He considered his half brother. Father James McClaren had been a handsome man with an altar-boy smile, strong jaw, and intense blue eyes that many women, not just Jennifer, had found seductive. There had been those, like his ex-wife, who loved the challenge of it all, the act of bringing a priest to his knees. Then there had been the frail or weak-willed who had turned to their priest in times of need only to be seduced by the unscrupulous James.

Self-righteous sinner.

Bentz could almost hear his half brother’s deep laugh, imagined the whisper of his footsteps on the bare floor. In this room, alone with Jennifer, James had probably stripped naked, then with her giggling and backing away, had followed her, kissed her, and begun undressing her.

Or had it been the other way around?

Had she, dressed in scanty lingerie, waited in the bed for him, listening for his footsteps, eyeing the door until he stepped into the room?

It didn’t matter. Either way, they’d ended up in bed, making love over and over again.

So much for the vow of chastity.

Odd, Bentz thought now as he played out the scene in his mind. Much of his anger and outrage had dissipated over time. That burning sense of betrayal had been reduced to dying embers.

It had been so many years.

And now there was Olivia.

His wife.

The woman he loved.

Dear God, why was he here when she was waiting for him in New Orleans?

There was nothing for him in California.

Jennifer was dead.

Yet, for just a split second, he smelled the scent of gardenias, a whiff of her perfume.

Yeah, right.

Then Jennifer’s voice came to him. The barest of whispers. “Why?” she asked and he knew it was all in his head.

Dear God, maybe he really was going off his nut.

He turned toward the French doors and in his mind’s eye he saw sunlight playing through the gauzy curtains. A bottle of champagne chilled in a bucket of ice on a bedside table while James and Jennifer rolled in the sheets and the bells of the chapel rang joyously…

Bong! Bong! Bong!

“Jesus!” Bentz jumped, snapped out of his reverie by the very real peal of church bells from a nearby parish.

Telling himself he was a dozen kinds of a fool, he shined the beam of his flashlight over the rubble and asked himself what he expected to accomplish by coming here. He’d found nothing concrete. Not one reason to believe that Jennifer was anything but dead.

Mentally berating himself, he walked to the French doors and peered through a slit in the boards covering the broken panes to the courtyard below.

His heart stopped.

Ice water slid through his veins.

Jennifer!

Or the spitting image of her.

Or her damned spirit, standing on the far side of the courtyard, caught in the long twilight shadow of the bell tower.