by Lisa Jackson
Something was wrong here. The bells tolled loudly, ringing through the garden, and the nun who had escorted her into the garden earlier, Sister Zita, appeared.
“I’m sorry, reverend mother, but you have an appointment,” Zita reminded her, almost as if on cue.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Sister Charity said. “We’re late.”
“Wait a second. I’d like to speak to some of my sister’s friends and coworkers. I know she was close to Sister Lucia.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the mother superior said with a glacial smile.
“I do need to be at the hospital,” Frank said.
Seeing that she’d run up against a brick wall, Val gave up. There was nothing more she could do here.
Today. She headed out of the garden with more questions than she had answers. She was irritated by the reverend mother, simmering with resentment at Father Frank, and still ticked at Slade for following her here.
With Slade only a step behind her, she reached the gate, which, of course, was locked. As if this were some damned prison.
“I’ll get that,” Sister Zita said quickly. Val turned to see Slade, followed by the nun. “Sorry about the reverend mother,” Zita said as she extracted a key from a deep pocket of her habit and inserted it in the gate. “Everyone here is just so upset.” She swung the wrought-iron bars open and met Val’s gaze. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” Val said, her throat growing thick. She could handle herself in anger, but kindness brought out her need to break down. Even when it came from a woman whose voice was as devoid of emotion as her eyes.
The gate clicked shut behind them.
Val took one last glance through the bars to the garden, but found it empty.
Yet, as she looked at the interior of the convent one last time, she felt that same eerie sensation that had plagued her earlier. Her eyes lifted to the buildings that rimmed the cloister, catching a flicker of movement on an upper balcony. Someone lingered in the doorway, a blurry figure dressed in black that melted backward into the shadows.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
She blinked.
And all was still on the balcony. Strange . . .
She reminded herself this was a convent, a holy place. And yet, that eerie sense that a predator was watching . . . She shoved her wayward thoughts aside, told herself she was just imagining things, that she was spooked because of Camille’s murder.
CHAPTER 18
Obviously disbelieving, Cruz glared at his older brother. “Lucia Costa is a nun at St. Marguerite’s?” he repeated incredulously. They were seated at a booth in a small restaurant not far from the police station, Cruz on one side of the table, Montoya on the other. The place was clean enough with a variety of salads and sliced, preserved meats on display behind the windows of a long counter. The smell of an overused fryer permeated the air, the odor tossed around by a few slow-moving overhead fans. “She’s here”—Cruz pointed at the tabletop with one finger—“in New Orleans?”
“Uh-huh.” As Montoya took a bite of his po’boy, his gaze skated from his brother to the glass door of the establishment. People passed underneath the striped awnings, moving slowly in the afternoon heat.
“That’s a pisser.”
“If you say so.”
Cruz had always been a wild card, Montoya thought, then decided that wasn’t as strange as it sounded. All his siblings, sisters and brothers, had been known to raise their share of hell while growing up.
Over six feet, Cruz had Montoya by a couple of inches and was muscular rather than lean. His black hair brushed the collar of his jean jacket, and his eyes, dark as night, missed nothing. He’d spent a few years in the service after high school, then attended college while tending bar and driving trucks. Somewhere in the mix, he’d gotten a tattoo that was visible on his forearm and a license to be a PI. “Jack-of-all-trades, master of none,” he’d always quipped. With thick eyebrows and a nose that had been broken more than once, he’d never given up his bad-ass appearance or, it seemed now, attitude.
“You know, I looked for her. Like crazy. Right after the accident. Then things got weird with her father, and I gave it up. Looking down the barrel of a shotgun can have that effect on you.”
“Whoa, slow down. Start at the beginning.”
Cruz snorted and wiped his upper lip and mustache with a napkin. “So we were dating. She was still in high school and I’d just graduated. You were already at the junior college.”
“That much I remember.”
“I’d signed up for the air force, but I had a couple of weeks before I went in, so I was basically hanging out, doing nothing, driving the folks crazy. Trying to stay out of trouble.”
“And failing.”
“Yeah, well . . . anyway, we were out one night, Lucia and me. I was driving—maybe too fast.”
“Maybe?”
“Hell, I was, what, eighteen? I was probably thinking about how I could get into Lucia’s pants, not paying as much attention as I should have, and a damned deer leaped over the fence and right into the middle of the road. It froze there, in the fog. Shit, I tried to avoid it. Yanked on the wheel, and the front tire hit gravel.”
Montoya remembered this part of the story. When Cruz had swerved to avoid hitting the doe, the car had skidded off the road, spinning through the wire fence and into a cypress tree, the passenger side taking the hit. The side door had been crumpled, window shattering.
“God, it was horrible.” Cruz’s dark eyes softened. “She was screaming and screaming and then . . . nothing.”
She’d hit her head, Montoya remembered. Cruz had suffered a broken wrist that delayed his entry to the air force, along with a few cuts from the glass of the shattered windshield. A tiny scar near his left eye was evidence of the crash.
Lucia hadn’t been so lucky, as a branch of the cypress had slammed into the side of her head. Montoya couldn’t remember many more details, just that she had been in a coma but had survived.
“You went to the hospital with her, right?”
“Yeah, until her old man barred me from seeing her. He convinced the hospital staff that I should be persona non grata and that he’d sue the hospital if I was allowed near her.” Cruz’s lips tightened. “Phillip Costa was fuckin’ nuts—you know that, right? Came at me with a damned shotgun.” He took a long swallow of his beer. “Christ, man, it was a mess. I tried to see her before I went into the service. I’d heard from a friend that she’d come out of the coma. But she disappeared.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“Thought you were supposed to be a hotshot investigator.”
“Not back then. This was when I was just out of high school and didn’t know jack shit about what I was going to do with my life. And she flat out disappeared—seemed to fall off the face of the earth. Her old man did a good job of hiding her, and I didn’t know how to find her. I think Mr. Costa was relieved when I finally got sent off to basic training.”
“I’m sure he was glad to get the daughter away from a hell-raiser like you.”
“Yeah, but the way he made her disappear . . .” His eyes narrowed on his bottle, but, Montoya guessed, he wasn’t seeing the amber glass but a place beyond, far in the distant past. “Man, it was strange. Real strange.” Another pull on his beer. “You know, I always wondered where she’d ended up, but a nun?” He shook his head, a contemplative smile twisting his lips. “Never figured that.”
The door to the restaurant opened, and a couple of men took a booth nearby. They were loud, talking and laughing about the latest baseball scores.
Out of habit, Montoya gave the newcomers a quick once-over. The usual sordid lunch crowd here—gold-capped teeth, shabby graying beards, and baseball caps.
“You know,” Cruz admitted, casting a glance at the two men, then dismissing them. “I thought she might be dead.”
“Very much alive.”
“That would’ve been nice to know.” He finished his
beer. “Real nice.” Scowling, he pushed aside his basket of remaining sandwich and fries.
“And you never tried to look her up?”
“Not after I went into the air force. What would have been the point?”
“Curiosity?”
“By that time, it was water under the bridge. Ancient history. I’d moved on. And the truth of it is that Lucia, she was always a little weird.” Cruz signaled the waitress for another beer. “I mean, she was good-lookin’, hot and all that, but . . . there was something about her that seemed off. It was almost as if she could read my mind. It freaked me out.”
“You mean she had ESP?”
“Whatever you want to call it; she’d get these weird ‘feelings.’ ”
Montoya understood. Bentz’s wife, Olivia, had a touch of it, had helped Bentz solve a case years before.
“And then in the hospital, when I was still allowed to see her and she was lying there, you know, in the coma. Her eyes opened for just a second and she stared at me. Her mouth moved, but she didn’t talk, just tried to form words. I’m not sure, but I think she was saying ‘danger.’ ” Cruz picked at the label of his beer bottle just as the waitress plopped another long-necked Lone Star on the table in front of him.
“Anything else?” she asked without an ounce of enthusiasm.
Montoya shook his head and frowned, and she plodded to the next table.
“She woke up to say ‘danger’?” Montoya asked.
Cruz’s eyebrows slammed together. “Maybe I was imagining it all.” He picked up the full bottle. “Who knows?”
“Yeah, who?”
“More importantly, who cares?” After taking a long swallow, he set the bottle down and folded his arms over the table. “So now that we’re done tripping down memory lane, how about you find a way to get me my bike back?”
The last thing Val wanted to deal with was her husband. “You’re out of line, following me around,” she said as they crossed the shaded lawn of the cathedral. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”
When she tried to open the door, he slammed it shut with a big hand, almost imprisoning her with his body. “What’re you thinking, Val?” he demanded.
She squirmed around to find him staring down at her with eyes she’d once found so disturbingly sexy, a blue that seemed to shift with his moods. “I needed to talk with O’Toole.”
“It’s a matter for the police. You were a cop, Val. You know that. Leave it to the professionals.” His face was only inches from hers. Too damned close. Her heart galloped in her chest, her mind wandering to forbidden places. As if he felt it, too, that sudden physical awareness, he stepped away and glanced back at the cathedral where two nuns, dressed in habits, wimples, and veils, hurried around the corner. “What happened to nuns wearing regular clothes?” he wondered aloud. “I thought all the black and white getup was over.”
“I think it’s up to each order or diocese or whatever, maybe each parish. I don’t really know. I gave up on the church a long time ago.” She remembered the orphanage, the dark hallways, the grief and loneliness, then snapped her mind shut from the memories that crept through her consciousness when she wasn’t expecting them, dark, disturbing images that cut painfully.
“So this place, St. Marguerite’s, can be as antiquated as it wants?”
“I’m sure the archdiocese has something to say about it. Camille told me that this is the way it’s always been at St. Marguerite’s, and most of the nuns, especially that warm and fuzzy mother superior, prefer it that way. What she says goes.”
Slade’s eyes narrowed. “Throwback to another century, if you ask me.”
“No one did,” she reminded him, and added, “And, for the record, I don’t appreciate being followed.”
A smile stretched across his beard-stubbled jaw. “I figured.”
“Really, Slade, you had no business tailing me here, following me inside and telling them”—she nodded toward the cathedral as a bicyclist rode past—“that we’re married.”
“We are.”
“Not for long.”
“Marriage is something the Catholic Church takes very seriously. I figured it would open some doors and it did.”
“Well, they’re closed now,” Val observed, glancing back at the main doors of the cathedral with the yellow crime scene tape fluttering in the same breeze that was causing the Spanish moss in the gnarled oaks guarding the place to shift and sway. “The hatches battened down tight.”
“Makes you wonder what secrets the old cathedral hides.”
“Amen,” she said, though she didn’t blame anyone at St. Marguerite’s other than Frank O’Toole.
He snorted, a humorless laugh. “You going back to the inn?”
“Not right away.” She shook her head as she slid into her car’s sweltering interior. “I have to drop some things off at the police station.” She pulled the door shut and switched on the ignition. The old engine sputtered, then caught. To make certain he understood, she rolled down the window. “I really don’t need an escort.”
He hesitated, then gave a sharp nod. “Fair enough. I’ll see you at home.”
Home? “Oh, God, Slade, don’t you have better things to do?” she asked, unable to stop needling him a little as the air-conditioning kicked in, blowing warm air throughout the car. “Isn’t there a steer to brand, a doggie to round up, or some fence to mend?”
His grin stretched wide, white teeth flashing against his tanned skin. “Well, darlin’, that’s exactly what I’m doin’, now, isn’t it? Just here to mend fences with my wife.”
“Save me,” she said, finding a pair of sunglasses in the console and slipping them onto her nose. “You know, you’re on sacred ground here, Cowboy. You’d better watch how much b.s. you’re peddling. God might not like it and strike you down right where you stand!”
The minute the words were over her tongue, she thought of Camille’s body, positioned at the altar, her young life cut down.
“I gotta go,” she said. Before he could engage her another second, she shoved the car into gear. As he stepped away, she pulled into the empty street, leaving him standing beneath one of the trees that shaded the cracked asphalt.
Slim-hipped with his old jeans riding low, his forearms tanned from the sun, he looked every bit the Texas rancher he was.
And you’re still in love with him, that horrid little voice in her head nagged.
“No way,” she said aloud.
Loving Slade Houston was borderline crazy after what he’d done. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, go there.
CHAPTER 19
“So tell me again what your problem is with Slade?” Freya suggested as she bent over the stove, pulling freshly made blond brownies from the oven. The kitchen smelled like heaven with the scent of warm vanilla wafting through. Val’s stomach gurgled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything all day.
She found a glass and dropped some ice cubes from the freezer into it before finding the pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator. “Can I get you some?” she asked Freya, who shook her head, then motioned to the counter where a large opaque cup sat near the window.
“Already got iced coffee.” She set the pan of blondies on the top of the stovetop’s iron grate. “And you’re avoiding the issue. I asked about Slade.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve got lots of problems with Slade,” she admitted. “Too many to count.”
“Hmmm.”
The back door was open, and through the screen door, Val could see the lump of fur that was Bo, sitting quietly on the porch, looking inside the kitchen. So intent was he that he didn’t notice the stray cat slinking across the yard. Merlin, a black tom with a long tail, disappeared around the hedge.
“You’re losing your edge,” Val confided in the dog. At the sound of Val’s voice, he cocked his head and hoisted himself to a sitting position for a better view.
“I see you,” she said, smiling.
God, she mis
sed the old hound.
He thumped his tail on the painted floorboards as she walked outside, the screen door slapping loudly behind her. “You’re a good guy,” she admitted, scratching the hound behind his ears. “You know that, don’t you?”
From inside the house, Freya said, “He misses you.”
“I suppose.”
“I wasn’t talking about the dog.”
“Oh. Slade?” She shook her head. “I doubt it.” Val couldn’t imagine Slade missing anyone, especially not a suspicious wife who was intent on divorcing him.
“I know the signs.” Freya appeared at the other side of the screen, her oversized cup in hand.
“This from a woman who’s had two husbands.”
“And an extra fiancé.”
“And a live-in boyfriend.”
“Don’t remind me.” She walked outside and hoisted herself onto the railing. “But I know what I know, and I see how that guy looks at you.”
“Enough! I get it, okay?” Val placed her cold glass to her forehead to fight the headache that was beginning to form. She closed her eyes, blocking out Freya, Slade, and the whole damned world for just a few minutes. “Didn’t we have an agreement when I moved in that we wouldn’t put our noses in each other’s love lives?”
No answer.
“Freya?” Val prodded. “I distinctly remember—”
“Okay, okay, I’m just sayin’—”
“I know what you’re saying, and I hear you.” Opening her eyes, she sighed, then took a long sip from her glass.
“Want a vanilla brownie?”
“In the worst way. You?”
“Absolutely. I’ll be right back, and you can tell me what happened this morning.” She hopped off the rail and walked inside while Val, drained, thought about what she’d accomplished. It all added up to a great big zero. Father Frank had given her nothing, the mother superior hadn’t wanted to talk, and she’d missed Detective Montoya when she’d left the e-mail with his partner, who had been mum on the subject of Camille. And then there was Slade. . . . Oh, hell, how did she even begin to deal with him?
