Maybe now, Val thought, her nightmares would finally fade.

As soon as Ignatia’s wheelchair was situated to her cranky specifications, Father Frank and Father Paul joined Father Thomas at the microphone. Enthusiastically, Thomas suggested everyone bid on the items that were on display at St. Elsinore’s, in the old gym. The donated items were incredible, everything from a trip for two to the Belvederes’ beach home in the Carolinas to a “one-of-a-kind” white grand piano donated by Arthur and Marion Wembley, lifelong citizens of New Orleans and members of St. Marguerite’s. The Wembleys he noted, were both orphans at St. Elsinore’s over eighty years earlier.

With that piece of inspiring information, he asked everyone to join him in prayer before dinner was served.

As soon as the last “amen” was whispered and most of the guests made hasty signs of the cross over their chests, the dinner service finally began.

Val had no appetite. She was too keyed up, her focus on what she had planned at the orphanage. This might be the only time she would be able to search St. Elsinore’s records, search for the information that had set Camille on her doomed path. While everyone was in the gym at the auction, Val would, with a little luck, sneak into the archives and find out just who the hell she really was.

Her identity, she felt certain, was connected to her sister’s murder; she just didn’t know how.

She pushed her shrimp and melon salad around on her plate. She felt as if she were being watched, every movement observed, but who, in this crowd of six or seven hundred people, was watching her? Scrutinizing her.

The hairs at the base of her scalp lifted, and she looked over her shoulder.

She saw no one singling her out.

But then, what better place to hide in plain sight but in a sea of unfamiliar faces?

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 49

From his position near a side door, Montoya surveyed the crowd in the hotel’s dining area. Over five hundred people, all dressed to the nines, all ready to open their wallets for the new orphanage, but no one he recognized as Father John.

A waiter passed, carrying a huge silver tray and rustling the fronds of a palm tree. A spiky leaf brushed against his face, and he shifted, moving a little closer to the front of the room, where he had a better view of the crowd.

And one of them, he thought, could be a killer.

Was the son of a bitch in their midst?

With enough plastic surgery to hide his identity?

Or disguised as what? The priest’s garb during his last killing spree would be a dead giveway. So, then . . . ? His gaze scraped the crowd.