“Oh, God,” she whispered, thinking about her sister. Cammie always did have a flair for the dramatic, an overactive imagination.
Slade tilted his head back, and she watched his throat move as he took another long pull from his bottle. “Maybe that was why she was killed.”
“But it doesn’t make any sense. It happened so long ago. . . .” She tried to pin down the facts, the details of her parents’ deaths. She’d been told that a plane crash had taken her parents’ lives. A day trip. Valerie and Camille had been left with a family friend when tragedy had struck and the plane had gone down. With both sets of grand-parents already dead, the small, grief-ridden family had to scramble to find a suitable home for the children. Valerie and Camille had been sent to St. Elsinore’s until the family could sort things out.
The end result had been placement with the Renards, as Nadine was a third cousin to Mary Brown, the only relative with the means or desire to take in a preschooler and an infant.
“Cammie didn’t tell you she was looking into your biological parents?”
“No.” Val shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I would have told her she was nuts, that she was chasing ghosts.” A dry, penetrating wind swept through her soul, upward through the cracks in the foundation of her life, sweeping aside all the memories she’d held as true. Her throat closed in on itself as she met Slade’s gaze. “Because if it’s true, if Mary Brown wasn’t our mother,” she whispered, the flyer crinkling in her fingers, “then my entire life has been a lie.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one day since my last confession,” Sister Asteria whispered the words that were so familiar while making the sign of the cross. On the other side of the screen, deep in the shadows, a priest was ready to listen. Father Paul, thank goodness, rather than Father Frank. She tried to ignore her trip-hammering heart as she folded her hands and took in a steadying breath.
At the whispered encouragement from the priest, she closed her eyes and began to unburden her heart. “I was once in love with a man who turned out to be married, and as soon as I found out, I left him.”
His face was hidden, unrecognizable in the semidarkness, but she knew she had his full attention. He sat, rapt, as she continued.
“I was determined never to make that mistake again, to never fall in love with a mortal man, to follow Jesus as my savior, as my strength, as . . .” She felt tears fill her eyes. Her voice caught as she let out a shuddering breath.
“Slowly, my child. Gather your thoughts and confess.”
She did, pouring out everything that had been torturing her for the past few weeks. “My thoughts have been impure,” she admitted, “and my actions—” Her voice caught, and she steeled herself. Whatever the penance, surely it would be easier to bear than the burden of her private, sinful secrets.
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.
“
T
he 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.