Pious Deception (28 page)

Austin Vanderhooven, the man, was still an enigma. The obsessive monk she could understand. The man who couldn’t give up his lover she could reconcile with that picture. She could even imagine Vanderhooven bringing Beth to his dome, combining his passions. And then there was the retreat. Vanderhooven the financial wunderkind, the fund-raiser, who planned what sounded like the biggest Catholic gathering-spot in the country. He would wield immense influence once it was built. How did Vanderhooven the monk fit with Vanderhooven the host? Why could she not merge the two aspects of him into one picture?

Momentarily the sun burst through the clouds and illumined an undisturbed peak that drew in sharply from a broad base to a tall obelisklike pinnacle. It echoed the lines of Joe Zekk’s house. Or more accurately, Kiernan thought, Austin Vanderhooven had had the house designed to echo the lines of that peak. And that peak, of course, would be the site on which he planned to build the great retreat. It was half a mile behind Hohokam Lodge.

In contrast to that peak, Hohokam’s mound seemed as squat as the chollas, as did the lodge itself. Behind it a little girl hung face down over a swing, moving lackadaisically back and forth despite the increasing wind. Kiernan noticed a young woman—was she the one in Beth’s office yesterday? But no, that woman had had toddlers. This one carried an infant. Kiernan slowed the Jeep, looking for Patsy Luca. Patsy should have called Stu Wiggins last night. She hadn’t. Stu hadn’t hidden his concern. Patsy was reliable, he had assured Kiernan. Things happen, they had agreed. Still, a glimpse of Patsy would have been comforting.

She pulled up behind a van and got out. She climbed the three steps to the door. Before she could knock, it opened.

Beth Landau’s freckled face tightened in anger. She kept her hand on the door. “You! What are you doing here? How did you find this place?”

Kiernan laughed. “I am an investigator.”

“Well, go investig—”

“And I know about you and Austin’s dome. I don’t expect the contributors to the shelter would be pleased to hear about that.”

“That’s blackmail, isn’t it?”

Kiernan laughed again. “Merely the threat of blackmail.” Then she sighed. “You want Austin’s killer caught. I want the same thing. Can we do it with a little less drama? I’ve had a hard day with the inhospitable McKinleys in Rattlesnake. And with Joe Zekk,” she added, watching Beth’s reaction. “I could use a sane conversation.”

Beth stood fingering the collar of her Florida shirt. She had it tied at the waist, exposing a brown triangle of skin above denim shorts. Her arms and legs were deeply tanned, and the freckles across her cheeks looked like a spray of chocolate. She stepped back abruptly. “Come in, for now.”

After Zekk’s house, the main room of Hohokam Lodge, with its blanket-and-toy-strewn floor, looked merely homey, a comfortable place to end this long, hot, exhausting day. She flopped down on the end of a flowered couch. “Are all your guests outside?”

Beth sank onto the other end. “Not all of them. Look, I’ve let you in but this isn’t a social visit.”

Kiernan forced herself
not
to straighten up. “Fine,” she said. “Let me start by telling you what I’ve discovered about Austin and the retreat and the shoot-out.” She summarized Zekk’s comments, barely finishing before Beth laughed.

“And there,” Beth said, “you’ve got Austin Vanderhooven’s character in a nutshell. He knew the holy Roman Catholic Church was behind a massacre—”

“I didn’t say they orchestrated it.”

“But they condoned it,” Beth insisted. “Same thing. And Austin knew and chose not to do anything. And you know why? Because of his high-powered Catholic retreat and monastery out here. Every person in the state of Arizona could have been killed and Austin would have walked over their graves to break ground for his place.”

For Kiernan, the exhaustion of the day vanished. She loved this part of an investigation, when things came together. “Beth, you said retreat
and
monastery. Was he planning to build a monastery out here, too? A monastery where he was in charge?”
That
made more sense with what she knew of Austin Vanderhooven.

“You got it, or part of it,” Beth said. “Let me tell you how outlandish his plans were. He wanted to build a monastery with the retreat to support it. He figured he’d have to put up with the bigwigs only a few times a year. The rest of the time he could board himself up in the monastery and unearth the Truth. And yet”—she drew her legs up under her—“he wanted to hedge his bets, in case there really was no Truth.” She leaned forward, digging her elbows into her thighs. “Listen, this is how out-of-touch Austin was. What he suggested was that we, the women’s refuge, could stay here at Hohokam. He would build the retreat up on the hill back there, and the monastery on the far side. Then the refuge would be the monastery’s charity. Can you believe that?” She uncrossed her legs and smacked her feet to the floor. “I mean, the man missed the point all around. How many times did I tell him that the key thing about a refuge is that its location is secret? A
secret
, and he’s planning to build a retreat next door to lure hotshots from all over the country!”

“How did Austin respond when you told him that?”

Beth pulled her legs back up under her.

No wonder the couch is so threadbare, Kiernan thought. If Beth were any more indignant, we’d be sitting on bare springs.

“Austin reacted like he always did,” Beth said. Her foot was already twitching toward its next move. “He shoved the argument aside. He said he’d work it out. Like he was God. He just couldn’t let the facts get in his way. He told me it would be a good opportunity for me to meet wealthy men. He said he’d introduce me to ones likely to take an interest in me. Like I was some kind of on-campus whore!”

“And you said …?”

“I told him he had the makings of a fucking, or more to the point a nonfucking, voyeur. But that was a mistake. Austin ate it up when I got angry and used ‘unpriestly’ words.”

The windows rattled in the breeze. Kiernan shifted, turning toward Beth. She said, “Austin had financing for his retreat, right?”

“Oh yeah. Austin had connections, and one thing he never forgot was how to use them.”

Beth’s face was still pinched with anger, but her anger was focused on Vanderhooven now, Kiernan thought, not on herself. As she had the day before, Beth was spitting out something on which she had chewed till it made her sick. And there was no one she could tell but Kiernan. Kiernan said, “So it would have been no big deal for Austin to build a monastery too.”

“He didn’t seem to think so. Not that that’s proof. But I can’t see why it would be a problem. The retreat was to draw Catholic men, Kennedy types. As long as Austin wasn’t planning to have the monastery encroach on the putting green or the sauna, or the bar, there’d be no problem.”

“So then, the only problem was this, the women’s refuge. Why didn’t he just evict you?”

“Well, he did eventually. When they set a date to break ground, we go, if we don’t find another place before that. Just as well—this place was a mistake. It’s too hot, too isolated. We’ve had a prowler on and off, or maybe Peeping Tom is a better description. These women have made the hardest decision of their lives; they need, they
deserve
, a safe house that’s safer than this.”

Kiernan leaned forward. “You want out of here; your guests want out; the refuge was a roadblock in Austin’s plans. Why did he keep the refuge here this long?”

Beth swiveled and smacked her feet to the floor. “I thought I made that clear to you. You know, you’re just like Austin.” She got up and paced toward the windows, hitting the floor with heavy staccato steps. At the window she turned and started back toward Kiernan. “I think I’ve gotten through to you. I think you really see something, and then I realize I might as well be explaining to this—” She reached down and grabbed a small, fuzzy panda off a chair. “You don’t get it any more than Austin did. He wanted the refuge here because
I’m
in charge of the refuge. He wanted the monastery to run it so he could have an excuse to come by here.” Angrily she propped a foot on the sofa arm.

“Because you were still sleeping with him,” Kiernan said. She held up a palm. “Don’t waste time denying it. I know about his dome over by Zekk’s. You may have slid by Zekk when you met Austin in there but not by the local teenagers. I’ve got a kid who can describe the strap marks on your back and the curve of your butt.”

Beth flushed. Her toes curled against the frayed sofa arm and she laughed—hard, humorless waves of sound that left her increasingly breathless and gagging. “You know, Austin would have loved that. He would have spent nights fantasizing. And more nights flagellating himself for his fantasies. How many times do I have to tell you that there was nothing physical between Austin and me? Nothing! I made a mistake accepting his help. He wanted power over me, like a possession he’d lost control of. And he wanted to be sure that I had no power over him, that he could dismiss me at any moment.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Sure it sounds ridiculous. But that’s how Austin was, all or nothing. You only have power if you have no attachment, he said. He needed to prove to himself that he had no attachment to me.”

Kiernan shook her head in disgust. “Beth! The teenager saw you in the dome!”

She laughed, more normally now. “Yeah, he did all right. Me. But not Austin. You know Austin’s not the only man in the world.
I
didn’t take a vow of celibacy when he chose the monastery.”

Kiernan sighed, this time in disgust with herself.

Beth laughed harder. “Jumped to a conclusion, huh? Lots of pitfalls for you hotshot detectives.”

Kiernan bit back a retort. In the back of the house a door banged. Women’s and children’s voices mingled. The refrigerator door slammed, then slammed again. A gust of wind rattled the windows, and dirt blew in under the front door. “Beth,” Kiernan said, “you may have been sleeping with someone else. But to do it in Austin’s dome, his private monastery, you can’t tell me there isn’t a little revenge involved in that.”

Beth grinned. “Better believe it! From the moment I got the idea of using it, I loved it. I loved every moment of every hour there. I loved feeling a man’s hard body on mine while I looked at Austin’s altar. I loved the whole idea of using Austin’s little prayer dome with the pink glass window like a cheap motel.”

Austin’s little prayer dome with the pink glass window,
she’d heard those words before. To Beth she said, “It couldn’t have been easy sneaking past Joe Zekk. Or was Joe Zekk in there with you?”

She glared down at Kiernan. “Zekk! That slime! I wouldn’t be in the same room with that revolting creep.”

“Were
you
paying him too?”

“Paying him! Hell, no. But Austin was, huh? I knew it!”

“What was he paying him for?”

“To spy on me. What else?” Beth began to pace again. In the kitchen, the refrigerator door slammed again, a pan clanged. At the windows Beth spun on the ball of her foot and started back. Her brow was wrinkled, her hands on her hips. She seemed oblivious to the clatter of the windows and the sounds from the kitchen. “Who do you think it was sneaking around here week after week, peeping in the windows? Once he even broke in. And last night, you know what the goddamn fucking slime did?”

“What?”

“He hired some floozy to pretend she needed my help.” Beth smacked the sofa arm. “But I’ll tell you one thing: She’ll think twice before she tries something like that again.”

Kiernan let out her breath, slowly. “Where is she?”

Beth’s mouth dropped open. “You! It was you. I can’t believe it. I thought only Joe Zekk would be slime enough to hire that woman—”

“Where is she!”

“I found her in my office in the middle of the night. I made damned sure she wouldn’t be any more trouble. Follow me. She’s all yours.”

Beth stalked to the storeroom, took out a set of keys, and unlocked the deadbolt and the door.

There was barely room between the gray metal shelves for the flimsy cot. Lying on it, Patsy Luca looked like an illustration from a text on jaundice. No hint of tan remained on her sallow, sweaty skin. Her blond hair stuck to her scalp in gooey clumps. Her eyes appeared to be glued closed.

Kiernan put a hand on Patsy’s arm. “My God, Patsy. What happened?”

Before she could answer, Beth said, “She seemed so interested in a bottle of liqueur of mine that I had her drink the whole thing. Very sweet it was, right, Patsy?”

Patsy groaned. “Damned eight-sided—”

“Eight-sided?” Kiernan exclaimed. “Was the bottle about three inches wide?”

Patsy groaned again, but this time added the smallest of affirmative nods.

“Did it look like this?” From her purse, she extracted a copy of the stain on Vanderhooven’s blotter.

Patsy’s eyes opened. “In the trash, there.” She rolled over and plucked the bottle from a wicker basket.

Kiernan held it against the copy of the stain. “Perfect fit.” To Beth she said, “Culiacán, the peace offering you and Austin had. When did you get this?”

“A year ago.”

Patsy sat up, lowered her feet to the floor, and groaned once more. Wind smacked the window behind her. “I found more than that,” she said, with the merest suggestion of a smile. “I found a stack of love letters. From Vanderhooven. Hot stuff, huh, Beth? Latest was four years ago, and things had cooled down a lot by then.”

“But you kept them, Beth?” Kiernan asked. “His ardor cooled, but you kept his letters. That doesn’t sound like disinterest.”

“What business is it of … Oh, hell! I started to burn them probably twenty times. Once I had the match lit. Look, I never said I had no emotional attachment to Austin. But it wasn’t love anymore. I just needed to get to the point where I could read one of those letters and have it mean nothing.”

“So you could prove you weren’t attached to him?” Kiernan said. “And have the power?”

Beth started to retort, then appeared to think better of it. Slowly, Patsy pushed herself up and stood, balancing her shaky body against the cot. Then she walked slowly into the hall and leaned against the wall.