“Jail time?”

“The woman is Teflon. I’ll email you the basics, but no convictions. Nothing went to court. Not even a plea. Everything dropped every single time.”

“What about blackmail? Any arrests?” Cyrus could easily imagine a sex worker blackmailing a priest-client. He knew quite a few priests with money tooling around town in big black Caddies, rushing to get morning Mass over with so they could make their ten o’clock tee-times at the golf course.

“No, but she does have a known associate who was investigated for blackmail. And he’s local, too. I couldn’t find an address for her, but I found one for him.”

“Name?”

“Kingsley Boissonneault.”

“Never heard of him.”

“AKA Kingsley Edge. Owns The Marquis Club. Jazz club, supposedly.”

Cyrus winced. “Him I’ve heard of.” A husband he was tailing last year had spent a lot of money at The Marquis Club, a lot of money that should have been going to his ex-wife and kid.

“What’s Edge’s address?”

Katherine gave him an address in the Garden District. “You think Sutherlin’s there?” he asked.

“They’ll know where she is if she isn’t. Better hurry. She might skip town when she finds out Murran’s dead. Plus, you know you want to meet this lady.”

“Believe it or not, I’m not looking forward to getting slapped around by a big lady with a whip today. That is not my type.”

Katherine laughed. “You’re forgetting I know you, Cyrus. Every woman is your type.”

He looked back at the house, the little brick cottage painted white. His heart was in that house.

“Not anymore.”

Chapter Three

Nora Sutherlin set her paintbrush down onto the tray and stepped back. She stood in the center of the nursery, which had been emptied of all furnishings. Everything was in storage, waiting for the mother-to-be to pick a paint color and for the aunt-to-be to do the painting.

“Okay, take your time. But not too much time. You’re about to pop,” Nora said. “The green one is Sounds of Nature. The pink one is Cotton Candy. The yellow one is Enchanted. Which one do you like best?”

Juliette Toussaint, thirty-five weeks pregnant with the child of the notorious Kingsley Edge, narrowed her eyes at the wall where Nora had painted three large sections in baby-friendly hues. With her right hand on her protruding pregnant belly and her left hand toying at a string of pearls around her long graceful neck, Juliette gave each swatch a long look before finally turning to Nora.

“No blues?” Juliette asked.

Nora dropped her chin to her chest and counted to three.

“You told me no blues,” Nora said.

“No, he told you no blues,” Juliette reminded her.

“He’s buying. Therefore, no blues.”

Juliette only sighed.

“If there is any white woman on the planet who shouldn’t have a Pinterest account, it’s me,” Nora said. “But I opened a Pinterest account in my quest to get you the perfect nursery wall color, because your baby deserves the best. These three are the best. These are the colors Martha Stewart dreams in. If the Virgin Mary had a ten-thousand-dollar nursery budget, baby Jesus would have had one of these colors painted on His walls. Any one of these colors in a nursery will give the most diehard childless free spirit—me, for example—aching ovaries because she wants to have a baby for the sole reason she can have a room one of these colors in her house.”