The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel

  Tiffany Reisz’s USA Today bestselling Original Sinners series returns with the long-awaited sequel to the eighth book, The Queen.

  When a New Orleans parish priest is found dead of an apparent suicide, the police see no reason to investigate. Private detective Cyrus Tremont knows a cover-up when he sees it, however. A former cop, he’s seen it all…or so he thought.

  Clues point him in the direction of Nora Sutherlin, an erotic romance writer who moonlights as a dominatrix. Together, they form an unlikely bond built on their shared need for justice.

  As Cyrus is drawn deeper into Nora’s underground world of pleasure and pain, what lines will he cross to discover the truth about the priest? And what will he and Nora do with the truth once they find it?

  The Priest is the beginning of a new era for Reisz’s Original Sinners series, and the perfect jumping-on point for new readers.

  Praise for the Works of Tiffany Reisz

  “Daring, sophisticated, and literary…. Exactly what good erotica should be.” — Kitty Thomas on The Siren

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  “Kinky, well-written, hot as hell.” — Little Red Reading Hood on The Red: An Erotic Fantasy

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  “Impossible to stop reading.” — Heroes & Heartbreakers on The Bourbon Thief

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  “Stunning…. Transcends genres and will leave readers absolutely breathless.” — RT Book Reviews on the Original Sinners series

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  “I worship at the altar of Tiffany Reisz!” — New York Times bestselling author Lorelei James

  Author’s Note

  The Priest is the ninth full-length title in the ongoing Original Sinners series. For those reading chronologically, this story takes place in New Orleans four months after the end of The Queen.

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  For new readers, welcome! The series follows the adventures of Nora Sutherlin, an erotic-romance writer who moonlights as a dominatrix, and the many men (and women) in her life.

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  While events in previous books in the series are alluded to, The Priest can be read as a standalone—no prior reading necessary. If you enjoy it, I invite you to read the rest of the series, beginning with The Siren.

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  A full listing of Original Sinners titles can be found in the front of this book, as well as at www.tiffanyreisz.com.

  Dedicated to the ghosts of New Orleans.

  Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.

  Frederick Buechner

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  One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie.

  Carl Jung

  Chapter One

  A priest was dead. That’s all Cyrus Tremont had been told in the thirty-second phone call that had summoned him to a house on the corner of Rose and Annunciation Street.

  When he arrived at the yellow house, he was let in by a uniformed police officer guarding a body lying face down on a small red rug. On second look, Cyrus saw it wasn’t a rug.

  “Jesus, God.” He slapped a hand over his mouth and took a step back. One of these days he would learn not to answer his phone when the police called him.

  Cyrus stared at the dead man, what was left of him. White male, tall, thin, but not unhealthy. Couldn’t see the face, so he looked at the hands. Put the man’s age between fifty and sixty. He wore a bright red Casio watch on his left wrist. He’d seen that watch before.

  “Christ, that’s Father Ike.”

  The cop nodded. “Killed himself. You know him?”

  “A little bit. He and my fiancée used to work together,” Cyrus said. He stared down at the body again, the blood turning from red to brown as it oxidized. Blood was alive even when the body was dead, but the blood turned brown as the oxygen fled the cells. It had outlived its host. It wasn’t drying so much as dying.

  “What did he use?” Cyrus didn’t see a gun anywhere.

  “A .243 Winchester hunting rifle. It’s being processed,” the officer said, his voice cracking a little. Cyrus glanced at him. Kid didn’t look more than twenty-two, twenty-three. This might be his first suicide.

  “Makes sense,” Cyrus said. “He liked to deer hunt.”

  He heard a car pull in the gravel drive. The uniform skirted the edge of the floor and went out the front, trading places with the new arrival, Detective Katherine Naylor. About time, too. She was the one who’d dragged him into this nightmare.

  “Katherine,” he said, nodding. She wore a trim gray suit, white blouse, an expression that was all business.

  “Cyrus. I hear congratulations are in order. Paulina’s finally making an honest man out of you.”

  She probably expected a joke, but he did not joke about Paulina. Keeping his face and tone neutral, he tersely replied, “Thank you.”

  “Sorry to get you out of bed so early.”

  “I was already up,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “Working a case.”

  “Something you can drop?”

  “You serious? You know this is not my area.” Cyrus wasn’t a police detective anymore, but a private detective. He helped women with cheating husbands and children with deadbeat dads. Women and children first. Women and children only. That was his motto. He’d seen enough death in his days on the force to last him a dozen lifetimes.

  “Didn’t you know him?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t work suicides. Wait, this is a suicide, right?”

  “It’s definitely a suicide,” Katherine said. “Approximate time of death was 11:30 last night. House was locked from the inside. No signs of forced entry. No signs of a struggle. No drugs or alcohol in the place except for a few bottles of wine under the sink—all unopened. Rifle recently fired. Plus, he left a voicemail message with a Sister Margaret last night at 11:25, which is why I’m guessing TOD was 11:30. That might change, though.”

  “What did he say in the message?”

  “I haven’t heard it, but according to the sister, he said…” Katherine pulled a small notebook out of her jacket pocket and flipped to a page. “‘I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, but I’d be sorrier if I didn’t do it. I can’t do this anymore. Forgive me. Pray for me, Margaret.’ She missed the call, didn’t hear the message until five a.m., and panicked when she didn’t find him in his apartment at the parish house. She knew he came here a lot, so she asked the police to check the house. An officer performed a wellness check, saw the body through the window at 6 a.m.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Belongs to St. Valentine’s parish. It’s a guest house for visiting priests or sisters, sometimes an emergency shelter. Sister Margaret says Father Murran came here all the time for peace and quiet when it was unoccupied. He liked the neighborhood, she said.”

  “I’m still waiting on why you called me.” God, how was he going to break this to Paulina? They’d eaten barbeque with the man at their engagement party not four months ago.

  Katherine peeked through the blinds. “Coroner’s here. Let’s go out back.”

  The backyard wasn’t much more than a postage stamp surrounded by a wooden fence that needed repainting. An elderly couple sat in rockers on their porch across the street, watching with interest. A pretty brown girl of about eleven or twelve walked slowly past the yard, clearly trying not to linger but also curious about the fuss. A pair of fairy wings on her back glittered in the early morning light.

  He and Katherine waited in silence for the girl to pass. This was no place for children to be playing. Not now, maybe not ev
er. Once she turned the corner, Cyrus spoke.

  “Talk.”

  Katherine took a deep breath and leaned back against the fence. He stood opposite her, a small fire pit full of ashes between their feet.

  “Thanks for taking my call,” she said.

  “Call, yeah. Case? Not yet.”

  “Look, I get it. You don’t want to work with us, and I don’t blame you. But hear me out. Please.”

  No, Cyrus did not want to work with the police. Two years ago, he’d been shot on the job by a fellow officer who had a file overflowing with excessive force complaints. Luckily, Cyrus had a good lawyer who’d wrangled a very nice settlement from the city. Nice enough, he didn’t have to take any case he didn’t want to take.

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” he said. “Working with you? For you? Investigating someone I knew personally? Ike and Paulina used to work together at Blessed Sacrament. You ever hear the phrase ‘conflict of interest’?”

  He so did not want to take this case. Katherine had a way of getting on his nerves—she was white, and acted like that made her something special down here.

  She was also the last woman he’d slept with before meeting Paulina.

  His life was B.P. and A.P.—Before Paulina and After Paulina. All that was B.P. meant as much to him as the ashes in the fire pit at his feet. But he tried not to hold that against Katherine. Not her fault they met on the wrong side of his salvation.

  “Do you know how hard it was for me to ask you for help? You were a real ass to me, and you know it,” she said. Cyrus turned away, didn’t admit it, but he didn’t deny it either. “Doesn’t that tell you how serious I am? Something is wrong here. You’re the only PI in this town I even halfway trust.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “You’re good and we both know it. There. Happy?”

  “Thrilled. Now please tell me what the hell is going on here. Even if I don’t take the case, whatever you’ve found, you know I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  She gave a dry laugh. “It’s not even seven yet, and Archbishop Dunn’s already making phone calls. He says everyone knew Isaac Murran suffered from depression. That’s all. Open and shut and lock it up. We are not allowed to investigate this, I’ve been told. And when someone tells me not to investigate…”

  “Catholic Church trying to cover up something embarrassing? This is my shocked face.”

  “Right,” she said. “That’s why I called you. I need you to dig.”

  “Dig for what? What aren’t you telling me?”

  “First of all, Sister Margaret swears up and down that Isaac Murran was not depressed. Not now, not ever, from what she could tell. She’s got a degree in counseling, and she’s been pouring his tea for fifteen years. She knows the symptoms of depression, and she knows him. Knew him.”

  Cyrus stuck his hands in his suit pockets. He was tired. He’d been on a stakeout all last night watching the comings and goings of a man who was going places he shouldn’t be going and coming with people he didn’t need to be coming with.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Katherine said. “I wish I knew someone else to call. I was here for ten minutes before Captain Latour was telling me to drop it. I shouldn’t even be back here now. I’m going to get hell for it.”

  Katherine had been in a turf war with the Catholic Church for years. She’d been sent to investigate a robbery at a church, and the priest had demanded a male officer instead. He’d said police work was too dangerous for women, especially for a woman who dressed so “provocatively.”

  “Sometimes people kill themselves and we never figure out why,” Cyrus said.

  “I might know why.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Now she’d gotten him curious.

  Katherine reached into her blouse and pulled something out of her bra. She held it out to him, and he reluctantly took it. A business card in a plastic evidence bag.

  “You didn’t get this from me,” Katherine said. “You didn’t get it from anyone. That card doesn’t exist. Unless I decide it needs to exist.”

  “Where’d you get it from?”

  “Our victim’s pocket.”

  “You’re contaminating a crime scene and interfering with a police investigation, Katherine.”

  “Not if there’s no investigation to interfere with. Look at it.”

  He exhaled heavily before looking at the card.

  “Red business card, black ink,” Cyrus said, flipping it over. “Only a phone number. No name. That’s unusual. A 212 area code. New York City?”

  “Manhattan,” she said. “The number’s a Chinese place now, but it used to be registered to a woman named Eleanor Schreiber. She writes dirty books under the name Nora Sutherlin.”

  “You’re worried Father Ike liked dirty books? He’s a sixty-year-old celibate priest. Give the man a break.”

  “If that were all, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you. I saw his phone. He called that number last night before he shot himself. He called Sister Margaret, then he called that number. We know why he called Sister Margaret. We need to know why he called Nora Sutherlin.”

  “Maybe he just likes her books? Maybe he thought it was a suicide hotline?”

  “Maybe he was following orders?”

  “Orders? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I mean Nora Sutherlin moonlights. I’ll give you one guess.”

  He sighed heavily. “Just so you know, next time you call me with a case,” he said, “I am not answering.”

  Chapter Two

  Cyrus meant to be at Paulina’s at eight, but he squeaked in the driveway at 8:10. While he knew she’d forgive him for being late, he still jogged from his car to the house to shave those last few seconds off his time. He found her in the bright white-tile kitchen pouring coffee into two yellow mugs.

  “About time,” she said, playing grumpy. He came up behind her, putting his hands on her hips and kissing her cheek. She stirred the cream into her coffee, and left his black.

  “Long night. Bad morning. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right. Sit. Tell me about it.”

  Cyrus took his seat and watched Paulina finish breakfast. Seeing her bustling around the kitchen in her red summer dress and sandals with the straps around her pretty ankles was a balm to his soul. She worked at a local Catholic middle school as a guidance counselor. Monday through Friday, she wore neck-high blouses and ankle-length skirts or suit pants. She saved her pretty dresses for weekends, for him.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  “You’re stalling. Is it bad?”

  “Baby, come here. Please.”

  She knew him too well to fall for that. She turned to face him, hip against the counter, arms crossed over her chest. “What happened?”

  “I got some bad news. Father Ike’s dead.”

  Paulina gasped. “What?”

  “That’s why I’m late. A detective called and asked me to come by the scene. I needed a shower after.”

  “The scene? A crime scene? Was he murdered? Jesus.” Paulina crossed herself before clasping her hands as if to pray.

  He shook his head. “Suicide.”

  “No,” Paulina put her hand over her heart. “Father Ike? Why?”

  “That’s what they want me to find out.”

  “Was there a note?”

  “No note,” Cyrus said. “But he called a friend of his, a sister, and left her a voicemail message that made it very clear he was planning to kill himself.”

  “Do you think he was sick? Cancer or something?”

  “They want me to look into that.” He rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

  “Cyrus? What is it? What aren’t you telling me about this?”

  He didn’t want to tell Paulina. Normally, he wouldn’t. He made it a rule to never drag her into his cases, for her sake and the sake of the women he helped. But she and Ike had been friends. This was different.

  “They found a business card in his pocket.”
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  “Do I want to know?”

  “It was for a sex worker.” He didn’t mention she was a dominatrix. He hadn’t quite wrapped his head around that part yet.

  Paulina turned away, placed her hands on the counter. She lowered her head, closed her eyes. Praying, knowing her. Her long dark eyelashes fluttered on her cheeks, and he felt a wave of tenderness toward her. Most days, she wore her curly brown hair down around her face, a look she jokingly called Shirley Temple Black. Today, it was pulled back in a red ribbon to match her dress.

  “You think you know someone.” She raised her head and stared out the back window.

  “You know we can’t know anybody. Not really. If we did, I’d be out of a job.”

  “It shouldn’t be a betrayal, but it is,” Paulina said. “You know what I mean? It shouldn’t be our business but it still matters. It’s like having married friends, and you think their marriage is strong, and you admire them because their marriage is strong, and you want something strong like that. Then you find out he hits her or she cheats. You know their marriage is private, but it hurts something in you to know you’ve been watching nothing but a show all that time. Father Ike was married to God.”

  “I don’t know if anybody gets married or becomes a priest planning to break their vows.”

  “No, I know. Still.”

  “We could be jumping to conclusions,” Cyrus said softly. “He might have been counseling her, trying to help her get out of that life.”

  “You think that?” she asked. He could hear the hope in her voice.

  “It’s possible.” True, it was possible. But not very probable.

  “Is this going to get out?”

  “We’re going to try to keep it quiet,” Cyrus said. “Until we know something, I guess.”