“Ready?” Nora asked.

“Hold on. Trying to figure out how to lie to a nun,” he said.

“Oh, that’s my area,” she said. “What are we lying about?”

“You. If I’m going to let you snoop around Father Ike’s room, I better tell Sister Margaret something about you.”

“Hmm…maybe tell her I’m a private eye in training?”

Cyrus stared at her.

“Okay, stupid lie,” she said. “Tell her I’m a psychic you hired to read the vibrations of the room?”

“I could maybe tell that to anyone in this town but a nun.”

“True. Catholics don’t really trust psychics. You could tell her I’m a therapist who knows a lot about the psychological issues Catholic priests deal with.”

“Can you pull that off, though?”

“I think I can handle that one.”

Cyrus escorted Nora to the front door of the parish house. Sister Margaret greeted them at the door. She looked Nora up and down a couple times but didn’t object to letting him and Nora into Father Ike’s room.

“Can I help you with anything?” Sister Margaret asked from the door.

“Did Father Ike have a laptop?” asked Cyrus.

“Not that I know of. We have a shared computer room in the house,” she said. She lowered her voice. “I already checked the internet history.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Though I felt terrible for looking.” She shook her head.

“Don’t feel bad, Sister,” he said. “We all want to know what was going on.”

“Did you find out what that thing was we found?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“Still looking into that,” Cyrus said.

Sister Margaret nodded. Then she left them alone in Father Ike’s room without another word. Nora stood by the picture window in the sitting room, staring down at the courtyard below. He stood next to her and saw what she was seeing—two elderly women in gray habits sitting under the shade of an oak tree.

“She seemed really upset.” Nora met his eyes.

“It’s been hard for her,” Cyrus said to Nora. “She’s known him for years. Thought she knew him.”

“Can you ever really know anybody? Completely, I mean? All the way down?”

“You been with your Viking for how long?”

“Known him twenty-three years,” she said, throwing two fingers up, then three. “Kingsley’s known him even longer. King once called Søren ‘the infinite onion.’ No matter how many layers we peel back, there always seems to be more to him…”

“The infinite onion?”

“We were really stoned at the time,” she admitted. “But it’s an apt description.”

“You don’t know him?” Cyrus couldn’t imagine not knowing everything there was to know about Paulina after twenty-three years.

“I know his heart,” she said. “But he can still shock me sometimes, still surprise me.”

“Where’d you two meet?” Cyrus asked.

“Went to Starbucks one day,” Nora said. “Ordered a tall blond with whip. They gave me Søren.”

Cyrus glared at her. She winked at him but didn’t pony up the real answer. Interesting. He’d figured her for an open book. Seemed like a few pages of that book were stapled shut.