VII

Brigitte was furious. Her cheeks flamed with natural color and her cobalt eyes glittered. I couldn’t help wondering if this was how she looked when Jade and B. B. Wilder were fighting over her.

“So he knew all along where she was! I ought to have him sent over for that. Can’t I charge him with contributing to her delinquency?”

“Not if you’re planning on using me as a witness you can’t,” I snapped.

She ignored me. “And her, too. Taking Lady Iva off like that. Mating her with some alley cat.”

As if on cue, Casper of Valletta squawked loudly and started clawing the deep silver plush covering Brigitte’s living room floor. Joel Sirop picked up the torn and spoke soothingly to him.

“It is bad, Brigitte, very bad. Maybe you should let the girl go back to Mobile if she wants to so badly. After three days, you know, it’s too late to give Lady Iva a shot. And Corinne is so wild, so uncontrollable-what would stop her the next time Lady Iva comes into season?”

Brigitte’s nostrils flared. “I should send her to reform school. Show her what discipline is really like.”

“Why in hell do you even want custody over Corinne if all you can think about is revenge?” I interrupted.

She stopped swirling around her living room and turned to frown at me. “Why, I love her, of course. She is my sister, you know.”

“Concentrate on that. Keep saying it to yourself. She’s not a cat that you can breed and mold to suit your fancy.”

“I just want her to be happy when she’s older. She won’t be if she can’t learn to control herself. Look at what happened when she started hanging around trash like that Lily Hellman. She would never have let Lady Iva breed with an alley cat if she hadn’t made that kind of friend.”

I ground my teeth. “Just because Lily lives in five rooms over a store doesn’t make her trash. Look, Brigitte. You wanted to lead your own life. I expect your parents tried keeping you on a short leash. Hell, maybe they even threatened you with reform school. So you started fucking every hulk you could get your hands on. Are you so angry about that that you have to treat Corinne the same way?”

She gaped at me. Her jaw worked but she couldn’t find any words. Finally she went over to a burled oak cabinet that concealed a bar. She pulled out a chilled bottle of Sancerre and poured herself a glass. When she’d gulped it down she sat at her desk.

“Is it that obvious? Why I went after Jade and B. B. and all those boys?”

I hunched a shoulder. “It was just a guess, Brigitte. A guess based on what I’ve learned about you and your sister and Jade the last two days. He’s not such an awful guy, you know, but he clearly was an awful guy for you. And Corinne’s lonely and miserable and needs someone to love her. She figures her horse for the job.”

“And me?” Her cobalt eyes glittered again. “What do I need? The embraces of my cat?”

“To shed some of those porcupine quills so someone can love you, too. You could’ve offered me a glass of wine, for example.”

She started an ugly retort, then went over to the liquor cabinet and got out a glass for me. “So I bring Flitcraft up to Chicago and stable her. I put Corinne into the filthy public high school. And then we’ll all live happily ever after.”

“She might graduate.” I swallowed some of the wine. It was cold and crisp and eased some of the tension the LeBlancs and Pierces were putting into my throat. “And in another year she won’t run away to Lily’s, but she’ll go off to Mobile or hit the streets. Now’s your chance.”

“Oh, all right,” she snapped. “You’re some kind of saint, I know, who never said a bad word to anyone. You can tell Corinne I’ll cut a deal with her. But if it goes wrong you can be the one to stay up at night worrying about her.”

I rubbed my head. “Send her back to Mobile, Brigitte. There must be a grandmother or aunt or nanny or someone who really cares about her. With your attitude, life with Corinne is just going to be a bomb waiting for the fuse to blow.”

“You can say that again, detective.” It was Jade, his bulk filling the double doors to the living room.

Behind him we could hear the housekeeper without being able to see her. “I tried to keep him out, Brigitte, but Corinne let him in. You want me to call the cops, get them to exercise that peace bond?”

“I have a right to ask whoever I want into my own house,” came Corinne’s muffled shriek.

Squawking and yowling, Casper broke from Joel Sirop’s hold. He hurtled himself at the doorway and stuffed his body through the gap between Jade’s feet. On the other side of the barricade we could hear Lady Iva’s answering yodel and a scream from Corinne-presumably she’d been clawed.

“Why don’t you move, Jade, so we can see the action?” I suggested.

He lumbered into the living room and perched his bulk on the edge of a pale gray sofa. Corinne stumbled in behind him and sat next to him. Her muddy skin and lank hair looked worse against the sleek modern lines of Brigitte’s furniture than they had in Mrs. Hellman’s crowded sitting room.

Brigitte watched the blood drip from Corinne’s right hand to the rug and jerked her head at the housekeeper hovering in the doorway. “Can you clean that up for me, Grace?”

When the housekeeper left, she turned to her sister. “Next time you’re that angry at me take it out on me, not the cat. Did you really have to let her breed in a back alley?”

“It’s all one to Iva,” Corinne muttered sulkily. “Just as long as she’s getting some she don’t care who’s giving it to her. Just like you.”

Brigitte marched to the couch. Jade caught her hand as she Was preparing to smack Corinne.

“Now look here, Brigitte,” he said. “You two girls don’t belong together. You know that as well as I do. Maybe you think you owe it to your public image to be a mamma to Corinne, but you’re not the mamma type. Never have been. Why should you try now?”

Brigitte glared at him. “And you’re Mister Wonderful who can sit in judgment on everyone else?”

He shook his massive jade dome. “Nope. I won’t claim that. But maybe Corinne here would like to come live with me.” He held up a massive palm as Brigitte started to protest. “Not in Uptown. I can get me a place close to here. Corinne can have her horse and see you when you feel calm enough. And when your pure little old cat has her half-breed kittens they can come live with us.”

“On Corinne’s money,” Brigitte spat.

Jade nodded. “She’d have to put up the stake. But I know some guys who’d back me to get started in somethin’. Commodities, somethin’ like that.”

“You’d be drunk or doped up all the time. And then you’d rape her-” She broke off as he did his ugly-black-slit number with his eyes.

“You’d better not say anything else, Brigitte Le-Blanc. Damned well better not say anything. You want me to get up in the congregation and yell that I never touched a piece of ass that shoved itself in my nose, I ain’t going to. But you know better’n anyone that I never in my life laid hands on a girl to hurt her. As for the rest…” His eyes returned to normal and he put a redwood branch around Corinne’s shoulders. “First time I’m drunk or shooting somethin’ Corinne comes right back here. We can try it for six months, Brigitte. Just a trial. Rookie camp, you know how it goes.”

The football analogy brought her own mean look to Brigitte’s face. Before she could say anything Joel bleated in the background, “It sounds like a good idea to me, Brigitte. Really. You ought to give it a try. Lady Iva’s nerves will never be stable with the fighting that goes on around her when Corinne is here.”

“No one asked you,” Brigitte snapped.

“And no one asked me, either,” Corinne said. “If you don’t agree, I-I’m going to take Lady Iva and run away to New York. And send you pictures of her with litter after litter of alley cats.”