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

by Alice Loweecey

  All the pipes lay on the ground in a ragged circle around the fire pit. She crept to her spot and dug out a quarter of the herbs from her pipe and Cheryl’s. More than that might be noticed. Next, the ashes.

  Maybe not. The heart of the embers still glowed red. Right, everyone had gone to sleep or to bed after the cosplayer and the hippie headed for the woods. Everyone…Giulia closed her eyes and pictured the group around the circle. Everyone except Alex. How convenient.

  She poked the outside edge of the fire pit. The ashes weren’t an option. The plastic baggie would melt if she scooped some in.

  One eye on the twins and the hippie, she eased herself vertical while the idea coalesced in her mind. Alex disappeared before the pipe ceremony. Alex might have been the same height and weight as the glistening Horned One, as well as she could recall from behind the smoke and its effects.

  Giulia whacked her own knuckles with an imaginary ruler. The experienced PI doesn’t allow her pet theories to block the facts. She’d taken Joanne’s twin obsession and run with it. Amateur.

  After this evening, she’d suggest to Olivier the possibility of cults recruiting for inherent worshipper tendencies. An analysis of the incense and whatever they smoked might yield substances designed to make the cultists mellow and receptive. An ideal combination for the leader/god: With regular use, a content group of followers would approve anything he did. Three examples snored at her feet.

  She rubbed her hand in circles over her stomach. Tomorrow she’d pay for a rush analysis of this herb mixture and make an appointment with her OB/GYN. Her doctor scheduled patients exactly like an acting cattle call, so Giulia wouldn’t get squeezed in sooner than the return of the analysis results.

  No panicking. She would not panic. Worry achieved nothing but elevated blood pressure and heart rate. Little Zlatan wouldn’t benefit from mama pulling a Sister Frumentius the Freakout on him. Living with that woman at one of her school posts had been a daily trial.

  She flipped a mental coin: Heads for house, tails for woods. Tails it was: Alex and the hippie in the ultimate back to nature experience. It wasn’t really a fifty-fifty chance. Alex and his consort communing with nature via sex al fresco made perfect sense.

  A nightingale warbled in the woods. She followed its song as she tiptoed past the beehives. Not a twig cracked beneath her feet as she looked down to keep her progress silent. Did these people vacuum the ground? No, silly her. Vacuums required electricity. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir of crickets helped her as well. It was a wonder roasted crickets hadn’t been served as an appetizer tonight. Thank God for unexpected favors.

  She seldom took her home for granted after her years in the convent, but after this immersion it would be difficult not to kiss the threshold when she returned.

  A discarded daisy marred the obsessive cleanliness of the dirt path. It lay at the edge of the woods about a hundred feet from the clearing.

  Giulia left the path to follow the beginning of a trail of unintentional breadcrumbs. The trees blocked some of the moonlight but she could still see her way clearly enough to avoid twigs and holes. Another hundred or so feet in, the trees opened to reveal a small clearing.

  The couple lay asleep on a brown blanket. Giulia crouched behind a cluster of juniper bushes and squinted. Not a blanket; deer skins. At least four had been sewn together to accommodate Alex’s height plus the width needed for his consort of choice. A daisy chain crowned said consort’s disheveled blonde hair. Giulia took a moment to reconcile herself to the task of examining two stark-naked strangers for evidence of her theory. She opened the camera on her phone, turned off the flash, and centered it on the antlers. Then she zoomed it two hundred percent.

  The antlers appeared real but the hair colored like shining autumn leaves was definitely a wig. At least the wig hadn’t been a drug hallucination. The trailing end of a tattoo curled around his neck. The tip of a horn, it looked like. No surprise there. She’d never seen Alex’s neck.

  On to his chest with a quick left swing over to his arm before an inadvertent eyeful of his naughty bits.

  And there it was. Her phone’s extreme close-up showed her the puckered scar at the base of his thumb. The scar Alex had gotten when he worked at a metal stamping plant in high school. Alex, you dog. So your wild-eyed preaching of the Gospel of Doomsday survival was merely an excuse to gather hard-working, willing women to use in every sense of the word.

  Giulia snapped several pictures in the hope one would be clear in this low light. Alex here asleep in the woods meant Alex’s house was hers to explore. She retraced her steps to the fire pit and over to Alex’s back door.

  She checked her phone: 3:03. A good Prepper would know what time sunrise began. Reason number…whatever. She’d make sure to be back in her sleeping bag by four at the latest.

  Alex’s non-tech community was a masterpiece of organization. He avoided smartphones, therefore he had to keep paper lists and records and she had less than an hour to find them.

  Taking a cue from her successful search of Joanne’s bookshelf, Giulia tried Alex’s books first. Dust and pollen covered most of them. Bulfinch’s Mythology and The Golden Bough were clean and heavily creased, but no handwritten notes fell out of either. Same for manuals on beekeeping and organic farming.

  All right then, where else? She climbed the ladder to the loft. A narrow night table didn’t even have a drawer. A low wooden frame kept the mattress off the floor. He might have built the extra-long frame himself to accommodate his height. She risked the flashlight, hooding it with her free hand.

  More horns were carved into the sides of the frame. Alternating with them, the classic Greek key design like on his beehives. Horns twined with antlers. A row of key design, more horns and antlers, and so on around the bed.

  No. Not quite around. Beneath the pillow, a vertical bar of the key design was a centimeter off-kilter. Giulia held her breath and pulled at the section of the frame. A shallow drawer slid into her hands.

  Whatever she’d expected, this wasn’t it. A couple of dozen black squares with white frames, three sides identical and the fourth wider. She touched one and her fingers remembered the feel from her childhood. Polaroids. Who still used old-fashioned instant cameras? Stupid question: As technology went, instant cameras were about as Luddite as it got.

  She turned over the nearest photo and flipped it back so fast she created a breeze.

  No. Personal morals must be set aside to find Joanne.

  She turned over the photo again. The background was the same bower in the woods where she’d left Alex and his choice du jour. The consort in the photo, a brunette with a similar crown of daisies, lay spread-eagled on the deer skin blanket. Her closed eyes and slack mouth could have indicated deep sleep.

  Giulia held the photograph at arm’s length. The angle indicated the photographer had squatted or knelt between the brunette’s legs to take the most explicit shot possible. She may have been deep enough under a version of the smoke and incense combination not to stir when the photographer arranged her in such an exposed position.

  But there was the LSA cocktail in the teenagers’ and Anne’s systems.

  It didn’t make sense that Alex needed his women under euphoric and relaxing drugs to bed them. Everyone here looked up to Alex, took his advice as canon, deferred to him in all things. So why the explicit photos?

  Simple answer: Alex was a pervert.

  Nothing was simple.

  She turned over photos one by one. Three blondes. Two brunettes. Cheryl. The cheesemaker.

  Joanne.

  She checked her phone: 3:42. No time to retrace the path to the clearing and look for Alex’s hidden camera.

  She turned over more photos as fast as her fingers could grasp their edges. Using Alex’s blanket as a shroud, she activated her phone’s flash and closed her eyes against the brief ligh
t. Shooting single pictures was taking too long. She held down the center button to take a burst. She moved the camera to the four corners of the drawer and took more bursts.

  After returning the blanket to its former place on the bed, she turned the photos face down as close to their original positions as possible. A partly hidden one of a brunette with short, straight hair made her pause. She took another look at the thin face.

  A curse almost formed on her lips. One of these days she wanted to be wrong when she crafted a deduction from a jigsaw puzzle of clues.

  She finished putting the pictures back the way they’d been when she discovered the drawer. With great care, she slid the drawer closed so the design didn’t match in the exact same way.

  She got one step down the ladder. She had to get out of here. Every second she expected to hear Alex opening the back door. Time to leave. Another step down.

  She pressed her lips together. Another step.

  Go big or go home.

  She climbed back up the steps. Opened the drawer. Removed the photo of the thin-faced brunette. Slid it into her hiking boot. Adjusted the other photos so there was no visible gap. Returned the drawer to its same position. Climbed all the way down the ladder. Listened for noise other than the birds. Slipped out the back door and through the back gardens into Audrey’s house. She positioned herself on top of her sleeping bag as though she were still conked out from last night’s ceremony.

  She didn’t know herself anymore.

  Forty-One

  When the light behind the curtains turned pink, Giulia rolled up her sleeping bag. Still thirsty enough to chug an entire gallon of water without stopping, she dug out her toothbrush and headed to the kitchen sink.

  Pepin barked good morning at her and she scratched his ears.

  “I’ll find you some breakfast, boy.”

  The dog must not have had faith in the stranger’s knowledge of his house, because he bumped the stand-alone pantry with his head until the door popped open. Giulia poured homemade kibble into his bowl and refilled his water dish.

  She did not think about the Polaroid in her boot. After downing six cups of water and and using homemade toothpaste which surprised her by not tasting of dirt and weeds, she turned herself a full three hundred sixty degrees to find the shower. Sink behind her, toilet stall a jog ahead and to her left, water purification gizmo next to her. Flower-shaped homemade hand soap on a shelf above the sink next to a pump jar of homemade dish soap.

  Conclusion: The house did not possess a shower. Water conservation in the future meant body odor was okay but dirty dishes were not?

  If she looked at the concept from a dispassionate angle, she supposed water for drinking and cooking trumped water for showering. Clean dishes stood in direct relation to water for cooking, always assuming anything in this cult was reasonably free of germs and bacteria. She wondered if everyone bathed in the Beaver River. Communal baths would be a sure way to conserve water and promote camaraderie in the new world. Then again, if the Downfall of Civilization as We Know It happened via nuclear bombs instead of an electromagnetic pulse, the river could become contaminated.

  So would the entire community. Had none of these people ever watched reruns of good old classic terror tactics movies? Testament, The Terminator, The Day After, and that great Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith, “Time Enough at Last?” All of them could be found on cable TV or the internet and the community members must use computers in their day jobs. If nuclear fallout destroyed the river, they should break open all the mead, because everyone would die in less than a week.

  Wasn’t she a little ray of sunshine this fine morning?

  Giulia resigned herself to stinky armpits and packed up her knapsack. After another detour for more water, she walked onto the front porch. Not a sound from any of the houses, but every bird north of Pittsburgh was making enough noise to fill the human gap. The chickens in their enclosure took the cue from the other birds and added to the din.

  The daisy-crowned hippie wandered out of the woods, clothed again. As she came nearer, Giulia heard her humming “Morning has Broken.”

  “Hi, Maria.” She finished a verse as she climbed the two steps to Giulia’s porch. “Isn’t it a perfect day?” She kissed Giulia, wrapping her arms around her, and Giulia smelled scented oil and the sour aftermath of sex.

  When they separated, Giulia said to gauge how much drug was still in the woman’s system, “You’re going to think I’m an airhead, but I can’t remember your name.”

  A fluttery laugh. “A ritual night will do that to you. I’m Ariel.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No worries. The morning after my first ritual I forgot my own name. The twins weren’t at that one, so Alex gave us the good stuff.” She moved toward the door. “Can I come in for some water? I don’t want to wake my husband.”

  Giulia filled the glass for her three times running. “I’ll start breakfast if you’d like. Does everyone eat together for all the meals?”

  “Sure. We’re family. We cook breakfast in our own kitchens because not everyone wakes up at the same time.” She sighed a sigh which radiated deep contentment. “We prop open our back doors when the weather’s good. The aroma of frying bacon is better than any alarm clock.”

  Giulia found two cast-iron pans and her companion brought eggs and bacon out of the stone cellar. She wasn’t surprised at Ariel’s claim that the community shared all things in common since Alex the Horned Stud shared everyone’s woman with himself.

  Forget about STDs. The strength of the united community will erect a wall around the crops, the bacon on the hoof, the coffee plants, and the chosen naughty bits. Chlamydia and gonorrhea will never cross the Horned Barrier.

  Ariel set up the kindling in the firebox and Giulia laid strips of bacon in both pans. “We’ll only need the cooktop right above the firebox for breakfast. Bacon and eggs always cook fast. I’ll get the bread.”

  Giulia monitored both pans since she didn’t trust her helpful companion’s synapses to keep firing.

  Ariel’s muffled humming resumed from the cabinet concealing her head. “Here we go. Right where it should be.” She brought out half a loaf of brown bread with seeds in it and held it out to Giulia. “This is from our last baking. Poke it. Toast is all it’s good for.”

  Giulia poked. “With a little butter and jam it won’t be too bad.”

  “Mmm, jam. I’m absolutely starving. Sex always makes me hungry.” Ariel sliced a piece of bread, impaled it on a toasting fork, and opened the stove door. “Stealing a little fire won’t mess up your cooking hardly at all. Come on, bacon up there, hurry and get crispy.” She turned over the bread. “I’m in my fertile cycle. The god must have chosen me because of it. My husband will be so proud.”

  “I see,” Giulia said, thinking, “Are you sure about that?” and “The god?” They thought Alex was actually their god, not the god’s priest? She’d have to remember to stroke Frank’s ego when she escaped from here, because he’d been one hundred percent right about the Jim Jones infection. A cult was a cult was a cult.

  “There. Toast.” Ariel set the long fork diagonally across the sink. “Butter should be in the cupboard above your head. I’ll go back down for jam.”

  Giulia found the butter in a covered bowl. “Blackberry or strawberry?” said the voice from the cellar.

  “Blackberry, please.”

  “Good choice.” The jar came up first, followed by the rest of her. Her sleeve pulled up to reveal a brand new sketched tattoo of horns and flowers. From this distance it could have been the product of a brown magic marker.

  The logical conclusion squicked Giulia out: When Antlered Alex chose his consort du jour, he put his mark on her outside and in. Before sex or after? Did the chosen one wake up like an eager kid on Christmas morning to see the new tattoo she must make pe
rmanent?

  Either way, it meant Alex had bedded every woman with a tattoo in his community. If the dead teenagers The Scoop exploited for ratings had run from here, they’d have the tattoos as well. Note to self: Ask Frank to check the teenagers’ police reports. She’d try to bring breakfast conversation around to the tattoos. How did he mark the men?

  With that question, Giulia exceeded the safety limits on her mental image quota. Sex with Frank was one thing. Imagining sex among strangers…no.

  If her former Superior General could see her now.

  Ariel’s arm tattoo screamed “I’m new!” “I’m special!” “I’m chosen!” Ms. New-Special-Chosen scooped a generous dollop of butter onto her toast and covered the result with enough jam to make the finished product in danger of turning into a waterfall of blackberries.

  “Audrey makes awesome jam,” she said after swallowing a quarter of the toast in one bite. “Here. Try it.”

  Giulia took a much smaller bite and her stomach woke up like a bear’s after six months of hibernation. She whimpered. Her companion giggled. “Told you.”

  Cheryl knocked on the back door. “The siren call of bacon has every man in the place either setting the table, making coffee, or drooling.”

  Ariel patted her daisies. “Did my sleepyhead husband report to Alex?”

  “He did.”

  “I have to go see his tattoo design.” She ran out the front door.

  Cheryl took over the egg pan. “I know you’re dying to ask, Maria. When the god inhabits Alex to choose and mark a consort, the god also inspires Alex with a complementary design to mark her partner with the next morning. Only three of the chosen have ever left the community. The honor can be overwhelming, I suppose, if you’re not strong-minded.“ As though they were discussing nothing more startling than the crispness of the bacon, she said with a motherly smile, “How’d you sleep?”