Lisa Jackson's Bentz & Montoya Bundle: Hot Blooded, Cold Blooded, Shiver, Absolute Fear, Lost Souls, Malice, & an Exclusive Extended Excerpt From Devious (57 page)

“Okay, you’re on.” She drained her beer and felt a little lightheaded as she got to her feet.

“Watch out,” Marianne warned. “Kristi’s really good.”

“So am I,” Brian assured her as she made her way to the dart board and grabbed a handful of darts.

She had the weird sensation that someone was watching her, someone besides her girlfriends. She glanced around the bar and saw no one really staring at her. Oh, there were a couple of guys playing pool who glanced up and winked at her and she was afraid the bartender was studying her as if he suddenly questioned her fake ID, but no one sinister. Still, she couldn’t shake the eerie sensation. “But there is one thing.”

“Yeah?”

Brian clamped steel-tough fingers around her wrist. She hadn’t realized until then how much bigger he was than she. “One rule.”

“So now there are rules? Great. Okay, what is it?”

“If I lose, and I don’t intend to, you can’t ask me to change your grade in Zaroster’s class. I like you, but I’m not going to screw up my life over this, okay? You’re on your own in philosophy.”

“Oh, darn, and I thought this was my big chance to score an A.”

“I mean it.”

“Fine, but anything else goes?” she asked and his fingers loosened a bit, the tips rubbing against the inside of her wrist.

“That’s right,” he said, that wicked light in his eyes flaring again. “Anything at all.”

Chapter Fifteen

Bentz spent Sunday morning working on the case. He’d checked with the department, and though there had been a gang-related knifing on the waterfront, and a hit-and-run out by the airport, no one had reported another murder that would suggest Olivia Benchet’s private killer was on the loose again.

But then she hadn’t witnessed a murder, only someone stalking a woman.

He’d also run down some leads, called people who had viewed the house on Bayou St. John where the murder had been committed and checked the people visible on Carl Henderson’s video against the list of witnesses who’d viewed the fire. Three people on the video, a young couple and the guy in the shadows, hadn’t been identified. Everyone else was accounted for.

The Lafayette Police had talked to Reggie Benchet and were faxing a report, but so far, there was no indication he’d been in New Orleans during the time of the last killing—they were still checking his alibi.

Bentz had created a list of sign companies specializing in neon lighting and another of bars in the area. Maybe someone would remember a pink martini glass, though Olivia’s recent vision had nothing to do with any murder.

So far.

Then there were the churches and the priests who officiated. He had lists of those as well.

Tired of the paperwork and trails leading nowhere, he took a break and worked out in the back bedroom. Stripped to his boxer shorts, he pounded the hell out of a punching bag. It worked his muscles, relieved stress, and had peeled off about fifteen pounds in the past six months. He was getting so goddamned healthy he could barely stand himself.

No booze.

No cigarettes.

No women.

Unless he counted Olivia Benchet, whom he’d known only a few days and had kissed once. It was a helluva kiss. But it wasn’t exactly a relationship.

Sweat began to run down his back. He was living the life of a bloody priest. Montoya had accused him of having no social life and the truth of the matter was the young buck was right. “Hell,” Bentz growled and pummeled the bag until his muscles screamed and he was soaked. Breathing hard, he leaned against the bag and let it rock slowly as he caught his breath. He glanced around Kristi’s room. Aside from the punching bag, it was just as she’d left it with its double bed, aqua-colored spread, and matching curtains. It smelled dusty and unused and he decided he’d go the distance and vacuum and dust, maybe even have a bouquet of flowers on the bedside table waiting for her. He looked at the spot and frowned when he noticed the photograph of Jennifer, still at the side of Kristi’s bed.

Taken years before, faded slightly, the shot was a picture of the two of them. Kristi had been around seven at the time and the picture had been taken by one of Jennifer’s friends as mother and daughter had climbed off a roller coaster. Their faces were flushed, their hair wild, their eyes alight with the thrill of the ride. Funny, he didn’t feel the old anger anymore, just a deep sadness with a bit of an edge. Their marriage had been doomed, of course, from the onset. Jennifer had been miserable married to a cop, who had been overly ambitious and spent long hours away from her. He’d sensed something had been wrong from the get-go, but had thought things would smooth out. He hadn’t read the warning signs, until she, tearfully and eight month’s pregnant, couldn’t keep up the charade and explained that the baby wasn’t his.

God in heaven, he’d never known such pain. And when he found out who the son of a bitch was who’d impregnated his wife …. no wonder he’d begun to drink. Oh, sure, he’d claimed Kristi, had determined from the moment he’d set eyes on the baby in the hospital that he would raise her as his own, but the seeds of distrust had been planted deep. The marriage had disintegrated to a hollow shell of what it should have been. Bentz had spent long hours at work or at a bar near the precinct in L.A. He’d told himself he was doing the right thing, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d never forgotten his wife’s betrayal, never really forgiven her. Not even after her death. Now, however, he could put that rage into perspective, tuck it away. It didn’t matter much anymore. Jennifer was dead and Kristi, left without a mother, felt all the more abandoned, all the more rebellious toward him.

But maybe that rebellion would mellow now that they weren’t living under the same roof. If they both didn’t let their tempers and sharp tongues get the better of them. He walked out of her room, closed the door and headed for the shower. Yeah, he thought, he’d definitely spring for the flowers.

In the meantime he had work to do.

Business was slow at the Third-Eye on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Olivia waited on a few customers, restocked shelves and dusted some of the artifacts before stringing gold tinsel along the shelves and cupboards housing the stock. Glassy-eyed alligator heads stared at her, candles, virgin wicks unburned stood at attention and mirrors reflected her image as she climbed onto a small step stool, draping the glittery tinsel. New Age prisms sparkled, books collected dust, and voodoo dolls hung suspended from the ceiling along with Christmas ornaments. Religious artifacts were tucked into drawers or cubbyholes of the antique desks, tables, armoires, and sewing machines that served as display cases. “Eclectic” didn’t begin to cover the merchandise offered for sale.

At four o’clock Tawilda, back from a cigarette and coffee break, urged Olivia to “take a load off for a few minutes.” Tawilda was a reed-thin African-American woman. She wore vibrantly colored saris and slipped matching beads onto the tiny braids clustered in her long hair. With a model’s high cheekbones, and a series of bracelets running up one arm, Tawilda was as exotic as some of the merchandise. “I can handle things for a few minutes. Go get yourself some fresh air, girl,” she insisted as she swept through a curtain of beads hanging in the doorway to the back rooms. A minute later she returned without her coat and purse. The beads danced again. “Go on. Git. I can handle things here.”

Olivia needed a break.

“I’ll be back in fifteen.”

Tawilda waved an elegant hand. “Knock yerself out. Make it twenty or twenty-five. Ain’t nobody shoppin’ here today. It’s not like I’m gonna be swamped or nothin'.”

“If you say so.” Olivia grabbed her jacket and purse and headed outside. Across the street was Jackson Square. A spiked wrought-iron fence surrounded the manicured grounds where paths converged at a statue of Andrew Jackson. Olivia wasn’t interested in the park. Instead she tightened the cinch of her jacket and walked swiftly to St. Louis Cathedral. Only a few pedestrians were out and a stiff breeze rolling off the Mississippi was colder than usual. Pigeons scattered and a lone trombone player, his case lying open, played something bluesy on the street corner.

The cathedral with its three imposing spires knifing sharply into the darkness was not only a grand, imposing structure but the oldest active cathedral in America, a building that had been rebuilt twice and was, Olivia felt, the center of Catholicism in the Crescent City.

She walked inside, where tall arches and stained glass surrounded the nave. She gazed at the altar and blended in with a handful of tourists who milled just inside the door. A sprinkling of the pious or troubled knelt in the foremost pews, their heads bent as they faced the altar. A tall man in an overcoat brushed past her and their eyes connected for a second.

“Leo?” Olivia called as he hurried by. Was Sarah Restin’s missing husband here, in New Orleans? No way. She took a step to follow him, but he was out a side door in a flash.

“Livvie?” she heard faintly.

Olivia froze at the sound of her mother’s voice. But that was impossible. Bernadette was in Houston.

A light touch on her sleeve and she nearly catapulted out of her skin. She glanced back to see the woman who had borne her, paler than she remembered, wearing a cape that reached her ankles and spike-heeled boots. Bernadette’s hair was tucked beneath a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses covered her eyes.

Olivia was stunned. She hadn’t seen nor heard from her mother since Grannie Gin’s funeral.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” Bernadette replied, slightly out of breath. “I stopped in at the shop and that black girl said you’d just left. I ran to catch up and I was lucky enough to see you walk through the front doors, so I hurried to catch you.”

“But why … ?”

“Come on, let me buy you a cup of coffee or something.”

“Mom, I have to go back to work.”

“The other girl said she’d watch the store. Really, Li wie, it’s important.” It had to be. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here. Bernadette inclined her head toward the front doors and Olivia walked into the square with her mother, a woman she barely knew, didn’t understand, and wasn’t sure she liked. As far as love went, well, that mother-daughter thing was a little nebulous. She felt the chill of the winter wind and it settled deep in her soul. As much as Olivia had wanted and tried for her mother’s approval as a child, disavowed it as a teenager, ached for it as a twenty-year-old, she now realized and accepted that Bernadette Dubois Benchet and whatever other names she’d tagged on, didn’t have the capacity to give nor, probably, receive unconditional love. It was a concept Bernadette just didn’t understand.

They found a café that served coffee and alcohol around the clock. A jazz man was seated in the corner, playing a guitar and harmonica simultaneously, his notes soulful. From the heart. Bernadette took off her hat and hung it, along with her jacket, over the top of the post separating the booths, then slid onto the bench opposite her daughter. In the flickering light from the hurricane lantern on the table, her long dark hair took on a burnished, coppery color. The sunglasses remained.

“How are you, Livvie?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“School going well?”

“As well as can be expected. How about you?”

Her mother’s smile was faint. “I suppose. I, uh, I know how close you were to your grandmother and I wonder how you’ve been doing since she’s been gone.”

“I miss her.”

“I know.” Bernadette nodded. “Believe it or not, I do, too. She was … a character. All that silliness with the tarot cards and mind reading or whatever it was.”

A waiter appeared and they ordered café au lait and beignets. “I don’t have much time.”

Bernadette nodded, rolled her lips over her teeth as if now, when she finally had Olivia’s attention, she wasn’t quite sure if she should confide in her. “What were you doing in the cathedral?”

“Looking around.”

“I don’t remember you as being particularly religious.”

“Maybe I’ve had a change of heart,” Olivia said as the waiter carried a wide tray to their booth. She didn’t elaborate as they were served. Only when the waiter had deposited their coffee and a basket of beignets covered in powdered sugar on the table did she ask, “What’s on your mind, Bernadette?”

Olivia’s mother took in a deep breath. Her fingernails tapped on the tabletop. “I heard from your father.” Her voice was a whisper, and tiny lines dared pinch the corners of her mouth.

The sperm donor. Great.
Olivia stiffened at the very thought of the man who had sired her. “Oh, yeah? What did he want?” She picked up her cup, took an experimental sip as the jazzman concluded his set, and several people clapped. “Let me guess. Money.”

“Well, that, too. There’s always that.” Bernadette picked up a pastry and tore it in two. “But this time there’s more. He wants to see you.”

Olivia nearly choked on a swallow. “Give me a break.”

“It’s true. He called last week sometime.”

“I thought he was still locked up,” Olivia said bitterly. That her father was a felon and that she hadn’t been told still bothered her. She’d found out from a “friend.” Connie Earnhardt had only been too happy to let it slip when they were in high school. Grannie Gin and Bernadette had thought it best to let Olivia think Reggie Benchet was in the Armed Forces somewhere on the far corners of the earth instead of in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Incarcerated for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and murder.

“He’s been out since the first of the year. He called me a few months ago. Jeb found out and there was hell to pay.” Her glossy lips turned down at the corners, and in the soft light Olivia noticed that her mother wore more makeup than usual, a thicker coating of base and powder, probably in deference to her age. As beautiful as she was, Bernadette couldn’t stop the footsteps of Father Time from marching across her skin and leaving footprints of wrinkles and age spots upon her face.

Picking at her beignet, Bernadette said, “Reggie disappeared again for a while, but now he’s back. He’s called three times in the last two weeks and he insists he wants to see you. You’re all he has left now.”

“Forget it.” Olivia shook her head, pushed her coffee aside. “He dumped you, me, and Chandra, killed someone, and ended up in prison, for God’s sake. He made a mess of his life. I’m not interested. Believe it or not, I’ve got my own life. There are things I’ve got to do.”

“So that’s why you were at St. Louis Cathedral?”