Cyrus ran about three miles a morning five times a week. And he was thirty-five. Nora’s Viking was fifty-one. Tall, though, with a longer stride than Cyrus…but fifty-one. He heard Nora’s voice in the background, yelling, “It’s a trap!”
Cyrus could handle himself with a fifty-one-year-old runner. He might be a Viking, but Usain Bolt he was not.
It sounded like Nora was off the case for today, however, bare minimum. And that was fine. Cyrus was happy to spend a day alone working on the case between having flashbacks from last night with Paulina. He’d taken care of a very insistent erection in the shower, but every time he thought about the way she looked and the way she smelled and the way she tasted and that sound she made when she came against his tongue, well, this was gonna be a two-shower day for sure.
In the meantime, he forced himself to focus on the case.
He had an entire shoebox full of Father Ike’s credit card receipts and bank statements to go through, which he’d been putting off since Sunday. Nothing for it but to brew a pot of coffee, get out his yellow highlighter and his laptop, sit down at the kitchen table and get to digging.
First thing he found—Father Ike did have money. He wasn’t a billionaire, but he’d died with ten thousand in his checking and eighty-eight thousand in savings. Not to mention a 401K with a little over a half a million in it. Of course, if he hadn’t died, that half a million would’ve had to last him for his entire retirement. With people living longer these days, that could have been twenty years or more. Except instead of retiring to a condo in Boca, Father Ike had eaten a bullet. Personally, Cyrus would have taken Boca.
Very quickly, Cyrus figured out how a man making a priest’s salary had that much money. Living expenses for a priest were pretty low. He owned his own car, but it was paid off. Insurance? Eighty bucks a month. His credit card bills showed charges for gas, for a few dinners at some mid-price restaurants, tickets to a Hornets game…nothing crazy, nothing wild, nothing out of place. Cyrus had most of the same charges on his card.
There was only one large charge.
From August, $4200 to something billed as “HAFH.com.” There was a ten-digit number next to it.
Cyrus opened his laptop, and searched “HAFH” in Google. No way was he going direct to some creepy kink website without checking it out first.
Praise the Lord. HAFH stood for “Home Away from Home.” A house rental website, like Airbnb.
He clicked through to the website. It specialized in long-term rentals. Not for weekenders, but for people who rented secondary residences for months at a time. Vacation homes for people who could afford long vacations.
Cyrus entered the number from the card statement into the search box. It took him to a one-bedroom cottage on Grand Isle, Louisiana. Cyrus flipped through the photographs of the house. Not bad. He and Paulina might have rented a place like that for their honeymoon. A little yellow beach cottage on stilts with a white wraparound porch, white front door, small galley kitchen, and a great big bedroom with a king-sized bed that looked out onto the water.
Cyrus noted the bed frame was metal with vertical bars on the headboard and footboard. Nora had called it a “bondage bed.”
All right. So Father Ike had rented a romantic one-bedroom vacation house on romantic Grand Isle. But when?
According to the website, the house was booked solid from September twenty-first to the end of the year. With rental rates of $5000 a month in the off-season, that $4200 had to be the deposit Father Ike paid on a long stay.
Cyrus sat back in his kitchen chair, sipped his coffee. It had cooled while he was working. Furthest thing from his mind right now, though.
Let’s say Father Ike was about to spend a few months in a beautiful beach house. He would have told a few people, wouldn’t he? Why not brag a little about getting laid in paradise? But that’s what Cyrus would do. God knows that’s what Nora would do. But is that what Father Ike would have done?
Priests were supposed to be humble. They weren’t. Cyrus knew that for a fact. Father Ike never struck him as a show-off or a blowhard, however. Really, he seemed a quiet, responsible sort of man. Maybe a quiet, responsible sort of man wouldn’t brag, but he’d request time off. At least warn Sister Margaret he was planning to be gone for such a lengthy time.
Cyrus called Sister Margaret. She answered on the third ring.
“Any news?” That was her hello. Poor lady, he didn’t know what to tell her.
“Still looking, Sister.”
“Well…I understand it might take some time. Isaac’s sister is arriving tonight. I’m picking her up at the airport. Will you be at the funeral?”
“When is it?”
“Saturday at St. Valentine’s.”
“I’ll try. Look, this is kind of a weird question, but did Father Ike mention anything to you about taking a long trip to Grand Isle?”
“Grand Isle? Oh yes, he went there a couple weeks every June. Soon as school was out.”
“What about soon? Like before the end of the year?”
“He wouldn’t take a trip in fall. He had to work. Why?”
“He paid a deposit on a house on Grand Isle. But I don’t know when his reservation was.”
“Maybe the owner of the house will tell you, if you let them know it’s an emergency.”
“That’s a good idea. Thank you, Sister.” Before he hung up, Cyrus decided to ask one more question. “Did Father Ike go to Grand Isle alone on his vacations?”
“As far as I know. He talked about how much he liked the peace and quiet of going down there.”
“Do you know where he stayed?”
“I have the address somewhere. In case of emergency. I’ll try to find it and get it to you.”
“I appreciate that. Thank you, Sister. I’ll call again when I know something.”
“Mr. Tremont, you said Ike paid a deposit on a place on Grand Isle?”
“Yes, Sister. A big one.”
“The place he stayed in the past, it’s owned by a member of the parish. Ike paid for the place by check.”
“You sure?”
“I’m certain. A very devout family owns the place and offers it to clergy at a decent rate. A sort of ministry of theirs.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus said, “I’ll definitely need that info.”
“I’ll get it for you right away.”
A few minutes later, Sister Margaret called back with the address. Cyrus jotted it down along with the name and phone number of the people who owned it.
As soon as he got done speaking with Sister Margaret, he called the owners of the house. Since nobody answered their phones anymore, he had to leave a voicemail message. Not wanting to tip his hand, Cyrus lied and said he had heard from a friend at St. Valentine’s that their Grand Isle vacation home might be available for rent.
Since he’d posed as a potential customer, the owner called him back immediately. A man, a Robert Hill, said the house was available for most of October and all of November. December was booked, however. Cyrus pretended to take the dates and prices down and promised to call Hill back.
So. What did that tell Cyrus? He could only guess at Father Ike’s motivations, but, as a detective, half of his job was guesswork. Father Ike had a place he could’ve rented pretty cheap, cheap compared to the Honeymoon Cottage he did rent. So why rent that place instead of his usual place? Maybe Father Ike wanted to go back to Grand Isle, but for some reason, he didn’t want anyone to know exactly where he was on Grand Isle. But if he didn’t want anyone to know where he was…why go back to a place he’d visited before?