Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) (7 page)

Fourteen

Four forty-five a.m.

Giulia eased open the nightstand drawer and took out her Glock and its loaded clip. A mid-July morning at quarter to way too early was bright enough for her to see without the risk of fumbling and making a noise. The uninvited intruder downstairs who had tripped on the furniture didn’t know Giulia was about to ruin their entire day.

She inserted the clip and walked barefoot to the head of the stairs. The round in the chamber should be plenty, but she knew better than to take that risk. Now the stealthy sounds came from the kitchen. Someone had failed Housebreaking 101. People didn’t keep an emergency stash of money in the flour bin or freezer anymore. She descended the stairs quickly and quietly and stopped at the dividing archway between the living room and kitchen. The refrigerator door was open.

Perfect. She stepped into the kitchen and placed herself behind the open door, ready to shoot.

The door closed. Giulia’s eleven-year-old niece saw the gun, screamed, and dropped the fork in her hand. A cold meatball exploded on the floor, sauce splattering in a sunburst around it.

Giulia lowered the gun. “Cecilia? What are you doing here?”

“Holy crap, Aunt Giulia! You’re badass.” The gangly pre-teen pushed wisps of hair away from her eyes. “I guess wussy Sister Regina is really gone, huh? Can I see your gun?”

“No.” She set it on top of the refrigerator with one hand and snagged the paper towels from the counter with the other. “Clean up your mess, please.”

“Okay.” Cecilia got on hands and knees and wiped the linoleum.

Giulia stood over her, arms crossed. “Why did you break into my house at five o’clock in the morning?”

The cleaning paused. “My dad’s a dick.”

“This is not news.”

A pair of startled brown eyes glanced up at Giulia, then Cecilia gave her attention to finishing with the mess. She brought a wad of paper towels and the flattened meatball to the sink.

“The garbage can is underneath.”

Disappointment filled Cecilia’s face as the towels and meat hit the bottom of the trash bag.

Giulia opened the refrigerator. “Since you’re hungry, what would you like to eat? Eggs? Bacon? Oatmeal? Peach pie?”

Cecilia’s eyes pleaded along with her voice. “Spaghetti?”

Giulia sighed. “Fine. Macaroni is in the pantry.” She pointed. While Cecilia found the box, Giulia filled a small pot with water and a pinch of salt. She sent Cecilia back to the refrigerator for the sauce pot. Conversation consisted of directions to hold the pot while Giulia ladled out a serving of sauce and another meatball. While the sauce heated in the microwave, she pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

Cecilia began talking as though the chair possessed an On button. “Mom’s in seventy-two-hour lockdown at the hospital because she OD’d, but mom never did drugs ever, ever, ever. You know mom’s all about growing our own food and not using processed stuff. I used to trade my friends her homemade cookies for their Twinkies. Mom even made her own makeup before dad took it away from her.”

Giulia stirred the spaghetti in the boiling water. “What?”

Another torrent of words. “Dad’s been getting worse and worse for months. He drags us to Latin Mass and we have to study church history with him every night. He won’t let Carlo play video games, and he won’t let Pasquale go to school dances or anything because, ooh, he might kiss a girl. Dad would go ballistic if he knew about Pasquale’s condom stash.”

Giulia strained the spaghetti and said in a careful voice, “Didn’t Pasquale turn fourteen last January?”

“Yeah.”

Giulia mixed the spaghetti into the bowl of sauce while thinking of several medieval punishments for her younger brother. “At least he’s smart enough to use condoms.”

Cecilia’s jaw dropped in the best theatrical way at yet another instance of how much cooler Aunt Giulia was than Sister Mary Regina Coelis. Then her momentum returned. “He won’t let anyone not Catholic come over to the house, and he won’t let us play any radio stations except EWTN.”

Giulia set the bowl and a glass of water in front of her niece, who shoveled in spaghetti and kept right on talking. “He made mom quit her gym membership and her book club and threw out all our novels and CDs. He won’t let mom go anywhere but church and grocery shopping. He said she could keep her part-time job, but only because she helps out in the church office.” She paused long enough to drink some water. “He measured all my dresses and all mom’s and had us make the hems longer. Mom started sneaking out of the house at night sometimes. I saw her twice, but no way was I going to rat her out to dad.” She lowered the meatball before taking a bite and whispered, “Honestly, Aunt Giulia, I was afraid he’d hit her if he found out. After we got home from fireworks on the Fourth of July, she snuck out and didn’t come back.”

In the same calm voice, Giulia said, “What did your father do when your mother didn’t come home?”

“Besides turn the house into Saint Pius the Tenth prison? Nothing. He made us keep the same routine and told us not to talk about it.” She bit off half the meatball. “This is good.”

“Thank you.” Giulia kept her body language calm too. “Did you say Saint Pius the Tenth?”

Cecilia took her dishes to the sink. “Yeah. Bo-ring.” She rinsed everything and put it in the dishwasher.

Giulia looked at the clock. “Where are you supposed to be at this hour, besides asleep in bed?”

Her niece scrunched up her face. “Babysitting the bratty twins next door, but not ’til six thirty. It’s my summer job.”

“It’s already ten of six. Wait a minute. How did you get here?”

“I biked. It’s not even ten miles from our house to yours. No biggie.” She dried her hands. “Uncle Frank must sleep great if all our noise didn’t wake him up. See, I know his name even though I haven’t met him.”

“He’s on overnight stakeout. How do you plan to get back home?”

“Stakeout like on TV? You guys are so cool.” She turned a sweet, winning smile on Giulia. “You’ll give me a ride back, please Aunt Giulia? If I’m late to my job, dad will find out and the shit will hit the fan.”

Giulia indulged in another sigh. “Scatological interjections are most effective when used sparingly.”

“Huh?”

“Stop swearing so much. I’ll be dressed in five minutes, then we’ll open the garage and hook up the bike rack to my car.”

As they secured the bright yellow bicycle to the back of the Nunmobile, Giulia said, “How did you break into my house?”

Cecilia froze for only a moment. Then with another charming smile, she said, “Your super-narrow cellar window has a loose lock. The one on the other side of the vegetable garden, I mean. Those turning locks are super easy to wiggle free.” She tugged on the final strap even though Giulia had tightened it a moment earlier. “I would’ve knocked, really and truly, if I couldn’t get in on my own. I wasn’t going to break a window or anything.”

“Thank God for a solid moral foundation.” Giulia caught Cecilia’s blush. “What?”

Cecilia twisted her unpainted fingernails. “I got really piss—um, angry at dad last week. He sent me to the grocery store for milk, and I met up with two of my friends he won’t let me talk to anymore.”

When the pause reached three seconds, Giulia said, “What did you steal?”

Cecilia flinched. In a tiny voice, she said, “A Milky Way Midnight.”

“Get in.” They buckled their seat belts. “What penance did you get when you went to confession?”

More silence. Giulia turned in her seat. Cecilia appeared to be fascinated with the thread count of her capris.

“Cecilia Falcone.”

She dragged her head upright and cringed.

Giulia gave her niece the Stern Teacher Stare. “You will confess the theft this Saturday.”

In the same tiny voice, she said, “Yes, Aunt Giulia.”

“The priest will probably tell you to donate the amount of the candy bar to charity. Expect a lecture.” A new thought intruded. “You’re still going to your old church, not a Society of Saint Pius the Tenth one, right?”

Cecilia un-hunched. “Dad can’t drag us to his super-special church. It’s only for super-special men.” She made a gagging face. “The second I turn eighteen, I’m becoming an atheist and never going back to dad’s house as long as I live.”

Giulia let that slide. She might have thought the same if she were in her niece’s position.

“Which way to your dad’s house?”

Cecilia gave directions in a subdued voice. Giulia parked around the nearest corner to keep the Nunmobile out of sight. They unstrapped the bicycle and Cecilia put down the kickstand.

“You’ll find out what happened to my mom, won’t you? You’re a detective.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Cecilia squeezed Giulia tight and said into her ribcage, “You’re awesome.” Her eyes shone a little too bright when she released her. “I’ll try to be super good and not call you or anything. Dad still lectures us about you sometimes. He’s a total jerk. Bye!” She pedaled out of sight.

Giulia didn’t need mnemonics tricks to remember how Cecilia’s story strengthened the connection between two teenagers dead from unknown drugs and her sister-in-law collapsing at her feet from a reaction to an unknown drug.

Good Heavens, next she’d be calling Ken Kanning for help.

She turned on the radio. Not on her worst day.

Fifteen

Giulia drove home, showered, dressed for work and hit the coffee shop below Driscoll Investigations for coffee deserving the name. The office was all hers at quarter to seven in the morning. Hers and Joanne Philbey’s file folder of bills.

Ammunition. Arrows. Cast-iron baking pans. Three sizes of mortars and pestles. Outdoor winter gear. A Kevlar vest. Heavy-duty gardening tools. Heirloom seeds.

Giulia unwrapped her turkey-kale-bacon sandwich. It had seemed so appetizing when she stood at the Common Grounds counter. Now she wanted a BLT and Swedish Fish gummies.

“Little Zlatan, we have to discuss your meal pairings. Now hush and enjoy this healthy breakfast.”

She reread the last set of purchases. Joanne’s third-floor apartment had no pots for plants anywhere inside or outside on the balcony.

More bills. Nine hundred dollars for a water purifier. She opened a search window and typed in the address of the company, then followed that link back to a Doomsday Prepper site.

Fifteen minutes later, she remembered her breakfast sandwich cooling at her left elbow. She bookmarked the site, needing more time to process the mindset. Next she spread out all the bills from last March through this March. Patterns emerged right away.

A regular donation to a radio preacher stopped in December. A dating site payment—no, two sites—no, three. Marjorie had been right. Joanne’s March MasterCard bill showed pro-rated refunds from all of them. Cable TV payments stopped in February. Fandango movie ticket purchases stopped then too.

She looked up the phone number attached to a charge from an unpronounceable string of letters. It turned out to be an Etsy shop of crafts made out of deer antlers. Buttons. Coat hangers. Beads. Lamp stands. Toilet paper holders.

Her phone chimed. Quarter to eight. She opened Skype and called Diane and Joanne’s older brother. After three rings, the face of a tired man who looked nothing like either of the twins filled the screen.

“Morning. Thanks for calling on time.” Nick’s voice, though weary, still had definite echoes of Diane’s.

“I won’t keep you long.” Giulia recapped her research so far, including a toned-down version of the office rumor pool.

His face showed sardonic amusement at first, then disgust, then frustration.

“What a bunch of old maid gossips. They spend their time inventing B-movie plots instead of figuring out a way to help.”

Giulia fed the frustration. “I wondered why no one thought she might be pregnant.”

It worked. “I’ll tell you why. Jo carried an extra forty or fifty pounds on her and people automatically think no man is going to look twice at a fat girl.” His thick eyebrows met and overshadowed his brown eyes. “Jo had her share of relationships. She always called me when things started to sour. She’d vent about the guy’s ego or how he screwed around on her and I’d tell her to look for a guy with more in his head than his pants. Lather, rinse, repeat.” His eyebrows reversed themselves. “What was the question?”

Giulia kept her voice neutral. She was getting a lot of practice at that this week. “Why do you think none of Joanne’s coworkers thought she might have been pregnant?”

“Oh, yeah. Because they’re superficial asshats. Jo could’ve been pregnant, I suppose, but she’s smart. She uses protection.”

“Condoms break.”

“And the pill isn’t infallible.” He pointed to himself. “Pharmacist.” His wry smile was exactly like Diane’s. “Look. Jo was—is—everyone’s friend. She always has an ear for everyone to talk into and a shoulder to lean on. She had no reason whatsoever to vanish. The police are wrong. They weren’t happy when I disagreed with their theory, but I care about Jo, not their hurt feelings. You find my sister. If Di runs into money trouble, call me.”

After the call ended, Giulia tapped her pen on a blank legal page as she stared out the window. Rush-hour traffic noise penetrated the closed glass. The room was heating up like the witch’s oven in “Hansel and Gretel,” but her brain registered the stuffy air and dismissed it.

The pen tapped. The Thursday morning trash pickup truck rumbled past. Her screensaver blinked on with Godzilla’s iconic roar. Giulia started, stood, and opened the window as Sidney opened the outer door.

“Hey, you’re back. The most wonderful thing happened yesterday! Jessamine’s tooth finally came in. We slept for seven whole hours. It would’ve been eight if the alpacas hadn’t started a fight. Rudolph and Blitzen both want to mate with Snowflake.” She opened the window on her side of the office. “I haven’t appreciated sleep this much since the week before Jessamine was born.”

Giulia leaned against her own doorframe. “I’m taking notes for future reference.”

Sidney unwrapped a whole wheat bagel and the distinctive aroma of alpaca cheese filled the room. Giulia’s stomach flip-flopped. Funny. She never used to mind alpaca cheese.

“Forget notes,” Sidney said. “Stock up on sleep.”

Giulia returned to her desk and stared at the random blue dots she’d made on the yellow paper. Everyone liked Joanne because of what she did: listened, helped, cooked, taught. No one seemed to consider what Joanne needed. All her friends and coworkers seemed to take without giving back.

The outer door opened. Zane struck a He-Man pose. “I am invincible!”