Bentz’s jaw slid to the side and she knew she was getting to him. Good. The bastard deserved it for ignoring his wife, probably sending her to an early grave, and then showing up here on Shana’s doorstep out of the blue. He was sexy, though, in that earthy way she found fascinating, if a little dangerous. Rugged and tough…despite the fact that he was a cop. Shana leaned forward, making sure her robe gaped open a bit, displaying a hint of her perfect décolletage, her latest investment since her damned boobs had started going south sometime after thirty-five.
“So what did he do?”
“Father James?” she asked coyly, suddenly glad to get back at this bastard.
“Yeah. Him.”
“He was upset, of course. They had a couple of fights. He was…out of control.”
There was a slight tic in Bentz’s jaw. “You think he had something to do with her accident?”
“I…I wouldn’t say that,” she hedged, but then what had she known about a priest who had continually broken his vow to God and church? Hadn’t she asked herself that very same question? She decided to change the subject. “You know, that brother of yours, he was damned sexy and passionate. A problem, I think, since he happened to be a priest.” She fluttered her fingers. “That vow of celibacy tends to get in the way. It can be a real bummer.”
Bentz was silently seething and she loved it. She decided to push it a bit. “You know, they sometimes met up on the Santa Monica Pier, or somewhere around there. I believe that’s where they first really hooked up. On the beach maybe, not far from the amusement park.” She saw Bentz flinch and knew she’d hit a mark. Good. She went on. “Let’s see, and then…Jeez, what was it that she was always talking about?” she asked and noticed the tightening of the corners of Bentz’s mouth. “Oh, I know! This was a biggie for her for some reason. They used to meet at some inn at San Juan Capistrano, I think.”
He tensed even more, his eyes, behind his shades, squinting. “You know the name?”
“No, but I remember Jennifer saying it was part of an old mission. Not the main one that’s there. It’s a smaller church that was sold and remodeled into an inn.” She tried to recall the details. “Wait a sec. Didn’t she tell me they always stayed in room number seven? It was, like, their lucky number, or something.”
“Number seven?” he repeated tightly.
“Yeah, I think so, though why I remember that, I don’t know.” But suddenly a conversation she’d had with Jennifer after one of her trysts came back to her now. Jennifer’s eyes had been bright with mischief, her lips curved into an aren’t-I-naughty smile as she sipped a martini and spilled a few juicy details of her secret life. And the name of the motel in Capistrano? It floated to her, then away. So damned elusive. “I think the name of the inn was Mission San…San Michelle.” That didn’t sound right. What the hell was it? “No…no. Wait!” She snapped her fingers as it came to her. “Mission San Miguel, that was it! It was special to them. They’d been there the first time, you know, when she got pregnant and then again, when they restarted the affair.” She saw the revulsion that Bentz was trying so hard to mask and she felt a thrill of satisfaction.
The jerk deserved a dose of cold, hard reality. He was the reason Jennifer had been so messed up; his distance had forced her into the arms of another man. She leaned a bit closer and said in a throaty stage whisper, “It’s kind of ironic, don’t you think, being as Father James was a man of God and all. I guess he could sleep with Jennifer, break all kinds of vows, and then head on over to the confessional to cleanse his soul.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not Catholic, but that is how it works, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” He seemed to be making a mental note. “Any other place?”
“Oh, I think there was some little no-tell motel over on Figueroa, somewhere near USC, but I’m not really sure.” Maybe she was telling him too much. Maybe she should keep her mouth shut. Nothing she said would bring Jennifer back.
His jaw was set. Rock hard. Eyes as steady as his voice. The cop. Cold. Distant. Had seen it all. “Anything else you remember?”
“Only that she was sorry,” she said in a moment of bare, honest-to-the-bone truth. “For hurting you.”
He looked at Shana as if she were yanking his chain again.
Who could blame the guy?
“I’m serious, Rick. She loathed herself for what she referred to as ‘her curse,’ her need to throw away all that was good in her life. Yeah, she was self-centered and vain, but deep down there was a very good person. In her own weird way, Jennifer loved you. A lot.”
CHAPTER 9
That day Bentz saw Jennifer for the first time in L.A.
After leaving Shana’s Beverly Hills estate he’d driven southwest, deciding to find Figueroa Street and satisfy his own morbid curiosity.
He was still mentally digesting everything he’d learned from Shana, trying to cull the facts from the fiction, or at least from Shana’s very slanted view of things, as he wended his way through the early afternoon traffic. One thing was clear from his meeting with Shana McIntyre; the pictures of Jennifer had unsettled her. No way had Shana faked her reaction. That had to mean something.
And in her catty way she’d reminded him to check out Alan Gray, the man Jennifer had professed to love.
For a while.
A developer who had made his money in the seventies and eighties, long before the recently stalled economy, Alan Gray had been in and out of Jennifer’s life. Bentz reminded himself to look the mogul up and see what good old Alan was doing these days. He would be in his late fifties or early sixties by now, possibly retired.
Bentz would check.
Squinting against the bright sun, he flipped down his visor and spotted several motels that could well have been one of the spots where Jennifer and James had met for their trysts. Unfortunately, there would be no records to prove that any of the stucco-faced buildings had been the private spot where they had met.
And so what if they had?
It had been over twelve years.
In that span of time places had changed hands, old buildings torn down and new ones sprouting up. He was just about to turn toward Culver City when he caught a glimpse of a slim, dark-haired woman in a yellow sundress and dark glasses standing at a bus stop.
So what? he thought initially. But as he drove past, he saw her profile and his heart stopped. The nose and chin…the way she held her purse as she stood near a bench, her eyes trained down the street where the approaching bus lumbered and belched blue smoke. She lifted one hand to her forehead, shading her eyes even further.
Just as Jennifer had always done.
Shana’s words rushed back to him: “In her own weird way, Jennifer loved you.” He’d been stunned then and was still.
This is crazy, his mind warned. It’s not her. You know it’s not Jennifer. Power of suggestion, that’s all it is!
With one eye on his rearview mirror and the other trained ahead, he searched for a parking space as the bus slowed to a stop.
“Oh, hell.” Gunning his car into a parking lot for a strip mall he nosed his rental into the first available space, an area that warned that the lot was for customers only. The doors to the bus were open. Two teenaged boys plugged into iPods laughed and pushed each other as they hauled their skateboards onto the bus.
Bentz threw himself out of the car and hitched his way across the street.
She was gone.
The woman in the yellow dress was nowhere to be seen.
The doors of the bus closed and the driver turned on the flashers to signal that she was heading into traffic.
“No!” Bentz pushed into the street, his bad leg aching as he hobbled after the city vehicle. He reached the stop just as the bus rumbled noisily away.
Was she aboard?
As it pulled away from the curb, Bentz stared through the dusty windows. He scanned the face of every passenger he could see, but recognized no one. There wasn’t anyone remotely resembling his ex-wife.