Lisa Jackson - Malice

What was the guy doing? Bentz’s first wife Jennifer had been no angel. And she was dead and buried. Fortunately. The way Montoya understood it, she’d been a bitch of a thing when she’d been alive. Bentz had divorced her, hadn’t he? Montoya had never met Jennifer but he’d heard from Bentz himself that she’d cheated on him, over and over again, even with Bentz’s damned half brother. A priest, no less.

“Bitch,” he said, throwing the ball into the air and watching the dog take off, nearly flying.

Ironically, Olivia had been attracted to that same man once, Father James McLaren, before she’d married Bentz. But she’d come to her senses and they’d been happy together.

Until recently.

Ever since Bentz had awakened from the damned coma, the one his daughter had insisted would take his life, he’d been a changed man. Remote. Almost haunted.

Montoya had chalked it up to inactivity; not being able to work, not having the strength to fight or walk on his own. Now Montoya wasn’t so certain. Maybe when a guy brushes up with death that closely, he comes back to life with a new, dark attitude. Because that was how it was. Rick Bentz had not returned to consciousness with a newfound appreciation for life, a revitalized joie de vivre . Nu-uh. None of that getting called to the light shit. No born-again Christian was Bentz.

Instead he’d awakened with an urgency to find his dead ex-wife, a bitch if there ever had been one.

Bentz was a good man who’d definitely gone around the bend.

It was all a flippin’ mess.

In Montoya’s opinion, Jennifer Bentz should bloody well stay dead.

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.

From his car he viewed a few people on the street; a couple of kids were skateboarding on the cracked sidewalks and an older guy, in shorts and a broad-brimmed hat, was smoking a cigarette while walking his caramel-colored dog, a one-eyed pit bull mix who tugged on the leash. The dog lumbered along and sniffed the tufts of dry grass and wagged his stump of a tail any time the old guy so much as said a word.

Bentz climbed out, left his cane, but picked up a small flashlight and a pocket-sized kit of tools in case he needed to pick a lock. Hitting the remote to lock the Escape, Bentz walked back to the old inn where an ancient chain-link fence encircled the grounds. Barely legible, a NO TRESPASSING sign creaked in a slight breeze that kicked up the dust and pushed a torn plastic sack and a few dry leaves down the street.

He checked the gate.

Locked tight, of course.

Searching for a way inside, he hitched his way around the perimeter of the building while aiming the beam of his flashlight on the fence. He moved slowly, inching around the perimeter until he discovered a spot where the metal mesh had been torn. He slipped through. His arm brushed against the sharp broken links, his shirt tearing, his skin scraping. He barely noticed. His hip and knee were protesting as well, but he ignored the discomfort, intent on his mission.

Inside, he stared somberly at the crumbling, decrepit building. The bell tower was one of the few sections still intact. Most of the windows had been boarded over and tall weeds choked what had once been a lush yard and manicured grounds. Some of the roof tiles had slid off and splintered on the overgrown pathways and gardens. A fountain in the heart of the circular drive had gone dry; the statue of an angel poised to pour water from a vessel into a large pool, now decapitated and missing one wing.

This was the location of their trysts?

Their romantic rendezvous?

Narrowing his eyes as he stared at the run-down buildings, Bentz had a hard time turning back the clock, thinking about the old mission as it once had been with manicured lawns and gardens, stained-glass windows, and flowing fountains.

He stepped over a pile of debris and worked his way through rubble and brush to the ornately carved front doors. A rusting chain snaked through the handles, its lock securely in place.

To keep out the curious, the homeless, or looters.

Or a cop with too much time on his hands who might be obsessed with his dead ex-wife.

Ignoring the voice in his brain, he picked the lock and found his way through an archway into what had once been a courtyard, a square surrounded on all sides by the two-storied inn. Each long side was divided into individual units, complete with doorways on the ground level and balconies with boarded over French doors on the second. The courtyard was already in shadow, the gloom of evening seeping around the chipped and broken statue of St. Miguel as the sun sank low behind the bell tower.

So far, so good, Bentz thought.

The place seemed empty.

Lonely.

Walking along the portico, peering through a few dirty panes of the remaining windows, he nearly stepped on a rat that scurried quickly through a crack in the mortar.

Not Bentz’s idea of a romantic getaway.

At least not now, not in the inn’s current condition. The place was downright creepy, a great setting for a horror film. Testing each of the doors along the covered walkway, he felt the prickle of apprehension on the back of his neck.

All rooms were locked firmly.

Number seven, a corner suite, was no different. The number dangled precariously from the frame and looked ready to drop into the debris collecting on the porch.