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.