Chapter 7: Heresy

Euforia specialized in Italian food. Specifically the cuisine and wines of the Piedmont area. Vanessa chose Piedmont for a couple of reasons. One, because she loved Italian food. But also because Piedmont was more or less unique in Kansas City — a niche, if you will.

But for all of her planning, hard work, and success, Vanessa had never been to Italy, let alone Turin and the surrounding area.

So, it was time. Vanessa, Amelia Baxter, her inked and pierced beverage guru, and one Winter Jennings were about to depart on a 12-day journey. Vanessa would be eating at off-the-path restaurants, private homes, visiting with chefs she’d met at conferences or online.

Amelia would be visiting little-known vineyards to find new suppliers for the wine lists at Euforia, BEAR’s, and the Unicorn Club.

Me? Well, I’d be mostly eye candy.

Walk had done his usual obsessive research; and got us excited that France and Switzerland were bordering neighbors. Piedmont was surrounded by the Alps on three sides.

Gertie Oppenheimer had one piece of advice: Receipts.

The entire junket would be a tax write-off, which made me feel sort of like a tycoon. Until Walk reminded the table, “You’re just pussy, Winter, that’s why Vanessa’s taking you.”

I lifted my chin; such drivel was unworthy of a response.

Vanessa said, “Walker! Shame on you. Of course she’s pussy. But Winter has fingers, and a mouth and tongue. She’ll be rather useful at night.”

A couple of nights before we were to be leaving on a jet plane, Vanessa had invited Lina and Pilar to join us for dinner. Vanessa smiled at Lina, now a one-third owner of Euforia, “Next year you and Amelia will make the trip. And I expect you to take Walker with you.”

Lina beamed, genuinely touched.

I said, “Are you sure one tiny pee-pee will be enough?”

Walk lifted his chin, attempting to telegraph disdain.

Laughter. That’s what I remember most about our Italian jaunt. Vanessa and Amelia and I had the most fun. There were the expected language snafus in some of the most rural areas, but our translation apps helped us muddle through.

Amelia hooked up with one girl in a corner of the Emilia-Romagna region. Adelina was the niece of a Parmigiano Reggiano cheese monger. Adelina and Amelia spent two days exploring wineries; and two nights exploring each other. No translation apps needed.

Vanessa and I put our healthy appetites to good use. She photographed every dish we ate, every wine bottle, every farmer’s market. The food, wine, scenery, colors, smells, all invigorated us — most nights she and I just devoured each other. It reminded me of when we were first married. I hadn’t looked at another guy — well, not seriously — for months.

I missed Walk of course. And Flynn too. But, interestingly I didn’t miss the sex so much as the guys themselves. In Italy, my physical needs were more than seen to by Vanessa.

The trip highlight, at least for me, was a mid-afternoon picnic. It was one of those unplanned events. Vanessa and Amelia and I had skipped lunch, the first time that had happened, and we spotted a tiny shop in a tiny town.

The window display caught our eye so we went inside. Vanessa was enchanted, “Prosciutto, Culatello and Salami Felino, Piacenza’s pancetta, coppa and salami, Bologna’s mortadella and salame rosa, Modena’s zampone, cotechino and cappello del prete and Ferrara’s salama da sugo.”

We bought samples of just about everything and made huge sandwiches. Bought two bottles of a dark red Barolo, and headed for the countryside. Heaven!

We spread a blanket at the edge of a pear orchard. The Alps seemed to be close enough to touch. The three of us devoured the food, savored the wine, talked, reminisced, and, mostly, laughed.

Then Vanessa caught my eye. No mystery in that glance. She ran her palm up the inside of my thigh. Looked at Amelia, “You mind?”

“Fuck no!”

In seconds I was naked, lying on my back, Vanessa’s mouth on my pussy. Amelia had never seen either one of us in the nude, but that wasn’t even a consideration for any of us.

Being in Italy, feeling sexy, the beautiful countryside, being outside, the wine ... well, it all came together.

Vanessa got me off in record time. She had recognized how hot I had been, how eager, before she even kissed me. I was vaguely aware of Amelia playing with my nipples, sucking them as Vanessa licked and finger-fucked me. But I didn’t have even a glimmer of a thought of home. Of Flynn. Of Walker.

It was all about me. I felt so beautiful, so sexy, so available.

Afterward, I just lay there, smiling, enjoying the afterglow. Vanessa and Amelia hadn’t undressed; they both lay beside me, the three of us on our backs, looking up at the puffy clouds.

Amelia’s only comment on the impromptu romp had come on the flight home. She looked at me fondly, “I’ve never seen anyone cum so fast. You’re so lucky.”

Vanessa patted my thigh, “I’m lucky too.”

Daddy was the one who found Bianca Uribe. Jessie and Jesse Sullivan had been unable to turn up even a whisper. All that Flynn had gotten out of Bobby Ray Guthrie was that he had ‘heard’ there was a contract out to deliver a spic chick to KC.

So far as all of us could determine, there was no local link to the Creed of the Apocrypha — the militant cult that had a vague connection to both Uribe and Chang.

It had been well over two days since Bianca had been snatched in Binghamton. And the stats of ever finding her were dwindling by the hour.

Daddy and I were locals; it didn’t make sense for Flynn to come in and blunder around with us. Not yet, anyway. So Daddy and I shook the bushes. He had his own network of snitches, built up over thirty years on the KCPD.

And I had my Winter Irregulars. A smaller group, and one not nearly so well connected. But we did what we could do.

The lead came from a two-time loser, Marty ‘Doc’ Marlowe. A white collar specialist in Medicare fraud. In any case, he called Daddy about “A drugged up Latina that somebody dumped in the Emergency Room at Liberty Hospital.”

It was after two in the morning, but we left right away. Daddy drove the fifteen or so miles north to Liberty. Neither of us talked — we were chasing a long shot, but a long shot was what we had.

It was our gal. I called Flynn right away, “She was found naked, a little sedated, but still aware of everything around her. She had somehow escaped from whoever was holding her.”

“Who found her?”

“Some stoner. Gave her a greasy serape to wear. Took her to the nearest hospital. The triage team told him to wait, but he split. They have security footage of his car, so they’ll probably pick him up.”

“I’ll call Emilia and fly her to Kansas City.”

“I’ll pick you guys up. Tell her that her daughter wasn’t molested, wasn’t ... physically hurt. She’s still a little out of it, but she should be okay by the time you guys get here.”

I wanted to start questioning her right away, but Daddy nixed that. “Wait until her mother is here. Bianca is traumatized — her stability is the most important thing for now.”

“But the kidnappers...”

“She told the triage nurses that she didn’t know where they’d kept her— just that it was a farm or ranch. Maybe we’ll learn more from the good Samaritan when we get our hands on him. But word is, he was pretty out of it.”

The Liberty police posted an overnight guard in the hospital; probably not all that necessary, but still.

In the morning, I met Flynn and Emilia Uribe at the airport. Daddy drove Bianca to his home in Brookside where she should feel safe in the presence of an ex-homicide captain. And where my mother would mother-hen her while they waited for Emilia.

Flynn Gallagher was spending a lot of time in Kansas City. Part of it was the Creed case — Bianca Uribe had escaped from her captors and was in the process of recovering from her ordeal. Benny Chang was still missing.

Clint and I never said the words — Missing, presumed dead — but we didn’t have to. The statistics pointed one way, and one way only. Clint was working the angles from Minneapolis; Flynn and I from KC.

Being two ex-cops, Daddy and Flynn had a lot in common. So they started spending more time together. Now Flynn had his own life — home and work — back East. As I understood it, he did some consulting with private clients on security measures.

A lot of that could be done online, but he still had to fly back there on a fairly regular basis. He told me, I’m taking you with me one of these days. You’ll like my family.”

Walk shook his head, “Big mistake, she can’t keep her knickers on when she travels.”

“I’ll just have to risk it.”

Still, Flynn had some time to hang with Daddy, whose own work with Vanguard Security was intermittent.

The two men shared another area of interest — sports. Because I had zero interest in team sports — unless it involved sex — I had let Walker down when it came to the Royals and Chiefs and whoever else KC had.

It wasn’t a frequent event, but Daddy and Flynn started going out to Kauffman Stadium to see the Royals (baseball) play. On weekends they took Walk, and usually little Gregory, with them.

I encouraged Flynn to hang with my son, “His father left us when Walk was so young. Daddy and Bear stepped up. But now that you’re here...”

Vanessa nodded, “A positive male influence.”

I said, “Degenerate, but positive.”

Flynn easily bought into it. He’d been raised in a large, tight, Irish family with a father, uncles, male cousins. He understood the concept of role-modeling, of bonding.

So, it wasn’t a traditional family setup. Vanessa and I shared Walker duties. Daddy, and lately, Flynn provided a male perspective. Would Norman Rockwell ever have painted our portrait? Not back then, but these days...

Flynn continued to fit into life at the Wrigley. He was a confident guy by nature; didn’t feel the need to prove himself.

One evening at dinner, Vanessa didn’t bat her eyelashes at him, but I knew that she was teasing. “Flynn, what were some of your most exciting times as a policeman?”

“Oh, it was mostly patrol and paperwork, nothing very dramatic, I’m afraid.”

Hmm ... very similar to the way Clint Callahan deflected attention away from his own accomplishments. And Daddy.

She said, “Oh, come on. Arrest any famous crooks?”

He played along, “Well, Uncle Pádraig and I did serve a warrant on Buster McCorkle.”

I was startled, “Bugfuck McCorkle?”

“Yeah, no drama. He was eating breakfast at Tony’s — Scungilli Fra Diavolo. Big carafe of red. Garlic bread. Was really pissed at the interruption.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He and his goons weren’t about to take on two armed cops in public. I only saw him again in court. Uncle Pádraig and I were assigned to sit behind him in case he went bedbug crazy.”

“What if he had?”

“We would have assisted him in regaining his composure.”

Deadpan delivery.

One evening I took Lina and Walker out to dinner at Bo Lings on the Plaza. It’s a pretty place and the food is, for Kansas City, pretty good.

Unlike at the Unicorn Club, Walk couldn’t be served an alcoholic drink. But Lina and I had a beer — Tsingtao. The three of us leaned forward, talking about life changes, Pilar’s leaving, her mood these days.

Unfortunately, at an adjacent booth, a loud guy was dominating the conversation over there. His petite wife looked shrunken and embarrassed. A younger woman, around 25, who was their daughter, scooted closer to her husband.

The blowhard pounded his fist on the table, rattling dishes and glasses, “They told me I’d never close the Perkins deal.” He shook his large head at the stupidity of most of the world. “Let me tell you what that was worth to me. I took home a quarterly bonus last week that was six figures.” He smirked, “And the first number wasn’t a ‘one’.” There was a booze in his voice.

His wife and daughter exchanged a glance, then looked down at their plates.

In our booth, we concentrated on the first course — stir-fried organic tofu in a garlic sauce with a bunch of veggies like Napa cabbage. The dish was sprinkled with cashews, which are tricky to eat with chopsticks.

Fortunately, Walk had been studiously practicing with them so the three of us were pretty comfortable with the routine.

Mr. Big Business, not content to dominate just one booth, looked over at us and snorted, “Why not use a knife and fork like a decent American?”

I reared up, an obscene retort concerning what he could do with all the chopsticks in Bo Lings on the tip of my tongue. But Walker surprised me. He said, “What do you know about chopsticks, sir?”

The question surprised the guy, but the politeness disarmed him for a moment. Then he reverted to form, “Chink utensils. People come to America, they need to adapt.”

Walk continued to speak softly as he held up his pair, “You might note that they’re seven point six inches long. To the Buddhists that represents the seven emotions and the six senses of their religion.”

The guy stared; what the fuck was this teenager prattling on about?

Walk raised his hand slightly, “The two chopsticks facing each other represent the harmony of Yin and Yang.”

Now all of us were looking at him; where the fuck did he pick that up?

“Our five fingers represent the five elements of the universe. And the two ends — one round, one square — is how the Chinese see the sky and earth.”

Mr. Big Business muttered something.

Walk brandished the chopsticks gracefully, “The strategy is not to be too forceful, nor too weak. That signifies moderation and having a life that’s committed to balance and wholeness.”

The guy just shook his head, said something under his breath, and raised his hand for the check. The rest of his table looked relieved. As they were leaving, the daughter looked speculatively at Walker. A look I’ve been seeing more and more as the lad has matured.

I said, “Where the hell did you pick that up?”

“TikTok.”

“Oh.”

He smiled at Lina, “Which reminds me...”

She looked at him curiously. He nodded to me. I sighed, “Well, if you must know...”

He held up his cell and opened a link. Showed it to Lina. I pretended not to be proud of how sexy I looked in the sexiest swimsuit I’d ever owned. Walk had shown me a TikTok video, and I had ordered The Triangle the moment I saw it.

How to describe it?

Lina and I looked at Walk’s photo of me. She whispered, “Dios mia.”

First, the material. It was some sort of microfiber sort of like what I used for cleaning digital screens. It was the first bathing suit I’d seen that was designed not to go into the water.

Even though it was black, it somehow became completely transparent when wet. This was not a detriment, not in my mind.

But it was the architecture, the design, that blew me away. One-piece, but what a piece! The top was like a strapless ballroom gown. That is, it just rested on my boobs.

From there it tapered down to a strip about an inch wide where it covered, barely, my pussy. By the time it started going up my spine, it was about as thin as a fishing line.

Then, at the back of my neck, it turned into a choker — a neck-ribbon with a single pearl dangling from it.

So.

Viewing me from the back, it looked as if I were naked except for a decorative ribbon around my neck.

But it was the front view that was so stunning.

The top of the black suit was as wide as my chest. Then it tapered down, thinner and thinner, until it disappeared between my thighs. The eye was drawn to my pussy surer even than when I wore a skimpy thong. It was the genius of the design; it was like a bold, triangular arrow pointing directly to my little slit.

I loved it!

And, I loved the boy who brought that TikTok link to my attention.

Lina shook her head, “No one could compete with that.”

Flynn and I were growing closer. We weren’t a forever couple: neither of us was looking for that, but we were compatible in so many ways. Sense of humor, law enforcement backgrounds, and yes, between the sheets.

He asked me to go back East with him. Made the invitation sound casual, “Maybe meet some of my people.” Now, what did that mean? His parents? His friends? His ex? He didn’t specify and I didn’t ask. But the trip didn’t turn out to be anything like we had anticipated.

We got into Newark late on a Friday evening and were in bed in his New Canaan home by midnight. It was my first time in his Connecticut bed and the novelty added a certain robustness to the festivities. His mouth and my pussy costarred in much of the first and third acts. We were both OSHA-compliant.

I slept like an innocent babe, which just goes to show.

But in the morning, the mood quickly shifted. We were having a light breakfast of buttered croissants and scones when his doorbell rang. Flynn introduced me to a friend of his from nearby Stamford, Sister Mary Margaret O’Brien.

The petite nun was dressed in jeans and orange Crocs. She and Flynn had known each other from Brooklyn. They had moved, independently, up to Connecticut. Flynn to retire, Sister Mary Margaret to run a shelter for abused women and children. I liked her immediately, but I didn’t have a chance to tell her about Sister Mary Packer and the Kansas City shelter.

We shook hands and she turned to Flynn, “There’s a monster out there, and he’s getting away with it.”

Just then the doorbell rang again. Flynn introduced me, “Winter, this worthless slug is Seamus O’Grady. A man in desperate need of birth control information. But he’s a cop, a sergeant in the Lexington, Connecticut police department.”

O’Grady was diminutive, not much larger than the nun. But he had a hard cop’s face and sounded like Hell’s own official voice. Dark and deep and resonant. He nodded at me, but turned to Flynn, “We need to erase a scumbag. Wife beater, kid beater.”

Sister Mary Margaret said, “Cocksucker’s been getting away with it for years.”

Flynn was all business, “Dick and Jane if for me.”

She said, “Wait a minute, Maja Svensson is coming. She’s an emergency room nurse. She and her husband took in the two kids. You’ll need to hear her side of the story.”

Maja was around 30 and moved with the sureness that some hospital workers did. Her blonde hair was tightly braided and pinned up in the back. No nonsense.

Mary Margaret said, “How are Ben and Katie?”

Maja game face softened, “Ben’s a tough little guy, I think he’ll get through this. Katie ... Oliver and I decided not to take her to see her mother anymore — it was too upsetting. Actually, that was Ben’s Idea; we just agreed with him.”

The three of them — Mary Margaret, Seamus O’Grady, and Maja Svensson — talked about the Trembly family for almost two hours. I took notes because ... well, that’s what I do.

Here’s the heartbreaking story, as best as I could reconstruct it:

Ben Trembly carefully poured milk into Katie’s white bowl of breakfast cereal. His mind raced, repeating his new mantra: It’s just a normal morning. It’s just a normal morning.

His younger sister looked up and whispered, “Did she die?”

Ben shook his head firmly, no. “Eat your Apple Jacks, it’s getting late.”

He raced upstairs and filled Katie’s backpack with underpants, a pair of pink sneakers, and an extra sweater. He also managed to cram in two pairs of jeans. He placed Gigi, her stuffed hospital giraffe from the day she was born, on top so he wouldn’t forget to take it. It was covered with smeared and faded signatures of their mother’s friends and three nurses. Katie had slept with Gigi every night for seven years.

A dash over to his side of the room. Underwear and jeans instead of schoolbooks and homework. He remembered their toothbrushes at the last minute.

Downstairs, Katie had already rinsed her bowl and spoon, and placed them neatly in the sink.

Ben zipped her into a green down jacket with a hood. “Need to pee?”

Head-shake, “Can’t.”

They eased out of the backdoor; it locked automatically behind them. Ben looked carefully in all directions. So far, so good. As she did on most school days when they walked to the bus stop, Katie held her brother’s little finger; she was grasping it especially tight today.

The Tuesday sun was just peeking up; they could see their breaths as they headed through the Campbell’s yard, then the Goshen’s, then —look both ways —across Prospect, and around to the back of Mrs. Culver’s small brick house. Their mother had once called their south-of-the-tracks neighborhood “The suburb of civilization.” Ben didn’t understand then, and still didn’t, what she meant by that.

It’s just a normal morning. It’s just a normal morning.