Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

sinner,” which was the Greek manner. But why had he come here? St. George was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic church; surely this man had a Roman Catholic church he attended regularly. The answer came to Aleksander Milichuk suddenly: The man had chosen a place where he wouldn’t be known. His own priest was bound to recognize his voice and would perhaps pressure him to turn himself in. Here, he was guaranteed anonymity.
    The priest sighed and leaned back in the cramped cubicle, which smelled of stale sweat and candle wax. He put a hand to his temple in an attempt to control the throbbing. What did it matter who the man was or where he was from? Aleks wasn’t a detective, and it wasn’t his job to hunt the man down. He felt the full weight of the sinner’s guilt upon his own shoulders. Perhaps that was what God intended — maybe he was doing his priestly duty now more than ever before, but the thought made him feel only more anxious.
    The rest of the day passed in a haze of meaningless activity. There were parishioners to call, schedules to arrange, events to discuss — choir practice, the Wednesday-night church supper, vendors for the annual Ukrainian festival. He wished he could drown himself in the barrage of mundane details, but all he could think of was the terrible secret he would be forced to carry to his grave. He considered the idea that the man was lying, but rejected that hopeful notion. Either he was telling the truth or he was the best actor in the world.
    Aleks gazed idly out the window, but even the sight of the white blossoms on the mimosa trees failed to cheer him up. He sat at his desk staring blankly, his head buzzing with apprehension. Normally he would now start writing his sermon for next week’s service, but he was unable to concentrate.
    His secretary, the ever-intrusive Mrs. Kovalenko, noticed his mood.
    “Are you feeling all right, Father?” she asked, one hand on her plump hip, the other clutching a freshly filled teapot. Mrs. Kovalenko was a great believer in the healing power of tea, and she had the persuasive ability of a used-car salesman combined with a Mafia enforcer. If she wanted to serve you tea, there was little you could do about it. He had briefly considered firing her for the sake of his bladder, but Mrs. Kovalenko was not the kind of woman you fired, so he had resigned himself to frequent visits to the bathroom.
    “I’m fine,” he replied, but his heart wasn’t in it, and she continued to stand there studying him. “I just have a headache,” he added when she didn’t move.
    She shook her dyed blond curls and clicked her tongue, then she brightened. “A good cup of tea is what you need,” she proclaimed. “Straighten you right out.”
    “That would be nice,” he replied; at least it might throw her off the scent for a while. She had nagged him about his drinking in the past, but he had cut down recently — partly because of the headaches. She busied herself gathering the honey and cream, bustling about the office happily humming a Ukrainian folk song. He knew she didn’t speak a word of the language, but she liked to impress people with her knowledge of the culture, and had picked up a few songs and phrases here and there.
    “I just bought this tea last week,” she said as she poured him a steaming cup from the ornate ceramic pot, decorated with chubby, beaming angels. She had found it at the weekly yard sale on Avenue A and had presented it to him with great pride. Father Milichuk gazed at an especially porcine angel and sighed. He hated angels. The angel leered at him with a self-satisfied smirk; he yearned to smash the pot and erase the grin from its fat little face.
    He made a point of telling Mrs. Kovalenko how delicious the tea was. “What’s it called?” he said, taking a sip and smacking his lips.
    “It’s Russian caravan!” she declared, clapping her hands with delight. “From the new tea store around the corner. I’m so glad you like it.”
    In truth, it tasted like turpentine. But nothing tasted good right now, not even the butter cookies from the Polish bakery he usually adored. Still, to make Mrs. Kovalenko happy (and less suspicious), he choked down several cookies with his tea. They tasted like dust.
    And yet when evening came, he left the church reluctantly. It would be even worse at home, when he had no happily bustling secretary, only his aged and morose mother. His father used to joke that his mother cooked like a Ukrainian but