by Lisa Jackson
Auntie and Uncle had wanted out of the Gulf Coast, and fast.
Freya had wanted in.
She’d bought out Uncle Blair and Aunt Susie on a contract. Leaving most of the furnishings, they filled an RV and drove west, into the sunset, searching for a dry climate, new snowbird friends, and endless nights of card games and martinis.
To Val, right now, her nerves on perpetual edge, that sounded like heaven.
Valerie had been at a crossroads in her own life when Freya had asked her to become her partner. It hadn’t taken much to convince her that an investment in a creaking old Georgian manor—rumored to be haunted, no less—was the best idea in the universe. Especially since the inn was barely a mile as the crow flies from Camille and St. Marguerite’s.
Since Freya and her live-in boyfriend had recently parted ways, Freya had decided she needed a business partner. She’d e-mailed Val with the details, and Val jumped on the opportunity.
A deal was struck.
The rest, as they say, was history.
Some of it bad history.
And now, with the gurgle of rain running through the gutters and the church bells now silent, Val wondered if she’d made the right decision. Again. And the eerie feeling that had been with her earlier still remained. Mentally shaking it off, she glanced at the window but, of course, couldn’t see the church spire in the dark.
“Okay, spill it. Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Freya asked, eyebrows puckering. “Wait a minute, forget I asked. Something’s always wrong. Let me guess—it’s Slade.”
“It’s not Slade,” she said emphatically, and Freya rolled her eyes, not buying it.
“If you say so.”
“Trust me, it’s not Slade.”
“It’s always Slade. We should talk about him.”
“No way.” Scowling, Val skewered Freya with her best don’t-go-there glare.
“Really, you should know that—”
“We’ve been over this ground before. I don’t want to talk or think about him until I have to. In court.”
“But—”
“I’m serious, Freya. Slade’s off-limits.” She really didn’t want to discuss her ex again. Especially not tonight, when she was feeling so off-center.
Freya looked as if she was about to say something more but thought better of it. “Fine. Just remember I tried.”
“I will.”
“Did he do something I don’t know about?”
“Probably.” Val lifted a shoulder. “Who knows and who cares?”
Freya opened her mouth, but before she could bring up Slade’s name again, Val said, “It’s Cammie, okay? I haven’t heard from her in over a week.” The old timbers of the house creaked overhead, and for a second, Val thought she heard footsteps. The ghost again, she supposed. Freya thought the house was haunted; she didn’t.
“Hear that?” Freya asked. Unlike Val, Freya was a believer in all things supernatural.
“The house settling.”
“It settled two hundred years ago.”
Val rolled her eyes.
Freya got the message. “Okay, okay. You’re worried ’cause Cammie’s incommunicado. So what? I don’t hear from Sarah for weeks, and she’s my twin. If you believe all the twin literature, we’re supposed to be on the same wavelength and have some special”—she made air quotes—“spiritual connection.” She rolled her eyes and took another sip. “They say we formed a psychic bond from our time together in the womb. Somehow, Sarah never got the message.”
Val ran her thumb over the chipped ridge of her mug. “But Cammie is different.”
“Cammie is probably just busy. You know, doing what nuns do. Praying, doing penance, good deeds, whatever.” Freya wiggled the fingers of her free hand as if to indicate there were a myriad of things keeping Cammie from communicating. “Maybe she’s taken one of those vows of silence.”
“Cammie?” Val questioned. Gregarious, outgoing, flirty, over-the-top Camille Renard? “You do remember her. Right?”
“Oh, yeah.” Freya bit her lip. “Always in trouble.”
“That hasn’t changed,” Val admitted, the uneasy feeling returning.
“I know, that’s really the problem, isn’t it? Cammie just doesn’t seem cut out to be a nun.” Another sip. “Just like you weren’t cut out to be a cop.”
Val felt that same little bite that nipped at her when she thought about her career gone sour. She wanted to argue and defend herself, to tell Freya that she’d been a good cop, but the effort would have been futile. A gust of heavy wind slipped through the open window, rattling the blinds, reminding her how she’d screwed up. “Well, I don’t have to worry about that now, do I?”
“Hey, I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” She waved a hand in the air, as if swatting a lazy fly. “Don’t worry about it.” But it was a sore subject, one that burned a hole in her brain and kept her up at night. She slid the window down and caught a watery image of herself: pale and ghostly skin, cheekbones high and sharp, wide mouth turned down, and worried hazel eyes. Her curly auburn hair was scraped back into a drooping ponytail. God, she was a mess. Inside and out. Rain skewed her reflection as she latched the window tight. “Anyway, you’re right. I do look like hell.”
“Nothing seventy-two hours of sleep won’t cure.”
Val doubted it.
“Anyone ever tell you that you worry too much?”
“Just you.”
“Then you should take it as gospel. Quit dwelling on Cammie, okay? So she’s doing the running-off-to-a-nunnery thing. It’ll pass.” One side of Freya’s mouth lifted. “I’m surprised she hasn’t already been thrown out.”
If you only knew, Valerie thought, sipping her tea and glancing out the window again into the thick night where the spire of St. Marguerite’s cathedral was cloaked in darkness, invisible.
Oh, God, Freya, if you only knew.
Slade Houston squinted into the darkness. The tires of his old pickup hissed over the slick pavement, and the wipers were having one helluva time keeping up with the torrent as he drove across the state line into Louisiana. His old dog, Bo, a hound of indeterminate lineage, sat beside him, his nose pressed to the glass of the passenger window. Every once in a while, Bo cast a bald eye in Slade’s direction, hoping for him to crack the damned thing.
“Not tonight, boy,” Slade said as he fiddled with the radio, which crackled from interference. He found a station playing an old Johnny Cash song, but the lyrics couldn’t keep his mind from returning to his reason for driving in the middle of the night. A fool’s mission, at least according to his brothers, Trask and Zane, who’d let him hear it while he was packing up the Ford just before dusk.
“Why the hell you want anything to do with that woman is beyond me,” Trask, his middle brother, had muttered under his breath. “Only gonna bring you grief.”
“More grief,” Zane, the youngest, had added.
Not that Slade had asked for any advice as he’d loaded his pickup with a sleeping bag and duffel before whistling for Bo.
“Just take care of things. I shouldn’t be gone long,” Slade had said as the dog, with his perpetual limp and gnawed ear, leaped into the cab. Slade had slammed the door shut and felt the heat of his siblings’ sullen glares.
“How long?” Zane had asked.
“Don’t know yet. It depends.”
“Just be smart,” Trask had advised.
“Why start now?” Slade had flashed a grin to lighten things up, but the joke had fallen flat. Neither brother had cracked the hint of a smile; they just glared at him with their jaws set.
Great.
That hadn’t been too much of a surprise. Neither one of them had liked Valerie before the marriage, and their opinions hadn’t changed much over the years.
Slade had tried to let it drop as he climbed behind the wheel. Through the open window, he heard that crickets had taken up their evening chorus and saw the western hills had been silhouetted by the brilliant shades of orange
and gold.
Trask hadn’t been ready to give up the fight. “You plan on bringing her back here with ya?”
“Valerie?” he said, just to get under his brother’s skin. As if there was anyone else. “Don’t know yet.”
“If ya do hook up with her again,” Trask said, “then you’re a bigger fool than I took ya for.”
“She wouldn’t be willing, even if I asked.” That was the truth.
“She’s bad news,” Zane reminded him.
“Don’t I know it.” But he’d cranked on the engine of the dusty rig anyway, executed a three-point turn in the gravel drive without a second look at the weathered two-story ranch house he’d grown up in, and hit the gas. He didn’t bother watching the setting sun light the sky ablaze behind the barns with their creaking wild-mustang weather vanes. His old Ford had bounced down the rutted lane, dried sow thistle and Johnson grass scratching the underbelly of the truck as it rolled past acres upon acres of fields dotted with cattle and horses, land he and his brothers had inherited from their father.
A red-tailed hawk had swooped through the darkening sky as he drove past the old windmill that sat solitary and still in the dead air. A good omen. Right?
He’d snapped on the radio, then turned the truck past the battered mailbox onto the county road. He drove through the small town of Bad Luck until he came to San Antonio, where he cruised onto I-10, the long strip of asphalt cutting dead east. He’d left his brothers, Texas, and the sun far behind him.
To chase down a woman who didn’t want him.
He had the divorce papers in the glove compartment of his truck to remind him of that sorry fact.
CHAPTER 5
The call came in not long after midnight.
Montoya groaned as he rolled across the bed and answered his cell. While his wife, Abby, burrowed under the blankets, he kept his voice down and slid out of bed as he had a hundred times before. He was a detective with the New Orleans Police Department. Odd hours and late-night calls were part of his job.
“What now?” Abby asked, her voice muffled before she tossed the blankets off and shoved a tangle of hair from her eyes as he hung up.
“Dead woman. A nun. Possible homicide.”
Abby pushed herself upright, propped her back against the pillows, and clicked on the light. “A nun?”
“According to the officer who responded to a nine-one-one call.” He slid into a pair of battered jeans that he’d tossed over the foot of the bed, then found a clean T-shirt in the closet and pulled it over his head.
“Why would anyone kill a nun?” She scraped her hair back from her face, but wild curls sprang loose.
“Don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” He flashed his wife a humorless grin and thought back to another time when a nun had been killed—that one being his own aunt. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”
“Yeah, right.” She didn’t smile as she tugged at her hair. “Just be careful.”
“Always am.” He started for the door.
“Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, angling her chin toward him, practically begging for a kiss.
“Oh, yeah!” He walked to the closet, found the locked box holding his sidearm, and retrieved his weapon. After strapping on his shoulder holster, he slid his arms through his leather jacket and started for the door.
“You can be a miserable SOB when you want to be,” she charged.
“I always want to be.”
“I know.” But her eyes twinkled and the reddish blond curls that framed her face were sexy as hell. “You’re a father now, so . . . don’t take any unnecessary risks, okay? I want Benjamin to know his daddy.”
He snapped his Glock into place, then crossed the room and pushed her back onto the mattress. “So do I.” He stretched his body over hers and kissed her hard, his tongue probing her mouth, his hands splayed wide across her backside. “Wait for me,” he whispered against her ear.
“Not on your life, Detective,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice, and he had to keep his thoughts on the coming investigation to control the tightness in his groin and the rock-hard response she always elicited from him. One interested arch of her eyebrows could cause a reaction deep inside of him. Man, did he have it bad.
“Pussy-whipped,” his brother, Cruz, had commented on more than one occasion.
In this case, Cruz was right.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be ready.”
“Oh, God, save it, Montoya,” she countered, and cocooned herself in the blankets again, covering her auburn curls with a pillow. “And whatever you do, don’t wake Benjamin, okay? Otherwise I’ll have to kill you.” Again her voice was muffled, but he got the message. He had no intention of waking their three-month-old son.
Smiling as he left the room, Montoya nearly tripped over Hershey, their big lug of a chocolate lab who, always on guard near the bedroom door, scrambled to his big paws and stood, blocking the hallway, his tail thumping against an antique sideboard. As ever, Hershey was ready for anything, especially to take Montoya’s place in the bed.
“Forget it, okay? She needs her beauty sleep.”
“I heard that!” she said through the open door.
Hershey took her voice as an open invitation and galloped into the bedroom. A small dark shadow, the skittish cat, Ansel, leaped from the sideboard and followed the dog inside.
“Great.” Montoya was struggling with his shoes. He didn’t have time to call the dog back and figured Abby could deal with the animals. With bluish night-lights as his guide, he headed through his long, shotgun-style home, passing through the kitchen and living room to reach the front door. The night was muggy. Thick. The smell of the sluggish Mississippi hung heavy in the air. Rain was falling hard, running in the street as he jogged across his soggy yard to the driveway and slid onto the familiar leather seat of his Mustang. He closed the door, jammed his key into the ignition, and the engine roared to life.
Wondering what the hell had gone down at the conservative church, he hit the wipers, then gunned the engine. No siren. No lights. Just the windshield wipers slapping away the rain as the car’s radio played and the familiar voice of Dr. Sam, a late-night psychologist, wafted through the speakers. Frowning, he drove the familiar streets and recalled another case in which the host, Samantha Walker, was the intended victim. Fortunately, Dr. Sam was still around to help the people who called in to her show.
Traffic was sparse as he rolled through the wet, muggy night. Montoya arrived at St. Marguerite’s to find squad cars, lights flashing, parked at angles on the street. A fire truck dominated the circular drive, with an emergency unit idling under one of the massive live oaks surrounding the building.
Montoya double-parked and headed toward the cathedral, a looming edifice with spires, bell tower, and tracery windows reflecting the strobing red and blue lights of the parked vehicles. Gargoyles perched high on the gutters, dark, dragonlike sculptures eyeing the sacred grounds with malicious intent, their evil presence in stark contrast to the cross rising high over the highest church steeple.
He paused at the wide double doors, long enough to log into the crime scene and receive directions from one of the uniformed cops controlling the scene. Quickly, he made his way around the larger area of the cathedral proper to a side door and down a short hallway to the smaller chapel, which was tucked between the massive church and what appeared to be a garden.
He stepped inside, and a wave of nostalgia pushed him back to his youth, when his mother would take him and his siblings to Mass every Sunday. The smell of lingering incense and burning candles, their tiny flames offering a flickering, shadowed light, the hushed voices, the cavernous room with its narrow stained-glass windows.
He glanced up at the huge crucifix, and, more from habit than any lingering sense of conviction, Montoya sketched the sign of the cross over his chest.
Officers were talking in hushed tones to several people near the back of the chapel, but Montoya ignored
them as he spied Rick Bentz, his partner for many of the years Montoya had been with the NOPD, standing near the altar.
Bentz was at least fifteen years older than Montoya, nearly another generation. Married to his second wife, he had a baby under a year old, and the lack of sleep showed in the lines on Bentz’s wide face and the flecks of gray in his hair. He still had a limp from a previous accident, but otherwise Bentz’s body was honed to that of a heavyweight boxer. Tonight Bentz wore jeans, a T-shirt, a jacket, and a dark expression, his gaze narrowed on the floor near the altar.
As Montoya hurried along a wide aisle, he saw the victim lying in front of the first row of pews. Her face was covered by an altar cloth, only tangles of dark hair showing on the stone floor. Her body seemed to be posed, arms folded over her chest, fingers twined in a wooden rosary. She was wearing a yellowed, nearly tattered wedding gown, her feet bare, a silver band around the ring finger of her left hand.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“One of the nuns here,” Bentz said. “Sister Camille.”
“Killed here? At the altar?”
Like a sacrificial lamb.
“Think so. There are some signs of a struggle, scrapes on her feet, a torn fingernail.” Bentz pointed to her right hand. “Hopefully she clawed her attacker and the son of a bitch’s skin is under her nails.”
Could they get so lucky as to have a sample of the killer’s DNA? Montoya doubted it.
“We haven’t found a secondary crime scene yet.” Bentz looked around the chapel, to the doors. “But, hell, this is a big place.”
And a helluva spot for a murder, Montoya thought, eyeing the massive crucifix towering above the Communion table.
“The cathedral, convent, and grounds take up more than a city block,” Bentz said, still scowling.
“Gated, right? Locked.”
