French Silk(12)
His sex was swollen and hot. He was impatient with his clothing. But as he went for his zipper there was a knock at the door.
"That'll be our lunch." Ariel sighed. She kissed him one final time, brushed her hand across his distended fly, then drifted out of his arms. "Have the waiter bring the tray into the bedroom. We'll eat first."
* * *
"Cassidy?"
"Here." He juggled the telephone receiver while trying to depress the volume button on the remote control and keep from dropping his bologna sandwich and his beer.
"It's Glenn. I've been officially assigned to the Wilde case."
Good, Cassidy thought, Crowder had come through. Detective Howard Glenn would be the point person, or the main liaison between him and the police department. Once Glenn selected his platoon of officers to investigate the case, he, Cassidy, would be constantly apprised of developments.
He knew that Glenn was difficult to work with. He was a slob, untidy in every respect—except his detective work. But Cassidy was willing to overlook Glenn's character flaws in exchange for his competence.
"Got anything?" he asked, setting aside the tasteless sandwich.
"The lab report's back. We're going through it now."
"How's it look?"
"No prints other than his, his old lady's, and the housekeeper in charge of the suite. Course, we've got hundreds of partials that belong to the people who stayed in that suite before him."
Although Cassidy had figured as much, it was still dismal news. "Any sign of a weapon?"
"Zilch. Whoever walked into Wilde's suite and offed him walked out with the gun."
The lack of a murder weapon was going to make solving this case and getting a conviction a real challenge. Luckily Cassidy liked challenges, the harder the better.
"How soon could you get a few phone taps in place?" he asked the detective.
"First thing tomorrow. Who else besides the wife and son?"
"We'll discuss it in the morning. Stay in touch."
He hung up, took another bite of his sandwich, another swig of tepid beer, and returned his attention to the television set. Earlier, he had called the cable station that aired Jackson Wilde's Prayer and Praise Hour and asked for copies of all available tapes. The station management had promptly delivered the tapes to his office. He'd then brought them home, where he could watch them without interruption.
The programs were slickly produced. Wilde put on a dazzling show, complete with flying white doves, an orchestra, a five-hundred-voice choir, a gold leaf pulpit, and Joshua's mirrored piano, which resembled the one once owned by the late Liberace.
The format never varied. The program opened with a trumpet blast loud enough to herald the Second Coming. The choir broke into song, the doves were released with a flurry of white wings, and Wilde descended a curved staircase as though he'd just wrapped up a visit with the Almighty, which is exactly what he intimated in his opening remarks.
Ariel, always dressed in pristine white, her only jewelry a simple gold wedding band and a pair of discreet pearl earrings—Wilde stressed that the only treasures they stockpiled were their spiritual rewards—was introduced with the trilling of trumpets in the background. Then the audience got a close-up of Joshua Wilde as he played the introduction to Ariel's first song.
Her singing voice, marginal at best, was greatly enhanced by the orchestra, the choir, and a sound system whose staggering cost would have made a large dent in the national debt. Ariel threw beatific smiles toward her husband, toward Josh, toward the audience, and toward heaven. Invariably, by the end of the song, at least one eloquent, glistening tear had spilled from her celestial blue eyes.
Cassidy was a skeptic by nature and rarely took anything at face value. Generously allowing for that, he still couldn't understand how anyone of reasonable intelligence could fall for Wilde's glitzy sideshow. His sermons were gross distortions of the gospel. He preached much more vehemently about admonition than grace, more about condemnation than love, more about hellfire than forgiveness. More was said of Satan than of Christ. It was easy to see why he was held in such contempt by clergymen of most organized Christian sects.
It was also plain to Cassidy how Wilde was able to induce such fanaticism in his narrow-minded followers. He told them exactly what they wanted to hear: that they were right and anyone who disagreed with their opinion was wrong. Of course, God was always on their side.
After viewing the tapes several times, making notes as he watched, Cassidy switched off the set and headed for his bedroom. An inventory of clean shirts and shorts revealed that he could go another couple of days before a trip to the laundry.
When he was married, Kris had taken care of his wardrobe, just as she had kept the house, done the shopping, and cooked their meals. The divorce hadn't come about because she was negligent. And by most standards, he would have been judged a fairly good husband. He always remembered anniversaries and birthdays. He had a sixth sense that told him when sex was out of the question and on those nights he refrained from asking.
The dissolution of their four-year marriage could be blamed more on apathy than on animosity. It had cracked under external pressure, and their love for one another hadn't been strong enough to hold things together. Kris hadn't even wanted to discuss relocating, and, after a pivotal incident that had unbalanced his perfectly balanced life, he'd been adamant on relocating.