Devious

by Lisa Jackson

  “Sister Georgia?” the receptionist called from a doorway. “There you are! You have a phone call.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sister Georgia said quickly. “No rest for the wicked. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “Or weary,” Sister Simone said. Her curly black hair was unruly, her smile a wide slash of white against her smooth skin. “Works either way.”

  “Of course it does.” The mother superior was distracted. “Would you mind showing Valerie around?”

  Before Simone could answer, the reverend mother bustled off and through the doorway.

  “I guess you’re on,” Val said, “whether you want to be or not.”

  “Sister, are you all right?” a blond woman asked Lucia, who was still stunned from the near accident and the fact that Cruz, still holding her, had probably saved her life.

  She realized that people were still looking at her—no, make that at them. She in full nun’s habit—wimple, scapular, veil, and all—and Cruz in his T-shirt and jeans, his arms lingering a little too long around her as he yanked her from the street.

  “I’m fine . . . fine,” she assured the woman and a few others who had gathered—two black teens who cast suspicious glances her way, the blond woman with her two children, and a group of young girls, each with a cell phone attached firmly to her ear. There were a couple of businessmen as well, and, as luck would have it, a priest speaking to a homeless guy pushing a shopping cart. Lucia wanted to die a thousand deaths. “I, um, I guess I was lost in thought.” She forced a smile to the blonde and felt the heat wash up her face.

  The light changed, and most of the pedestrians crossed, the worried woman clutching her children’s hands as they hurried across the street to the park where playground equipment was visible through the stands of live oaks and hedgerows of vibrant crepe myrtle.

  Lucia didn’t follow but took a deep breath, then turned her attention to Cruz, her erstwhile savior. “So what are you doing here?” she demanded, casting a nervous glance at the post office. “Following me?”

  “Yep.”

  Oh, dear Mother, this was not what she needed! Not now. Well, not ever.

  His mouth was that insanely sexy slash of white, and she mentally kicked herself for noticing.

  “Why?”

  “To save you from deadly SUVs?”

  She almost laughed. Almost. “The real reason?”

  “Because the last time we talked, you told me to stay away, something like forever.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “Part of my charm.”

  “Right.” Still shaken from nearly being run down, she started walking along the sidewalk, away from the corner and the few remaining people who still cast curious glances her way. Quickly, she walked along the storefronts, and as she did, she told herself her nerves were stretched tight because of the adrenaline still racing through her bloodstream, that it had nothing to do with Cruz. But, of course, she was lying to herself again.

  This lying, it was becoming a habit. Not healthy.

  To her consternation, Cruz fell into step with her. “I think we’re even now, right?”

  “Even?” She shook her head. “I’m not keeping score.”

  “Sure.”

  She wasn’t going to be baited by him. “You still haven’t said why you were following me.” She thought of the package she’d just mailed, and her palms began to sweat. Mother Mary, she was a horrible liar. “I thought I made myself pretty clear that we couldn’t see each other.”

  “I know, but I thought you were a little on the melodramatic side.”

  “So what? I was serious.”

  “Don’t believe it.”

  She’d forgotten how irritating he could be. “Believe what you want to,” she said, mentally scolding herself for kissing him, for giving him the slightest glimpse that she still cared. “Just leave me alone.”

  She stopped under the overhang of a little dress shop and caught their reflection in the glass. Faint, as if a superimposed negative over a display of sundresses, was the image of a man and a woman; he in battered jeans and a faded T-shirt, and she in her voluminous habit and veil. An odd couple, and yet, there was more. A glimpse of hidden emotions in the blush of her cheeks, the intensity of his gaze.

  The memory of a forbidden kiss.

  His gaze caught hers, and her heart began to throb, a pulse beating at her throat. She looked away, blinking, catching a glimpse of something else in the panes, something as disturbing as the clouds collecting overhead.

  The wavering image of a man of the cloth—a priest wearing sunglasses. She froze. Something was off about the guy.

  “What?” Cruz asked, and in that flicker of an instant, when she turned her attention to him, the image of the priest was gone. She turned to look over her shoulder to the park.

  “Did you see him?”

  “Who?”

  “The priest.”

  “What priest? The one helping the homeless guy on the corner?” Cruz’s gaze followed hers to the empty park.

  “I don’t know,” she said, thinking maybe she’d conjured up the image, and yet it burned in her brain. Cold as dry ice and just as foggy.

  Like the night so long ago.

  She had been in Cruz’s car, the radio playing loudly. As if it were yesterday, she remembered that last night of their youth, of the exhilaration of being with him, of doing something dangerous, of defying her father . . . They’d been kids then, teens, and the world had been a big, vast, exciting place where their future had seemed to stretch out endlessly.

  Until the moment she’d seen the deer in Cruz’s headlights, the spindly legged animal frozen in fear in the rising mist, twin beams mirrored in the doe’s glassy eyes.

  A voice as rough as sandpaper gritted in her ears. “Lucifer’s son is the harbinger of death.”

  She’d screamed as the tires spun out of control, the axle twisting, metal groaning. Glass shattered. Panic and pain sizzled up her spine....

  Now, looking at the empty park, she felt the same chill, the flesh on her arms pimpling at a dark, unknown danger.

  “I have to go,” she insisted, glancing up at Cruz to the cleft in his eyebrow, evidence of that night.

  He grabbed her arm. “Lucia, please . . .”

  Knowing she would be damned in hell forever, she stood on tiptoes and brushed a kiss across his cheek. He tried to catch her lips with his, but she pulled away. “Cruz, if you love me, please . . . don’t follow me.” And with that, she pulled away, dashing across the street and into the park.

  She didn’t look back, but she felt the weight of Cruz’s gaze, heavy against her back.

  CHAPTER 31

  “So you’re Cammie’s sister,” Sister Simone said to Val in the playground. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her slacks and nodded, as if agreeing with herself. “She said you two were close.”

  Until Slade Houston came between us. “We were.”

  “So sad that she’s gone,” Simone said. “And I mean it. I loved Sister Camille. She was blessed with a thoroughly wicked sense of humor. I didn’t understand why she stayed at St. Marguerite’s.” Her gaze caught Val’s for a second before she looked away. “I wouldn’t have thought she would fit in there.”

  “Why?”

  Sister Simone lifted a shoulder, noncommital as she watched a paper wasp work on a tiny nest under the eaves. “Camille didn’t strike me as the traditional, by-the-rules-at-all-costs kind of nun. She seemed more . . . independent than that. A woman with her own mind.”

  Amen.

  Simone seemed to be the first one who actually understood Cammie. Val thought about keeping Camille’s secret, then realized that was ridiculous. The truth would soon be spread through the press and run through the parochial community like wildfire. Val decided she’d more likely find out the truth if she was forthright.

  “Did you know she was pregnant?”

  Sister Simone’s eyes widened a bit. “Oh, Holy Mother,” she said, shaking her head.
“I . . . I was afraid . . . No, I didn’t know.”

  “But you knew she was involved with Father Frank O’Toole.”

  “I’d heard she was . . . taken with a priest.” Simone’s dark eyes glanced to the ground. “I don’t think I really wanted to know. Once, Camille tried to talk to me but changed her mind, and I saw her leaving with a priest.”

  “Father O’Toole?” Val asked, making certain.

  Simone shrugged, seemed uncomfortable. Biting her lip, she looked up at the bell tower where swallows were flying erratically, backdropped by gathering clouds. “I don’t know. It was dark, and he was turned away from me, but he was tall, built like Father O’Toole.”

  “Did he, Frank O’Toole, come here often? Meet with her?”

  “I’m not sure. He’s . . . he’s been here, with Father Thomas for Mass, of course, and he’s visited the orphanage and the clinic, just as many others have. St. Elsinore’s is unique, you know, a real community.”

  Valerie’s gut twisted. She did know. She did remember. She’d lived here, if only briefly.

  “Sister Camille said that you were her only living relative,” Simone said as they walked across the empty playground where a solitary swing, its hinges creaking mournfully, moved with the breeze.

  “Yes, our parents are dead and there are no other siblings or close cousins. However, Camille was looking for our birth parents.”

  Simone blinked and her expression tightened. “You knew that? I thought she was keeping it to herself.”

  “She and I were in this together,” Val said, stretching the truth more than a little. “I know she was checking the records here and using the computers to find out if the people who we were told were our biological parents really were.”

  Fingering the cross at her throat, Simone nodded.

  “Did she tell you anything?”

  “No.” Simone shook her head. “But”—she glanced over her shoulder, and her eyebrows drew hard together—“I, uh, I helped her with the computer, and I know she kept a notebook.”

  The diary! Val’s heart nearly skipped a beat. Finally, Valerie felt as if she were getting somewhere.

  Simone cleared her throat, as if nervous that she’d said too much.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  Simone hesitated, as if she were fighting an inner battle, but finally said, “We have private cubicles here. It’s a relatively new practice because of some theft, but the school decided the few personal items we have and the equipment we need to teach should be locked up.” She led Val past the slide with its corkscrew turns and depression in the sawdust where thousands of tiny feet had landed.

  Just not hers.

  A gust of wind blew, rattling the chains on the playground again, and it was all Valerie could do not to fall back into the darkest period of her life in this place where she felt forever frightened.

  “This way,” Sister Simone said, breaking into Valerie’s reverie.

  Telling herself she was being ridiculous, Val realized the nun had stowed the bats and balls in a basket on the porch and was holding the door open. She followed Sister Simone along the old familiar hallways where the art and paint color were different, but the worn tiles on the floor were the same and the doorways hadn’t moved in over thirty years. At the gym doors, there was a flurry of activity, volunteers already working on the auction that would be held in a few days. While the dinner was going to be held in a hotel three blocks away, tours of the orphanage, before it closed its doors forever, would be allowed. Hence, the volunteers were converting the gymnasium into the display area for the donated items that would be auctioned.

  Valerie had never spent much time in the gym, as she’d been so young when she’d arrived at St. Elsinore’s.

  Today, as Sister Simone led her down the halls, her heart began to drum a little faster. She remembered the kids staring at her on the day that... What was her name? The woman who’d brought her here? Theresa . . . or . . . Tonia . . . No, that wasn’t right, but she remembered the nun who had been assigned to settle Valerie into the orphanage.

  Sister Ignatia had pulled her along this very corridor. Sharp fingernails had dug into Valerie’s upper arm as she’d been propelled along. The corridor had seemed endless, dark and scary.

  “Hurry up, now, child!” the old nun, dressed in a full dark habit, had urged, her heavy dark skirts rustling as she’d sped foward. Ignatia, who to Valerie had resembled the old lady pedaling the bike in the tornado in The Wizard of Oz, had swept Valerie along these dark hallways so quickly that Val had been forced to run to keep up with her. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that sloth is a sin?”

  Val had been pulled past so many closed doors, and, even though she had been not yet five, she had wondered which one baby Camille was behind. What were they doing to her? Would she ever see her sister again?

  Eventually, Sister Ignatia had deposited Valerie in a room with Sister Anne.

  Unlike Ignatia as day is to night, Sister Anne had welcomed a frightened Valerie with open arms, a kind face, and extreme patience. She’d been kind and gentle, read stories and allowed the children, including Valerie, to sit on her lap. None of the children had ever been rebuked for playing with her scapular, coif, or rosary.

  “God blessed the little ones with curiosity,” Anne had told a disapproving, sour-faced Ignatia when Valerie had fingered the bloodred beads.

  “Cursed is more likely,” the older nun had huffed, but hadn’t challenged the younger nun. Ignatia had suffered Anne’s serene authority where the children were concerned. It seemed to Valerie that Ignatia was only too happy to get rid of the responsibility of dealing with the “urchins.”

  That had been thirty years ago.

  Now, Sister Simone pushed open a door and frowned. “Odd,” she said. “This is one of the few rooms we lock. Hmmm.” She moved past a conference table to a counter under which were storage cupboards. She paused in front of one, then, almost to herself, said, “It’s not locked either. Weird.”

  She swung the door open and Valerie peered inside.

  The cupboard was empty.

  Just like Mother Hubbard, she thought, her throat thickening when she recalled Sister Anne reading the nursery rhyme to the boys and girls spread at her feet in a room just down the hall.

  “I don’t understand,” Simone said.

  “Does anyone else have keys?”

  “Yes, of course. Sister Georgia, Philomena, and the maintenance man and some others.”

  “Father Thomas?”

  “Of course.”

  So much for privacy, Valerie thought. “Is anything missing from your cupboard?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. Why? Oh. Let’s see.” She unlocked another cabinet, and Val saw a couple of books and a small box of markers within. “Just as I left it.” She tried another, and sure enough there was a couple of skeins of yellow yarn and two sets of knitting needles along with what appeared to be the start of a baby blanket.

  “What about Father Thomas?” Val asked.

  “Oh, he doesn’t have a cubby,” Simone said as she straightened. “He’s got his office.”

  “Is he in?”

  “I don’t think so. He had a conference that starts tomorrow; I think he flew out early this morning.”

  “But do you have a key?”

  “What? To his office? Oh, no.” She seemed startled at Val’s suggestion. “No, of course not.”

  Val wanted to ask Simone if she would show her the priest’s office and unlock the door if it was bolted, but she thought better of it. Besides, if it came to looking through Father Thomas’s things, she’d rather do it alone. Not that she had any reason to suspect the priest of anything, but maybe, just maybe, if Camille needed to talk to someone about her relationship with Father Frank, she might have turned to someone outside Frank O’Toole’s parish for counsel.

  Something to think about.

  “It’s odd,” Sister Simone said as she ushered Valerie toward the front of the complex ag
ain.

  Val wondered what had happened to Slade. It had been over an hour since he’d taken the call that had propelled him from the office.

  “What’s odd?” Val asked. Everything was odd to Valerie; there wasn’t any one thing she could put her finger on.

  “I’d just called St. Marguerite’s and spoke with Sister Charity today about Sister Camille’s things, and now they’re gone.”

  “When did you make the call?”

  “Just a few hours ago.” Simone’s perfect brow knitted. “She said she’d send someone for them, but no one spoke to me.”

  “Maybe we could look on the computer and see what she found.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They were my parents, too,” Val pushed.

  “The parish computers are private, for parish use only, but . . . I’ll have to check with Sister Georgia.”

  At that moment, Val finally spied Slade, walking swiftly along the hallway as he tucked his cell phone into the pocket of his shirt.

  “Ready to go?” he asked Val, then extended his big hand to Sister Simone. “Slade Houston, Val’s husband.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said as Val introduced her.

  “Sister Simone was a friend of Camille’s and showed me around.”

  “Sorry I missed it,” he said with that crooked smile that she found so irritatingly endearing. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we really have to go.”

  She caught his look and didn’t argue, even though she didn’t think she was finished here—she was certain that somewhere in these dark hallways was the answer to her sister’s death. “Would you please let me know if you find out what happened to Camille’s things?”

  “I’m sure the reverend mother will,” Sister Simone said as Slade walked swiftly to the front doors, Valerie at his side.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Val demanded once they were outside. With storm clouds brewing, dusk was soon settling over the land. “Is there something wrong at the ranch?”