Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1)

by Alice Loweecey

  “Oh.”

  The disappointment in that one word made Giulia wonder what attributes Angie had to cause it. She braced for more shouting.

  “Could you let me have the name and address—and phone number, if possible—of your former girlfriend who you’re rumored to have gotten pregnant?”

  To the delight of Giulia’s ears, Fitch remained silent for several seconds.

  “Somebody’s got their knife into my back,” he said at last. “The name you want is Lacy Maples.” He spelled out an address. “I deleted her number from my phone two years ago. For the record: I did not tell her to have an abortion, I did not force her to have an abortion, and I did not pay for an abortion. Clear?”

  “Yes.” Giulia drew angry emoticons in the margin of the printout under her hand. “Then you admit it was your child.”

  “No, I do not admit that. Jesus Christ, what the hell have people been telling you?”

  “You hired me to look into everything. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “Great. Won’t I look good to a jury now? Happy?” He hung up.

  A key turned in the deadbolt on the front door. “I’m home,” Frank called from the short front hall. “Sweaty, victorious, and starving.”

  “So of course you stopped at the Garden of Delights and brought dessert,” Giulia called back.

  “What? I can’t hear you over the sound of my stomach growling.”

  Giulia laughed and dropped her phone onto the couch. “Never fear. Blueberry pie awaits. I’ll make coffee. I’d make just about anything for the delight of talking with a reasonable man.”

  Frank came up behind her and squeezed her in his not-too-sweaty arms. “You are a model for all wives. I gather I’m being favorably compared to The Silk Tie Killer?”

  “Indeed you are. Don’t let it go to your head. Go away and change. Coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”

  When Frank entered the kitchen to carry dishes to the living room, Giulia had her questions prepared for him.

  “The living room appears to have been annexed by Driscoll Investigations,” he said.

  “Temporarily. I’m annexing you tonight as well.”

  “Taskmaster.” He sat at the end of the coffee table, away from the papers on the floor. After his first bite of pie, he said, “You have won me over with this dessert. Ask away.”

  Giulia brought up the two sets of pictures on her tablet. “The lawyer’s version omits seven from the raw version you gave me. Five of them are nothing—a skunk and kids and duplicates. But look at the other two.” She handed him the tablet. “See how the person in the hooded poncho is standing? Now scroll down...there. The one with the same person jumping the barberry bushes.”

  Frank scrolled back and forth between both photos. “What about them?”

  “I’m thinking Fitch’s lawyer omitted them because they have details which could identify this mysterious person. Someone with a concealed face and a body-disguising raincoat who happened to be lurking around Fitch’s apartment the night Loriela was killed. The prosecution would give a lot to know who that is.”

  “So would we.” He stopped at the photo with the bare wet arm in the foreground. After enlarging it and holding it close and at a distance, he shook his head. “It’s not enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look.”

  He set the tablet flat on the coffee table. Giulia pushed both coffee cups to the other end, away from the screen.

  Frank started with, “I get what you’re saying about the way poncho carries himself.”

  “Or herself,” Giulia said.

  “Or herself. But, to give one example, actors can imitate certain posture tics. Let’s assume that the killer—we won’t say who that is—hired some out-of-work actor to pose in ways that the killer knows will trip the motion-sensor camera.” He reached around the tablet for his coffee. “Don’t raise your eyebrows. The actor gets told it’s a practical joke, because a friend watches too many slasher movies. Or that a rival security system is trying to sell the apartment building owners on a better camera. And that the trick is the actor has to imitate a certain person to make it work.”

  Giulia tried to see the photo with fresh eyes. “Seriously?”

  “One hundred percent. A good prosecuting attorney could take those photos and twist them into whatever he wanted. Face it, the state’s attorney might be doing exactly that as they prepare for the trial.”

  Giulia scooped the last of the vanilla ice cream from her plate.

  “Better find out now than waste more time on this angle.” He picked up his plate and leaned back in the chair. “That’s probably why Fitch’s lawyer chose his creative omission. If I had to guess, despite what I just said, the prosecution might not be wasting any time on it either. They’ve got a straightforward case with the DNA and other evidence.”

  “I’m not happy.” Giulia shook her fork at Frank. “I’ve got a thin lead on an actor the victim dated, but it seems too easy.”

  “Easy? I know you know how many months it takes to put a case like this together.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s not what I mean.” She picked up her dishes. “I mean that if Fitch is willing to expose all these details to us when he has one of the best lawyers for this type of case, there must be something else to it all.”

  Frank followed her into the kitchen. “I applaud your determination. Because of that, I promise not to say ‘I told you so’ when he slips up and you realize he’s a slick liar as well as a murderer.”

  Giulia gave him her “unimpressed teacher” look. “You, sir, have one major fault. You resist change at all costs.”

  He closed the dishwasher. “I prefer to think of myself as a rock to be relied upon.”

  “Argh. Come watch the end of the movie with me before I dive into my clue collage.”

  “Not the clue collage.” Frank pretended to sink under a heavy weight. “I won’t see you ’til midnight.”

  “Great art requires sacrifice.”

  Twenty-Two

  After the movie Frank retired to the den to play Assassin’s Creed online with his brothers. Giulia queued several Mozart symphonies on their multi-CD changer to drown out the brothers’ running trash-talk. Through hard experience, she had a mere thirty minutes of gameplay before the multiple voices from the attached speakers became too loud for her to think. She’d checked with her fellow Driscoll spouses after the first couple of Fridays, and they shared their successful coping mechanisms with her.

  Symphony number five in B-flat major burst through the living room. She flexed her fingers.

  “All right, people. Fear the power of the highlighters.”

  She started at the left end of the TV stand with Geranium Asher’s two pages detailing the police call and what she heard listening at the shared wall. Next to them she dealt Shirley Travers’ naked hate. Three pieces of tape linked them. Below both of those she set Len Tulley’s pages, the one in which he threw everyone possible under the bus landing off-center. Continuing the hub of a wheel pattern, she taped Jonathan’s reasonable story, Cassandra’s pulsing neon lust for Fitch’s death, and two blank pages for Henri Richard the actor and Lacy Maples the angry ex.

  The Driscoll boys’ game strategy—shouting each other down—cut across the Mozart symphony. Giulia scowled at the six-inch gap caused by the door sticking to the hardwood floor. Frank kept promising to fix it before she had to hand-wax it for the twentieth time.

  “Crank it down, warriors!”

  “Sorry, hon!” from the den.

  The almost identical male voices cut the volume by half. Giulia swapped out the highlighters for regular red, green, and blue markers. With the red, she drew arrows to the most suspicious statements. Iffy statements got blue. Positive clues, green. Then she attacked the entire collage with Post-it notes.

  An hour later, pages from the police and DNA reports fanned out from the spokes of the wheel. More arrows led from information in them that connected to underlined and hig
hlighted points from the interviews.

  Muscle cramps rippled through Giulia’s shoulders. Her knees hurt from extended contact with the wood floor. Only four years out of the convent and she’d gone soft. Sister Eulalia would’ve had plenty to say about that.

  She unkinked her right shoulder enough to grope on the top of the coffee table for one of the blank pieces of paper that had been stuck in with the printouts. With the plain blue marker, she made a list for the weekend:

  • Get on the internet and find the actor

  • Stay on the internet and find the baby mama

  • Try to contact both and have an in-person meeting Sat. or Sun.

  • Fitch’s apartment (block out two hours)

  • Groceries

  • Sleep?

  • Food?

  She focused her eyes on the DVD player’s clock. Eleven forty-five. Enough for one day. She capped all the markers and paper-clipped all the un-collaged documents in separate piles. Slowly, with attention to her left foot returning to life with a thousand phantom bee stings, she stood up for the first time in two hours.

  The CD remote cut off Mozart’s symphony number twelve in the middle of the second movement. Frank’s voice rushed into the gap. She bent in half and picked up the clue collage at the bottom, folding it more or less in half, then in quarters. The loose edges flapped, but she tamed them into a semblance of neatness and set the rhombus on the coffee table underneath the semi-empty delivery box.

  Off with all the lights except the front hall and the stairs. Check the locks. Trudge upstairs and into the bathroom. Strip and fall into bed. She was so whipped she postponed her nightly Bible reading, something Frank had taken a while to get used to, especially on their honeymoon.

  She had no idea when Frank came to bed. She only noticed his presence when he whispered in her ear, “Told you it’d be after midnight.”

  She slept the sleep of the righteous and weary until her phone rang at nine a.m.

  “I thought you said you’d be ready for me?” Roger Fitch said. “It rang so many times I thought I’d get dumped into voicemail. You can come over now.”

  Twenty-Three

  Giulia stuffed the phone under her pillow. But only for a moment.

  “I’ll be over soon, Mr. Fitch. Thank you for calling so early.”

  She returned the phone to her nightstand and pulled the blanket over her head.

  Her husband said from the pillow next to her, “I love it when strange men call my wife while we’re in bed together.”

  “It’s all part of my nefarious plan to keep you on your toes.”

  He peered under the blanket. “Ruh-roh, Shaggy! We’ve got a recret ragent in our red!”

  Giulia giggled. “You are the only person who can make me giggle like Sidney.”

  Frank kissed her ear. “One of the many reasons I love you is that you are nothing like Sidney.” He kissed her neck. “Where are you going at this hour on a Saturday?”

  She moved her hair away from her neck so he could get to more of it. “Roger Fitch’s apartment.”

  Frank jerked up onto one elbow. “What?”

  “I want to walk through the crime scene. He wants a report on what everyone said about him.”

  “He’s a killer. Okay, alleged killer.”

  Giulia knew how to interpret his words and body language. “I’m taking Zane with me as my personal muscle. You should know I’m not naïve enough to go to an alleged murderer’s apartment by myself.”

  He fell back onto his pillow. “Sometimes I worry. Tell Zane to wear a tight t-shirt and a leather jacket, if he has one. He’s got good muscle under those button-downs he usually wears.”

  “Spoken like a cop used to sizing people up.” Giulia draped one leg over his. “I promise,” she kissed his shoulder, “that I won’t take,” his collarbone, “any foolhardy risks.” Her lips found his.

  She tapped his shoulders a few minutes later. “I really have to show up for this appointment,” she said with her mouth still against his.

  He pulled her on top and kissed her harder.

  A few more minutes later, she tapped his shoulders again. “I mean it.”

  A pitiful sigh. “I’m losing my touch.”

  She pecked his nose. “No, I’m obsessive about doing my job.”

  He let his arms drop to his sides. “One hundred percent true. Fine. Go. Leave me here cold and alone and unloved.”

  Giulia’s feet touched the carpet. “You are the farthest thing from unloved. There must be UK soccer on live at this hour. I plan to be back by noon, unless I can get hold of a French actor or a jilted lover. I’ll call you if that happens.”

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “You will when I tell you thrilling stories of the Jerry Springer kind.” She dialed her admin’s number. “Zane? It’s Ms. Driscoll. Can you be ready in twenty minutes or so? I’ll pick you up.”

  “No prob, Ms. Driscoll.” His voice sounded alert and prepared. “Should I wear menacing clothes?”

  Giulia smothered a laugh. “Actually, yes, if you possess them.”

  “Awesome. The thug life for me. See you in twenty.”

  She set down the phone and said to Frank’s attentive face, “Why do men automatically think alike?”

  “It’s programmed into our DNA. Seriously, be careful. Don’t trust that guy.”

  “I don’t. That still doesn’t mean—”

  “That you’re not going to do your best to find the truth, regardless,” he finished for her.

  “I need a new line,” she said, and headed for the shower.

  Twenty-five minutes later she pulled into Zane’s driveway. March had performed another about-face and the clouds threatened snow. Giulia refused to turn on the heat in the car on principle, but she had chosen jeans and her violet wool coat.

  Zane opened his door and Giulia almost didn’t recognize him. Her fashionable admin wore cowboy boots, thick jeans, a black t-shirt, and a leather bomber jacket. His white-blond hair, wet and combed straight, should have made him look like he was playing dress-up. Instead, it combined with the clothes that emphasized his kickboxer’s physique to make him look exactly like the label she’d given him earlier: Understated muscle.

  He blew it by jumping into her car with a, “Hey, Ms. Driscoll. What do you think? My girlfriend says I look like Trunks from Dragonball Z, except my hair’s not purple.”

  “From what?”

  “Anime. Never mind. Trunks is badass. I’m channeling him today to be your backup.”

  “I—good. You look great.” She backed out of the driveway and headed east. “Your presence will maintain Fitch’s illusion that I’m a wuss in body and spirit.”

  “PayWright was never like this.” He leaned forward in the seat, the seat belt keeping him anchored. “What are we looking for?”

  The light ahead of them turned green. Giulia drove straight for a few blocks. “Three things. One, I want to get a feel for the apartment, the balcony, the landscaping. That’s right. You haven’t seen the photos. Open my tablet. They’re in the Fitch folder on the desktop.”

  While Zane scrolled through the photos, Giulia continued, “Two, Fitch wants a summary of all the interviews I’ve done. Three, I’m going to ask him more about his ex-girlfriend who got an abortion.”

  Zane whistled. “He’s going to blow a gasket.”

  “Probably. That’s another reason you’re here. He’s more likely to behave with another DI employee in the room.” She turned left, then made a quick right. “Only a couple miles to go.”

  “These surveillance photos sure make it look like he didn’t kill her.”

  “I know, but the obvious inference is that the man or woman in the poncho was casing the apartment building for future burglaries. Then when he or she saw Fitch strangle Loriela, he—or she—hightailed it out of there.” She signaled and turned left into the apartment building’s parking lot.

  Zane repacked her tablet. “I almost forgot. Yesterday afte
rnoon I found it. I finally found something on the AtlanticEdge documents that might be the essential clue to the problems I’m having with the financial records.”

  “You just made my day. Tell me that Fitch is the one who’s been skimming off the books for the past two years and you’ll make my month.” She parked and shut off the car.

  His eager posture wilted, but only for a moment. “I can’t say that for certain yet. And honestly, he may not be involved at all. Here’s what we saw—”

  “Later. Right now we have to focus on the Silk Tie part of Fitch’s life.” She turned in her seat to face him. “What I’m going to do is make Fitch walk me through the night of the murder. I’ll get the summary of interviews over with first so he’ll be more willing to do what I want.” She unbuckled her seat belt but didn’t get out of the car. “You’ve never done anything like this, which makes you twice as useful. Watch Fitch’s body language. Assess the logistics of the apartment and the balcony in relation to those footprints and the landscaping as they looked on the night of the murder. Don’t write anything down, because that will put Fitch on his guard. I know you have an excellent memory. This is your chance to test it.”

  Her phone alarm rang.

  “What?” She unlocked the phone. “Oh, crap. I forgot about confession.”

  “Huh?”

  She cancelled the alarm. “Confession. It’s a Catholic thing. I set an alarm for it this week because I’ve been lying for the sake of the job more than usual. Without confession, I shouldn’t really take Communion at Mass tomorrow.”

  She put away her phone. Zane’s face could’ve been the poster image for bewilderment. Giulia smiled and waved it away. “It’d take too long to explain. Sidney would file it under ‘Catholics sure have a lot of rules.’ Come on. Time to beard Fitch in his den.”

  Zane jumped out of the car. Giulia followed and locked it. “Please stop looking like a puppy waiting to catch its first Frisbee.”

  He sobered up. “Sorry. I’m your silent muscle. I’ll remember.”