Devious - Lisa Jackson [173]
“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?
CHAPTER 49
From 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