French Silk(33)

"Was it you?"

The younger man blanched. "My father and I had our differences, but I didn't kill him."

"Did he know about your affair with his wife?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Cassidy's reclining chair sprang erect, practically catapulting him across the desk. "Don't bullshit me, Josh. Did he?"

The younger man squirmed beneath Cassidy's hard gray stare. Eventually his shoulders slumped slightly and he looked away. "No. I don't think so."

Ah-ha. He now had a confession that they were involved in an illicit relationship. He screened his happy reaction. "You think you were clever enough to conceal it from your father, when I guessed thirty seconds after meeting you?"

"It isn't that we were so clever," Josh said with a mirthless laugh. "It's that he was so egomaniacal. He would never suspect Ariel of choosing me over him."

Cassidy looked him in the eye and believed him. "He was a real son of a bitch, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he was."

"Did you hate him?"

"Sometimes."

"Enough to kill him?"

"Sometimes. But I didn't. I couldn't. I wouldn't have the nerve."

Cassidy believed that, too. Joshua Wilde was named after the Hebrew warrior of the Old Testament, but it was a misnomer. Undoubtedly Jackson Wilde, with his thunderous voice and avenging-angel temperament, had been sorely disappointed in his mild-mannered, soft-spoken son. A kid could stockpile a lot of resentment against an overbearing, supercritical parent. Better parents than Jackson Wilde had been blown away by their stressed-out children. But Cassidy didn't think Josh had it in him to put a bullet through a man's head.

"What about her?" Cassidy asked, pointing his chin toward the door through which Ariel had made her huffy exit. "Think before you answer, Josh. We might turn up incriminating evidence at any moment, something we missed before. If you protect Ariel, you're an accessory, and the punishment's the same. Did she kill him?"

"No."

"Could she have done it without your knowledge? Did you make love with her that night, Josh?"

He cast his eyes down but answered without hesitation. "Yes."

"Did she leave your suite at any time?"

"No. Not until she left for good, sometime in the wee hours."

Too late for the murder, which Elvie Dupuis had placed between 12:00 and 1:00 A.M. "You're sure?"

"Positive."

"Do you suspect her of killing him?"

"No." He shook his head so adamantly that several locks of hair fell over his brow.

"How can you be so sure?"

He raised his head and met Cassidy's stare head-on. "My father was Ariel's ticket to greatness. Without him, she's zero."

It was a dead-end street. They were guilty as hell. The rub was that Cassidy didn't know if they were guilty only of adultery or of a sin more grievous. But even if they had offed Wilde, he had no evidence to hold them. "Have a nice trip," he said in a clipped voice.

Joshua Wilde was taken aback. "You mean I can go?"

"Unless you want to sign a confession."

"I've got nothing to confess and neither does Ariel. I swear it, Mr. Cassidy."

"You may have to yet—in a court of law. For the time being, goodbye."

Cassidy watched him go, wondering if he was releasing a murderer onto an unsuspecting public. Although, he reasoned, the only danger Ariel and Josh posed to the general public was fleecing them of hard-earned cash in the name of the Lord.

Querulous and feeling at odds with the world, he snatched up his phone after its first shrill ring. "Cassidy." It was Crowder, who wasn't too pleased to hear the results of the interrogation. "The bottom line is they walked," Cassidy summarized.

Crowder had several choice comments about the widow and the ruckus she had left in her wake. "She's flying off to Nashville smelling like a rose, looking like a goddamn martyr, and leaving us with a stinking pile of shit to shovel. Cassidy, you there?"

"What? Oh, yeah, sorry. Shit. Right."

"What's the matter with you?"

Cassidy was gaping at the stuffed folder that Howard Glenn had just carried into his office and dropped onto his desk with a triumphant flourish.

"I'll call you back." Cassidy hung up, leaving Crowder in midsentence. He looked up at Glenn, who was standing at the edge of his desk, a smug grin on his unshaved face.

"Hey, Cassidy. This might be the break we've been looking for. Let's go."





* * *



Chapter 7

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"It's yours, isn't it, Miz Laurent?"

"Where did you get it?" Claire asked the unpleasant man who confronted her with the stance and glower of a gladiator.

"One of my men found it in the garbage dumpster a few blocks from here. Didn't you figure on us checking the contents of the garbage bins located near anyone involved in the Wilde case?"

"I'm not involved," Claire said evenly.

"This indicates otherwise." He brandished the incriminating folder an inch from her nose. She batted it aside.