French Silk(144)

Cassidy bent over her chair and lowered his voice. "Last night when you recounted the murder, you quoted this almost verbatim, Claire. You got your facts from the newspaper, not from the scene itself."

"I was there. I killed him."

"If that's so, then show me the discrepancy," he challenged.

"I—"

"You can't, can you?"

"No. Yes." She groped blindly for a way out. "I can't remember every little detail."

"You remembered them last night."

"You're confusing me."

"You're confusing me, too, Cassidy," Crowder said. "If she said she did it, she did it."

"You just want to end this thing," Cassidy shouted.

"And you want to continue sleeping with Ms. Laurent."

"Damn you, Tony!"

"Then deny it!"

"I can't. I don't even want to. But whether I'm sleeping with her or not, do you want to sentence a woman to life imprisonment for something she didn't do?"

The question momentarily silenced Crowder, although he continued to fume. Cassidy knelt in front of Claire and covered her hands where they were tightly clenched in her lap.

"Claire, last night you said that when you stood at the foot of Wilde's bed, you noticed his Rolex wristwatch lying on top of his Bible on the nightstand. You said the symbolism of that made you sick."

"Wait! It wasn't a Rolex. It was an expensive wristwatch, but it might not have been a Rolex. I've never placed much importance on labels, so when I said 'Rolex' I meant it in a generic sense. After I read the newspaper accounts, it probably stuck in my mind that his watch was a Rolex."

"So now you're saying that the watch lying on top of the Bible wasn't a Rolex?"

"It might have just looked like one to me."

A smile spread slowly across Cassidy's face. "It was a Rolex, all right. But there was no Bible."

Claire gasped softly.

Crowder grunted.

Cassidy leaned in closer to her. "Claire, you didn't kill Jackson Wilde, did you? Before yesterday, you had dozens of opportunities to confess."

"But I never denied it, did I? Think back. You accused me of it repeatedly, but I never once denied it."

"In principle. That's like you. It's also like you to confess in order to protect someone else."

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I killed him."

"You've got to trust me. For once, dammit, you've got to trust me enough to tell the truth."

She tried to concentrate only on the earnestness in his voice and the compelling facets of his eyes, but what he represented blocked out everything else. He reminded her of the social workers who had claimed to be doing what was best for little Claire Louise. They had asked for her trust even while dragging her from Aunt Laurel's house with her mother screaming and in tears.

"Claire, do you love me?"

Tears spilled over her eyelids and ran down her cheeks, but she refused to answer him because the truth might trap her.

"You can't really love me if you can't trust me. You were right last night, you know. I could never have made love to you if I were convinced you were the killer. But I'm convinced that you're not. I swear to you that everything will turn out all right if you'll tell me the truth now."

The words wanted to be spoken. They were dammed up in her throat. But she was afraid. By telling him the truth, she would be entrusting her life to him. More important, she'd be entrusting the life of one she loved to him. Those one loved were more important than the truth, weren't they? People were more valuable than ideals. People were more valuable than anything.

"Claire." He squeezed her fingers until the bones ached. "Trust me," he whispered urgently. "Trust me. Did you kill Jackson Wilde?"

She was perched on a precipice and he was urging her take a leap into the unknown. If she loved him, she had to believe that her landing would be gentle and safe. If she loved him, she had to trust him.

And looking into his face, she knew unequivocally that she loved him.

"No, Cassidy," she said, her voice cracking emotionally. "I did not."

His tension snapped. His head dropped forward between his shoulders, and he remained bent over their clasped hands for several silent moments. Finally Crowder asked, "Why did you confess to a murder you didn't commit, Ms. Laurent?"

Cassidy raised his head. "She was protecting her mother."

"No!" Claire's wide, disbelieving eyes followed him as he stood up. "You said—"

"Everything will be all right, Claire," he said, touching her cheek. "But I have to tell Tony everything you told me last night."

Claire hesitated, then nodded. Cassidy turned to Crowder and bluntly stated, "Jackson Wilde was Claire's father."

Crowder listened in stunned, absorbed silence while Cassidy related the story of Mary Catherine's seduction and abandonment by the sidewalk preacher Wild Jack Collins.

"As the investigation progressed, Claire came to believe that in a lucid moment, Mary Catherine had recognized Wilde and connived to kill him. Her suspicions were confirmed when we determined that Yasmine's .38 had been the murder weapon. Mary Catherine had access to it, and she sometimes 'borrows' things and later replaces them." He told Crowder about the incident with his fountain pen at Rosesharon.