by Lisa Jackson
Asteria thought she heard another sound, a quiet footstep outside the door to the confessional.
Her back muscles tensed.
Surely no one would be hovering nearby or listening in. No, her confession was between herself and the priest . . .
And yet, she was certain she heard someone, or rather sensed someone, nearby. Wasn’t that the sound of a gasp being stifled?
Her unease intensified, and she could almost feel the presence of another person nearby.
Friend or foe?
She swallowed hard.
“Go on, my child,” the priest encouraged in his soft rasp, and Asteria reined in her wild imagination. Her fantasies and dreams and nightmares had always been her undoing, getting her into trouble.
Now, in the wake of poor Sister Camille’s death, her worries and her own sins loomed large in her mind, scratching at her nerves.
She needed to release herself from her secrets, from the sins that had enslaved her.
She ignored the hairs rising at the back of her neck, the nervous beads of sweat that collected along her spine.
She was alone with Father Paul in the house of God, here for the sacrament of penance. She let out a long breath and began speaking again as she told herself she was safe.
No one could harm her here.
Or so she vainly tried to convince herself.
CHAPTER 24
“The dog can stay with you,” Slade said as he carried his empty beer bottle into Val’s kitchen. This cozy little cottage, so different from the rambling ranch house in Texas, still felt like home. Because of Val, he realized.
“I can keep him?” she called from the living area, where the television still droned on, the volume low.
“For the night.”
Bo lifted his head but didn’t alter his position on the rug near Val’s feet. She pushed herself out of her chair, and the hound was instantly on his feet, ready to follow her anywhere.
Like you? he silently asked himself, and hated the fact that he was weak where she was concerned. His brothers were right—he was whipped with a capital P.
“Maybe I’ll keep him,” she said.
“Fat chance.”
She was teasing, a spark of humor in her hazel eyes. God, he’d missed that, the way her face could change from pensive to amused in a heartbeat.
“We’ll work it out in the doggy-custody hearing.”
“He stays with me, on the ranch. End of subject.” Slade walked to the front door, and the damned dog didn’t so much as look at him. Bo, it seemed, was as pathetically hung up on Valerie as he was.
“Gee, I love when a man tells me what to do,” she quipped. “Or how it’s gonna be. Like I can’t figure my life out for myself.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as she snapped off the television and walked up to him, the angle of her chin definitely defiant. “Sassy, aren’t you?”
“Sassy. Is that the new PC term for bitchy?”
“Hey, if you want to fight, we can. Your call.” But he was grinning by now, and there was a part of him that wanted to meet the challenge in her eyes, yank her off her feet, and haul her into the bedroom he’d noticed just on the other side of a short hallway. He’d seen the foot of her bed through the open doors, noticed a familiar area rug covering the hardwood floors. But he figured the surest way to push her into going through with the divorce was to move too fast. When she didn’t respond to his challenge, he opened the door, though the screen was still latched.
“You’d lose any fight,” she said.
Man, she was asking for it. “Careful, Valerie.”
“Of what?” Again with the arched brow and angled chin.
“I could go—how did you used to phrase it?—‘all Neanderthal’ on you right now.”
She groaned. “Oh, God, and what? Show me who’s boss? Save me.”
“As I said, you can keep Bo tonight, but”—he sent the dog a warning glare—“he still belongs at the ranch.”
“Sure. If you say so,” she said, her eyes belying her words.
“And as for tomorrow, I think we should go to St. Elsinore’s when the place is open.”
“ ‘We’?” she repeated.
“Yeah, ‘we.’ Like it or not, I’m here and involved.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I know, but I want to be.”
She hesitated. “Look, Slade, you don’t have to feel obligated, okay? Just because we’re still married doesn’t mean that you have to jump in or be my advocate or protector or whatever might be in your head. I can handle myself. I was a cop. A detective. Remember?”
“One with nightmares.”
“Everyone has them. Comes with the territory.”
Slade wasn’t so sure. Val’s dreams, though infrequent, terrorized her. He knew. He’d woken up to her screams, to her night sweats, to her body trembling in fear. He’d tried to give her comfort, to hold her, to whisper that everything would be all right, but she’d always insisted upon rolling off the bed and going into the living room where she’d curl up on the couch with an old afghan and stare at the dying embers of the fire with Bo beside her.
She’d never objected to him joining her and the dog, but she’d needed a few minutes to compose herself first. She’d refused to tell him what the dreams were about and dismissed them as “stress from the job.”
He’d come to suspect she’d been lying, placating him. He thought her night terrors might have been triggered by a horror she’d witnessed while performing her duties, but they ran much deeper than what she’d admitted.
Now she was so close he could reach out and touch her, brush the wayward lock of auburn curls from her cheek, wrap his fingers around her nape and draw her closer. But he resisted. Instead he asked, “So are we on for tomorrow?” Of course, he thought they should leave the investigation to the police, to try and keep their emotions out of it, but he knew Val wouldn’t be able to back off. With her temperament and experience tracking killers, she wouldn’t just let her sister’s murderer get away without a fight. He figured together they might be able to find out something that might help the authorities, though he knew that if he said so much to the detectives in charge, they would not only laugh but also tell Val and Slade to back off in no uncertain terms.
Tough.
This was the way Val was determined to play it.
He saw the hesitation on her face; then her eyebrows pinched together.
“Come on,” he urged. “I have some experience myself. And I have questions. About Frank O’Toole and about your adoption—why Camille was looking into it. We’re assuming she was killed because she was pregnant, because it’s so bizarre that she broke her vows, that she got herself into that kind of mess with a priest, no less. But what if the pregnancy didn’t have anything to do with her murder?”
“What?”
“I mean, it’s likely, yes. It’s the one thing that’s so big and different, so out of whack that we think she had to be killed because of it, but that’s only an assumption.”
“But the bridal gown?”
“Yeah, what does that mean?” He inched a little closer to her. “What I’m saying is that we have to keep an open mind here, look at all the possibilities. And I think I can help with that.” She was about to argue when he added, “I’m not as emotional as you are about all this.”
“I’m not . . .” She let out a long breath. “Okay . . . fine,” she finally relented, though she didn’t seem too pleased about the prospect of working with him.
“But you have to agree that anything we find, we give to the police immediately.”
“Of course.” She closed her eyes for a second. “I just can’t believe this happened. Even though I know it does, I always thought it was something that happened to other people, you know. Not Cammie.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “I can’t believe I’ll never see her again.”
God, he wanted to wrap his arms around her, to hold her and whisper ridiculous
platitudes into her ear. As if she knew where his thoughts were taking him, she added, “We’ll work together, but if you bring up the divorce or separation or marriage, the deal’s off. You know where I stand on that.”
He wanted to argue.
Badly.
Instead, because he knew she was still trying to work through her pain and grief, he inclined his head. “Deal.”
“Good.”
To the dog he said, “Good night, traitor,” then opened the screen door and walked across the small stoop and into the cool of the night. He didn’t look over his shoulder, didn’t even wait to hear the click of the lock behind him. He’d try to play by her rules.
For now. Until they found out what happened to Camille.
Montoya figured Abby would be pissed.
He didn’t blame her.
He was late. Really late, he realized. But finding the letter in Camille’s mattress had set off a chain of events in which the forensic guys came out again, the mattress was taken into the lab, and another round of questions begun. He’d talked to Father Frank, in the priest’s office, a book-lined room filled with volumes on philosophy, history, and religion. In a quick glance, Montoya saw the names of Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Mao Zedong, and Thomas Jefferson on the spines of those closest, though there were hundreds more.
The priest’s desk had been bare save for a few pictures of members of his family, some of whom Montoya recognized. A crucifix was mounted over the door, another behind his desk, and a print of Jesus and the Sacred Heart framed upon one wall.
Upon being shown the letter, Father Frank had closed his eyes and pulled back as if he expected the words to twist and form into Satan incarnate.
“Yes,” he had said, he’d thought Camille had penned the letter.
No, he didn’t think it was intended for him, but he had no idea who that might be.
Who, indeed?
Was Frank O’Toole lying, trying to lay blame elsewhere? Or was Sister Camille was involved with a second lover? Was he the kinky guy—into handcuffs and dominance? Or was that Father Frank? After they had left the building, Bentz had admitted he thought the man was “lying through his orthodontically straightened teeth.”
Again, if Camille had another lover, who was it?
The question had plagued him ever since discovering the letter. The conversations with Father Frank and Sister Charity hadn’t been enlightening. When questioned about Father Frank’s alibi of visiting the sick old Arthur Wembley, Charity had looked away, as if embarrassed to lie, but she had verified the priest’s story.
Charity Varisco was nothing if not loyal.
Now, Montoya tried to put the case aside. At least for a few hours.
The beams of his car’s headlights washed over the single-story shotgun house as he wheeled his Mustang into the drive and cut the engine. Scooping up the items in the passenger seat, he locked the car, then jogged across the patch of front yard. Similar homes lined the street. The neighbor’s dog, a friendly dalmatian, bounded over the row of boxwoods separating the yards.
“Hey, boy,” Montoya said, stopping to pet the animal, when the door to the house next door opened.
“Apollo?” the neighbor, a middle-aged woman wearing a bathrobe and slippers, called from her front porch. The red tip of her cigarette glowed in the night. “Come on, now! Come on home! It’s gonna rain soon! Git in here!”
“Better go home or you’ll be in as much trouble as I am,” Montoya advised the dog. Apollo cocked his head, then took off like a bullet, leaped over the shrubbery effortlessly, and galloped onto the porch to his waiting owner.
“What do you think you’re doing, leaving the yard?” the neighbor reprimanded, chuckling as she gently scolded the dog and held the screen door open. Apollo shot inside as the woman waved at Montoya. Then she shoved her cigarette into one of the potted plants positioned around a porch swing and shut the door firmly behind her.
Time to face the music.
Montoya’s house was dark, not even the porch light left burning for him.
Not a good sign.
He opened the door and caught the thin smell of smoke from candles recently extinguished, hovering over the aromas of cheese, garlic, and fish.
He snapped on the overhead light and saw that the small dining table was still set for two. Shiny white plates sat empty and waiting upon gold chargers and bold, striped place mats. Beside a small glass bowl of rose petals, three once-tall white candles, their wicks blackened, trailed wax that was still warm.
No doubt he was in deep trouble.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered.
He set the keys, bottle of merlot, and loaf of bread on the counter, then headed toward the back of the house. It was double sized, as Montoya had bought the property next door and combined the two buildings. Of course, he’d had to gut and renovate the place after Hurricane Katrina, but he was happy with the result.
A line of flickering illumination was visible under their bedroom door. The television.
The dog whined and scratched.
Great. More trouble.
He opened the door slowly, and Hershey burst through, a tornado of clicking paws, brown fur, and wet tongue. The dog sniffed wildly, probably smelling Apollo’s lingering odor. “Hey, hey, hey,” Montoya said, giving the dog some attention before poking his head into the bedroom.
“A little late,” Abby said from their bed. Propped by several pillows, she didn’t take her eyes off the television. Yep, she was ticked off. Her hair was piled onto her head, and she was wearing an oversized T-shirt. Her cat, Ansel, was curled into a ball near her head. On Montoya’s pillow. Abby hit the PAUSE button and finally glanced his way.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” she said sharply. Man, was she burned. “Tell it to your son the next time you see him, hopefully in this millennium.”
“It’s work.”
“It’s always work.”
“That’s how I met you,” he reminded her, sliding onto the bed and leaning close enough to kiss her neck. She scooted away, leaning back to look at him dead-center, straight in the eyes. “I remember,” she agreed, some of the starch leaving her spine. “Yeah.” Her voice softened a bit. “Believe me, I’m not trying to be a bitch, but, you know, you’ve got a family now.” Her gaze touched his with the same intensity it always had, but there was something more. Though she was struggling to mask her hurt with anger, he saw it.
“This was the deal when we got married.”
“I know.”
“So you can’t be mad now.”
“Sure I can. The rules changed. We have a child.”
“Speaking of whom . . .” Montoya scooted off the bed and headed out the door.
“Oh, no, you don’t! Reuben! If you wake him up, I swear I’ll kill you,” she called after him in a stage whisper.
Montoya didn’t pay any attention. The door to the baby’s room was ajar, and he stepped inside, where the night-lights gave off a soft glow. Benjamin was sleeping, but Montoya didn’t hesitate to pick him up and carry him into the master bedroom, where Abby had unpaused the television. A laugh track was softly playing for a sitcom he didn’t recognize.
“I told you—”
“Shhh.”
Cradling the baby, Montoya slid onto the bed. Ansel meowed in protest, then hopped to the floor and slunk out of the room.
Little Ben yawned, showing off his gums, not opening his eyes. He had a head of dark hair, some of which seemed to be rubbing off, and pudgy arms and legs. He looked more like his father than his mother, but that could certainly change over time. Montoya hoped so.
Abby hit the MUTE button and the TV went silent. “Okay,” she said, “apology accepted.”
“Good.”
“But I still don’t like it.”
Theirs was an argument that had been brewing for months. “What do you want me to do? Hand in my badge? Become a security guard at the mall?”
“Don’t be silly. I
just think you can get a safer job with the department, one where you have more regular hours.” She shoved a stray piece of hair out of her eyes and gently touched her son’s cheek. “What about a desk job?”
“I’d go nuts in two minutes.”
She sighed through her nose and rested her forehead against his, the baby between them on the bed. “Yeah, you would.”
“This is what I do, Abs. I get the bad guys.”
“And you love it.”
“Yep.” He saw a question forming and cut it off. “Don’t ask me to choose. That’s not fair. Apples and oranges. You and Ben, you know what you mean to me.”
“But—”
“No buts. That’s just the way it is. I believe we can have a family, and I can still do my job.”
She smiled but there was a trace of sadness in her eyes. “You know I love you, and, yeah, I bought into the whole rebel-cop thing, fell for you hard. Okay, I admit it, but, damn it, now it’s not just you and me. Ben needs his dad. I need my husband. The game’s changed.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, God, now I sound whiny and needy, a wife who’s trying to manipulate her husband. I hate that.”
“Then stop.” He kissed her gently, then changed the subject. “I brought bread and wine.”
“Such a hero.”
“Maybe we can eat whatever you made tomorrow night?”
“Seafood Alfredo?” She wrinkled her nose. “Not so great on the second day.”
“Sorry.”
She nodded. “Anyway, I offered some to Cruz.”
Montoya’s head jerked up at the mention of his brother’s name.
Abby explained, “He stopped by to see Ben earlier, but he couldn’t stick around.”
“There’s a surprise.”
“Must run in the family.”
Montoya said, “So okay, you’re pissed. I get it.” He turned his palms to the ceiling. “What do you want me to do, Abby?”
“I don’t know.”
