Read ABSOLUTION (A Frank Renzi novel) for Free Online Page B

of me just fine.”
    A smile tugged at her lips as she spread strawberry jam on her toast. “All well and good, but you’re killing yourself with those cigarettes. The doctor said so.”
    He snubbed out the cigarette and reached for the newspaper, the stark front-page headline leaping out at him: NO LEADS IN FOURTH MURDER. A nasty business, best ignored. He located the puzzle page, took out a pencil and began the crossword.
    “ What’s your schedule today?”
    “ I’ve got a meeting with the deacons after lunch, a planning session for the annual fund-raiser.”
    “ Money problems. Will they ever cease?”
    “ Not unless we hit the lottery.” He watched her leave the table to fill a pitcher with cream, moving with a lithe grace, maintaining a trim figure at fifty-seven. Lord knows how. She was a fantastic cook: homemade jams, rich Cajun sauces, and the best seafood gumbo he’d ever tasted. Born and raised on the bayou, she came from Cajun-French stock, though her chiseled face hinted at Choctaw ancestors.
    He thought her the most beautiful women he’d ever known.
    “ I need to review the financial statements,” he said, doodling dollar signs in the margin of the newspaper. “And visit Alphonse Landry in the hospital.” Seventy percent of his parishioners were seniors. The younger families had moved to the suburbs, and the elderly were dying off like Alphonse, eighty-two and in the last stages of cancer.
    “ Do you think they’ll ever catch this horrible killer?”
    He set aside the crossword. With no close friends and no family, Aurora needed to talk. He was her closest companion, and after thirty years they shared a deep bond.
    “ I hope they catch the bastard, put him in jail and lose the key.”
    Aurora’s eyes widened. “Sean!”
    “ Well? I do. He’s a sick bastard.” He tapped the photographs on the front page of the Times-Picayune . “These girls were just starting out in life. They never had a chance.”
    “ You’re thinking about Lynette,” Aurora said softly.
    “ Of course. How could I not?” He massaged his eyes, visualizing the troubled young woman who’d poured her heart out to him. Her family had a lot of money, but that didn’t guarantee happiness. Or a peaceful family life.
    “ It says in the paper her parents might hire one of those retired FBI profilers to find the killer.”
    FBI. His heart thumped his chest.
    “ Sean, I think you should tell the police about that young priest, the one you saw talking to Lynette at the mall the day before she was murdered.”
    “ It’s no crime to talk to a girl at a mall.”
    “ I know, but you said he made a nasty comment to you about—”
    “ Let sleeping dogs lie, Aurora.” He pushed back his chair. “I’d best get to work on the parish financial statements.”
    Aurora gave him a puzzled look as he left the table. Secrets, he thought with a pang of guilt as he entered his office and went to his desk. His yellow legal pad lay on top of the desk, full of doodles: swirls and circles and dollar signs. He tore off the top sheet and threw it in the wastebasket.
    July had been a bad month. First, the cancer diagnosis. Then the letter from New Hampshire. He had no idea what to do about it. The parish financial outlook was grim. He didn’t know what to do about that either. And if the Beauregards hired some FBI agent to find Lynette’s killer, the agent would come to St. Elizabeth’s and ask him a lot of questions, questions he didn’t want to answer. Worse, if some FBI agent dug into his past, he might find out Sean Daily wasn’t the man he pretended to be.
    _____
     
    This time when the sinner marched up to the hostess station, Roxy greeted him with a smile. He didn’t smile back. Why give her another opportunity to reject him? “I’d like the booth down there,” he said, pointing with his finger. “The one you gave me last time, beside the restroom.”
    Her smile faded to a sulky pout. “No problem, sir.”
    He followed her