He wore casual superiority so well.
His steel-gray eyes gleamed with sinister intent as a self-satisfied smile played across his lips.
Gmork? Or Søren?
“He’s a dog,” she said. “He’ll be fine.”
Chapter Thirty
Cyrus had the pleasure of waking up in bed next to Paulina, a pleasure he thought he’d have to wait for until November. Even better, there was no morning-after awkwardness between them. That was a relief.
Still, she kicked him right out of her house.
“I gotta go?” he asked, still sleepy. It was just after six. They’d only spent a few minutes awake, enjoying the closeness.
“Right this second,” she said. “I have to get ready for work and if you say one more thing to me, I’ll call in and never forgive myself.”
“Bu—”
That was as much backtalk as she allowed him. She pointed at her bedroom door, and he knew she meant business.
Cyrus dragged himself away from her warm soft bed and her warm soft body and yanked his jeans on. He found his shirt in the hallway and under it, her pink panties. He brought them back to her and when she tried to snatch them from his hand, he pulled them back and tucked them in his pocket.
“Cyrus!”
“Catch me if you can,” he said, running out the door, waving her stolen underwear like a flag.
He’d been up for four hours by the time Nora called him. Good thing her Viking had been there or Cyrus might have let it slip that he’d had a very good night after leaving her. Paulina might not appreciate him spilling their business all over town.
But a man had a right to smile. Cyrus found himself grinning like a fool even as he drove back to his apartment, grinning like a fool as he walked up the stairs, grinning like a fool in the shower. He was still grinning like a fool when Nora’s Viking got on the phone and asked him to go running the next morning.
Cyrus ran about three miles a morning five times a week. And he was thirty-five. Nora’s Viking was fifty-one. Tall, though, with a longer stride than Cyrus…but fifty-one. He heard Nora’s voice in the background, yelling, “It’s a trap!”
Cyrus could handle himself with a fifty-one-year-old runner. He might be a Viking, but Usain Bolt he was not.
It sounded like Nora was off the case for today, however, bare minimum. And that was fine. Cyrus was happy to spend a day alone working on the case between having flashbacks from last night with Paulina. He’d taken care of a very insistent erection in the shower, but every time he thought about the way she looked and the way she smelled and the way she tasted and that sound she made when she came against his tongue, well, this was gonna be a two-shower day for sure.
In the meantime, he forced himself to focus on the case.
He had an entire shoebox full of Father Ike’s credit card receipts and bank statements to go through, which he’d been putting off since Sunday. Nothing for it but to brew a pot of coffee, get out his yellow highlighter and his laptop, sit down at the kitchen table and get to digging.
First thing he found—Father Ike did have money. He wasn’t a billionaire, but he’d died with ten thousand in his checking and eighty-eight thousand in savings. Not to mention a 401K with a little over a half a million in it. Of course, if he hadn’t died, that half a million would’ve had to last him for his entire retirement. With people living longer these days, that could have been twenty years or more. Except instead of retiring to a condo in Boca, Father Ike had eaten a bullet. Personally, Cyrus would have taken Boca.
Very quickly, Cyrus figured out how a man making a priest’s salary had that much money. Living expenses for a priest were pretty low. He owned his own car, but it was paid off. Insurance? Eighty bucks a month. His credit card bills showed charges for gas, for a few dinners at some mid-price restaurants, tickets to a Hornets game…nothing crazy, nothing wild, nothing out of place. Cyrus had most of the same charges on his card.
There was only one large charge.
From August, $4200 to something billed as “HAFH.com.” There was a ten-digit number next to it.
Cyrus opened his laptop, and searched “HAFH” in Google. No way was he going direct to some creepy kink website without checking it out first.
Praise the Lord. HAFH stood for “Home Away from Home.” A house rental website, like Airbnb.
He clicked through to the website. It specialized in long-term rentals. Not for weekenders, but for people who rented secondary residences for months at a time. Vacation homes for people who could afford long vacations.
Cyrus entered the number from the card statement into the search box. It took him to a one-bedroom cottage on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Cyrus flipped through the photographs of the house. Not bad. He and Paulina might have rented a place like that for their honeymoon. A little yellow beach cottage on stilts with a white wraparound porch, white front door, small galley kitchen, and a great big bedroom with a king-sized bed that looked out onto the water.
Cyrus noted the bed frame was metal with vertical bars on the headboard and footboard. Nora had called it a “bondage bed.”
All right. So Father Ike had rented a romantic one-bedroom vacation house on romantic Grand Isle. But when?
According to the website, the house was booked solid from September twenty-first to the end of the year. With rental rates of $5000 a month in the off-season, that $4200 had to be the deposit Father Ike paid on a long stay.
Cyrus sat back in his kitchen chair, sipped his coffee. It had cooled while he was working. Furthest thing from his mind right now, though.
Let’s say Father Ike was about to spend a few months in a beautiful beach house. He would have told a few people, wouldn’t he? Why not brag a little about getting laid in paradise? But that’s what Cyrus would do. God knows that’s what Nora would do. But is that what Father Ike would have done?
Priests were supposed to be humble. They weren’t. Cyrus knew that for a fact. Father Ike never struck him as a show-off or a blowhard, however. Really, he seemed a quiet, responsible sort of man. Maybe a quiet, responsible sort of man wouldn’t brag, but he’d request time off. At least warn Sister Margaret he was planning to be gone for such a lengthy time.
Cyrus called Sister Margaret. She answered on the third ring.
“Any news?” That was her hello. Poor lady, he didn’t know what to tell her.
“Still looking, Sister.”
“Well…I understand it might take some time. Isaac’s sister is arriving tonight. I’m picking her up at the airport. Will you be at the funeral?”
“When is it?”
“Saturday at St. Valentine’s.”
“I’ll try. Look, this is kind of a weird question, but did Father Ike mention anything to you about taking a long trip to Grand Isle?”
“Grand Isle? Oh yes, he went there a couple weeks every June. Soon as school was out.”
“What about soon? Like before the end of the year?”
“He wouldn’t take a trip in fall. He had to work. Why?”
“He paid a deposit on a house on Grand Isle. But I don’t know when his reservation was.”
“Maybe the owner of the house will tell you, if you let them know it’s an emergency.”
“That’s a good idea. Thank you, Sister.” Before he hung up, Cyrus decided to ask one more question. “Did Father Ike go to Grand Isle alone on his vacations?”
“As far as I know. He talked about how much he liked the peace and quiet of going down there.”
“Do you know where he stayed?”
“I have the address somewhere. In case of emergency. I’ll try to find it and get it to you.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you, Sister. I’ll call again when I know something.”
“Mr. Tremont, you said Ike paid a deposit on a place on Grand Isle?”
“Yes, Sister. A big one.”
“The place he stayed in the past, it’s owned by a member of the parish. Ike paid for the place by check.”
“Y
ou sure?”
“I’m certain. A very devout family owns the place and offers it to clergy at a decent rate. A sort of ministry of theirs.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus said, “I’ll definitely need that info.”
“I’ll get it for you right away.”
A few minutes later, Sister Margaret called back with the address. Cyrus jotted it down along with the name and phone number of the people who owned it.
As soon as he got done speaking with Sister Margaret, he called the owners of the house. Since nobody answered their phones anymore, he had to leave a voicemail message. Not wanting to tip his hand, Cyrus lied and said he had heard from a friend at St. Valentine’s that their Grand Isle vacation home might be available for rent.
Since he’d posed as a potential customer, the owner called him back immediately. A man, a Robert Hill, said the house was available for most of October and all of November. December was booked, however. Cyrus pretended to take the dates and prices down and promised to call Hill back.
So. What did that tell Cyrus? He could only guess at Father Ike’s motivations, but, as a detective, half of his job was guesswork. Father Ike had a place he could’ve rented pretty cheap, cheap compared to the Honeymoon Cottage he did rent. So why rent that place instead of his usual place? Maybe Father Ike wanted to go back to Grand Isle, but for some reason, he didn’t want anyone to know exactly where he was on Grand Isle. But if he didn’t want anyone to know where he was…why go back to a place he’d visited before?
Because there was something there he wanted to see again?
Something? Or someone?
Someone…yeah, maybe someone was there. Maybe someone he’d met in June when he’d gone there for his vacation.
Cyrus turned that over in his mind.
June. Father Ike heads down to Grand Isle for a three-week vacation. He’s been there before. Only wants some R and R. But. Maybe. He meets somebody there. A woman, let’s say, on vacation herself. She and Father Ike hit it off. He’s on vacation, right? No priest collar, no black jacket, no clerical shirt. He’s wearing khakis. He’s wearing flip-flops. He’s a good-looking sixty. She’s forty, fifty. And maybe she’s kinky. And maybe she’s from New York City. And maybe she knows the “legendary” Mistress Nora.
People from New York came down to Nola all the time on vacation. Why not Grand Isle? Beautiful place.
All right. So Ike meets a lady. Maybe a man, but Nora got a straight sort of vibe from Ike. So did Sister Margaret. Maybe this kinky New Yorker lady and Ike have an affair. Happened a billion times before, right? Solo vacations were made for getting laid by strangers you never meant to see again.
So Father Ike went for it. Had a grand old time on Grand Isle. The lady’s heading back to New York at the end of her trip. Bad news. Sad news. She tells Ike, “Hey, don’t worry. I know a local gal who might give you want you want and need, just like I could. You don’t even have to go all the way to New York to get it. Mistress Nora. Here’s her card. We used to party together before she moved down here. It’s a cell phone, so that’s probably still her number.”
Father Ike takes the card and keeps it.
And later on in June, maybe he starts getting notes or threatening phone calls…
Okay, so somebody knows about his lady. Somebody knows Ike got wild with a kinky lady at his vacation home. Only two hours from Nola. Anybody could go there on a day trip.
Or maybe the lady herself figures out she’d been sleeping with a Catholic priest and she gets mad he lied to her—it could happen—and she threatens to tell on him. He’s got over half a mill in a retirement account. A lot of money. Very tempting to blackmail a priest for that money, trip to hell be damned.
What’s Ike’s first instinct? Well, everybody’s first instinct is fight or flight. Flight? Put in for a transfer. Get out of Nola before the shit hits the fan.
Fight? Fight might mean he kills his blackmailer. Priests had committed murder before. Maybe it was an accident during a confrontation with the blackmailer? Either way, somebody or something ends up on Ike’s conscience. He can’t live with himself after what he did.
He kills himself.
But first he calls Mistress Nora. Why though? Why her? Why right before he eats a bullet? It’s all over by then, right? Not like he was going to make an appointment with a dominatrix he never planned to keep.
To confess his sins? He sinned with a kinky lady, so he wants to confess to a kinky lady?
That didn’t sound right.
Except Nora was sleeping with a priest herself. And if Ike was being blackmailed for sleeping with somebody, maybe he’d want to talk to Nora about it.
Or warn her.
Imagine there was a blackmailer out there going after sexually active priests. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that Father Ike might try to warn other possible victims before taking his own life, as a last act of compassion?
Farfetched? Yes. Impossible? No.
Only one way to find out if it had any legs to it.
He had to go down to Grand Isle, find some locals who lived near that vacation home Father Ike had rented. Ask if they remembered seeing Ike with anyone.
He shot Nora a quick text.
Long story but I’m heading to Grand Isle. Can you come with?
Nora replied a minute later. Can’t. Tied up.
Too busy?
No, literally tied up.
I thought you had a bangover, lady.
Only cure for a bangover, she wrote back, is hair of the Dom that bit you.
Chapter Thirty-One
Søren’s piano was being delivered to his new house that day. He offered to reschedule the movers, but Nora wouldn’t let him. And it wasn’t as if Gmork could fit on the back of Søren’s bike anyway.
Once she sent Søren on his way home, Nora called Kingsley to come and pick her up at her dungeon. That was a mistake. He spent the entire ride lecturing her about letting strange women into her house in the middle of the night. He wasn’t very happy when Nora reminded him that he’d spent his entire thirties letting strange women—and men—into his house in the middle of the night and therefore he had, as they say, no room to talk.
“That’s an entirely different situation. I was fucking them,” he said.
“One of them stole your Rolex, remember?” Nora said.
“Ah, but she was good enough in bed I didn’t mind.”
Clearly, they had very different recollections of that incident.
Kingsley stood guard while Nora packed a bag at her house. She would be living with him, Juliette, and Céleste until she could get a security system installed on her house. Actually, she wasn’t allowed to handle the security system installation. Kingsley decided he would handle it since she couldn’t be trusted to make good decisions where her own safety was concerned.
“You’re being a little sexist here, King,” Nora said when he was scrolling through his phone, looking for the number of the company that installed his. “I can take care of my own house.”
“You have a thousand strings of cursed Mardi Gras beads hanging from your tree left by a witch over the course of three years trying to put a spell on you,” he said as he put the phone to his ear. “Tell me again why I should let you handle this?”
Nora opened her mouth to give him five good reasons he should back off and let her handle it.
Then he said, “I’ll pay for it.”
“All right,” Nora said. “It’s all yours.”
Kingsley ordered her to his house while he stayed at hers and waited for the installers to arrive. She was halfway out the door when she heard him on the phone with a new person now, requesting a tree trimmer come and trim her front tree and remove all the beads.
“No,” Nora said to him.
“What?” He told the person on the other end of the line to hold.
“My house. My tree. My beads. You can handle the security system, fine, but leave my tree alone.”
“A witch put them on your tree.”
> “You don’t actually believe in witchcraft, do you?”
That got him. “Of course not.”
“Then no reason to have them removed, right?”
Kingsley hung up on the tree trimmer.
“Thank you,” she said although she didn’t mean it. The men in her life were getting a little overprotective for her taste. “Do I need to remind you that I am not a child? This is my house. I own it. You get an opinion,” she said, “but you do not get a vote.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay. I know you’re on edge, Edge.”
He smiled a little, but just a little.
“If anything happened you to,” he began, glancing away like he was wont to do when admitting feelings he didn’t like having. “We’re all knitted together so tightly…one thread unravels, we all fall apart.”
“I know you’re scared. You always turn into a control freak when you get scared.”
“Why aren’t you scared?” It was a good question. Why wasn’t she?
“I don’t know,” she admitted with a shrug. “I met her. You didn’t. What she did scares me. What she said scares me. But she doesn’t scare me.”
“She scares me enough for the both of us. Now go.” He opened the door and pointed in the direction of his house.
“I have to run an errand first.”
“It can wait.”
“I’ll take Gmork.”
“It can wait.”
“Until when?”
“Until I stop being terrified,” he said. He met her eyes again and she saw his fear. Kingsley was right about all of them being interlaced, but wrong about how. They weren’t knitted together like a blanket or sweater. If those unraveled, they could be fixed. They were more like a spiderweb, all of them, made of filaments so fragile and fine nothing could put them back together if one of them was torn away.
Which is why she had to do what she had to do.
She kissed his cheek. “It can’t wait that long.”
Nora whistled and Gmork followed her to her car and jumped into the backseat and lay down on his blanket. “Don’t tell on me, boy,” she said as she started her car and pulled out onto the street, “But we’re going to go have a little talk with our witch.”
The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Page 23