The Priest (The Original Sinners #9) - Tiffany Reisz Page 0,40

pull that off, though?”

“I think I can handle that one.”

Cyrus escorted Nora to the front door of the parish house. Sister Margaret greeted them at the door. She looked Nora up and down a couple times but didn’t object to letting him and Nora into Father Ike’s room.

“Can I help you with anything?” Sister Margaret asked from the door.

“Did Father Ike have a laptop?” asked Cyrus.

“Not that I know of. We have a shared computer room in the house,” she said. She lowered her voice. “I already checked the internet history.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Though I felt terrible for looking.” She shook her head.

“Don’t feel bad, Sister,” he said. “We all want to know what was going on.”

“Did you find out what that thing was we found?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“Still looking into that,” Cyrus said.

Sister Margaret nodded. Then she left them alone in Father Ike’s room without another word. Nora stood by the picture window in the sitting room, staring down at the courtyard below. He stood next to her and saw what she was seeing—two elderly women in gray habits sitting under the shade of an oak tree.

“She seemed really upset.” Nora met his eyes.

“It’s been hard for her,” Cyrus said to Nora. “She’s known him for years. Thought she knew him.”

“Can you ever really know anybody? Completely, I mean? All the way down?”

“You been with your Viking for how long?”

“Known him twenty-three years,” she said, throwing two fingers up, then three. “Kingsley’s known him even longer. King once called S?ren ‘the infinite onion.’ No matter how many layers we peel back, there always seems to be more to him…”

“The infinite onion?”

“We were really stoned at the time,” she admitted. “But it’s an apt description.”

“You don’t know him?” Cyrus couldn’t imagine not knowing everything there was to know about Paulina after twenty-three years.

“I know his heart,” she said. “But he can still shock me sometimes, still surprise me.”

“Where’d you two meet?” Cyrus asked.

“Went to Starbucks one day,” Nora said. “Ordered a tall blond with whip. They gave me S?ren.”

Cyrus glared at her. She winked at him but didn’t pony up the real answer. Interesting. He’d figured her for an open book. Seemed like a few pages of that book were stapled shut.

“I guess we should get started,” he said, glancing around the room. “But I only have one pair of gloves with me, so I better do the digging. You can tell me if I—”

“I got this.” Nora rummaged through her handbag. She snapped on a pair of disposable, powder-free latex gloves. “I have my own.”

“Do I want to—”

“No, you don’t want to know.”

“All right then. What room do you want? Sitting room or bedroom?”

“Bedroom,” she said.

“Thank God,” Cyrus said.

He thought Nora would smile or laugh. She didn’t.

Cyrus started in on the sitting room, while Nora worked silently in the bedroom. He found nothing in the sofa but loose change and a pair of fingernail clippers. He had better luck with the coat closet. There was a shoebox on the top shelf full of old credit card bills.

He went through a few of them. The charges appeared benign. Gas, restaurants, Amazon. But Cyrus knew better—he’d seen it in the river in his mind. Father Ike had a secret, and keeping secrets costs money.

He carried the shoebox into the bedroom. Nora was sitting on the floor, her back to the bed, a Bible in her hands.

“Nora?”

She looked up at him, tears on her face. “Sorry,” she said, hastily wiping them away.

Although he was wearing a suit, Cyrus sat down on the dusty floor across from her. “What’s wrong?”

She closed her eyes, then took a breath before looking at him. “It just hit me what we’re doing. A priest died, and these are all his private things. We’re going through them like…like we can. Because he doesn’t have any family here.”

“This is the job.”

“Father Ike keeps private notes in his Bible.” She opened the Bible. It filled with scraps of paper. “S?ren does, too. That’s why I got Father Ike’s Bible out when I saw it. Because I’ve found all kinds of secret stuff in S?ren’s Bible.”

Cyrus waited. He could tell she had something to say to him. He’d been with enough women in his life to see that look in her eyes. He waited.

“I need to tell you something about S?ren,” she said. “If I can trust you. Can I?”

“I want you to,” he said. “But I can’t make you. All I can say is keeping secrets is part of my