Devious - Lisa Jackson [51]
Suddenly Val wondered if she’d known her sister at all. There were so many contradictions, so many things she didn’t know or understand about her sister, who had never, as far as Val could remember, really enjoyed children. And yet she’d worked with them at an orphanage and gotten pregnant herself. And they knew who their natural parents were. There was no mystery there.
“What’s going on here?” she said, turning to the reverend mother.
“Nothing, I assure you.” Again the fragile grin. “Camille was just a very, very confused young woman.”
Something was wrong here. The bells tolled loudly, ringing through the garden, and the nun who had escorted her into the garden earlier, Sister Zita, appeared.
“I’m sorry, reverend mother, but you have an appointment,” Zita reminded her, almost as if on cue.
“If you’ll excuse us,” Sister Charity said. “We’re late.”
“Wait a second. I’d like to speak to some of my sister’s friends and coworkers. I know she was close to Sister Lucia.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” the mother superior said with a glacial smile.
“I do need to be at the hospital,” Frank said.
Seeing that she’d run up against a brick wall, Val gave up. There was nothing more she could do here.
Today. She headed out of the garden with more questions than she had answers. She was irritated by the reverend mother, simmering with resentment at Father Frank, and still ticked at Slade for following her here.
With Slade only a step behind her, she reached the gate, which, of course, was locked. As if this were some damned prison.
“I’ll get that,” Sister Zita said quickly. Val turned to see Slade, followed by the nun. “Sorry about the reverend mother,” Zita said as she extracted a key from a deep pocket of her habit and inserted it in the gate. “Everyone here is just so upset.” She swung the wrought-iron bars open and met Val’s gaze. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” Val said, her throat growing thick. She could handle herself in anger, but kindness brought out her need to break down. Even when it came from a woman whose voice was as devoid of emotion as her eyes.
The gate clicked shut behind them.
Val took one last glance through the bars to the garden, but found it empty.
Yet, as she looked at the interior of the convent one last time, she felt that same eerie sensation that had plagued her earlier. Her eyes lifted to the buildings that rimmed the cloister, catching a flicker of movement on an upper balcony. Someone lingered in the doorway, a blurry figure dressed in black that melted backward into the shadows.
The hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
She blinked.
And all was still on the balcony. Strange . . .
She reminded herself this was a convent, a holy place. And yet, that eerie sense that a predator was watching . . . She shoved her wayward thoughts aside, told herself she was just imagining things, that she was spooked because of Camille’s murder.
CHAPTER 18
Obviously disbelieving, Cruz glared at his older brother. “Lucia Costa is a nun at St. Marguerite’s?” he repeated incredulously. They were seated at a booth in a small restaurant not far from the police station, Cruz on one side of the table, Montoya on the other. The place was clean enough with a variety of salads and sliced, preserved meats on display behind the windows of a long counter. The smell of an overused fryer permeated the air, the odor tossed around by a few slow-moving overhead fans. “She’s here”—Cruz pointed at the tabletop with one finger—“in New Orleans?”
“Uh-huh.” As Montoya took a bite of his po’boy, his gaze skated from his brother to the glass door of the establishment. People passed underneath the striped awnings, moving slowly in the afternoon heat.
“That’s a pisser.”
“If you say so.”
Cruz had always been a wild card, Montoya thought, then decided that wasn’t as strange as it sounded. All his siblings, sisters and brothers, had been known to raise their share of hell while growing up.
Over six feet, Cruz had Montoya