Force of Habit: A Falcone & Driscoll Investigation (13 page)

“A padlock?” Frank set
the box on the windowsill the next morning and rubbed the back of his neck. “That stinks to high heaven. You’re certain it’s myrrh?”

Giulia held out the note. “It has to be. The padlock is symbolic of this verse, so therefore the scent is myrrh.”

“Isn’t that one of the gifts the Three Kings brought to Jesus at Christmas? I wouldn’t want to smell this mixed with cow dung.”

“Frank, how often does your mother pray for your irreverent soul?”

“Every night, she tells me. I’m keeping her happy. She loves a project, and I’m her perpetual straying lamb.” He kneaded his left shoulder.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“Migraine. Woke up with it. That myrrh is killing me.”

“Do you need me to, um, rub your shoulder or anything?”

“Ms. Falcone, where are your professional boundaries?” He attempted a chuckle. “And don’t you dare take that seriously. I took serious drugs as soon as I got up. It’ll go away in half an hour, I hope.” He closed the blinds and turned away from his glowing monitor. “Now tell me what happened last night.”

“He came in here around six looking for you. When he had no other options, he talked to me.” She put the lid on the box and set it on the floor outside Frank’s doorway. “By the way, please don’t ever call me ‘Sugar.’ ”

“Sugar? You’re kidding.”

“I am not.”

“Did you dump coffee on his lap?”

“Of course not. Professional boundaries, remember?”

“Touché. And I’m sorry I turned off my cell. Yvonne analyzed our failed relationship and potential life-mate types for two solid hours.”

“Serves you right. Did you sever the relationship like a gentleman?”

“I did indeed. I told her about all the ‘correct way to break up’ advice you gave me.”

“You didn’t.”

“She said you ought to host the late-night call-in show on WLTJ.” He dropped his forehead on his desk and yanked at his hair. “Can you get me an espresso? Or my gun. I’ll give you the key to my apartment.” He pushed the heels of his hands against his temples.

“Don’t even say that as a joke. Be right back.”

He was asleep on his desk when she brought the espresso.

_____

At 11:30, Frank’s door opened.

“Sorry about that, ladies.” His face had lines from the papers on his desk, and his ginger hair stuck flat to one side of his head.

Giulia hit
Save
. “Better?”

“Almost normal.”

Sidney handed him a printout. “Mr. Driscoll, have you tried feverfew? Lots of people don’t think of holistic remedies, and they’re so much better for you than synthesized drugs.”

“Thanks, Sidney. I’ll look at it later.”

Giulia plucked the empty coffee cup from her trash can and waved it at Frank. “Do you want me to get you another espresso? I drank that one.”

“Never let good caffeine go to waste?”

“That’s my motto.”

“I need food more than caffeine now. Who’s up for an early lunch?”

“I brown-bagged,” Giulia said, “but I’ll get something for you.”

Sidney planted herself in front of Frank. “Mr. Driscoll, you should eat healthy foods, natural ones, after a migraine. Like organic salad with tofu and vinaigrette. No MSG or preservatives. And nothing with carbonation. Spring water is best; it’ll flush the toxins out of your body.”

Frank’s eyes closed. “Sidney, if you try to feed me tofu, you’ll get two weeks’ notice.”

She shot Giulia a panicked glance, then backed toward her own desk. “I’m sorry, Mr. Driscoll, I didn’t mean to overstep my boundaries. I won’t mention anything like this again. I—”

He held up a hand. “That was supposed to be a joke. All right. I’ll eat a salad if there’s a burger attached to it.” He pulled out his wallet and looked at Sidney. “Do you mind going?”

“I planned to get takeout today anyway. I’ll be right back.”

Giulia gave Sidney time to get outside. “Stop teasing that poor girl. She’s new to the working world.” She pulled out her client chair and shoved it toward Frank. “Sit before you fall.”

“Haven’t had a migraine this bad in a while. I must’ve eaten one of my triggers.” He sat. “We didn’t finish the story of last night.”

Frank closed his eyes and rubbed his left shoulder with a light touch, so she could indulge her urge to simply look at him. The censored version of last night arranged itself in her mind, excluding Blake’s nudity and her (suppressed) lust.

A good four or five minutes passed while Giulia attempted to relax her mind the way Frank was trying to relax his tight shoulder muscles. When the silence had stretched to the point of awkwardness, she said, “When you didn’t answer the phone, I got inspired. He and I were both worried about what might be waiting for us when we got home.” She tapped two keys with her index fingers; PC doodling as cover. “I did think he was a bit of a weenie to be asking me for protection, but I suppose he was really asking the firm, not me, myself.”

Frank opened his eyes and gave her a penetrating look. “Giulia, maybe you should crash with someone for a while.”

“With who? Quinn? Mingmei? Evelyn of the disastrous date nephews? No. If I give in to this, I’ll end up pushing all my worldly goods in a shopping cart and sleeping under bridges.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“I took it to the worst possible conclusion. Therefore, I’m not giving in. To continue. I suggested my couch.”

“Blake agreed right away?”

“You know better than that.” She banged the keys harder. “He started to laugh and didn’t manage to disguise it as a cough.”

“Oh. Yeah. He’d think, well, you know.”

She most definitely did know. “I called upon my years of explaining English grammar to thick-headed teenagers. Mr. Parker realized that, lowly as I am, he could use me.”

Frank sat up. “He could what?”

“
Tsk
. Not in that way. As if.”

He leaned away. “
As if
?”

She snorted. “Sidney’s a bad influence.”

Sidney stopped with one hand on the door handle and the other filled with bags. “Ms. Falcone? Did I do something wrong?”

Giulia stepped around Frank and took two bottles of water from under Sidney’s arm. “You polluted my conversation with your slang.”

Sidney’s brown eyes rounded into root beer barrels. “Um. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything bad, really, I can stop talking—”

Frank and Giulia laughed.

“You wouldn’t be you,” Frank said.

“I was kidding,” Giulia said. “I used one of your expressions, and Frank called me on it.”

“And you told me to be nice to poor Sidney.” Frank opened his salad container and grimaced. “What’s this white stuff?”

“Feta cheese. It’s all natural, made from goat’s milk, very healthy. I spritzed plain vinegar on top. Vinegar is good for cleansing the system, too. There’s cheddar on the burger but no bacon. Nitrates are a leading cause of migraines in men under fifty.” She split the pile of napkins between them. “I looked it up.”

“I—thanks.”

Sidney rooted in her skirt pocket. “Here’s your change.”

Giulia carried the water into his office. Frank followed, salad in one hand and cheeseburger in the other.

“Bring in your lunch and close the door.” While she unwrapped salami on homemade pumpernickel and swallowed a bite, he stabbed lettuce, feta, and cucumber on a plastic fork and said, “Anything else I need to know about last night?”

“Nothing important. He bought dinner, my lack of cable caused him to miss a soccer game, and since he didn’t call this morning, I gather he found no one lurking in his closet when he went home to change.”

Frank chewed his first bite of cheeseburger, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “God, that’s grand.” With a contented sigh, he swallowed and drank half the water. “Okay, sounds like you did good. I won’t tell him that Man U lost to Wigan, biggest upset in Premier League history.”

“Should I understand any of that?”

“Just soccer talk,” he said through a mouthful of salad. “And I’ll tell Mom to add you to her devotions. Inviting an engaged man to sleep in your apartment, unchaperoned. I’m shocked.”

“Francis Xavier Driscoll, you know better than to think anything happened.”

The burger thumped into its plastic box. “How did you know my middle name?”

“A good Irish Catholic boy named Francis can only have one possible middle name.” She crossed her arms. “What’s mine?”

“How should I—oh. Wait. You’re a good Italian Catholic girl. Mary. No—Maria.”

“Bingo.”

“You can take the kid out of the Catholic, but you can’t take the Catholic out of the kid.” He waved her out. “Go finish your lunch in the sunshine, or at least someplace that doesn’t have a biblical scent diffuser. And log all the hours Blake foisted himself on you as billable time.”

As soon as Giulia crossed Frank’s threshold, Sidney waved her over.

“Come here, Ms. Falcone, come here and listen to this.”

Sidney double-clicked an MP3 e-mail attachment. A man and woman sang a bouncy song in painfully cheerful voices. A guitar and piano accompanied them.

“Hats and gloves,

Snug and wooly.

Socks and scarves

Keep you cozy.

When winter bites,

Laugh and play,

Keeping warm

The alpaca way!

Meier Farms, two miles west of Cottonwood on Route 19, all-natural alpaca yarn and odor-free fertilizer. 555-WOOL. Meier Farms—it’s Spin-tastic!”

Sidney closed the file. “What do you think, Ms. Falcone? I wrote the lyrics, my sister wrote the music, and that’s my mom and dad singing.”

Giulia hunted through her mental thesaurus for a compliment. “It’s catchy.”

Sidney clapped. “Oh, good. It’s the first time we’re advertising on radio and TV. It’s the same jingle for both, but for TV we have a short movie of my mom spinning the wool in the backyard with the prettiest alpacas roaming behind her. One of them came and looked over her shoulder while she was spinning, and Dad got it on film. My boyfriend says it puts the cute factor through the roof.”

The phone rang. Sidney put the call through to Frank in a textbook-professional voice.

Giulia set the remains of her lunch on her own desk. “The farm supports your whole family?”

“Once we got out of debt. Alpacas are wicked expensive. Thirty-two thousand dollars for two proven females—meaning they successfully gave birth once—and twelve thousand for two non-gelded males.”

“Good heavens.”

“That’s why I needed the swimming scholarship. When I applied to colleges, Jingle and Belle were only on their third pregnancy each.”

Giulia coughed. “Jingle and Belle?”

“Sure. Mom’s the original Christmas elf. The males are Comet and Blitzen, and the six babies are the other reindeer names.”

Giulia tilted her head and scrutinized Sidney. “And you’re not a Christmas elf?”

Sidney gave her a
duh
look. “Of course I am. Nothing beats Christmas. But Mom out-elfs us all. That’s the real reason I haven’t moved out yet. The whole month of December is one long Christmas orgy. It’s so great. Did you know that goat-milk eggnog tastes just like the cow kind?”

Goat milk. And Giulia would bet— “From your own goats?”

The big eyes got bigger. “Where else? Ms. Falcone, once you’ve tasted chilled goat’s milk that you milked yourself the night before, you’ll never touch pasteurized, hormone-filled, store-bought cow milk again.”

Sidney pulled a small photo album out of her tote bag. “This is my whole family on the cover. My twin sisters are the oldest, then my brother, then me. Dad’s blurry because he set the timer too short and didn’t make his spot behind Mom in time.”

“What’s in the small laundry bags by your sisters’ feet?”

“Alpaca poop.”

Giulia plopped into Sidney’s side chair. “What?”

“It makes the best fertilizer. It doesn’t stink, and it comes out shaped like raisins. Not wrinkly, more like chocolate-covered raisins.”