Giulia came through the doorway and nabbed a skinny slice of pizza. “Tully comes across as the right kind of employee. He’s good with numbers, has a hobby that keeps him in town, and if we can believe the surveillance videos, sucked up in a big way to Loriela when she was his boss.”
Olivier said, “That is all surface polish.”
Giulia sat. “Tell me more.”
“May I read what you know about him already?”
Giulia pointed. “It’s on the wall. Start with the third row left, then read across the top row.”
Olivier stood and read as he finished a rib. “He’s in a bitter time loop of his own making, and he refuses to recognize his other qualities. I went to one of his microbrew tastings last year. He has definite talent, but he squanders it as minion to Roger Fitch while he focuses on the great football player he once was.” He took the interview pages off the wall. “Here, where he shifts from lazy former jock to crafty traitor. Here, where he pretends he isn’t interested in marriage, yet he deliberately searched for Loriela Gil’s online presence.”
“You mean he threw Roger under the bus because they were rivals for Loriela?” Giulia pointed at her interview pages. “No way. She chose men based on how high they’d climbed the success ladder. Always higher than the last one. Tulley was going nowhere.”
Sidney came out of the bathroom. “If Tulley wasn’t Fitch’s rival, then he’s got the biggest case of ‘I hate my job’ ever.”
“That’s too easy,” Giulia said. “Besides, how would he know for sure Fitch killed Loriela?”
“Fitch admitted it one night at the bar when they were both hammered?” Zane said, yawning.
“Do any of us think Fitch ever gets that hammered?” Giulia said.
“If he doesn’t, then his story of his alcohol coma the night of the murder falls apart,” Frank said. “Speaking in a purely helpful brainstorming fashion, that is.”
Giulia stood very still facing her clue collage. “Nobody say anything for a minute, okay?”
Her gaze stopped on the empty space where Tulley’s interview pages had been. Then on Fitch’s pages. Cassandra Gil’s pages. The DNA evidence. The crime scene photos.
There’s something here. Think.
She rubbed her hands over her face. All she really wanted was silence and her own bed.
Bed. Footprints. Rain and an open door and a body on a narrow balcony and a man too stupefied-drunk to hear any of it happening a mere five feet away.
“Zane,” she said, “if you compare the crime scene photos to everything you saw when you and I went to Fitch’s apartment, would you say an intruder killed Loriela?”
She didn’t worry about the silence that followed. Silence meant Zane in super-think mode.
“Yeah. Yeah, I would, even though I still think Fitch did it.”
“Me too. It’s not just his work background and the history of the case. The more I talk to him and get exposed to his body language and inflections—shush, Frank, you know what I mean—the more I’m convinced he’s the killer.” She grabbed the air in front of the Collage like she was choking it. “But he didn’t kill her. So who did, and why are we hung up on him as perpetrator?”
No one replied.
“He said something to me last Saturday. Something along the lines of ‘It’s good to be the king.’ Zane, do you remember—no, wait. Minions. He was talking about Tulley working for him at the bar.”
“I remember,” Zane said. “He said he liked being the owner because people had to do what he said. He didn’t use those words, but he was talking about having power over people.”
Giulia turned to face the room. Her right hand drew bullet points in the air as she spoke.
“Fitch likes power. Women. Money. The arguments with Loriela escalated up ’til the night of her death. We only have his word on the drunken birthday party and happy reconciliation. Okay, let’s assume the reconciliation because of their bedroom escapades afterward.”
She stared at the air in front of her, cataloguing the points.
“Fitch and Tulley are stealing from AtlanticEdge. Fitch and Tulley are stealing from Long Neck. Zane and Sidney, what’s the probability of both?”
Sidney said, “Ninety-five percent from AtlanticEdge, eighty percent from the bar. We don’t have enough data for that yet.”
“Point taken. Zane?”
“One hundred percent from AtlanticEdge, eighty from the bar, for Sidney’s reason.”
“Agreed.” Giulia didn’t shift her focus from her invisible bullet points. “What if I said Loriela was also embezzling?”
From the edges of her vision, Giulia saw Zane and Sidney both sit back in their chairs.
“Interesting,” Zane said. “It blows her image of the beautiful, hardworking, wronged woman.”
“She never had that image, except in her mother’s mind,” Sidney said. “What about that woman who said Loriela left heel prints in her back when she walked over her to get her job? Something like that.”
“The higher you climb, the more expensive and frantic life gets,” Zane said. “I saw the damage at PayWright when somebody clawed up to assistant manager level, then manager, then floor supervisor.”
“Loriela was smart,” Giulia said. “She had power and brains to work out an embezzlement scheme. Or to improve Fitch’s, if the idea was his.”
“But not Tulley’s?” Frank said.
“No. Embezzlement wasn’t Tulley’s idea. He’s a follower now, not a leader.” Giulia unfocused her eyes on the clock above the door. She didn’t really want to know how long this workday was lasting. “He wants to turn back the clock to his high school most popular athlete days. Because he can’t do that, he’s nursing a spectacular load of hate and bitterness. Maybe he decided sticking it to his employer was the best he could manage, since women don’t seem to want him. Loriela sure didn’t.” She focused at last on the people in the room. “Tell me this doesn’t sound crazy: Tulley killed Loriela.”
“Why?” Sidney said.
“He finally realized she’d never dump Fitch for him?” Giulia said.
“Fitch told him to?” Zane said, then made a disgusted noise. “Forget that. Tulley isn’t stupid, either. This isn’t Of Mice and Men.”
“He wanted more money?” Giulia said.
“From who?” Sidney said. “If the three of them were already stealing, and the two who worked at the bar were stealing more, why get extra greedy?”
“He was fed up with being the minion?” Olivier said.
“Fitch is a top salesman,” Giulia said. “His bonuses prove it. He’s been trying to sell me on the idea that despite his current tomcatting, he truly loved Loriela. I think it was mutual exploitation, not love. I think he and Loriela were using each other first to further their careers and then to get rich quick.”
“More than two years of embezzling is hardly quick,” Frank said.
“It’s smarter than robbing a bank.” Giulia locked eyes with Frank. “They’re both smart. They’re both charming when they want to be. Loriela had a reputation for turning on the charm to the right people and using the rest for stepping stones.” She took a step toward him. “Fitch is using Tulley. Loriela might have used Tulley. Tulley might have interpreted that as something more. Picture this: Loriela leading Tulley on to keep the embezzlement going, with Fitch laughing at Tulley all the while.”
Frank gave her that challenging smile he always used when they were nearing a solution together. “So what then? Fitch got tired of Loriela and wanted her share of the money so he killed her?”
Giulia shook her head hard enough to whip her curls against her face. “Yes, he wanted her money. No, he didn’t kill her. The whole murder scene is set up like a locked-room mystery. It’s been bugging me for days, when Fitch himself wasn’t the biggest annoyance in my life. You and your team must’ve seen it.”
Frank raised his eyebrows. “All the evidence, including DNA, points only to Fitch.”
“I know. I know.”
Olivier said, “Jealousy.”
Giulia’s head snapped toward him. “Tulley jealous of Fitch? Of course. What if he wanted to one-up Fitch by stealing more and doing it better?”
Zane’s fingers pounded his keyboard. Sidney moused through documents.
“Last July,” they said almost in unison.
“The bar thefts started in April, after Loriela’s murder,” Sidney added.
“That’s Fitch celebrating his freedom,” Giulia said.
“From?” Frank said.
“Jail and Loriela.” Giulia paced the distance from wall to wall. “If the July escalation is Tulley’s doing, what triggered it? Don’t answer that.” She stopped and stabbed a finger at different sheets of the collage. “Fitch forced Tulley to steal from the bar. Tulley rebelled by taking more risks at AtlanticEdge.”
“So they’re playing ‘mine are bigger than yours’?” Zane said. “What are they, five?”
“No,” Giulia said. “They’re in high school. That’s why I got distracted by Petit.”
“The lawyer?” Frank said. “You have him on the suspect list?”
“Tulley told me how Fitch and Petit were high school basketball rivals. Petit spent too much time coming up with wordy, plausible refutations of my suspicions.”
Olivier snagged the last piece of carnivore pizza. “I am already looking forward to the relative simplicity of my more convoluted patients tomorrow.”
“Hah,” Sidney said. “And you thought all we did was chase deadbeat dads and screen wannabe priests.”
Zane said, “If this is real life imitating a soap opera, Tulley wanted Loriela. Fitch didn’t want Loriela anymore. Tulley tried for her and she rejected him.”
Giulia stood very still, looking at all the elements as one giant pattern. “Fitch pushes and twists and goads Tulley until Tulley’s ready to do anything to revenge himself on Loriela’s rejection. Fitch plants the idea—revenge or greed, it doesn’t matter, maybe both—and sets everything up. On April first he gets Lori falling-down drunk, pretends to everyone he’s just as drunk, and gives himself the perfect alibi—because he really is innocent. In fact, if not in spirit.”
“Ye-es,” Sidney said. “It makes more sense than Fitch doing it himself.”
“Because Fitch likes to get his minions to do things for him,” Zane said.
“Yes.” Giulia slapped the photo of the footprints in the muddy landscaping below Fitch’s balcony. “Fitch got Tulley to kill Loriela. And it’s festered in him with all his other festering wrongs until he told me to look at Petit and Fitch, the other rivals. Misdirection.” She turned to Frank with a grin. “Fitch didn’t kill Loriela.”
Frank grinned back. “You sure?”
“I am, but we have something better than being sure: We don’t have to prove it. Proof is Colby Petit’s problem. Providing him with ammunition to create reasonable doubt is ours. Sidney, do you agree?”
Sidney was studying her screen. “It makes sense...I could put a summary document together to double-check.” She looked up. “Tomorrow?”
“Zane?”
“I can see it. Do we have anything concrete? Anything at all?”
“No.” Giulia leaned on Sidney’s desk. “We never had anything concrete against Fitch, either. Neither did the police. Right, Frank?”
Frank opened both hands. “Technically correct. You will admit, however, that the circumstantial evidence is damning enough to justify murder charges.”
“Well, tomorrow I’ll give Petit enough to plant doubt in a jury’s mind. Then I bet you’ll get a call to start digging through some old evidence.” Giulia would have danced if she wasn’t so dead tired. She squinted at the clock as though seeing the time through the smallest opening would soften the blow.
“It’s nine thirty-three, hardworking investigators. You are hereby kicked out of this office for the night. Go to sleep thinking of how fat your next paycheck will be.” She held up a hand. “But be here on time tomorrow, because we have a lot to write up. I’ll call Petit tonight with the good news and the bad news.”
“Bad news?” Sidney said. “Oh, right. He’s not a killer, but he is a thief.”
“He’s not technically a killer, we think.”
Zane gathered all the food boxes and empty water bottles and stuffed them in the plastic bags. “I vote we take out an ad in the paper exposing him. It’d sure make me feel better.”
Frank winked at Olivier. “I think we should call The Scoop.”
Giulia threw her crumpled napkin at him.
Thirty-Eight
Giulia awoke at five a.m. and slipped out of bed without jostling Frank.
She threw on lounge pants and a sweatshirt and tiptoed downstairs to start coffee. While it brewed, she opted for pen and paper to outline the final report. Her eyes threatened to mutiny at the mere thought of an LED screen at this hour.
AtlanticEdge Findings
Based on Driscoll Investigations’ analysis of video surveillance footage, bookkeeping ledgers, purchase orders, and check scans for the three-year period in question, we have reached the following conclusions.
Giulia added several bullet points about Tulley and Fitch. Loriela too, with a footnote to be written explaining that her involvement up to her death was a deduction without actual proof.
“I’ll need to scan in the lists we made and add them to the PO scans, plus the corresponding pages from the books. This PowerPoint is going to be huge.”
The coffee finished brewing. She chose a Monet water lilies teacup from the cupboard and the caramel creamer from the fridge. With the practiced hand of the desperate, she poured the fragrant, life-giving fluid into the narrow china cup.
The first hot, delicious mouthful warmed her inside and out. With renewed purpose, she flipped over those pages and started her report for Colby Petit.
No PowerPoint for this one. Using the same reporting format, she began:
Based on the evidence and Driscoll Investigations’ analysis, it is our conclusion that Leonard Tully is the murderer of Loriela Gil. However, it is also our conclusion that Roger Fitch was the driving force behind the murder. In addition, we have compiled evidence that this murder was part of ongoing embezzlement at AtlanticEdge by Fitch, Tulley, and possibly Loriela Gil herself. There is also evidence of ancillary money laundering at the Long Neck bar by Fitch and Tulley.
Following are the facts on which we base these conclusions, beginning with the AtlanticEdge embezzlement.
She filled three more pages, drawing in big boxes labeled CHECKING ACCOUNT and LONG NECK DEPOSITS and TULLEY SCREENCAPS FROM MURDER NIGHT PHOTOS.
Corroborating information from AtlanticEdge would have buttressed their case, but there was only so far Giulia could walk the tightrope of Fitch as Killer vs. Fitch as Thief. Sharing confidential AtlanticEdge information wasn’t one of them. As it was, she could barely stand on the narrow ledge she’d created for herself by taking on these two cases.
The first cup of coffee was long gone by the time she had the summary in a format Zane could work with. She poured another cup and added creamer.
Now the phone. She’d turned it off at eleven o’clock after she left the message for Petit, thereby achieving six whole hours of sleep. Sure enough, when the phone powered on, a red number four appeared over the little telephone icon. A red twelve covered the top corner of the missed calls icon. She took a long drink of coffee. There was no way she could take an incensed Fitch without assistance, even a recorded Fitch.
She dialed voicemail. It was Petit, not Fitch. Weariness and strain thinned the lawyer’s voice.
“Ms. Driscoll, I’ve called several times and you’re not picking up. It’s after midnight. I need details. The message you left earlier was so sparse as to be nonexistent. Please return my call as soon as possible. Thank you.”
“Mr. Petit,” she said to the screen, “you should try yoga. It helps relieve stress.”
Another few sips of coffee and she pressed the next me
ssage button. The expected voice hit her ear. He didn’t bother with a salutation.
“I’m going to tell everyone that Driscoll Investigations is nothing but a front for thieves and con artists.”
Somehow Fitch too angry to scream was nowhere near as cartoonish as Fitch at full volume and spitting mad.
The message continued. “Colby called and said you had news for us. Said you didn’t leave any details in your message. He thinks there’s hope. I think you’re full of it.”
That message ended and she pressed the next one.
“Pick up your phone, you bitch!”
Ah, the real Roger Fitch is back. She moved the phone away from her ear.
“I called you six times in the last hour! Don’t you stonewall me or I’ll come to your cozy little house and show you what happens to women who don’t behave!”
Frank’s hand came over her shoulder and hit the end button. Giulia jumped and gasped and dropped the phone.
“I believe that’s an actionable threat,” her husband said. “I do like it when the scumbags take care of our work for us.”
“If you give me a heart attack you can’t blame it on Fitch.” Giulia kissed him. “Want some coffee? What time is it now?”
“Yes, please, and it’s ten after six.”
“I need a mental health day. Preferably at a girly spa with aromatherapy and pedicures.” She poured coffee for Frank.
“I can think of a better way to relax.”
Frank put his hands on her hips and kissed her neck.
“There’s men’s ways to relax and there’s women’s ways to relax.” Giulia leaned against him and moved her hair out of the way of Frank’s lips.
Frank kissed more of her neck. “Right now they look the same to me.”
Her skin muffled his voice. Right now she agreed with him...
Giulia channeled her inner workaholic and extracted herself.
“Here. Coffee. I have another voicemail to endure before I shower and get to the office. We get to wrap up two cases today.”
Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) Page 22