Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1)

by Alice Loweecey

A shy smile altered Jane’s tough persona. “Thanks. Now that I’m working I can afford lunch.”

  Giulia didn’t embarrass her by pointing out that she should have known Giulia wasn’t the type of boss to exclude Jane from their company rituals because she was both new and a temp.

  Giulia returned to her desk and called Frank.

  He answered from a suspiciously quiet office. “Anything wrong?”

  “This isn’t a basketball night, so are you free between eight and ten?”

  “Yeah. Our next sting is still in its infancy. Why?”

  “I received a plain brown envelope with a plain white anonymous letter—typed, of course—telling me to be at Maple Road Park at nine tonight where All Will Be Revealed.”

  He choked. “It actually said that?”

  “No, silly man. It said I’ll learn important information. To get this information, I will require a strong, handsome detective to protect me. Are you up for the challenge?”

  “You know it. Think Fitch has gone off the deep end?”

  “Not him. We’re divided over here. Two for one of the food-fight girlfriends, one for Fitch’s ex-jock co-worker.”

  “If it’s one of his girlfriends, make sure you don’t wear big earrings.”

  Giulia laughed. “You either. Pork chops for supper.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll do anything for a pork chop.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.”

  Giulia and Frank waited in the Nunmobile for the car clock to reach nine p.m. The half-moon illuminated the area less than Giulia liked, but at least it wasn’t cloudy or raining.

  Frank wore all black, including the knit hat covering his ginger buzz cut. He would blend in nicely with the darkness to maintain the illusion she’d kept the appointment alone. Giulia wore a bright white jacket paired with the neon-green pants all the Driscolls wore for a family photo last St. Patrick’s Day.

  “They can see you from space in that outfit,” Frank said.

  “All the better to give a potential attacker pause. There. Nine o’clock.”

  She opened her door and stood by it to let Frank squirm across the seats and crouch around the back. When he was clear, she closed it and crossed the grass to the picnic shelter. She couldn’t hear Frank following her, but she didn’t have to. He’d be close enough to help her restrain a crazed girlfriend or accountant before any damage could occur. She loved him for wanting to protect her, but sometimes she wondered if he’d forgotten she’d passed three different self-defense courses and had a gun license.

  “Hello?” She peered into the shelter.

  “Are you alone?” The whisper from the dark sounded neither male nor female.

  “Yes.” A lie of course.

  “Are you prepared for the truth about Roger Fitch?”

  “Yes. What do you have to tell me?”

  A thin figure in all black stepped out of the darkest corner of the shelter. A hoodie concealed the face, but it wasn’t baggy enough to conceal its feminine shape.

  Score one for Giulia and Sidney. “Are you Angie or Tammy or somebody else Fitch tossed aside?”

  A sound of wordless rage sounded from beneath the hood. A hand emerged from the pocket and yanked the hood backward. Angie. Giulia was glad there was nothing for her to throw.

  “That piece of shit thinks he can humiliate me and get away with it.” When she spoke, the cuts on her face from the shards of glass her rival had attacked her with moved like bloodworms.

  “What do you have to tell me?” Giulia kept her voice steady.

  “I don’t know if Roger strangled that Loriela Gil, but you need to check out where he’s getting all his money.” She pointed a long fingernail at Giulia. “He says it’s because the bar’s doing good business. You know he’s part-owner of Long Neck, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course you do. You’re a detective. You don’t look like one. You look like a schoolteacher. That’s pretty good camouflage.”

  Giulia sighed inwardly at one more nail in the coffin of her hopes to look like a Cosmo woman.

  “Roger took me on a pricey weekend to New York City last Christmas,” Angie said. “Penthouse suite with room service—in the City! Then he gave me real diamond earrings on Christmas morning. That was before he got tired of me.” That incoherent anger returned to her face. “I’m telling you he isn’t making that kind of cash at his day job.”

  Giulia said after a beat, “You think he might be laundering money through the bar.”

  Angie’s smile was feral. “I want you to nail him for it.”

  A spotlight flooded the shelter.

  “You heard it here first, Scoopers! Roger Fitch is a murderer and a thief! His ex-girlfriend, Angie Rossler, agreed to work with us to put the Silk Tie Killer in the Death Chamber where he belongs.”

  Giulia stiffened at that predatory voice. With an effort she achieved the expressionless mask she’d started to refer to as her Scoop Face. The camera turned on her.

  “Ken Kanning with The Scoop, here in the dead of night with the head of Driscoll Investigations. Well, Mrs. Falcone-Driscoll, are you prepared to admit you’ve been working for a murderer?”

  Giulia kept her voice even. “Nine p.m. is hardly the dead of night. Thank you for your information, Angie.”

  She turned and walked back to her car, thinking that her butt looked huge in the screaming-green pants, and would probably be all over The Scoop’s show tomorrow.

  She didn’t dare look around for Frank. He wouldn’t come near the car with that camera trained on her, but it wasn’t a cold night. She could come back for him later. The Scoop probably wouldn’t stay more than half an hour getting location shots and finishing up with Angie. Maybe.

  When she latched her seat belt, Frank’s voice whispered from the backseat, “It’s me. Drive.”

  Giulia drove straight home, fitting puzzle pieces from Long Neck’s bank balance into the AtlanticEdge jigsaw. As soon as the garage door closed them inside, Frank unfolded himself and sat up.

  “I’m not built for the fetal position anymore.”

  “Some backup you are.” Giulia let herself out.

  He followed. “I knew you were safe the minute they turned on the camera light. They used night vision for your meeting with the ex-girlfriend. I heard most of your conversation before I snuck back to the car when the spotlight made it too risky for me to hang around. You didn’t give anything away that’ll hurt you on TV.” He patted her butt. “Those pants, on the other hand...”

  “Don’t remind me. They were all I thought of as I walked back to the car. Won’t they make me look great on TV?” She tossed her purse on the kitchen counter. “There’s no legitimate reason for DI to talk the judge into issuing a subpoena for the Long Neck’s books, is there?”

  Thirty-Three

  Giulia walked into work on Wednesday, said a general “good morning,” and hung up her jacket. When she turned toward the room again, all three DI employees formed a blockade across the narrow space between Zane’s desk and the opposite wall.

  “Well? Did you go? Who was it? What happened?”

  Giulia struck a pose with her coffee mug. “You see before you a budding TV star.”

  “What?” Sidney stepped out of line, supporting mini-Sidney above and beneath with hands and forearms. “Not The Scoop again.”

  The pose drooped. “Yes, The Scoop again. Fitch shouldn’t have dumped Angie.”

  Zane moved over to his desk. “She’s the blond, right? The one who threw the casserole on Saturday.”

  “Yes. She sent the message and Kanning and his minion hid in the shelter. They filmed the meeting with a handy-dandy night vision attachment on the camera.”

  Zane raised his fingers from his keyboard. “Oh, crap.” He clicked the mouse and turned the monitor to face the room.

  The first few notes of The Scoop’s trumpet fanfare played over a black screen. Then a brief shot of Angie, her skin and hair an eerie green. “Today on The Scoop,” Kanning’
s voiceover began, “a jilted lover and a conscience-stricken private eye.” Angie dissolved into Giulia, her white coat glowing like it came direct from the Emerald City. “Film of their clandestine meeting at three-thirty today. No dark deeds can hide from The Scoop!”

  The video ended with the TV station logo.

  “Oh, crap,” Sidney said.

  Giulia took a long drink of coffee. “I’ve never wanted so badly to duct-tape someone and lock them in a damp, mold-infested cellar.”

  “Fitch?” Zane said.

  “And Kanning. If I could only find a cellar that had mold and rats.”

  “I can recommend my first apartment out of high school,” Jane said.

  “Don’t tempt me.” Giulia sank into Zane’s client chair. “Angie the Jilted joined the ‘Throw Fitch Under the Bus’ group. I keep expecting it to show up in my Facebook feed. According to her, Fitch is cooking the books at the bar he’s part-owner of, Long Neck.”

  “Really.” Zane typed on a few keys and stopped. “We don’t have access to their records.”

  “That was my first thought, too. I checked with Frank, who agrees with me that we don’t have a snowball’s chance of getting a look at them.”

  Sidney said, “We couldn’t use it in the AtlanticEdge case anyway. But maybe when The Scoop puts it on TV, the other owner of the bar will get suspicious.”

  “And what?” Giulia said. “It won’t help us. As much as the thought of Fitch in jail warms my heart, to help make that happen we have to prove either we’re right about the AtlanticEdge embezzlement or that he really did kill Loriela Gil. And if we can’t find glaringly obvious proof of either embezzlement or murder, Fitch walks.”

  Silence.

  “I sucked the air out of the room, didn’t I?” Giulia smiled at them all. “Sorry.” She stood. “I have to dig into a sixteen-year-old sports rivalry to see if Petit thinks it’s still worth murdering for. Zane, after that you and I need to cross-check our lists of altered purchase orders and ledger entries. Sidney, I see that face. If you complain about being left out and neglect Jane’s training, I will be at your house after every two a.m. feeding, keeping you up with work.”

  Sidney hit the keys on her keyboard as though it had reverted to a manual typewriter. Jane hid a smile behind her hand.

  Giulia closed herself in and hit the Net. Yearbooks, sports articles, school district archives. The glut of information in searchable online formats worked to her advantage.

  She brought up the yearbook photo of Fitch and Petit’s senior year basketball team. “Weren’t they cute in those little shorts?”

  Fitch’s smile hadn’t altered in the intervening decades. Petit’s smile looked a little sour.

  She searched for prom pictures. According to the photographic evidence, the basketball team stuck together in sports and recreation. Fitch posed with a blonde similar to Angie. Three other players had their arms around two blondes and a brunette. Petit and a tall kid with unfortunate acne bookended the photo, without girls to hold on to. Both of their smiles left something to be desired.

  She switched to college archives. Fitch received a Bachelor’s in Marketing and Petit passed the bar exam his first try. Fitch’s smiling photo appeared in the business section of the paper several times as he achieved promotion after promotion. Petit joined Creighton, Williams, Ferenc, and Steele straight out of law school but five years later still hadn’t been made partner.

  Petit coached summer basketball camps for inner-city kids. Fitch’s name appeared only in the business section.

  “Yeah, but Petit can be the best sports mentor around and still be a murderer. Wait.”

  She ran a search for “Colby Petit + Loriela Gil.” Nothing. “Colby Petit + Leonard Tulley.” Still nothing. Then she thought, Why not? and typed “Colby Petit + AtlanticEdge.” Zilch. “Colby Petit + Cassandra Gil.”

  “Well, well, well.”

  The five-year-old newspaper article read:

  LEGAL EAGLE SAVES SINGLE MOM

  Colby, Petit, Esq., the latest acquisition of the prestigious local firm of Creighton, Williams, Ferenc, and Steele, proved he’s more than a jury favorite yesterday. Petit was returning from a late deposition when he heard the sound of breaking glass and a scream. He ran toward the sound and saw a figure in a ski mask jump through the broken window of the ground-floor apartment of Cassandra Gil, 55. Petit, 29, followed the attacker through the window and subdued him with the help of a decorative stone cat statue.

  The alleged thief, whose name has been withheld because he is a minor, is connected to several recent break-ins using the same pattern. He is in the Cottonwood Holding Center awaiting arraignment. Ms. Gil is the mother of Loriela Gil who was recently seen in the company of Henri Richard, Cottonwood’s rising star of experimental theater. Mr. Petit is already known for his skill in winning a jury’s sympathy for an underdog defendant. When asked what prompted him to interfere in a potentially deadly situation, he replied that anyone would have done the same.

  Giulia rubbed her hands over her face. “Okay, Dudley Do-Right, why didn’t Cassandra mention any of this, since she’s one hundred percent certain her rescuer is working for the man she’s one hundred percent certain killed her daughter?”

  An answer came to her straight out of her years of teaching Catholicism: If he didn’t kill Loriela himself, he’s defending Fitch to expiate all the years of hate and jealousy. If he did kill Loriela, he’s covered his tracks like a master. Which he is if he’s absorbed lessons from any murderers he’s defended.

  Giulia leaned away from the screen. She tried to picture Petit tracking Fitch and Loriela’s movements, desperate enough to climb her balcony like a perverted Romeo and watch his old rival and the unattainable woman make love in that king-sized bed.

  Was he the type to stalk their drunken arrival home on April first and the sex that followed? To hate Loriela enough to kill her for—what? Destroying some angelic image of her he created in his own mind? Wanting to be the one tying her to the bed?

  Giulia shivered. “I’m going to need an extra-large jug of brain bleach when this is over.”

  If Petit had lured Loriela out to the balcony and pleaded with her to give him a chance...with the rain soaking both of them and making that thin blouse cling to her naked skin...or if he lost it and kissed her? Groped her? And she swatted him away? Those silk ties were so easy to reach, only five feet away, so easy...

  Giulia grabbed a pen and the legal pad and wrote.

  Fitch:

  Motives: Boredom. Jealousy. Money?

  Opportunity: Unlimited.

  Gain: Freedom. Both from a committed relationship and from jail because all evidence so far is circumstantial.

  Petit:

  Motive: Jealousy? Hate. Lust/Love?

  Opportunity: If he stalked her, why didn’t he choose a night when Loriela was home alone?

  Giulia made an exasperated sound and scratched out those last lines.

  Opportunity: If he stalked them, he would choose a night when Fitch at least was falling-down drunk so he wouldn’t be able to fight Petit off—or remember? Maybe. Also, to let Fitch take the blame. If Petit planned that, he has succeeded brilliantly—so far.

  Gain: Negative. Nobody gets to “have” Loriela now that she’s dead.

  Gain Part Two: If Petit planned Loriela’s murder with the same meticulousness he crafts a defense, he would have known he could spring Fitch within forty-eight hours because of lack of evidence. He’d also know that, barring any counter-evidence surfacing and everything modern DNA testing can discover, there’d be a strong possibility Fitch would be indicted for the murder sooner or later.

  She reread the lists. “Then what? He had a whole year to get an attack of conscience? Who’s the real Colby Petit? Dudley Do-Right or the Boston Strangler?”

  She started a third page.

  Tulley:

  Motive:

  Giulia recalled all the AtlanticEdge surveillance videos in which he sucked up to Loriela. B
ut was it sucking up? What if they were his awkward attempts at wooing her?

  All the men in the case loved or yearned after Loriela. All of them except for Petit, and Giulia admitted her Motive-Opportunity-Gain list for him was nothing more than theory.

  “Any one of the three could’ve strangled Loriela with that tie.” Giulia pulled her emergency sweater from the extra-deep bottom desk drawer. She wrapped one sleeve around her coffee mug and pulled the ends tight. Her arm muscles hardened. “I have enough strength to strangle someone with a tie if they’re too drunk to fight back. Fitch, Petit, and Tulley could certainly do it even if Loriela retained enough of her senses to fight back.”

  She continued Tulley’s sheet:

  Motive: Lust/love. Fear of jail re: embezzling.

  Opportunity: Less than Fitch, more than Petit. Did Fitch take Loriela to Long Neck to get hammered for his birthday? Tulley would’ve seen them and snatched his chance.

  Gain: Peace of mind. Continued money. Knowledge that Fitch couldn’t turn him in without exposing the embezzlement scheme, because Tulley would then have nothing to lose.

  She pushed away the legal pad. “Not only could any of them be the killer, my lists make all three look like prize scumbags. These kinds of cases almost make me miss the Sister Mary Regina Coelis years. The world was simpler. Evil wore fewer masks.”

  She could recite Frank’s lecture on that idea word for word: The world isn’t the warm and fuzzy place you want it to be. You want to be a private investigator? Be prepared to fight the evil in the world. That means facing facts.

  “All right, Frank.” She printed out Petit’s heroic rescue article, his prom photo, and basketball team photo.

  A minute later, Zane knocked on her door and handed her the pages. “Ready when you are to compare bogus purchase orders.”

  Giulia stared at the clue collage on the wall. “Thanks. Give me a few minutes.”