Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1)

by Alice Loweecey

  She named the document. “You said your car was vandalized?”

  “Vandalized? That’s too good a word for it. An hour later the cops called to pick me up. They found my car six blocks away in the back lot of some boarded-up store or other. I could kill those punks! They smashed the windows and cut through the upholstery on the seats. They slashed the tires. They stole my gym bag from the trunk. They keyed the top and sides and spray-painted insults over that. They pissed into the glove compartment!”

  Giulia made a gagging face at her screen. “You said they painted insults on the car? What specifically?”

  “I took photos along with the cops. Come to my place. You know where it is, right? I’ll show them to you.”

  “I can’t come over to your apartment right now. If you think this is connected to the case, please give me the information so I can attach it to the rest of the evidence.”

  “Fine.” His tone implied offense at her unwillingness to jump on command. Or perhaps it was nothing more than Male Indulging in a Pout. “I’ll put you on speaker so I can check my pics.” A moment of silence. “Still there?” His voice acquired a slight echo.

  “Yes.”

  “Just a sec...They wrote ‘Die, murderer’ on the hood, ‘Killer’ on the doors, and drew a needle with a skull and crossbones on it on the trunk.”

  Giulia’s fingers hovered over the keyboard. “That was thorough.”

  “You think? Since you’re too busy to come over here, when are you going to give me the report you owe me? You remember? The one on all the people you talked to who bad-mouthed me.”

  If Giulia hadn’t spent ten years serving others in the convent, she would’ve told her client what she thought of his attitude. In precise, grammatical Shakespearean English. Shakespeare could insult with the best.

  “Shall we say between ten and eleven tomorrow morning?”

  “I might be at the car rental place then. I’ll call you. You going to be around all day?”

  Giulia fixed her gaze on the framed painting on the wall across from her. The twelve-by-twenty-four inch watercolor of a garden in summer—exactly the bright, sunny kind of art she preferred—eased her tension enough to answer Fitch with civility.

  “I have errands to run as well. If I don’t answer when you call, please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

  “Fine. No problem. I’m only one more day closer to a jury tying a noose around my neck, figuratively speaking.”

  “I’m aware of the timeline, Mr. Fitch. I’ll expect your call tomorrow.”

  Giulia rested her head on the desk for a full minute after she hung up. Then she pushed herself up and went into the main office space.

  “Zane, is there any chance you’d be available for about two hours of overtime tomorrow?”

  Her admin stared at the ceiling, one eye half-closed.

  Good Heavens, Giulia thought. He looked like Bogie in Casablanca when he did that. She kept her gaze away from Sidney, just in case they were thinking the same thing.

  “I’m hosting a Final Fantasy night in my game room at seven-thirty. Beer’s my contribution. I can get it tonight after work.” He transferred his Bogie-look to Giulia. “Sure. Any time tomorrow up ’til seven.”

  “Your game room?” Giulia said.

  “Don’t get him started,” Sidney’s voice vibrated with overdone caution.

  “You should see it, Ms. Driscoll.” With that one sentence, Zane morphed from noir leading man to cyber-warrior. “I had the room rewired to my personal specs when I bought the house. It’s got power and tables for four screens, recliners and desk chairs depending on whether you want back support or butt cushioning, surround speakers, a four-cubic-foot fridge, and a half-bath so nobody has to run all the way downstairs during important battles.”

  Giulia said, “Sounds...well-thought-out. I didn’t realize you owned your own house.”

  “All thanks to PayWright. They tried to suck out my soul, but I kicked butt on commissioned sales. The house was my reward for surviving their evil maw. It’s an older Cape Cod with small rooms and closets and everything, but my cats and I christened it Veni, Vendidit, Vici.”

  “I came, I...sold? I conquered?” Giulia laughed. “I love it. Tell me you have that on a plaque above the front door.”

  “Well, yeah.” For once he didn’t look embarrassed. “What’s happening tomorrow that you need me for?”

  “Our client wants a report on all the interviews I’ve been doing. I want to scope out his apartment and get a feel for how the crime might have been committed.” She dropped into Zane’s client chair. “I keep having to remind myself that just because he’s an arrogant, rude, entitled jerk doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. Anyway. I’m not foolhardy enough to walk into a possible murderer’s apartment by myself. I’d like you to be silent muscle and my backup eyes and ears.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sidney said. “Fitch is my height and weight—at least what I weigh now—and you had me begging for mercy in ten seconds at self-defense training.”

  “You got Sidney to yield?” Zane said. “Nice.”

  “I’ll make the alpacas spit on you,” Sidney said.

  “Uncle.” He raised both hands in surrender.

  “Fitch has the impression I’m still the passive wallflower he met four years ago,” Giulia said. “I want to use that to my advantage.” She checked her phone. “I need to rewire my brain. I’m going to the gym to turn myself into quivering Jell-O in the circuit training room.”

  She returned to her desk, shut down her computer, gathered all the loose papers into the delivery box the lawyer had given her, and turned off her light.

  “I know I’m neglecting the retainer agreement you created,” she said to Zane as she put on her coat, “but we’re on the clock with the Fitch case. I’ll call you tomorrow as soon as His Entitledness calls me. He claims he might be busy renting a car in the morning—that’s what the screaming phone call was about. I think he’s power-tripping on me and fully intends to have me come to his place before noon.” She opened the front door. “If the Pope himself calls within the next half-hour to hire us, you guys have permission to contact me, but otherwise I’m in gym rat mode for the rest of the daylight hours.”

  Twenty-One

  Frank chewed and swallowed his first bite of pad thai, then took another. After the third, he said, “I like it. Did you find a new takeout place?”

  Giulia threw her napkin at him. “This pad thai was created from scratch by these two hard-working hands.”

  Her husband laughed and tossed the napkin back at her. “I knew it all along. Let me get my phone.” He stretched one arm sideways and snagged the phone from the kitchen counter. He snapped a picture of his dinner plate and sent it. A few seconds later he dialed a number.

  “Sean? It’s Frank. Did you get the text I just sent? Good. Tell me what it is.”

  “Uh...noodles and veggies and stuff.” Frank’s brother’s voice came from the phone at full volume.

  “Ignoramus. You are looking at homemade pad thai. If I could send you the aroma over the phone, I would. When do Tina and the kids get back from her mom’s? And how’s that frozen pizza?”

  “Go n-ithe an cat thú is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat.”

  “I love you too, big brother. No leftovers will be coming your way.” He hung up.

  Giulia giggled into her noodles. “Irish curses are much cleverer than Italian curses. I have nothing to top ‘May the cat eat you and may the Devil eat the cat.’”

  “He deserved it. He spent years telling me what a terrific cook Tina is, and not sharing any of it. Payback is sweet.” He stopped talking and paid attention to supper.

  “We have enough to bring him a bowlful.”

  “Are you serious?” He swallowed. “I’m not letting this out of our kitchen.”

  Giulia basked in Frank’s oblique praise. Coming home to her own home and family after the day she’d had was something she’d never dreamed of hoping
for in the bad old days. Her brother’s marriage wasn’t the greatest example to follow, either. He ran his house like a Catholic army barracks with him as Pope, military police, and God all in one.

  Frank refilled his Coke and her iced tea. Giulia smiled.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m comparing you to other husbands, and they are suffering thereby.”

  Frank affected an innocent expression. “Well, of course.”

  Half an hour later, Frank left for his Police Rec League basketball game. Giulia found a nature sounds radio station on iTunes and cranked it. She pushed the coffee table against the couch and rolled up the throw rug. From the combination office/library/den she brought six different colored highlighters and a tape dispenser.

  “All right, friends, relatives, and co-workers. Let’s see what you’re really saying.”

  She started with the first interview, Geranium Asher. Yellow for her, since she was the happiest of all the people Giulia had spoken to. The marker picked out the high points. The fights. Geranium’s idea that Loriela wanted power and Fitch wanted things. A lot of wanting.

  Next in the pile: Len Tulley. The surprise. The stick bug, to be precise. Green for him, since envy was eating him alive.

  “Brown would work too, but I can’t read through it. There, where you pretend you’re a dumb, beer-drinking ex-jock. There, where you reveal your capacity to hold a grudge for years. And there, where you throw three people under the bus, including Fitch’s lawyer.”

  She sat back on her heels. “Getting information from Colby Petit, Esq. is going to take finesse. Tomorrow morning and a fresh strategy session for you.” She switched to a red pen and wrote a few notes at the top of Tulley’s first page.

  “Mrs. Gil. Hot pink for you, only because they don’t make angry red highlighters.” Giulia started marking sentences halfway down the first page, continued onto pages two and three and covered half of page four.

  “Ouch.”

  She ran back into the den for a black magic marker and revisited all the highlights, underscoring in black only the bits and pieces that appeared to have more truth than hate in the mix. She’d have to reread all of these transcripts.

  Blue for Jonathan Stallone. He disappointed Giulia. She’d been all prepared to crown him Suspect Number One. He had all the markers: Jilted lover, anger issues, strength, opportunity. Yet he came across as the most well-adjusted of the five. She didn’t think he was conning her either, not like Len Tulley’s Jekyll and Hyde act.

  “How dare you get over a failed relationship and move on with your life, Mr. Stallone?” She used hardly any highlighter on his transcript.

  Shirley Travers, on the other hand...Bright orange for her and lots of it. Think of the lost income. The perceived downgrade in job status when she finally got hired by her school district. The rearranging of her entire life as her rival’s status and pay grade rose higher and higher in her former company.

  “Shirley ought to have SUSPECT stenciled on her forehead in fluorescent orange to match this marker. But is that too easy?” She shook her head. “Only a fool refuses a gift dropped right into her lap. I’m not a fool.”

  More orange on sentence after sentence. It still didn’t feel quite right. She persevered anyway. When Shirley’s transcript bled orange, she stretched her back and made a face at the pile of police and DNA reports. All at once she’d had enough of chirping birds and harp glissandos. Off went the radio, on went the TV. She found the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup in the DVD carrel and popped it into the player.

  She left the papers in small piles on the floor and made herself a cup of coffee sweetened with amaretto creamer. Fetching her iPad from her bag, she stretched on the couch with a full-on view of the movie and the coffee on the table ready to hand.

  As Groucho confused Margaret Dumont, Giulia booted her tablet and opened both sets of surveillance photos from Fitch’s apartment building. The first “extra” photo from the police’s version appeared early in the set.

  “I suppose I understand why the courtroom exhibit version doesn’t have this one. A photo of a skunk nosing around a barberry bush isn’t clue material.” She reached for her coffee with her left hand while she scrolled alternately through the photos with her right. “Number two looks like a duplicate of the first lightning photo in both sets.” She enlarged it, but side by side they still looked like those drawings in the Sunday comics that wanted you to find six differences between the two pictures.

  The third and fourth photos of the extra seven had caught two teenagers running through the grass. One in a hoodie, one bareheaded. The bareheaded one was laughing and her soaked hair was plastered flat.

  Photo five fell chronologically between the one of the rain-soaked balcony and the one with the man-sized shadow. Or woman-sized. Shirley Travers and Len Tulley were about the same height. Tulley carried at least a hundred more pounds, but the shadow appeared to be wearing a hooded poncho. It concealed the exact shape of the person with great effectiveness.

  In this photo, the shadow stood on the sidewalk with its face turned north, toward the stoplight at the nearby intersection. The poncho hood covered everything but the tip of the nose. Giulia enlarged the photo. Whoever this was, their stance indicated they were listening. The nose tip wasn’t particularly distinctive. Not pointy or bulbous, not hooked or tipped up.

  But if Giulia could somehow line up Shirley, Len, Roger himself, and, yes, Colby...

  She stared at the photo ’til her eyes blurred. Onscreen, Chico and Harpo drove the burly lemonade stand owner to distraction. Giulia rubbed her eyes and watched the classic comedy for a few minutes.

  She drank more coffee and scrolled to the sixth eliminated photo. This was also nonessential, showing possibly the same skunk crossing the footprints in the mulch.

  The seventh and last appeared toward the end. The figure in the poncho was jumping the low barberry hedge onto the sidewalk. At the near end of the shot, Loriela’s arm dangled over the edge of the balcony. Like the “waiting” photo, the captured movement of the running man—or woman—might be enough to pinpoint which of the four Giulia suspected.

  “Wait. What about that actor Cassandra Gil and Len Tulley threw at me?”

  She scooted off the end of the couch and flipped through Cassandra’s transcript, then Tulley’s.

  “Actor and baby mama. I’m going to have to call Loriela’s mother.”

  Onscreen, the four Marx brothers romped and sang about Freedonia going to war. Giulia had a fleeting wish that the main players in this case would somehow break into spontaneous song and dance. She hit the pause button and dialed Cassandra Gil, hoping she’d be home on a Friday night.

  “Hello?”

  Yes. “Mrs. Gil, this is Giulia Falcone-Driscoll. May I ask you a few more questions?”

  “Of course. Please wait one minute while I check on supper in the oven.”

  The low-pitched creak of the door on an older oven. Giulia’s last two convents had ovens that sounded exactly like that. The scrape of a baking dish sliding off the inner rack. The crinkle of foil, then footsteps.

  “Your timing is very good. The chicken must rest for five minutes before George carves it. What is it you wish to know?”

  Giulia plunged in. “I’ve heard rumors Roger Fitch got his last girlfriend before Loriela pregnant and then deserted her. Would you know anything about that?”

  A Spanish profanity. “Loriela mentioned once that a woman came to their apartment to see him and he was surprised and angry. I do not know if the woman was pregnant.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know her name?”

  “No. I am sorry.” Frustration edged her voice. “Is it very important?”

  “Please don’t worry about it. I’ll ask Mr. Fitch when I see him tomorrow.”

  A harsh laugh. “He’s willing to tell you about the evils he has done, but still claims that he did not murder my daughter?”

  “He’s ready to give me any information he thinks will lessen h
is chance of conviction.”

  “He is a drowning man snatching at straws.”

  “One more thing, and then I won’t take up any more of your Friday night. Do you remember anything more about the actor Loriela dated? The one you said Roger Fitch gave a black eye to?”

  A real laugh from Cassandra this time. “Oh, that one. He did not understand how funny all his words and actions appeared.”

  “Do you remember his name?”

  “Let me think...‘Henri’ something. I called him ‘Henry’ once and he corrected me with great seriousness. Let me ask George.”

  The sound in Giulia’s ear became muffled. She pictured Cassandra cupping her hand over the tiny phone.

  “George, what is the name of that egotistical actor who stalked Loriela after she had moved on to Roger Fitch?” Her voice came through the covering hand with only a slight loss of clarity.

  The rattle of cutlery underscored George’s voice. “He had two first names, didn’t he? Pronounced the second one weird.”

  “That is it.” The sound cleared. “The actor’s name was Henri Richard. The last name is spelled like Richard, but he pronounced it ri-shard.”

  George’s voice, saying something Giulia couldn’t make out. Then Cassandra’s voice again. “He performed out of a renovated church downtown. The one with the beautiful rose window.”

  “Next door to the open-air Farmers’ Market,” Giulia finished. “Yes, I know exactly where that is. Thank you so much, Mrs. Gil.”

  “I told you, I will give you any help I can so I may drink champagne at his execution. George is making the face that means I am getting angry again and I should come eat supper.”

  Giulia smiled into the phone. “I won’t keep you from your supper. Good night.”

  She ended that call and dialed Fitch. He answered on the second ring.

  “Angie?”

  “It’s Giulia Falcone-Driscoll, Mr. Fitch.”