Kingsley Edge might yet live up to his reputation—mercenary, perverted, and dangerous—but Cyrus couldn’t fault him his taste in women or his taste in home decor. If Juliette was a goddess, her home was a worthy temple.
Nora Sutherlin—if this really was Nora Sutherlin—led him up the steps to the large arched front door, her giant dog following at her heels. Cold air blasted him right in the face, and he basked in it. Although only ten in the morning, the city was already starting to steam.
“Very nice,” Cyrus said. “Mr. Edge has a beautiful home.”
She took him down a hallway to a parlor room filled with furniture the likes he’d never seen outside a Chartres Street antique store.
“A king needs his castle. Do you mind very much if I change clothes before we talk?” she asked. “I shouldn’t get paint on anything. King would tan my hide.”
“Literally?”
She smiled. “So you have heard of him.”
“His reputation precedes him.”
Her smiled widened. “Make yourself at home. Wet bar’s there if you’re thirsty. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared with her dog, and Cyrus helped himself to a bottle of water from the mini-fridge. He wandered the room, taking it all in. Fancy sofas—tufted velvet, exposed wood arms, carved wooden legs. Versailles-type stuff, very old world. The parlor was wallpapered with some kind of old-fashioned Victorian-looking stuff—red with an ivory floral pattern. Paulina would have liked it. A little too ostentatious for his taste. Then again, this was the Garden District. “Ostentatious” was standard procedure in most of these houses.
The only personal touches in the room were the framed photographs on the top of the marble fireplace mantel.
The same man appeared in each one of them. Kingsley Edge. Cyrus wasn’t the best judge of whether a man was good-looking or not, but even his eyes told him Edge was a head-turner. Of course, with a woman like Juliette in his house and bed, he’d have to be.
Mr. Edge had wavy dark hair that needed cutting. Dark eyes that were cutting. If hadn’t already known otherwise, Cyrus might have assumed Edge was of Louisiana Creole ancestry like Paulina—a little Spanish, a little French, a little Afro-Caribbean, a little who knows what…
According to his record, Edge was fifty. In the photos—which appeared recent, based on the age of his daughter in one—he didn’t look a day older than forty. Money, Juliette, and looks. Lucky bastard.
The picture of Edge and his girl had been taken in winter. His daughter was wearing a white coat and pink mittens, while Edge was sporting a tuxedo. Both of them had on wide smiles for the camera, and the little girl had her arms around her father’s neck.
In another photo, Edge and Juliette were slow dancing, looking at each other like nobody else existed in the world. Edge had on the same tuxedo jacket, and a patterned kilt. Scottish wedding?
The last photograph on the mantle had been taken at the same wedding. Edge and a pale, blond man were arm-wrestling at a table covered in wine bottles. Their eyes were locked on each other in a death stare, although it was clear both men were trying hard not to laugh. The blond was almost as much of a head-turner as Edge. Possibly. Men were not his specialty.
Cyrus glanced over the pictures again. These were the photographs of a man who loved his family. He might not have believed it without seeing it, knowing what he knew about Edge. But it was better this way, wasn’t it? Better to have a bad reputation that hid a secret good side, than to have a good reputation with a secret bad side?
In his career, Father Ike worked tirelessly as a church pastor, a school chaplain and a prison chaplain. Paulina had said students adored Father Ike. She certainly had liked and trusted the man. And all that time that good man had a secret dark side.
Or maybe not. Maybe it was all just a misunderstanding.
Right. And Cyrus was the next Miss America, too.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He turned and saw Nora Sutherlin standing in the doorway to the room, her dog beside her like a shadow. She’d changed out of her shorts and paint-splattered shirt into a black halter top dress with a high thigh slit and red high heels that gave her the illusion of height. She’d taken her hair out of the ponytail and now it fell around her shoulders in lively black waves. That was more like it. Now he believed this was a woman men paid money to spend time with.
“You were gone three minutes. I expected thirty,” he said.
“I’m not very high maintenance on Saturdays,” she said. “Here, proof I am who I say I am.”
She passed him a business card—solid black with silver lettering, the words Mistress Nora and a phone number. He dialed the number.
Her phone rang. She held it up, showing him he was calling her.
“All right. I buy it now.” He ended the call.
“Thank you. Would you like to have a seat?”
“I’ll stand.”
“So will I then. What can I do for you?”
“You live here?” he asked.
“I have my own place, but I’m here a lot. I’m on the day shift.”
“Day shift?”
She walked to the mini-bar and poured herself a glass of ice water.
“Juliette’s at thirty-five weeks. She could go into labor any time now. Papa is with her at night. She needs someone with her during the day. At least Papa thinks so,” she said and smiled. “Papa Kingsley.”
“How do you happen to know Mr. Edge?”
“We’re…family. In a way. I live just one street over.”
“Related?”
“Sort of,” she said, wagging her head from side to side. “Céleste calls me Aunt Elle. And Kingsley’s like a brother to me. Same father, in a way.”
“Foster father?”
She seemed to think good and hard about that.
“More like a godfather.” She smiled behind her glass.
“I see.” Cyrus wrote all that down. He saw her rub a spot of paint off her arm with her thumb. “You’re repainting the house?”
“Just the nursery,” she said.
“No offense, and I’m sure you’re a fine housepainter, but I’d think a man with Mr. Edge’s money could hire a whole team of professional housepainters.”
“He could. But he’s feeling extra protective of Juliette lately. He’s not comfortable with strange men in the house, even to paint. I offered to do it.”
“Wouldn’t I count as a strange man in the house?” Cyrus asked. He watched her over the water bottle as he took a sip.
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Are you strange?”
“Stranger than I look. I might not be the best judge of that, though.”
“Strange but not dangerous. You’re not even carrying a gun.”
“People might think threat of force is a good way to get to the truth,” he said. “But it’s not. People lie more when they’re scared, not less.”
“I’m not scared,” she said. “I’ll be honest with you if you’re honest with me.”
“That’s a good deal,” he said. “Should I start?”
“Please. I’m sure you didn’t come here to hire me for my painting skills.”
“I’m here about a dead priest.”
Her reaction wasn’t what he expected. She set her glass down with a thud that sent water spilling over the lip. Then she sat—almost falling—onto the sofa, her lips parted in a gasp, her eyes wide with shock and horror.
“What?” she breathed.
“Father Isaac Murran. Do you know that name?”
She took a shuddering breath and leaned over, head on her knees.
“Ma’am? Ms. Sutherlin?”
“I’m fine,” she said. She held up a hand. “Give me a minute.”
“Of course. Take all the time you need.”
The dog trotted over to his mistress and rested his head on her knee. She sat up and exhaled through her lips.
“I’m all right, boy,” she said to the dog.
“I assume you know Father Ike then?” Cyrus asked.
The woman shook her head. “Never heard of him.”
“That was a strong reaction over the death of a total stranger.”
“I know a few priests. I thought…I thought maybe it was one of them.”
“How do you know priests?”
“I’m Catholic.”
Cyrus snorted a laugh.
“What?” she asked, anger flaring into her eyes. They looked black now in the low light, not green.
“You’re Catholic?”
“Of course I’m Catholic. This is New Orleans, right? Everybody’s Catholic here.” She leaned back on the sofa and stuck one leg out, sprawling for a moment like a woman who’d been expecting a death sentence from her doctor and instead heard the word “benign.” She laughed a little drunkenly.
“Don’t scare me like that, Mr. Tremont.”
“Sorry about that.” He sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from her, watched as she rubbed her forehead between her eyes. He saw she wore a silver saint’s medal, which rested between her ample breasts. He had to wonder if this particular saint had ever imagined his reward for a life of godliness would be an eternity pillowed in beautiful cleavage.
“It’s not your fault. You’re doing your job,” she said.
“What saint do you wear?” Cyrus said as she sat up and adjusted her necklace.
“Saint Ignatius.”
“Interesting choice for a saints medal,” he said. “Patron of soldiers and the Jesuits. You have someone in the service? Or the Jesuits?”
“You know your saints,” she said, which didn’t answer his question. He waited. “This medal belongs to my lover. He’s on a long trip right now. I wanted something of his close to my heart.”
“Your lover? That’s what you call him?”
“I’d call him my ‘owner,’ but that would make probably make you uncomfortable.”
“A little, yeah. Something wrong with calling him your ‘boyfriend’?”
“He’s fifty-one. There’s no boy in that man. Although I am seeing a twenty-seven-year-old as well.”
“And he’s your boyfriend?”
“No. He’s my other lover.”
“You’re playing with me.”
“I always play with handsome men. It’s my job.”
She patted her dog on the head and stood up, went straight to the wet bar, and poured herself a drink. Not water this time, but whiskey from the looks of it. She downed the shot in one take.
“Now I believe you’re Catholic,” he said.
“By the way, I don’t usually drink bourbon before brunch. You gave me a shock.”
“Sometimes you have to shock someone to get their attention.”
She seemed to be considering taking another shot of her whiskey. Instead, she screwed the lid back on the bottle and took a seat opposite him on the smaller sofa.
“Why me?” she asked. “Why are you asking me about this dead priest? I’m guessing he was killed?”
“Suicide,” Cyrus said.
“How am I involved in a priest’s suicide? Was my name in his note or something?”
“This was in his pocket when he died.” Cyrus pulled out the little red business card. “That’s yours, yes?”
She reached out and took the card from him, nodded, handed it back to him.
“Mine. Old card, though. That’s not even my number anymore. Hasn’t been since we moved down here.”
“When was that?”
“Let’s see,” she said, counting backward. “Two years, eight months ago.”
Cyrus jotted all that down. “And the name Isaac Murran means nothing to you? Everyone called him Father Ike.”
“Nothing.”
“What about him? Ever seen him before?” Cyrus handed her a photograph of Murran he’d gotten from Paulina.
“Never seen him before,” she said.
“You’re certain?”
“I have never seen that man in my life. He might have known me, but I don’t know him.”
“You’re going to have to forgive me for being skeptical. Most of the time, I tail husbands cheating on their wives or blowing money that should go to their kids. One guy blew a lot of his kid’s college fund at your friend Edge’s club.”
“How is that Kingsley’s fault? He runs a club for adults, not a daycare center.”
“Just saying, the work I do…it makes you a little skeptical of everyone.”
“Most of the time, I flog husbands who are afraid to tell their wives they’re masochists or submissives. There’s a lack of trust on both sides.”
“You don’t care those men are cheating?”
She shrugged again. “That’s between them and their significant others. I’m just the hired help.”
“You’re a little more than a housekeeper.”
“Not much more. No kissing. No sex. Only pain and dominance.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “You were arrested for prostitution twice in New York. In 2006 and 2007.”
“I wasn’t convicted. Charges were dropped.”
“Charges get dropped for lots of reasons.”
“I won’t lie and say I’ve never had sex with a client. But I will say I’ve never exchanged sex for money—not that, as the kids say, there’s anything wrong with that. One detective tried to get me to give him private information about a client. When I didn’t, he arrested me for prostitution in retaliation. Another arrest was a case of mistaken identity. A wife thought her husband was seeing a prostitute behind her back. He wasn’t. He was seeing me.”
“You’ve never blackmailed a client?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t have too many clients if I did.”
“So that’s a no?”
She took a deep breath. He was annoying her. Good. The feeling was mutual.
“Do you have any clients who are in the clergy?” he asked.
“Back in New York, one of my clients was a rabbi. There was also a Baptist youth pastor, but don’t tell his momma.”
“So you’re saying you’ve never been in a sexual relationship with a Catholic priest?”
“I’m saying I’ve never seen, met, or had any kind of relationship—sexual or otherwise—with this priest.” She returned the photograph to Cyrus.
“But he had your card.”
“A lot of people have my card. You have my card.”
“True. But I didn’t call your number right before I killed myself.”
He’d shocked her again.
“You didn’t tell me that part.” She spoke softly, breathlessly. He’d upset her.
“He made two calls in the five minutes before his suicide. The first to a friend to say he was sorry for what he was about to do. The last call he made was to you. You want to tell me why he was calling you?”
“I’d tell you if I knew.”
“You would?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. But I really don’t know.”
“How about this? How about you tell me how he might have gotten your card?”
She took a long breath, puffing her cheeks out as she exhaled. “Well…that’s my old New York number. Maybe he went there on a trip looking for kink.”
“Did Mr. Edge ever give out your cards?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need to speak to him then.”
“Good luck.”
He ignored that. “You say Father Ike might have gone to New York looking for kink. I’m not very familiar with what dominatrixes do. Can you walk me through it?”
“You really think he wanted to do kink right before he died?”
“I don’t know what he wanted right before he died. But I do need to find out.”
She looked away, crossed her legs, nodded. “What do you want to know?”
“Father Isaac Murran was sixty years old. Do you have a lot of clients in their sixties?”
“A few.”
“Really?”
“Many sixty-year-old men still have strong libidos and sexual longings. The man I love will be sixty in nine years, and I fully intend to have good sex with him nine years from now. I mean, before then too but also nine years from now.”
She was playing with him again.
“Can you tell me what goes on between you and your clients? The basics?”
She sat forward and gave him her full attention. “A basic session begins like this. A client comes to my dungeon—”
“And where is your dungeon?”
“Do you really need to know that?”
“I really need to know that. I’m not the cops, okay?”
“Fine—828 Piety Street. Old brick factory.”
“You have a dungeon on Piety Street?”
“It’s not my fault half the streets in this town have religious names.”
“Okay,” Cyrus said. “Go on. Who are your clients, mostly?”
“We’ll go with the usual demographics. Most of my clients are straight white men between the ages of twenty-five and seventy-five who are middle class or above. Professional men—white-collar types. A few military guys but mostly doctors, lawyers, bankers, that sort. The bulk of my clients are in their forties and fifties, midlife crisis age. The ‘it’s now or never’ stage.”
“A client arrives at your dungeon and then what?”
“I greet them at the door and they come in. Then I make them take off all their clothes.”
“But not for sex?”
“For protection. I need to see they aren’t hiding any weapons.”
“Got it. Go on.”
“We’ll talk a few minutes about what he wants. Most of the time, it’s some pain and dominance, like I said. Maybe some foot worship. Maybe he wants to be called a specific name like ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ or ‘baby boy.’ Something that’s part of his fantasies. I’ll leave him alone a minute or two to get into the right headspace. He’ll probably kneel on the floor and close his eyes. I’ll come back in and the scene will start.”
“The scene?”
“That’s what we call it. A scene. Scening. A roleplay scene. A Mommy scene. A humiliation scene. Whatever he’s paid for. Anyway, let’s say it’s a pain scene. I’ll put him on the St. Andrew’s cross and hurt him with various instruments of kink-play—floggers, whips, paddles, canes. I see a lot of masochists in my dungeon. Most of them can orgasm from pain or can orgasm very easily after a beating.”
“The men do that?” Cyrus cleared his throat.
“They’re allowed to touch themselves. I don’t jack them off or anything.”
“Isn’t that…unsanitary?”
“Germaphobes don’t usually become dominatrixes. I make them clean up after themselves.”
“What do they use? To clean it up, I mean? Lysol?”
“Something like that. Or their own tongues if I’m feeling particularly sadistic. And then Lysol after. And bleach. I keep a very clean dungeon.”
Cyrus stared at her, stared a long time.
“Yes?” she said with a smile.
“Sorry. Head swam there a second,” he said.
“Kink isn’t for everybody.”
Cyrus wiped a drop of sweat off his forehead. The cold house was suddenly not so cool anymore.
“All right. The scene ends with him coming and cleaning it up. Then he pays you?”
“Oh, forgot that part. I get paid upfront.”
“How much, can I ask?”
“Really depends on what he wants. A basic two-hour pain session is going to be about five hundred dollars, and I usually get tipped another hundred. That’s here in Nola. I charged a lot more in New York.”
“Nola gets a discount?”
“Nola’s got a much lower cost of living than Manhattan.”
Cyrus chuckled. “I believe that.”
“For more serious scenes—blood-play, fire-play, all-nighters—it can run into the thousands of dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money. You must be rich.”
“I do okay. I mostly see clients now for fun. Old regulars from New York fly down. And I have a few new locals I adore. I might only see five to ten clients a week.”
“So a regular two-hour scene, just the basics, would cost a man six hundred dollars minimum?”
“Right.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“I’m worth it.”
Cyrus nodded, leaned back on the sofa, and exhaled.
“Another question…you do anything they pay you to do?”
“Within reason,” she said. “We all have our limits. But if it’s something I’m not into, I can refer the client to someone who will do it. I know a specialist for almost every fantasy, every fetish.”
“What won’t you do?” he asked and didn’t know why he was asking. Just nosy, if he was being honest.
“You’d be surprised by the guys who want me to dress up like a ‘sexy Nazi’ and order them around in German. That’s a hard ‘no’ for me,” she said. “Nazis aren’t sexy.”
“That’s one hell of a fantasy.”
“Many of the men I know with those sorts of fetishes are as horrified by them as you are. The brain is weird. If a man gets the standard set of wiring, he’ll find a woman sexy, or another man, or both. Nothing fancy. If you get a slightly different set of wiring, you’re turned on by popping balloons, dressing like a baby, getting beat up by Nazis, and you have very little say in the matter.”
“Wait. Balloons? You serious?”
“They’re called looners,” she said. Cyrus boggled at her. “Don’t judge. They can’t help it. Even vanilla people have unwanted fantasies—rape, violence, incest. Just because someone calls their lover ‘Daddy’ during sex doesn’t mean they want to fuck their own father.”
Cyrus looked up at her in surprise.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Your eyes got very wide when I said the word ‘Daddy.’ Did it get to you?” Her tone of voice wasn’t flirtatious, but curious. She sounded like a therapist trying to diagnose a patient. He better get out of here fast or she’d be interviewing him instead of the other way around.
“I didn’t know it was considered a kink, that’s all,” Cyrus said. “Girls say it all the time as a joke.”
She bowed her head. He could see she was trying not to smile, trying not to smirk.
“You like being a sex worker?”
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t find it satisfying on more than one level. There are, I promise, easier ways to make money.”
“Then why do it?” he asked.
“I’m a sadist.”
Cyrus laughed.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Of all the crazy shit you just told me, that’s the craziest. You’re a sadist?”
“I’m a sadist.”
“I used to be a cop. I met sadists. You are not a sadist.”
“You’re confusing sadists with psychopaths. Maybe this answer will make more sense to you,” she continued. “I like having power over people.”
“Power?”
“Power. Have you ever felt it? Power over someone?”
Hard question. Easy answer. “Yeah.”
“Did you like it?”
He answered it honestly before he could stop himself. “Too much.”
“There’s your answer.”
“You like having power enough to order someone to kill himself?” he asked, casually as he could.
Either she was the best actress in the world or his question had caught her completely off-guard.
“I would never do that,” she said, almost breathless. “Never.”
He believed her. Maybe he shouldn’t but he did. “Had to ask.”
“Right. Of course.” She stood up. “Now if we’re done here, there’s a little girl and a very pregnant woman upstairs who are expecting me to take them to get chocolate chip waffles at eleven, and I would hate to disappoint them. And me. Since we’re being honest with each other, the waffles are mostly for me.”
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.