“What?” Slade asked.
Val’s heart hammered wildly at the sight of the black-and-white photograph.
In her mind’s eye, pictures of her youth flashed in painful, sharp fragments. She remembered entering the stark, glistening hallways of St. Elsinore’s. Losing sight of Baby Camille. Crying at night for her parents. Wishing Mrs. O’Malley would return and save her.
From what?
Val blinked hard and smelled, for just a second, the same scents she had as a child:
Floor wax.
Ammonia.
Pine cleaner.
Fear.
A tremor passed through her.
“Are you all right?” Slade’s voice brought her back to the present just as he was taking hold of the crook of her arm and herding her away from the stark, mind-jarring picture.
“Y-yes,” Val said, though she was lying as she tried desperately to pull herself together, back to this bustling hotel, back to a night in the twenty-first century.
She took one final glance at the easel but stopped. Her heart nearly dropped through the floor. “Wait!” she said, and stared at the young nun in the still shot. If she layered on the years, weathering the nun’s skin, adding wrinkles and the harshness that decades of disappointment can etch upon the skin, she recognized the nun as a young Sister Ignatia.
Val’s nerves stretched thin. Her heart raced. Not just a nun, not just the woman who had grasped her five-year-old arm in her strong fingers with their sharp nails, whose rosary reminded a child of a silvery snake, but also the monster who haunted her dreams—the demon that besieged her subconscious, a being that had, over the years, transformed from a cruel witch of a woman to a creature with her tiny teeth, slithering silver rosary, and talonlike hands.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, a chill that brought a rash of goose bumps to her skin running through her. All these years, the terror she’d felt was because of a nun who yelled, a nun who slapped at her fingers with a ruler, a nun who seemed to enjoy inflicting pain.
Val shuddered, told herself it was silly, when so many of the people at the orphanage had been kind.
“Valerie?” Slade asked, his eyes darkening with concern, his fingers still strong around her elbow.
“I’m . . . I’m fine,” she managed, forcing a weak smile. In truth, she knew that the images from her youth, the fear and the pain, would probably be with her for the rest of her life.
“We don’t have to stay.” It wasn’t just that the situation made him uncomfortable, she saw, but that he was seriously worried about her.
“I said I’m fine. Come on.” She headed for the dining area where they took seats at one of the many tables scattered throughout the cavernous room and waited as others joined them and drinks were brought. Beer and wine were available, though no hard drinks were on the menu.
Before they were served, Father Thomas, a tall, dark-haired man with an easy smile and sharp eyes, walked to the microphone and introduced himself and his staff on the raised dais.
Sister Ignatia, an honored guest, was wheeled in. She was shriveled and humpbacked, her face thin and drawn, etched with wrinkles that made it seem she was a wax figure melting into her habit.
This was the woman who had caused so many of Val’s nightmares? This tiny, withered piece of flesh in a nun’s habit? How could this poor old woman still permeate Val’s subconscious and bring on the night terrors?
Unable to get out of her chair, Ignatia was parked at one of the closest tables to the dais. She barely moved, just huddled in the chair, a handwoven afghan tossed across her lap, a silver cross danging from her neck.
Maybe now, Val thought, her nightmares would finally fade.
As soon as Ignatia’s wheelchair was situated to her cranky specifications, Father Frank and Father Paul joined Father Thomas at the microphone. Enthusiastically, Thomas suggested everyone bid on the items that were on display at St. Elsinore’s, in the old gym. The donated items were incredible, everything from a trip for two to the Belvederes’ beach home in the Carolinas to a “one-of-a-kind” white grand piano donated by Arthur and Marion Wembley, lifelong citizens of New Orleans and members of St. Marguerite’s. The Wembleys he noted, were both orphans at St. Elsinore’s over eighty years earlier.
With that piece of inspiring information, he asked everyone to join him in prayer before dinner was served.
As soon as the last “amen” was whispered and most of the guests made hasty signs of the cross over their chests, the dinner service finally began.
Val had no appetite. She was too keyed up, her focus on what she had planned at the orphanage. This might be the only time she would be able to search St. Elsinore’s records, search for the information that had set Camille on her doomed path. While everyone was in the gym at the auction, Val would, with a little luck, sneak into the archives and find out just who the hell she really was.
Her identity, she felt certain, was connected to her sister’s murder; she just didn’t know how.
She pushed her shrimp and melon salad around on her plate. She felt as if she were being watched, every movement observed, but who, in this crowd of six or seven hundred people, was watching her? Scrutinizing her.
The hairs at the base of her scalp lifted, and she looked over her shoulder.
She saw no one singling her out.
But then, what better place to hide in plain sight but in a sea of unfamiliar faces?
F
rom his position near a side door, Montoya surveyed the crowd in the hotel’s dining area. Over five hundred people, all dressed to the nines, all ready to open their wallets for the new orphanage, but no one he recognized as Father John.
A waiter passed, carrying a huge silver tray and rustling the fronds of a palm tree. A spiky leaf brushed against his face, and he shifted, moving a little closer to the front of the room, where he had a better view of the crowd.
And one of them, he thought, could be a killer.
Was the son of a bitch in their midst?
With enough plastic surgery to hide his identity?
Or disguised as what? The priest’s garb during his last killing spree would be a dead giveway. So, then . . . ? His gaze scraped the crowd.
He noticed a few other cops in plainclothes, mingling with the crowd, some even subtly taking photographs and videos from hidden cameras; it was so easy to do these days with cell phones and pocket cameras.
Montoya caught Bentz’s gaze and nodded when the priest, the often-missing Father Thomas, now standing at the mic, had mentioned the Wembleys, the couple who had been Father Frank’s alibi on the night of Camille Renard’s homicide. Arthur and Marion, solid parishioners, had made a generous donation of their beloved Steinway piano.
Montoya had done his research on the devout couple. They were giving most of their earthly possessions to charity, as they’d recently moved from a four-thousand-square-foot mini-mansion on the Mississippi to a small apartment in an assisted-living complex.
Montoya had talked to the couple. After spending most of their lives amassing material possessions, the Wembleys were now more concerned with the hereafter than their collection of classic cars, art, and their beloved Steinway Louis XV, now up for auction.
And there was something more he’d seen when visiting the aging Wembleys at the hospital, where the old man was fighting a losing battle with the Grim Reaper. Though they played the part of the loving, dedicated couple, there was something that didn’t sit quite right with Montoya, as if the wife wasn’t as dependent upon Arthur as he was on her. Probably because of the old man’s declining health, Montoya told himself, but he didn’t quite buy it.
It was almost as if a lie had been flitting around Wembley’s hospital room, the truth chasing after it.
Or was he imagining things, seeing falsehoods because he expected them?
Tonight there was a buzz of excitement in the dining area, a charge of electricity. Unfortunately, he thought, it wasn’t only because of generous and giving souls ready to pay far more than items were worth for a good cause. No, there was more going on here; the newspeople were here en masse, hoping for a story, one tied to the macabre murders at St. Marguerite’s.
Sick freaks!
And the fact that the auction had sold out was no doubt due in part, not to the local celebrities who were donating their time, nor the good feeling of donating to a worthy cause, but to the bit of scandal associated with St. Elsinore’s.
The two women who had been killed had been orphaned themselves, put up for adoption from within the very walls that were now scheduled to be sold and probably demolished. Camille Renard, a novitiate, had been pregnant, rumored to have been involved with Father Frank O’Toole, the handsome priest who was here tonight.
Free publicity, gruesome though it may be.
Yeah, there was a current of electricity moving through the crowd, and some of it could be attributed to the heinous crimes that Montoya was investigating.
It was intriguing though thankfully the public knew few of the details of bridal dresses, bloodied necklines, orphans, secretive religious orders, and a madman on the loose again. A dead prostitute and a nun’s diary that read like a guide to kinky sex, the scenes so graphic he’d nearly ignored the little scribbles that had accompanied the text, notes he’d not understood.
Important?
He shrugged, as if someone had actually asked him the question. Weird numbers and symbols, hearts and arrows, like cupid encrypting a special message. All wrapped up in death.
A helluva thing when you thought about it.
The wheels of the bus go round and round,
Round and round, round and round.
The wheels of the bus go round and round
All through the town....
The childhood song ran through Lucia’s mind as the Greyhound’s tires sang over the pavement. How many times had she sung the lyrics along with making the hand movements with the kids at the orphanage at St. Elsinore’s?
She sighed, leaning her head against the window as the night rushed by. Tonight, she knew, was the auction for the building of the new orphanage, and a part of her longed to be there; just as a part of her longed to be with Cruz again.
Idiot!
That part of your life, with the orphanage, and certainly with Cruz, is over.
The bus was nearly empty. Besides Lucia, there was just an old woman with a child of around eight two seats back from the driver. The child was nestled in the woman’s arms; both were asleep. In the back was a twentyish man with a scar that ran down one side of his face and tattoos visible on his big arms. He was leaning back in his seat, plugged into an iPod, his eyes closed.
Lucia sat in the middle of the bus, on the opposite side of the aisle from the others.
Tonight she was dressed in street clothes again, though her hair was cropped short, compliments of her own hack job with a pair of scissors she’d stolen from the convent. She was traveling courtesy of Sister Camille, who had left her, along with her cell phone, a wallet filled with hundred-dollar bills. Fifty of them, to be exact.
A fortune to Lucia. She sighed, her breath fogging the window as she remembered Camille giving her the money.
“Just in case,” Camille had said when she’d tucked the thick leather billfold into the pockets of Lucia’s habit just two days before she was killed. “The Holy Father may want us to give up worldly possessions, but he surely doesn’t want us to be stupid.”
“But where did you get this?” Lucia had gasped, intending to return it to Camille.
“It doesn’t matter,” Camille had said, but her smile had faded. “I guess some people might say it’s hush money.” She’d squeezed Camille’s hand. “But rich people, you know, people like Marion Wembley, they call it a ‘donation.’ ”
“To what?”
Camille had grinned again. “To ensure their future is never ruined. That some secrets are never revealed,” she’d said cryptically, with a naughty little smile. “Just take it, okay?”
“I can’t.”
“Then keep it for me. Please.” Her eyes had clouded. “I might need it.”
Lucia had swallowed hard and slowly nodded, even though she’d known she was somehow compromising her values, committing some vague sin. “Just for a while . . .”
And now Camille was dead, murdered, and Lucia had thrown away all of her promises to herself. She was using the cash to put as many miles as she could between herself and Cruz.
She closed her eyes and wondered where she’d be in the morning.
Her route had been a zigzag course to nowhere.
She’d gotten aboard a westbound bus in Baton Rouge wearing exactly what she’d had on when she’d left Cruz; then, once the bus had crossed the state line into Texas and stopped at the first station, she’d bought a ticket heading south. In the restroom, she’d donned her holy habit. She’d worn it for as long as she was on the bus rolling toward Mexico, so if anyone saw her, they’d remember the habit—that a young nun was on the bus to a border town.
Two stops later, the one before the border, she doubled back, taking a northbound bus and wearing street clothes again, this time adding a pink sweater that she had in the backpack. At each stop in her circuitous route, she changed something about her appearance. She had sunglasses and a scarf she tied over her hair that she wore with a blouse and jeans or with a T-shirt and skirt.
Now, as rain began to fall, the bus was climbing hills. With the bus speeding by long stretches of dark countryside, she thought about the East Coast, but not north—no, she was a Southern girl.
The names of the towns along the coast went through her mind, and she settled on Savannah—a big enough city to get lost in, yet small enough to feel like home. Yes, she thought, Savannah.
She noticed the driver, a portly man with a buzz cut and red face, switch on the windshield wipers.
The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish
Swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.
The wipers on the bus go . . .
At the hotel, the salad plates were removed by the waiters. Val, nerves strung tight, scanned the dining area and eyed the patrons. She recognized many of the nuns from both parishes. Conversation and laughter, rattling dishes and clinking glassware created a rumbling cacophony that rolled through the room as steaming plates of jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, red beans and rice, and stacks of biscuits and corn bread drizzled with butter and honey arrived.
Though she and Slade tried to avoid small talk, they were forced into conversation with the three other couples seated at their table. It came out that each of the couples had been married for at least ten years, and they all had grade-school-age children. Two of the men had been adopted out of St. Elsinore’s. One couple had adopted both of their girls through the orphanage. All of them were intrigued with what was happening at St. Marguerite’s.
“It’s a real reunion here tonight,” the taller of the men, red-haired Ned, enthused.
His wife, even-featured with a pile of blond hair, agreed while a pinch-faced woman, Connie, couldn’t quit talking about the horrible goings-on at St. Marguerite’s as she drank two—or was it three?—glasses of wine.
It was all Val could do to hold her tongue, especially when Camille’s name came up.
“I heard she was pregnant, you know,” Connie said, her eyebrows rising at the scandal.
“Really?” the third woman, a brunette with wide doe eyes, said, shocked.
“Shhh.” Connie’s husband, Vince, scowled.
“I will not! They claim the father is the priest, and I don’t blame her—look at him!”
“Connie!” Vince rebuked, his face suffusing with color. “Please.” But Connie, tipsy, was eating up Father Frank with her eyes. “I wonder about that other nun who was killed. Maybe she was having a thing with the priest, too!” Connie laughed and nearly fell off her chair. “And now I heard from my friend who works there that another couple of the sisters are missing. What kind of a convent is that? They’re dropping like flies over there!”
“Shhh!” The husband was angry now. Embarrassed.
Val couldn’t stand it. Despite a warning glance from Slade, she said, “Camille Renard was my sister.”
“Of course she was. She was everybody’s sister,” Connie said, her eyes a little glassy as her fingers held up a wobbling glass of Chardonnay. But Vince stiffened, and the other couples went completely silent, setting their forks on the table.
“No, I’m not talking about her being in the convent and taking vows. She was my blood sister,” Val said evenly, and saw the shock register in six pairs of eyes. Slade looked as if he wanted to throttle her, but Val wasn’t about to back down now. “We both were brought to St. Elsinore’s when our parents died. She was a lovely woman, and I miss her terribly.”
“Oh, dear God,” Ned’s wife whispered.
The other crossed herself.
“But she was preggers, right?” Connie had lost all sense of propriety.
“I’m so sorry,” her husband said, and to his wife, “Come on, honey, let’s go.”
“But the auction hasn’t even started.” She was slurring her words now, and Val, irritated and ready for a fight, wondered how many drinks she’d had before she’d walked through the hotel doors.
“I’ll be good, I promise,” she said, trying to appear cute.
Her husband wasn’t having any of it, and he herded his tipsy wife out of the room. They wove their way to the doors while the rest of the people at the table picked at their food, a silent, awkward table in the midst of noise.
Slade placed a hand on Val’s knee and warned her with his gaze to not make a scene. He was right, of course. Especially when she considered what she planned to do later. She didn’t want anyone to notice her. Or miss her.
Her gaze skimmed the crowd again, and she noticed several people from the police department. Her gaze locked with Bentz’s for a second, and she saw Montoya leaning against a post and eyeing Father Thomas, who, just as dessert of Bananas Foster was served, introduced Sister Charity and the St. Marguerite’s choir.
The reverend mother seemed to have shrunk in the past few days, her skin paler than Val remembered, the starch drained out of her.
“As you know,” Charity said into the microphone after she’d tapped it to see that it was still live, “we’ve suffered some terrible losses at St. Marguerite’s lately.” Her voice was clear and strong, even over the feedback of the mic. “Our choir, too, has been affected, but in honor of those who have passed and those who are missing, for the glory of God and this great cause, we will perform.” The corners of her mouth tightened a bit as she paused, then said, “But first, I’m going to ask you all to pray with me and observe a moment of silence for Sister Asteria and Sister Camille, who were called home so recently, and for those who are missing from our order.” She glanced at Father Paul, who led the prayer; then, after a quiet moment when nothing so much as ice cubes clinking disturbed the silence, Sister Charity led the smaller group in song.