Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (22 page)

Thirty-Six

A different courier brought the flash drive. Giulia took charge of it and plugged it into a USB port on her computer.

“Dear God, there are thousands.”

She pulled up the previous year’s calendar in a different window and scrolled to the camera images from the first Thursday in January.

“Early morning rush hour...more rush hour...” She hit the down arrow until the time stamp read 4:30 p.m. A considerate red Buick ran the light as an employee of Long Neck set out a chalkboard sidewalk sign. Which Giulia couldn’t read, because the sidewalk was covered with snow and the sign was set up in the doorway to protect it.

“You are being uncooperative,” she said to the back of the unknown employee. More arrow keystrokes until the timestamp read 5:15 the following Saturday. The sidewalks were wet but clear and the chalkboard had been moved out from the doorway. She enlarged the photo and slid it down and to the left then enlarged it some more.

The sign read:

Microbrew Tasting Tonight

7-9 p.m.

Touchdown Ale

Play Action Lager

Small cover charge

“Those would be Tulley’s creations, all right.” She wrote the date on a clean sheet of her legal pad.

She checked week after week of camera stills from every Thursday and every third Saturday nights. The camera caught a large group of regulars every Thursday. Sometimes the Saturday tasting featured three beers, but the regulars—a fancier set judging by their clothes—didn’t increase proportionately.

That intersection featured a quick yellow light which meant a lot of red light runners. Enough that Giulia went through the Thursday and Saturday photos a second time and came out with a ballpark estimate of how many people took advantage of Happy Hour and Microbrew Tasting nights.

A lot.

She’d tuned out any sounds from the outer office. When she entered that room again she saw there wasn’t a lot to tune out. Jane had left and Sidney and Zane were hunched over their monitors.

Sidney pointed at the clock with her right index finger while keeping place on her screen with her left. “Jane left a list of all the deposits you asked for and said she’ll see you tomorrow.”

Giulia blinked at the clock. “It’s quarter to six? Good Heavens. Shall I make a caffeine run downstairs before they close?”

“Yes, please, if you don’t mind,” Zane said.

“You’re awesome,” Sidney said. “Chamomile smoothie, please? They make it for me even though it’s not on the menu.”

“Large regular, three sugars, please,” Zane said.

“Be right back.”

Giulia took the steep wooden stairs two at a time, something only accomplished without injury after much practice. The afternoon barista at Common Grounds was just starting to straighten chairs and wipe tables.

Ten minutes later, Giulia returned triumphant. “He locked the door behind me. Sidney, he says you should name the baby ‘Chamomile.’ I didn’t tell him what I thought of that.”

Sidney sucked a mouthful of the smoothie. “Men. No offense, Zane. Oh—” She massaged her belly with slow circular motions. “Mini-Sidney always jumps when I drink these. Olivier’s going to be disappointed if she’s a vegetarian like me.”

“He’ll sneak her bits of steak behind your back. It’ll be their bonding ritual.”

Sidney sucked another mouthful. “That’s actually kind of cute.”

Giulia sipped her coffee. “Hmm. Cherry-lime syrup is not a winner. Sidney, you’re mellowing. I vividly remember a certain wedding with carnivore and vegetarian food stations at opposite sides of the room.”

Sidney blushed. “I’m not saying I’d eat steak. It’s only fair to give Olivier’s viewpoint equal time. It’s like church. We’re going to raise mini-Sidney Catholic, but she should be able to choose when she grows up.”

Zane muttered, “I’m so going to tell my mother that the next time she calls to nag me about deserting the family religion.”

“What do you usually say to her?” Giulia said.

“I usually hang up.”

“Been there. Are you guys ready for a brainstorming session?” Giulia grabbed her legal pad from her desk.

They gathered at Sidney’s desk.

“All I can say is that Long Neck must put something addictive in the beer,” Sidney said. “The deposits on the days after their tastings and happy hour are a little less than huge but a lot more than respectable.”

“I like it when I’m right.” Giulia set her list of cover charges and estimates of bodies passing through the door on each targeted evening. “Here. Third week of April, two years ago. Based on the traffic cam photos, about sixty people paid the cover charge. Let’s figure I missed another forty because of inconsiderate drivers who didn’t run the red light. If we make it an even hundred, there should be, what? An extra five hundred in the Monday deposit from the cover charge, maybe. That is, compared to a Monday deposit on any other week of the month.”

Sidney poked at Jane’s handwritten numbers. “Four hundred ten the first week, four hundred thirty-four the second week, eight hundred six for Microbrew week, three hundred sixty-one the fourth week. Whoa.”

“Those numbers make too much sense. Let’s try the next month.”

The deposits followed the same pattern for May through July.

“Wow.” Sidney circled August’s third Monday deposit. “Twelve hundred and change.”

Giulia checked her own list. “No way. They had fewer people than usual for that tasting.”

Zane said, “Are you sure you got the numbers straight? My eyes are starting to cross and I’ve had to triple-check a few things. Um, no offense.”

“None taken. Let me check.” Giulia returned to her computer and found the relevant dates in the photo index. “Nope,” she called. “It poured that Saturday and only about half the usual number showed up.” She was smiling as she came back to Sidney’s desk. “Thank you for being greedy, Roger.”

“Yes, but how can we use it?” Sidney said.

“This was my idea: Fitch is using the bar account to launder the money he’s embezzling from AtlanticEdge. What we need now is Frank. I only know the basics of money laundering. He knows a lot more.” She glanced at the clock. “He’s probably on the way home from basketball. I’ll try him in a little bit.”

A single knock sounded on the door and it opened at the same moment.

“Olivier!” Sidney stood as fast as a woman with a baby ready to pop could stand.

“I bring food for the hard-working detectives,” Sidney’s husband said, plastic bags with smiley faces on them hanging from his hands.

“You are awesome.”

“I agree,” Giulia said. “Let me take those.” She set the bags on Zane’s desk.

“You brought Buddhist Delight. I love you.” Sidney unpacked the bag nearest to her.

“I know you do,” he answered in his calm, deep voice. “I also brought hot and sour soup and eggrolls for Giulia, General Tso’s for Zane, barbecue ribs for me and water for everyone.”

Giulia pecked him on the cheek. “You are a life saver. Our deductive skills were circling the drain.”

They shoved everything on Zane’s desk to one end and used the other end as a table. No one spoke for a good five minutes.

Another knock and the door opened again.

“Pizza delivery! Hey...” Frank stopped in the doorway. “Who stole my idea?”

Thirty-Seven

Everyone laughed. Giulia set down her eggroll and pushed back her chair.

“Sidney and I have the most thoughtful husbands in town.” She stacked all the papers on Sidney’s desk and laid them over her keyboard. “Do I smell black olives?”

Frank set one small and one large pizza box on the cleared space. “Of course you do. I brought water since I didn’t remember what Sidney couldn’t drink. Hi, Olivier. Do I say great minds think alike and do you say we tapped into the collective unconscious?”

Olivier winced. “I’ll book several sessions for you in which I will open your eyes to the true nature of the collective unconscious.”

“Only if you ride shotgun on my next drug bust.”

Giulia cut this short. “Gentlemen, all of the wonderful food is getting cold. Frank, grab my client chair and join us. Want an egg roll?”

They alternated between their Chinese takeout, a pepper and mushroom pizza for Sidney, and a pizza with everything for the rest of the group.

When the eating slowed from ravenous to human, Giulia said, “Now that you’re both here, may I pick your brains?”

“Of course,” Olivier said.

“We have two cases that are jumbled together. First, AtlanticEdge wants us to see if certain employees are embezzling. They gave us certain employee files, two years’ worth of accounting ledgers, and their internal security camera footage. Second, Roger Fitch, the accused Silk Tie Killer, hired us to prove he’s innocent.”

Olivier tried to stop a smile. He was unsuccessful. “I saw a replay of Monday’s Scoop episode.”

Giulia took a bite of pizza and chomped it like it was Ken Kanning’s head. “The mere thought of
The Scoop
raises my blood pressure. So does Fitch, since his trial judge and prosecutor are the reason we’re pulling this late-night session. The prosecutor convinced the judge the two-week delay Fitch’s attorney wrangled is nothing but a stalling tactic. Since we didn’t have anything concrete as of this morning, the trial’s been moved up to Friday at nine.”

Olivier whistled.

“Exactly,” Giulia said. “On top of that, we’ve narrowed down the list of embezzlement suspects to Fitch and one of his buddies who also works at the bar Fitch is part owner of.”

“Technically,” Zane said, “we think Fitch and his bar buddy are both embezzling.”

“And stealing from the bar,” Sidney said. “Maybe.”

“You meet the nicest people in this business,” Frank said. He pushed back his chair and walked over to the clue collage. “Give me specifics.”

Sidney and Zane described the altered purchase orders and the surveillance footage involving Tulley and Loriela. Zane took over for the ledger entries. Giulia tied it into the bar deposits.

“Frank,” Giulia finished, “come look at these bank statements. I don’t know enough about money laundering, but you do. Isn’t there a way Fitch and Tulley could verbally claim one price as the cover charge for Happy Hour and Tastings but on the books list it as a higher charge? Please say yes.”

“Yes,” Frank said. “If there aren’t any written records of their cover charge, they can deposit what they want and label it how they want.”

Giulia and Sidney fist-bumped.

“Don’t get excited yet,” Frank said. “How are Fitch and Tulley getting this embezzled money? You’ll notice I’m going with your assumptions for the sake of this analysis.”

“I saw it on the surveillance videos tonight,” Sidney said. “Tulley makes the AtlanticEdge deposits once or twice a week, depending. If they ran a retail sale, then he goes twice.”

“Wait,” Olivier said. “Don’t they bank electronically?”

“No.” Giulia pulled a page of Loriela’s employee file off the Collage. “It says here one of the reasons Loriela got promoted to head of accounting was her, quote, forward thinking, unquote.”

“Corporate babble,” Frank said. “What’s that really mean?”

“She pitched a cost-effective way to switch from physical checks. Right now, because of their current bank’s procedures and their own systems, AtlanticEdge pays vendors with paper checks, and vice-versa. Employees get paper checks too.”

“Seriously?” Frank said. “I thought every company with more than twenty-five employees went paperless years ago.”

“A surprising number have not,” Zane said. “I researched cost-benefit analyses of paper versus electronic. The break-even point isn’t as—”

“Zane,” Giulia said. “Later.”

“Who cuts the checks?” Frank said.

Giulia and Sidney glanced at each other.

“Good question,” Giulia said. “Just a second.”

She ran into her office and opened the AtlanticEdge files on her computer. “Eat something, you guys. This may take a minute.” She moused down the list of Human Resources files. “Research and Development, Testing, Quality Control, Marketing, Sales, Accounting, thank you...Somebody not on any of our lists is in charge of timesheets, somebody else cuts the checks, but...just a sec...oh, look at that. Tulley totals the purchase orders and gives the amounts to the check-cutter.”

“Did they do any employee screening before they hired us?” Sidney said.

Giulia came through the doorway and nabbed a skinny slice of pizza. “Tully comes across as the right kind of employee. He’s good with numbers, has a hobby that keeps him in town, and if we can believe the surveillance videos, sucked up in a big way to Loriela when she was his boss.”

Olivier said, “That is all surface polish.”

Giulia sat. “Tell me more.”

“May I read what you know about him already?”

Giulia pointed. “It’s on the wall. Start with the third row left, then read across the top row.”

Olivier stood and read as he finished a rib. “He’s in a bitter time loop of his own making, and he refuses to recognize his other qualities. I went to one of his microbrew tastings last year. He has definite talent, but he squanders it as minion to Roger Fitch while he focuses on the great football player he once was.” He took the interview pages off the wall. “Here, where he shifts from lazy former jock to crafty traitor. Here, where he pretends he isn’t interested in marriage, yet he deliberately searched for Loriela Gil’s online presence.”

“You mean he threw Roger under the bus because they were rivals for Loriela?” Giulia pointed at her interview pages. “No way. She chose men based on how high they’d climbed the success ladder. Always higher than the last one. Tulley was going nowhere.”

Sidney came out of the bathroom. “If Tulley wasn’t Fitch’s rival, then he’s got the biggest case of ‘I hate my job’ ever.”

“That’s too easy,” Giulia said. “Besides, how would he know for sure Fitch killed Loriela?”

“Fitch admitted it one night at the bar when they were both hammered?” Zane said, yawning.

“Do any of us think Fitch ever gets that hammered?” Giulia said.

“If he doesn’t, then his story of his alcohol coma the night of the murder falls apart,” Frank said. “Speaking in a purely helpful brainstorming fashion, that is.”

Giulia stood very still facing her clue collage. “Nobody say anything for a minute, okay?”

Her gaze stopped on the empty space where Tulley’s interview pages had been. Then on Fitch’s pages. Cassandra Gil’s pages. The DNA evidence. The crime scene photos.

There’s something here. Think.

She rubbed her hands over her face. All she really wanted was silence and her own bed.

Bed. Footprints. Rain and an open door and a body on a narrow balcony and a man too stupefied-drunk to hear any of it happening a mere five feet away.

“Zane,” she said, “if you compare the crime scene photos to everything you saw when you and I went to Fitch’s apartment, would you say an intruder killed Loriela?”

She didn’t worry about the silence that followed. Silence meant Zane in super-think mode.

“Yeah. Yeah, I would, even though I still think Fitch did it.”

“Me too. It’s not just his work background and the history of the case. The more I talk to him and get exposed to his body language and inflections—shush, Frank, you know what I mean—the more I’m convinced he’s the killer.” She grabbed the air in front of the Collage like she was choking it. “But he didn’t kill her. So who did, and why are we hung up on him as perpetrator?”

No one replied.

“He said something to me last Saturday. Something along the lines of ‘It’s good to be the king.’ Zane, do you remember—no, wait. Minions. He was talking about Tulley working for him at the bar.”

“I remember,” Zane said. “He said he liked being the owner because people had to do what he said. He didn’t use those words, but he was talking about having power over people.”

Giulia turned to face the room. Her right hand drew bullet points in the air as she spoke.

“Fitch likes power. Women. Money. The arguments with Loriela escalated up ’til the night of her death. We only have his word on the drunken birthday party and happy reconciliation. Okay, let’s assume the reconciliation because of their bedroom escapades afterward.”

She stared at the air in front of her, cataloguing the points.

“Fitch and Tulley are stealing from AtlanticEdge. Fitch and Tulley are stealing from Long Neck. Zane and Sidney, what’s the probability of both?”

Sidney said, “Ninety-five percent from AtlanticEdge, eighty percent from the bar. We don’t have enough data for that yet.”

“Point taken. Zane?”

“One hundred percent from AtlanticEdge, eighty from the bar, for Sidney’s reason.”

“Agreed.” Giulia didn’t shift her focus from her invisible bullet points. “What if I said Loriela was also embezzling?”

From the edges of her vision, Giulia saw Zane and Sidney both sit back in their chairs.

“Interesting,” Zane said. “It blows her image of the beautiful, hardworking, wronged woman.”

“She never had that image, except in her mother’s mind,” Sidney said. “What about that woman who said Loriela left heel prints in her back when she walked over her to get her job? Something like that.”

“The higher you climb, the more expensive and frantic life gets,” Zane said. “I saw the damage at PayWright when somebody clawed up to assistant manager level, then manager, then floor supervisor.”

“Loriela was smart,” Giulia said. “She had power and brains to work out an embezzlement scheme. Or to improve Fitch’s, if the idea was his.”

“But not Tulley’s?” Frank said.

“No. Embezzlement wasn’t Tulley’s idea. He’s a follower now, not a leader.” Giulia unfocused her eyes on the clock above the door. She didn’t really want to know how long this workday was lasting. “He wants to turn back the clock to his high school most popular athlete days. Because he can’t do that, he’s nursing a spectacular load of hate and bitterness. Maybe he decided sticking it to his employer was the best he could manage, since women don’t seem to want him. Loriela sure didn’t.” She focused at last on the people in the room. “Tell me this doesn’t sound crazy: Tulley killed Loriela.”

“Why?” Sidney said.

“He finally realized she’d never dump Fitch for him?” Giulia said.

“Fitch told him to?” Zane said, then made a disgusted noise. “Forget that. Tulley isn’t stupid, either. This isn’t
Of Mice and Men
.”

“He wanted more money?” Giulia said.

“From who?” Sidney said. “If the three of them were already stealing, and the two who worked at the bar were stealing more, why get extra greedy?”

“He was fed up with being the minion?” Olivier said.

“Fitch is a top salesman,” Giulia said. “His bonuses prove it. He’s been trying to sell me on the idea that despite his current tomcatting, he truly loved Loriela. I think it was mutual exploitation, not love. I think he and Loriela were using each other first to further their careers and then to get rich quick.”

“More than two years of embezzling is hardly quick,” Frank said.

“It’s smarter than robbing a bank.” Giulia locked eyes with Frank. “They’re both smart. They’re both charming when they want to be. Loriela had a reputation for turning on the charm to the right people and using the rest for stepping stones.” She took a step toward him. “Fitch is using Tulley. Loriela might have used Tulley. Tulley might have interpreted that as something more. Picture this: Loriela leading Tulley on to keep the embezzlement going, with Fitch laughing at Tulley all the while.”

Frank gave her that challenging smile he always used when they were nearing a solution together. “So what then? Fitch got tired of Loriela and wanted her share of the money so he killed her?”

Giulia shook her head hard enough to whip her curls against her face. “Yes, he wanted her money. No, he didn’t kill her. The whole murder scene is set up like a locked-room mystery. It’s been bugging me for days, when Fitch himself wasn’t the biggest annoyance in my life. You and your team must’ve seen it.”

Frank raised his eyebrows. “All the evidence, including DNA, points only to Fitch.”

“I know. I know.”

Olivier said, “Jealousy.”

Giulia’s head snapped toward him. “Tulley jealous of Fitch? Of course. What if he wanted to one-up Fitch by stealing more and doing it better?”

Zane’s fingers pounded his keyboard. Sidney moused through documents.

“Last July,” they said almost in unison.

“The bar thefts started in April, after Loriela’s murder,” Sidney added.

“That’s Fitch celebrating his freedom,” Giulia said.

“From?” Frank said.

“Jail and Loriela.” Giulia paced the distance from wall to wall. “If the July escalation is Tulley’s doing, what triggered it? Don’t answer that.” She stopped and stabbed a finger at different sheets of the collage. “Fitch forced Tulley to steal from the bar. Tulley rebelled by taking more risks at AtlanticEdge.”

“So they’re playing ‘mine are bigger than yours’?” Zane said. “What are they, five?”

“No,” Giulia said. “They’re in high school. That’s why I got distracted by Petit.”

“The lawyer?” Frank said. “You have him on the suspect list?”

“Tulley told me how Fitch and Petit were high school basketball rivals. Petit spent too much time coming up with wordy, plausible refutations of my suspicions.”

Olivier snagged the last piece of carnivore pizza. “I am already looking forward to the relative simplicity of my more convoluted patients tomorrow.”

“Hah,” Sidney said. “And you thought all we did was chase deadbeat dads and screen wannabe priests.”

Zane said, “If this is real life imitating a soap opera, Tulley wanted Loriela. Fitch didn’t want Loriela anymore. Tulley tried for her and she rejected him.”

Giulia stood very still, looking at all the elements as one giant pattern. “Fitch pushes and twists and goads Tulley until Tulley’s ready to do anything to revenge himself on Loriela’s rejection. Fitch plants the idea—revenge or greed, it doesn’t matter, maybe both—and sets everything up. On April first he gets Lori falling-down drunk, pretends to everyone he’s just as drunk, and gives himself the perfect alibi—because he really is innocent. In fact, if not in spirit.”

“Ye-es,” Sidney said. “It makes more sense than Fitch doing it himself.”

“Because Fitch likes to get his minions to do things for him,” Zane said.

“Yes.” Giulia slapped the photo of the footprints in the muddy landscaping below Fitch’s balcony. “Fitch got Tulley to kill Loriela. And it’s festered in him with all his other festering wrongs until he told me to look at Petit and Fitch, the other rivals. Misdirection.” She turned to Frank with a grin. “Fitch didn’t kill Loriela.”

Frank grinned back. “You sure?”

“I am, but we have something better than being sure: We don’t have to prove it. Proof is Colby Petit’s problem. Providing him with ammunition to create reasonable doubt is ours. Sidney, do you agree?”

Sidney was studying her screen. “It makes sense...I could put a summary document together to double-check.” She looked up. “Tomorrow?”

“Zane?”

“I can see it. Do we have anything concrete? Anything at all?”

“No.” Giulia leaned on Sidney’s desk. “We never had anything concrete against Fitch, either. Neither did the police. Right, Frank?”

Frank opened both hands. “Technically correct. You will admit, however, that the circumstantial evidence is damning enough to justify murder charges.”

“Well, tomorrow I’ll give Petit enough to plant doubt in a jury’s mind. Then I bet you’ll get a call to start digging through some old evidence.” Giulia would have danced if she wasn’t so dead tired. She squinted at the clock as though seeing the time through the smallest opening would soften the blow.

“It’s nine thirty-three, hardworking investigators. You are hereby kicked out of this office for the night. Go to sleep thinking of how fat your next paycheck will be.” She held up a hand. “But be here on time tomorrow, because we have a lot to write up. I’ll call Petit tonight with the good news and the bad news.”

“Bad news?” Sidney said. “Oh, right. He’s not a killer, but he is a thief.”

“He’s not technically a killer, we think.”

Zane gathered all the food boxes and empty water bottles and stuffed them in the plastic bags. “I vote we take out an ad in the paper exposing him. It’d sure make me feel better.”

Frank winked at Olivier. “I think we should call
The Scoop
.”

Giulia threw her crumpled napkin at him.