Mortal Sin (17 page)

“Absolutely. I never turn down a free meal.”

The man standing in line behind her cleared his throat. She and Clancy Donovan realized simultaneously that they were still holding hands. He dropped her hand as if it had jungle rot and took a step backward.

She busied herself locating the release button to her umbrella. It popped open, and she glanced back up at the priest. He stood with feet braced apart, his hands clasped, regarding her with an odd intensity. “Maybe I’ll see you there,” she said.

“I’ll be looking forward to it.” And he turned to greet the gentleman who’d been waiting with barely concealed impatience.

She dodged puddles all the way to her car, unlocked the door and slid in behind the wheel. Shaking water off her umbrella, she closed it and tossed it onto the floor. Breathing a little too hard, she gripped the steering wheel and leaned back in her seat.

What the hell had that been all about? What devil had prompted her to stand in the damp and windy church entryway, flirting with a priest, of all people, while needles of awareness danced in her belly?

It was a momentary aberration. Nothing more. To prove it, she popped in a CD, cranked the ignition, and turned the car in the direction of Sheila’s house, exorcising her demons the way she always did, by belting out a jazzy little number along with Reba.

Tell me why haven’t I heard from you ?

“I wouldn’t let ‘em put me out. Hell, I’m a grown man, you’re gonna put me to sleep for something as simple as having a few teeth out? I took a local. Never felt a thing. But when he started yanking and twisting, I could hear the roots crunching. The most bizarre sensation I’ve ever experienced. And the blood… Jesus, it was just spurting out everywhere—”

Glassy-eyed, Sarah nodded, took a gulp of warm cream soda, and looked around desperately for a familiar face. But she’d been deserted, left to fend for herself in her hour of need. Jack Lawson was recently divorced, lonely, and movie-star handsome. He was also an interminable bore who stuck like Velcro. He had already treated her to the lengthy and convoluted story of his defunct marriage. Now he’d moved on to the recent extraction of his wisdom teeth. Perhaps Jack preferred a local, but she would have been thrilled with a few whiffs of ether, just so she could escape from this living hell.

“It’s the goddamn insurance companies,” he was saying. “They won’t pay unless you have all four out. Can you believe that? I only had trouble with one, but unless I wanted to pay the frigging bill myself, it was four or nothing. It’s some kind of collusion between the medical profession and the insurance industry. Believe me, the truth’ll come out one of these days. When it does, just remember it was Jack Law-son who said it first.”

Forgetting would be difficult. While the man continued to ramble insufferably, Josie’s son Jake raced into the room with his cousin Brandy in hot pursuit, both of them carrying toy pistols, both of them screaming like banshees. They circled a Louis XIV armchair that was undoubtedly worth a fortune and scrambled on all fours behind the overstuffed couch. “I got you!” Brandy yelled. “I got you, you worthless scumbag!”

“That’s what you think,” Jake yelled back. “You’re dead meat, dog breath, because I got spies watching you everywhere.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m the good guy, Jake Porter, and you are toast.”

“You can’t be the good guy. You’re a girl.”

“I’m three years older than you. I get to be anybody I want to be!”

In the midst of the chaos, Clancy Donovan appeared in the room’s arched entry, looking relaxed and comfortable in the sweater and jeans he’d changed into before driving out here. “Jake,” he said firmly. “Brandy.”

The yelling ceased abruptly, and two heads popped out from behind the couch. “Take all that energy elsewhere,” he said. “Right now, before you destroy the living room. Go upstairs and play.”

Both kids scrambled out from behind the couch and stood before him, shuffling and contrite. Jake mumbled, “Sorry, Father.”

“Go on,” the priest said. “Both of you, before your mothers throttle you. And walk, please. No more running in the house.”

He stood watching them until the sound of their footsteps disappeared up the staircase. Then, with a satisfied gleam in his eye, he turned to Sarah. For an instant, her breath caught in her throat as he studied her from across the room, his eyes a sea of gold, pupils wide and black in the dimness.

“—besides,” Jack said, “they don’t know who they’re dealing with here. I don’t take any of that crap from any—”

Momentarily lost in Clancy Donovan’s eyes, she had forgotten Jack Lawson even existed. She exhaled and sent the priest a beseeching look across the Aubusson carpet.

Save me. Please.

He took in the situation and wasn’t quite successful at hiding the smile that flitted across his face as he began moving across the carpet toward her.

“—so I told the guy he could just—”

“Excuse me. Sarah? I believe we volunteered to help with cleanup in the kitchen.”

Jack Lawson stopped midsentence, his mouth hanging open. She gave the priest a look of unending gratitude. “You’re right, Father,” she said. “I completely forgot. Jack, it was so nice to meet you.”

Jack closed his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.” As if in afterthought, he shouted to her receding back, “Hey, don’t they have somebody to do that?”

The kitchen was a disaster, paper plates piled everywhere, silver and glasses and serving dishes stacked on every available surface. “You fill the sink with water,” the priest said, “and I’ll start tossing rubbish.” He crouched in front of the sink and opened a cupboard door. “They must have trash bags in here somewhere… yes, here they are.”

She raised her eyebrows and took a second look at the catastrophe. “We’re really cleaning this? You and me?”

He glanced up at her, an oversized trash bag in his hand. “You wouldn’t want to make a liar of me, would you? And you have to consider the alternative.”

She pictured Jack Lawson and grimaced. “There is that to consider.” She waited while he closed the cupboard door, then she put the stopper in the sink, squirted in dish detergent, and turned on the hot water tap. “Thank you, Father. I felt like a caged animal in there.”

“It’s Clancy.”

“‘scuse me?”

“My name. It’s Clancy.” He had moved to the table and was busy filling the trash bag with paper plates, empty paper cups, and disposable plastic utensils. “That’s what my friends call me.”

Warmth spread low in her belly. “I see,” she said to the back of his head. “And are we friends?”

“I wonder if Sheila wants to save the rest of this salad.” He turned, serving bowl in hand, and smiled at her. “It feels that way to me,” he said, and lofted the bowl. “What do you think about the salad?”

“Toss it. Nobody wants to eat wilted lettuce.”

“Good point. How are you holding up?”

He scraped leftover salad into the trash while she stacked dirty dishes beside the sink. He handed her the salad bowl and she dunked it into hot, soapy water. “I went to a support group meeting,” she said, turning the ridged bowl and poking into all the crevices with her dishcloth. “‘1 really want to thank you for that little suggestion.”

“Is that a kernel of sarcasm I’m detecting at the heart of your gratitude?”

“It was awful. Heart wrenching.” She lifted the bowl from the water and rinsed it. “Adrienne and I had coffee afterward. She advised me that the best thing I can do for myself is to go on living a normal life.” Sarah loaded silverware into the sink and began working her way through it briskly. “So here I am. Living.”

He opened a cupboard door, moved down the line of doors until he found a roll of plastic wrap. “Did you get anywhere with the high school?”

“No. I talked to the principal, and Kit’s teachers, and a couple of the kids who sat near her in class. Nobody seems to have a clue about anything.”

He opened the fridge and made room for a couple of bowls. “I’ve been pushing it,” he said, returning to the table. “As hard as I can. I’ve been out on the street night and day, talking to people. Nobody’s seen Kit, and nobody seems to know who this guy is.”

He touched her shoulder and she turned. In his hand, he held a partitioned serving plate with two olives on it. “Payback for all our hard work,” he said. “We get to raid the leftovers.”

“My hands are all soapy.”

He plucked an olive from the plate and held it out. She ate it from his fingers, then watched as he popped the last one into his mouth. “It’s so hard,” she said. “The waiting. I can’t stand feeling helpless. I keep thinking there must be something else I should be doing. I call the Revere police at least once a week, just to make sure they don’t forget I’m alive.”

He slipped the plate into the sink and shoved up the sleeves of his sweater. “I suspect they’d find you difficult to forget.”

“Since I’m not sure precisely how you meant that, I’m going to operate under the assumption you meant it as a compliment.”

“I absolutely meant it as a compliment. Dishcloth?”

She wrung out the cloth and handed it to him, and he wiped down the table, the counter, the stove top. When he was done, he pulled two towels from a drawer, and together they dried the dishes, quickly and efficiently. “At least spring finally got here,” he said, holding up a cake pan to allow excess water to drain off. “I seem to remember telling you, just a few weeks ago, that it would.”

“I didn’t believe you. I still don’t believe you.” She glanced out the window at a dull, gray world. “This is your idea of spring?”

With a disarming smile, he said, “Welcome to Massachusetts.” He dried the pan and picked up a fistful of silverware. Opened the silverware drawer and rapidly wiped and stacked knives, spoons and forks in their proper places. “The crocuses outside the back door of the church are poking their heads up through the snow. And in a week or two, magnolias will be blooming all over the Back Bay.”

“Magnolias,” she said with a sigh, charmed by the picture his words painted in her mind of wispy pink and white blossoms flanking narrow streets lined with brick townhouses. “I absolutely adore magnolias. I had no idea they grew this far north.”

“It would be worth your while, then, to take a drive down Commonwealth Avenue to see them. They’re breathtaking.”

They hung up the dish towels and stood back to admire their handiwork. Clean dishes were stacked tidily on the table. Every surface was wiped clean, and the bag of rubbish was tied neatly and left beside the back door. “Now,” he said, “like good little elves, it’s time to steal away and leave Sheila to wonder who cleaned her kitchen for her.”

It was also Sarah’s cue to pack up and depart. “I have to be going,” she said, sneaking a glance at the kitchen clock. “It’s almost three. Thanks again for rescuing me.”

“No thanks necessary.”

She located the Raffertys, made her goodbyes, and unearthed her coat from the pile on the guest room bed, wondering as she did so whether the priest would still be here when she got outside. Not that it mattered. He undoubtedly had places to go, things to do, people to see. And so did she. There was that frozen turkey dinner she had to microwave for her evening meal. Several pairs of panties that needed washing. The living room to vacuum.

Lint to contemplate in her navel.

With a sigh, she acknowledged that the good Father was gorgeous. Not to mention clever and witty and smart. He oozed an innate charm he probably wasn’t even aware of, and he had a deliciously off-the-wall sense of humor. She couldn’t imagine being female and not finding him attractive. But as far as men were concerned, there were degrees of availability, and Father Clancy Donovan was as unavailable as it was possible to get.

Besides, her kitchen floor could use a good coat of wax, and the toilet in the downstairs bathroom needed scrubbing. That should be sufficient distraction to curb her deviant thoughts and fill the rest of her afternoon. With a renewed determination to hone her domestic skills, Sarah let herself out the kitchen door, her umbrella tucked under her elbow, and stepped around the corner of the house.

The object of those deviant thoughts was standing in the driveway, beneath the basketball hoop, giving Jake pointers on how to line up a jump shot. The breeze lifted a strand of the priest’s dark hair, then let it fall. Jake nodded his understanding, bounced the basketball against the pavement two or three times, and shot for the moon.

He missed by a mile. Clancy ruffled his hair, cast her a parting smile over the boy’s head, and squatted back down to explain something that apparently hadn’t gotten through the first time. Heels clicking on the pavement, she moved briskly down the driveway to her car, parked on the street in front of the house for a quick getaway. She unlocked the Mustang and slid into the driver’s seat. Of its own volition, her gaze returned to the dynamic duo in the driveway just in time to see the priest make a flawless shot that went through the hoop like a knife through butter. Determined to ignore her disconcerting reaction to him, she stuck her key into the ignition and turned it.

Nothing happened.

In disbelief, she pulled out the key, inhaled a sharp breath, and slid it back in. She’d been driving the Mustang for two years, and it had never even seen the inside of a repair shop. If there truly were a God, she didn’t appreciate His sense of humor. Or His timing.

Please. Pretty please.

She turned the key again. Zilch. The poor old girl didn’t even let out a feeble whinny. The Mustang was as dead as Elvis.

“Shit on a stick,” she said.