Laurel almost cried when she saw the Jaguar parked in Caroline's drive. Danjermond. He was the last thing she needed to cap off the evening.

No, she amended, as Vivian's white Mercedes pulled in behind her at a drunken angle to the curb. This was the last thing she needed.

Ross bolted from the car, leaving the door wide open, and hurried toward her as she climbed out of the BMW. He looked a mess for the first time in the twenty years she had known him. His steel gray pompadour had been dismantled by numerous finger-combings. His expression, usually bland and smugly satisfied, was taut, thinned by stress, and his eyes seemed wider and darker-desperate.

"Laurel, for God's sake, you've got to talk to Vivian," he said, grabbing for her arm.

She twisted away and took a step back. "I don't have anything more to say to my mother, and I certainly don't have anything to say to you."

"Jesus Christ," he mumbled, rubbing a hand across his mouth. He glanced away from her, toward the sunset that bled over the western horizon. In that light, with a stubble of evening beard shadowing his cheeks and that haunted look in his eyes, he appeared like a drunk in dire need of a bottle. In fact, the aroma of whiskey clung to him like cologne, and he was weaving a little on his feet. "You don't know what you've done."

"No," she said, taking another step back. "This is about what you did, Ross. All I did was tell the truth. I should have told it twenty years ago."

"I can handle Stipple," he muttered, still not looking at her. "The man is spineless. Besides, why should anyone believe you?" He turned his head and glared at her, hatred flaring bright in his eyes for one frightening moment. Laurel wished to hell Kenner hadn't confiscated her pocketbook with the handgun in it.

"Everyone knows you've got a screw loose," he said. "Look what happened up in Georgia. It's Vivian I'm not sure about. She won't let me in her room."

"What difference should that make to you?" Laurel jeered, her temper overtaking her common sense. "Pervert that you are, you've probably got some little fifteen-year-old on the side."

He scowled at her, the thin, weak line of his mouth twisting. "It's not the sex, you stupid little bitch. I haven't slept with Vivian in years. Why would I? She's colder than a witch's tit. She never wanted it."

"And why would you care, when you could rape her daughter instead?"

His fleshy face turned scarlet, the color creeping up from his neck like a tide that pooled in his narrowed bloodshot eyes. "I never raped anybody. Savannah was a little prick-teaser-"

"She was thirteen!" Laurel shouted, not caring if her voice carried through every screen in the neighborhood.

Ross waved it off, making an impatient face. "It's in the past-"

"I'll say. Savannah is dead. You don't get more past tense than that."

"Well, I didn't kill her!"

"You as good as did, you snake! If you think for a minute I'm going to make this easy on you-"

"Just talk to your mother, for chrissake!" he bellowed, weaving toward her.

"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?"