French Silk (51 page)

"In her luggage I guess. I don't know."

"How long was it missing?"

"A couple or three weeks. I'm not sure."

"How'd she get it back?"

"She said it just reappeared in her handbag."

"Claire—"

"I don't know!"

"Cassidy?" A man knocked once abruptly before opening the door. Sensing the tension, he glanced uneasily at Claire, then back at Cassidy. "Crowder wants to see you."

"I'll check with him later."

Despite Cassidy's irritation, the young intern held his ground. "Excuse me, sir, but Mr. Crowder said now. Said it'd be my ass if I didn't bring you back. He's got somebody with him, and it's mandatory that you be there too."

Chapter 27

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C
assidy, muttering curses, reached for his coat. As he was pulling it on, he said, "If Yasmine was in Wilde's room that night, she tracked in the carpet fibers from your car."

"For the hundredth time, I didn't see Yasmine that night. I was using my car." Claire kept her head down, her eyes averted, but her voice was steely. "I didn't see Yasmine until the following morning when I picked her up at the airport. If she was in New Orleans, she kept it a secret from me. In any event, she didn't have access to my car."

"I'll make this meeting with Crowder as brief as possible. Don't leave this room." He went out and pulled the door closed behind him.

On his way to the elevator, he met Howard Glenn. "Hey, Cassidy, I was on my way to see you."

"Anything?"

"Some pretty interesting stuff is coming out of those lists of Wilde's contributors."

"Thanks." Cassidy took the sheets of paper Glenn extended him, folded them twice, and slipped them into his breast pocket. "I'll get to it as soon as I can. Right now I'm due in Crowder's office. In the meantime, stay with it."

He stepped into the elevator. When he emerged, he didn't break stride until he was standing at the edge of Crowder's desk. "For Christ's sake, Tony, what's so damned important that it couldn't wait? I was questioning Claire Laurent. She's protecting Yasmine, but the more I pull out of her, the more apparent it is to me that Yasmine killed Wilde."

"That's what we wanted to talk to you about."

Cassidy, remembering that the intern had mentioned someone with Crowder, followed the direction of his gaze. Alister Petrie was complacently seated across the room in a leather wingback chair.

Cassidy had never liked Petrie, either as an individual or as a statesman. Having impressive political connections was his sole qualification to legislate. Petrie's family roots were sunk deep into delta dirt but weren't as deeply embedded as his wife's. Cassidy considered him a pompous nerd, who, through no achievement of his own, had enough money to buy a congressional seat. Because Cassidy had been weaned on the work ethic, he held Petrie in contempt, which he barely concealed. "Hello, Congressman."

"Mr. Cassidy," he replied coolly.

"Sit down, Cassidy," Crowder said, brusquely signaling him into a chair.

Cassidy's instincts were sizzling like exposed electrical wires. Something was afoot, and if his intuition was to be trusted, it was something he wasn't going to like. Tony Crowder was having a hard time looking him in the eye. That was a bad sign.

"I'll let Congressman Petrie explain why he asked us for this meeting." Tony coughed uncomfortably behind his fist. "When you hear what he has to say, you'll realize its importance and urgency. Congressman?"

Petrie began by saying, "I was stunned by the headlines I read in this morning's newspaper, Mr. Cassidy."

"It's pretty stunning stuff. If a technician hadn't been on his toes, he wouldn't have noticed the similarities between the results of the ballistics test he ran on Yasmine's suicide bullet and the ones he'd recently conducted on the bullets we took out of Jackson Wilde. There was a deep groove running the length of the bullets that was worth remembering, he said. So he compared them. And bingo. Same weapon. He fired it just to make sure. There's no mistake."

"There has to be."

"There isn't."

"Nevertheless, your investigation into a possible connection between Yasmine's suicide and Jackson Wilde's murder must cease and desist. Immediately."

The command was issued so pedantically, and with such bald arrogance, that Cassidy's initial reaction was to laugh. He glanced at Tony Crowder, but there wasn't a trace of a smile on his superior's face. In fact, it looked as stern and indomitable as a totem hewn out of solid oak.

"What the hell is going on?" He faced Petrie again. "Where do you get off telling me to cease and desist my investigation?"

"Yasmine did not kill Jackson Wilde."

"How would you know?"

"Because she was with me that night. Throughout the night."

Silence stretched through the room. Again Cassidy turned to Tony, his hard stare demanding elaboration. The D.A. cleared his throat with obvious discomfort. Cassidy's respect for him slipped several notches. He was old enough to be Petrie's father, but he was kowtowing to the jerk like he was a frigging prince.

"Congressman Petrie came to me this morning and freely admitted that he'd been having an … that is … he and this Yasmine had a relationship."

"No shit," Cassidy said sarcastically. "I know all about his affair with her."

"Miss Laurent told you, I assume," Crowder said.

"That's right."

"Then you can appreciate the embarrassment that a lengthy and thorough investigation could cause Congressman Petrie and his family."

"He should have thought of that before he started screwing around."

Petrie bristled. "All this embarrassment would be for nothing, Mr. Cassidy, because, as I've informed you, I'm Yasmine's alibi. She was with me."

Cassidy looked at him scornfully. "And you get credit for her suicide, don't you, Petrie? She sprayed your walls with her brains because you're a lying cheat. What happened to make you call it quits? Did the new wear off? Or did you get cold feet over the upcoming election? Did you get scared that your white voters weren't going to look kindly upon your black mistress?"

"Cassidy!" Tony banged his fist on his desk.

Cassidy shot from his chair and turned his anger on Crowder. "This is the first piece of real evidence we've uncovered since we began investigating this crime. Do you really expect me to toss it away because it might get out that the woman implicated in the crime was our illustrious congressman's mistress?"

Petrie's previous nonchalance had vanished. Red-faced with indignation, he too came to his feet. "Yasmine was not my mistress. She had formed an unnatural attachment for me that was entirely one-sided. A fatal attraction."

"You're a liar. It was a two-way love affair until you turned gutless."

"She was a terribly disturbed young woman."

"That's bullshit."

"She was addicted to mind-altering drugs—"

"Dr. Dupuis's autopsy report says she didn't have so much as an aspirin in her system."

"Obviously Yasmine didn't agree with my position on—"

"Oh, I'll bet you agreed on most positions. Which one did you like best? On top or on bottom?"

"Cassidy, I won't have this!" Crowder bellowed, surging to his feet. "I won't have Congressman Petrie insulted in my office when he came here of his own accord and at great personal cost."

"I can't fuckin' believe this, Tony!" Cassidy exclaimed. "You're going to sweep this under the rug, pretend those ballistics tests don't exist?"

"You know as well as I do that those tests are inconclusive. Besides, he makes good sense. Hear him out."

"Why, Tony?" Cassidy asked, seething.

"He's convinced me that the young woman had no motive to kill Wilde."

Cassidy swiveled his head and fixed a hard stare on Petrie. "You've got the floor. Make it good."

Petrie tugged on the hem of his suit jacket and composed himself. "Yasmine thought Jackson Wilde was a joke," he said. "Even though he called the French Silk catalog pornographic, she didn't take him seriously. To her he was a comic figure. That's all. She teased me about rolling out the red carpet to him while he was here."

"Oh, you're a specialist at kissing ass."

"Cassidy, shut up!"

He ignored Crowder and advanced on Petrie. "You looked right at home sitting on his podium. You're as full of shit as he was. In my opinion, Wilde was the Alister Petrie of clergymen. Like you he was a self-important, self-serving opportunist who's only talent was duping people."

Petrie's face turned even redder, but he kept his voice calm. "Insult me all you want. The facts remain the same. Yasmine was with me the night Jackson Wilde was shot and killed."

"Where?"

"At the Doubletree."

"You stayed overnight at the Doubletree and that didn't arouse Mrs. Petrie's suspicions?"

"I frequently stay downtown overnight if I'm going to be out late and have an early meeting scheduled for the next day. Sleeping over spares me a short night and a long commute the following morning."

"And gives you an opportunity to cheat on your wife."

"I'm trying to be up front with you," Petrie exclaimed angrily. "I've admitted to being with Yasmine at the Double-tree."

"I'll check on it."

"I'm sure you will."

"How do you explain her gun being used to kill Wilde if she didn't pull the trigger?"

"I may be able to shed some light on that."

"Then please do."

Following that sarcastic crack, Petrie addressed himself to Crowder. "I was with Yasmine when she rediscovered her gun."

"Rediscovered?"

"Yes. She was surprised to find it at the bottom of the handbag she was carrying at the time. She said it had been missing. She thought she'd lost it in transit between here and New York."

Mentally Cassidy cursed. It perfectly matched Claire's story and shot his case all to hell. His expression, however, remained pugnacious.

"I suggest you start questioning anyone who had access to Yasmine's handbag," Petrie said. "And put an end to investigating her activities that night."

"Which will be convenient as hell for you, won't it?"

Unruffled by Cassidy's snide remark, Petrie stooped down to retrieve his briefcase. "I leave the crime solving and prosecuting to you, Mr. Cassidy." He flashed a brittle smile. "Actually I'm sparing you hours of time, effort, and eventual public disgrace. I didn't have to come here and admit that I was with Yasmine that night. I felt it was my civic responsibility to do so. Now the taxpayers" money won't be wasted on another wild goose chase."

"The only one you're protecting is yourself," Cassidy said with a sneer. "You admitted to us that you and Yasmine were lovers only so you wouldn't have to admit it to your constituents."

Again Petrie gave him a fleeting smile. "You'd do well to take the advice of your mentor Mr. Crowder. Your ambition has been noted and duly recorded. Mr. Cassidy. But if you want to fill that chair," he said, nodding toward Crowder's desk, "you'd better learn to play the game."

"I don't shovel political bullshit, if that's what you mean."

"Everything is political; Mr. Cassidy. Most everything is also bullshit. If you're going to be in public office, get used to shoveling it."

Cassidy cocked his head to one side. "That's quite a speech, Petrie, but it sounds rehearsed. Did your wife write it for you?"

Petrie's arrogance collapsed like a dud parachute. He sputtered, "In this evening's
Times Picayune
I expect to read that the technician conducting the ballistics tests made a gross error, that Assistant District Attorney Cassidy's allegations regarding Yasmine were incorrect, that this office is retracting previous statements suggesting her possible involvement with the Wilde murder, and that you're redirecting your investigation. Let her suicide stand as the inexplicable action of an unbalanced woman, who, for reasons known only to her, chose to end her life on my doorstep, possibly in an attempt to make a radical political statement."

"Have you washed all the brain tissue off your wallpaper yet?"

"Cassidy."

"Or have you replaced the wallpaper altogether?"

"Cassidy!"

Once again, Crowder's reprimands were ignored. "Can you clean up that quickly, Petrie? A pail of water and some Spic 'n' Span, and
whoosh
she's expunged? Is that all her life meant to you?"

Using his words like a battering ram, Cassidy had hoped to smash the protective facade that was inherent to the public office Petrie held. He wanted to confront Petrie man to man, where he would have equal footing, if not the advantage. He wanted Petrie angry, scared, and upset. He finally got what he wanted.

"Yasmine wasn't worth the hell she put me through," Petrie smirked. "She was nothing but a whore with the hottest snatch I'd ever had. Too bad for you that you homed in on her cool friend, Claire Laurent, and not Yasmine."

Cassidy lunged at him, knocked him backward into the leather chair, and wound up with his forearm across Petrie's throat and his knee gouging his crotch.