Mama bear must have been on the lookout, because her door popped open when Giulia was still five feet away from it.
“Mrs. Driscoll, I am very happy you are here. Please come in. Thank you for arriving on time. Not everyone remembers to be courteous to old women.”
Giulia said something polite and followed her in. The blond-and-black streaked hair had been replaced by plain black speckled with gray. She was still rail-thin, but her shoulders stooped a trifle now and frown lines marred her otherwise flawless skin.
The apartment was smaller and darker than Geranium’s. It also had signs of more than one person occupying it. A well-used recliner faced the TV on one side of a low table and a slider rocking chair faced it on the other. Two cell phones lay on the kitchen counter, and when Giulia came all the way into the kitchen, she saw a laundry basket with lacy bras and tightie-whities on top of a pile of clothes. The sound of a running shower reached her from somewhere to the left.
“Come and sit down, please. Would you like coffee? A beer?”
“Thank you, no. I’m fine.”
Cassandra sat kitty-corner to Giulia, hands interlaced before her on the table. “Why are you working for the piece of mierda who murdered my Loriela?”
Giulia blinked. “Because there is a chance he didn’t. I’m going to find out who’s responsible, whether it’s Roger Fitch or someone else.”
A sharp nod. “You are a fair woman. I will prove to you he is the killer so I may watch his execution and drink a glass of champagne at the moment he dies.”
Before Giulia could form a neutral yet encouraging response, the shower turned off.
“George!” Cassandra called into the silence, “We have company. Put on pants if you are coming out here.” Her voice modulated for Giulia with the next sentence. “He works seven-to-three at the nursing home. Sometimes he’s so tired he comes out in nothing but his underwear and drops into his chair for a few hours. He is a hard worker.”
Giulia answered the pride in Cassandra’s voice. “Hospital work can be grueling. A friend of mine is an emergency room nurse. The stories she tells make me tired just listening to them.”
Cassandra perked up. “George is a nurse too. I thought it was strange, a man being a nurse and not a doctor. Then he told me of the muscles it requires to lift the old people who cannot walk and I told him that I am not too old to learn something new.” She resettled herself. “Where do you want to start?”
“Tell me about the restraining order.”
Loriela’s mother indulged in several unprintable Spanish words. Giulia had heard worse in her years of teaching high school. A tall man with long, wet hair in a ponytail walked into Giulia’s line of vision. Wearing (oh, good) pants and a t-shirt.
“Cassie, stop it.” He kissed the top of her head. “She knows you’re angry. Use it.” He held out his hand to Giulia. “I’m George Barras.”
“Giulia Falcone-Driscoll.” She shook his hand, if her own hand disappearing completely in his gigantic muscled fingers could be called a legitimate handshake.
“I’ll leave you two to business. The TV volume won’t disturb you, I promise.” He snagged a Bud from the refrigerator and settled into his recliner.
Cassandra pressed the heels of her hands into her temples. “George is right. I apologize. What do you want to know about the restraining order?”
“Let’s start with the video someone took at the bar.”
More Spanish invective.
“He and Loriela stayed here that Christmas. She wanted me to meet him. I told her he was bad business, but she told me I had made too many bad decisions to throw stones at her.” She pressed her lips together and breathed deeply. “Loriela preferred dangerous men, like I used to. I could have wished she took after me in keeping to a household budget instead.” A small smile.
Giulia returned it, but didn’t interrupt the flow of words.
“That man lounged around for four days, complaining that he was bored. Then he would go drinking and return after midnight. He disliked my cooking and argued with Loriela and tried to ignore me. I might as well have sold tickets to the neighbors. Every time I opened my door all the other doors in the hall closed much too fast.”
Giulia made a sympathetic noise.
“The last day, all three of us had had enough. We said out loud everything we had been thinking all that time. He walked out. Loriela and I said terrible things to each other before she walked out after him.” Her bony hands twisted together on the tabletop. “I saw through his charm and he knew it. Loriela might have, because she was smart and also beautiful, but she loved him so it didn’t matter to her.” Another small smile. “I made use of the neighbors for once. After she left, I knocked on Mrs. Harper’s door at the end of the hall because her windows look out onto the whole street. Her face was a picture. I asked her where Loriela went and she told me.”
A laugh track from the TV filled the momentary pause.
“Sorry,” George said.
“That bar is not a good place for women. When I walked in, he and Loriela were still arguing. I could see he was halfway to being drunk. The words he said to my daughter in such a place made me so angry that I returned to my days in the barrio. You would be surprised, Mrs. Driscoll, at the language that came from me, a mother who raised a successful businesswoman. But you have seen the video, so you know. Do you have children?”
“Not yet.”
Cassandra nodded. “But you will. Then you will watch that video and understand. The drinking men sat there and laughed at Loriela and I fighting like cats in the street. I do not know how it would have ended, but then Loriela grabbed her man’s arm and her man, who should have protected her, threw her away so she injured herself on a barstool.” Her smile wasn’t pleasant this time. “They left the bar together, but I had the man who filmed it send a copy to me. I took that to the police officer who patrols this neighborhood and he went with me to his father the judge.”
“You have connections.”
Cassandra shook her head, her hair swinging across her face. “It is not that. Loriela grew up here. Everyone knows her. The judge’s sister is the nurse who delivered her. She went to school with the police officer. We take care of each other, especially now the neighborhood is older and the crime rate is rising. The judge watched the video and listened to my stories of what happened over Christmas and issued the Order of Protection.” Another unpleasant smile. “Loriela called me the night it was delivered to him. I heard him cursing in the background. She took the telephone out onto her balcony. She was angry that I had interfered, but she did not say evil words to me.”
Giulia risked interrupting the narrative flow. “I understand the order was vacated later on.”
Cassandra’s fingers knotted themselves together again. “She allowed him too much control. I did not care that she loved him. He was bad for her. They demanded a hearing. By that time, he had wormed his way back into Loriela’s heart and mind. At the hearing, he established a rapport with the judge, a man, right away.” A pause. “Loriela took his side against me. The judge vacated the order. I lost my temper and said regrettable things until the judge threatened me with contempt. Roger Fitch strangled my Loriela one year and three months later.”
Her toneless voice, so animated earlier, said much more than her words. Giulia let the accusation slide. Only an idiot would mess with the transient bond they’d established. Giulia was not that idiot.
“Do you know of anyone else who hated your daughter? Anyone who considered her their enemy?” Cassandra opened her mouth and Giulia held up both hands. “I know you think Roger Fitch killed her. That may be the case, but it’s my job to research every possibility.”
Cassandra frowned. “You said that earlier. I understand it with my head, but my heart says you are wrong. Let me think—George, we need your help.”
He stretched out of the recliner and came over to the table. “Yes?”
“What enemies did Loriela have?”
He looked from Cassandra to Giulia with surprise. “There was that actor. You remember him. The one with more ego than talent.”
“Oh. Roger Fitch protected Loriela from him. That is right.” She gave Giulia an innocent smile. “You see? I too can be fair. The actor was a dangerous type. Attractive and forceful and charming, like Roger, only Roger’s charm masks those traits much better.”
“What did the actor do?” Fitch hadn’t mentioned that one.
“He tracked Loriela to work and waited in the parking lot for her. As though threats would make a woman change her mind about a man. She and Roger Fitch were driving to work together, although they were still living separately. The one good thing Roger Fitch did was to send that actor away with a black eye.”
Giulia made a mental note to find out his identity, just in case.
“I heard about a bartender, too.” Giulia couldn’t recall the name Fitch had given her—something to do with a movie actor—and she’d left her tablet in the glove compartment. Not that she was about to do anything to bust up this interview.
George crossed his arms. “He thought he was something.”
Cassandra looked up at George.
“Loriela should have found a man like you.” She said to Giulia, “Loriela had dropped the bartender long before Roger Fitch, but the bartender called me for her new phone number a year later. He had no experience with mothers of young women. I told him that he was a leech and should be squashed under my shoe. He found out her number somehow and called her. She told him exactly what she thought of him and threatened him with the police. Ironic, no? Between both of us we got through to him. He left her alone after that.”
“Mrs. Gil, I appreciate everything you’ve told me. I won’t take up any more of your time today.” Giulia stood. Cassandra stood with her. George headed for the door.
“You will call me, please, when you learn that I am right.” Cassandra shook Giulia’s hand. “I promise I will not say ‘I told you so.’”
“Cassie,” George said. He opened the door.
Giulia shook George’s hand. “Thank you for your help. I’ll certainly call within ten days. We have to finish our investigation before the trial starts.”
“Yes, I know all about the trial. I have been subpoenaed.” She patted George’s arm. “He reminds me at least once a day that I must be calm and detached when the lawyers ask me questions. I am practicing.”
“We’ll make her a model witness,” George said.
Giulia tried to keep her mind blank in the elevator, but one thought squeezed through: If Fitch’s trial were televised, it would eclipse NCAA March Madness.
Sixteen
Giulia performed the same memory trick in the car. Only when she saved the twenty-three minute recording did she look at the dashboard clock.
“It’s after seven? No wonder I’m starving.”
She dialed her husband and got his voicemail. “Frank, I’m on my way home. If you’re in the shower, please make salads when you get out. I’ll pick up pizza. Be there in forty minutes or so.”
Forty-two minutes later, she pulled into their two-car garage—the true selling point of their small house. Her car smelled of sausage and black olives and right now she could’ve happily gnawed through the cardboard box and called it extra fiber.
When she entered the house, Irish fiddlers played on the stereo and the kitchen table was set with salads, plates, silverware, and red wine. All the day’s tension evaporated from her shoulders.
“Attention, Mr. Driscoll! I will be calling your mother after supper to tell her that she raised you right.”
Frank appeared in his PAL Basketball warm-ups and took the pizza box from her.
“My mother will preen and my grandmother will tease my grandfather that I take after her and not him. Result: Happiness all around. Did you remember black olives?”
“Of course. Did you put extra cucumber in my salad?”
“Of course.” He kissed her. “I’m starving.”
She tossed her coat and bag on the couch and beelined for the kitchen. “As soon as I eat I have to sync the interviews to my iPad.”
Frank transferred two pieces of pizza to each of their plates. “Food first. You look like a ravenous wolf.”
“I feel like one. It’s a good thing I’m not obsessed with my looks.”
“Sit. You know that’s not what I meant.”
They scarfed down pizza, wine, and salad for seven minutes by the clock before any more conversation occurred. When Frank got up to refill the wine, Giulia said, “I’ve been longing for a glass of this since my second interrogation.”
“Embezzling employees or Silk Tie suspects?”
“The latter,” Giulia said and chomped down on the crust of her second slice of pizza.
“You need me?” Frank liberated his third slice from the box.
“Yes. I need a neck rub.” Giulia gazed at him over the rim of her wineglass. “Don’t pout. It isn’t professional. I’ll need you to bounce ideas off of and help me weed the useless from the potential. But not ’til I transcribe all the interviews and stare at them ’til my eyes bleed. No, no more pizza.”
“Would it please you if I said there was rocky road ice cream in the freezer and spray whipped cream in the fridge?”
Giulia pretended to be overcome. “What did I do to deserve you?”
“I could start a list.” Frank tried and failed to look humble.
“Nuh-uh. We’re not going to play one-upsmanship on which of us got the better bargain. I’ll have your father be the judge of that.”
“And I’ll counter with my mother...never mind.” Frank sighed in his best dramatic fashion. “She’ll lecture me on how you’ve improved my life.”
“We’ll call it a draw. I’ll clean up before I recharge and sync my electronics.”
“You’re not going to transcribe those interviews tonight?”
“Good Heavens, no. My brain is fried. Besides, that’s what I have Zane for.” She gathered plates. “Did I tell you I found a temp for Sidney’s maternity leave?”
Giulia slipped out of bed at five-thirty the next morning without waking Frank. A quick shower and she headed for the Caribou Coffee where Loriela’s bartender had agreed to meet her.
Jonathan Stallone walked in as she found a table in the far corner with her coffee and cinnamon roll. She stood by the table ’til he looked her way and then raised her hand. He nodded and got in line, towering over everyone else by a minimum of six inches. Broader than most of them by the same dimension. Giulia couldn’t stop herself from humming the Rocky theme.
Over the phone, he’d said he worked two jobs now—bartending nights at the same place he’d met Loriela and teaching a series of morning kickboxing classes at a local gym. Thus this too-early-o’clock meeting.
He came to the corner table with an extra-large coffee and two egg and cheese biscuits; one with sausage, one with bacon.
Giulia inhaled. “I should’ve gone for the bacon.”
“Get a couple for lunch on your way out. I do that all the time.” He took a Hulk-sized bite of the sausage biscuit. “What do you want to know?”
Giulia avoided the spray of biscuit crumbs from his mouth. “I’d like to know about your relationship with Loriela Gil.”
His lip curled. “You mean you want the gory details on how she cut off my balls with one phone call.”
Giulia sipped her coffee. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes.”
A hearty slug of coffee followed the Hulk bite. “Why?”
“Roger Fitch’s murder trial starts in less than two weeks. He maintains his innocence. I’ve been hired by him and his lawyer to find evidence which backs up that claim.”
He choked with laughter on his new mouthful of food. This time Giulia’s cinnamon roll got a hail of crumbs and sausage bits. She pretended not to see it.
“Sorry.” He attempted to stifle his laughter with more coffee. It worked, more or less. “That guy could sell fleas to a d
og. You’re not telling me you believe him?”
Giulia became Sister Regina, the English teacher feared by every freshman class in three Catholic schools. “My belief or disbelief is immaterial. I’m here to do my job.” She masked her unexpected personality regression with a long drink of coffee. When she emerged, Sister Regina was back in her cell under a vow of silence.
“Damn. You sounded like my grade-school principal.” He looked at Giulia’s newly decorated cinnamon roll. “Let me buy you a new one.”
Giulia smiled. “That’s okay. We both have to get to work, so if you could tell me about Ms. Gil?”
“Sure. No problem.” More coffee. “We got along pretty good for seven or eight months. Then she met this actor type. All about Art and The Stage. He writes these message plays that even the critics don’t get, but he always convinces good actors to put them on. He plays lead when he can too. Lori latched onto him because she wanted to break from her mother and her old neighborhood.” He started on the bacon and egg sandwich. “And from me.”
Giulia waited, her patience with these crammed-together interviews on its last gasp. She craved action.
“Lori wanted out so I let her go. She didn’t last long with the actor. I heard he got an offer from some avant-garde theater in Chicago or Detroit, someplace big enough to have an artsy crowd with money. He bailed. About a year later I saw her with Fitch and it pissed me off. I was better for her than that snake and she needed to know it.” He shifted gears. “Did you ever meet Lori when she was alive?”
Giulia shook her head. “No.”
“You’d understand everything if you had. Lori was gorgeous and sexy and classy. Everybody was jealous when she was mine. She said she would own her own company before her fortieth birthday and I believed her. She was unstoppable when she wanted something.” He stared into his half-empty cup. “I worked in a cube farm when I got out of high school. Phone stuff. Too much pressure, too much backstabbing, and the people sucked. So I went to bartender school and never looked back. People are usually happy in a bar, and I can bust up a fight without much problem. I like what I do. But Lori, she was going places. That’s why she left me.”
Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) Page 9