Neither door budged.

It was getting darker by the second, the room musty, dragging the breath from his lungs. He ran the beam of his flashlight over a worn chaise. Foam stuffing bloomed crazily from the frayed velvet that had once been ice blue and now was a dingy, dirty gray.

Bentz’s muscles tensed as he trained his small light on the bed, nothing more than a stained mattress on a rotting frame. It had been shoved into a corner beneath a broken stained-glass window, then forgotten.

Staring at the mess, cleaning it up in his brain, Bentz imagined what the room would have looked like nearly thirty years earlier. A time when Jennifer and James had first started their affair.

Don’t even go there, he warned, but couldn’t help imagining how the area would have looked. Surely a carpet would have covered the plank floors. The chaise, in a soft blue, would have been new and plump, the desk, a shiny rosewood antique. The bed would have been turned down and inviting, with smooth sheets and a cozy coverlet.

He thought there had been a desk chair, perhaps upholstered in the same blue as the chaise. He imagined a black cassock and clerical collar recklessly discarded over the chair’s back.

One fist clenched.

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.

Disbelief coursing through his veins, Bentz hurried to the stairway and raced downward. He shoved open the door and dashed across the porch and into the courtyard, his damned leg throbbing painfully. Heart pounding, he flew across the uneven flagstones. The toe of his shoe caught on the edge of a stone. He didn’t go down, but the twinge of pain slowed him.

He shot a glance to the edge of the courtyard, but it was empty.

No Jennifer.

Damn!

No woman, earthly or otherwise, stood in the silent, darkening enclosure. He turned, looking all around, cursing himself as he considered the fact that he’d conjured up her image, possibly caught a glimpse of the statue of St. Miguel. Had his willing mind transformed the broken statue into what he wanted to see? What he expected to witness?

Had it all been the power of suggestion?

No way!

His wildly pounding heart, accelerated pulse, and goose bumps on the back of his neck confirmed that the vision was very real. He dragged in deep breaths of the dry air and tried to think rationally, rein in his thoughts. Find sanity again.

Good God, he’d always been so rational…and now…now…Shit, what now? He shoved his hands through his hair, told himself to calm down. But as he did, he glanced up at the second story of the old inn. One of the balconies was different from the rest; its door hadn’t been barricaded.

Why?

A shadow moved within.

His eyes narrowed.

Was it a play of light, or a dark figure lurking in the shadows, hiding behind the tattered, gauzy curtains?

“Oh, hell,” he whispered. He took off again, forced his feet into a dead run. His bad leg was on fire, his breathing ragged as he leapt over the step and across the porch to the doorway of room twenty-one.

The door was ajar.

His heart nearly stopped.

He reached for his sidearm, but wasn’t wearing his shoulder holster. His pistol was locked in the glove box of the rental car.

He didn’t have time to run back for it. Take it easy. Slow down. Think this through. It could be a trap! Carefully, he pushed on the door.

Sweating crazily, he swung the beam of his flashlight over the rubble within. It was similar to the other room, squalid and neglected.

And smelling of gardenias.

What the hell?

Thud!

The sound of something falling in the room above reverberated through the living area.

He shot forward. Reminding himself that he might be walking into a trap, and that he should have brought his sidearm, he started up the stairs. He didn’t bother to test for rotten wood or broken railings, just hurried upward.

The smell of her perfume was stronger here. His throat tightened. On the landing he paused, feeling exposed, an open target. Back to the wall, heart pumping wildly, he shined the beam of his small light over the empty bedroom, then inched toward the closed door of the closet. He braced himself. Then flung the door open.

Empty.

What had he expected?

Sweating, swallowing back an unsettling fear, he zeroed in on the bath. One, two, three! He kicked the door open.

With a shriek and flap of frantic wings, an owl flew from his roost on an old towel bar and soared out the broken window.

Bentz’s knees nearly gave out. Jittery, he backed out of the room where feathers, dung, and pellets, the regurgitated undigested pieces of animals the owl coughed up, littered the floor.

Then he thought of the back stairs.

Damn!

Nerves tight, he backtracked to the upper hallway and heard the sounds of fast breathing and quick steps down on the first level.

Flinging himself over the rail, he half-stumbled down the stairs and cast his narrow light beam down the murky corridor.