Devious - Lisa Jackson [29]
“Wait a second,” Bentz interjected. “She was breaking it off with him?”
“Yeah.” She was nodding and fighting tears. He witnessed the set of her jaw. “The last time we talked on the phone, she said something like, ‘I have to get out of this.’ And then you know what she added?” Valerie said, her eyes filling.
Bentz and Montoya waited.
“That he wouldn’t take it very well. That he’d ‘kill’ her.” She sniffed and swiped angrily at her eyes. “And she wasn’t joking, you know. She was being literal.” She swallowed hard, her eyes red.
“Did he ever threaten her that you know of?” Montoya asked.
“I . . . I don’t know. She, uh, didn’t tell me all of the details.” Val blinked hard, still fighting tears and staring at him as if he was completely dense. “I don’t know what their relationship was, just that it was unethical, immoral, and God knows what else. The term ‘sexual harassment’ doesn’t even begin to touch what was going on there!” She took one step forward, and her husband grabbed hold of her wrist, but she shook him off. “Listen, you’re dealing with a sick, narcissistic psychopath who scared her to death. She said as much, thought he would kill her and his own unborn child to save his damned reputation!” Tears welled in her eyes again. “If you don’t believe me, check with the medical examiner. He should be able to tell you that Camille was two, almost three months along.”
CHAPTER 11
“I want to know everything you can dig up on Francis O’Toole,” Bentz was saying into his cell phone as Montoya punched the accelerator, cutting through the thick traffic of the city. The windows were rolled down, and the smell of exhaust from a semi that squeezed his lane overshadowed the tinge of barbecue that hung in the air. “No, I don’t know his middle name, but that can’t be too hard to figure out. He’s around thirty-five, maybe, the junior priest over at St. Marguerite’s, and he went to a private school here in the city, St. Timothy’s, about what, twenty years ago?”
Montoya nodded, then found enough room to pass the big truck, only to be stopped at the next light and have it idling, belching black smoke, beside him.
Bentz was silent for a few minutes as he listened to one of the junior detectives on the other end of the line, then said, “And find out anything you can about a Sister Leanne or Lily who left St. Marguerite’s in the last few years. . . . No, not yet, but I’ll check and see if we can come up with a last name. It shouldn’t be too tough to find her, though. It’s not as if convents are crawling with nuns these days.... Yeah.”
The light turned, and Montoya gunned it again, leaving the semi to lumber through the light, the driver pushing the huge vehicle through its gears.
“There’s a guy I want some info on, too,” Bentz said as Montoya slowed for a jackass who jaywalked across four lanes of traffic. “The name’s Houston . . . Yeah, that’s right, like the city. First name is Slade. Lives in Bad Luck, Texas . . . What? Yeah, I know, but he swears that’s the name of the town. He’s married to the vic’s sister, and there might have been something going on between him and the vic. . . . Yeah, I know, but this was before she entered the convent,” Bentz said, squinting against the glare through the windshield. “Uh-huh, not exactly The Sound of Music. I get it. Okay . . . we’re on our way to the morgue now. You can catch me on my cell.” He hung up and swore under his breath.
“You think the brother-in-law is involved?” Montoya asked.
Bentz lifted a shoulder. “Driving all night. Alone. No alibi. On the night the vic ends up dead. There’s some tension between him and his wife, and then, according to him, just after Camille Renard lived with them, she bails and gets all religious, enters St. Marguerite’s. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I just think we should check him out.”
“Doesn’t fit with the wedding dress.”
“What does?” Bentz glowered out the window.
Montoya didn’t see the cowboy as a murderer, but then he wasn’t buying Frank O’Toole as a killer either.
“You know,” Bentz said to Montoya as he