“Maybe . . . but just in passing.” She shook her head, honestly perplexed.
“They weren’t close?”
“I don’t think so,” she said, then glanced at the bag in his hands. “But then there are a lot of things I didn’t know about Cammie.”
“You should have left this where you found it,” he said, indicating the ziplock and diary. “Take anything else?”
“That’s all there was,” Slade said.
“Have you looked through the diary, Detective?” Val asked. “You might be interested in the fact that it pretty much lists all of her lovers, starting with her first. Not hard to figure out.”
To her surprise, Montoya flinched a bit, almost imperceptibly, but it was there just the same.
“Does it list O’Toole?”
“Camille was discreet—didn’t name names.”
She noticed Montoya’s tense shoulders sag a bit at the news. For that, she didn’t blame him. They all hoped that the book would be key, that it would point out the person who had killed Camille.
“I didn’t recognize him, if that’s what you’re getting at, but I’m sure he’s there along with a list of others.”
“So you went through this page by page?” Montoya accused.
Slade said, “We used gloves.”
Montoya’s lips were white as they flattened over his teeth. He was trying and failing to rein in his anger.
Bentz, from his spot near the door of the small room, asked, “Did you recognize anyone in the pages?”
“Not really. Just put two and two together.” She swung her gaze back to Montoya and saw a tired, angry man. “You know, you’re pretty good at pointing fingers and telling me what I shouldn’t do, but do you really think you should be investigating Camille’s murder since it’s pretty clear that you were lover number one?”
Beneath his swarthy skin, Reuben Montoya colored, but he didn’t miss a beat as he leaned over the table. “Since you looked through the pages, I would appreciate knowing if you saw anything that might indicate who her last lover was.”
“I already told you: Frank O’Toole.”
“And he admitted to it, but here’s the kicker,” Montoya said without an ounce of satisfaction. “There’s no way he could be her baby’s father. Not according to the laws of science. So, if not him, who do you think it might be?”
Sister Charity had been struggling for hours. Sitting at her desk, she was bone-tired, her muscles ached, her eyes felt as if they’d been rubbed in grit. She’d dozed twice, there at the desk, with her open prayer book beside her and poor Eileen hammering away at the typewriter when she, too, was beside herself.
“What happened?” she’d asked earlier, then held her thin fingers over her mouth and squeaked in disbelief as Sister Charity had explained what she could about Sister Asteria’s horrid demise.
“Dear, dear. Poor sweet girl.” Eileen, eyes brimming, had held her hand and they’d prayed; then, tissue box next to her little angel mug often filled with peppermints, Eileen had tried to go about her work.
Sister Charity was beyond exhausted. After dealing with the police in the predawn hours, she’d spent the rest of the night talking with Father Paul and Father Frank, not trusting either man completely. Both were weak. Paul unable to stand up to the archbishop or some of his more domineering parishioners, especially those with large wallets, and Frank . . . well, because of his weakness.
At the first sign of his true nature, she should have called him out, put an end to things, but she hadn’t.
And now two of her darlings were dead.
Guilt tore a hole in her heart as Eileen’s fingers tapped their irregular cadence beyond the slightly open door, and Charity knew, deep to the center of her soul, she’d been at least partially to blame for Asteria’s death. She squeezed her eyes shut hard at the admission to herself.
She should have been more forthright with the police, less secretive and protective. She felt the scars on her back, long healed, and knew she had to pay her own penance for her sins. “Forgive me,” she whispered for the hundredth time since Asteria’s body had been discovered and realized dawn was casting its brilliant rays over the city.
She’d spent the early morning hours kneeling on the cold floor of the chapel, praying to the Father for guidance, clasping her hands together so hard her old knuckles showed white, the bone so close to her pale skin.
She had to be strong, she’d told herself, and had slept so very little since the horror of finding another one of her flock, the women she sincerely considered her charges—no, her children—had been murdered.
Her muscles ached as she pushed back her desk chair and walked through the back door of her office and through the halls she’d loved so deeply. This, St. Marguerite’s, was as much a part of her as the family home she’d never had.
Few people knew that she was an orphan, that she had grown up at St. Elsinore’s, never adopted out. She found her calling into the service of the Holy Father. The nuns at St. Elsinore’s had both frightened and inspired her, and she’d never thought twice about taking her vows.
Until now.
The halls of the convent were quiet now. The police had once again created chaos here, but, for the moment, it had passed, most of the police officers having left but the cemetery was still cordoned off.
Most of the nuns were spending the day in contemplation, the rigidity of their daily routine interrupted until this evening when they would all gather together in the chapel and Father Paul and Father Frank would conduct a special Mass.
Charity should rest—her body was reminding her of that very painful fact—but she couldn’t, not yet. She walked through the doors to the garden and the fountain she loved so dearly. In the shimmering water, she caught a glimpse of her reflection distorted by her own shadow, rippled by the water’s movement and the glints of gold when the fish darted through the pool’s tiled depths.
She was a relic in her habit and veil. Archaic. Clinging to the old order that was becoming a distant memory. And yet she knew deep in her heart that she was following her true destiny, that she had helped so many like herself, those abandoned, for reasons both good and evil, by their families.
“Sister?” A male voice brought her up short, and she nearly gasped, so deep was she in her reverie. On the other side of the fountain stood that incorrigible Detective Montoya. She didn’t trust him for a second. “May I have a word?”
At least he was being respectful.
“I’m sorry, Reverend Mother,” Sister Devota said, and looked truly rueful. “We”—she indicated her companion, Sister Irene—“were returning from the orphanage, and he was waiting at the gate.”
“It’s all right,” she said to the worried novice. Devota bit her lip, then hurried off, her gait slightly unsteady. She was a difficult woman, full of impassioned faith that concealed her own doubts about herself. Irene’s faith was just as solid, and she was the antithesis of Devota. Tall and lithe, with an almost regal possession of her body. Her fluid movements made Devota’s awkwardness more pronounced.
All so different; all the same.
“What can I do for you?” she asked the detective, surprised to find him alone. They usually talked to her in pairs, but then, the police department was probably stretched thin with these recent horrors. “I thought I answered all your questions last night.” Her voice was dry and sounded weak.
“It’s something that I found out today,” he said, jumping right in. “You told me that Sister Lea De Luca left New Orleans and joined a convent in San Francisco.”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but I do know that she decided against taking her final vows.” Montoya seemed surprised as he rounded the fountain. “I don’t know the details, but I got a card from her last Christmas saying that she’d decided to become a teacher. A lay teacher. She didn’t say why. She’d left the order.”
“Do you have the name of the parish?”
“St. Dominique’s . . . No, no, that was someone else. Oh! Our Lady of Sorrows?” she said in a question, scouring her memory. “Yes, that was it.”
He shook his head. “The SFPD checked all the parishes. No one remembers Sister Lea.”
Charity felt her lips purse. “I said she gave it up.”
“They were specific. No one named Lea De Luca in the last decade.”
“But . . .” Charity felt the very foundations of her faith begin to quiver. What was the officer saying? “I don’t understand. As I said, I’ve gotten correspondence.”
“But she hasn’t called or visited?”
She pinned on her overtly patient smile, the one she knew to be intimidating, the one that silently called the person asking her a silly question an idiot. But she was certain Detective Reuben Montoya was no one’s fool, even though, as he squinted against the hard sun, the ridiculous diamond in his earlobe glinted in ostentatious flamboyance and that small beard of his—a vanity. Her lips pursed. “This is a convent,” she reminded him. “One with certain values and decorum, but you know that. We’ve had this conversation before.”
“The correspondence,” he said. “Do you still have it?”
“The latest was a card at Christmas, but I’m not certain,” she admitted. “Come with me into the office and I’ll look.” He walked with her along the path and through the cool, dark hallways to her office where he waited while she opened the drawer in which she kept her personal correspondence, a pitifully slim folder.
She sifted through the few envelopes and found it, a white envelope and inside a card, showing the blessed Virgin Mary holding a perfect little Christ child, halos glowing around them, a lamb at Mary’s feet. The message was a simple Bible verse and the card was signed “Peace be with you in this holiest of seasons. Sister Lea” in her perfect, Catholic school cursive scrawl.
“May I have this and the envelope?” the detective asked, and when she answered, “Of course,” he slipped them both into a plastic sleeve, as if the card were of some great importance.
There was a knock on the open door, and the receptionist with the frizzy blue hair poked her head in. “I’m sorry, Sister, but there’s someone here to see you . . . Oh!” Her eyes rounded at the sight of Montoya as he and the reverend mother entered through a small back doorway.
“Thank you, Eileen. Detective Montoya and I are almost finished.”
“Detective?” Her graying brows drew together behind the glasses that made her eyes appear owlish. “But the man who’s here says he’s—”
Montoya’s partner, the heavier-set fellow, appeared behind Eileen.
“It’s all right,” Charity said, waving him inside. “I think I need to talk to both detectives.”
Eileen had shifted slightly and Bentz entered.
“Please, close the door,” Charity said to Eileen, and as it closed, she motioned to the two chairs facing her desk. “I’m glad you’re both here,” she said, finally ready to unburden herself. “You see, I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“
I
t’s as if I didn’t even know her,” Valerie said as they walked into the mausoleum. Slade’s boots rang against the polished marble floors, and, as always when she visited here, Val felt cold, her skin chilling as if the ghosts of the dead haunted the wide hallways of the mausoleum where the ceilings rose twenty feet and the walls were polished stone. Tall windows on either end of the edifice let in natural light, today a filtered sun. She had the feeling she was walking through a long tunnel, the walls of which were inhabited by the dead.
Her parents’ ashes were sealed here, on the east wall, along with dozens of others who had died. Gene Richard Renard and his wife, Nadine Lynne Bates Renard, held permanent residence in a vault on the fifth row from the bottom in a wall of veined marble.
Val ran her fingers over the etched letters while Slade leaned against a tall ladder that was used to reach the higher spaces. She’d come here often after they’d died, first her father of throat cancer and less than two years later, her mother of a brain aneurysm, just after Christmas, the very year that Camille decided to live with Val and Slade in Texas for a while, then left to join the convent. Though Gene had been nearly seventy when he died, Nadine had been much younger, only fifty-eight when she’d died. Val had sometimes wondered if the aneurysm had been caused by the stress her daughters had put Nadine through, though every doctor she’d talked to had dissuaded her of the idea.
God, that was a bad time for all of them.
Val shook off the memory and said, “I mean . . . it’s almost like Camille was two people. Or . . . something.”
“A split personality?” Slade asked, but she shook her head.
“No, not really. I’ve heard that people have public lives and personal lives and private lives. Everyone sees the public life, the family and close friends are part of the personal life, and then there’s the secret life, the one no one but you knows about. Camille’s secret life, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Someone knew about it,” Slade pointed out, walking closer to her, touching her on the shoulder in a way that was intimate and caring—a bridge between them.
“Yeah, someone did.” Whoever she was sleeping with surely did, the man Cammie had referred to only as “Beloved.” Whoever the hell he was. Frank O’Toole? Or the unknown guy who had impregnated her.
If only Cammie had confided in her. Told Val about the other lover.
Maybe she thought the kid was fathered by Frank.
Sighing, Val studied her parents’ inscription. Gene and Nadine, names that rhymed. A joke between them. Her father had sworn that if she and Camille hadn’t already been named, he would have called her Valdine and Camille would have been Camdeen. He’d winked as he’d said it, and Val had rolled her eyes.
They’d been good parents. Gene, a welder who worked for the railroad and Nadine a substitute teacher for the public schools, though they’d enrolled their daughters in St. Timothy’s.
“Doesn’t hurt to get a little religion with your ABCs now, does it?” Gene had said, usually over a long-necked bottle of beer in front of the television.
But the two had shared a look, and Val had overheard an argument once. She’d been hurrying down the hall, almost at the head of the stairs, and her parents’ voices slipped through the bedroom door that hadn’t been quite closed.
“You can’t get behind with the tuition!” Nadine had whispered harshly. Tiny and thin to the point of being bony, she was a strong woman whose convictions were matched only by her faith.
“We’re not. It was a screwup. I took care of it.” A dozen years older, Gene Renard was a foot taller than his wife, his hair in gray tufts around a significant bald spot, the smell of tobacco and smoke forever clinging to him.
At her mother’s words, Val had stopped, her hand on the newel post, her gaze riveted to the crack between the door and the jamb. From her vantage point, she saw her mother’s full-length mirror and the reflection of her father stepping out of his dirty work jumpsuit.
She had nearly turned away but couldn’t. “Look, Gene, I promised Mary, okay? Private school. Catholic. So we can’t mess this up.”
His legs were white but muscular, his jockey shorts black as night. A once-athletic man who had developed a bit of a paunch in his later years, he was about to yank off his shorts. She’d blushed at the sight of him; then, when his gaze caught hers, she’d hurried quickly down the stairs.
Neither of them ever spoke of that moment again. She thought then that it was odd, as many times as she’d been here, she’d never once visited the graves of her biological parents, those two people who were but wispy memories. Where the hell were they buried? The woman who’d been their friend, who had supposedly brought Val and Camille to the orphanage, she might know. Again, the woman’s kind face came into view, but her name . . . Wasn’t it Thea? No . . . but she was married or had been and that guy’s name was . . . Oh, damn. Steve . . . no! Stanley! That was it. Stanley O’Malley!
“Let’s go,” she said, not really knowing why she’d brought Slade here, why she’d felt an urgency to touch the tomb of the parents who had raised her. It seemed they, too, had secrets they’d taken with them to the grave.
“Where to?” They were walking through the oversized glass door and into the bright sunlight of the afternoon. The air was thick, the sky a sharp, brilliant blue as they followed a brick path across a carpet of lawn to the parking lot.
“First I want to go to the library and the local newspaper, check the old files, anything I can’t find on my own over the Internet. I think it’s time to look up that ‘friend’ of the family. I think her name is O’Malley. She’s the woman who supposedly was watching Cammie and me when our biological parents were killed. I’d like to see what she has to say for herself.”
“Okay.”
She’d unlocked the car, and he was sliding into the passenger seat.
“And then I need to go back to Briarstone and look in the attic over the garage,” she said, thinking for the first time of the boxes her sister had stowed up there as she slid into the stifling heat of the Subaru. She started the engine, then quickly rolled down all the windows. “When Camille went into the convent, she left a bunch of her stuff with me. I didn’t want it, as we weren’t on the best of terms, but I finally relented when she said she’d get rid of it as soon as she could, give everything to charity or something, once she’d gone through it.” She pulled out of the lot and nosed her Subaru into the traffic leading to the Pontchartrain Expressway.
“I thought it weird at the time, didn’t know when she’d ever get away from the convent for something so trivial, but she hauled the boxes into the attic, and no one’s touched them since.” She slid a glance his way. “You game?”
“Sure.” He grinned slightly. “It’ll be just like Christmas.”
“Right,” she said without even the trace of a smile. “Just like.”
From two of the most uncomfortable chairs on the planet, Montoya and Bentz listened while the reverend mother unburdened herself. Montoya watched her transformation, from bristling, secretive mother hen to a penitent, an aging woman slowly losing her grip on the reins of control over her spiritual fortress.
“I probably shouldn’t be talking to you, not without a lawyer from the archdiocese or someone of authority to witness what I’m saying, but I think that’s wrong. Father Paul and I are in disagreement about it, of course, but then we often are and . . . and sometimes I think it’s important to do what you believe to be the correct course in your heart. I believe in rules and discipline and structure, but sometimes . . . well, as I said, as much as I trust authority, I know I was given my own free will to pray, to seek the Father’s counsel, and then do what I believe is best.
“I know there is a lot of darkness surrounding the church right now, but there is so much good that is forgotten. Here, we help the sick and the hungry, offer counseling and guidance and love. Did you know that St. Ursuline’s has been in the city since the seventeen hundreds and provided medical care for a disease-riddled, newfound city? I believe the first pharmacist in the United States was a sister from St. Ursuline’s, and the nuns there helped educate girls and . . . Oh, there’s no use telling you the history of convents and trying to prove to you our worth. You already know it. But, with all good comes the capacity for evil, I suppose.”
For someone so rigid, Montoya thought, this was a surprising admission. The fine lines across her face seemed more pronounced today, her spine having lost much of its starch. “It’s not as God intended, to speak through attorneys. I know the church, which I love with all my heart, has been battered in recent years. All the ugly scandals coming to light.” She looked pained, her graying eyebrows drawn in consternation and sadness. “But all that is Satan’s work, and we do God’s work here, so I just want to tell you the truth before anyone else, another of my novices, gets hurt.”
She stood and walked to the window, where she looked out to a courtyard. “You’re asking about Sister Lea, and I’m not surprised. I knew her name would come up.”
“Why?” Bentz asked.
“Because she, too, was enamored with Father O’Toole.” Charity sighed through her nose. “The girls who come here, for the most part, are barely women. They’re young and full of life and filled with joie de vivre and the Holy Spirit. They’re often giddy and naive, some even rebellious, but they are good-hearted and willing to serve God and come here to learn. I’m strict with them, yes. They often need structure and discipline, but in the end, they can be trained to be angels of mercy here on earth. . . . Oh, listen to me go on. The point is, they’re impressionable, and they are women. They have hormones and dreams, and many are romantic, caught up in youth and . . .” She pulled a hand from the pocket of her habit and waved off whatever else she might say as fluff.
“Anyway, I saw that Sister Lea was treading in dangerous water, falling in love with Father O’Toole. He’s handsome and fiery and virile.” She slid a glance at Montoya. “As I said, nuns, even this old one, are women. We notice though we try not to.” She cleared her throat, her hand disappearing into the black folds of her habit again. “I wasn’t the only one who witnessed the, uh . . . attraction. I heard the younger nuns talking, and Father Frank . . . well, just as the nuns are women, he’s a man. It was a difficult situation.
“I talked to Lea. Actually, she came to me and though she wouldn’t discuss what had happened between her and Father Frank, she agreed to leave, but only on her terms. She’d lost her spirit of conviction and wasn’t certain she wanted to be a nun any longer. I let her go.”
“And you didn’t check on her?” Bentz asked.
The older woman turned and skewered him with a gaze meant to cut through granite. “No, Detective, I didn’t. I asked her to contact me when she was settled, and I received a postcard saying she was leaving the church. . . . Here, maybe I can find that one, too.” She walked to her file drawers again and searched through several files before she found what she was looking for. She handed him a postcard of St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Francisco, the twin spires cutting upward through the fog. On the back was a handwritten note stating that she’d arrived, was “excited” to be in “the city” and was still working on her spiritual issues.
“Can we take this?” Montoya asked.
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Have you talked with any members of her family?” Bentz asked as Montoya carefully slid the postcard in with the Christmas card in the plastic evidence bag.
“No,” she said sadly. “Lea’s parents were divorced. Her mother died a few years back, car accident I think, and her father and Lea were estranged. He remarried shortly after the divorce and moved out of the country.” Her brow wrinkled beneath her wimple. “Yes, I think so. Mexico maybe?”
“What about siblings?”
“None, but I thought you knew.” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Sister Lea was an only child, adopted years ago.”
Montoya’s muscles tightened. He felt that little sizzle in his blood, the rush of adrenaline as it spurted through his veins when he knew he’d found something important to the case.
“From St. Elsinore’s?” Bentz asked.
“Of course.” She acted as if this was common knowledge. “Most of the women who come here are from St. Elsinore’s, sisters in spirit, yes, but also sisters because they grew up in the same place, the orphanage.” The corner of her lip trembled a bit. “Just like me.”
Montoya wanted to make certain he’d heard right. “You were adopted out of St. Elsinore’s?”
Her smile was forced. “No. I never was adopted, though my brother was.” She sighed sadly. “I grew up at the orphanage. A lot of us did. The older ones, harder to adopt, you know. It breaks my heart that it’s closing. . . .”
Montoya felt a little buzz in his bloodstream. “Sister Camille was adopted from St. Elsinore’s, right?” He’d read that in his notes.
“Yes.” She was nodding.
“But Asteria, she was from a large family in Birmingham.”
“No, Detective.” The mother superior’s face was thoughtful. “She was adopted from St. Elsinore’s as well.” Her smile held a bit of sorrow as well as irony. “It was a case of the parents struggling to conceive, and then when they adopted Asteria, Mrs. McClellan, Colleen I think her name is, had another child within twelve months. After that, Asteria’s siblings came along quite steadily.”