Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “I used to think so,” she admitted. “Now I’m not so sure, and the fact that you’re here at nearly nine at night doesn’t bode well, does it?”

  “I guess not.” He handed her a glass, took a sip from his own before resting a slim hip on her kitchen stool. As he did, his jacket fell open, showing the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster, and Abby was reminded that, first and foremost, Detective Reuben Montoya was a cop. He could sip wine, laugh, turn on the sexy twinkle in his eyes, even pet her dog as if he loved chocolate Labs to death, but he was still a homicide detective investigating the death of her ex-husband, a man who might still believe she was involved.

  “So far, Detective, all you’ve brought with you is not only bad, but also disturbing news. What’s on your mind?”

  “Asa Pomeroy,” he said and set his glass on the counter.

  “What about him?”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  She felt it then, that first premonition of dread. The sensation of relief that had been with her for the past ten minutes drained away. “No, I’ve been working. Alone in the studio.” She hitched her chin toward the back door, then took a calming sip of the wine, which was surprisingly smooth. “I haven’t even turned on the radio. What happened?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Missing?” The little bit of worry grew. “Asa? My neighbor?”

  “Since last night.”

  “You suspect foul play,” she said and the world seemed to get just a little bleaker. If a man as rich and powerful as Asa wasn’t safe, who was? No, no, her thinking was off. It was because of the wealth and influence of Pomeroy Industries that he was a target.

  “We’re not certain of exactly what happened, but since he’s a neighbor of yours, I thought I’d stop and see that you were okay.”

  “Fine,” she said. As the kitchen began to fill with the scents of melting cheese, warm tomato sauce, and baking onions, she thought fleetingly of the open window and the dog’s growls and snarls.

  “So there was no other reason that you were running around with a hammer?”

  “I told you—”

  “I know what you told me, but when you opened the door, you looked relieved to see me, and you were holding the hammer so hard the bones in your knuckles showed through your skin.”

  “You noticed all that?”

  “I am a detective,” he said. She couldn’t tell if he was ribbing her or deadly serious. Probably the latter, considering the fact that he was here to tell her about Asa.

  “Okay, Detective, you caught me. The dog acted like someone might be in the house, so I checked things out.”

  “With a hammer as protection?”

  “It was handy.”

  “But you have an alarm system, right?” He twisted his head to the window cut into the back door. The gold alarm sticker warned any and all intended intruders that the house was connected to the sheriff ’s department.

  “The house came this way. It’s not wired to anything.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure it ever was.”

  “Find out and connect it.” All humor had left his face.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Absolutely. As I said, we’re not certain what happened to Pomeroy, but it doesn’t look good.” He gave her as much information as he had, and she listened in stunned silence. Both Asa and his car had vanished the night before, and it appeared as if there were some signs of a struggle at the gate to his estate. When the maid arrived in the morning, the automatic lock wasn’t working. The police thought he’d probably been abducted and the FBI was already involved.

  “All this happened right down the road?” she clarified, though she knew the answer.

  “That’s right. There’s a chance that Asa could have just taken off and told no one where he was going, but it seems unlikely. All of the law enforcement agencies are involved, local, state, and as I said, the FBI.”

  “Because he’s wealthy?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “It isn’t. But Pomeroy’s high-profile and he owns property all over the South. His business is headquartered in New Orleans, but he’s got warehouses and factories in Alabama, Texas, even as far away as Georgia. And there’s a chance he might have been taken across state lines, we’re not sure yet, but all the agencies are on alert. I work Homicide, and there’s no evidence that Pomeroy’s dead. But he’s definitely missing. Since I’ve been to your house before, I volunteered to come and warn you and find out if you’ve heard or seen anything suspicious in the neighborhood.”

  “But you’re off duty,” she clarified again.

  “That’s right.”

  “So someone else could still come over . . . officially.”

  “Maybe. Depends on what shakes down. So tell me what you’ve seen or heard. It doesn’t have to be something blatant, just something that caught your attention.”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.” She managed to find an oven mitt, but she was stunned, had trouble absorbing everything he’d told her. She opened the oven door and a cloud of spicy heat escaped. Carefully she slid the pizza from the oven. Melted cheese bubbled and dripped over the edges of the crust as she slid the pie onto a plate.

  She thought about the times she’d been by the Pomeroy estate, either in her car or on foot. “I don’t remember anything odd or suspicious,” she said. “When I drive to my office, I go by there twice a day, once into town, once out.” Scavenging in a drawer, she came up with a dull pizza cutter. Using all her strength, she pushed hard on the handle and forced the circular blade to slice the pie into eighths. “Then, I jog past the gates when I’m taking my run, but that’s been spotty lately. Have you checked with the Stinsons? They live right across the street. Asa and Mark know each other through some kind of flying club, I think. They both have airplanes. Vanessa and Celia Stinson play bridge or golf together.”

  “Someone’s already spoken with them. We’re talking to everyone Asa knows.”

  “That’ll take a while.”

  “No kiddin’.”

  She arranged the sliced tomatoes, found plates and a spatula, then set two pieces of pizza onto each small platter. Handing one to Montoya, she took the stool next to his but ignored the food. After hours of her stomach begging her for something to eat, she was suddenly not hungry. To think that Asa Pomeroy could have been abducted, only a few hundred feet down the road, was bone-chilling. Pomeroy’s disappearance coupled with Luke and Courtney LaBelle’s murder killed her appetite.

  “So you came here to find out what I knew about Asa Pomeroy or if I’d seen anything,” she stated, not adding, under the guise of caring.

  Stupid woman!

  Montoya met the questions in her eyes. “I came here to warn you,” he said, lifting a slice and taking a bite. “And to make certain you were safe.”

  A cold feeling settled at the base of her spine. “I don’t even know Asa Pomeroy.”

  He nodded. “Tonight, that might be a good thing.”

  “I guess.”

  “Eat,” he suggested. “It’s good.”

  “It can’t be.”

  He poured more wine and she finally sampled the pizza. He was lying. It tasted like raw onions on cardboard, but she ate it anyway.

  He waited a few minutes, finishing his first piece, and said casually, “I heard you went out to the old sanitarium.”

  She nearly choked on the bite she was chewing. “How did you know that?” The only person she’d confided in was Zoey and she doubted her sister had picked up the phone and called the New Orleans Police.

  Were the police tailing her?

  If, so, why would Montoya bring it up?

  “My aunt is Sister Maria,” he explained, then washed down another bite with a swallow of wine.

  “Oh.” Heat climbed up the back of Abby’s neck at the thought of trespassing on the grounds of the hospital. “So she turned me in?”

  Montoya grinned, his smile disarm
ing. “Nah. If she wanted to punish you, she’d make you get down on your knees and say the rosary from now until eternity. I called and asked about the hospital, if anything was going on over there with the pending sale and demolition, and she mentioned that you’d been by.”

  Just my luck, to meet up with Sister Maria, the gossiping nun. She forced down another bite of pizza. “Did she say why I was there?”

  “No. Even when I asked.”

  “So now you’re asking me?”

  He didn’t respond, just stared at her.

  “It’s no big deal,” she said, deciding to level with him. “Under the advice of a psychiatrist I went to a few years back, I decided to go to the hospital and confront my past, you know, walk the grounds where my mother spent her last days. She committed suicide on my fifteenth birthday, her thirty-fifth, by jumping from the window of her room . . . the closed window.” She shivered and added, “But you already know that, don’t you? My guess is you know a lot about me, more than anyone’s willing to admit, and that makes me wonder why?” Growing angry, Abby pushed her plate away. It slid across the counter, nearly landing on the floor. She barely noticed. “So what is it? Am I a suspect? If so, in what? Luke’s murder? Asa Pomeroy’s disappearance? My mother’s suicide?” Drilling him with her gaze, she said, “Come on, Detective Montoya, what’s this really all about? And please, don’t be reticent or try to spare my feelings. Didn’t dear old Auntie Sister Maria tell you that confession’s good for the soul?”

  He smothered a smile. Wasn’t intimidated in the least. Blast the man. “Maybe I just wanted to see that you were okay.”

  “You expect me to believe that? After you’ve had the Our Lady of Virtues spies checking up on me?” She couldn’t keep the bite out of her words, but he wasn’t offended. If anything, he appeared amused by her outrage. God, she’d love to shake some sense into him. He was just so damned maddening!

  There was a part of her that was dying to believe that he had stopped by because he cared for her, that he had felt compelled to see her again, but that was just wishful thinking by a very feminine and silly piece of her. The more real down-to-earth side of her nature knew better.

  This man was a cop. Period. He didn’t trust her and she, now, didn’t trust him.

  “Believe what you want,” he said, standing and wiping his hands on a paper towel he snapped from a roll on the counter.

  “I will.”

  He tossed the used towel into the trash. “So everything cool here?”

  Boy, he wouldn’t give it up, would he?

  “Except for a neurotic dog and a paranoid cat, yeah, everything’s fine.” She was tempted to tell him about the open window, and Hershey’s growl-fest, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t want to come off as some kind of scared little mouse of a woman, and besides, no one had been in the house.

  She’d proved that, hadn’t she?

  He looked around the kitchen as if to satisfy himself. “Well, thanks for the dinner.”

  “If it could be called that.”

  Again, he flashed her that infectious, disarming smile, and if she let herself, and looked beyond his black goatee, she might see a dimple or two.

  “It was the best invitation and dinner I’ve had in a long, long time.” When she started to protest, he held up a hand. “Seriously.”

  “You’re an easy man to please.”

  “Maybe.” His dark eyes sparked and smoldered and she felt her breath catch in the back of her throat. “Come to think of it, maybe I am.”

  Oh, dear God. Her pulse was thundering. Heat curled in her stomach and spread to her limbs. What was it about this man that bothered her so? One minute he was so damned infuriating she wanted to strangle him, and the next, he was getting to her, teasing and flirting, and generally digging under her skin.

  Which was not a good thing.

  He was sexy as hell in his black leather jacket, faded, butt-hugging jeans, and irreverent attitude, and she guessed he knew just how to play a woman, something that should have turned her off completely. She warned herself to tread carefully; flirting was one thing, falling for a man like Detective Montoya was another thing altogether. He was still off-limits. Way off.

  “Listen,” he was saying as she walked him to the front door. God, she hoped he was unaware that she was sizing him up. “If you think of anything or see anything that you think just doesn’t fit, call me.” He slid her a glance that she could have interpreted a dozen ways. “You’ve got my number.”

  Oh, I wish, she thought. She’d love to know what made this man tick. “I told you. I don’t know anything.”

  She opened the door.

  Montoya hesitated a beat on the threshold.

  For a full half-minute, he stared into the dark night, where the rain was beginning to lash the ground, and the wind was whipping the branches in the old oaks near the drive. “Listen,” he finally said, turning to look her full in the face. Deep grooves cut into his forehead, and beneath his goatee, the corners of his mouth pinched downward. “Be careful.”

  Something inside her cracked.

  She had trouble finding her voice. “I . . . I will.”

  “No, I mean it.” He was deadly serious. One hand lightly touched her forearm, one rested over the deadbolt on the slim edge of the door. “Something’s going on here. I don’t know what, but I don’t like it. Get that security system up and running. ASAP.”

  “You’re starting to scare me.”

  “Good. That’s the point.” His expression didn’t change. His dark gaze was intense, downright smoldering.

  The back of her throat tightened. “Okay.”

  He slid a glance past her, to the interior and the table in the entry hall. “And the hammer’s not such a bad idea. I’m not crazy about civilians with guns and guard dogs, but protect yourself.” He frowned. “You might want a bigger one.”

  “Gun or dog?”

  “Hammer.”

  “Like a sledge?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded and dropped his hand. “A sledge would work just fine.” But he didn’t smile as he hunched his shoulders against the rain. She watched him hurry down the steps of the porch, along the brick path to the driveway and into his black Mustang. Once inside, he engaged the engine, maneuvered a quick U-turn, and drove down the lane, his taillights fading in the rain.

  “Did you hear that, Hershey? The hammer thing? As if. And he doesn’t think much of your skills as a watch dog, does he?” She slid the deadbolt into place and walked into the bedroom, trying not to be depressed that he was gone. She barely knew the man, didn’t trust him. But the house seemed suddenly empty without him.

  Silly.

  His warnings crept back through her mind. Maybe it was time to load the .38. She had ammo in a box in the closet.

  She pulled open the drawer, intent on taking Montoya’s advice.

  But the gun was missing.

  She blinked hard. No way! Luke’s father’s revolver couldn’t be gone! She’d seen it only a few nights earlier, right?

  So what had happened to it?

  Shaken, Abby sank onto her bed, thought about dialing Montoya’s cell, and decided against it. One more time, she looked in the nightstand drawer, then rolled across the bed to the other side and the matching night table. Nervously she pulled the drawer open, silently praying she would find the .38, that she’d forgotten where she’d last seen it.

  No such luck.

  The gun was missing.

  And the window had been open.

  Someone had been inside the house.

  Someone had climbed inside and stolen Luke’s precious handgun.

  Her breath stopped in her lungs when she considered the possibilities.

  The killer could have come inside, looking for something Luke had said was precious to him. Or some obsessed fan, who had heard Luke talk on the air about the .38, was either acting out of some fanatical obsession in righting the “wrong” she’d done his hero, or had thought the gun would get a g
reat price on eBay, or the black market, or wherever it was that someone sold a weapon stolen from a famous person.

  “Too bizarre,” she murmured and too damned scary. Before allowing serious panic to set in, she spent the next half an hour tearing the bedroom and house apart, all the while hoping beyond hope that she’d misplaced the damned gun. But in the end, she found no trace of it.

  So who had taken it?

  And what were they going to do with it?

  CHAPTER 16

  The old man was waiting.

  Which was just fine, he thought as he slid through the darkness and climbed the fence. His truck was parked behind the shed of the abandoned sawmill and he decided this was the last time he could risk parking so close to the Pomeroy estate.

  Adrenalin crackled through his body and he felt more alive than he had since killing Gierman and the virgin. The threat was much stronger now that the cops knew Pomeroy was missing. The FBI would be called in and they would wire the Pomeroy mansion while waiting for a ransom demand that wouldn’t come.

  A sly smile crept across his lips.

  They had no idea what was happening, not yet.

  But they would tomorrow . . . he would see to it. He already knew how to contact them, and through whom.

  As much as he loved watching the police scratch their heads and chase their tails, they were making things more difficult for him. With all the law enforcement agencies swarming around this part of the state, he would have to be careful. Very careful. That’s why he’d snagged the gun today when Abby had been working in her studio. He’d watched her for over an hour, realized she’d probably spend most of the day in her studio, so he’d taken the chance. He’d known that soon things would become harder, especially as he intended to step things up, work more quickly. So he had risked sliding into her house and slipping the .38 from its hiding spot in her bedroom.