.
It wasn't as if he hadn't warned her, she thought, lashes beating back a fresh sheen of tears. It wasn't as if she hadn't warned herself. He wasn't the man for her. This wasn't the time. Too bad she had never gotten her heart to listen.
“Was it all grist for the mill, Jack?” she asked, going slowly, shakily to the open French doors. “The way we made love? The way you cried when you told me about Evie? The way Annie died, and Savannah—is that all plot for the next best-seller?” The thought sickened her. “Everything we did together, everything we—I—felt . . .” The words trailed off, the prospects too cruel to consider aloud.
“You missed your calling, Jack,” she said bitterly. “You should have been an actor.”
He said nothing in his own defense. He just stood with his hands braced on the balcony railing, broad shoulders hunched, gaze fixed on the bayou. His expression was hard, closed, remote, as if he had taken himself to some dark place of solitude—or torment—within himself. Laurel wanted to hit him. She wanted to pound a confession out of him, a confession that refuted the damning evidence he had handed her himself. But she didn't hit him, and he didn't recant a word of his testimony. There wasn't a judge in the country who wouldn't have convicted him—for crimes of the heart, at the very least.
“I guess you proved your point,” she whispered. “You're a bastard and a user. Bad for me.”
She stepped out onto the balcony, appalled that the day could be so beautiful, that the birds could be singing. Below them, the bayou moved, a sluggish stream of chocolate. Huey lay sleeping on the bank.
“I know that you can't help the things that shaped you,” she said, looking up at him through a watery haze that made him seem more dream than real. “None of us can. Savannah couldn't change the fact that our stepfather used her as his private whore. I can't change the fact that I knew and never did anything about it,” she admitted, her voice choked with pain. “But you know something, Jack? I'll be damned if I'll believe we don't have the power within us to get past all that and be something better.
“You put that in your book, Jack.” Chin up, tears streaming down her cheeks, she slipped the folded notepaper in his hip pocket. “And at least be decent enough to write me a happy ending.”
Standing on pride alone, she turned and left him . . . left L'Amour . . . left her heart in pieces.
Chapter
Twenty-Five
The summons to Beauvoir came before Laurel could leave the house for Prejean's. Vivian was on the brink of one of her spells, distraught over the news of Savannah's death. Dr. Broussard and Reverend Stipple had been sent for, but what she
really
needed was the comfort of having her only remaining child nearby.
Laurel's strongest urge was to say no. Vivian had disowned Savannah in life, had long ago ceased to love her. She couldn't keep from thinking that this was a ploy to gain attention, not a plea for sympathy or support. Vivian and Savannah had been rivals since the day of Savannah's birth. Why would that change after her death?
But the burden of guilt and family duty won out in the end. Laurel found herself in Caroline's burgundy BMW, turning up the tree-lined drive of her childhood home, cursing herself for being weak. She could almost envision Savannah looking down on her with disapproval.
Still scrambling for Mama's love, Baby? Aren't you pathetic.
She cut the engine and lay her forehead against the steering wheel for a moment, shutting her eyes against the exhaustion that pulled at her. She couldn't have felt more battered if someone had taken a club to her. Every part of her felt bruised, every cell of her body ached—her skin, her hair, her teeth, her muscles, her heart. Most especially her heart.
Images of Jack kept rising before her mind's eye, and her besieged brain struggled to rationalize in the name of self-preservation. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of hurting her. He had pushed her away because he was afraid of being hurt. But nothing she came up with could refute the evidence she had held in her hands.
God, he'd been studying her, jotting down notes, formulating theories as if she were nothing more than a fictitious character. The pain of that was incredible.
And still she wanted him to love her. The shame of that was absolute. She wanted him to come to her and tell her it was all a mistake, that he loved her, that he would be there for her as she struggled with the grief of loss. What a fool she was. She'd known from the start he wasn't the kind of man to depend on.
She sucked in a jerky breath, fighting the tears. She would get through this. She would get over it. She would get over him. She would find some way to be strong for Savannah.
Olive answered the door, looking appropriately dolorous, her skin as gray as her uniform, her eyes bleak. The maid led the way up the grand staircase and down the hall, and Laurel followed automatically, her mind on other times spent here.
Like ghosts, she heard the voices of her childhood—Savannah's wild laugh, her own shy giggle, Daddy promising he would come find them and tickle them silly. The memories bombarded her—good and bad. She remembered walking down this same hall to her mother's room the day of Daddy's funeral, and watching while Vivian applied her makeup artfully around her puffy red eyes.
You must endeavor to be a little lady, Laurel. You're a Chandler, and that's what's expected.
Then Vivian had loaded up on Valium and sat through the funeral in a daze, while her daughters struggled to weep gracefully into their handkerchiefs.
Vivian's spell of depression after Jefferson's death had lasted two months. Then Ross Leighton had begun worming his way into their lives.
Vivian's rooms comprised a spacious suite that saw a decorator from Lafayette once a year. The latest incarnation was a festival of floral chintz in shades of teal and peach. Olive escorted Laurel through the sitting room with its clutter of English antiques, knocked on the door to the bedroom, and opened it an inch when the muffled invitation came from within. Eyes downcast like a whipped dog, the maid slunk away as Laurel went in.
Her mother stood by the French doors, wrapped in teal silk, one arm banded across her middle, the other hand rubbing absently at the base of her throat. Opals glowed warmly on her earlobes. A ring with a stone the size of a sparrow's egg drew the eye to the hand pressed against her chest. She turned as Laurel entered the room, her features drawn tight, eyes looking dramatically sunken beneath the camouflage of dark eye shadow.
“Oh, Laurel, thank God you've come,” she said, her voice reedy and strained. “I had to see you for myself.”
“I'm here, Mama.”
Vivian shook her head in disbelief and paced listlessly. “Savannah. I just can't accept what the sheriff had to say. That she was murdered. Like those other women, she was murdered. Strangled.” She whispered the word as if it were profane, her right hand still rubbing at her throat. “Right here in our own backyard, practically. I swear, I can't bear the thought of it. The instant he told us, I nearly fainted. My throat constricted so, I could barely breathe. Ross had to bring my medication to the parlor, and I could hardly swallow it. He brought me straight to bed, but I couldn't rest until I'd seen you.”
“I was on my way to the funeral home,” Laurel said, toying with an arrangement of tiger lilies that filled a Dresden pitcher. “Would you like to come?”
Vivian gasped and sank down on the edge of the bed, careful to keep her knees together and tilted properly, one hand expertly seeing that her robe was tucked just so. “Heavens, no! I just couldn't bear it. Not now. I'm simply not up to it. I—I'm just weak with shock from it all, and filled with such emotions—”
She broke off as her beautiful aquamarine eyes filled, plucked a lace-edged hankie out of her breast pocket, and blotted at the moisture.
Anger built inside Laurel as she watched from beneath her lashes. Her sister was dead, and their mother sat here doing a one-woman show for sympathy. Poor Vivian lost the daughter she never loved. Poor Vivian, so fragile, so sensitive, like something out of Tennessee Williams.
“I haven't had a spell in so long,” she went on, twisting her handkerchief in her fingers. “But I can feel it coming on, stealing over me like a shadow of doom. You can't know how I dread it. It's a terrible thing.”
“So is your daughter's murder,” Laurel said tightly.
Her mother's eyes went wide. Her hands stilled in her lap. “Well, of course it is. It's horrible!”
Laurel turned and gave her a hard look of accusation. “But the most important thing is how it affects you. Right?”
“Laurel! How can you say such a thing to me?”
She shouldn't have. She knew she shouldn't have. Good girls didn't sass back. Ladies kept their opinions to themselves. But all the dictates from her upbringing couldn't hold back the rage she had stored inside her all these years. In her mind she could see Savannah lying dead, could hardly allow herself to imagine the way her sister had suffered. And here was Vivian, playing Blanche DuBois. Always the center of attention. Never mind who else might be in pain.
“It was just the same when Daddy was killed,” she said, her voice trembling with the power of her emotions. “It wasn't a matter of all of us losing him. You had to turn it around so the focus was on
you,
so people flocked out here to check on
you,
so they all went around town saying ‘Poor Vivian. She's in such a state.' ”
“I
was
in such a state!” Vivian exclaimed, pushing to her feet. “I had lost my husband!”
“Well, it didn't take you long to find another one, did it?” Laurel snapped, the pains of childhood flowing through her like fresh, hot blood.
Her mother's eyes narrowed. “You still resent my marrying Ross. All the sacrifices I made for you and your sister, and all I get in return is bitterness and criticism.”
“Daddy was barely cold in the ground!”
“He was dead,” she said harshly. “He was gone and never coming back. I had to do something.”
“You didn't have to bring
him
into this house, into Daddy's room, into our lives.”
Into Savannah's bed. God, if it hadn't been for Ross Leighton, Savannah might still be alive. She might have grown up to fulfill all the potential he had crushed out from inside her.
“Ross was a fine catch,” Vivian said defensively, fussing with the lace at the throat of her nightgown. “From a good family. Respected. Handsome. Wealthy in his own right. And willing to take on the children of another man. Not every man is willing to do that, you know. I can tell you, I was very grateful to have him come calling. I couldn't manage the plantation by myself. I was in such a weakened state after Jefferson died, I just didn't know if I'd ever function again.”
And along came Ross Leighton. Like a vulture. Like a wolf scenting lambs. Willing to take on another man's children? Willing to take their innocence. Vivian had no idea just how willing Ross had been.
Because Laurel had never told her.
“Don't tell Mama. . . . No one will ever believe you. . . .”
She wheeled toward her mother to let the terrible secret loose at long last, but the words turned to concrete in her mouth. What good would it do now? Would it bring Savannah back? Would it give them back their childhood? Or would it only prolong the pain and mire them all more deeply in the muck of the past?
“I did what was best for all of us,” Vivian said imperiously. “Not that you or your sister ever showed a moment's appreciation. Your father spoiled you both so.
“And Savannah was always jealous of any attention I might have garnered for myself from Jefferson. She was no different with Ross. I swear, I don't know where that girl got her wildness, her stubbornness. I'd say from Jefferson's side; Caroline is just that way, you know. But Caroline never had an interest in men—”
“Stop it!” Laurel shouted, her voice ripping across the quiet, elegant room. Her mother gaped at her, mouth working soundlessly, like a bass out of water. “It's none of your business who Aunt Caroline sleeps with. At least she's happy. At least she's not deluding herself into believing she needs to have a relationship with a man no matter what kind of slime he is.”
“No, she's not like Savannah that way, is she?” Vivian said archly.
Her own anger simmering, she resumed her pacing along the length of the half-tester bed. “I don't know how many times I told her to be a lady. All the hours of training, of showing by example how a lady should comport herself, and none of it doing any good at all. She lived like a tramp—dressing like a slut, going off to bed with any man who crooked his finger. God, the shame of it was almost too much to bear!” she said bitterly. “And now she's killed because of it.”
She shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself as if trying to physically hold herself together. A fresh sheen of tears glistened in her eyes as she resumed her pacing. “I don't know how I'll be able to hold my head up in town.”
“That's all you care about?” Laurel demanded, stunned. “You think Savannah embarrassed you by falling prey to a psychopath?”
Vivian wheeled on her, eyes flashing. “That's not what I said!”
“Yes, it is! That's exactly what you said. Christ, she was your daughter!”
“Yes, she was my daughter,” Vivian snapped, her face turning a mottled red as long-held feelings surfaced inside her. “And I will
never
understand how that could be, how God could give me a child like her—so beautiful on the outside and rotten to the core. I will never understand—”
“Because we kept it from you!” Laurel cried.
She clamped her hands on top of her head and turned around, everything within her in turmoil. She had tried to tamp the truth down inside her again, to bury it for all time, but it ripped loose and clawed its way free. Savannah was dead indirectly because of what Ross had made her into.
And because I kept the silence.
The guilt was like a vise, twisting and twisting, crushing her. She couldn't change the past, but someone had to pay. Vivian couldn't go on living in her watercolor fantasies. Ross couldn't be allowed to escape the consequences of his actions. Justice had to be served somehow, some way.
Vivian watched her with wary eyes. She swiped a strand of ash blond hair back behind her ear in an impatient gesture. “What do you mean, ‘kept it from me'? Kept what from me?”
“That Ross, the wonderful, well-bred, charitable knight in shining armor who swept in and rescued you, molested your daughter.” She met her mother's shocked stare evenly, unblinking. “He used her, in the carnal sense, night after night, week after week, year after year.”
“You're lying!” Vivian said on a gasp. She clutched a hand to her throat and swallowed twice, as if the words Laurel had spoken were gagging her. “That's a horrid lie! Why would you say such a thing?”
“Because it's the truth and because I'm sick to death of keeping it a secret!” Laurel advanced on her mother, her hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at her side. “Everything Savannah became is because of Ross Leighton. Now she's dead, and the one person who should be inconsolable is more concerned about her own image than her daughter's murder. I can't stand it!”
The slap connected solidly with her cheek and snapped her head to the side. She didn't try to block it or the second blow Vivian glanced off her shoulder. She deserved worse—not for what she had said to her mother, but for what she hadn't said all those years ago. Vivian shoved her, then backed away, her eyes wild, her lips twitching and trembling.
“You ungrateful little bitch!” she spat, her silky hair falling across her forehead and into her eyes. “Lies. That's all you have in you is lies! You lied to those people in Georgia, now you're lying to me! You hated Ross from day one. You'd do anything to hurt him!”
“Yes, I hate him. I hate him for taking my father's place, but I hate him more for taking my sister.” The incredulity she had known during those years came back in a violent rush. How could their mother not have realized? How could that have gone on in her house without her suspecting? “Didn't you ever wonder where he was all those nights, Mama? Or were you just thankful he wasn't coming to your bed?”
Vivian's face washed white, and she brought a trembling hand up to press against her mouth, to press back the cry, to hold back the bile that rose in her throat. She'd never cared for sex. It was messy and revolting, all that grunting and sweating. She'd never questioned Ross's calm acceptance of her disinclination to share her bed. She'd never thought once of where he might be relieving his manly urges—as long as he was discreet, she didn't care. But with her own daughter?