Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle

by Lisa Jackson

  Almost smelling the odor of forgotten sex, he eyed a dusty bookcase that lined one wall. A few forgotten books were scattered on the shelf, their pages and covers yellowed. Other books had fallen to the floor, and from their mottled edges it appeared that something had been nibbling on them. He picked one up, a legal thriller from the nineties. A novel Jennifer had read. He remembered discussing it with her.

  Her copy?

  His throat went dry as he flipped through a few pages, then tossed the book aside, the ever-darkening room creeping into his soul.

  Coincidence, nothing more.

  And yet…

  He felt as if she’d been here. Almost.

  “Fool,” he muttered as his gaze landed on a desk. It had been pushed in front of the closet and was missing a few drawers. On the scarred top was the base of an old telephone, the receiver dangling over one side.

  Had Jennifer really spent hours here? Nights? With James? He crossed to the French doors, the glass boarded over on the outside, many of the panes cracked. The doors had once opened onto a small, private balcony overlooking the courtyard. Thinking they might open inward, he tried the levers.

  Neither door budged.

  It was getting darker by the second, the room musty, dragging the breath from his lungs. He ran the beam of his flashlight over a worn chaise. Foam stuffing bloomed crazily from the frayed velvet that had once been ice blue and now was a dingy, dirty gray.

  Bentz’s muscles tensed as he trained his small light on the bed, nothing more than a stained mattress on a rotting frame. It had been shoved into a corner beneath a broken stained-glass window, then forgotten.

  Staring at the mess, cleaning it up in his brain, Bentz imagined what the room would have looked like nearly thirty years earlier. A time when Jennifer and James had first started their affair.

  Don’t even go there, he warned, but couldn’t help imagining how the area would have looked. Surely a carpet would have covered the plank floors. The chaise, in a soft blue, would have been new and plump, the desk, a shiny rosewood antique. The bed would have been turned down and inviting, with smooth sheets and a cozy coverlet.

  He thought there had been a desk chair, perhaps upholstered in the same blue as the chaise. He imagined a black cassock and clerical collar recklessly discarded over the chair’s back.

  One fist clenched.

  He considered his half brother. Father James McClaren had been a handsome man with an altar-boy smile, strong jaw, and intense blue eyes that many women, not just Jennifer, had found seductive. There had been those, like his ex-wife, who loved the challenge of it all, the act of bringing a priest to his knees. Then there had been the frail or weak-willed who had turned to their priest in times of need only to be seduced by the unscrupulous James.

  Self-righteous sinner.

  Bentz could almost hear his half brother’s deep laugh, imagined the whisper of his footsteps on the bare floor. In this room, alone with Jennifer, James had probably stripped naked, then with her giggling and backing away, had followed her, kissed her, and begun undressing her.

  Or had it been the other way around?

  Had she, dressed in scanty lingerie, waited in the bed for him, listening for his footsteps, eyeing the door until he stepped into the room?

  It didn’t matter. Either way, they’d ended up in bed, making love over and over again.

  So much for the vow of chastity.

  Odd, Bentz thought now as he played out the scene in his mind. Much of his anger and outrage had dissipated over time. That burning sense of betrayal had been reduced to dying embers.

  It had been so many years.

  And now there was Olivia.

  His wife.

  The woman he loved.

  Dear God, why was he here when she was waiting for him in New Orleans?

  There was nothing for him in California.

  Jennifer was dead.

  Yet, for just a split second, he smelled the scent of gardenias, a whiff of her perfume.

  Yeah, right.

  Then Jennifer’s voice came to him. The barest of whispers. “Why?” she asked and he knew it was all in his head.

  Dear God, maybe he really was going off his nut.

  He turned toward the French doors and in his mind’s eye he saw sunlight playing through the gauzy curtains. A bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket of ice on a bedside table while James and Jennifer rolled in the sheets and the bells of the chapel rang joyously…

  Bong! Bong! Bong!

  “Jesus!” Bentz jumped, snapped out of his reverie by the very real peal of church bells from a nearby parish.

  Telling himself he was a dozen kinds of a fool, he shined the beam of his flashlight over the rubble and asked himself what he expected to accomplish by coming here. He’d found nothing concrete. Not one reason to believe that Jennifer was anything but dead.

  Mentally berating himself, he walked to the French doors and peered through a slit in the boards covering the broken panes to the courtyard below.

  His heart stopped.

  Ice water slid through his veins.

  Jennifer!

  Or the spitting image of her.

  Or her damned spirit, standing on the far side of the courtyard, caught in the long twilight shadow of the bell tower.

  Disbelief coursing through his veins, Bentz hurried to the stairway and raced downward. He shoved open the door and dashed across the porch and into the courtyard, his damned leg throbbing painfully. Heart pounding, he flew across the uneven flagstones. The toe of his shoe caught on the edge of a stone. He didn’t go down, but the twinge of pain slowed him.

  He shot a glance to the edge of the courtyard, but it was empty.

  No Jennifer.

  Damn!

  No woman, earthly or otherwise, stood in the silent, darkening enclosure. He turned, looking all around, cursing himself as he considered the fact that he’d conjured up her image, possibly caught a glimpse of the statue of St. Miguel. Had his willing mind transformed the broken statue into what he wanted to see? What he expected to witness?

  Had it all been the power of suggestion?

  No way!

  His wildly pounding heart, accelerated pulse, and goose bumps on the back of his neck confirmed that the vision was very real. He dragged in deep breaths of the dry air and tried to think rationally, rein in his thoughts. Find sanity again.

  Good God, he’d always been so rational…and now…now…Shit, what now? He shoved his hands through his hair, told himself to calm down. But as he did, he glanced up at the second story of the old inn. One of the balconies was different from the rest; its door hadn’t been barricaded.

  Why?

  A shadow moved within.

  His eyes narrowed.

  Was it a play of light, or a dark figure lurking in the shadows, hiding behind the tattered, gauzy curtains?

  “Oh, hell,” he whispered. He took off again, forced his feet into a dead run. His bad leg was on fire, his breathing ragged as he leapt over the step and across the porch to the doorway of room twenty-one.

  The door was ajar.

  His heart nearly stopped.

  He reached for his sidearm, but wasn’t wearing his shoulder holster. His pistol was locked in the glove box of the rental car.

  He didn’t have time to run back for it. Take it easy. Slow down. Think this through. It could be a trap! Carefully, he pushed on the door.

  Sweating crazily, he swung the beam of his flashlight over the rubble within. It was similar to the other room, squalid and neglected.

  And smelling of gardenias.

  What the hell?

  Thud!

  The sound of something falling in the room above reverberated through the living area.

  He shot forward. Reminding himself that he might be walking into a trap, and that he should have brought his sidearm, he started up the stairs. He didn’t bother to test for rotten wood or broken railings, just hurried upward.

  The smell of her perfume was s
tronger here. His throat tightened. On the landing he paused, feeling exposed, an open target. Back to the wall, heart pumping wildly, he shined the beam of his small light over the empty bedroom, then inched toward the closed door of the closet. He braced himself. Then flung the door open.

  Empty.

  What had he expected?

  Sweating, swallowing back an unsettling fear, he zeroed in on the bath. One, two, three! He kicked the door open.

  With a shriek and flap of frantic wings, an owl flew from his roost on an old towel bar and soared out the broken window.

  Bentz’s knees nearly gave out. Jittery, he backed out of the room where feathers, dung, and pellets, the regurgitated undigested pieces of animals the owl coughed up, littered the floor.

  Then he thought of the back stairs.

  Damn!

  Nerves tight, he backtracked to the upper hallway and heard the sounds of fast breathing and quick steps down on the first level.

  Flinging himself over the rail, he half-stumbled down the stairs and cast his narrow light beam down the murky corridor.

  Empty.

  No one.

  Dead or alive.

  His leg on fire, he hitched his way to the nearest exit and found himself in what had been the lobby of the old inn, the main entrance to the small mission.

  The air was stale and unused.

  Except for the slight scent of Jennifer’s perfume.

  For the love of God, what was this?

  He knew before he tried the front doors that they would be locked. He also knew that he could wander around this old structure, search the chapel and wine cellars, the individual rooms and reception hall and he wouldn’t find her.

  She was gone.

  And he knew nothing more than he had when he’d left L.A. earlier today.

  Perfect! I think with a smile. I peer through binoculars from a hiding spot in the upper story of an abandoned warehouse that reeks of must and oil. But the smells don’t bother me. Not today. I focus on Bentz, who is still limping his way around the inn checking doors and flashing his light into the dark corners.

  Go ahead, Bentz.

  You’ll find nothing.

  It’s getting darker, the shadows lengthening, but I can still see him studying the crumbling exterior of the mission. From here I’m safe to imagine him puzzling out the mystery of his first wife.

  Good!

  “Keep looking,” I say in the barest of whispers, adrenaline pumping through my body. “But, uh-oh, be careful…who knows what you’ll find.”

  I can feel my lips twist in satisfaction because I read him so perfectly. I know now that I can manipulate him however I want. And it feels good.

  About time!

  “Good boy, RJ,” I coo softly, as if to a collie who’s mastered a difficult trick. “Good, good boy.”

  God, how I love to see him squirm!

  He’s already walking away from the inn, so I step away from the window just in case an ancient, watery streetlight might reflect in my field glasses.

  I can’t afford to be careless.

  Rick Bentz might be a lot of things, but a fool he is not.

  I know that.

  He’s just a dogged, single-minded bastard of the lowest order. He deserves this and I can’t wait to see him twist in the wind. Oh, yeah. How perfect will it be for him to know the sheer terror, the mind-numbing fear that overcomes you when you’re haunted? He will get to experience the confusion and horror of thinking he’s losing his sanity.

  And there are ways to ratchet up his torment. Oh, yes.

  It’s time to add a little pressure on the home front.

  Olivia…she is the key, I think, the coup de grâce. There is no better way to get to Bentz than through his damned wife.

  I see him slip through the opening in the fence and head down the street to the parking lot. His shoulders are still broad, but his once purposeful gait is now uneven.

  A coldness settles in my heart.

  Do you feel me, you sick son of a bitch?

  Do you have any idea what you did to me, the pain you put me through?

  No?

  Well, you will, Bentz, you damned well will.

  In fact, and I promise you this, the pain and suffering and guilt will be so intense, so excruciating that you’ll wish to heaven and hell that you were dead.

  CHAPTER 14

  Bentz found his car and made note of a few changes in the parking lot. One of the twin pickups had left and there was now an old Datsun with expired plates idling in front of the bookstore. A teenage girl was behind the wheel, gabbing on her cell phone. WASH ME was still in prime position in front of the tavern, but the silver Chevy with the stickers was no longer parked near the dirty van.

  He wondered if one of the cars could belong to “Jennifer” or whoever she was. If so, she certainly was no ghost. As far as he knew the State of California only issued licenses to living people and, if folklore were to be believed, ghosts really didn’t need wheels.

  On a whim, he walked into the tavern, glanced at the waitstaff and few patrons huddled over a long bar or staring at a big screen in the corner. Satisfied that whoever he’d been chasing hadn’t taken refuge in the establishment, Bentz ordered a zero-alcohol, made small talk with the waitress, and asked if she knew who owned the Chevy. She gave him a blank stare that was almost identical to the expression of the bartender when Bentz posed the same question to him. If they knew anything, they weren’t going to give it up, but his gut told him they didn’t have any idea of the answer and didn’t really care.

  Ignoring the beer and leaving some bills on his table, he left the tavern and headed to the bookstore, where a shopkeeper nearing eighty was waiting to close. Now the girl who had been in the Datsun had moved inside and was still talking on her cell as she cruised the aisles, concentrating on a wall of books in an area labeled “Vampires and Ghosts.” Without a break in her conversation, she picked up various books, thumbed through them, then replaced them on the shelf.

  The bookstore was nearly empty, one balding guy near thirty poring over computer texts and a woman with a little girl in pigtails perusing the children’s books section.

  No one here could have played the part of Jennifer.

  The grocery, too, was devoid of customers. Bentz bought a sixteen-ounce Pepsi and checked the aisles. Two teenaged boys in long hair and baggy shorts were checking out the candy section while stealing peeks and whispering about the “hot” girl at the till. A harried young mother, toddler on one hip, eyebrows knit in concern, was shopping for disposable diapers and scowling at the price.

  They were the only patrons.

  No Jennifer.

  Of course.

  Outside, behind the strip mall, two men in their early twenties stood smoking near a Dumpster.

  Nothing surprising there. Bentz drank his soda and wondered why the hell he’d come down here. What, if anything, had he learned?

  Just that you’re a gullible ass, willing to chase shadows.

  He climbed into his rental and kicked himself for not having the presence of mind to take pictures of the woman he’d been chasing; even a dark image on his cell phone would have helped.

  He twisted his key in the ignition, then looked at the empty spot in the lot where the silver Chevy had been parked. There was something about that car that had seemed out of place. His cop instincts were in overdrive, which happened whenever he experienced an anomaly—something that didn’t seem to fit.

  He tried to recall anything about the vehicle. It was an Impala, he thought, maybe a 2000. He tried to visualize the numbers on the license plate, but only remembered that it had current tags issued in California. There was something unique about the plates…two or three sixes in the number. He wasn’t certain. But there was some kind of expired parking pass on the front windshield, a hospital permit of some kind, though part of the information had faded to the point that it hadn’t been easily visible, and he’d been in a hurry. Yet he sensed there was something a
bout the pass that was a little out of the ordinary…what the hell was it?

  He tried to envision the damned thing. Failed and gave up. Whatever had caught his attention was now gone. It would come to him. Probably in the middle of the night.

  Again, he should have taken pictures. With that thought he cut the engine and got out of his Ford to snap photos with his cell phone. He took shots of the license plates and makes and models of the cars parked but also in the lot and on the street leading to the old inn. All told there were only eight, and one of them was on blocks, the plates long expired. A no-counter.

  Then there was that old parking pass thing.

  Bentz decided to check out any hospitals in the area. There was a good chance that whoever owned the Chevy had some kind of hospital or medical facility connection. Unless the sticker belonged to a previous owner.

  He was driving back through the quaint town when his cell phone rang and he picked up, barely registering that the screen read UNKNOWN CALLER. “Bentz.”

  “Hi, Rick,” a woman said, her voice vaguely familiar and frosty as hell. “This is Lorraine. You called.”

  Lorraine Newell. Jennifer’s stepsister.

  “That’s right. I’m in L.A. and wondered if we could get together.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “I have some questions about Jennifer’s death.”

  “Oh, for the love of God. You have a helluva lot of nerve.” She let out a long-suffering sigh. “I knew calling you back was a big mistake. What do you want?”

  “I’ll tell you when we meet.”

  “Come on, you’re not going to try and be coy now, are you? It’s so not you. Let’s not mince words. I’ve always thought you were a straight shooter. A miserable son of a bitch, but a straight shooter.”

  “Can we meet tomorrow?”

  “I’m busy most of the day. Work and appointments.”

  “Tomorrow night, then.”

  She hesitated. “Why do I know I’m going to regret this?” She paused as if second-guessing herself, then said, “Okay. Fine! Can you be at my place around…four-thirty? I’ve got a dinner meeting, but I suppose I can give you a few minutes. For Jennifer.”