Devious - Lisa Jackson [143]
Sister Camille Renard’s diary had been eye-opening, but other than offering up a few notes that didn’t make any sense and describing her sexual encounters—all with anonymous partners—hadn’t held much else. He’d winced when he’d read about her first experience, especially when she’d admitted to the diary that it had been less than what she’d anticipated; at the time, she’d expected so much more than a horny high school boy had given her.
It seemed that her other lovers had been more to her liking. He’d sifted through the diary, trying to place names with events, linking several experiences, because of the dates, to Brandon Keefe, a man to whom she’d once been engaged and who was now married with a couple of kids in California, and another to a man who had become a parishioner at St. Marguerite’s, Joshua Lassiter, but that had been before she’d taken her vows. There were others still unnamed, then more recently, the entries that were most recent, Father Frank, certainly. Could there possibly be someone else?
Who, they didn’t know.
The BlackBerry that had belonged to Camille Renard had not given up any clues that were easily evident, but the techs weren’t finished with it, even though all of the messages, contacts, and old calls had been erased. Except for the last audio message and the two videos of the dead nuns.
The son of a bitch had been careful, and he was irritating the hell out of Montoya.
The lab was still trying to match blood types and so far hadn’t come up with a serious candidate for the baby’s father. Even the men who worked at the parish—Elwin Zaan, the janitor; Clifton Sharkey, a maintenance man; and Neron Lopez, the groundskeeper—were being checked.
The one glaring omission was Father Thomas. No blood had been taken from the priest, as he’d been away from St. Elsinore’s more often than not.
Odd, that.
Still, Montoya thought wryly, he was doubting Thomas as the father. He smiled at his own little joke, then angled off toward the coffee shop where he usually picked up his regular cup of joe. At the coffee stand, he paid for his black coffee, got a cup of water for the dog, and left change in the tip jar for Jessica, the barista, a pillowy African American woman with silver hair. He sipped from the steaming paper cup as he walked back to the house and stretched his muscles. Hershey, finally tired, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, followed.
All part of his usual routine.
Except that now a killer was stalking the streets of New Orleans, his town, once again.
First Sister Camille and then Asteria McClellan. The two, as far as Montoya could tell, were only linked because of two parishes: St. Elsinore’s, from which they’d both been adopted, and St. Marguerite’s, where they lived and planned to take their vows.
As different as night and day, his mother would have said. Sister Camille, outgoing, spontaneous, a flirt, and, it turned out, someone who didn’t take her vows of chastity seriously. Sister Asteria had no tell-all graphic diary. No pregnancy. Was still, according to the ME, a virgin.
Both women, though, had been drugged, traces of Rohypnol in their bloodstream. The date-rape drug—used on nuns. What the hell was that all about?
There wasn’t any info yet on Grace Blanc, and the testimony of the old Italian lady, Mrs. Rubino, about seeing a priest through her fish-eye peephole was sketchy at best. She was partially deaf, and her eyesight wasn’t near 20/20, so if she were ever put on the witness stand, assuming the police made an arrest, her testimony would be torn up by any defense attorney worth the cost of the ink on his diploma.
What a mess! Montoya drank his coffee and cut across the lawn to the house. On the porch, he stretched his hamstrings and quads, then finished the last swallow before crushing his cup. The neighbor’s dog, Apollo the dalmatian, whined from the front porch, wriggling at the sight of the Lab.
“No!” Montoya said before Hershey even looked up at him or dashed inside. “Sit!”
He