She reread her stream of consciousness outline. It made even less sense written out. She pushed the page to the outer edge of her overcrowded desk and ripped another one from the pad.
Arson Attempt
•Florence makes lit cigarettes appear.
•Therefore she controls fire.
•Can she manipulate physical objects? There may be brake fluid in the cellar (check next time in house), but how would she get hold of pool shock?
•Was Eagle really trying to burn down the house?
•For what possible reason, besides saving money on demolition?
Another page.
Sister Matilda
•What about Florence?
•Is Florence tied to the house or can she follow the residents outside?
•What reason would she have to scare Sister Matilda to death?
•Not liking nuns isn’t reason enough.
•Corollary number one: I need to know more about ghosts.
•Corollary number two: Despite Olive and Eugenie’s vendetta against Eagle, the logical conclusion is most of the crimes are plain old illegal acts committed by the usual suspects.
Giulia knew better than to let her ideas about Florence slip through the legitimate investigation cracks. She called Rowan and explained the ghost’s dark possibilities. “She may not only be annoying. If she can leave the house, she may be homicidal.”
Rowan was delighted all over again. “Fascinating. Jasper!” A pause. “Giulia’s ghost may be shoving people into the next life before their time.”
Giulia bit her tongue so she wouldn’t snap “She’s not my ghost” at Rowan.
A brief conversation on the other end and Rowan returned. “We’re in agreement. Don’t let yourself get thrown off-kilter because this is your first ghost. Remember what I said earlier about your inner strength combined with your little guy’s? Use it.”
All Giulia’s frustration hit boiling point. “How? Is there an instruction manual? Does Barnes & Noble stock it?”
“See? Even when you’re stressed you balance it out with humor. Here, Jasper wants to talk to you.”
“Giulia, if you force her to admit to an actual crime, she may change quickly from a charming antique ghost into something evil and otherworldly.”
“Jasper, do you have any idea how many horror movies I’ve watched in my life?”
Now Jasper sounded amused. “Ringu? Ju-On?”
“All of them, plus their better imitators. Don’t forget Kairo.”
“I see.” He became serious. “I won’t tease anymore, because this is reality and not cinema. What’s your schedule later this afternoon?”
“I’m free…” She considered the best time to visit the convent about the new offer. “I’m free from now until seven-ish.”
“How about five o’clock here?”
“Yes. What should I bring?”
“Something to take notes with. I’m going to throw a lot of information at you.”
The phone rang again the instant she hung up. Only budgetary concerns kept Giulia from heaving it out the window.
Sixty-One
“Ms. D., it’s the hospital.”
Thanks to years of discipline, Giulia did not indulge in one of Frank’s extreme Irish curses.
“Giulia Driscoll speaking.”
“Ms. Driscoll, your brother is awake again and demanding to see you.”
Speaking of soap operas, Giulia wasn’t going to explain her family to a nurse she didn’t know. “Thank you for keeping me updated, but I’m in the middle of a workday.”
Muffled voices on the other end, and then Aida took the phone.
“Honey, I know, but his vital signs are spiking and his EEG is fluctuating. We’re worried about a brain bleed. Please come.”
Giulia’s forehead hit her desk.
“Please.”
“All right.”
“Hurry, honey.”
Sidney’s voice from a short distance away: “Is everything okay?”
Giulia raised her head. Sidney and Zane stood in her doorway, faces puckered with worry.
“My brother’s awake and yelling for me. The nurses begged me to come.” She pushed herself away from her desk. “No good deed goes unpunished. He’ll damn me to Hell and tell me again what a vile creature I am for leaving the convent. If he’s in top form, he’ll bring out his favorite line: I spit on the cross every time I darken the door of a church.”
“Whoa.” Zane thought for a moment. “I have a few friends who could curse him. Want me to call in a favor?”
Giulia’s laugh was bare of humor. “Thank you, no. He makes plenty of misery for himself on his own. Also, I can’t afford to lose you because of a karma payback.”
“Good point.”
Sidney elbowed him. “Your ego is appalling.”
“What? We’re busy.”
Giulia shut down her computer. “We are indeed. I’m heading to the hospital and then to the convent. Can you both squeeze in another search on Eagle’s ex-wife and kids? Don’t spend more than half an hour, tops. I want to know if they’ve been vocal about the business. Do they feel the money belongs to them, what about back child support, that kind of thing.” She handed Sidney the bullet list. “If one or more of them has an eye on the business, everyone’s stuck until probate.”
Sidney took the paper. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole ‘ghosts are real’ thing.”
“Try being haunted by one.” Frustration ripped through Giulia one instant and then vanished. “I’m sorry. This case is getting to me.”
“Plus baby hormones.” Sidney gave Giulia a one-arm squeeze.
“Plus baby hormones.”
Giulia walked down the hall to Salvatore’s room concentrating on the noise from all sides: Rolling carts, endless PA announcements, nurses on phones, doctors dictating notes. Sooner than she wanted, she reached his closed door. She didn’t hear any shouts from inside cutting through the surrounding din.
Maybe Salvatore had slipped back into his coma and this trip would be a waste of time. Wasting time didn’t usually please her. She opened the door.
The number of people in the room exceeded its maximum occupancy limit. Aida, two doctors, and another nurse stood on both sides of the bed. Anne and all three kids squeezed against the walls.
Aida beckoned Giulia inside. The door swung shut behind her. The air in the room grew warm and stuffy with so many people breathing in it. The other nurse wrote on the clipboard from the end of the bed. The doctors spoke in low voices as they glanced at the beeping monitors in the room.
Cecilia, nearest the door, pulled Giulia next to her. “The nurse called Mom and she said we should come too.” Cecilia’s whisper was anything but. “Dad was awake before we got here. She said maybe next time Dad wakes up he’ll be the way he used to be. She said brain injury does that sometimes. Wouldn’t it be awesome if Dad was normal again like he was when I was little?”
The patient’s eyelids fluttered. The doctors stopped talking. Anne stretched her arms across her children in the same protective gesture parents use when a car makes a sudden stop. Giulia stepped to the end of the bed to deflect her brother’s wrath from his children.
Salvatore’s eyes opened. His eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. He raised a hand against the glare of the overhead light.
“Mr. Falcone?” the doctor on the left said.
Salvatore pointed at Giulia. “Demon!”
Sixty-Two
The medical staff took a step backward in unison. Giulia clenched her teeth.
“You brought the demon! You are an abomination!” Salvatore’s finger trembled. “In the hotel—I saw it in the wires—the wires…” His voice faded. His hand dropped.
The nurse clipped a pulse monitor on the now-quies
cent index finger. Aida checked his EEG readout. The doctors each took a different machine.
“So much for getting our old dad back.” Tears lurked in Cecilia’s voice.
“The children must be kept uncorrupted.” The pulse meter’s white cord waggled like a loose garden hose as he shifted his admonishing finger to Anne. “She has given herself to evil. Demons will possess the children! I can see them now! They surround the Jezebel!” The cord whapped against one of the doctors. “Throw them from the window and let dogs devour them—”
Cecilia inched closer to Anne and Salvatore’s bloodshot eyes seemed to see her for the first time. “You are all Jezebels at heart!” The pulse monitor unlatched. It sailed over the bed and landed at Cecilia’s feet. “The dogs of the Lord will devour your flesh! Only then can you be purified! The window…they must be devoured…”
His heart monitor flatlined. Aida began CPR. The other nurse ran into the hall and wheeled in the crash cart so quickly everything on it rattled.
Anne and Giulia herded the kids into the corner. The room was too small for them to leave without impeding the resuscitation efforts.
The defibrillator whined on an upward note until it held steady.
“Charged.”
Salvatore’s body jumped. The line remained flat.
The upward whine repeated.
“Charged.”
This time after Salvatore’s jump the EEG resumed its regular beeping. The medical staff moved with efficiency and within five minutes Aida and both doctors escorted Giulia, Anne, and the kids into a consultation room.
Giulia pulled three chairs together and seated Anne in the middle one. Cecilia was crying and wiping her eyes with her hands. Carlo leaned over the back of Anne’s low chair and clutched her neck. Pasquale’s bravado had deserted him. He clung to his mother’s hand with enough force to make both their knuckles bloodless. Giulia ran into the general waiting room and carried in a fourth chair.
Aida mouthed at her, “A chair for you?”
Giulia waved it off and pointed to the rug. “I’ll stand,” she mouthed back. She plucked several tissues from a box on the desk and handed two each to Anne and the kids.
Aida brought in a fifth chair anyway. “Sit.” Her strong hands squeezed Giulia’s shoulders.
The doctors turned on a micro-recorder and spoke in low voices with each other while the family got settled. Then the one who’d successfully used the defibrillator turned the recorder toward Anne.
“Mrs. Falcone, we apologize for causing you and your family distress.”
“Please don’t worry about it.” Anne made a motion as though to clasp her hands in her lap, but Cecilia and Pasquale were still gripping them. “Your first concern was to save my husband.”
“Mr. Falcone’s coma state has returned.”
“Good,” Pasquale muttered.
“May I ask a few questions in relation to his, ah, outbursts?”
“If you have to.” She shook herself. “I’m sorry. Certainly. What do you need to know?”
The doctors glanced at each other. “Has he been abusive in the past?”
“Giulia?” Anne said.
The doctors shifted their attention to her.
“My brother has taken religion to extremes for many years.” Giulia chose her words with care. “I used to be a nun but left the convent a few years ago. Salvatore excoriated me to my face and made so many phone calls to verbally abuse me I had to change my number.”
“He says awful things about Aunt Giulia during Bible study,” Cecilia said.
“He says awful things about women no matter what.” Pasquale patted his mother’s hand.
The doctors’s faces revealed nothing.
Anne said, “My husband changed everything about our household last year. He no longer permitted us to have contact with anyone not of the Catholic faith. He removed all reading materials from the house not related to Catholicism.”
“He threw out Mom’s makeup and made her quit the gym and took away our cell phones,” Pasquale said.
Carlo spoke for the first time. “He goes on and on during Bible study about how we’re terrible sinners and makes us do penance, like extra chores or say the Rosary on our knees in the kitchen because there’s no rug in there.”
The second doctor said, “The Rosary?”
Giulia took up the narration again. “It’s a Catholic meditation using beads to count more than fifty repetitions of its main prayer plus repetitions of other prayers. It takes—”
“It takes twenty-three minutes,” Cecilia said. “We can’t rush it because Dad times us. If he says we’ve really been sinful he makes the boys roll up their pants and me move my skirt so we kneel on bare knees. See?” She pulled up her school uniform and stuck out her leg. Rough, red calluses disfigured both knees.
Both doctors nodded.
“Thank you,” the first one said. “Ms. Driscoll, if you could take the children we’d like to speak with Mrs. Falcone a moment.”
Giulia and Aida took them to the main waiting room.
Pasquale dropped into a hard plastic chair and kicked the legs. “I’ve got homework.”
“What a waste,” Cecilia said. “Like I haven’t heard the Jezebel bullshit before.”
“Language,” Giulia said.
“Come on, Aunt Giulia.”
“I didn’t say you were wrong.”
Cecilia’s surprise morphed into a brilliant smile. “You’re the coolest aunt ever.”
“Then make your cool aunt happy and stop swearing.”
Anne joined them. “Let’s go. I’ll tell you in the parking lot.”
The minivan was closest to the doors. Anne gathered them into a circle by the back bumper. “The doctors said their report will indicate in their professional opinion the behavior Salvatore’s exhibiting since the head injury renders him a danger to minors—that’s you three.” She spoke faster, repressing excitement. “Then they turned off the recorder and said if Salvatore ever gets out of the hospital and comes near us, they’ll give us ammunition for a restraining order.”
Carlo was the first to reply. “Dad won’t come back?”
Pasquale said slowly, “Dad won’t be allowed to come back?”
“Holy sh—” Cecilia clamped her lips together. “We’ll be a normal family again.”
Giulia said, “Anne, don’t cry. I don’t have any more tissues.”
Anne pushed her hands against her eyes. “Besides, I have to drive home.”
Pasquale winked. “Yeah, mom, we have homework. A good mother wouldn’t impede our education.”
Cecilia gave him an incredulous look. “Impede?”
“Learned it in school today.”
Sixty-Three
Giulia called Barbara Beech from the Nunmobile. “We were required to shuffle a few appointments this afternoon. I won’t be speaking with the Sisters until after six. Did you wish to wait until tomorrow for the answer?”
“No. Everyone involved would like this settled, don’t you agree? Here’s my cell number. Call me anytime this evening. I’ll bring the paperwork with me. If you’re amenable, we can meet this evening to sign off.”
Giulia hung up but didn’t put away her phone. Enough wondering. There was no more time to waste. She stuffed tissues into both nostrils and dialed Eagle Developers.
Neither Giulia Driscoll the PI nor Maria Falcone the hopeful freelancer answered the receptionist’s “Eagle Developers. How may I direct your call?” This Giulia hacked into the receiver. “Sorry. Germs aren’t contagious over the phone so you’re okay. Who’s in charge there?”
The receptionist paused a brief second. “I beg your pardon?”
“Charge, chicklet. The one with the power. Who’s running the show now that your boss offed himself?”
“Ma’am, I really don’t—”
“Oh yes, you do. Strike a blow for women everywhere and tell me someone with the right plumbing signs your checks now.”
“Ms. Beech, of course. If you’ll state your business, I’ll see if she can—”
“Atta girl. I knew you could do it. You tell Ms. Beech to keep fighting the good fight. Remember what the Iron Lady said: ‘If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.’”
Giulia hung up and yanked the tissues out of her nose. She inhaled two huge lungfuls of air, then she laughed, and laughed. She had no concrete idea who she’d imitated for that bizarre call. The attitude was the Silk Tie Killer’s. The execrable diction belonged to the wives in DI’s last divorce cases. And where did she get the idea of stuffing her nose to fake a head cold?
Maybe she did possess acting skills.
Sixty-Four
Giulia parked in the post-five p.m. empty lot behind DI’s building and started to run across the street to the Tarot Shoppe. She thought better of it after five strides and settled for a rapid walk.
Jasper looked up from an old-fashioned ledger when the bells over the door tinkled Giulia’s entrance. “You said you were running ten minutes late and here you are at ten minutes after five. I’m impressed.”
She sat in the nearest chair to catch her breath. “I didn’t break any speed limits, either.”
He went into a room behind the counter and returned with a paper cup of water. Giulia gulped it. “Thank you.”
“I won’t imitate my aunt and give you an unplanned aura analysis, but were you not pregnant I’d recommend an inch of Tullamore Dew.”
“Were I not pregnant, I’d drink it neat.” She inspected her empty water cup. “Family.”
Jasper closed his ledger. “One day I’ll tell you about my cousin.”
“Radical Bible thumper who feels compelled to tell you you’ll roast in Hell?”
“Scientologist.”
Giulia winced.
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