Chapter Thirty-Two
Cyrus was lucky with traffic and made it to Grand Isle in an hour and fifty minutes. He plugged in the address of Father Ike’s vacation home into Google maps first. It led him to a picturesque street a couple of blocks from the nearest beach. The houses were all painted in bright colors—sky blue and sunny yellow, pink and green—and stood on stilts to avoid the inevitable flooding from tropical storms and hurricanes. They had names like Slow M’Ocean and Shore Beats Work. The beach house was smack dab in the center of the street, a white A-frame with red shutters.
As he was canvassing that day and knew he’d have to talk to strangers, he’d put on his best suit before driving down. Cyrus had his story ready, too. Black or white, male or female, old or young—fact was, people were nosy as hell. If he gave up a little gossip, he was sure to get some in return. He climbed the stairs to the first house on the street and rang the bell. Nobody seemed to be home, and the people in the next house over were on Grand Isle for the first time. No help there.
He got a little luckier with the third house, the pink house. Pink, in Cyrus’s opinion, was an old lady color and sure enough, an older white woman opened the door.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” he said, passing her his business card. “I’m a detective. Do you live here on Grand Isle?”
“Since my husband retired in 2008. Why do you ask? Should I call my husband?”
“I’m just looking for some information about someone who stayed next door to you this summer. This man,” Cyrus said and held up the photograph of Father Ike. She took it from and peered at it, nodding.
“Oh yes, I remember him. He stayed next door for a long time. Very nice man. Isaac, I think he said. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“We get so many tourists, they tend to be a blur after a while. But he was around a lot. I must have talked to him every day. But just to say hello and chat a little. Why? Did he do something?”
Cyrus decided now was the time to start answering her questions. He let her hold onto the photograph. Might help jog her memory.
“I’m afraid he’s dead,” Cyrus said. “His family hired me to look into it.”
“Dead? Was he killed?”
Cyrus nodded. He was killed. That was true. He didn’t mention that Ike himself pulled the trigger. The woman gasped and covered her mouth with her fingertips in shock.
“I just…he was so nice. I can’t imagine…was he mixed up in something?”
That was movie talk right there. Mixed up in something. Cyrus liked playing the part of the TV detective since that was what people expected of him.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, ma’am. Did you see him with anyone at the house while he was here? A visitor? Someone who might have stayed with him? Overnight possibly?”
“You mean like a girlfriend? No, he didn’t have a girlfriend. Or, you know…” She lowered her voice. “A man friend.”
“I see,” Cyrus said, disappointed. There goes that theory. “Do you remember if he stayed at that house every night? Or maybe he stayed with someone else around here? Or somewhere else?”
“Oh, I think he was there every night,” she said. “Liked to walk every morning on the beach. By the time he got back, I was making breakfast. I could see him from the kitchen window climbing his steps.”
All right. So he didn’t have company at the house and Ike didn’t go to anyone else’s house at night.
“Did he…do you think he had a girlfriend,” the woman asked, “and she killed him?”
“It’s a theory I’m working on,” he said. Cyrus decided to shake up the woman a little, shake her and see what he could shake out. “Ma’am, were you aware that Isaac was a Catholic priest?”
Her eyes widened, big as the sand dollars painted on her mailbox.
“He was?” she said. “He never told us that. Why wouldn’t he tell us that? We’ve had several priests stay at that house. We’re not Catholic, but we don’t have any problem with priests.”
“Oh, a lot of reasons. Priests can make people feel uncomfortable. Or people immediately want to tell priests everything they did wrong or get into theological discussions. He may have just wanted his privacy while he was here.”
“A priest…that just doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Louisiana is a very Catholic state,” he reminded her.
“I guess you’re right. He asked me about my grandchildren, and I think…well, I thought he had grandchildren, too, since he seemed to know a lot about children.”
“He worked in a school.”
“Ah,” she said, nodding. “Well, that explains that. I said something about it being paradise down here but that my grandson hated visiting, nothing to do. I remember him saying a lot of kids hate being away from their things and their friends. Not even a big beautiful beach makes up for it. It just sounded to me like he knew kids. But if you say he worked at a school, that makes sense. Although…I could have sworn—”
“What could you swear?”
“Oh, he asked what there was for kids to do around here. I thought for sure he had kids or grandkids of his own. Grandkids, at his age. I told him a few things and he wrote them down.”
“Maybe he was thinking about field trips or something.”
“Maybe so.”
She shook her head. “Murdered…I can’t even imagine…he was just so nice.”
“Yes, he was,” Cyrus said.
“You find out who did it to him, you hear,” the woman said.
“I plan on it, ma’am.”
She nodded, managed a smile. “I need to get lunch started. Is there anything else?”
Cyrus took her name and number in case he had follow-up questions, and thanked the woman profusely for her time. He turned to leave but then thought of a question. He knocked and she answered the door with a real smile this time.
“Forget something?” she asked.
“Just real quick,” Cyrus said, “what did you tell him when he asked what there was around here for kids to do?”
“Oh, the usual.” She lifted her hands. “Swim at the beach. We got a park, too. And the butterfly dome.”
“Butterfly dome?”
“Just a nature park, all butterflies. Schools visit it all the time.”
“Got it. Thank you. Have a nice day, ma’am.”
Cyrus tried a few more houses on the street. If anyone was home, they weren’t answering. He did catch a couple people walking back from the beach, but they were tourists and had nothing to add.
Nothing more he could do on that street. Cyrus got in his car and punched in the address for the house Ike had secretly rented for a two-month stay from Home Away From Home.
Grand Isle might have been grand, but it wasn’t very big. Cyrus arrived at the new address in only ten minutes. The neighborhood was almost identical to the one he’d left. Brightly painted houses on stilts, all in a row. These looked a little nicer, a little newer. And they were closer to the water and would have a good view of the sunset. Romantic as it got.
Cyrus had trouble finding the house Ike had rented. He walked up and down the block twice looking for the number. His phone’s GPS was no use. New development. A lot of places still weren’t precisely mapped, and there was nothing to do but gumshoe it until he found the place.
The street was called Atlantic Way and the house number was 15. He found 10, 12, 14, and 16, but no 15. Odd numbers had to be somewhere.
Cyrus reached the end of the block and kept going. Turned out the street curved like a U. The odd numbers were on a ridge a little higher up.
He found the house he was looking for at the very end of the street.
Number fifteen was just as quaint as the Home Away from Home pictures had painted it, but the photographs hadn’t done justice to how secluded it was. There were three undeveloped lots between it and the next house—three empty lots full of trees, trees that had survived a hundred years of hurricanes. The property was fen
ced in. A passcode was required to access the staircase leading to the house.
No need to jump the fence or anything. Not yet, at least. Cyrus walked the perimeter of the lot to get a feel for the place.
Good thing this beach house was so secluded, he thought. Somebody might have called the cops on him, the way he was nosing around it…
Wait. Why this beach house? The answer was staring him in the face. Number fifteen rented at a premium for a reason, and it wasn’t the view—every beach house had a view. All were spectacular. None were this isolated. The privacy number fifteen afforded renters seemed like overkill, if all they planned to do was go for morning walks on the beach and sit on the back porch and read. But it wasn’t overkill if your livelihood was on the line.
Location, location, location.
That’s what Nora had said when Cyrus had asked her how she and her Viking had never got caught fooling around.
Tiny parish in a small town. And with the priest shortage, Søren didn’t have to share the parish house with any other priests. Which is good. That place was tiny. But it was way back in the woods, trees everywhere, and to get to it, you had to drive in from a side street. Very secluded.
But if Father Ike was having an affair with somebody…who the hell was it?
Cyrus was going to have to meditate on that. But not until he got home and was feeling safe in his own place.
On the drive back, he tried instead to think about Paulina, her long legs around his shoulders, the taste of her, the sound of her coming.
But even that didn’t work.
All the way back to Nola, Cyrus could only think of one thing:
What the hell was Father Ike planning to do in that secluded beach house for two months?
Chapter Thirty-Three
The Good Witch, Mercedes’s occult shop, was located in the Irish Channel, on the corner of Tchoupitoulas and 7th. Even after three years, Nora was still struggling to pronounce the city’s street names like a local. Tchoupitoulas, though, she had in the bag: “Chop-a-Two-Liss.” Just as long as no one asked her to spell it.
Nora drove a block past the shop and parked on a side-street. On the off-chance dogs were allowed in The Good Witch, she leashed Gmork and took him with her. Otherwise, she’d have to leave him tied outside the store. Not a problem, really. Wasn’t like anyone was going to try to steal a huge black German Shepherd wearing a spiked dog collar.
The storefront of The Good Witch was painted lavender with a creamy white trim. The display window was brightly-colored with stained-glass hangings of harvest scenes, owls and ravens and deer, triple-phase moons, and the strange faces of men grinning through green foliage. On the door, a sign declared the shop Open. A brass plaque next to the door was engraved with the words Familiars Welcome.
“I guess that’s you, boy,” Nora said to Gmork.
She pushed open the door and heard a gentle tinkling of bells. A string of silver bells on a golden cord hung on the back of the doorknob. Nora spotted Mercedes behind a counter, on the opposite side of the store. A customer—a well-heeled white woman of about fifty—was chatting to her. Nora only caught a few words, something about arthritis inflammation. Mercedes was recommending spearmint tea in addition to whatever compound she was preparing for the woman.
Mercedes glanced Nora’s way, and nodded her head in recognition and greeting. She didn’t seem too surprised to see Nora. Maybe a little pleased? Or was Nora imagining that?
As she waited for Mercedes to wrap things up with her customer, Nora wandered the store, Gmork at her side on a very short leash. “You break it,” she whispered to Gmork, “you buy it.”
The shop was a good size, about twice Nora’s living room. A converted cottage, she decided. The main front room had been a living room at one point. The back room, hidden behind a curtain, had likely been a bedroom. A sign beside the curtain said it was now the Reading Room. That was where the private tarot and palm readings happened.
Nora found the store welcoming. Nothing strange or scary here. No eyes of newt or voodoo dolls. She found a wall of scented candles that had apparently been “charged” with magical properties. A green candle worked a money spell. A yellow candle stoked creativity. A pale blue candle promised to help with anxiety. A red candle promised love.
Another wall was replete with books of magic and spells. Journals, too, with embossed leather covers and thick with heavy cotton paper. From the ceiling of the shop hung Mardi Gras beads, mostly silver, and draped in elegant loops. The sunlight through the stained-glass panels in the shop window reflected off the beads and tossed rainbows throughout the entire store. And the whole place smelled of blooming flowers, potent but not over-powering. Nora felt better just inhaling the air in there.
While Mercedes rang up her customer’s purchase at another counter, Nora examined the decks of tarot cards. There were dozens of different decks, dozens of different sets of artwork. Some she recognized. Everyone had seen the Rider-Waite decks. Others were stranger, lovelier, sillier. She found tarot decks for cat-lovers, for witches, for medievalists. There were vampire decks, angel decks, African decks, and Italian Renaissance decks. Nora fell in love at first sight with the Aquarian deck and its eerie Art Deco illustrations.
Nora moved away from the decks before she bought all of them simply to stare at the artwork for hours on end. She wandered to a table of jewelry, but it wasn’t the gems and beads that caught her eye.
A newspaper article had been cut out, framed, and hung on the wall in a back corner. Time had yellowed the paper, which was dated November 1984. Nora skimmed the article about a woman named Doreen Goode, a local New Orleans witch, who had helped the police recover a missing child. Though the image was grainy, Nora could spot the resemblance to Mercedes in Ms. Goode’s face.
“My mother,” Mercedes said.
Nora glanced over her shoulder and found Mercedes standing behind her at a respectable distance.
“She rescued a little girl?” Nora asked.
“She helped the police whenever they asked her.” Mercedes held out her hand and Gmork strained against his leash to reach those extended fingers. Nora loosened her grip so Gmork could reach Mercedes and get petted.
“Do you?” Nora asked.
“I would if they asked me. City’s not what it once was. But nowhere is.” Mercedes had gone down into a squat to meet Gmork eye to eye. She stroked his head, his long ears. If Gmork had been a cat, he would have purred.
“What do you mean ‘nowhere is’?”
“Ah, cities are self-aware now. New Orleans used to be a little strange and wild because it was strange and wild. Now it’s strange and wild because tourists expect it of us. Internet makes it hard, too. In ’84, a missing child in New Orleans wasn’t national news. No Facebook or Twitter to make it national news. Nobody around here batted an eye at the police asking a witch for help. Now you don’t want to be the police chief that’s made a laughingstock on the world’s stage by admitting you believe in the occult.”
“Guess not,” Nora said. “How did your mother find the girl? Did she, ah, ‘see’ where she was?”
“She would chew moonflower to put herself into a trance,” Mercedes said. “She said it took her ‘into the deep.’ Where the ‘deep’ really was, I don’t know, but she never went into the deep without bringing something or someone out with her. She went in and saw the girl through a little window lying on a bed of bare wood, sunlight streaming in, beams like a church roof.”
“An attic,” Nora said. The girl had been found in her own home, the newspaper article had said. Found half-dead from hitting her head while hiding.
“She’d thought she was in trouble,” Mercedes said, rising up from her squat but still keeping her fingertips on Gmork’s dark head. “She’d broken the grandfather clock in the house by playing with it. So she’d hid. Tripped over a box or a beam, knocked herself out. Couldn’t hear everyone screaming her name. She was up there over twenty-four hours in the attic heat, passed out and dyi
ng of thirst. If Mama hadn’t found her, she would have died in a couple hours. Now she’s thirty years old. Two kids. One girl named Doreen for my mother.”
“You have a daughter, right?”
“Just the one girl,” she said. “Got it right the first time. Had her at eighteen. She’s a freshman in college now.”
Nora did quick math. Eighteen plus eighteen meant Mercedes was thirty-six years old. Maybe thirty-seven. About Nora’s age.
“Around here?” Nora asked.
Mercedes shook her head. “In Boston.”
“Boston? She’s at Harvard?”
“We’re not supposed to brag about that,” Mercedes said. “So Rosemary tells me. But we do. My mother used to wear peasant blouses every day. Now she wears Harvard t-shirts.”
“So your mom’s still alive?”
“Oh yes, the Goode women are long-lived. But she’s in Savannah, taking care of my grandmother.”
“How did you know my mother was dying?” Nora asked.
Mercedes lifted her hands. “I just saw it.”
“Did you see me coming to see you today?”
“I can’t see my own future,” Mercedes said. “It’s like trying to read a book pressed to your face. Too close to make anything out.”
“Well, that’s a bitch, isn’t it?”
They laughed companionably. Hard to believe she’d been terrified of this woman only last night.
“My grandmother always said that our gifts came from the Goddess, but the Goddess was far off. We shouldn’t be surprised when our gifts arrived banged up and battered. Like getting a package from Siberia, it’ll be a little worse for the wear. But better than nothing.”
Mercedes beckoned Nora to follow her with a wave of her hand. She pushed the curtain to the reading room aside and switched on an antique lamp with a green shade.
The floral scent in the shop had been coming from this room. Instead of Mardi Gras beads dangling from the ceiling, bundles of herbs were tied to crossbeams to dry.
The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Page 24