Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  “All of this information was on the news?” Deeds asked.

  “Probably not all of it. Some was held back.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I was there. Renner called me.”

  “Damn it, Cole! I knew it! You can’t keep your nose clean for a day!”

  “I told you I thought I was in trouble.”

  “Trouble is a traffic ticket. This isn’t trouble. It’s a fucking catastrophe!” He paused to draw in a deep breath then continued his rant. “What the hell were you thinking?” He swore again, calling Cole every name in the book before he somehow managed to calm down. “Okay, okay. Let me get this straight. You witnessed the crime?”

  “No.” Cole sipped the hot coffee from his paper cup and kept staring through the smudged glass of the booth, watching people pass by. Some were walking to the bus stop one block away, others whipping by on bicycles, still others strolling or out for a morning jog. No one seemed to be paying any attention to him. A police cruiser stopped at a nearby light but rolled past the booth without either of the officers inside even glancing in his direction.

  “I got to the scene just afterward, I think.” Talking quietly and rapidly, he sketched most of the details of the events of the night before, only omitting the part about locating his stash of money, stealing Renner’s things, and visiting Eve. Those details could come out later.

  Maybe.

  Deeds listened.

  Cole knew the legal wheels were whirling at light speed in his attorney’s mind as Deeds tried to come up with a good “spin” on the unwelcome news of his client’s escapades. As Cole concluded, Deeds said, “Just tell me you didn’t call Eve.”

  “I didn’t call Eve.” That, at least, was the truth. He didn’t know how much he could confide in his lawyer, and as for Eve, oh hell, he didn’t know what to think about that himself. He hadn’t intended to meet her last night, but in truth, had he known she was back in town, he might have made a beeline for her door anyway. “Look, I gotta go. I’ll call you later, and we’ll meet.”

  “I’m booked until six. Got a squash match after that, but I’ll change it. Come in then.”

  “No, let’s meet somewhere else.”

  A beat.

  “Okay. Your place?”

  “How about O’Callahan’s, on Magazine, a block or two off of Julia?”

  Deeds said, “I’ll be there around six-thirty. Don’t, and I mean do not, do anything stupid in the meantime.”

  “Right. Oh, and Sam, don’t call me. I had to ditch the phone.”

  “Son of a bitch, Cole, what’s got into you?”

  “I don’t want to be traced. If you don’t show up at O’Callahan’s, I’ll call you.

  “Jesus H. Christ, what the hell have you done this time?”

  Oh man, if you only knew. “I’ll explain when I see you,” Cole lied then hung up and started walking.

  Don’t do anything stupid. What Deeds really meant was don’t contact Eve. Deeds didn’t yet know that Eve was in town and that Cole had already found her.

  Taking another scalding sip of coffee, Cole kept walking, over the slight rise that separated the city streets from the waterfront. He needed time to think, to clear his head.

  Except his damned thoughts kept tumbling back to Eve. Dressed in a soft robe, her eyes glimmering with tears and emotion, her lips compressed angrily, and her hands pointing a revolver straight at him, she’d been ultimately desirable. He should have been scared, angry, but there was something about that woman that just got to him. Even though she’d obviously been with another man, cheated on him, and despite her admitted memory loss would have willingly testified against him, he still found her the most intriguing woman he’d ever met.

  So much for thinking rationally.

  He strode toward the Riverwalk Marketplace, watching the sluggish water of the Mississippi roll past. A barge was heading upstream, and a bit of wind, blowing across the water, brought the dank scent of the river to his nostrils.

  Who had killed Terrence Renner?

  The same psycho who had slit Roy Kajak’s throat?

  It had to be…So what did the numbers mean? 212? 101? Were they clues to the killer’s identity or a part of the homicidal maniac’s sick sense of justice?

  Why, on the very day he was released, had the killer found his next victim?

  Maybe it isn’t about you. Maybe the killing resumed because Eve returned to New Orleans. Or maybe because of some incident entirely unrelated.

  A coincidence.

  Oh yeah, like he believed that for even an instant.

  Watching a teenager throw a Frisbee to some kind of mixed-breed shepherd wearing a red bandana, Cole downed the rest of his coffee, crumpled the cup, then tossed it into a trash receptacle. He had too much to do to spend time thinking in circles. He headed to the spot he’d parked his Jeep.

  In the early morning hours, after leaving Eve’s house, Cole had headed back to his place, changed into clean clothes, then driven across town to a laundromat where he’d bleached the hell out of the blood-stained T-shirt and jeans before drying them and dropping them off at a depository for the Salvation Army. He was back home by six, slept three hours, showered in the thin spray of his bathroom, then walked to get his coffee and make the call. Fortunately, the caffeine was doing its job, jolting his system awake. He had a lot of things to do today, the first of which was to buy one of those prepaid, nearly impossible to trace cell phones that, he suspected, were popular with the drug-dealing crowd. Once he’d purchased a new phone, he’d make a few calls and see if he could connect with one of his former clients, a low-life slumlord who might just be able to help him out.

  In the meantime he was going to go against his attorney’s advice and his own better judgment.

  Because he couldn’t leave well enough—or Eve Renner—alone.

  It was nearly ten when Eve finally forced herself out of bed. Somehow, despite the confrontation with Cole, the drive to her father’s house, the further phone calls to Anna Maria and her brother Van’s answering machine, she’d slept.

  Like a log.

  Now, though, she was sluggish, and the events of the past twenty-four hours bogged her down. Scrounging in the freezer, she discovered a bag of opened beans, which she ground, and started the coffeemaker. As she let Samson outside, Mr. Coffee began to gurgle and scent the room with the rich, warm aroma of some dark blend called Mississippi Mud. She didn’t remember buying the coffee, but that was pretty much standard these days. Her memory, though recovering, just wasn’t reliable.

  She walked through the shower. Then, with a towel cinched around her body, swiped at the steamy mirror and nearly cringed at her reflection. Her long hair was cut short and highlighted, compliments of Anna Maria the hairdresser. The “style,” if you could call it that, was spiky and uneven due to the large spot over one temple that had been shaved for her surgery. Her hair would grow out, and, for the moment, she decided to “go with” the new “do.” It wasn’t all that bad, and a hairstyle was the least of her problems.

  The face beneath her shaggy bangs was a concern, however; she looked as if she’d aged ten years in the past three months. Her skin was pale, her eyes without their usual sparkle, her cheekbones pronounced with the loss of nearly ten pounds. She hadn’t been heavy to start with, and losing the weight hadn’t aided in her attempts to appear healthy and athletic.

  “In time,” her physical therapist had told her, “you’ll be a hundred percent, but it will take awhile.” So maybe the eighty-five percent motion in her shoulder would improve. She ran a toothbrush around her teeth, added a little lip gloss and minimal mascara, and called it good.

  Who really cared anyway?

  When she stepped into the jeans she found in her drawer, they hung lower on her hips than she remembered. The sweater she tossed over her head draped loosely but was comfy, so she went with it. As for the headache that had followed her around all day yesterday, it had abated a bit, and, despite the gr
ief she bore for her father, she felt as if she could tackle the day.

  She slid into her favorite pair of slip-ons and clattered down the wooden steps just as the phone jangled. Racing to the kitchen, she snagged the receiver before it rang for the third time. “Hello?”

  “Eve Renner?”

  She braced herself at the sound of the unfamiliar male voice. “Yes,” she responded cautiously.

  “This is Miles Weston with WKMF.”

  Her heart sank. She recognized the name.

  “I’d like to talk to you about your father’s death.”

  “No comment,” she said.

  The reporter continued, “The police are listing it as a homicide.”

  She hung up. Her anonymity had been short lived. Last night she hadn’t been recognized, but today the press was already putting two and two together, having figured out she’d returned to New Orleans. She was Eve Renner, the woman whose lover had been accused of murdering Roy Kajak in a bizarre homicide, and now she was also Eve Renner, the daughter of Terrence Renner, who’d been killed in like fashion.

  And Cole Dennis, blast his hide, was a free man.

  At least temporarily.

  The phone rang again. She saw it was the same number as before, so she let the answering machine take the call. The last thing she needed to deal with today was the damned media. She’d had enough to last her a lifetime.

  And she wasn’t ready to deal with her father’s murder.

  Not yet.

  The coffee, despite its enticing smell, was a little bitter without any cream, but she sipped it as she read over the articles about Faith Chastain and Our Lady of Virtues again. They seemed less sinister in the morning light, almost childish with their perfectly cut notched edges. Why the pinking shears? Why sent to her? Why, why, why?

  She sat at the table and read each clipping carefully. Faith Chastain. She fingered a grainy picture of a beautiful woman with a haunted expression. Had Eve seen her before? She checked the articles closely and determined that Faith Chastain had been in and out of Our Lady of Virtues but that she’d stayed for an extended length of time when Eve was young,…She’d been killed twenty years earlier, about the time Eve was fifteen…not long before Eve’s own mother’s death.

  Moving the clippings around, Eve tried to put them in some sort of order, and as she did her thoughts returned to Our Lady of Virtues. The hospital was a creepy and fascinating place for a curious child. Though she’d been warned time and time again about keeping to the main hallways or her father’s office on the first floor, she had, over the years, explored all of the old brick asylum, from the basement with its cool tile walls and shining equipment to the dusty attic where unused and broken furniture and records had been kept. She’d loved to sneak into that forgotten space under the rafters.

  Our Lady of Virtues was where she’d first met Roy…. They were both around ten at the time and up to no good. Roy was the son of the caretaker, and they’d instantly connected, two normal kids in a bizarre world of insanity, delusion, and pain. For the most part, they’d played outside, off the grounds of the hospital, in the surrounding woods and fields, but when the weather was bad, they spent time inside the campus of Our Lady of Virtues. Though both the convent and hospital were deemed off limits, they ignored the rules as much as possible.

  It had been a game to them both, slipping through the quiet hallways, up the service stairs, and avoiding the ever-rustling skirts and stern glances of Sister Rebecca. How many times had Eve hidden in the laundry cupboard, peering out, seeing the dangling cross from the heavy belt rosary Sister Rebecca wore around her waist? Or viewed the crisp uniform and pinched lips of the nurse, a slim blond woman who seemed to do her job with long-suffering efficiency? What was her name? Nurse…Suzanne…That was it; there had been an old song by the same name, one she’d heard on her mother’s tape player. Roy had always whistled it under his breath, singing only, “You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind…but you know that she’s half crazy…”

  They’d thought they were so funny, so clever, so sly as they’d filched cookies and apples from the kitchen then sneaked them upstairs to the attic to build their own hiding space with the old furniture, drapes, and broken equipment.

  She remembered the gloomy day that Roy had led her to the attic and then, making her promise not to tell on pain of death, showed her a series of holes in the floor where light from the rooms below filtered upward. “Spy holes,” he had told her, and they’d spent many afternoons looking through them into the patient rooms and hallways below.

  Eve had felt a little guilty about it, uncomfortable that she was peering into another person’s privacy, but it hadn’t stopped her.

  Had one of the people she’d observed secretly been Faith Chastain? What was the reason so many articles about this woman had been forced upon her?

  Now, as morning sun filtered through the dirty windows and slats of the blinds, she had no answers, just the same feeling of unease that had chased after her so many years ago.

  Her stomach rumbled from lack of food. She made a quick mental note to pick up a few essentials before she returned, then scooped up the newspaper articles and slid them into the envelope in which she’d received them.

  No doubt the police, if interested, would want everything.

  Especially the truth.

  What are you going to tell them about Cole, Eve?

  Sooner or later, you’re going to have to explain that he stopped by, that he was covered in blood, that he’d been at your father’s house but you, the woman who’d accused him of trying to kill her, had believed his story when he told you he hadn’t slit your father’s throat.

  “Later,” she told herself as her cell phone indicated she had a text message. She checked, saw that it was Anna. All it said was, Hope you’re okay. Call later. What was it with Anna and the texting?

  She stuffed the envelope into her purse then headed outside, locking the door behind her. The air was warmer than the day be fore, and sunlight was filtered through high, drifting clouds. Samson, pressed flat on the floorboards of the porch, was peeking between the rails, his body frozen, only the tip of his tail twitching as he stared at a bird flitting between the budding, twisting stalk of a clematis winding its way up the rain gutter.

  “In your dreams,” she told the cat, smiling to herself.

  She unlocked the car, slid inside the already warm interior, and was about to start the engine when she saw the glove box. Closed. No evidence that anyone had opened it. Yet her heart kicked into a quick tempo and she couldn’t help but open the small compartment.

  It was empty except for her sunglasses case and owner’s instruction manual for the Camry. “Good,” she told herself as she backed onto the street. She noticed Mrs. Endicott busily weeding her flower bed and as the older woman waved, Eve raised her hand then drove toward St. Charles Avenue. She hated to imagine what her neighbor had overheard last night but decided not to dwell on it. If she were lucky, it would never come up.

  “Yeah, right,” she said with more than a trace of sarcasm as she braked for a red light.

  Her cell phone rang before the light changed and she pulled it out of her bag. Caller ID told her that Renner, Kyle was calling, but Eve was laying odds that Anna Maria was on the other end of the wireless connection.

  “Eve?” Anna asked when Eve answered. She didn’t wait for a response. “You didn’t call me!”

  “Just got your text message a few minutes ago. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Did you get hold of Van?”

  “Yeah. I left him a message.”

  “Me too, and he hasn’t called back.” She sounded worried, but that was nothing new. “I just don’t get him. Do you know anything else? I mean, we’ve got to plan a funeral. Kyle hates these things; I think he’s in denial, and…Oh damn, I didn’t mean to go on like this. How’re you?

  “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. What about you?” />
  “Fine, I guess. The news reporters have started to call and, well, that’s kind of weird. You know, unnerving.”

  “I hear you,” Eve said. “They’ve started with me too.”

  “I’m glad Kyle’s not around, or he’d be having a fit. Has he phoned you?”

  “No. Where’s Kyle?”

  “Still at that damned job I told you about.”

  “When he gets home, have him give me a call and we’ll figure out funeral arrangements once the police release the body. I just don’t know when that will be.”

  “Okay…. Listen, I hate to bring this up, but what about his will?”

  Someone behind Eve honked, and she saw the light was now green. Easing into the intersection, she said, “I don’t know. He never talked about one.”

  “I suppose we’ll find it when we clean out his house or safe-deposit box.”

  “If he has one.”

  “I know it’s kind of uncomfortable to be talking about it so soon, but it’s just that Kyle thought you might know something about it.”

  Her stomach soured. Their father had been murdered, and her eldest brother’s first thought was the estate? It was just so like Kyle. To this day, she didn’t understand what Anna saw in him. Slowing for another amber light, Eve decided to end the call. “Look, let me call you back later, Anna. I am no good at multitasking when one of the tasks is driving.”

  In the business district, she found a small storefront that advertised all kinds of copying and mailing services. She parked then walked inside past a bevy of mailboxes to a wide room lined with different sizes of copiers and counters. One wall held boxes of all sizes and shelves holding envelopes, tape, and various office supplies. Behind a counter, clerks were busily helping customers with faxes, shipping, and mailing services.

  Eve tossed her purse onto an unused counter near a vacant copy machine then made photocopies of each of the clippings that had been left in her car. She planned to go to the police with a complaint and expected they would want the originals. She would keep the copies for herself, to pore over, to try and figure out why the specific, jagged clippings had been left for her.