Pious Deception (31 page)

She felt around with her foot. A large dish on the floor was filled with burning coals and incense. The hot heavy smoke filled her mouth; she gagged and swallowed hard. Forcing back a cough, she listened for a footfall, a clearing of the throat, any human sound. Nothing.

Sliding her feet, she moved toward the next pew and came up against another dish on the floor. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, squatted, and looked down the pew. Nothing moved. How many of these dishes were there?

Giving up on the pews, she made her way to the small side altar opposite the one where Vanderhooven’s body had hung. There was one candle on it, smaller than those on the main altar. It stood so far back that its flame nearly licked the wall, and its light was enclosed by the altar pillars beside it. She peered at the altar. The paint on the statues was streaked with brown.

The fiery heat rose from the floor, reverberated off the walls. Her shirt stuck to her back. Her face felt as if it was about to crack.

Something shifted in the middle aisle.

Sweat rolled down her face. She gripped the candlestick and inched forward, avoiding the dishes of incense, stepping softly, listening. Another noise—a footstep. From the center aisle? Peering into the darkness, she tried to make out a figure, but the smoke was too thick.

“Bishop Dowd?” she called.

No answer.

She started through the pew toward the center aisle. Her foot smacked something hard—the kneeling bench. She lurched forward. The candlestick fell. It hit the floor with a resounding clang. She dropped down and searched for it frantically, but the candlestick was gone.

Ahead, feet hit the floor. Coming closer. She froze. The steps were clearer now; two or three pews away. She ducked down, grabbed the kneeler, and carefully folded it up out of the way. The footsteps were closer. Keeping down she inched forward. The center aisle was less than a yard away. She wanted to peer over the edge of the pew but didn’t dare, not this close. She reached the end of the pew. With her head not twelve inches from the floor, she peered into the aisle, just in time to see a leg disappear into the pew across the aisle.

She stood up and squinted into the dense smoke, but she could make out only a dim blur from the candle on the other side altar, the altar where Austin Vanderhooven died. The footsteps were moving toward it, away from her, moving faster.

She followed. For the first time she heard a low moan, coming from the altar. She moved closer. In the candlelight, she saw a dark form at the right end of the altar. Bishop Dowd! Blindfolded, he was standing on the altar, tottering at the edge, with his hands bound behind his back and a noose around his neck. She rushed toward him.

She heard the footsteps coming behind her just before she felt the blow on her head.

K
IERNAN FELL SIDEWAYS, OVER
the back of a pew. Her eyes shut against the pain of the blow. She could hear her assailant running off. Furious, she forced her eyes open, but it was too late to see a figure through the clouds of incense. Waves of pain washed through her head. “Can’t pass out!” a voice said. Smoke filled her nose and throat. Weakly, she coughed.

Another voice moaned.

Her eyes stung. She closed them and sank farther down into the pew. The sacristy door slammed.

Her stomach felt awful. She was going to throw up. She jammed her teeth together.

A gasp came from the altar. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked toward it. Miraculously, Bishop Dowd was still balanced on the edge. He looked as if he’d been drugged.

She lurched up and braced herself against the pew. “Don’t move! I’ll get you down!”

Dowd swayed forward. The rope went taut. He gagged. She shoved him back. “Keep your knees stiff!”

He swayed back from her push. His face was blank.

She pushed the candlestick to the far end of the altar, away from Dowd, grasped one of the columns, and pulled herself up onto the altar. Dowd swayed to the side. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Don’t move a muscle!” Releasing his arm, she loosened the noose and lifted the rope over his head. He swayed again, more violently. She caught him, this time around the chest, and pulled back. His knees buckled; he slid down till his feet slipped off the edge of the altar. Momentarily, he balanced sitting on the edge, then slid to the floor.

She jumped down beside him; the pain exploded in her head. Her legs gave way; she fell forward and lay on the floor until she could breathe again.

Dowd lay groaning at the foot of the altar. Slowly, she knelt to untie his hands. The light glinted off something shiny on the floor next to him. Kiernan reached for it—a tiny bottle, an airline liquor bottle, like the ones that littered Joe Zekk’s house. She stared at it, enraged.

Dowd moaned. Kiernan turned back to him, coaxing him into a sitting position with his back against the altar. He coughed, wiped ineffectually at his eyes, and coughed again.

Finally, she got him standing unsteadily and half-walked, half-dragged him out of the smoke-filled church. The fresh air outside revived him briefly. He walked, mostly under his own power, to the rectory and, as if finding safety on Vanderhooven’s couch, he sighed and passed out.

“Damn!” she muttered. The man was breathing, his color was as good as could be expected under the circumstances, his pulse was reasonable. “Lucky not to have a heart attack.” Sighing, she dialed 911, wishing there were a way to call an ambulance and the fire department without alerting the sheriff.

The medics arrived moments before the first fire engine. She passed on the essential information. As they clustered around the bishop, she edged out of the room and across the hallway to the kitchen. Outside a siren shrieked and died. The medics wheeled Dowd along the hallway and out the front door. Kiernan raced out the back, let herself out the gate, and walked quickly down the alley. When she reached the street she slowed her pace and joined the gaggle of neighbors already heading toward the front of the church.

All the windows of the church were open now. Firemen scurried back and forth. Kiernan slithered along behind the onlookers, away from the church, hurried across the street to the Jeep, and drove slowly out of Azure Acres Homes.

Her head throbbed. It was going to take more than Alka-Seltzers this time. Goddammit, Joe Zekk would not get away again. He had half an hour’s lead. But he wouldn’t be expecting her to follow him. He’d be home, rooting through his piles of stuff, yanking out this and that to take with him. If he pictured her at all, it would be in the hospital battling the effects of smoke inhalation. Or in the morgue.

It was already after four
A.M.
Begrudging the time it took, she stopped at the first gas station, filled the tank, the spare can, and the water bottle. Next door, at the 7-11, she downed four Alka-Seltzers and picked up a couple sandwiches; she climbed back in the Jeep and headed onto the Pima Freeway.

For once the freeway was nearly empty. Only a few red taillights dotted the blackness ahead. The seemingly endless sky was thickly splattered with specks of white. As she veered onto the Superstition Freeway the streaky white of headlights was visible across the divider. The cool night air brushed her face and neck, but it did nothing to cool her anger. She squeezed the steering wheel harder and thought of Joe Zekk.

The whole operation would have been so easy for him. He was virtually a sentry for the town of Rattlesnake. He must have seen Austin Vanderhooven go down there two weeks ago, when John McKinley gave him the instructions for his new will. Then Zekk would have seen Vanderhooven go down that winding road on Saturday—eight days ago now—with the will itself. Had Austin been frustrated and angry when he came back up empty-handed? A four-hour drive for nothing? Had he been angry enough to complain to Joe Zekk? Had he told him about the will but stopped short of telling him where it was? And had Zekk realized the money-making possibilities in murdering Vanderhooven and possessing that new will?

Night was just beginning to fade as she started the climb into the mountains. The sharp hills and craggy peaks seemed to suck the black into themselves; they stood ominous against the paling sky. The stars that had crowded the dark expanse minutes earlier had faded to invisibility against its dark gray.

With the will unrecorded, and John McKinley dead, the retreat was still viable. Had Zekk offered that hope to Bishop Dowd? Planned to sell him the will?

Already the sky was lighter, no longer a battleship gray but a pale gray. The crags had lost their sharp points and gone fuzzy, as if they were covered with velvet.

Sylvia Necri? As a buyer for the will? Or a full-fledged accomplice? When he sabotaged the retreat, Vanderhooven had snatched away her professional chance of a lifetime. The retreat meant at least as much to her as it did to Dowd.

A jolt drew Kiernan’s attention back to the road. Both hands on the wheel, she eyed the straight strip ahead and then let her gaze rise back up to include cloudless expanse above. As she watched, the color of the sky shifted from gray to beige. The road curved to the left; paloverde trees and ocotillo crowded near the sides. She passed jojoba bushes and the squat barrel cacti with their bright orange flowers.

Bud Warren? The longer the church or Sylvia Necri controlled the water rights, the better off he was. He needed three years to show off his process. Kiernan could picture him buying the will. She could see him shrugging off the murder if he thought he could get away with it. But she couldn’t see him as a co-planner. The vicious sexual humiliation involved in Vanderhooven’s murder reeked of revenge. Bud Warren had no reason for seeking revenge. That kind of revenge fit Sylvia Necri. Or Beth Landau.

Beth Landau. She had the Culiacán. She was the only one likely to know the significance of that liqueur. The peace-offering ritual was not something the closed-mouthed Vanderhooven would have told anyone. And she had the revenge motive in spades. But she gained nothing financially.

“Damn!” Kiernan muttered. “Nothing quite fits.”

Over the top of the hills a strip of orange sun poked up. Sprays of blinding yellow turned the hillside gold and caramel and brown. Without thinking, Kiernan slowed down. Beams of light glistened off the tops of the paloverdes and the saguaro cacti like stars on a Christmas tree. And then the sun rose quickly and poured light over crest of the mountains. The trees and jutting rocks reclaimed their shapes, the sepia tones vanished from the landscape, and the mesquite and the paloverde trees stood pale green in the golden mist of morning.

She shook her head sharply to break the spell. It was easy to see how the high desert seduced people. Just as easy to see how those people drove their Jeeps off the road.

The metal Z that marked Joe Zekk’s road came up on the right. She turned onto the unpaved road, driving too fast for even the Jeep’s suspension. What had Zekk said to Dowd at nine-thirty last night to lure the bishop to Mission San Leo? Had he threatened to expose his part in the Rattlesnake massacre? Or had he lied and told him he had the will?

The mesa came into sight. Zekk’s house sat, castlelike, on the edge. At the far end of the mesa she could see the small round rise of Vanderhooven’s dome, and from this angle, that giant forearm and fist of rock that hung over the end of the valley.

She looked back at Zekk’s house. The land in front was empty. Zekk’s green panel truck was gone.

“Damn! Oh, hell! Damn, damn, damn!” She pounded her fist against the steering wheel. She slammed on the brakes and stared at the offending building, then rolled the Jeep forward and parked in front of the house.

If Joe Zekk wasn’t here, at least his house could be useful. She grabbed her water bottle, extricated Austin Vanderhooven’s keys, and headed in through the kitchen door.

The vaguely sweet smell she had noticed yesterday was stronger now. Was it from the sticky soda cans on the counter?

The kitchen looked no different than it had yesterday afternoon. The potential avalanche of dishes in the sink seemed just as precarious, the pile on the counter just as architecturally amazing. She pulled open the refrigerator door and found the contents unchanged: beer, soda, butter, a raw steak—nothing that smelled.

She walked slowly through the living room. It, too, looked as bad as the previous day. As bad, but not lots worse, as it would if Zekk had rooted through the piles for things he wanted to take with him.

Disgusted, she checked the dresser and the closet. No empty drawers or hangers. In the bathroom the medicine cabinet appeared untouched. A dry toothbrush hung in its holder.

She walked back to the kitchen, looked at the sink once more, and edged her water bottle in under the tap.

Zekk’s truck was gone, but none of his things appeared to be missing. Or was he gone?

Of course, Zekk hadn’t left for good. What he had to sell was McKinley’s new will. And that was at the bottom of the hill in Rattlesnake. Zekk wouldn’t leave without it.

But how could he get it? The McKinleys were hardly about to let him wander down the switchback road. They had shot at her yesterday; they would shoot at Zekk today. He would never get near the will.

If Zekk planned to steal the will, he would have to wait till after dark. And be very clever, very quiet, and very, very lucky.

K
IERNAN PULLED THE
Jeep against the west side of Zekk’s house and settled in the shade to wait for his return. She ate a sandwich, kept an eye on the switchback road, watching for angry McKinleys, and reviled Joe Zekk for keeping a house that smelled too bad for her to wait in. From time to time she found herself catnapping. Every couple of hours she ventured in to the bathroom. Twice she swallowed more Alka-Seltzer. By noon she had reconsidered her premise about Zekk a dozen times. Maybe Zekk would not return after all. Maybe he had abandoned the will and fled. He could be in L.A. by now. Maybe she was sweating in the middle of the desert for nothing. She considered walking down to the dome. But the last time she had been in there it had been almost as hot inside as out. Instead, she doused herself in water and refilled the bottle. The Rattlesnake River looked tantalizingly cool below. By three in the afternoon she was ready to admit that the day had been wasted. Zekk had to come back to Rattlesnake at night, but there was no reason to assume he would return before then.