“Wouldn’t be surprised if the captain yanked you off the case,” Bentz thought aloud. “It’s not often an investigating officer knows the vic and one of the suspects as well as the person who found the body and reported the crime.” He nodded to himself. “Nah, the captain’s not gonna like it.”

“I don’t like it,” Montoya said.

“What about that Sister Lucy?”

“Lucia,” Montoya corrected, taking a corner too fast, tires screeching. He felt the weight of Bentz’s gaze, recognized the questions forming in his partner’s eyes.

God, what a mess. He couldn’t imagine Frank O’Toole as a murderer ; then again, he’d never have guessed the soccer star would end up a priest, even with the near-death experience of O’Toole’s sister.

Stranger things have happened.

“Guess you’ll have to ask him.” Montoya braked, allowing a slow-moving minivan filled with half a dozen kids to roll past. Balloons fluttered from the windows, catching the wind, delighting the grade-schoolers and causing ripples of giggles and squeals of laughter to rise from the van. After the noisy vehicle passed, he wheeled into the lot and pulled his car into a safe spot.

“The odd thing about this case is that it seems to center around you,” Bentz prodded, and straightened his leg, wincing a little from an injury that had once sidelined him while he worked a case in Baton Rouge, an injury that nearly cost his older daughter, Kristi, her life.

“There are lots of odd things about this case.” For the first time in months, Montoya craved a smoke. He’d given up the habit years before, but when things were tense, he found himself reaching into his pocket for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes.

The hell of it was that Bentz was right about the high school reference.

Montoya felt a weird sense of déjà vu, as if he’d been thrown back in time to take a long look at his own life, the images of his youth parading by like his own personal krewe at Mardi Gras.

He only hoped that no one else he knew turned up.

“I’m telling you, he was involved with her,” Sister Charity said angrily. So irritated she had to pace from one side of Father Paul’s small office to the other. Books lined the shelves, stained-glass windows filtered the light, and Paul sat behind a huge desk of dark mahogany. The wood shined so glossy that light reflected off it.

“We don’t know it for certain.”

“I’ve seen them!” Sister Charity was almost trembling she was so upset. “Discretion wasn’t one of Sister Camille’s strengths.” The headache behind her eyes began to pound. “And Father Frank . . . well, he just doesn’t understand the meaning of celibacy!” She had only to think of the other incident . . . Oh, dear Father. Righteousness burned deep in her soul.