Thud!
Somewhere a door banged shut as the bells pealed again.
Lucia jumped.
Someone was coming!
Good. “Just hold on,” she said to the ashen body, though she knew intuitively that it was too late. “Help is coming.” Her words hung in the chill night air.
Lucia felt a shiver slide down her spine as doubt clouded her mind. She linked her fingers through those of her friend and sent up another desperate prayer as the church bells in the steeple continued to toll off the hours.
Was help really on the way?
Or was the person who had done this to Camille returning?
V
al was calmer now, the quivering of her insides having subsided.
She filled her favorite, chipped mug with hot water, set it in the microwave, and watched as hidden letters appeared. The heavy cup, bought online at
ABC.com
, displayed the cast members of
Lost
, her once-favorite television show.
It had been a Christmas gift from Camille, a treasure she’d bought before the show had aired its final episode.
Back in the days when they hadn’t let anything drive a wedge between them. Not even Slade Houston.
“Oh, Cammie,” she whispered, shaking her head at their own ridiculous fights as the microwave dinged. Gingerly gripping the cup’s handle, she scrounged the last tea bag from a box and dunked the decaffeinated leaves into the near-boiling water.
Though it was midnight, sleep, for Valerie, was still hours away, if at all possible. What was it Slade had always said? That her insomnia was one of the reasons the department had kept her on; she was a workaholic who, because of her inability to sleep, could work sixteen hours straight while being paid for eight.
Then again, Slade was known to exaggerate.
Part of his ridiculous cowboy humor.
Twisting the kinks from her neck, she closed her eyes, and for a heartbeat, she saw her husband’s face again: strong, beard-shadowed jaw; crooked half-smile with teeth that flashed white against skin tanned from hours working under the brutal Texas sun; and eyes smoldering a deep, smoky blue. Slade Houston. Tough as old leather, all rough-and-tumble cowboy, sexy as all get-out and just plain bad news.
So why was she thinking of him tonight?
And last night and the one before that and . . .
“Idiot,” she muttered under her breath as she willed Slade’s image to disappear. The bells had stopped ringing sometime in the past few minutes. Good. Silence. Peace.
But the eerie sensation that something was very wrong tonight lingered, and she couldn’t help feeling on edge.
Tomorrow.
She’d visit Camille tomorrow, regardless of the Machiavellian methods that old bat Sister Charity tried to use to dissuade her. “I’m sorry, but seeing your sister now is impossible. We have strict rules here,” she’d told Val the last time she’d tried to visit Camille unannounced. “Rules we abide by, rules sanctified by the Father.”
Yeah, right. If Sister Charity had any good intentions, Val had yet to see one. In Val’s opinion, the reverend mother was on a power trip fueled by self-importance and a skewed view of religion.
Always a bad combination.
And one, this time, Valerie intended to thwart come daybreak.
The last tolling bell faded to the sound of footsteps emanating from beyond the chapel walls. Lucia’s skin crawled as she stared at the dead girl. She tried to pray but couldn’t find the words. Who had done this to Camille? Why? And the weird bridal dress, the ring of bloody drops around the neckline—what was that all about?
She glanced to the side door that had shut just as she’d arrived, and her heart hammered. Someone else had seen Sister Camille on the chapel floor. Lucia had crossed paths with either Camille’s assailant or a witness to what had happened. Fear prickled the back of her neck as she wondered if help was on its way . . . or if the assailant was returning.
Making the sign of the cross, Lucia turned toward the doorway and screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help!”
The side door swept open, banging against the wall. Mother Superior, an imposing woman in a long black habit, hurried into the nave. Her graying hair, which was usually concealed by her veil, appeared fuzzy and disheveled. “Sister Lucy! For the love of the Holy Mother, what’s going on?” she demanded. Her skirts swished against the smooth floor, and her face was a mask of disapproval, her lips pinched. Suddenly realizing where she was, she paused to quickly genuflect at the crucifix and make the sign of the cross over her ample bosom.
“It’s Sister Camille . . .” Lucia rose, her gaze still upon Camille’s body.
“What about . . . ? Oh!” The mother superior dragged in a quick breath as she rounded the final pew. “Saints be with us.” Wide skirts swooshing, she ran to the victim’s side and dropped to her knees.
“It’s too late. She’s dead.”
“But how? Why?” Sister Charity whispered, as if she expected God to answer as she fussed over the corpse and said a quick prayer. “Who would do this?”
“I don’t know. Someone was here, before me,” Lucia said, trying to separate fact from fiction, from the images that were real as opposed to those that had been conjured in her mind. “I saw the door to the hallway close.” Yes, yes, that was right. She pointed to the door that led to a back hallway. “And . . . I think Sister Camille was alive at that point.”
The older nun touched Camille’s wrist and placed her ear next to Camille’s nose, listening for any sign of life. Lucia knew she would find none.
“What were you doing here, Sister Lucy?” Mother Superior asked, addressing Lucia in her formal name—the saint’s name she had taken along with her vows.
“I, uh, heard something,” Lucia lied, as she had so often in the past. No one here knew her secret, not even the priests to whom she confessed.
“Heard something? From your room?”
“Yes, I was on my way to the bathroom.”
As if she realized this conversation could wait, the reverend mother, still kneeling at Camille’s side, ordered, “Go find Father Paul. Send him here.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?”
The reverend mother closed her eyes as if seeking patience. “Do as I say. After you send Father Paul, then go to my office and dial nine-one-one.”
“But the police should be alerted first—”
“Don’t argue! The best thing we can do for Sister Camille is to pray for her soul. Now, go! And if anyone else wakes up, send them back to their rooms!” Her expression brooked no argument, and Lucia took off, walking rapidly through the very doorway where she’d seen someone exit. Send the other nuns back to their rooms? Cells, more likely. Or kennels. Like dogs. Oh, Lord, she knew she was
not
cut out to be a nun. Not with impure thoughts like these.
Heart pounding, she closed the door behind her and took off at a dead run—heading straight to the reverend mother’s office. Let them punish her later, but right now she knew Camille was the priority. She pushed open the frosted-glass door and stormed into Sister Charity’s inner sanctuary.
Everything was neatly placed on bookshelves that lined the room—books, candles, crucifixes, a healthy amaryllis with a heavy white bloom, and a solitary picture of the Pope. Lucia rounded the big, worn desk, where far too many times she had sat on one of the uncomfortable visitor chairs, her hands clenched in anxiety, as the mother superior had lectured her across the expanse of lacquered walnut. She reached for the telephone with its heavy receiver, a black dinosaur left over from the sixties or seventies, and dialed quickly, nervously waiting for the rotary dial to click into place.
“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?” a woman’s voice answered.
“Sister Camille is dead! There was some kind of accident here at St. Marguerite’s Convent—no, in the chapel—and she’s dead! I . . . I think she was killed. Please, please send someone quickly!” Her voice, already tremulous, was elevating with each word.
“What is the address?”
Lucia rattled off the street address and, when asked, her name and the phone number.
“What kind of an accident?”
“I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe she was strangled. All I really know is that she’s dead, and the mother superior is with her now.”
“A homicide.”
“Oh, I don’t know! We need help. Please, please send help!”
“We are. Officers have been dispatched. You need to stay on the line.”
“I can’t . . . I have to tell Father Paul.”
“Please, Miss Costa, do not hang up. Stay on the line—”
Ignoring the dispatcher, Lucia dropped the phone, letting it dangle as she took off at a full run through the back door of the office, one only Sister Charity used.
Lucia’s heart was a drum as she sprinted through the dark hallways with their gleaming floors, down the stairs, and out the double doors to a courtyard. As if Lucifer himself were chasing her, she raced through the rain-splattered cloister and past a fountain. Wind scuttled across the flagstones, kicking up wet leaves and tugging at the sodden hem of her nightgown.
She couldn’t tell anyone about how she was awakened so abruptly in the middle of the night. What would she say? Anyone who heard about the voice that directed her, the beast she’d somehow unleashed, would think she was certifiable. As she did herself. She figured that voice in her head was between her and God. No one else. Not even Father Paul or Father Frank. They might think she was possessed by a demon, and maybe she was, but she just didn’t want any attention drawn to her.
It’s not about you! Camille is dead! Dead! Someone killed her and left her lifeless body in the chapel.
And somehow the voice knew. And awoke her.
Oh, it was all so disturbing.
Through another door and under a dripping portico, she flew to Father Paul’s door, where she pounded desperately.
“Father!” she cried, shivering in the pale glow of the priest’s porch light. “Please! Father! There’s been . . . an accident!”
Over the drip of rain, she heard footsteps behind her, the scrape of leather against wet stones. From the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the shadows, a dark figure emerging through a garden gate. She gasped, stepped back, and nearly tripped on her own hem as a large man appeared, his face white and stern, his eyes sunken and shadowed in the night.
“Father Frank,” she whispered, recognizing the younger priest. She had clasped her hand over her breasts and suddenly realized that the cool rain had soaked her cotton nightgown, which now pressed flush against her skin. The fabric clung to her body, hiding nothing in the watery light. “There’s been an accident or . . . or . . .” She swallowed hard, aware of the secrets that Sister Camille had shared. Secrets about this tall man standing before her. “It’s Sister Camille, in the chapel. . . . She . . . she . . .” And then she saw the blood leeching from his cassock, running in red rivulets onto the smooth, shimmering stones of the pathway.
“She’s dead,” he said, his rough voice barely audible over the gurgle of rainwater in the gutters, his gaze tortured. “And it’s my fault. God forgive me, it’s all my fault.”
“
S
till up?” Freya’s voice cut into her fantasy.
“Always.” Val tried to ignore the worries about Camille. She tossed the tea bag into the sink and glanced over her shoulder toward the archway leading to the main house. When they’d bought this old inn, Val had been attracted to the small living space of the carriage house, while Freya took over the private quarters just off the main kitchen. Freya, all tousled reddish curls and freckles, appeared in shorts and an oversized T-shirt. She was cradling a cup with whipped cream piled so high it was frothing and running over the lip of her mug. Somehow, Freya managed to lick up the drip before it landed on the cracked linoleum.
Freya was five-three and still had the honed body of the gymnast she’d been in high school and the metabolism of a girl twenty years her junior.
“You look like hell,” Freya observed.
“Thanks.”
“Really, you should try to sleep.”
If only. She turned and leaned her hips against the counter. “Insomniacs R Us.” The inability to sleep was something she and Freya shared in common.
Freya toasted her friend. “Mine is decaf. Though it doesn’t mean I’ll actually fall asleep anytime soon.”
“I’ve got decaf, too. Something called ‘Calm.’ ” Val took an experimental sip. Hot water tasting of ginger and chamomile singed the tip of her tongue. “It’s supposed to help you chill. . . . Wait a minute, let me see what exactly it’s guaranteed to do.” She picked up the empty box and read the label. “Oh, yeah, here it is. ‘Calm’s unique formula is guaranteed to ease the worries and cares of the world away with each flavorful swallow. With hints of ginger and jasmine, this chamomile blend will relax and soothe you.’ ”
“Sure,” Freya mocked, wrinkling her nose. “Soothe
you
? No way. Anyway, it sounds disgusting.”
“No, just boring to fans of triple-caramel-chocolate-macchiatos with Red Bull chasers.”
“Very funny.” Freya couldn’t help but grin as she climbed onto one of the two café chairs near Val’s bistro table.
A friend since eighth grade, Freya Martin had convinced Val to invest in this eight-bedroom bed-and-breakfast inn in the Garden District, a few blocks off St. Charles Avenue. Named the Briarstone House, the old Georgian had been minimally damaged during Hurricane Katrina, but the owners, Freya’s great-aunt and uncle, had decided they weren’t about to weather any more Category 5 storms. Actually, they didn’t want to see any Category 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms either.
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.