“You know, Brounier, you can be a real douche bag.”

“I’m just saying we’re all busy.” Brounier tucked his newspaper under his arm and sauntered out of the lunchroom, muttering, “Pansy ass,” under his breath.

Brinkman called out, “I heard that!”

“Good.”

Brinkman snagged a second cupcake and motioned toward the box. “What’s the occasion anyway?”

“Peggy’s, in Missing Persons, birthday,” Del Albright said out of the corner of his mouth. He was leaning against the counter, perusing the Sports page. “Rita brought ’em in. You might want to save one for Peg.”

“Why?” Brinkman bit off half the cupcake and said around a mouthful, “She’s always on a diet.”

Montoya had had enough. He left the conversation behind and went to his desk to start reviewing files and double-checking the timeline for the last hours of Camille Renard’s life.

Her last twenty-fours hadn’t been that out of the ordinary. She’d spent most of her day at the convent, only going out for about six hours to where she worked in the orphanage in the preschool.

If she’d hooked up with O’Toole or any other man, she’d been discreet.

And she’d never sent the letter tucked inside her mattress. The lab was still processing that kinky bit of unsent correspondence. There had been a desperate, almost pleading tone in her demands for sexual favors.

Why the hell was she a nun? Montoya believed there might be some unfulfilled sexual needs in most members of the clergy. Hell, celibacy was a bitch. Abstinence nearly impossible.

People were sexual creatures.

To take a vow of celibacy, one’s convictions had to be so much stronger than natural animal attraction. He really believed most members of the Catholic clergy pulled it off. But there were a few who couldn’t.

Sister Camille was obviously one.

And she knew it, was thinking of leaving the order.

“Too late,” he whispered, caught up in the enigma that was Camille Renard.

He took a few calls while he waited for the autopsy report, but in the back of his mind, he wondered who the father of Camille’s baby was. A parishioner? Maybe a father of one of the kids she worked with? Or workers at the convent? Clifton Sharkey was the maintenance man for St. Marguerite’s, fifty-four, the father of six and a grandfather twice over. Elwin Zaan a forty-two-year-old janitor. Both with airtight alibis for the time of Camille’s death.