Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2)

by Alice Loweecey

  CeCe giggled. “I’ve always wanted to try one of these, but my pastor would’ve beat my butt so bad. Mama would’ve beat it more when he sent me home.”

  “I’ve never seen one of these in person before,” Giulia said.

  “The class troublemaker snuck one into Bible camp when we were thirteen. It might’ve worked if we all hadn’t giggled so loud the counselor came to check on us.” CeCe sat on her heels. “Okay; everyone’s fingers on the planchette.”

  Roy said, “Let’s not imitate the movies. That never ends well. I’ll try the straightforward approach. CeCe, stop shaking this thing.”

  She took several deep breaths, let out one last nervous giggle, and settled.

  “Spirit of Stone’s Throw, speak to us,” Roy intoned.

  They waited.

  “Spirit of Stone’s Throw,” CeCe started, giggled, and started again. “Girl, come have a chat. Ignore that man over there.”

  They waited. Roy sneezed and the planchette skidded over to the letter “L.”

  “Sorry.” He reset it to the middle of the board.

  They waited some more.

  “Giulia, you try,” CeCe whispered.

  Every Cradle Catholic molecule in Giulia’s body rebelled. She couldn’t. She really couldn’t.

  Yes, she could, because it was her job. Father Carlos would tease her to no end at next week’s confession.

  “Come speak to us,” Giulia said in a coaxing voice. “It’s a good night for some girl time.”

  Below them, on the patio, someone screamed.

  Sixteen

  Giulia jumped up. CeCe and Roy started. The planchette skittered over the board.

  Giulia yanked apart the curtains and opened the window.

  “Fire!” Several voices yelled.

  “Oh my God, oh my God, the ghost started a fire.” CeCe’s voice quivered. “We’re going to be arrested for arson.”

  “Cec, don’t be ridiculous.” Roy blew out the candles. “Come on, we’ve gotta help.”

  CeCe turned on the room light, glanced down at the Ouija board, and backpedaled until she hit the wardrobe. “Look at her message.”

  Roy and Giulia looked where CeCe’s bright pink fingernail pointed. The planchette had stopped over the word “Yes,” the letters cut in jagged halves by the cracked glass.

  “Damn,” Roy said.

  Giulia shook her head. “We pushed it there when we all stood and ran to the window. It doesn’t mean anything. Come on.”

  She opened the door and ran downstairs, a bodiless voice in her head repeating, “Too many horror movies. Too many horror movies.” Which had to be the reason for all the little hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. That was all. Period.

  Through the sunroom windows, she saw a confusion of orange flames and black smoke whipping back and forth two feet above the ground. Mac shoved past her, carrying the kitchen fire extinguisher. Giulia followed, right into a faceful of smoke. She bent in half, coughing and eyes stinging. The world stank of burning plastic. Mac’s silhouette crossed in front of the largest flames and the hiss of spraying chemicals mixed with popping wood from the still-lit bonfire and ululating approach of sirens.

  The smoke morphed from black to gray as it flowed over the house.

  “Dammit, this thing is empty.” Mac flung the small extinguisher aside. Someone hopped over it as it rolled onto the grass, possibly Joel or Gino.

  The sides of the cooler melted in on each other. A small explosion whipped against the sparking cushions and reignited the stuffing. A new set of stenches joined the rest. Giulia pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth and flattened against the sunroom windows as three firefighters appeared around the corner of the building, hose flopping behind them.

  One turned on the pressure and another held the hose while the first one drowned the flames in a thick spray of foam. The third shouted orders and then all at once the fire was out and floodlights on the second floor overhang turned on to illuminate the wreckage.

  That’s when the police arrived.

  The entire patio looked like the remains of a gigantic campfire doused with whipped cream. The firefighters clustered around the fire pit like Macbeth’s witches as one detective conferred with the chief over the remains of the cushions. The noise level dropped by half. Giulia returned her shirt to its proper position. CeCe and Roy squeezed through the sunroom door together, looking exactly like all of Giulia’s nieces and nephews caught pushing their parents’ envelopes.

  Giulia walked over to them. “Don’t you dare tell Mac we goaded her family ghost into starting a fire, because we did no such thing.”

  With an “Excuse me, please,” Mac brushed past them into the house.

  “She looks angry,” CeCe said. “I’ve never seen her angry.”

  Roy said to Giulia, “You seem to know a lot about ghosts, but how can you be sure—”

  “Police!” Mac screamed from inside.

  Giulia made a movement to run inside, but stopped herself. The uniformed officer walked inside. A minute later, he came to the door and called to the detective. When the opening was clear, Giulia caught CeCe’s and Roy’s attention and jerked her head toward the door. All of them went in. Giulia followed Mac’s stressed voice to the kitchen area and the locked room, which turned out to be Mac’s office.

  Mac was cursing the beige walls blue. “My laptop and my purse. Miserable little drug addicts.”

  The uniformed officer called for assistance with fingerprints. The detective cautioned Mac not to touch anything.

  “Do I look like I just crawled out of the underwater caves? Of course I didn’t touch anything as soon as I saw that dust-free rectangle where my laptop used to sit.” She cursed at the walls some more.

  Giulia walked away and gestured Roy and CeCe to follow. When the three of them made it back to the sunroom, the firefighters were packing away their equipment. The remains of smoke clogged the air in the sunroom. Giulia went out to the edge of the patio and the others followed her. What she really wanted was Frank’s perspective on this. What she wanted most after that was to drop this “guest” mask.

  Too bad life didn’t order itself to her wishes.

  “Have you ever heard Mac swear like that?” she asked them.

  “No way,” CeCe said. “But she never got her purse stolen when we were here either.”

  Roy looked from the remains of the fire to the inside of the house and back again. “This is like a TV cop show. I bet someone set the fire to get everyone outside, and then the thief got in by the front door to steal her purse and laptop.”

  Giulia had never been so thrilled to sit back and let someone else voice the deduction.

  “Excuse me. Did you say someone set this fire as a cover for a robbery?” A young woman channeling 1950s television Lois Lane tick-tacked across the flagstone patio in three-inch heels, pencil skirt, and matching jacket.

  Giulia activated her best imitation of beige wallpaper. The young woman aimed a micro recorder at Roy.

  “Well, yeah, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Are you with the local paper?”

  “Yes. My photographer is shooting the remains of the fire but we’d love to get an inset of some of the guests.”

  Perhaps to block out the noise from the people still around the patio wreckage, the reporter turned her back to the lake and by default to Giulia. Giulia slipped away, sidling among the croquet wickets in the grass. Once out of sight, she sprinted around the opposite side of the house and up the porch steps. Voices still came from the small office. Giulia entered the dark kitchen, avoided the spill of light from the office doorway, and used the antique stove as a shield for eavesdropping.

  “Mac, we’re going to need fingerprints from you and Lucy and Matthew for comparison.”

  �
��Fine. Whatever you want.”

  A series of clicks and snaps and footsteps.

  “Lucy will be here tomorrow at eight. Matthew doesn’t usually show up until after breakfast. If that’s too late, you know where they both live. God, this ink is disgusting. I’ll be right back.”

  Giulia leaped into the dining room. Mac stomped across the wood floor into the actual kitchen. The sounds of running water and splashing followed, then more stomping back to her office. Giulia returned to spy mode.

  “We’re all set here,” a deep male voice said. “Lock the room, please. We’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

  “Thanks, Ronnie.” Mac’s voice sounded more tired than angry now. “I’ll hide the key. The windows were locked already.”

  Three sets of footsteps neared the kitchen. Giulia dived into the dining room again.

  “We’ll get right on this,” Ronnie said.

  “I know you will. Tell Sheila I need more blackberry preserves, would you?”

  “She’ll bring a new supply over tomorrow.”

  The screen door closed a minute later. Giulia came out into the open.

  “Oh. You.” Mac sat on the end of the bench seat at the trestle table. “What did you hear?”

  “Not enough.”

  Clomping footsteps came in from the direction of the sunroom. One of the firefighters stopped at the doorway, her braid coming loose from its elastic band.

  “Mac, we need you out back.”

  Mac stood, her movements more like those of a seventy-year-old than Giulia had yet seen.

  “I’ll talk to you afterwards,” Giulia said.

  Mac palmed the office key into Giulia’s hand.

  Seventeen

  Instead of taking Mac’s hint, Giulia followed her out to the backyard. The floodlights illuminated a sad, dripping, filthy mess of couch cushion remnants and scorched iron. Off to one side, Ronnie the detective was typing into a small tablet.

  “Call Jeanie for cleanup,” the firefighter was saying to Mac. “Her team’s not the fastest, but they’re thorough. This won’t take them more than a day. Can your Matthew repaint the furniture?”

  Mac didn’t answer right away. Her gaze kept moving from the fire pit to the furniture to the patio stones and back around again.

  “Mac?”

  “Yes, yes, sorry. Matthew can paint. He’s done it before. I think I have some left over from last year.”

  “Okay. We triple-checked everything, of course. All that’s left is the mess. Ed took all the pictures you’ll need; he’ll send them to your insurance rep for you since the firebug took your laptop.”

  Mac shook herself. “Thanks. I’m sure I’ll see this tomorrow morning as a mess to clean, but right now all I want is a glass of wine and my bed.”

  The firefighter gave her a one-armed hug. “Understandable. Come on over and wrap things up with the police first.”

  Giulia couldn’t get close enough to the detective to listen in without being obvious. She also knew better than to unlock the office and mess with a crime scene. Mac would be hearing about that from her before the end of this night.

  A hand with pink fingernails shot out from the living room and grabbed her arm.

  “Giulia,” CeCe hissed. “What’s going on? Where’d you go? That cute reporter would’ve put your picture in the paper too, I bet.”

  “I tried calling my husband, but he’s still at work.” Every so often Giulia Driscoll, former nun, was appalled at how smooth a liar Giulia Driscoll, private investigator, had become.

  “He’s not a caveman, is he? He won’t swoop in and rescue you just because poor Mac got robbed?”

  Giulia laughed. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh, good, because you have to be here for the real séance. Have to be! After what happened upstairs and down here, who knows what will happen when an actual psychic tries to contact the ghost?” CeCe yawned. “Sorry. I’m dead on my feet and it’s barely eleven o’clock.”

  “I need a bed too.” Giulia started upstairs and CeCe took the hint.

  When Giulia was alone in the hall, she tiptoed downstairs and found Mac at the trestle table finishing a glass of chardonnay.

  “Mac, here’s the key to your office. It’s a crime scene. You should know I can’t go in there.”

  Mac ran her hands through her hair. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking. I’ve got to call LifeLock and cancel every damned credit and bank card I own.”

  “I’ll get out of your way, then. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  Giulia left Mac pounding the keypad on her phone and headed to her room for real. Not until she sat on the bed to call Frank did she remember she’d muted her ringer. Which turned out not to matter, because the phone was down to one percent battery. She’d never stopped the recording when the fire broke out.

  “Professional of you, Driscoll. A good investigator shouldn’t get distracted by a little arson.”

  She plugged it in, turned on the ringer, and four voicemails appeared. All from Frank. She hit redial.

  “Hi, honey.”

  “Cac naofa, where the hell have you been? What happened? You were supposed to check in at eight.”

  “I, sir, have been participating in a séance, watching an amateur succeed at arson and theft, and eavesdropping on police and firefighters.”

  Silence.

  Giulia chuckled. “I’ve never reduced you to silence before. Score one for me.”

  Something Irish Giulia figured was much worse than “holy shit” came from the phone. She kept her voice calm and even as she summarized the evening.

  “Lock your door. Where’s your gun?”

  “I will, dear, and it’s close at hand. I’m more interested in reading the police and fire reports.”

  “I am more interested in my wife taking precautions against nearby criminals.”

  “Frank, you’re cute when you regress to Neanderthal. Don’t worry. I’m alert and aware and will remain so even while sleeping. What time will you be here tomorrow?”

  “After lunch unless we can turbocharge this wrap-up. I’ll do my best.”

  Giulia woke from a Cinderella dream of scrubbing soot from endless floors. The room was so quiet without Frank snoring. She fluffed her pillow and turned on her side, sinking toward sleep again.

  Someone in the hall started crying.

  Giulia lay there, eyes closed, unsure if the noise was part of another dream. The sobs came again. She opened her eyes and gave herself a moment to adjust to the moonlight in the room. Then she slipped out of bed. Shirt. Underpants. Capris. It’d be enough. She checked the nightstand clock. If a real person was this miserable at two a.m., he or she wouldn’t care if Giulia’s boobs bounced with every step. And if it was a ghost…did ghosts care about boobs?

  She picked up her phone and tiptoed to the door. Her hands remembered an old convent trick for Novices sneaking out of their rooms after all good nuns were asleep. Hold the door closed with the left hand and turn the handle with the right. If you kept the motion smooth and even, when the latch receded from the faceplate into the door it would make no noise.

  Muscle memory triumphed. Without a sound she opened the door just enough to squeeze through, then closed it the same way.

  Dark hall. The moon at the wrong angle to light the stained glass window. Library door open; other bedroom doors shut.

  Giulia stood in place, her breathing shallow. The crying appeared to come from downstairs. She felt her way to the banister and counted the steps. The creaking ones were, she remembered, the fourth and second from the bottom. She used the banister to vault over both. She stopped on the wooden floor in front of the antique baby carriage. The moon shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the sunroom, making the doll’s eyes glow.

&n
bsp; That particular decoration could be put in storage any time and Giulia wouldn’t miss it.

  The first floor smelled ever so faintly of smoke. More weeping to her left distracted her from the blackened furniture outside, impervious to the moonlight. Was that a shadow of something (someone?) in the little souvenir room connecting the house to the lighthouse? The moonlight was bright enough for her to keep navigating without the flashlight app on her phone. The sobs receded as she entered the room. The small windows cut the available light by three-quarters. Giulia stood still and closed her eyes for a count of ten. The crying took a breath and restarted. When she opened her eyes she could see well enough to avoid running into that suit of armor and waking everyone in the house.

  Another glimpse of something on the lighthouse stairs. Giulia followed into near-pitch darkness. The sobs floated above her. Giulia set one foot on the lowest step.

  And stayed there. She’d seen this movie and read this book. She was not Daphne or Shaggy and this was not a Scooby-Doo cartoon. Her thumb flicked up the bottom of her iPhone screen and pressed the flashlight app. A second later she aimed the blinding light up the stairs. The sobs stopped. Nothing white moved above her as she angled the beam against the walls and the spiral railing. Now she heard no sounds.

  Giulia climbed back upstairs, angry but remembering to skip the noisy steps. If this prankster liked games, Giulia would squash him or her like a hassled teacher corralling an unruly kid at the end of recess. She climbed into bed, wondering how many grade schools scheduled outside recess anymore. Wondering how the trick with the nightgown worked. If it had been a nightgown…

  Eighteen

  The aroma of coffee woke Giulia from a dream she didn’t want to remember. This wasn’t her bed. She reached out for Frank and her hand patted a quilt. A seagull squawked outside her window and she opened her eyes.