Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2)

by Alice Loweecey

  With a mocha smoothie at her elbow and excellent Wi-Fi feeding her tablet, Giulia started with Solana.

  Twenty minutes later, she followed an odd comment in an old LiveJournal discussion down a wandering path to a small town paper’s police blotter. Busted for weed possession: Elaine Solana Appleton.

  Giulia got so excited she slurped the smoothie, causing giggles in a five-year-old at the next table. Giulia stuck out the tip of her tongue and the little girl mimicked her, then giggled some more.

  With Solana’s full legal name in Giulia’s possession, she traced the psychic’s career from a second bust to three months’ probation. After that she hid her weed better, got an accounting degree, married Cedar, and created Lady Solana. The blonde, overweight, nearsighted high school senior in the first mugshot bore zero resemblance to the skinny, businesslike woman with dark, asymmetrical hair using a Ouija board to channel dead Stones.

  Giulia rubbed her hands together à la Simon Bar Sinister and went after Cedar.

  His family rejoiced in unusual first names. He’d been a model student and continued to be a model employee. Boring, even. A real-life illustration of the Monty Python sketch about charted accountancy. She refused to give him props for hiding his weed and heroin habits better than his wife. All that meant was he had the smarts to make sure all spotlights focused on Lady Solana.

  She finished the smoothie without further slurps. Therefore: Solana and Cedar could be behind everything for the money. Heroin and weed weren’t cheap. Also for the boost to her authenticity. Sucker in more rubes and fatten the drug budget.

  Onward to Rowan. Giulia reread Zane’s initial research results. Divorce fees. Steep ones. Did her Tarot income cover her mortgage and store rents, plural, with a cushion, or were she and her younger husband living on ramen?

  She sidetracked to dig on the husband and nephew. The facts of their military service were easily located, but specifics ended there. She quit that diversion. She had no desire to ping Homeland Security’s radar.

  Back to Rowan’s college years. A helpful sorority sister of Mac and Rowan’s had scanned and uploaded whole chunks of their yearbook for their fiftieth class reunion. Many candid activity photos, music recitals, theater performances.

  Mac and Rowan on the track team. Mac playing oboe in the symphony orchestra. Rowan winning a dance marathon. Mac and Rowan in the school’s productions of Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They’d alternated as cast members and stage crew.

  Both an embarrassment of riches.

  Rowan and Solana possessed the skills to pull off all the Stone’s Throw “accidents.” Both of them could qualify for the “land grab” column and the “family gold” column. Giulia wished for a touch of poverty in these “suspects” columns. She needed a hard target, fast.

  Last, a dive into Ancestry.com. The way this research was going, she wouldn’t be surprised if every single guest this week turned out to be related to one of the gazillion Stones. Including herself and Frank. It’d be a family gold free-for-all.

  But first a quick break to clear her brain. She closed her tablet and went outside for a walk on the beach before the genealogy session.

  A small, moving light appeared in the top of the lighthouse. She ran.

  The light was gone when she reached the lakeside door. She begrudged the minute it took her to slow her breathing so she could climb after whoever it was without gasping. She opened the door and turned the handle so it closed without a click. A dark corner of the vestibule hid her tablet so her arms were free to nab this “ghost.” The suit of armor didn’t even register on her consciousness. No light was visible in the almost total blackness of the lighthouse. Maybe the circular stairs blocked it. She didn’t use her flashlight app to climb; she had the railing to guide her. She slowed her pace after she passed the second window. Who would she surprise? Jasper and Rowan? Walter? Had Solana sneaked back again? She set one foot on the top step.

  A phosphorescent clown swooped into her face out of the empty blackness, green-glowing arms reaching for her eyes. In the same instant she gasped and stepped backward onto nothing.

  She couldn’t get breath to cry out. She stumbled down one step. Her toe missed the second.

  As she fell, her right hand caught the wooden railing. Her body swung around and her back slammed into the railing as her left hand latched onto the wood.

  When her shoulders stopped screaming at her, she looked up into the dark apex of the lighthouse.

  The clown doll had vanished.

  Her entire body shaking, Giulia texted Frank. An eternity later—only a minute by her phone’s clock, but what did it know—Frank pounded up the stairs to her.

  “What happened?”

  She raised a still-shaking, but not as bad as before, hand and whispered, “A glowing clown doll loomed out at me. I almost fell, but caught myself on the railing.”

  Frank switched to Irish curses. Giulia put her fingers on his lips. “Help me up so we can look for wires.”

  He put his hands under her elbows, stopped moving when she gasped, and switched his hands to her waist. After a second to get steady, she led the way up, both of them using their flashlight apps.

  They scoured the catwalk. The ceiling. The ladder. The opening to the gallery. The light itself and its gel color-changers. No wires. No hooks. No drips of glowing paint. Nothing.

  “Now I’m angry,” Giulia said, the adrenaline rush gone.

  “I’m going to make him regret this.”

  Giulia kissed him. “Or her. You’re sweet. Come on, I want to check something.”

  She led the way into Mac’s office and took the attic door key from the niche in the roll top desk. They slipped into the stairwell leading to the attic without anyone seeing them and opened the door with minimal noise.

  “It should be on the shelf with the Victorian dolls, if Mac didn’t lie about this too.” Giulia used her flashlight and kept it shielded so the light wouldn’t show through the window. She knelt on the floor and took down square boxes, rectangular boxes, narrow boxes, opening the first few until she saw the labels on the ends. Bride. Groom. Witch. Three trick-or-treaters. Five Christmas Carolers. It had to be here. She was not seeing ghosts.

  “Here’s a trunk labeled ‘To Be Repaired.’” Frank lifted the lid. “Lots more boxes.”

  Giulia came over to him. “You take the left side and I’ll take the right?”

  “Vase.”

  “Picture Frame.”

  “Lampshade.”

  “Did I tell you how tempted I was to surprise you for your birthday with a tasseled lamp like the ones in the hallways?” Giulia lifted out the next box. “Clown doll.”

  “Those lamps are something out of a reality show nightmare. Well? Open the box.”

  Giulia clenched her teeth and removed the lid. Empty. No, not quite. She shone her flashlight into the tissue paper. A hand with painted fingernails, broken off at the wrist.

  Frank picked it up. “Did the one you saw have only one hand?”

  Giulia closed her eyes, but opened them a moment later. “I don’t remember. All I can see is its glowing face and sunken eyes.”

  He replaced the hand. “A restoration nut like Mac wouldn’t keep a hand without the doll.”

  “That doesn’t mean the horrible thing wasn’t possessed by a vengeful ghost.” Giulia sat on her heels. “What am I saying?”

  “This place is getting to you.” He replaced the clown doll box.

  “You think?” Giulia handed each of the boxes on the floor to him and he repacked the trunk. “I need to find out if Solana and Rowan went home. Their information’s in my iPad. A couple of phone calls should do it.”

  Solana answered her phone and Giulia listened to her rhapsodize about her new ability to contact spirits. Frank heard
most of it from his side of the bed. She finally put her free hand over his face because his expressions were making her laugh.

  Too late, she realized Solana on her phone meant nothing, since Giulia didn’t know if the number she had was for a cell or a landline. Drat. She had to rule out Cedar because of his cast. That set her back to Walter, Rowan, and Mac. Possibly Jasper as Rowan’s young and limber assistant, although the possibility depressed Giulia. If you can’t trust a war hero…

  “I’m setting my alarm for seven a.m. Will you come up to the lighthouse in daylight so we can snoop again?”

  Frank groaned. “Vacation is over.”

  If the sobbing ghost roamed the halls that night, Giulia slept through it. Likewise the strangling dream. If she’d possessed a hammer, the alarm clock might not have survived the morning.

  “Ow.”

  Frank raised his head. “What?”

  “I have discovered new upper arm muscles and they hurt. Will you check my back?”

  Her husband pulled up her nightgown and whistled. “You have a railing-shaped bruise running diagonally from your right shoulder blade down to your waist.”

  “Wonderful. Let’s go exploring first so I can soak in the shower afterward.”

  “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” He stretched.

  “When I’m on a case, you bet it is.” She tickled that one spot behind his left knee. “Up, you slug.”

  He leaped away using only his butt muscles and flailed bare arms and legs on the edge of the bed. One foot on the floor saved the rest of him from following.

  “Now that you’re up…” Giulia got out of bed and threw on yesterday’s clothes.

  The lighthouse in morning sunshine smiled on their efforts. Giulia found a shred of clear fishing line caught on the metal frame of one of the colored lighting gels. She followed its possible trajectory to a centimeter-sized hole in the wooden roof, visible only because she pointed out the general area to Frank and his extra height brought him close enough to spot it.

  “Found another one a foot to the right.”

  Giulia handed up her phone and he took pictures. She was embarrassed at her relief. No possessed dolls. No ghosts. Regular antique dolls hooked up to nearly invisible strings to scare her into falling down these stairs and breaking her neck.

  Her or Mac.

  Forty-Eight

  Breakfast made it to the table only twelve minutes late. Rowan and Jasper squeezed into spare chairs in between Gino and Frank.

  “We slept in Mac’s spare room,” Rowan said. “That is, I did. Poor Jasper got the couch, but his joints don’t go snap-crackle-pop in the morning.”

  Lucy carried in the dishes and Mac followed with more coffee and other one-handed extras.

  “I don’t know what this is called,” Giulia said after a couple of bites of sausage, gravy, and biscuit, “but I taste coffee, which makes it the perfect breakfast food.”

  Joel said, “You’ve never had Red-Eye Gravy? How have you lived?”

  Mac said, “Don’t compliment me, compliment Lucy. She did ninety percent of the kitchen work this morning.”

  Praise from everyone except CeCe, who traded her plate for her husband’s fruit and poached egg. All through the meal, she kept looking sideways at Rowan, who preened.

  Everyone pitched in after breakfast and brought dishes into the kitchen. Giulia walked Mac to the far end of the narrow space.

  “I need to show you something.”

  Lucy took charge of the dishes. “I’ve got it, Mac; you know you can’t wash or dry with your arm like that.”

  Giulia and Mac walked through the house. Joel and Gino came downstairs a few minutes later in swim trunks and carrying towels. Frank followed them, also in swim trunks. Marion and Anthony didn’t reappear.

  Roy and CeCe passed Giulia carrying a camera with a lens bag, an easel and a paint tote. “It’s art day.”

  The new couple was the last to leave. She carried a homemade shopping tote with “All your kitsch are belong to us” silkscreened onto both sides.

  “Marion and Anthony will be packing,” Mac said as she and Giulia climbed the spiral stairs. “Lucy mentioned she heard you and Frank talking up here yesterday.”

  “We were looking at the railings. Four more of them are sawed most of the way through.” Giulia waited for a reply. Waited some more. Mac didn’t say anything until they reached the catwalk around the light.

  “What did you want to show me?”

  “Last night I saw a small light moving around up here. I snuck up the stairs to see who it was. When I got to the top step, a glow-in-the-dark clown doll flew into my face. The only reason I’m not dead is because I managed to catch myself on the railing as I fell backwards.”

  Mac didn’t reply. Giulia wondered if her pain meds had kicked in and she wasn’t in the here and now anymore.

  “Frank and I came up here early this morning to search. We found this.” She led Mac to the shred of fishing line. “And those.” She pointed to the holes in the roof.

  Mac blinked, confirming Giulia’s impression that the meds had flicked the slow-motion switch on Mac’s world.

  “Do you suspect anyone?”

  “Yes, but we need hard evidence.”

  Another blink. Then a head shake like a dog drying itself off after getting caught in the rain. “Damn these muscle relaxers. They’re relaxing my brain cells. You have a suspect but not enough evidence? That’s good. How much longer…” A wide-mouthed yawn.

  “How long will it take?” Giulia made an open-handed gesture. “We hope to find what we need soon. We can’t promise anything.”

  A slow nod. “All right. Thank you. I think I need to lie down for a while.”

  “Let me go first.” Giulia stepped down one tread. “You can put your hands on my shoulders if you need a little steadying.”

  They created a lopsided procession. The more than six-inch difference in their heights wasn’t designed for taller Mac to lean on shorter Giulia during a descent. When Giulia’s feet touched the floor, Mac sat on the third step from the bottom and leaned her head against the balusters.

  Giulia crouched in front of her. “Would you like me to help you back to the carriage house?”

  The silver head lifted slowly. “I think that’d be a good idea.”

  Mac leaned on Giulia’s shoulder and they started out. By the time they reached the porch, Mac’s dead weight made Giulia appreciate all her circuit training at the gym. When she knocked on the door, Rowan and Jasper took charge of Mac like they were her nurses or bodyguards.

  Giulia headed for the island between the divided driveway and collapsed on the grass. Cool, comforting. No ants that she could feel. Now for the research last night’s clown doll attack prevented her from finishing. She called work.

  “Zane, it’s Ms. Driscoll. I need to hijack you and our fast internet connection.”

  “Sure thing, Ms. D. My fingers are at your command.”

  “You know that super-secret credit report backdoor you discovered last month? Can you look up Rowan Fortin, Elaine Solana Johnsen, maiden name Appleton, and Walter Stetler?” She spelled out everything.

  “On it.” Tapping.

  Giulia tried a few gentle stretches with her right arm. Ow.

  “In order,” Zane said. “Rowan Fortin pays rent on the Tarot business. No late payments in the last two years. Scrolling…All those divorce lawyer debts are here. She’s been late on each one of them within the last year. The bankruptcy is still on here. No credit cards or red flags.”

  “Not what I hoped to hear. Moving on.”

  Tapping. “Elaine Solana Johnsen or Appleton has a mortgage and a car loan jointly with Cedar Johnsen. All payments on time and up to date. Two credit cards, both maxed out. The first late payments were last month
.”

  “So things are tight.”

  “It would appear.” Tapping. “I could say I expect the car loan to be late next and the mortgage last, but I’m not psychic.”

  “Ba-dum ching.” Every time Zane loosened up enough to make a joke, Giulia wanted to high-five him.

  “The third report.” Tapping. “Whoa.”

  If Giulia were superstitious, she would’ve crossed her fingers. “What?”

  “If their algorithms used negative numbers, Walter wouldn’t be able to buy a pack of cigarettes on credit. He contacted one of those debt consolidation places last month, but never followed up.”

  “Wait. What debt consolidation place?”

  “Just a sec.” Clicking. “New Growth.”

  Giulia smiled for the first time in days. “If that was a blind choice from a late-night infomercial, I’ll open a psychic hotline next week.”

  The tapping stopped. “Why?”

  “Solana owns a credit counseling service, whose name is…”

  “New Growth?”

  “You said the magic words.”

  Sidney’s voice came through too muffled to understand.

  Zane said, “Sidney says I have to put you on speaker.”

  “Giulia.” Sidney’s voice, much clearer. “Jane said she remembered Lady Rowan’s face from somewhere and she found it last night. Did you know Rowan was part of an avant-garde theater company and Mac was one of its financial backers?”

  Giulia trapped the phone between her shoulder and ear and opened up her case files. “No. Keep talking.”

  “Olivier says avant-garde theater is a sign of deep-seated insecurities and a desire to sneer at the rest of the world.”

  Giulia scrolled with her left hand and tried bicep curls with her right arm. Her arm registered an official protest. “Are those terms in the approved psychologist diagnosis manual?”

  “Well, some of them are. Anyway, the theater group had its own Facebook page, which is gone now, but Zane found all these cached pages. A bunch of angry people posted nasty stuff on them.”