The Priest: An Original Sinners Novel Read online

  Cyrus stood up. He knew when he was being dismissed. He followed her from the room to the front door of the house and down to the gate. Her fingers flew over the keypad too fast for him to see the code. The gate yawned open.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, Mr. Tremont. Truly. I don’t like knowing a priest called me before he shot himself. Maybe if he got me on the phone, I could have helped him.”

  Cyrus stepped onto the sidewalk and turned back to face her.

  “Could you answer one more question for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “This is all speculation, but can you imagine any scenario where a man would call you right before he killed himself? Anything? Anything at all?”

  She exhaled through her nose. Her brow furrowed.

  “I had a client once who called me after he committed a crime. Hit and run. He’d been drinking. He thought he’d killed the other driver.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to tell me where he was. That way if he hung up, I could call 911 and tell them where to look for him. After that I tried talking him into turning himself in to the police immediately, that a couple years in jail was better than eternity in a grave. Thank God he listened.”

  “Can you think of any other reason Father Murran might have called you?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “No.”

  She hit a button on the keypad. The iron gate started to close.

  She turned and walked back toward the house.

  “Ms. Sutherlin? Nora? Nora?”

  “I told you I was a sadist, Mr. Tremont. Do you believe me now?” she called to him without looking back. Then she was in the house with the door closed behind her. The queen was back in her castle, the knight-errant on the wrong side of the drawbridge.

  He believed her.

  Chapter Six

  Nora kept a mental list of men who somehow managed to get even more handsome after turning fifty than they were before. George Clooney was on that list. Christopher Plummer, of course, her personal favorite. Two of the men on her list she’d had the pleasure of sleeping with. Alas, Captain von Trapp wasn’t one of the two.

  Standing in the doorway of Céleste’s pretty pink ballet-themed bedroom, Nora watched as one of those men on her list read a bedtime story to his three-year-old daughter. A scene from a fairy tale: the handsome papa with the rakish dark hair only beginning to show the gray, and the little girl enraptured with the story or, far more likely, with her father and his tender voice.

  The girl was small, and so was her room. But it was a work of art in miniature—pink-and-white striped wallpaper, white wainscoting, white princess bed, a barre and mirror on one wall because Papa could not tell his baby ballerina “no.” On the nightstand, a milk glass lamp with a lace lampshade was on, bathing the room in the softest gentlest light, and next to it sat a framed photograph of famed ballerina Misty Copland leaping like a gazelle in a white tutu, grace and power incarnate. Céleste’s idol right after her Papa.

  “Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché, Tenait en son bec un fromage…” Kingsley read aloud.

  The Fox and The Crow. An ancient story warning of the dangers of believing your own reviews. The consequences could be dire. One might lose one’s cheese, and Nora had enough German ancestry in her to consider this not a fable, but a horror story.

  Anything but the cheese.

  It would have been sublime—the handsome papa, the adoring little girl, the picture-perfect bedroom—except for one thing. Nora was in trouble. Again.

  Papa closed his storybook. Nora went into the room and stood at his side over his shoulder.

  “King?” she said softly.

  “Céleste,” Kingsley said, “would you tell your Tata Elle I’m not speaking to her?”

  “Papa’s not speaking to you, Tata Elle.”

  Nora grimaced but tried to make it look like a grin. “Yes, I’ve noticed, baby. Can you tell your Papa he’s being childish?”

  “Papa, really. You kind of are.” Céleste, almost four, had already mastered the art of the French shrug, the ever more French eyes-to-heaven look.

  “I know,” he said, grinning. “I’m enjoying it.”

  “Céleste,” Nora said. “You know I love your Papa, right?”

  “I know.”

  “You know I’d never really hurt him, right?” Nora asked.

  “Right.”

  “Good. Now kiss him goodnight before I drag him out of your room by his hair.”

  Céleste rolled up, grabbed her Papa Kingsley by the face and kissed him on both cheeks, twice.

  “Goodnight, Papa. I love you.”

  “I love you too, my angel princess darling cabbagehead.”

  “Very sweet. Now excuse us, Céleste. Goodnight.”

  Nora grabbed Kingsley by the back of his hair and yanked him out of his little chair.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “Come on, Big Papa. We need to talk.”

  “Help me, petite,” he said to Céleste who only shook her head.

  “You’re on your own, Papa,” she said, before dramatically throwing the covers over her head.

  “On my own? You’ve been spending too much time with your auntie,” Kingsley said to her as Nora dragged him into the hallway.

  “There is no such thing as ‘too much time’ with me.” Nora released his hair once they were outside Céleste’s room.

  “I beg to differ.”

  “You’ll beg to breathe if you don’t behave. Come with me.” She slapped her thigh the way she did when signaling Gmork to follow her. Luckily this maneuver also worked on Frenchmen.

  She went into the guest room she usually commandeered when she spent the night at the house—a red and gilt room that looked like the sort of place where French Bourbon kings sodomized their courtesans. This was Kingsley’s typical aesthetic.

  “Sit,” she said, pointing at a Rococo chair with gilt scrollwork arms. “Speak.”

  Out in the hallway, Gmork barked.

  “Not you, Gmork.”

  “That is the stupidest name I’ve ever heard for a dog,” Kingsley said, disgusted.

  “It’s from The Neverending Story, which is a classic of German children’s literature. Show some respect.”

  “Le bête noire,” he muttered. The black beast, a fancy French way of saying Gmork was the bane of Kingsley’s existence.

  “My dog is not a bête noire.”

  He pointed a finger at her. “I meant you.”

  “What did I do this time?” she demanded.

  He sat back in the chair, stretched out his legs and crossed his feet at the ankles. She straddled his calves and stood arms akimbo. If he tried to escape, he’d have to go through her first.

  “Did you or did you not let a strange man into this house today?” he asked, dark eyes narrowed.

  “He wasn’t all that strange. Certainly less strange than the man who lives in the house.”

  “Juliette is thirty-five weeks pregnant. We don’t let strange men near her. I’d ban strange women as well, but we need you to babysit.”

  “Juliette told me I should invite him in.”

  “You shouldn’t have listened to her.”

  “Is this the key to happiness in your relationship? She says something calm and rational and not paranoid and you ignore it?” Nora asked.

  “So far so good,” he said.

  “I swear to God I would slap you if I didn’t know for a fact you’d like it.”

  “You could have called me. I would have come right home.”

  “Cyrus Tremont is a P.I. who helps women catch cheating husbands and parents find missing kids. And he has very good Yelp reviews. He’s not a serial killer. I Googled him.”

  “We do not vet visitors to this house with Google.”

  “I do.”

  “And we do not help P.I.s des
troy the lives of our clients.”

  “They’re my clients now, not yours,” she reminded him. “I don’t work for you anymore. And he wasn’t even asking me about a client.”

  “Then why the hell was he here?”

  “Because some priest killed himself last night.”

  Kingsley’s head snapped up and he started to stand. Nora put her hand out, pressing him back down into the chair.

  “Not him,” Nora said, rolling her eyes. As if she’d still be vertical and breathing if anything happened to him. “A priest named Isaac Murran. Apparently he tried to call my old number a few minutes before he shot himself. My business card was in his pocket. Tremont wanted to know why. The end.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth—that I have no idea who Isaac Murran is, that we’ve never met, that he’s certainly not a client of mine.”

  “Did you tell him—”

  “I know what I’m doing, King. And you can’t guard Juliette all the time. She’s a grown woman.”

  “She’s vulnerable right now.”

  “Obviously, she is not the only one.”

  Without warning, Kingsley rolled forward in his chair and rested the top of his head on her stomach. “Help me.”

  Sighing, she put her hands on the back of his head and stroked his hair.

  “Do the thing,” he said.

  “The thing? Oh, right, the thing.” Nora brushed his soft wavy hair off the back of his neck and found the two pressure points at the base of his skull that when massaged just right, helped relax Kingsley more than a bottle of wine.

  These two spots, known in the acupressure world as “the heavenly pillars” were about an inch below the hairline and an inch apart. For some reason, no one but Nora could ever find them on Kingsley. Juliette had tried, plus two doctors, a massage therapist…even Søren. Only she could “do the thing,” and since the thing needed done, she did it.

  As she rubbed his heavenly pillars, she felt the tension in his neck and back and then slowly felt it leaving. Not all the way, but a little bit—enough for his broad shoulders to slump slightly, enough for him to exhale.

  “Merci,” he whispered. “But don’t stop.”

  “King, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  His back moved with his long deep breath. Nora reached under his neck and unbuttoned his shirt to the center of his chest. He didn’t try to stop her as she pushed it down his arms to bare his shoulders and back. She massaged his arms, his shoulder blades, ran her fingernails up and down his spine the way she knew relaxed him best. It was easy to be with him like this. They had been passionate lovers long ago. And they’d hated each other, long ago. Both passions had burned themselves out. Only the softer feelings survived the flames—affection, friendship, tenderness.

  “I slept in a chair last night. Everything hurts,” he said.

  “There are six bedrooms in this house. Why would you sleep in a chair?”

  “There’s only one bed in the master bedroom. Juliette was sleeping in it.”

  “That bed is huge. There’s room for her, the baby, and you and half the National Guard.”

  He shook his head. “I had a nightmare last night. I woke up tangled in the covers. Woke Juliette up, too.”

  “Ah…” She stroked his hair gently. “Are they back? The bad dreams?”

  “For a month now, they’ve been back.”

  “What do you dream?”

  “They’re awful.”

  “I can handle awful.”

  Kingsley shuddered. “I dream Céleste is lost in the house, and I can hear her crying for me but…no matter where I look, I can’t find her. I dream men with guns come for Juliette and take her from me while she screams my name. I dream someone is trying to shoot at Nico, and I see you running to stop the bullet. Sometimes you take it. Sometimes it hits Nico and I see him fall…and you hold him while he bleeds.”

  Nico. King’s son. Nora’s other lover.

  Her hands went to her heart. “Oh, God, Kingsley.”

  “Last night was the worst one yet.”

  “What happened?”

  Kingsley didn’t answer at first. Nora braced herself and when Kingsley finally did speak, it was in a whisper, as if he were afraid to hear his own words.

  “Juliette lost the baby.”

  Nora blinked tears from her eyes. She dipped her head and kissed the back of his neck.

  “Just bad dreams,” she said. “You’re about to have your third child. It’s a lot to handle. Of course you’re having anxiety dreams. That’s all it is.”

  He looked up at her. His eyes were bright, almost feverish. Something in his eyes scared her. Something in his eyes she didn’t want to see.

  “You know your past. I know mine. Do we have any right to be as happy as we are?”

  “I don’t know if we have a right,” she said. “I don’t know if anyone has a right to be as happy as we are.”

  “You never worry it’ll catch up with us?”

  “What?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

  “Our sins? Søren’s finally caught up with him. We’re next, aren’t we?”

  She wanted to laugh, to laugh away his fears. This was irrational. Superstitious nonsense. She knew it. And yet, his words chilled her.

  “You sound very Catholic right now,” she said.

  “Tell me it’s sleep deprivation.”

  “It’s just sleep deprivation,” she said and prayed that was all. “You did sleep in a chair last night.”

  “I slept in the chair because I couldn’t bear to leave Juliette alone and unprotected in the room, but I was afraid to sleep next to her in case I had the dream again and started thrashing around. What if I hurt her in my sleep? I would never forgive myself if I hurt her or the baby.”

  “You want me to sleep with her tonight in your bed? She won’t be alone, and you can sleep in another room?” Nora asked.

  “I can’t ask you to do that. You’ve given us too much of your time already. You have your own life.”

  “One night won’t kill me. It’s worth it if you can get some sleep.”

  “Would you?”

  “If Juliette agrees. You know I love sleeping with beautiful women.”

  Kingsley sat up but Nora didn’t stop rubbing. She pulled his earlobes gently and he exhaled with relief.

  “It’s the great bait and switch,” he said. “You want something your entire life and you know that you won’t be truly happy until you have it. And then you have it and you can’t be truly happy because you’re now terrified of losing it. It’s enough to drive a man mad. I can’t lose Juliette. I can’t. I can’t lose my children. I can’t lose you or Nico or—”

  “Søren?”

  Kingsley glanced up at her before lowering his head again. Ah. So that was the problem. With Søren gone on his impromptu road trip, Kingsley was quickly losing his mind.

  Nora ran her fingers through his hair again, soothing him with her touch as best she could. Times like this she felt woefully inadequate. She might have the magic fingers but she didn’t have any magic words.

  “He just needed some time to himself, I’m sure. He’ll be back.”

  “Unless he gets hit by a truck and is dying in a ditch right now.”

  “Kingsley. Now you’re just being pathetic.”

  “What if he joined the Hells Angels?” Kingsley asked. “They’re not nice people.”

  “Our pacifist pretentious priest did not join the Hells Angels,” Nora said. “He rides a Ducati, not a Harley.”

  “They could force him to trade it in. He could come home covered in tattoos and dying of hepatitis.”

  “That’s it. I’m leaving.” Nora tried to pull away. Kingsley grabbed her by the arm to stop her.

  “Don’t go,” Kingsley said. “Do the thing again.”

  He rolled forward and put his head on her stomach again. Nora did the thing.

  When Kingsley finally calmed down, Nora went to Juliette and told her about King
sley’s nightmares. Juliette politely declined Nora’s offer to sleep with her—if she couldn’t sleep with Kingsley she would sleep alone—but she graciously agreed to sleep with the baby monitor in the room so Kingsley could hear her right next door. Kingsley agreed to the compromise. Nora kissed them both goodnight and started to head out. He stopped her at the front door.

  “He won’t hurt himself, will he?” Kingsley asked. She was glad he kept his head down when he asked that question so he wouldn’t see the look of horror that crossed Nora’s face.

  “No,” she said. “He’s too in love with himself for that.”

  “I’m not kidding,” Kingsley said. “I’m worried about him. I’m not used to being worried about him. He worries about us. That’s how it works.”

  “He’s still a priest,” Nora said. “Just a suspended priest. When the one year’s suspension is over, he’ll go back to the Jesuits, and everything will go back to normal. Our version of ‘normal’ anyway.”

  “Do you want things to go back to normal? I don’t,” he said.

  “Doesn’t matter what I want. If he wants to go back, he’ll go back.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I just want him to come home.”

  He nodded. “Moi, aussi.”

  “Goodnight, King. I’m going to bed. You should, too.”

  “Not yet.” He raised a finger, pointed it at her face. “This detective of yours.”

  “He’s not my detective. He’s just a detective. And what about him?” she asked.

  “Is he done with us?”

  Nora shook her head. “He’s going to come see you. He wants to find out how this dead priest had my business card.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Then tell him that. It’s no big deal.”

  Kingsley raised his eyebrow. She pushed it back down.

  “Goodnight,” she said again.

  She started to walk away. Kingsley called out after her, and Nora went back to him.

  “If you hear from him,” Kingsley said softly, “tell him I bought him a present. He needs to come home so I can give it to him.”

  “You bought Søren a present?” she repeated.

  “A little one,” Kingsley said. “A trifle.”