Nun After the Other

by Alice Loweecey

  “Eagle’s home base? You’d better come to me. I won’t guarantee my veneer of civility if I happen to see the butterball in person.”

  “I’m happy to accommodate you if you’ll give me your address.”

  “Oh, yeah. I moved last year. I’m in Oakmont now. Got a practice of my own and meet clients on the golf course. It’s the life. Can you be at Casey’s by one? I’m booked solid next week with depositions and pretrial work.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Bring your appetite. I’ll buy you lunch. Anything to help shoot Eagle down.”

  Twenty-Eight

  When Giulia slid into the restaurant booth opposite Jeremy Butler, Esq., she understood why Frank’s partner remembered him as “Jeeves.” He was as out of place in a modern American restaurant as a starched upper-crust butler would be.

  He shook her hand. “Nice to meet you. Go ahead and get it out of your system.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He snapped open his menu. “I look like every movie butler from every British costume drama ever filmed.”

  Giulia gave him a friendly smile. “I’ve been compared to a poodle by people with more manageable hair.”

  “My sister has hair so straight you could use it as a plumb bob. Sorry, you told me your company’s name but I don’t remember yours.”

  “Giulia Driscoll.” She opened her menu.

  “Your own business? Nice. I opened mine after I left the AG’s office. Because I’m not stupid, I didn’t tell him what I thought of the flaccidity of his spine.”

  The waitress arrived with glasses of water as the piped-in classical music changed to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Giulia had been forced to wear worse outfits as a waitress than a frilly white apron over a mustard-yellow uniform. When the waitress left with their orders, Giulia placed her phone on the table.

  “I’d like to record our conversation. I find it less intrusive than taking notes.”

  Butler shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me as long as we lay some ground rules.” When Giulia pressed the record button, Butler the lawyer appeared within the Steelers sweatshirt and jeans. “You can’t use anything from this meeting in a legal case unless you bring me in as an adjunct. I want partial credit for taking Eagle down and I want to see his face when it happens.”

  Giulia made a mental note never to bring Butler and Sister Olive together. Their combined vindictiveness might cause an explosion which would level a city block.

  “I accept your conditions. Here are mine.”

  Their lunch specials arrived. Giulia averted her eyes from Butler’s double bacon burger. She couldn’t put it off any longer. The balance of her pregnancy would have to be burger-free. Little Zlatan was sending NO NO NO signals at the aroma.

  Zlatan was, however, all about tomatoes and cheese. She took a bite of her grilled cheese with tomato and everything in her sighed with contentment. She made another note to herself: Ask Sidney if her psychologist husband had written a paper on the conflation of mother-baby desires in the second trimester.

  She got herself back on point. “Harassment may be proved without your evidence and the case settled out of court. If Eagle Developers takes it to court, we agree with your earlier stipulations.” He opened his mouth but she continued. “Your fee will have to be negotiated separately with our client.”

  He paused with the burger halfway to his mouth. “Are you kidding? You get Eagle into a courtroom and my services are pro bono.” The burger reached its destination. “Since you bothered to track me down, you know about the fiasco in Harrisburg.”

  Giulia nibbled a corner of her sandwich. “I know the basics. What will help me is more knowledge of the charges your former office brought against Eagle.”

  Butler held up his burger. “Food. Eagle knows people, which is the way to get things done. Everybody cultivates the right names to get on a bid list.” Another bite disappeared into his mouth, followed by a swig of Coke. “Eagle got himself access to the decision makers. He treated them to meals at restaurants where the check equals a week’s worth of groceries.”

  Giulia led him on. “That’s not illegal.”

  He bared his long teeth. “It is if you charge those meals to your state expense account.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yeah. We found thousands of dollars in improper charges. Not only fancy restaurants, but fast food. He claimed his people worked twelve- to eighteen-hour days on projects and feeding them on the account allowed them to keep on deadline.”

  He signaled for a refill.

  The waitress stopped at their booth with an overloaded tray of Cokes, waters, and coffees. As she set down Butler’s drink and picked up the empty, a woman pushing a stroller fumbled her baby’s bottle and lunged for it. The stroller clipped the waitress’ ankles, the tray tilted, and in dreamlike slow motion three cups of steaming coffee and four filled with iced beverages crashed onto their table.

  Several things happened at once. Giulia snatched her phone away from the flood, waterproof case or not. Butler must have been a yoga practitioner, because in one smooth motion he was standing on the vinyl bench, last bite of burger inviolate in his hand. The tray followed the cups onto the table. The coffee cups shattered. The plastic glasses bounced left, right, forward, and backward. The mixed hot and iced flood streamed to the back of the booth on Butler’s side and drained off the corner.

  “Are you okay? Are you burned? Do you need ice?” The waitress called over her shoulder, “Jacky! Towels!”

  Giulia checked her clothes. Only a few splatters. Butler’s showed the same. Two bus boys popped up on either side of the waitress armed with broom, dustpan, gray dish bucket, and an armful of towels.

  “We’re fine,” Giulia said. “We were almost finished anyway.” As she squeezed past the cleaning operation she heard laughter and applause from nearby diners.

  She raised her voice. “Did your mothers teach you to make fun of other people’s accidents?”

  The applause dwindled and died. The laughter too. The scrape of broken glass and the squelching of soaked towels were the only sounds for a long moment. Then a different waitress banged open the door from the kitchen and the other patrons returned in silence to their food.

  Giulia’s waitress smiled. “Thanks.”

  “Been there.”

  “The booth behind you is clear. I’ll bring dessert on the house.”

  They sat. Giulia set her phone on the dry surface. “We were talking about padded expense accounts.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Butler waved away her words. “We’re moving on to bid-rigging and bribes.”

  Giulia smiled sweetly at the twenty-something couple passing them, who had been among the loudest applauders. They didn’t meet her eyes.

  “Numbers?” she said to Butler.

  “Two hundred thousand in bribes to state suppliers. Twenty-five thousand in donations to the governor’s reelection campaign. Magically, two no-bid contracts were awarded to Eagle.”

  A plate with slices of cake and pie arrived. They both requested decaf.

  Giulia said, “With such an abundance of evidence, how did the AG’s office not obtain a conviction?”

  Butler’s face could have curdled the milk in his coffee. “Technically, we did. Two counts of underbidding on state contracts, not the magical ones. One fifteen-thousand-dollar fine and one successful reelection campaign.” He stabbed a fork into a slice of chocolate cake. “Eagle reached into his deep pockets and put together a team of lawyers that could’ve gotten Lucifer out on parole. I took notes. They twisted witness’s words. They manipulated the jurors’ minds. They painted a halo on Eagle’s shiny head and it stuck.”

  Giulia convinced Zlatan that cherry pie was almost as good as strawberry. “Did they play the ‘Eagle creates jobs and boosts the economy’ card?”

  “You got it.
The governor sent us a polite letter of commendation for our efforts.” He caught the waitress’s eye. “Check, please. Working for the AG went to hell. My blood pressure shot up and I was mainlining antacids. I called two of my law school buds and we went indie. Doing pretty well now, if I do say so myself.”

  The waitress stopped by. “No charge. Sorry about the mess.”

  “Thanks.” He finished his coffee. “I won’t ask you for details on Eagle’s latest games.”

  “I wouldn’t give them to you.”

  “You PIs are all alike.” He tossed three dollars on the table.

  Giulia added a five. “Thank you for your information.”

  “Remember, get Eagle into court and I’m all yours.”

  Polite Smile Number One was her only answer.

  Thirty

  “Frank, tell me why all lawyers make me look for a trail of slime in their wake?”

  Giulia sat on the edge of the tub, soaking her feet. The kids had joined the street soccer game and a casserole was in the oven.

  “They’re not all like that.” Frank sat behind her, hands on her belly. “Was that a kick?”

  “I didn’t feel it.”

  “Maybe he’s giving me a dad-only special.”

  She swished her feet in the water. “Butler’s data dovetails with everything the nuns have been saying.”

  “Not surprised. Eagle didn’t rise to the top by running his company as a charity.”

  “I’m too tired to make a speech about how honest businesses also succeed.”

  “Consider it given.” A pause. “Now that was a kick.”

  She suppressed a sigh. “I didn’t feel it.”

  “Your feet are distracting you.”

  The front door banged. “Is supper ready? We’re starving?”

  “What time is it?”

  Frank checked his watch. “Twenty after five.”

  “Ten minutes,” Giulia called. She drained the water and dried off. “Fair warning: I’m going to be nagging you for important details about your half of this project.”

  He handed her fresh socks. “My half?”

  “Autopsy results. Criminal activity stats.”

  He kissed her. “The romance has not yet gone out of our marriage.”

  Thirty-One

  The ringing phone dragged Giulia up from a dream of the invalid nuns living under a bridge begging for candy canes to hang on a dead Christmas tree they found while dumpster diving.

  “H’lo?”

  “He’s dead.” The voice on the other end was breathy with panic. “He’s dead.”

  Giulia snapped awake. “Bart? What happened?”

  “He’s dead. He’s in the cellar. Oh, God.”

  “What? Who’s dead?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Oh, God, his face was—it was all—”

  “Bart, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it back to me.”

  “You’ll be here in fifteen minutes.” Bart’s voice came through a smidge steadier. “The fire’s out.”

  “What fire?”

  “The cellar was on fire when I found him.”

  “Call 911 right now.” She was out of bed and opening her dresser drawers when Frank joined her.

  “What’s up?”

  “Someone broke into the convent. Bart doesn’t know who, but she thinks he’s dead. She’s panicking. I’m going over there now.”

  Frank stepped out of his pajama bottoms. “I’ll come with you.”

  They stopped moving and said at the same time: “The kids.”

  “You stay,” Frank said. “If they need someone they’re more used to you.”

  “No. You have to stay. I can get into any room in the convent. You can’t without a chaperone.”

  “Och i gcuntas Dé. You’re right.”

  She pecked his nose. “I love it when you say that. Do I love what you said before it?”

  “I said ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Does it meet with your approval?”

  “Teach it to Cecilia, please. Don’t wait up. This could take awhile.”

  Red and blue lights from police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances threw rotating colors over the empty houses on the nuns’ block. Giulia found a parking spot five houses down from the convent.

  Despite the neighborhood being a ghost town, a couple dozen living people crowded the sidewalk. They kept a few hundred feet away from the emergency vehicles, speculating and pointing and taking pictures with their phones. Giulia skirted the edge of the gawkers and stepped over a firehose.

  Two firefighters were hosing down the side of the house. Several voices yelled instructions back and forth over the sound of the water. The radios in the police cars squawked. Giulia worked her way to the front door around the equipment crisscrossing the sidewalk and street. A uniformed police officer was interviewing Sister Olive. Steve was nowhere in sight.

  Sister Olive reached out an imperious hand as soon as she caught sight of Giulia. The officer blocked her access with one arm.

  “I’ll have to ask you to stay behind the barriers, ma’am. This is an active crime scene.”

  He appeared to be unacquainted with Sister Olive.

  “Officer, Ms. Driscoll is our advocate. We insist she be present during every interview.”

  When he turned to look at Giulia, his face rang a vague bell. “Sorry, Ms. Driscoll. I didn’t realize it was you. You’re a lawyer too?”

  She smiled at him. “I’m not. They’ve retained me as their Private Investigator.”

  Two different local news vans screeched to a stop before they hit the fire truck on one side and the knot of spectators on the other.

  “Which means we require her advice in tonight’s situation.” Sister Olive pulled Giulia into the hall. The officer squeezed himself in before the door warden performed her duty by shutting out the night.

  “I’d lock it if I could, but the firefighters need access. Come on, you have to see what happened.”

  The officer followed them downstairs, trying to finish his interview with Sister Olive. It wasn’t working.

  The few cellar lights appeared much brighter with no daylight to compete against. At first, all Giulia saw was two inches of water sloshing around the floor. The farther downstairs she came, more of the activity became visible. A forensics team gathered samples in test tubes and envelopes. An older woman with a camera took pictures of something on the wall by the hot water heater. An odd stink hit Giulia’s nose. It wasn’t gasoline or kerosene or the smoke from a candle wick, but something had started a fire.

  “Look.” Olive pointed to the window next to the hot water heater.

  Giulia saw the difference in the stack of newspapers first. It was charred and smoking. Mingled with it were pieces of cardboard boxes, frayed sheeting material, and the warped end of a plastic water bottle. Her eyes traveled up to the open window. Hanging half-in, half-out of the window was a pudgy a man or woman in a long-sleeved black shirt. Well, the burned remnants of a long-sleeved shirt. White detritus clung to the few parts of the body, the wall, and the water heater not yet drowned from the fire hose. Half of his or her hair had been fried off, including the visible eyebrow.

  As had half the face. Giulia swallowed hard several times. She didn’t recall when the young officer behind her had stopped expostulating.

  “Why—” She cleared her throat. “Why try to burn down a convent?”

  The camera flashed. A firefighter clomped downstairs and brushed past with an “Excuse me.”

  Olive said in Giulia’s ear, “You’re not thinking.”

  The forensics team started packing up. The photographer looked around the cellar and spied the uniformed officer. “We’re all finished here. Found his wallet. Fell out of his pants. The det
ectives here yet?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll tell the coroner you’re done.” He ascended to the first floor at a rapid clip.

  Giulia forced herself to stop staring at the torched, weeping eye. Without that distraction, she studied the shape of the body and the remains of a long brown ponytail on a bald head.

  Victor Eagle turned out not to be as savvy as his publicity implied.

  She turned away and said to Olive, “We have to talk.”

  Thirty-Two

  Frank and Nash came down the stairs as Giulia and Sister Olive came up.

  “I called your sister-in-law. She picked up the minivan yesterday so she was able to drive to our place. She’s bunking on the couch.”

  Giulia jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s not pretty down there.”

  Frank stared hard at his wife. “You okay?”

  “I’m still vertical.”

  He continued downstairs. Giulia took the lead and headed for the kitchen. Bart and a different uniformed officer sat at the table. The teakettle shrieked on the stove. Giulia turned off the gas and found mugs and the box of tea bags. She poured water over the bags and pushed one mug into Bart’s hands. The young nun’s trembling hands clutched the warm stoneware without looking down at it.

  Olive took a mug for herself and handed another to Giulia before scooting a chair next to Bart. The door warden said nothing as Bart leaned against her. For Bart’s sake, Giulia didn’t relieve her own stress by pointing out to Olive her irascible mask was slipping.

  A third uniformed officer manning the front door yelled before slamming it shut, “Get off the lawn or we’ll arrest you for obstructing an investigation.”

  His voice got louder as he approached the kitchen. “Three news trucks blocking the street now. There’re more people outside than live in a five-block radius from here. I expect food trucks to pull up next. Andy, give me a hand, will you?”

  When he left the room, Giulia reached across the table and touched Bart’s hands. “You found the body?”