Mortal Sin (48 page)

He leaned back in the driver’s seat and stretched out his legs. “Well,” he said, “if Fiona doesn’t object too loudly, I thought you might like to come to New Orleans with me.”

Somewhere on the outskirts of the city, he pulled into the parking lot of a ramshackle diner with a peeling hand-painted sign advertising crawfish caught fresh daily. He and Jamal walked past a line of dusty pickup trucks to the entrance. Inside, on the jukebox, Alicia Keys wailed soulfully about falling in and out of love as they slid into a red leather booth and picked up sticky menus.

The place wasn’t fancy, but the food was good, the servings massive, and the waitress friendly. “You boys from up north?” she said when she heard their Yankee accents.

“We’re from Boston.”

She flashed him a killer grin. “Well, then, sugar, welcome to New Orleans.”

They inhaled their food, just two growing boys on a road trip, and he topped off his meal with a cup of coffee while Jamal slurped the biggest root beer float he’d ever seen. Watching a dented vintage GMC pull into the parking lot, he told the kid, “We probably should check into a motel.”

Jamal eyed him over the root beer float. “Don’t know ‘bout you, but if I was the one come ail this distance to see my woman, I be headed straight to her house.”

“We have to find her first. I don’t even know where the man lives.”

“That’s why God made phone books, dude.”

The waitress pointed him in the right direction, and he sat on a high stool beneath the pay phone and paged through the telephone directory. There were five Remy Duvals. He folded back the pages of the directory and took it to the waitress.

“I’m looking for a Remy Duval who lives in the French Quarter. Can you tell me which address might be the right one?”

She squinted, then pointed. “This one for sure,
cher
.”

He went back to the pay phone, pumped in a couple of coins, and waited, his heart thudding double-time. When a man answered, he said, “I’m looking for Sarah Connelly.”

“She’s not here.” There was a measured pause. Then, “Who’s calling?”

“My name’s Clancy Donovan. I’m a friend of hers, and—”

“I know who you are.”

It was his turn to pause. He hadn’t expected the ex-husband to recognize his name. Nor had he expected to be received with open hostility. “Look,” he said, “I just drove all the way from Detroit, by way of Boston. I have to see her. Can you tell me—”

“She went out shopping a couple hours ago. I imagine she’ll be coming round pretty soon. You say you’re here in New Orleans?”

“Yes. I’d like to come over.”

“I can think of a thousand reasons to say no, but if Sarah found out, she’d fillet me and make gumbo out of my hide. She prob’ly wouldn’t kill me first, either. You got a pen?”

“I don’t need one.”

Remy Duval gave him crisp, concise directions. “You got that?” he said when he was done.

“I’ve got it.”

“Good for you.” And the man slammed down the phone without saying goodbye.

“Holy shit,” Jamal breathed as they pulled up in front of what could only be termed a mansion. “You think she gonna give up something like this for the likes of you, dude, one of you got some serious brain damage.”

Built of burnished red brick with an elegant white portico fronting on a semicircular drive, the house possessed a warmth and charm that spoke of good breeding and old money. Evergreen garlands decorated with tiny red bows wound around massive white porch columns in honor of the season. Clancy turned off the ignition, removed his keys. “It’s not hers,” he said. “It belongs to her ex-husband. And I appreciate the support.”

“Any time.” Eyeing the eighty-thousand-dollar Mercedes S500 sedan parked in front of them, Jamal said, “Cheer up. You may be out of work and not much to look at, but your ride is way cooler than his.”

“Ah, youth. Keep your mouth shut and try not to embarrass me. Got that?”

The kid rolled his eyes. “Yes, Massuh.”

To his surprise, Remy Duval opened the door himself. In a house this size, he’d have expected servants. Duval was in his mid-forties, with wavy blond hair going prematurely gray, and cool green eyes that bored into him as though he were day-old garbage. There was a softness to the man, a boyish pudginess to his face that probably came from forty years of easy living.

“Do you suppose there’s some unwritten rule of etiquette,” Duval drawled, “that says I have to let you in, Boston?”

“Absolutely not. We can wait in the car if that’s what you’d prefer.”

Duval looked past him, sniffed an opinion of the Celica that had nearly bankrupted him, and stepped aside. “Might as well come inside instead of letting the heat out.” He eyed Jamal as though he were some exotic zoo animal. “Who’s this?”

“My faithful manservant. Jamal, say hello to the nice man.”

“Yo, dude. This some crib you got here.” The boy’s eyes were the size of dinner plates as they took in the massive foyer, complete with marble-tiled floor, crystal chandelier, and a massive winding staircase with gold-painted wrought-iron railing. The Renoir on the opposite wall, a delicate still life, appeared to be real.

Duval shut the door behind them just as the roar of some god-awful music floated down the staircase. All three of them raised their heads at the intrusion, but it was Jamal who spoke.

“Nine Inch Nails,” he said in outrage. “Who listening to that crap, man?”

“Kit?” Clancy guessed.

“Kit,” Duval confirmed.

Jamal shook his head in exasperation. “That girl got no taste at all. She as honky as you, dude. She be needing a serious music education.”

For once, they agreed on something. “You want to go up and see her?” He glanced at Duval for permission.

Duval shrugged. “Go,” he said. “Second door on the left.”

Jamal strolled across the foyer, the ultimate in hip, the epitome of bad. “Shoes,” Clancy ordered, totally demolishing his coolness. With an exaggerated roll of his eyes, the boy came back and kicked off his size thirteens while Remy Duval looked on with mild horror. “And don’t be getting any ideas about stealing the silver while you’re here,” Clancy added. “You get in any trouble, I’ll feed you to the gators.”

“You sure know how to ruin a brother’s day,” Jamal grumbled cheerfully, and sprinted up the staircase.

Duval looked after him, his face a shade or two paler than it had been when they arrived. “Should I be worried?”

“He’s nowhere near as bad as he’d like you to think. The kid has a heart the size of Texas.’?’
And a pocketful of hip-hop CDs
, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Duval would find out in due time.

“So, you’re a priest.”

“Yes. I mean no. Well, sort of. It’s complicated.”

Duval’s green eyes narrowed. “Well, which is it, Boston, yes or no? Seems like a pretty simple question.”

“I’ve resigned from the active priesthood. But I’m still a priest. It doesn’t go away.”

“I suppose you realize you broke her heart.”

“That was never my intention.”

“What is it they say about the road to hell? I suppose you also know that in spite of six years of marriage, I was never able to do what you did in just a couple of months. It sticks in a man’s craw, that kind of thing. She never loved me, you know. That’s the difference. She loves you.”

Duval paused, studied him keenly. “Since her Daddy’s no longer among the living and her brother’s taking up breathing space that should have been allocated to somebody who’s evolved beyond Neanderthal status, I suppose that means it’s my responsibility to be asking you what your intentions are.”

“I could ask you the same question, Duval.”

“Doesn’t really matter, does it? You’re the one she’s in love with. How’s this? Hurt her again, Boston, and I’ll have you killed. I have friends in high places.”

He bit back a smile. “I suspect my friends in high places beat yours any day.”

Duval uttered a long-suffering sigh. “I imagine you’re right.”

Upstairs, the music abruptly stopped. They both glanced heavenward. “Praise be to God,” Duval said.

“Don’t start praising too soon. It’s about to get worse.”

“There’s worse?”

As if in answer to his question, the deceptively innocuous opening bars of
The Real Slim Shady
filled the air. “What the hell is that?” Duval said, and then Marshall Mathers opened his mouth and removed all doubt.

“He calls himself Eminem. I prefer to think of him as an equal-opportunity offender. It’s been an interesting trip.”

“Oh, shit.” Duval rubbed his head. “I think I need a drink.”

The after-Christmas sales had yielded some wonderful bargains. She’d picked up a couple pairs of jeans for herself, a gorgeous blue turtleneck sweater for Kit, some kind of stylish hair clasp to bring home to Josie. Now she was all shopped out, ready to kick off her high heel boots and relax with a cold one.

She pulled into the half-moon drive and parked her rented Oldsmobile directly behind a fire-engine-red Toyota Celica with Michigan plates. Remy had people over to the house all the time. He was a regular social butterfly, and she wondered who he could possibly know from the frigid Midwest. If she was really lucky, she’d be able to sneak upstairs before he noticed she was back. Otherwise, he’d corral her and try to drag her into their little social exchange. These days, socializing with strangers wasn’t high on her list of favored activities.

The jagged, syncopated rhythm of hip-hop hit her as she walked through the door. Lord love a duck. She knew kids bounced all over the place with their musical tastes, but she’d only been gone for three hours. It hardly seemed possible that Kit’s CD collection could have undergone such a drastic transformation in the space of one short afternoon. Remy must be having a cow.

She set her bags on the bench in the foyer, bent and slipped off her boots. They were ankle high, black suede, with zippered sides and little stiletto heels, killer boots that had cost her a fortune at Macy’s Downtown Crossing store. The problem was, they were killer boots in more than one way. She should have known better than to wear them shopping. Three hours of standing on the damn things had probably crippled her feet permanently.

She felt his presence before she saw him, a faint prickling at the back of her neck that had her raising her head and straightening, still holding a single boot in her hand. The man who stood in the parlor doorway, dressed in a simple black shirt and jeans, was both intimately familiar and a total stranger. Hands thrust into his pockets, he studied her with bone-melting intensity while she tried to take in enough oxygen to keep her upright.

Michigan plates. She should have figured it out right away. She’d studied geography in fifth grade. Unless they’d moved Detroit since then, it was still in Michigan. But the truth hadn’t even occurred to her. He was, after all, driving a strange car. And never, not in a million years, would she have expected him to follow her all the way to New Orleans.

Bittersweet joy ricocheted through her as she realized there could be only one reason why he’d come.

He’d cut his hair, all that beautiful dark hair she so loved to run her fingers through. A part of her mourned its loss even as another part of her admired how attractively the crisp new cut followed the contours of his head. Two hundred and twenty-seven days. It had been two hundred and twenty-seven days since she’d touched him, and she’d counted every one of them. At times, she’d wondered if she would spend the rest of her life counting. Seven and a half months should have been time enough to dull the knife blade a little, to take away some of the sting. But it still cut with breath-stealing precision.

No way was she going to make this easy on him. Not after all those months of crying herself to sleep every night. Her fingers twisted on the soft leather of the boot she held in her hand, and she straightened her spine.

“Nice car,” she said. “Midlife crisis?”

“No. I suspect it’s more a case of the real me finally being allowed to run free.”

Her hands trembled, those damn treacherous hands, bent on betrayal. She turned, set down the boot, lined it up with military precision beside its mate on the floor beneath the bench.

“What are you doing here, sugar?” she said. “I thought you were in Detroit, battling Satan or some such thing.”

“I was. It didn’t work.”

She glanced up and fell into those golden eyes of his. Trapped in their relentless whirlpool, she trod water, struggled to stay afloat. “Battling Satan?” she said.

“Detroit, T thought if I put enough miles between us, you’d stop waking me up at night. I was wrong.”

The tightness in her began to uncoil, one slender strand at a time. “So,” she said. “Here you are.”

“Here I am. Sarah, I’ve left the priesthood.”

Inside her, jubilation warred with blame, elation with guilt. “Because of me,” she said.

“I don’t want you to feel responsible. You were only part of it. A big part, but I was dissatisfied long before you entered the picture. You were simply the catalyst. You gave me the courage to act, the courage to admit I was in the wrong place.”

“So you just walked away? Just like that?”

A faint smile touched his lips, softened his eyes. “It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “The priesthood is a bit like the military. You don’t just walk away. You can take off the uniform and go AWOL, but that won’t alter your status as a soldier. I’ve applied to Rome for laicization.”

“Laicization,” she repeated, unfamiliar with the word.

“You’d be more likely to think of it as a dispensation. It’ll officially relieve me of my clerical duties and my promise of celibacy, and allow me to go back to living as a layman.”

She wondered if he could hear her heart thudding, all the way across the room. “So you won’t be a priest anymore.”

“I’ll still be a priest. Holy Orders is irreversible. But I won’t be allowed to perform the sacraments any longer. Of course, as a failed priest, I’ll be pretty much
persona non grata
in the eyes of the Church. A black mark on her record, at a time when she can’t afford many more black marks.”

She took a deep breath, filled her lungs with blessed oxygen. “And you’re all right with this? You’re sure you’ve done the right thing?”