Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3)

by Alice Loweecey

  All at once, Giulia reached her limit. “Driver’s license, please.” She laid her hand palm up on the table.

  He jumped. “Why?”

  “I’m sitting at a table with a complete stranger I met on the internet. I want proof you are who you claim you are.”

  He must have gone to Catholic school, because he produced his license without hesitation at her peremptory Sister Mary Regina Coelis voice. She inspected it.

  “Tell the next person you buy a fake ID from to use better materials. This one wouldn’t fool the greenest bouncer at a low-class strip club.”

  Behind her, Frank coughed into his drink.

  The teenager stammered excuses.

  “Please. Did you think you were going to impress me with your Prepper knowledge? Did you think I would leap at the chance to travel into the new world with you because of your youth and stamina?” She gestured with her smoothie as though it were a ruler. “I’m reporting you to the site moderators. Go call your mother to come pick you up.”

  Since she never raised her voice above a whisper, neither customers nor baristas looked in her direction. She walked out the way she came in, sipping her smoothie in a show of unconcern. Using the spare car keys, she unlocked the Camry and drove it into the next parking lot.

  A few minutes later Frank opened the passenger door. “Honey, he cringed. I swear I almost peed my pants. If God is good, my phone caught it in full color.”

  “What a waste of time. If my client’s sister met up with him, she would’ve reacted the same way.” She drove home and popped out the contact lenses first thing. “Little Zlatan will not be pimply and pale and living in our basement when he’s nineteen,” she called downstairs. “His sister or brother will kick his butt into gear first.”

  “As well he or she should,” Frank called from the living room. “Hey, babe, more total strangers want to meet the sexy blonde I’m married to.”

  Giulia came downstairs and sat next to him. “You’re not going to think this is sexy when it wears off and I look like 1980s Madonna in need of a dye job.”

  Her husband adopted Rodin’s “The Thinker” pose. “You know how I said the Kinski snake poster was a rite of passage? Fantasizing about easy-access Madonna was the other rite.”

  “I so enjoy learning more about your young, impressionable mind.” She opened the message. “The one who hates romances has to come into Pittsburgh tomorrow for supplies and suggests eleven a.m. You’ll be asleep. I’ll get Zane to be my muscle.”

  Frank’s foot beat time on the carpet. “I should be your muscle.”

  She pecked his nose. “Not when you’re on all-night stakeouts. Why have minions if I’m not going to use them?” She spoke as she typed: “Eleven a.m. good. Western Allegheny Community Library NF section.”

  “It’s the closest to Cottonwood,” she said to Frank. “If he wants to scope me out as a potential apocalypse mate, he’ll make the trip.”

  “I’m not happy, but”—he forestalled Giulia’s impending speech—“you trust Zane and I trust you.”

  Giulia grinned like a loon. “It’s good to hear you say it. Now let’s see what number three has to offer.” She clicked. “Well. We have competition for the Overbearing Patriarchal Attitude trophy. Listen: ‘If you’re serious, meet me at the Home Depot on Ben Avon in Pittsburgh at six-ten tomorrow morning by the seed displays.’”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. At least he’s consistently domineering.” She typed: “Will be there.”

  “I can do abrupt too,” she said to Frank.

  He was texting. The reply buzzed a moment later. “Okay, VanHorne says he can finish the last hour of our stakeout on his own. I’ll meet you at the Big Orange Box.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  Twenty-Three

  Wearing the same outfit as the night before, Frumpy Giulia walked into the Home Depot main entrance at five minutes past six the next morning. As she reached the spinning seed racks, Frank entered through the garden department door and began studying the hardiness information tags on various shrubs.

  Giulia went right for the heirloom seeds. She’d never grown tomatoes other than plum and Big Boy, and she wondered what kinds of sauce purple or yellow tomatoes would make. Next to the tomato packets she found Lemon Cucumbers.

  A resonant voice behind her said, “The lemon cucumbers have a disproportionate amount of seeds.”

  Giulia kept control and didn’t startle. “Too bad. They look like fun.”

  Her black-haired, blue-eyed date towered over her. “Fun is for children younger than the age of reason. Good morning, Maria. I’m Alexander.”

  “Good morning. Have you ever made sauce with these types of tomatoes?”

  They discussed fruit and vegetable husbandry, one-upping each other with stories of full canning shelves and compliments received. Frank moved from the shrubs to the potted plants one aisle nearer to them.

  “What are your religious affiliations?”

  Again, Giulia parried the abrupt question. “I was a Cradle Catholic, but now I only show up on Christmas and Easter. It keeps the parents happy. What books do you like to read?”

  He played right along with her. “Nonfiction. I’m always reading about better ways to grow food and raise animals. I like staycations.”

  “Have you had any success planting multiple colors of bell peppers and not having them all come out green?”

  They discussed planting strategies as a few early risers entered, chose shrubs and pots and fruit trees, and left. Giulia asked about camp cooking and they compared fire starting methods and the best way to gut fish.

  It might have been the way she described filleting trout that made him bite. “Would you like to see what I’ve done with my property?”

  Frumpy Giulia made her mascara-free eyes big and eager. “I’d like to, but I’ll have to check my work schedule. I work two jobs. One is in a nuns’ retirement home and the other with a cleaning service.”

  He nodded.

  “The Catholic Church knows how to educate its followers. I respect them. Are you free Sunday morning?”

  Giulia took out her phone and made a small show of checking her calendar. “Yes, that will work. What’s your address?”

  “I’ll pick you up.” He stopped himself. “No, of course not. You shouldn’t trust someone you’ve only known for twenty minutes.” He gave her a rural address. “It’s less than an hour north of here, near Beaver Falls and close to the Beaver River itself.”

  Giulia struck a balance between self-effacing and pleased. “I’ll dress for tramping around in the woods.”

  He didn’t even shake her hand as they parted. When he left through the garden door, Frank sprinted to the windows to catch his license plate. Giulia went back through the store proper and waited for Frank to pull the car around, in case the preaching farmer hadn’t left yet.

  “You hussy,” Frank said when she got into the car.

  She batted her eyes. “He was quite polite and non stalker-ish. No physical contact at all.”

  “I was prepared to chuck a potted ficus at his head if he tried anything. He drives a pickup, maybe six years old. He’s no poser. That truck works hard. I’ll run the plate as soon as I get on a computer.”

  As they turned onto their own street, Frank said, “Nuns’ retirement home?”

  “Who’d lie about that? Besides, I told him I was raised Catholic.” She typed a note into her phone.

  “Nevertheless, you’ve added the sin of lying to your list for your next confession.”

  “Always, unfortunately.” She saved the note. “If the Church still sold the corrupt Medieval version of Indulgences, I’d have to purchase so many we’d be too poor to buy a pack of gum.”

  “You do know I plan on riding into Heaven on your c
oattails, right?”

  “We have to talk about your Catholicism.”

  Frank hit the garage door opener. “Oh, look, we’re home. Don’t you have to get to work, dear?”

  She took out her car keys. “We have our whole lives to finish this discussion.”

  “So many more chances to dodge this issue.” He kissed her.

  “One of the perks of married life.”

  She hopped into the Nunmobile and ended up purchasing Real Coffee Number One of the day at a different coffee shop since she was still in disguise. The extra driving got her to work half an hour later than her usual time.

  Zane looked up from his keyboard. “Welcome to Driscoll Investigations—oh my gods.”

  Sidney squealed. “It really is the old you, back when Frank hired me as his admin. You haven’t worn that skirt in years.” She dug into her combination diaper and messenger bag and came up with her phone. “I think I still have a picture of you in it. Jessamine…Olivier and Jessamine…Just a second…Here.” She handed the phone to Giulia. “Your hair wasn’t blonde, but it’s the same skirt.”

  Giulia passed it to Zane. “Dowdy was my middle name back then.”

  Zane handed the phone back to Sidney. “I value my continued employment and will therefore not comment on my boss’ choice of clothing.”

  Giulia started to rub her eyes, but thought better of it. “Zane, you will go far in life. Today I need you as my bodyguard again.”

  “Will there be catfights with casseroles of food like at Mr. Silk Tie Convicted Killer’s apartment?”

  She blinked several times and the contact lenses re-centered themselves. “Heaven forbid. I’m meeting one of the dating contacts at the Allegheny branch library at eleven. He comes across as a complete Neanderthal. If he tries to club me with a book, you have my permission to go, what did you call it? Super Saiyan on him.”

  “Awesome.”

  At eleven o’clock Giulia was browsing the gardening books in the library’s nonfiction section. Zane stationed himself within eyeshot by the graphic novels.

  At two minutes past eleven, the romance hater in a plain blue polo shirt walked through the door and nodded at “Maria’s” tentative wave. As he came nearer, she confirmed her impression from his dating site picture: He’d been creative with his age.

  “I’m Maria.”

  “I’m Dyami. Dan will do.”

  Giulia waited for a comment on her weight in the photo compared to the person who stood before him. Nothing. She gave him a point for tact. In library voices, they discussed much the same topics as at her six a.m. meeting.

  “I play tuba and harmonica,” he said. “I like to call it my mouse and elephant repertoire.”

  “Flute, guitar, and piano,” she said with a polite smile at his attempted humor. If this had been an actual first date, she would’ve already tried to end it. Even if she cut him slack for being nervous, his stodgy conversation highlighted the lack of any spark between them.

  As she thought this, he closed the distance between them and plopped his hands on her hips. She froze before she dislocated his kneecap; shrieks of pain would violate the “library voices” rule. Zane slipped into the end of the aisle, running a finger along the Dewey Decimal System labels on one of the rows of books.

  Giulia said, “Remove your hands.” He didn’t rate a “please.”

  He rolled her hips with his palms. “Good pelvic spread. You should have many easy births.”

  “Remove. Your. Hands.”

  His head jerked up. “What’s the matter? You know the baselines have to be established before we can make further overtures.” But his hands left her hips.

  With a prodigious effort, Giulia stayed in character. “The rules don’t change the fact that I decide when touching happens.”

  He grinned, showing hockey-player teeth. “I like you. My last two contacts were prissy bitches. What do you say to a hike in the woods and a picnic? Can you forage or do you want to bring garden harvest?”

  Zane took a book from the shelf and sat facing Giulia at the nearest table.

  Taking an educated guess at his interpretation of “forage,” Giulia said, “My foraging skills aren’t as sharp as I’d like yet.”

  “We’ll use cultivated then.” With that he turned as eager as the nineteen-year-old poseur from last night. “What do you say to this Sunday? The weather’s supposed to be good.”

  Giulia held out both palms.

  “I work a second job on the weekends. I won’t have a day off until a week from tomorrow.”

  “Let me check.” He took a small calendar from the back pocket of his jeans. “I teach a woodworking class every other Saturday morning. How about we meet at the Commonwealth entrance to Point State Park at one o’clock for a ten-mile hike and a late lunch after?”

  Good thing she kept in shape. “I’ll send you a message through the site.”

  Another gap-toothed grin. “Great. Want to get some lunch now?”

  She pointed to the clock. “I have to get back to work.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah, okay. Good first meeting. I’ll look for your message.” He shook hands with her like she was part of the club.

  Zane hauled it outside a step ahead of Dan. When Giulia met him at his car, he said. “Got his plate number. Did he seriously have one of those checkbook-style pocket calendars?”

  “He did. That man is in major prep mode for the day an electromagnetic pulse sends us back to the stone age.” She got into the passenger seat and texted Frank. “Good job on the license plate. Frank will run it for me when he wakes up.”

  Back at the office, Giulia took out the contact lenses while Zane regaled Sidney with his version of the library meeting.

  “He grabbed Ms. D’s hips and shook them. Ms. D. got this ‘mayhem approacheth’ look on her face.”

  Sidney said with glee in her voice, “I’ve seen that look.”

  “I really wanted to let her bust him up, but those librarians are scary. When I was a kid, I used to think they kept axes behind the desks to chop off our heads if we talked too loud.”

  Giulia came to the bathroom doorway, blinking a third set of eye drops into her dry, tired eyes. “The librarian nun in the Catholic school I went to adopted a perpetual expression of ‘No court in the world would prosecute me, so go ahead and try.’ She kept the best-behaved library in the state.”

  “How did you get his hands off you?” Sidney said.

  “The Voice,” Zane said. “She never raised it, but he’d been measuring her hips with his hands and eyes. When The Voice spoke, it was like someone tied a string to his head and yanked.”

  Giulia laughed. “You can take the private eye out of the convent, but you can’t take the convent out of the private eye.” She dabbed her eyes. “Sidney, if my next meetings with domineering jerks give me any leads to Joanne Philbey, I might need Olivier’s insights on the mental makeup of these end of the world types. Could you have him email me his rates?”

  “You don’t need them. You can ask him anything.”

  “Nope. He’s a professional psychologist, and he’ll get paid like every other professional we consult.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The next person who calls me ‘ma’am’ will take a trip back in time and witness the wrath of Sister Mary Regina Coelis.”

  Twenty-Four

  Frank called at three.

  “I ran both plates. The library guy got two tickets in the past year for minor infractions: An expired inspection and a tail light out. Zero tickets for the garden department guy, but here’s the interesting part: I ran a traffic cam archive search for both plates. Between the two of them, they got snapped only a dozen times in the past year.”

  “They’re mapping routes to avoid the cameras.”<
br />
  “That’s what I think.”

  She hung up to chew on that idea and Zane buzzed her. “Jasper Fortin would like five minutes.”

  Doomsday Preppers and clairvoyants. The Scoop would devour this combination like Sidney at an all-natural dessert bar. Still, she respected Jasper, a decorated war veteran whose partnership with his eccentric Tarot reading aunt made for a thriving business.

  “Please send him in.”

  He wore his usual working clothes: black jeans and shirt, tattoos that were works of real art, multiple piercings, long dark hair pulled back with a strip of beaded leather.

  “Ms. Driscoll.” He held out his prosthetic hand. “Sorry to interrupt your workday, but Aunt Rowan saw danger for you in her sunrise Tarot reading. I couldn’t get away from the shop until now.”

  Giulia shook hands. “Did she see anything specific?”

  He smiled in his self-deprecating way. “You know what Tarot readings are like. It’s the cards combined with their interpretation combined with the subject of the reading. Taking all three elements into account, Rowan says four things: First, lost is in the eye of the beholder. Second, herbs have many uses. Third, the gods are no danger to us but their disciples can be whack jobs.” He stopped while Giulia did her best to suppress a smile. “Fourth, take your prenatal vitamins every day without fail.”

  Every so often, Rowan spooked her. Then again, she or Jasper could have overheard a conversation somewhere, or spied on her to gain her confidence, or any number of standard shyster tricks.

  Jasper’s dark eyes held hers. “We’re not trying to pull a con on you, Ms. Driscoll. Aunt Rowan only cons the cheaters and liars.” He winked.

  Giulia wasn’t the least embarrassed. “I suspect everybody. It goes with the job. Please thank Rowan for her concern and her advice.” As an olive branch, she said, “We enjoyed The Scoop’s unceremonious exit from your shop on Monday.”