His smile hardened. “Bloodsuckers. I would’ve done more, but I had the business to think of. They claim they’re filming an exposé of frauds and predators. The only thing they want to expose is themselves to a bigger TV market.”
“No argument here.”
The outer door crashed open. Ken Kanning’s voice followed in full-on announcer mode. “We’re here at Driscoll Investigations on the trail of yet another psychic predator trying to suck money from the pockets of hard-working professionals.”
Giulia jumped out of her chair an instant before Jasper leaped out of his. They reached the doorway together. All Zane’s muscles bulged as he shoved Kanning’s cameraman back out the door. The cameraman spread his legs and braced his heels against the doorframe. He switched his lens from the top of Zane’s head to Jasper at a signal from Kanning.
“Jasper Fortin.” Kanning dodged Sidney and thrust his microphone at Jasper. “Isn’t it true that you claim you lost your right hand in a battle with a demon from hell? What do you have to say about the rumor that your Tarot cards are marked? What about the claim that your aunt goes dumpster diving for information about the victims she targets?”
With an inarticulate noise, Jasper lunged at Kanning. Giulia and Sidney held him back. Zane hooked his foot around the back of the cameraman’s knee and shoved him out the door when he lost his balance. Then he turned on Kanning. The voice of The Scoop looked at white-hot, bulging-muscles Zane and hustled after his cameraman.
Jasper stopped fighting Giulia and Sidney. They released him. He assumed a yoga pose and took several slow, deep breaths.
Zane turned and faced the room. His pale hair began to return to its normal straight-down position, but all the veins in his arms and forehead still throbbed. As Jasper calmed himself, Zane mirrored his deep breathing and posture until his circulatory system retreated to its usual subcutaneous position.
“I’m all right now,” Jasper said.
“They’re not worth the jail time,” Giulia said.
Sidney said, “They’d take it that far too. You know they would. More news coverage for them.”
“Zane, you’re a life saver,” Giulia said.
“It’s all in the timing. I’d just gotten up to replace the cyan ink cartridge in the printer, so I was in the optimum place when those douchenozzles barged in.”
Everyone laughed.
“That’s the perfect term for them,” Giulia said.
Jasper rubbed his temples. “If Kanning’s mouth is open, he’s lying. I know damned well they have access to my war record, but I’m not going to defend myself. It would bring me down to their level. My unit, too, by proxy, sort of. But if they keep attacking our business, I’m going to lose my temper.”
Zane said something in Estonian. His tone conveyed all the translation anyone would need. “The ink cartridge broke. I must’ve knocked against the printer table when I kicked them out.”
“A small price to pay.” Giulia looked at the floor by Zane’s feet. “I’ll get towels and floor cleaner.”
Sidney said from the window, “Their van is a block away and moving south.”
“Time to make my escape,” Jasper said.
“Thank you for passing along your aunt’s warning,” Giulia said.
Zane locked the door behind Jasper. “Warning?”
Giulia finished blotting ink and sprayed wood cleaner over the area. “If we end up with a blue stain on the floor, we’ll consider it our anti-Scoop badge of honor.”
Zane brought his trash can over and Giulia threw several soaked, colorful paper towels into it. While she started on a second round of cleanup, she told them Lady Rowan’s four messages.
Sidney groaned.
Giulia said, “I’ll believe her when she tells me the nickname we have for the baby.”
“What? Tell us.”
She concentrated on a stubborn spot. “Nuh-uh.”
They booed her.
Twenty-Five
Frank woke Giulia up from a nap at five o’clock.
“What’s wrong? You don’t take naps.”
She stretched. “I’m stocking up on sleep for little Zlatan’s two a.m. feedings. Sidney’s advice.”
Frank sat next to her. “I’m serious. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Of course I am.” She pulled her laptop over. “Come check out the dating sites with me.”
The rest of the day’s harvest of messages made yesterday’s look like grade-schoolers passing notes in class. The first two men made her explicit, vulgar offers. A man who could’ve been Giulia’s grandfather wanted to know if she’d be willing to meet for a coffee and book discussion once a week, or even once a month.
Giulia bookmarked her message. “When this case is over, I may put him in touch with Marjorie the Cat Lady. I counted three cats in his profile picture plus another tail off to one side.”
“You are still a bleeding heart.”
“I beg to differ. Compassion is a necessary character trait for Franciscans. In or out of the convent, crabgrass is easier to uproot than the core Franciscan values. Besides, Crazy Cat Lady plus Crazy Cat Guy has to be a perfect match.”
In the last of a deplorable string of videos, an average guy with average looks, hair, and clothes turned on a karaoke machine and sang, “I like big butts and I cannot lie…”
Frank grasped Giulia’s hands, pulled her off the couch, and danced her around the room, singing along with Maria Martin’s musical suitor.
The silliness defused Giulia’s rising anger. Frank patted her definitely not big butt and they resumed sitting side by side on the couch in front of her laptop. Giulia deleted every single message.
“Aw, honey, even our troubadour?”
“He might have been the least rude, but he doesn’t fit the criteria. I don’t know which are worse: The perverts trolling for sex or the judgmental cavones who think only size zero women are worthy of them. Tonight was a complete waste of time.” She pushed the laptop away. “Only Alex the garden guy and Dan the library guy hit my top trigger points.”
Frank stood. “Come supervise me grilling the fish and tell me your triggers.”
“That sounds wrong even though it’s not.” In the kitchen she whisked together brown sugar, hot mustard, and soy sauce while Frank rinsed the salmon.
“I’m working from the premise that if Joanne’s body isn’t decaying in a shallow grave in the Pennsylvania woods, she ditched everything to join a Prepper group.” She daubed the sweet-hot mixture on the salmon with a generous hand.
“Why?”
“The running theme in all my interviews with coworkers, relatives, and friends is how giving Joanne was. Or is, depending on whom I talked to.”
“Good grammar is so sexy. Hold that thought.” He elbowed open the back door, set the fish on the grill, and returned. “So she’s everybody’s friend. Why is that your neon sign?”
Giulia opened a bag of frozen dinner rolls. “Her personality as characterized by everyone who knew her reminds me of me back in my convent days. She breaks her back to be everyone’s problem solver, everyone’s listening ear, everyone’s advice columnist. I would guarantee that her own wants and plans kept moving further back in the queue of everybody and their cat clamoring for her to take care of them.”
Frank set out dishes and silverware. “I’d want to kill myself if I couldn’t shut out the world like that.”
“No, Mr. Police Detective, I’m not saying she killed herself.” She set a cookie sheet with four rolls in the oven. “That is, if she’s dead, which I don’t really think happened. I give it eighty percent to twenty she’s still alive.”
“Gut instinct?”
“Yes, bolstered by evidence from her apartment.” She poured lemonade into two imitation Depression glass tumblers. �
�We also found a video from The Scoop. They were trying to sneak into a Prepper compound and I thought I saw someone who resembled Joanne in there. Therefore I’m pretending to be her clone on those dating sites, looking for men in my trigger profile. First, they have to be True Believers, the kind who make bug out bags for their dogs.”
“Who make what?”
“Not important. Second, they have to want her skill set because she’s valuable as an equal.”
Frank opened the back door. “Those cavemen were not looking for an equal life partner.” He tested the salmon and came back.
Giulia set butter on the table. “No fooling. I meant an equal the way men and women were in pioneer days, both working the land and sharing the chores because they had only themselves to rely on. Third, they have to be overloaded with testosterone.”
Frank turned a chair backwards and sat spread-eagled. “Tell me more.”
Giulia made a wry face. “Joanne likes, as her twin sister puts it, major schlong.”
Frank leaned his forehead on the chair back. “You women. Never looking above the waist.”
“Would you be more complimented if I said I married you for your brain? Don’t answer that.”
“You’re blushing.”
“Am not.” But she felt her cheeks heating up.
He stepped over the chair and came around the table to hug her. “You are complex and adorable and”—he looked down—“barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. I will be the envy of every cop in town.”
“Go check the salmon, caveman.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As they washed the dishes after supper, Giulia made up her mind. “I’m going to go to the scheduled meetings with the library guy and the gardener guy. I told them I would, but that was only to escape their clutches. The gardener gives me a weird vibe, but he hit two trigger points right off the bat. The library guy seems normal, aside from his caveman-itis, but I’m not clueless enough to assume good intentions.”
Frank closed the dishwasher. “The psycho ax murderer’s next-door neighbors always say, ‘But he was so quiet.’”
“Sometimes they say, ‘We knew all along something wasn’t quite right about him.’”
“Hindsight. If they really think the neighbor’s planning to go American Psycho on them, they’re spying on said neighbor and making six panicked calls to 911 per day.”
Frank closed himself into the game room for the weekly Driscoll brothers’ family bonding night. Giulia put in a DVD of the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee version of The Hound of the Baskervilles and heaved the box of Joanne’s papers onto the coffee table.
Right about the time the action of the movie switched to Baskerville Hall, she slammed the lid on the box, fetched her Glock from the nightstand drawer, and sat at the kitchen table to clean it. Frank came out of the gaming cave and opened the refrigerator, his wireless headset pushed back from his ears.
“What’s bugging you?” he said as he removed a Harp lager.
“Hm?” Concentrating on her alter-ego strategies, Giulia heard his voice, but not his words.
“You only clean your gun late at night when you’re stuck on a case.”
He got her complete attention then. “I didn’t know I was that obvious.”
“Need help brainstorming?”
She shook her head. “Go slaughter space aliens. I’m about to brazenly deceive two complete strangers.”
“My wife always makes me proud.”
Giulia finished cleaning and returned to the living room where Holmes was being his usual brilliant self on the TV. She opened Maria Martin’s messages and replied to Dan: “Switched shifts with a friend so I could take a vacation day. Open for a hike tomorrow?”
A reply appeared within thirty seconds. “You bet. I’ll bring sandwiches.”
She answered, “I’ll bring homemade pickles and canned peaches.” To the screen, she said out loud, “And my gun.”
Twenty-Six
Pregnant Giulia did not like humidity. Pregnant Giulia’s ankles in her hiking boots and snug socks promised escalating retribution with every mile hiked. Weren’t these problems supposed to hold off until the third trimester? She made a mental note to ask her three sisters-in-law. One of the benefits of marrying into a big family: Lots of advice to draw on.
Maria Martin compartmentalized Giulia Driscoll’s life and continued her foraging discussion with Dan.
They’d been walking uphill and down and sometimes blessedly level for half an hour. The sun bled through the trees in pockets of golden hellfire. The monotonous buzz of every insect native to western Pennsylvania waxed and waned, sometimes loud enough to frustrate conversation.
“I’m looking for wild plums,” Giulia said.
“There won’t be enough in these woods to make a decent canning batch.” Dan’s hiking uniform—his term—of jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved athletic wicking kind of shirt, reminded Giulia of childhood Paul Bunyan illustrations.
“I know. I’ve been experimenting with jam mixtures this summer. Currants and gooseberries should be ripening too. I haven’t seen them in these woods. Have you?”
“Haven’t looked. I’m not into berries. They don’t pack enough nutrients to offset the effort of picking and cleaning them.” He shifted his portable cooler from his left hand to his right and slapped his neck again. “I have to find a decent mosquito repellent recipe. I’m using the internet while it still exists, but the level of idiocy increases the longer I search.”
Giulia pictured her medicine chest in the spare bathroom at home. “Let me guess: They all recommend a certain hand lotion.”
He made a frustrated noise. “People who use commercially made products should be banned from serious preparation sites.” He turned on her. “What are you using?”
Giulia affected embarrassment. “Unscented Off. Mosquitoes hone in on me like someone rang the dinner bell.”
A disappointed head shake. “Not good enough.”
“I know, but I haven’t perfected a homemade recipe yet either.” They passed a cluster of bushes. “Gooseberries. I knew it.” She brought out a resealable plastic container from her backpack and picked all the ripe ones she could stuff in.
Over lunch, they discussed American history and current politics. When he brought out dried violets to sprinkle over the canned peaches, she almost revised her opinion of him.
On the hike back, his tone of voice changed from challenging to cozy. He must have approved of her hiking and canning skills. Giulia adopted the meme “Cynical Giulia is Cynical.” Cozy didn’t suit him, but when he wanted to be friendly, he wasn’t an unpleasant companion.
“Got any family?”
“My parents both passed several years back. My younger brother lives about as far north in Canada as you can and still access the internet.” Once again, Giulia Driscoll the detective lied like a rug. Thank God for Father Carlos and his understanding of her job constraints.
He shuddered. “Too cold for me. I like hot, sweaty summers. My folks are snowbirds now.”
“Florida has giant flying cockroaches.”
“Palmetto bugs aren’t the worst thing I’ve eaten. They taste like greasy chicken.” He glanced sideways at Giulia, perhaps to see if she was grossed out.
“Given the choice, I prefer foraging to throwing a handful of termites into a frying pan.” She opened her water bottle and drank.
“You might not have a choice.”
Giulia said with a tight smile, “Let’s make a deal. I won’t lecture you on the classic roots of modern democracy, and you won’t lecture me on my preparedness preferences.”
They walked in silence. Perhaps none of Dan’s contacts had ever spoken back to him before.
As they reached the parking lot and unlocked their cars, he said, “We’ve go
t a connection, don’t you think? What about coming out to one of my neighborhood slow pitch softball games? My team is composed of Preppers only. We’re putting together a working group for post-EMP times.”
Giulia thought fast. “I have to check my work schedule since I juggled to get today off. I’ll leave you a message on the site.”
“Yeah, okay. I don’t own a computer or a cell phone, so it’s not like I can give you another way to contact me. I check email at the library and at work.”
Giulia drove home, blasting eighties glam rock to drive the idea of eating a palmetto bug out of her head. What if Joanne was hiding in plain sight in some off-grid community? Hard on that thought: Real life problems seldom tie themselves up in neat Disney movie plot ribbons.
Seven point three minutes after she walked through her own door, her feet were soaking in a tub full of cold water. She watched one of the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock episodes on her phone while her lower legs turned into beautifully shrunken prunes.
Twenty-Seven
“I am not happy,” Frank said early Sunday morning as Giulia dressed for her outing with Alex the gardening guy.
“That’s because your body’s natural cycle is shot. You should be sleeping the sleep of hard-working law enforcement officials who’ve successfully completed a stakeout.” She laced her hiking boots.
He lunged at her from his seat on the bed and dragged her into his lap.
“No, it’s because your location is too rural for me to follow you as backup.”
She buttoned her short-sleeved shirt. Forced to wear jeans and boots to church because she wouldn’t have time to change and still make the meeting, she hoped St. Thomas’ ceiling fans would work a miracle this morning and do more than merely move the hot air around. Last Sunday she was sure the Hosts in the Tabernacle would spontaneously combust.
Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) Page 11