“You ever flip the tables on your Viking and tie him up? Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

“Never,” she said. “He’s all dominant. Unfortunately. He’d look so pretty in handcuffs.”

“Stop.”

Nora smiled as she kept digging, turning out pockets, checking linings. “Any luck on that key?”

“No luck there. But this is interesting.” She held up an unopened box of K-Y lubricant.

“Okay, so, Ike was fucking someone,” Cyrus said.

“Or someone was fucking Father Ike.”

“Right. Yeah. Possible. Not gonna think about that, though.” Cyrus turned his back to her, walked up and down her driveway. He hit the end of her street, turned on his heel, walked back.

“Who else might know about Ike?” Cyrus asked.

“What?”

“In this town, there’s like ten guys who can hook you up if you want to sell drugs. Another ten guys for guns. Another ten guys for girls. There’s gotta be a guy you go to if you want a…you, and you don’t know where to start.”

“Kingsley,” Nora said. “And we already talked to him. He didn’t have any interaction with Father Ike.”

“But Edge is still new in this town. You gotta remember, this is New Orleans. We have bars in this city older than the country. Somebody was here before Edge.”

Nora considered that as Cyrus paced another lap. What old-timers did she know around here? Someone deep in the community. Someone who knew everyone.

“I know a guy,” Nora said. “He hosts a lot of events in town. I don’t usually go to them, but he invites me to every single one.”

“Who is he?”

“Retired art professor. I’m sure he’d talk to you if I were there. I’ll get in touch. Although I doubt he’d know who Father Ike was seeing. Male subs don’t, as a rule, talk to each other.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Worth asking.”

“Fair warning, he’s kind of weird.”

“Weirder than you?” he asked. She nodded. “Damn. Now that’s saying something.”

Chapter Sixteen

“I know that look,” John Breaux, the best tailor in New Orleans, said as he helped Cyrus on with his tuxedo jacket.

“You don’t know a damned thing.” Cyrus buttoned the jacket. He’d been caught grinning, but didn’t try to hide it.

“How long until the big day?” Breaux asked.

“About two months.”

The tailor raised an eyebrow.

“Fifty-three days,” Cyrus said.

“That’s better.”

Cyrus stepped in front of the mirror and stared appraisingly at his reflection.

“What do you think? The blue look good?” Cyrus asked.

“Don’t ask me. I’m not the one marrying you.”

“You’re the expert, man.”

“I know what I like. I’m not in your wedding. Where your boys at?”

“No boys today,” Cyrus said. “I like to do this stuff on my own.” Paulina took an entire crew of women with her when she went to her dress fittings. Her mother, her sister, her best friend, and three of her sorority sisters. At least. And just for the fittings.

But Paulina’s girls took this stuff seriously. His friends, much as Cyrus loved them, would be doing nothing but cracking corny jokes through the whole thing, giving him hell for getting married, bringing up his wild past like they always did. He didn’t want that today. He didn’t want jokes. He didn’t want his past. He just wanted to find a tux that would make Paulina, who never said a foul word in her life, look at him and say, “God damn.”