The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Read online

  “Well…I told you I have two men in my life. My other lover, the twenty-seven-year-old…is Kingsley’s son.”

  “God. Damn.”

  “Oh, it gets worse, my friend.”

  “I’m out.”

  She smiled, halfway giggled.

  “About time you told me this,” Cyrus said. “This matters to the case, you know. If Father Ike knew about you and your Viking—”

  “I promise, Søren did not know Father Ike. He would have told me if he did. And Søren wouldn’t have given Father Ike my business card. And if he had, for any reason at all, he would have told us both. Hand to God.” Nora put her right hand on Father Ike’s Bible and lifted her left hand. Cyrus had to admit it was compelling testimony.

  “It’s a motive, though, right? For a priest to call you? Say he found out this lady in town was sleeping with a priest. Maybe he’s got a girlfriend, too, feels guilty as hell over it, wants to talk to someone who gets it.”

  “He had a chastity device in his nightstand. You really think he was calling me just to chat?”

  “All right, good point.” If they hadn’t found the chastity whatever thing, Cyrus might be able to convince himself Father Ike was looking for some understanding in his final hours from a priest’s mistress. But they had found it, and there was no pretending it didn’t exist.

  “You don’t seem very shocked,” Nora said.

  “More priests than we want to admit got side pieces. I’ve had two cases with people cheating with clergy—one wife, church secretary. One husband, groundskeeper.”

  “Both Catholic priests?”

  “Both,” he said. “It happens.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  They met eyes.

  “You pissed at me?” she asked.

  “Why? I stole Paulina from the Ursulines.”

  “She wasn’t in the order yet. Søren’s been an ordained priest for a long time.”

  Cyrus shrugged. “Done too much in my days to judge how you spend your nights.”

  She smiled. “I like you.”

  “We gonna be friends?” Cyrus asked.

  “For the time being.”

  “It’ll make our counselor happy. Check ‘female friend’ off the wedding checklist.”

  “Can I come to your wedding?” Nora asked, eyes wide.

  “Hell no.”

  “Fair.” She laughed again. Good to hear her laugh. He promised himself a long time ago he’d stop being the reason why good women cried in this town.

  “Back to work,” he said.

  Cyrus stood up. His ass was falling asleep fast on that floor. He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

  “You all right?”

  “Better. Still freaked out to be digging through a dead priest’s things. Hard to not think about somebody doing this to Søren if something happened to him. Digging through his stuff, finding out his secrets.” She glanced around the room, shuddered a little.

  “Just remember, it’s for a good cause. Nobody deserves to die because they’re, you know—”

  “A freak like me?”

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s get back to work. You find anything in the Bible?”

  “Nothing much,” she said. “A few thank you notes from former parishioners. Birthday card from some Archbishop. Picture of him and his sister as kids. One poem. That was about all that stuck out.”

  “The poem?”

  “Rumi,” she said. “Heard of him?”

  Cyrus shook his head.

  “Legendary thirteenth century Persian Sufi mystic and poet.”

  “Oh yeah, him. You just know this off the top of your head?”

  “My boyfriend is half-Persian. I mean, the other one.”

  “He a fan of this Rumi guy, or you just like bringing up all the time that you have two boyfriends?”

  “Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”

  “Just tell me about the damn poem.”

  “Well, Rumi mostly wrote religious poetry and love poetry. I’d kind of expect a religious poem in his Bible, but not this one.”

  She opened the Bible and took out a folded sheet of paper. The poem was written in Father Ike’s own hand on a sheet of linen paper, the kind people used when they were trying too hard to make their resumes look nice.

  “‘Poem of the Butterflies,’” Cyrus read aloud. He continued:

  The people of this world are like the three butterflies in front of a candle’s flame.

  The first one went closer and said, “I know about love.”

  The second one touched the flame with his wings and said, “I know how love’s fire can burn.”

  The third one threw himself into the heart of the flame and was consumed.

  He alone knows what true love is.

  Cyrus folded the sheet of paper and pressed it back into the Bible.

  “You think that means something?” Cyrus asked.

  “It could,” she said. “Could be romantic. Could be erotic. Could be masochistic, the thought that love equals being burned and consumed.”

  “Could be talking about God’s love. Could be talking about his suicide, you know.”

  “Could be,” Nora said. “Just caught my eye. What about you? You find anything?”

  “Credit card bills,” Cyrus said. “Might be something in here.” He picked up the shoebox and pulled a chair to the bed so he could spread out the bills. “You find anything else?”

  “What I didn’t find is kind of interesting,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That cock blocker you found…like I said, it uses a lock and key. That’s how you keep the thing on you—with a padlock. I didn’t find the key. That means someone else probably has it.”

  “What does that tell you?” Cyrus asked.

  “It means Father Ike probably had a partner. Sex partner? Kink partner? A dominant maybe? Someone locked him into that thing and unlocked him from it. He wasn’t doing it to himself.”

  “That’s a big leap,” Cyrus said. “He might have thrown the key away.”

  “Then why keep the chastity device?”

  “Good question,” Cyrus admitted. “Maybe he’s got the key but not here…”

  “The house he died in?”

  “Cops already searched it looking for a note.” He glanced around the room for secret hiding places. Nothing jumped out at him. He furrowed his brow as he looked at Nora. “Where do you keep all your gear?”

  “My house. My dungeon,” she said. “And I have a bag of gear in my car. Did Father Ike have his own car?”

  Cyrus thought about that. “Let me find that out.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nora listened as Cyrus sweet-talked and cajoled a detective he knew on the force into putting out an APB or whatever the hell they were called on Father Ike’s car. So much work for no pay. He was either a very good guy or out of his mind. She gave it even odds.

  “Well?” Nora asked when Cyrus got off the phone finally.

  “They’ll keep an eye out for it—unofficially,” Cyrus said. “Until then, I’m going to walk around, see if I can find it myself.”

  “You’re just going to walk around New Orleans and hope you find his car?”

  They’d found out from Sister Margaret that Father Ike did own his own car, a 2005 Sentra in basic gray. Probably ten thousand gray Sentras in the city, at least.

  “The neighborhood, not the whole city. Wanna join me?”

  “In these shoes?” She held up her foot clad in those red high-heeled sandals.

  “Maybe not. You can leave me here,” Cyrus said. “I’ll call Paulina to come pick me up.”

  “You sure? I hate to abandon you in the middle of a case.”

  “My case,” he said. “Not your case.”

  “Fine. Your case. But is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Figure out how Ike got your card,” Cyrus told her. “Sooner the better.”

  “Right. Card. On it. Leaving.”

&
nbsp; She started to go but stopped at the door.

  “Will you call me if and when you find his car?” she asked.

  “You want me to?”

  “You might need me to translate for you. I speak Kink and Vanilla.”

  “I noticed,” he said. “I’ll call you. I won’t open the trunk until you get there. Just in case.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. If there’s another one of those demonic cock rings in the trunk, I’m making you pick it up this time.”

  “I’ll bring my gloves,” she said.

  “Bring lots of gloves,” he said. “And a Hazmat suit.”

  She left Cyrus with his box of credit card bills, found her car, and drove straight home. She’d promised Søren she’d get back by five, and it was only a little after two when she walked through her backdoor.

  Gmork jogged to her in happy greeting. A yellow Post-it was stuck to his back fur.

  Muzzle me, it read.

  “Søren,” she growled. Gmork growled when she growled. “Don’t worry, boy. I’m not going to muzzle you. I might muzzle Blondie though.” She went upstairs and found the door to her bedroom closed. She didn’t remember closing it last night before leaving. Quietly, in case Søren was asleep, she opened the door.

  No, not sleeping. He lay on her bed, head propped on her pillows, reading. What a sight—an excruciatingly handsome blond man in jeans and t-shirt in her bedroom, framed erotic pen-and-ink art on the red walls.

  “Eleanor?” he said from behind his book.

  “Give me a sec. I’m picturing you handcuffed to my headboard.”

  He looked over the top of her book at her, eyebrow arched. The look was not friendly.

  “You aren’t allowed to do that.”

  “A girl can dream.”

  He laid the book across his stomach. Nora stood in the doorway a moment longer just to appreciate the view of Søren on her bed. “Done sleuthing?”

  “Done sleuthing for the day,” she said. “We didn’t find anything, but Cyrus is out looking for Father Ike’s car. Might be something in there.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not,” she said. She didn’t want to talk about Father Ike with Søren. Not yet. Too upsetting to talk to a priest about digging through the private life of another priest. She knew Søren would probably prefer she stayed far, far away from this case. But she couldn’t.

  “What are you reading?” she asked.

  “Where God Happens by Rowan Williams,” he said. “Book of sermons by the former Archbishop of Canterbury.”

  “I have porn, you know. The good stuff, too. Kinky. Hot. Well-written. I should know. I wrote it.”

  “This is Anglican porn,” he said.

  Nora shut the door, stranding Gmork in the hall.

  “Anglican porn…you thinking of converting?” she asked, crawling to Søren on the bed and resting her chin on his chest. “Last I heard, Anglican priests were allowed to get laid.”

  “Not even Anglican priests are allowed to have mistresses. They’re definitely not allowed to have mistresses and children with married women.”

  “You’d think the Church of England would be more understanding, founded by King Henry the Adulterer/Wife-murderer/Swan-eater.”

  “I believe the swan-eating was the least of his issues.”

  “We could, you know…do the thing, if you wanted.”

  “The thing? Could you be more specific?”

  “Rhymes with ‘carriage’?”

  Søren laughed. “I suppose we could. If we were married, it would, as they say, cover a multitude of sins. What a husband and wife do behind closed doors is no one’s business, not even if the husband is an Anglican priest.”

  “Or a husband and his former brother-in-law…” Nora said. Then rethought that. “I guess the Church of England wouldn’t be keen on you and King doing your thing either.”

  “No. And even if they did, a priest or a pastor’s wife lives in a fishbowl. It’s more stressful in many ways than being in the clergy. Turning you into a pastor’s wife would be sadism,” he said, stroking her hair. “And not the kind either of us enjoy. No, becoming Anglican would cause as many problems as it would solve. And I can’t imagine myself as anything but a Jesuit.”

  “Neither can I,” Nora said. “A Jesuit or nothing.”

  Jesuits. The scary-smart priests. The scary-scary priests, as Cyrus had called them. The Jesuits were an army of Catholic intellectuals and so liberal, they were often accused of heresy.

  Søren dropped his hand to his chest. His smile had disappeared.

  “I was only eleven,” he said, “when I was dropped on the doorstep at St. Ignatius. I had a letter with me, written by my father that I had to give to Father Henry, the headmaster. I knew what it said. I was told what it said—that I was a violent delinquent and a deviant, and Father Henry and the other Jesuit priests and teachers should feel free to beat me daily as it was the only punishment I understood.”

  Nora closed her eyes, though she would rather have closed her ears.

  Søren went on. “Father Henry took the letter, read it, and I knew I was going to spend the next seven years of my life in hell. Instead, he took me to the kitchen, sat me down, and gave me hot chocolate. He said, ‘I think your father’s full of shit, but don’t tell him I said that.’ Then he winked at me and put a dollop of whipped cream on top of the cocoa. ‘We don’t beat boys at this school,’ he said. ‘Except in chess.’ Then we played chess for two hours.”

  “You used to give me hot cocoa, too,” she said. “When I was upset.”

  “Forty years ago, and I can still remember how sweet the hot chocolate was and how good. I’d never had it before. My stepmother always said sweets were for ‘poor people,’ not ‘our kind.’” A long pause. “I see him every time I look in the mirror.”

  “Father Henry?” Nora asked, assuming Søren meant when he wore his collar and clerical garb.

  “My father.”

  Ah. So that explained the beard. Nora leaned over and kissed the back of Søren’s hand. Then she took it and held it and said nothing. For years, Søren had kept his traumatic childhood mostly hidden behind a shroud of silence and shame. But since becoming a father, Søren’s past had been slipping out in one little dark tale or another. Yes, King had heard a few stories, too, and asked Nora if she thought it was something they should worry about. She’d said “no,” though she was worried.

  Ever since Fionn came along, Søren’s walls were coming down. But were they the walls that held Søren in? Or the walls that held Søren up? She didn’t know, but she knew this…she could do nothing for him but listen, no matter how much it hurt to hear the suffering in his past. If anything in the world was truly a sin, it was letting one’s own mild discomfort interfere with someone else’s healing.

  “I’m Catholic for a reason,” Søren said, his eyes focusing again on her. The past was vanquished, temporarily at least. “The Church of England is fine, but it’s not for me. I need all seven of my sacraments. King Henry threw out the baby with the baptismal water.”

  Nora knew this. They’d talked about it before, once or twice, when they had their serious “What happens if/when we get caught?” talks. Back then, however, those conversations had stayed in the realm of the theoretical, the maybe, the someday, the what if.

  Now it was happening.

  “Speaking of kings…you seeing King soon?”

  “Tonight, at my new house that I do not know about yet.”

  “Remember to act surprised and also totally unimpressed.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “He’ll see right through it.”

  “Without a doubt.”

  She picked up his book and read what he was reading out loud:

  A hermit said, “Do not judge an adulterer if you are chaste or you will break the law of God just as much as he does. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not judge.’”

  Nora put the book bac
k on his stomach. “Nice. Loophole Theology is my favorite Theology.”

  “Not a loophole. Have you ever tried going a day without judging someone else?” he asked.

  “Sounds impossible.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I prayed for you,” she said softly.

  “Did you?”

  “A lot. Almost every night you were gone, I’d pray for you. Went to church, sat in a pew, prayed and prayed…last night, I even lit a prayer candle. Voilà. You’re here.”

  “I was already back by the time you lit your candle. Very powerful prayer if it can time-travel.”

  She looked up at him. “I’m just that good.”

  He kissed her again. Not on her head this time, but on her lips. When he started to roll on top of her to deepen the kiss, the book on his stomach stopped him.

  Nora laughed as Søren picked up the book of sermons and tossed it across her bedroom, where it landed in a pious heap on her rug. He slid on top of her and dragged her underneath him. Bliss, feeling his full weight and length and breadth on top of her again.

  “You can’t fuck me,” she said as he kissed and bit her neck.

  “I don’t recall asking your permission.”

  “You’re fucking Kingsley tonight. You need to save your strength.”

  By his strength, she meant, of course, his semen.

  His eyebrow cocked skyward. “Are you implying I’m incapable of having you and Kingsley both in one night?”

  “Well…” She shrugged. “You aren’t as young as you used to be.”

  “You’re trying to make me punish you.”

  “Is it working?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m in trouble?”

  He nodded again.

  “I’m in big trouble?”

  “Enormous.”

  Her dungeon down the hall had gotten lonely while Søren was gone. Nothing sadder to Nora than the sight of a St. Andrew’s Cross gathering dust.

  Søren slid gracefully off the bed and to his feet. He crooked his finger at her. She smiled and followed him to her bedroom door. He opened the door and there was Gmork, in the hallway, growling deep and low in his throat. A solid black eighty-pound German Shepherd growling in a darkened hallway was almost as intimidating as Søren when you got him in the right mood.