Bentz was being a damned fool, off chasing the ghost of his dead ex-wife when he could be home, here, with his real, living, flesh-and-blood spouse. It just didn’t make sense. Bentz, usually pragmatic, was definitely not playing with a full deck. No doubt his near-death experience had messed with his mind. Big-time.
There wasn’t much traffic this time of night, but the lights of the city, revitalized since the hurricane, blazed, as he pulled into his driveway.
Pocketing his keys, he walked up the sidewalk and into his house, a double-wide shotgun that he’d been renovating when Hurricane Katrina had struck with all the vengeance of hell. God, the place had been a mess, though not hit as severely as some of the homes that were nearly obliterated. Still, the damage was enough that he hated the thought of another hurricane. He’d rebuilt, like so many others. His renovation plans included retaining as much of the original charm of his shoebox of a house as he could, while updating to accommodate his new family. Not only had he gained a wife in Abby, but she’d come with a skittish gray tabby named Ansel who hid beneath the furniture, and a happy-go-lucky chocolate lab, Hershey. The dog now danced at his feet, his tail wagging so wildly it swiped precariously at everything on the coffee table.
“Hey, boy,” he said while scratching behind the Lab’s ears. “Wanna go outside?” With a deep bark, Hershey raced him down the long hallway that bisected the house and led to the enclosed backyard.
Following Hershey, Montoya put in a call to Abby. She was a photographer and tonight she’d scheduled a late-night photo shoot in her studio outside the city.
The dog was running back and forth, a bundle of energy. “I get it, man,” Montoya told the dog, tossing a yellow tennis ball into the yard as he waited for Abby’s voice mail to kick in. Hershey took off at a dead run and found the ball in the darkness while Montoya left his wife a message. The big lab then galloped back and dropped the ball at Montoya’s feet. His tail wagged until Montoya snatched the ball up and tossed it so the dog could pounce on it again. Another throw and an equally quick retrieval, again and again. They played the game for nearly half an hour, the dog a bundle of energy, Montoya thinking about his ex-partner and Bentz’s emotional suicide mission to L.A.
What was the guy doing? Bentz’s first wife Jennifer had been no angel. And she was dead and buried. Fortunately. The way Montoya understood it, she’d been a bitch of a thing when she’d been alive. Bentz had divorced her, hadn’t he? Montoya had never met Jennifer but he’d heard from Bentz himself that she’d cheated on him, over and over again, even with Bentz’s damned half brother. A priest, no less.
“Bitch,” he said, throwing the ball into the air and watching the dog take off, nearly flying.
Ironically, Olivia had been attracted to that same man once, Father James McLaren, before she’d married Bentz. But she’d come to her senses and they’d been happy together.
Until recently.
Ever since Bentz had awakened from the damned coma, the one his daughter had insisted would take his life, he’d been a changed man. Remote. Almost haunted.
Montoya had chalked it up to inactivity; not being able to work, not having the strength to fight or walk on his own. Now Montoya wasn’t so certain. Maybe when a guy brushes up with death that closely, he comes back to life with a new, dark attitude. Because that was how it was. Rick Bentz had not returned to consciousness with a newfound appreciation for life, a revitalized joie de vivre. Nu-uh. None of that getting called to the light shit. No born-again Christian was Bentz.
Instead he’d awakened with an urgency to find his dead ex-wife, a bitch if there ever had been one.
Bentz was a good man who’d definitely gone around the bend.
It was all a flippin’ mess.
In Montoya’s opinion, Jennifer Bentz should bloody well stay dead.
Before driving to San Juan Capistrano, Bentz had done his homework. He’d searched the Internet as well as the public records of Orange County and the town of San Juan Capistrano, looking for anything relating to an inn or hotel dedicated to Saint Miguel or San Miguel. He’d thought Shana McIntyre might have been lying-jerking his chain. But no. He’d found reference and pictures of a small chapel that wasn’t a part of the larger mission.
He’d also found that Saint Miguel’s Church and grounds had been sold by the diocese in the early sixties and renovated into an inn. Over the past forty years it had been sold and resold. The latest transaction in the public records indicated that the inn had been purchased by a Japanese conglomerate eighteen months earlier and wasn’t open for business.
Using his G.P.S., he navigated the streets of the quaint, famous city. Gardens flourished and red tile roofs capped stucco buildings throughout the town. Twilight was settling in as he drove through the historic district where people window-shopped or dined outside at umbrella-covered tables.
Across the railroad tracks, Bentz drove several miles, angling away from the heart of the town and into an area that hadn’t flourished. He passed warehouses on the old San Miguel Boulevard and crossed a dry riverbed to a squalid dead-end street.
Although the rest of the town was charming and bustling with activity, this area felt tired and worn. FOR LEASE signs faded in empty storefront windows. He slowed as the old inn came up on his right, the lawn now thick with waist-high weeds, the stucco and brick exterior crumbled and tinged with soot. Apparently hard times had hit this part of the neighborhood.
Bentz turned his rental car around in an alley and parked in a pockmarked lot serving a strip mall that held a used bookstore, some kind of “gently used” clothing store, and a small mom-and-pop corner market going to seed. One of the shops, formerly a pizza joint, according to the signs, stood vacant. Now a FOR RENT sign with a local number was taped to the window.
The single business that seemed to be thriving was an adjacent tavern that advertised “Two For One” night on Tuesdays. A couple of beater pickups, a dirty van with the words WASH ME scraped into the dingy back panel, a dented red Saturn, and a silver Chevy with a faded parking pass were scattered sparsely on the broken, dusty asphalt. The aura of the neighborhood was gray, wrought with desolation and desperation, as if this little patch of the town were clinging to dreams of a bygone time.
From his car he viewed a few people on the street; a couple of kids were skateboarding on the cracked sidewalks and an older guy, in shorts and a broad-brimmed hat, was smoking a cigarette while walking his caramel-colored dog, a one-eyed pit bull mix who tugged on the leash. The dog lumbered along and sniffed the tufts of dry grass and wagged his stump of a tail any time the old guy so much as said a word.
Bentz climbed out, left his cane, but picked up a small flashlight and a pocket-sized kit of tools in case he needed to pick a lock. Hitting the remote to lock the Escape, Bentz walked back to the old inn where an ancient chain-link fence encircled the grounds. Barely legible, a NO TRESPASSING sign creaked in a slight breeze that kicked up the dust and pushed a torn plastic sack and a few dry leaves down the street.
He checked the gate.
Locked tight, of course.
Searching for a way inside, he hitched his way around the perimeter of the building while aiming the beam of his flashlight on the fence. He moved slowly, inching around the perimeter until he discovered a spot where the metal mesh had been torn. He slipped through. His arm brushed against the sharp broken links, his shirt tearing, his skin scraping. He barely noticed. His hip and knee were protesting as well, but he ignored the discomfort, intent on his mission.