“No.” Lucia swallowed hard. “Not in so many words, but I, um, saw them together a couple of times. You know . . . embracing . . . kissing. When they thought no one was looking.”

She avoided his eyes, embarrassed.

“And others saw them?”

“I suppose.” She lifted a shoulder, her body stiff. As if she wanted to jump out of her own skin. “They tried to be discreet, but, you know, there’s always someone around.”

“How did Sister Camille feel about her pregnancy?” Montoya asked.

“She was . . . scared, I guess. She said she didn’t know what she’d do but that she’d probably have to leave the convent.”

“But she was intent on having the baby?”

“What? Oh!” Her eyes grew round when she understood that he was asking about the possibility of Camille terminating the pregnancy. “Oh, she was absolutely going to have the baby and raise it. She wouldn’t do anything to stop it. I mean, no, oh, no way.” Lucia was shaking her head violently. Passionately. Now she wasn’t hedging. “Sister Camille was adopted herself, and she was all about finding her birth parents. She didn’t believe they were dead, I guess. Because of this baby and . . . Oh, no, she would never do anything to hurt it. She wanted to raise the child.” Lucia’s little chin lifted defiantly, as if she felt she needed to save her friend’s reputation.

“Did she pressure Father O’Toole?”

“I . . . I don’t know. She talked to him, but she didn’t really say anything other than that she told him she was going to have a baby. If you’re talking about asking him to leave the priesthood and marry her, I don’t know about anything like that.”

“How did he take the news of her pregnancy?” Montoya asked.

“She said he was upset.”

“How upset?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. You . . . you should probably ask him.”

“We will.”

“Look, he didn’t kill her,” she insisted. “He swore to me that he didn’t!”

“You asked him?”

“No, of course not. He just told me later.” She explained her conversation with the priest, but as she did, she seemed to shrink away, as if she knew she shouldn’t have blurted out anything, that somehow she was betraying both Camille and Father Frank.

Montoya realized he’d made a mistake by questioning her himself. Sister Lucia was intimidated. Nervous. Maybe because he was a man, probably because he looked so much like Cruz. There was a chance Lucia might have opened up more to a female officer.

He asked about a BlackBerry or cell phone.

“I don’t know about anything like that, but she did have a diary, I think, or maybe it was just a notebook,” Lucia admitted reluctantly.

A diary. Could be revealing . . . though Bentz hadn’t come across it when he searched Camille’s room.