ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) by Susan A Fleet Read Free Book Online Page B

covered the phone with his hand and said to the waitress, “No dessert, thanks, just the check.” A headache was building behind his eyes. He got back on the phone. “Sorry, Mo, I’m in a restaurant, got interrupted.”
    “ Have you talked to Mom lately?”
    Mom. The bone of contention. “Yeah, she called me last night.”
    In fact, Evelyn had jolted him awake at two A.M. It had taken him twenty minutes to calm her fears and convince her some rapist wasn’t about to climb in a window and attack her.
    “ We’ve got Key Lime pie,” said Gum Girl, putting her hand on her hip, smiling at him. “It’s the best in town. Our pastry chef makes it.”
    “ Maybe you could call her sometimes, Dad.”
    “ Mo, hold on, okay?” His gut roiled with acid. He counted to five and said to the waitress, “I don’t want dessert. I don’t want Key Lime pie. What I want is the check, got that?”
    “ Whatever,” said Gum Girl, her eyes suddenly frosty. She slapped his check on the table, flounced down the aisle to the booth by the jukebox and began talking to Ponytail.
    “ Sorry, Mo. The waitress wanted to sell me some pie and—”
    “ Dad, if I don’t go get my laundry they’ll dump it on the floor. I really have to go. But thanks for calling.”
    Meaning: Go fuck yourself .
    “ Right,” he said, “talk to you later.”
    He punched off, hurt and disappointed and, he had to admit, angry. Maureen had no right to blame him for the divorce. She had no idea what the problems were. Evelyn had wrapped it in a neat package: adultery. As if that explained everything.
    He drove home to his apartment, his heart a lump of lead in his chest. But he couldn’t stay angry at Maureen. She was the innocent bystander. He dropped his keys on the coffee table and wandered to the bookcases on the wall opposite the sofa. Bracketed by freestanding stereo speakers, they held his books and his ridiculously large CD collection. Before moving to New Orleans, he’d converted his vinyl to CDs but kept the record jackets. Jammed into the bottom shelves of two bookcases, they reflected his music preferences: jazz instrumentals, except for Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, a few oldies by Frank Sinatra and several classical recordings.
    Other shelves held paperback thrillers, books on jazz, biographies of jazz players, and hardcover tomes on criminal psychology, but his most cherished possessions—photographs—stood on top of the shelves: Maureen at ten, atop a chestnut mare, beaming with joy at her first riding lesson; another six years later when she won the riding competition for her age group. His favorite: Maureen with her arm around him at her college graduation, both of them beaming, thrilled that she’d been accepted to John’s Hopkins med school. Taken one month before Evelyn filed for divorce.
    His computer and file cabinets were in the spare room upstairs, along with an extra bed in case Maureen came to visit. Maybe someday they would regain the closeness they’d shared for twenty years. But judging from tonight’s conversation, it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. That left work.
    He got on the phone and called Kenyon Miller.
    “ Hey Frank, what’s up? No date on a Saturday night?”
    “ Nah, I’m saving myself for the right woman.” After Miller’s guffaw died away, he said, “Do you know a Catholic priest named Sean Daily?”
    “ I know the name, not much else. Why?”
    “ He was Lynette Beauregard’s parish priest and I want to talk to him. He’s at St. Elizabeth’s near South Carrolton.”
    “ I think Charlie Malone goes to St. Elizabeth’s. He’s a rookie, just joined NOPD last year. I’ll dig up his number if you want.”
    “ That’d be great. Did you get a sketch artist to work with Kitty?”
    “ Yeah, Monica said she could do it Monday afternoon at one. I didn’t tell her it’s related to the serial killer case.”
    Frank fingered the jagged scar on his chin. On his sixth birthday the kid next door had