“
W
hat the hell’s going on here?” Bentz was agitated and didn’t try to hide it as Montoya drove the Mustang away from the hospital. Leaning his elbow on the open window ledge of the sunbaked car while the air-conditioning struggled against the heat, he let fly. “It feels like I was your date at a damned high school reunion!”
“Yeah, right.”
“Come on. First, what’re the chances of you knowing the victim?” Bentz asked, raising his index finger. “And then the nun who found her?” Another finger shot skyward. “Not to mention the priest she was allegedly sleeping with.” The third digit joined the first two. “Did I forget anyone?” Bentz groused.
“Not so far.”
“Humph!” Bentz was clearly annoyed, and probably tired as hell. The case had kept them up most of the night, and Bentz, too, had an infant at home who wasn’t yet sleeping through the night. His daughter, Ginny, born last Halloween and now nearly eight months old, had been colicky from the get-go.
“Christ,” Bentz grumbled. “Who knows how many more will crawl out of the damned woodwork?”
“Hopefully none.”
“Be sure to check the list of everyone associated with St. Marguerite’s. Could be some more long-forgotten girlfriends holing up there.”
“I will.”
With a snort of disgust, he discovered a pack of gum in a pat-down of his jacket and unwrapped a stick. He pointed out the obvious: “If Camille Renard really was pregnant, we’ve got ourselves a double homicide.”
“Great.”
“With your friend O’Toole as a prime suspect.” He wadded the gum into a ball and plopped it into his mouth. “You buy him being the daddy?”
Montoya snorted. “I don’t buy him being a priest.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
“Nuns don’t get pregnant.”
“Yeah, usually the celibacy thing takes care of that,” Montoya agreed, turning a corner where a lone saxophone player was playing blues to a small crowd, his instrument case open in front of him, scattered coins glinting in the sun.
“You believe he was involved with another nun, one before Camille Renard?” Bentz asked, squinting from the sun.
“Don’t know what to think, but we’re checking it out. Zaroster’s on it.”
“So what is it with this guy? Why become a priest if you’re so into women?”
“Who knows?”
“Yeah, well, I just don’t get the whole vow of celibacy thing. Seems to be just another way to get everyone in trouble. It’s just not natural. God or no God.”
Montoya didn’t respond, just drove on automatic, his mind spinning as fast as the tires of his car. He wondered about Camille Renard, how she’d ended up back in New Orleans in a convent. And pregnant. He figured she must’ve really been carrying a child; there was no reason for the sister to lie, especially when an autopsy would reveal the truth.
“You know, the whole crime scene was wrong,” Bentz finally said, staring out the window.
“Staged.”
“Nuns don’t wear bridal gowns or jewelry.”
“Actually, O’Toole said they wear the gowns when they take their vows. And they have a ring, too. But I get what you’re saying. The wedding gown. The way her body was laid near the altar with the drops of blood around the gown’s neckline . . .”
“Ritualistic,” Bentz observed.
“Sick.”
Bentz’s cell phone chirped. As he answered, he rolled up the window, cutting down the ambient noise.
Montoya tuned out Bentz’s one-sided phone conversation as he passed a carriage pulled by a gray mule. Driving along the river, he tried to piece the disjointed bits of the investigation together. Camille as the victim, dressed in a frayed wedding dress, strangled, apparently. Who wanted her dead? Who would go to such bizarre lengths to kill her and display her body? The father of her unborn child?
Seemed unlikely.
Someone else, then. Someone who lived at the convent? An outside enemy? What about the brother-in-law, Houston? Montoya’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Slade Houston seemed an unlikely candidate as the killer, but then, so did Frank O’Toole. As for the paternity of the unborn child—assuming Sister Camille really was pregnant—was O’Toole the father, or someone else? Montoya felt a pang of remorse, his own involvement with Camille a very painful sticking point.
Bentz clicked his phone shut as they slowed for a red light. “That was the ME’s office,” he said, his voice low and angry. “Preliminary report on Camille Renard. Looks likes asphyxiation due to strangulation, which we figured. And, yeah, she was pregnant. It’s a double.”
Montoya’s hands tightened over the steering wheel again. He thought of Camille in the chapel, the way her body was displayed, the rosary beads threaded through her fingers. “So who, besides Valerie Renard, knew she was pregnant?”
“Most likely the father of the kid. Maybe a friend or two. Maybe even the mother superior or a priest, other than O’Toole. Someone like that, who she might confess to.”
Montoya had already thought of them. “But the secret was probably confined to the convent and her sister.”
“Unless people talked—they tend to do that.” Bentz glowered out the window. “The lab’s checking blood types now—Camille’s and the fetus’s. We’ll need a sample from O’Toole, too, or rule him in or out.”
“And anyone else who knew her.”
“You mean in the biblical sense.” Bentz slid a glance in Montoya’s direction, unasked questions hovering in the warm interior of the car.
“She was a nun, for Christ’s sake.”
“And knocked up.”
The light changed and Montoya hit the gas.
“Wouldn’t be surprised if the captain yanked you off the case,” Bentz thought aloud. “It’s not often an investigating officer knows the vic and one of the suspects as well as the person who found the body and reported the crime.” He nodded to himself. “Nah, the captain’s not gonna like it.”
“
I
don’t like it,” Montoya said.
“What about that Sister Lucy?”
“Lucia,” Montoya corrected, taking a corner too fast, tires screeching. He felt the weight of Bentz’s gaze, recognized the questions forming in his partner’s eyes.
God, what a mess. He couldn’t imagine Frank O’Toole as a murderer ; then again, he’d never have guessed the soccer star would end up a priest, even with the near-death experience of O’Toole’s sister.
Stranger things have happened.
“Guess you’ll have to ask him.” Montoya braked, allowing a slow-moving minivan filled with half a dozen kids to roll past. Balloons fluttered from the windows, catching the wind, delighting the grade-schoolers and causing ripples of giggles and squeals of laughter to rise from the van. After the noisy vehicle passed, he wheeled into the lot and pulled his car into a safe spot.
“The odd thing about this case is that it seems to center around you,” Bentz prodded, and straightened his leg, wincing a little from an injury that had once sidelined him while he worked a case in Baton Rouge, an injury that nearly cost his older daughter, Kristi, her life.
“There are lots of odd things about this case.” For the first time in months, Montoya craved a smoke. He’d given up the habit years before, but when things were tense, he found himself reaching into his pocket for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes.
The hell of it was that Bentz was right about the high school reference.
Montoya felt a weird sense of déjà vu, as if he’d been thrown back in time to take a long look at his own life, the images of his youth parading by like his own personal krewe at Mardi Gras.
He only hoped that no one else he knew turned up.
“I’m telling you, he was involved with her,” Sister Charity said angrily. So irritated she had to pace from one side of Father Paul’s small office to the other. Books lined the shelves, stained-glass windows filtered the light, and Paul sat behind a huge desk of dark mahogany. The wood shined so glossy that light reflected off it.
“We don’t know it for certain.”
“I’ve seen them!” Sister Charity was almost trembling she was so upset. “Discretion wasn’t one of Sister Camille’s strengths.” The headache behind her eyes began to pound. “And Father Frank . . . well, he just doesn’t understand the meaning of celibacy!” She had only to think of the other incident . . . Oh, dear Father. Righteousness burned deep in her soul.
“I’ve talked to the archbishop,” Father Paul said softly. “Told him about the situation.”
Charity closed her eyes. “This is such an embarrassment for the church,” she whispered.
“We’ll ride it out,” Paul said, and she saw the weariness in his eyes. “Have faith.”
“My faith is not the issue.” She sighed and shook her head. “There is a chance, Father, that Camille was with child.”
He glanced up sharply, disbelief and something else—suspicion? —in his eyes. “No.” He shook his head. Foolish old man. As if he could decide what was the truth.
“I’m not certain, but I overheard a conversation between her and Sister Lucia.”
The lines in his face deepened. “I hope you’re wrong,” he said. Then his weak smile. “I don’t put much faith in gossip.”
He checked his watch and she understood. He was a busy man. And he was dismissing her, hiding his head in the sand, hoping that she, again, would clean up the mess. “I’ll talk to Father Frank,” he said benignly, as if that conversation would change anything.
Inwardly, Charity seethed as she left him and his skewed view of the “situation,” as he so callously referred to it. Didn’t he understand the significance of Sister Camille’s murder? The ramifications to St. Marguerite’s? Of course not. Whenever there had been a “situation” in the past, she’d taken care of it.
She walked briskly, hurrying through the passageway between his quarters and her beloved convent. She trailed a finger along the old walls, composed of more than mortar and brick. Years, no centuries, of history were a part of this institution; if she tried, she could almost feel the love, determination, and anguish of those who had walked before her down these hallways, which had withstood hurricanes and floods and political madness.
She reached the far end of the windowless corridor and started toward her office when she heard her name.
“Reverend Mother,” Sister Zita said. She had a melodic voice and a tall, lithe appearance that wasn’t hidden by her habit. Her skin was a warm mocha color, her eyes sparked with intelligence, and she had never given Charity one second of trouble.
“Yes, my child.” She smiled warmly.
“I was wondering about St. Elsinore’s,” she said somberly. “Sister Camille and I worked in the orphanage together ever since Sister Lea left and now . . .” She rotated her palms upward.
“I see.” Charity was nodding. “There are lots of spaces that will need to be filled now that Sister Camille has passed on. Why don’t you see if Sister Maura or Lucia . . . or maybe Sister Edwina can go with you?” She offered a reassuring smile. “Even though the orphanage is moving to a new location, trust me, we here at St. Marguerite’s will be involved. I’ll see to it. Now, come with me.”
She led the tall woman toward her office and, once inside, sat at her desk, unlocked a big drawer, and retrieved the staffing schedule. As Zita had said, Sister Camille was scheduled the next day at St. Elsinore’s orphanage, which was actually across Lake Pontchartrain and closer to Slidell than New Orleans. A place dear to Charity’s heart. She hated to see the orphanage’s venerable old doors closing, but it was already decided, the move in progress.
“Let’s see . . . Yes, either Maura or Devota should be available. They both work there fairly regularly. Lucia . . . let’s leave her out of it. She’s been through enough in the last twenty-four hours.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Zita said.
“Good.” Then, automatically, “Bless you, my child.”
Zita left, and once again, Sister Charity was alone in her office, the picture of the current Pope and the crucifix her only solace. In so many ways, these were troubling times. Much earlier, when she was a young novitiate, before Vatican II, things were so much easier to understand. Rigid, yes, but there was no blurring of lines, no question of what was expected.
Now . . . now nothing, it seemed, was clear.