Mortal Sin (16 page)

“Really? You’re really going to do a portfolio for me?”

“Of course I am, Princess.” He ran a finger down the bridge of her nose. “Didn’t you believe me?”

So they spent the evening poring over magazines, getting ideas to use for her own photos. He explained to her the dramatic differences he could get from different lighting conditions and shutter speeds, explained the kinds of poses models and actresses typically used in their portfolios. He told her what color combinations and fabrics would work best for her coloring (deep blues and passionate reds and mysterious blacks), what type of clothing worked best with her particular body type (just about anything, because her body, he said, was damn near perfect). If she thought she’d feel too stiff or nervous during the photo sessions, he said, they could smoke a couple of joints first to relax her, because stiff or nervous models made for lousy photos, and he wasn’t giving her anything but the best. She listened to everything he said, impressed by the extent of his knowledge and troubled by the fact that a man so educated, so smart, so talented, should have to work a loathsome day job instead of being able to make a living from what he did best.

When she told him that, he just smiled and said, “Someday, babe. Who knows? Maybe you’ll become a famous actress, and I can be your official photographer.”

Josie locked the door behind the night’s final customer and flipped the Closed sign. “Thank God,” she said, crossing the room and falling like a rag doll into the chair beside Sarah’s. “I’ve been on my feet for nine hours in these god-awful shoes.” She kicked off the offending footwear, leaned back in the chair and swiveled it like a small child on a bar stool.

Her fingers rapidly working the keys of the adding machine, Sarah said distractedly, “You keep that up, sugar, you’ll be staggering out of here.”

Josie rubbed her temple. “My ex-husband spent years telling me I was dizzy. He’d be tickled pink.” Head thrown back, dark hair spilling over the back of the chair, she swiveled to and fro in a slow, lazy rhythm.

Sarah glanced up and frowned. “I hope you set him straight real quick.”

Josie opened her eyes and gave Sarah a slow, feline grin. “Oh, I set him straight, all right. Right before I booted him out the door for good.”

Steve Merino came bopping down the center aisle, tossed a Granny Smith apple into the air and deftly caught it. “Set who straight?” he said, and bit into the apple.

“My ex.” Josie stretched like a cat and studied him with narrowed eyes. “You’re looking chipper tonight, Steverino. Hot date?”

He grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Sizzling. But I’m not saying any more than that, because I’m a gentleman clear to the marrow.”

“Sex,” Josie said. “He’s planning to have sex. God, I remember sex. Do you?”

“Vaguely,” Sarah said, concentrating on the numbers she was running through the adding machine.

Steve leaned both elbows on the counter beside the cash register. “I already told you, Jose, any time you’re interested, I’m your man.”

Josie rolled her eyes. “Let me put it this way, Steven. When the day comes that you’re five years older and I’m five years younger, then we’ll talk.”

“She wants me,” he said to Sarah in a mock-confidential tone. “She’s just intimidated by the idea of having the greatest sexual experience of her life with a younger man.”

Sarah looked up, adjusted her reading glasses, and eyed him over the frames. “Maybe,” she said. “On the other hand, maybe she’s just interested in a man who’s old enough to grow hair on his chest.”

Steve clutched at his heart and staggered backward. “
Augh
! That hurt, boss lady. That hurt so bad that I am outta here.” He picked up his apple and headed for the back door, whistling cheerfully.

“Details!” Josie shouted to his back. “We want lots of details so we can live vicariously!” She leaned back in her chair and said, “You know, men are really more trouble than they’re worth. I think women are a lot better off just getting a cat and a vibrator.”

She’d finally snagged Sarah’s full attention. “A cat and a vibrator,” Sarah repeated, totally abandoning her adding machine. “And the reason for this is… ?”

“Think about it. Between the two of them, they can do anything for you that a man can do. But neither one will ever come home smelling of somebody else’s perfume.”

Sarah tucked a pencil behind her ear and considered Josie’s words. “I don’t know, sugar. I’ve had cats come home smelling of a lot worse things than perfume.”

Josie grinned. “You know what I mean.” She slithered her lanky body higher in the chair. “So. You are coming to little Frankie’s christening, right?”

Sarah had met Josie’s brother Frank and his wife, Sheila, at a Christmas party. Over eggnog and sugar cookies, Sheila had confided to her about their little surprise, a souvenir from a twentieth-anniversary cruise last summer when she and Frank had gotten a little too intoxicated one night on moonlight and champagne.

They were both approaching forty, they already had three daughters—a nine-year-old and a set of twins in their final year of high school—and the last thing they’d expected was another child. But once they got over the initial shock, Frank and Sheila found themselves eager to be parents again.

“Maybe this time, we’ll get it right,” Sheila told her only half-jokingly. “After all, we have seventeen years of experience to draw on. And one baby at a time has to be easier than twins.”

Three weeks ago, when Sheila had given birth to a baby boy, Josie had somehow managed to get Sarah to promise she’d attend the baby’s christening. “Oh, shit,” Sarah said now. “Tell me it’s not tomorrow.”

“You know perfectly well it’s tomorrow. Don’t even think of trying to back out. You promised.”

“But—” She cast about for a valid excuse to skip the festivities, but couldn’t seem to find one. She’d gotten on well with Sheila. And Josie was hell-bent on having her there to witness her shining moment as godmother to her first and only nephew.

“No buts,” Josie said. “Remember what that Adrienne woman said to you? You have to go on living a normal life. Correct?”

Sarah sighed, knowing she was defeated. “Correct.”

“Case closed, then. I’ll pick you up at eleven-fifteen.”

“Whoa, girl. Hold on just a minute. I’ll go, but I’m driving my own car. That way I can make a clean getaway when I’m ready.”

On a wet and dreary Sunday morning, she found herself pulling into the parking lot behind Saint Bartholomew’s Catholic Church. The day was so dismal she’d almost stayed home, where it was warm and cozy and dry. But sitting alone in her living room watching
Behind the Music
and waiting for the phone to ring wasn’t going to bring Kit home any more quickly, and Adrienne Thibodeau’s words kept coming back to her.
Don’t use guilt as an excuse to die a slow death
. A christening was a happy occasion, and right now, happy was something she could definitely use. So she’d bought a gift for the baby, pulled from her closet the only dress she owned that was suitable for church, and put on panty hose for the first time since she’d moved to Boston.

In the last week, temperatures had risen, rapidly eating away at the hard-packed snow, uncovering layer after layer of soot and muck and road sand. By midweek, Boston had reached a near record seventy degrees. Muddy water gushed in the gutters and spilled over onto the roadways, morphing into deadly black ice when each afternoon’s sunset sent temperatures plummeting. This, combined with the ubiquitous potholes, made for interesting driving, rendered even more interesting by the tendency of the natives to view both as challenges to their creative driving skills.

Today’s weather was a drizzly fifty-two degrees and damp, the kind of dampness that worked its way into your body and burrowed clean through to your bones. Sarah parked the Mustang amid a cluster of cars at one end of the church parking lot, opened her umbrella, and headed for the red double doors that were the only spot of color brightening an otherwise drab, monochromatic day.

Inside the church, the air was heavy with that hushed stillness all houses of worship seem to possess. Sarah folded her umbrella, shook the raindrops from it, and stepped into the sanctuary. Its ornate lushness was a far cry from the simple wooden church where she’d spent Sunday mornings during her formative years, terrified by the promises of fire and brimstone emanating from the pulpit. Here, the vaulted ceiling rose to the heavens above immense stained glass windows. A thick, blood-red carpet offset the massive wooden pews. The scent of candle wax, a remnant of the Sunday-morning service that had just ended, sweetened the air. Sarah stared in horrified fascination at the tormented and bloody Jesus who hung in eternal sorrow on the wall behind the altar. Maybe fear and intimidation weren’t the sole province of the Bible Belt, after all.

In the front pews, about fifty people clustered on one side near the baptismal font. Sarah silently crossed the crimson carpet and slipped into a vacant seat. Two rows ahead of her, Josie’s six-year-old son Jake, wearing a suit and bow tie for the occasion, turned around and stared at her. Sarah waggled her fingers at him. He flashed a killer grin and wriggled back down into his seat just as the priest, followed by the parents and the godparents, proceeded down the center aisle to the front of the church. As godmother, Josie proudly carried the guest of honor, swaddled in a snow-white christening gown.

The group gathered in a semicircle around the baptismal font. From somewhere, a flashbulb popped. Father Clancy Donovan glanced up, cleared his throat, and offered a faint smile to the cluster of individuals assembled in the pews. She’d seen him in street clothes, seen him dressed all in black. But today he wore white, a flowing white robe that was both a symbol of purity and a stunning contrast to his dark good looks. Some type of deep purple scarf looped over his shoulders and fell nearly to his knees. The effect was dazzling.

The symbolism and ritual of the Catholic baptismal ceremony was as foreign to Sarah, a born and bred Southern Baptist, as it was beautiful. Candles and prayer, the renouncing of sin, the anointing of the child with some kind of oil, the holy water ladled over the head of the squalling infant, who demonstrated his displeasure at the indignity with an amazing lung capacity.

Although tiny Francis Rafferty II was the focus of interest, Sarah’s attention kept wandering back to the priest. She couldn’t have said exactly why, except that in the white robe, he displayed an innocent purity at odds with the sophisticated, street-smart man she knew him to be. It was a little unsettling, seeing him in his natural habitat. His movements were graceful, his hands gentle but steady as he performed the age-old ritual that would eternally bind the child’s soul to God. She’d heard somewhere that a priest’s hands were consecrated, blessed, incapable of sin. Watching those long, slender fingers drawing the sign of the cross on the infant’s forehead, she could have almost sworn they gave off a divine glow. For some inexplicable reason, that unsettled her even further.

After the ceremony, people stood talking in clusters among the pews. Sarah lost track of the priest as she squeezed through the high-spirited crowd to pay her respects to Sheila and Frank Rafferty, who stood beaming with pride. Then she had to spend a few minutes admiring the baby. Little Frankie definitely had strong Rafferty genes; he stared boldly at her with wide, curious eyes fringed with dark lashes that would be driving girls crazy in thirteen or fourteen years.

Then Josie shanghaied her. “You have to meet my Aunt Freda,” she said, and proceeded to introduce Sarah to half the people in the building. Josie had a mind-boggling array of extended family, and by the time she was done, Sarah was certain she hadn’t missed a single great-uncle or second cousin. Not that she’d remember any of them by tomorrow. She was terrible with names and faces.

She finally escaped when Josie’s mother dragged her daughter away to confer about the buffet luncheon waiting at Frank and Sheila’s house. Grateful for the reprieve, Sarah scooted for the front door, intending to make a rapid getaway. But it wasn’t fated to be; in the vestibule, near the open door, she found Clancy Donovan shaking hands with the departing guests. She tried to sneak past the portly woman in flowered silk who was pumping his hand with immense enthusiasm, but over the top of the woman’s head, the priest’s gaze met hers, wanned and lingered.

“Wonderful baptism, Father,” the woman said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Elsinore. It’s a blessed occasion.” His words were directed at the woman, but his eyes were still on Sarah, clearly willing her to stay.

Hell’s bells. She hesitated for an instant before abandoning her getaway plan. He spoke a few more words to the woman before the petite Mrs. Elsinore fluttered away into the drab gray afternoon like a brightly colored finch.

Sarah took a step forward and held out her hand. “Father,” she said. “Nice. Very nice.”

“Sarah.” He took her hand in both of his. His skin was warm and dry, and he smelled like altar candles and bay rum. “I’m glad you could come. Was this your first Catholic baptism?”

“Yes.”

“Different?”

“Very different. Where I come from, when we baptize people, we just dunk them in the river. And they’re generally a tad older than little Frankie. I’m not at all familiar with Catholic ritual, but it was a lovely ceremony.”

“Thanks. Now you’ve uncovered my secret. I like to dress in robes and pour water over the heads of unsuspecting children.”

He was teasing her. Humor danced in his eyes, and she returned his smile, wondering how anybody so closely aligned with God could be so devilishly attractive. They stood looking at each other as the wind blowing through the open door fluttered the hem of his robe. “Are you coming to the house?” he said.

She hadn’t intended to. Her plan was to give Josie the gift she’d bought, ask her to deliver it to the proud parents along with her regrets, then get the hell out of Dodge. But the longer he stood waiting for an answer, the less appealing she found the idea of a long, solitary afternoon in Revere. “Will you be there?” she said.