Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (16 page)

Twenty-Six

Sunday morning after ten o’clock Mass, Frank headed to the car while Giulia talked with Father Carlos, the pastor of Saint Thomas’. The parishioners exited the parking lot like NASCAR contenders or headed down the street like marathon runners.

“Your husband is impatient,” the tall, bearded priest said.

“I made cinnamon rolls this morning and he says they’ve taken hold of his mind. He won’t be free ’til he eats one more.”

Father Carlos laughed. A withered old woman jerked her head toward them, shock freezing her wrinkles. Father Carlos nodded at her and she walked away, shaking her head.

“She’s new here,” Giulia said.

“Depending on what their last parish was like, it takes the new ones time to get used to a priest who isn’t grim.”

“You radical. See you next Saturday for confession. Make sure you don’t watch
The Scoop
show tomorrow.”

“I never do...wait a minute. Why shouldn’t I watch it tomorrow? Are you telling me I should schedule a special extended confession slot for you?”

Giulia laughed and walked down the steps. When she rounded the corner of the church, a spotlight snapped on right in front of her face.

“Scoopers, this is Giulia Falcone-Driscoll, investigating the Silk Tie Murder. Tell us how a former nun can sleep at night knowing you’re helping a cold-blooded killer get off scot-free?”

Giulia’s vision adjusted to the glare. Now she could see Ken Kanning shoving his foam-covered microphone so close to her face she smelled someone else’s chili dog on it.

Every cell in Giulia’s body wanted to grab that microphone and bash it into the camera’s spotlight. But she hadn’t survived ten years in the convent and eight years teaching high school in the inner city by losing her cool under pressure.

She pushed the microphone aside with the back of her hand and kept walking.

“Come on, Mrs. Falcone-Driscoll.” Kanning’s movie star voice followed her. “The Silk Tie Murder Case is number one with our viewers. What do you know about Roger Fitch’s two girlfriends trashing his apartment? What about...”

Giulia walked faster than usual, but Kanning and his cameraman glued themselves to her. She could see her head and shoulders outlined faintly on the asphalt by the camera light. Fifteen steps to the car. Ten. Five. Frank’s hand opened the passenger door. Three. Two. Giulia slid onto the seat and closed herself in. Frank locked all four doors and hit the gas. Too fast for the small parking lot, but their Camry was the only car remaining.

“Good job,” Frank said when they made it through the nearest green light without
The Scoop’s
white creeper van following them. “I knew you’d have the self-control not to respond to their trolling.”

“It took them less time to track me down than I thought. They must have a roomful of minimum-wage researchers scouring the Net for information about their latest targets.” Giulia stared at her hands. “I’m still shaking. You don’t know how hard it was not to smash that microphone into their camera.”

“Yes I do. They showed up at a crime scene a few months back.”

Frank turned left, then left again.

“Why are you taking a different way home? Do you think they’ll follow us?”

“Not really, but why take chances? This route cuts off three or four minutes on a slow traffic day, like today. If they’re planning to stake out the house, we’ll be safe inside while they’re still four blocks away.”

Seven minutes later, Giulia locked their front door and pulled the curtains closed, even though their street was free of traffic.

“Those miserable bloodsucking parasites.” Giulia paced the living room, kitchen, and laundry room and back again. “Those disgusting stalker leeches. And I guarantee Roger Fitch told them who I was.”

Frank stopped her with a bear hug around her shoulders. “I’m sure he did. We’ll have to set up strategies for getting to work and ditching them when they tail you.”

Giulia grabbed her hair and yanked. “If he didn’t kill Loriela Gil, I’m going to be tempted to execute him myself.”

“You need cinnamon roll therapy.”

The tension drained out of Giulia. “What you mean, Mr. Driscoll, is
you
need cinnamon roll therapy. Come on. I’ll make fresh coffee.”

“It’s a scientific fact that homemade baked goods increase brain power as much as one of those little bottles of B-12 plus caffeine.” When Giulia gave a disbelieving snort, he threw his hands out in a protestation of innocence. “Go ahead. Look it up.”

While the coffee brewed, Frank tore off a piece of paper from the pad on the fridge. “Strategy time. Since
The Scoop
knows where and when you go to church, they know where you work and live. Which reminds me—”

He returned to the front hall, keeping away from the diamond-patterned frosted glass inset on the front door. Giulia stayed in the kitchen doorway. Frank sidled up to the front window and moved the edge of the curtain the barest half-inch.

“Yep. They’re parked four houses down.”

“Luridi codardi.”

“What?” Frank said.

Giulia’s ears heated up. “I called them filthy cowards.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Frank shook his head. “Marriage to me is cracking the pedestal I put you on way back when.”

“Frank, I—”

He kissed her. “Don’t be a goose. Hearing even a mild insult from you is a red-letter day. So fear not, Mrs. Driscoll. Their choice of vehicle is about to work against them.” He retraced his surreptitious path and unlocked his phone. “Gordon? Frank. Need a favor.
The Scoop
is parked on our street...Yeah, aren’t we lucky? They’re after my wife...I know. Ever see their van? Plain white, windows painted white too, and a beat-up license plate that’s hard to read...Exactly. A predator van...That’s what I was thinking. A concerned citizen would call the police to report the presence of such a vehicle lurking in a neighborhood with kids...Thanks. I owe you one.”

He ended the call and turned a pleased face to Giulia. “Come get a front-row seat to watch the results.”

A police siren neared their street two minutes later. It got louder and louder, finally blaring past their closed windows and cutting off close by. Frank opened the curtains. All the other curtains across the street were already open. A black-and-white, lights whirling, blocked the front of
The Scoop’s
van.

A voice through a loudspeaker from the police car: “Step out of the vehicle with your hands where we can see them.”

Silence for five...ten...fifteen seconds. Then both doors opened. Ken Kanning’s raised arms preceded him out of the passenger side. Someone Giulia didn’t recognize appeared from the driver’s side.

“That must be the cameraman,” Giulia said.

“Yeah. I met him once, when VanHorne offered to take him outside and beat the crap out of him. You don’t know how much we wanted to pound both of them into jelly.”

“I do. They make me wish I could practice the small bone-breaking techniques we learned in self-defense class.”

Frank stared down at her. “That is the second time today I’ve heard you speak positively of violence.”

“This case is making me not recognize the person I see in the mirror,” Giulia said.

On the street, one police officer was talking to the two men who comprised
The Scoop
while the other inspected the van. Kanning’s theatric hand gestures proclaimed his righteous innocence. The cameraman stood next to Kanning, saying nothing. The second policeman closed the van’s back doors and took his time walking around to his partner. After another short dialogue,
The Scoop
got into their van and drove away.

“It’s all about who you know,” Frank said.

“They’re going to be seriously ticked off.”

Frank let the curtain fall. “I have no sympathy. Let’s work on the various tactics you’re going to use for the next several days to ditch them.”

Twenty-Seven

No white van lurked on the street at six-thirty Monday morning when Giulia looked out her bedroom window. At seven she came downstairs and peered through the front curtains. The neighbor two doors down pulled out of his garage and a certain white panel van inched along the street in his wake.

“Blast and drat,” she muttered on her way to the kitchen. The timed coffee maker faithfully filled the first floor with the scent of dark roast. “They’ve only had their radar on me for a day and a half and they already know my schedule. Did they ask the neighbors what time I leave for work?” She took the travel mugs from the cupboard. “We might have to rethink who we invite over for driveway basketball this summer.”

“They’re in front of the Anderson’s,” Frank called from upstairs.

“I know. Implementing Plan A as soon as I pour coffee.”

“I’ll be down in two minutes.”

“Please put on some clothes. They have a video camera.” Giulia split the coffee between her Godzilla mug and Frank’s Manchester United mug. Nothing added to Frank’s, cinnamon-sugar creamer in hers.

She chose her red quilted jacket more for the brightness of it than for the weather. The days were steadily warming, so while the current temperature hovered near freezing, the weather forecast promised sun and fifty degrees later. Besides, if she was going to make an involuntary TV appearance, Frank always complimented her when she wore this coat with this particular snug pair of jeans.

Frank’s bare feet clomped down the carpeted stairs and slapped onto the wood floor of the front hall. “You’re wearing that coat and those jeans. Woman, you are a tease.”

Giulia kissed him. “Ready to be my door warden?”

He followed her into the kitchen. “My muscles are ever at your service. Keep your windows rolled up so they can’t stick that mike in your face or grab onto the sill.”

“Of course.” She opened the door to the garage and navigated the step using the light from the kitchen. “Give me ten seconds to start the car.”

Frank passed her and placed his hands on the metal garage door handle. “Don’t get arrested.”

“Yes, dear.”

She buckled herself in and turned the key. Frank raised the garage door. She backed out the Nunmobile at a prudent speed and Frank closed the door behind her. The white Scoop van hit the gas and screeched to a stop halfway across her driveway. Its doors opened. Light from the rising sun bounced off the TV camera lens.

Ken Kanning’s voice penetrated her closed windows: “Driscoll Investigations is out before sunrise in its quest to help a murderer escape justice.”

Giulia gunned her Ion onto the narrow strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, bumped over the curb, and drove in reverse past the next five houses. While Kanning and his minion got themselves back into their van, she whipped through a three-point turn and drove forty miles per hour in a thirty zone for two blocks. The light turned green a few seconds before she reached it and she turned right.

The van turned right seven or eight seconds later. Giulia turned left at the next street. Left again, then right. At last she came up to a light as it turned yellow. She ran it. In her rearview mirror she saw the white van brake hard with its nose in the intersection. Early morning cross traffic had no intention of giving anything the right of way, which gave her the precise advantage she and Frank had planned.

Grinning, Giulia began a winding route to the office. Leaving before seven-thirty got her downtown fifteen minutes earlier than usual. For practical purposes, that meant the best parking spot in her building’s minuscule lot.

It also meant a fresh out of the oven raspberry streusel muffin from Common Grounds. Giulia climbed the stairs and unlocked Driscoll Investigations’ main door surrounded by the aromas of raspberry jam and cinnamon.

She turned on the lights and the printer and booted her desk computer. The muffin tasted as good as her nose promised.

“Since I never did my planned research this weekend, let’s put my Google-fu to the test.” She typed in a search string for local theaters.

“The Glass Arts. Of course. I’ve driven past their sign a dozen times. Managing director...not Henri Richard.” She clicked on the Past Performances tab. “There you are. Director Emeritus as of last year. Current productions...great. Chicago. When did you leave town?”

She opened a new browser tab and brought up the Arts Weekly archives. Typing his name in the search window brought up a couple of dozen hits, mostly reviews of his plays. But the article title from the month before his Emeritus date on the theater site showed promise. She clicked it and a collage of photos popped up of a man on the order of pro basketball player Dirk Nowitzki: Scruffy blond hair, sculpted muscles, so tall other actors on stage with him looked out of proportion.

“What a puff piece.” Giulia skimmed to the end of the article. “Come on, where is it...he moved to Chicago...blast. Two and a half months before Loriela’s murder. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the woman Fitch seduced and abandoned.”

She opened her tablet and scrolled through the interview notes. “Thursday’s...Friday’s...There. Lacy Maples.”

A new tab and a new Google search. “How nice of you to have a Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile, Ms. Maples.”

Giulia started with the Facebook page. “And especially nice of you to keep so much information public without needing a friend request. Attending the International Culinary Center in New York City. Not enough. What’s on your Twitter feed?”

Ten minutes of clicking through tweets and attached comments gave Giulia the answer. “You didn’t move out of Cottonwood ’til this past August. All right, Ms. Maples, what’s your revenge quota?” She clicked through more tweets.

The end of March:

@HowardGeek Thx for driving me to the ER. Looks like surgery. #notfun

Nothing for two days, then:

@BFFJulie @HowardGeek @BlueEyedDoll I want pizza! #hospitalstay #notfun

A few more tweets complaining about food and making a food wish list for her discharge date, then on April second:

@BFFJulie News! Roger-the-scumbag is in jail! Seems he strangled the snotty bitch. #poeticjustice

Giulia read through a four-way conversation between Maples, BFFJulie, HowardGeek, and BlueEyedDoll. Schadenfreude and rejoicing dominated the tweets for the first few days, followed by accusations of bribes and police inefficiency at Roger’s release. This culminated in great excitement from Maples: The police visited her. She bragged about her calm replies, made fun of the haircut on one of the police officers, accepted praise from her friends, and ended with:

@BFFJulie Never thought I’d be happy to be in the hosp. Can’t kill yr rival if yr getting yr appendix out the day before. #sux2bRoger

Giulia scowled at the monitor. “I had hopes for you. Fine. I’ll stick with Tulley, Travers, Fitch himself, and I’ll keep an open mind about Petit ’til I can talk to him about basketball and school rivalries.”

She opened Sidney’s and Zane’s files on the AtlanticEdge embezzlement case and started to read through them. Columns of numbers and paragraphs of her assistants’ analysis actually relaxed her.

Zane arrived at eight-fifteen. “Ms. Driscoll?”

“In here,” Giulia said. “I had to dodge
The Scoop
. They staked out my house.”

Zane’s white-blond head popped into her doorway. “No way.”

“They showed up last night too. Fortunately, their white van looks exactly like a creeper-mobile. We called the cops, who kicked them out of the neighborhood. They returned this morning half an hour before I usually leave for work. I wrecked part of our front lawn escaping them.”

The rest of Zane followed his head. “Can they do that? Isn’t there a law or something?”

“Not really. They didn’t attack me. Technically they’re reporters going after a story.”

Zane snorted. “If they’re reporters, I’m Bill Gates.”

Giulia laughed. “When you get settled, come tell me what you discovered about AtlanticEdge. You know, whatever you were going to tell me on Saturday before the Great Roger Catfight.”

Sidney came in at twenty to nine and announced, “I’m not in labor and I’m ready to train my replacement.”

Giulia applauded from her desk.

“Mini-Sidney kept me up all weekend, so I am one cranky preggo lady.”

Giulia called, “You couldn’t be cranky if someone paid you to do it.”

Sidney waddled into Giulia’s doorway. “That’s what Olivier says.”

“That’s what everyone who’s known you for more than a week says.”

Sidney considered the idea. “If I had to stay pregnant for eleven months like Jingle and Belle, I might be inspired to crankiness.”

“You would be entitled.”

Zane said in a pleading voice, “You’re giving me the gross-outs with this pregnancy talk.”

Sidney mouthed something unintelligible at Giulia, but Giulia knew they were thinking the same thing because their grins were identical. Giulia pulled out her tablet and logged onto The Before and After Shop’s website. When she had the image she wanted, she brought the tablet out to Zane.

“Let me introduce you to placenta art.”