Veiled Threat (11 page)

eighteen

“I love your family,”
Giulia said in the car on the way back to her apartment.

“Mom let me know that you have the Matriarch Seal of Approval.”

She laughed. “Why?”

“Because you’re charming and polite and good with kids and can beat me at cards.” He paid attention to the road for a minute. “Also, let’s just say the last two women I brought home were not exactly the right choices.”

“I gathered that when your nieces and nephews interrogated me.”

“Christ above, I wanted to strangle those brats.”

She laughed again. It was past eleven and she was tired and comfortably full from dinner. She was glad the roads required attention; otherwise she’d have been tempted to snuggle against Frank. And after an evening of warmth and family, her common sense was snoring under a fluffy blanket of “belonging again.”
I’m still not ready to make a commitment to Frank. Tonight would be a dangerous time to make such a decision. We’re both all Christmased-up.
She snugged her alpaca-wool gloves—bought from Sidney’s family store—tighter on her fingers.
I wonder if I’m technically on the rebound from my ten-year marriage—my divorce from Jesus came through less than two years ago.

She snickered under her breath.

“What’s so funny?”

Oops.
“Nothing. It’s silly.”

He turned onto her street. “You are stuffy, spiritual, strict, and sometimes funny, but I can state with confidence that you are never silly.”

“That’s not a desirable catalogue of attractions.”

“Depends on your point of view.” He pulled into her parking lot and idled the car.

She gave him a sly smile. “That’s a broad hint, Mr. Driscoll. Come see me safe inside, please.”

“I’d be happy to.” He turned off the ignition.

She didn’t wait for him to open the door for her. Regardless of his chivalric training, she was too used to doing everything for herself. She did let him take her arm without even the excuse to herself that he was steadying her across the icy parking lot.

The thin hall carpet muffled their booted feet, giving Old Man Krieger across the hall no excuse to play voyeur. To add to the lovely feeling of privacy, Giulia knew how to open and close a door in near-silence.

“Why do you keep this place so cold?”

“It’s set at sixty-five. If this were spring or fall, you’d call it balmy.” She flicked on the light and turned the thermostat up to sixty-eight. “It’ll warm up soon. Would you like coffee?”

He unbuttoned his coat. “No thanks. I’m stuffed to the gills.”

“Me too. Come sit on the couch. I’ll find you an afghan and light the tree.”

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,
muffled, sounded from her purse.

“Who could be calling at this hour?”
And why are they interrupting potential snogging time?
“Hello?”

“Giulia, they called us. They’re sick, twisted, evil people.” Laurel’s voice came thick and broken, the voice of someone after a long crying jag.

“What? Wait a sec. I’m going to put you on speaker.” She beckoned Frank over and set the phone on the kitchen table. “All right, go ahead. Frank’s here, too.”

Anya this time, angry rather than weepy: “A woman called a few minutes ago. She whispered, so we didn’t recognize her voice. We record everything now. Listen.”

The sound of a tape recorder rewinding, and then an eerie, half-human voice: “She is so precious. We’re going to name her Pearl, because she is our pearl of great price.” The voice stopped and the sound of a kiss came through, and steady breathing. “She’s asleep, the little angel. You’ll never come up with the money. We know. We know everything about you. He’s playing with you. He’s good at that. He likes games.”

Laurel’s voice: “Don’t hurt her. Please. We’re getting the money. We promise. We’ll have it all for you, if you can just give us a little more time.”

A whispery laugh. “That’s exactly what I expected to hear. Bargaining, like Judas bargained for the money to betray his Lord. I hope you writhe in agony every time you think of us with our precious Pearl. It’s exactly what you deserve.”

A door slammed on the tape, far away from the whispering female, and a distant male voice said, “It’s me.” Then tape hiss.

Anya said, “I’ll kill her.”

Giulia didn’t try to sound soothing. “She’s messing with your heads, that’s all, trying to spook you.”

“It worked. That bitch has our baby and we have no idea where or who or how to find her.” Anya’s voice rose at the end of each phrase. “You said you’d help us.”

“I will. We will. How much have you raised?”

“Three hundred thousand and change. We have an appointment at our bank for nine tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t erase that tape. Captain Reilly will want to hear it on Thursday when we meet at your house for the ransom-instruction phone call.”

“He can’t trace the call though, can he? I checked our call history on the phone and then went online to see if I could find any more information. Nothing. The number wasn’t local.”

“It’s most likely a disposable phone,” Giulia said.

“God, I want to dismember these people like my father used to gut deer,” Laurel said in the same stuffed-up voice. “You tell your Captain Reilly that I hope he treats this as though it were one of his own children in the hands of that psychotic bitch.”

“Laurel, we’re on it. I promise. Anya, did you hear that? I promise.”

“I heard you. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take this out on you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t keep playing that tape. Just go to bed. Take a sleeping pill if you have to.”

“I bought some today.” Her voice was grudging. “It goes against everything I teach my students.”

“Some situations call for exceptions to the rules.” Giulia took a deep breath. “I’ll call you if we learn something, but don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me till I show up at your house on Thursday morning for the ransom call.”

Anya laughed, a drained sound. “The only surprises I ever want in my life again are when Katie brings home a pet snake or something equally … Shit.”

“I know,” Giulia said. “Get some sleep, please.”

“Better sleep through chemicals. Hooray.”

Three
beep
s and silence. Giulia pressed the
End
button. “Games.”

Frank looked at her. “What?”

“Games. She said, ‘He likes games.’ Resorts have people who organize games and activities.”

“Sounds a little obvious.”

“You never know. She also sounds like she was disobeying the mastermind with that phone call, since she hung up when we heard his voice. So she could’ve been so eager to gloat that she let her guard down.”

Frank pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ll see what the papers from Jimmy have to say. Maybe it’ll be obvious.”

“No objection from me. I wish I was alert enough to analyze things tonight.” A shiver fluttered along her spine. “You’re having a deleterious effect on me. Now I think it’s cold in here.”

“Good. You mentioned something about an afghan?”

Five minutes later the tree was twinkling and Nat King Cole played softly through the speakers. They curled together on the couch under her yellow-and-white seashell afghan.

“Now this is a potentially compromising position,” Giulia said, and yawned. “I can’t even blame it on the booze. All I had was a glass of wine with dinner.”

He kissed the back of her neck. “Thanks for inviting me in.”

“Mmm.” Too tired to open her mouth, she snuggled against Frank as his arm came around her waist.

Nat King Cole sang “The Christmas Song” as she drifted off to sleep.

_____

Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.

Giulia reached out to hit the alarm’s
Off
button.
Why did I turn down the volume?
Her hand slapped the nightstand. The alarm kept beeping. She opened her eyes.

Coffee table. Not nightstand.
I’m staring at the coffee table.

A loud snore tickled her ear. She jumped.

Party. Frank. Afghan. Couch.

She sat up. The apartment was freezing.

She clutched the afghan with one hand and shook Frank with the other.

“Frank! Wake up!”

“Mmm?”

She bent closer. “Frank, wake up.”

He felt for the back of her head, pulled her on top of him again, and kissed her. “Morning.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Nice skin.”

She pulled away. “Frank. It’s six thirty. We have to get to work.”

His eyes roamed the room. “Did we sleep all night on the couch?”

“Yes. I have to catch the bus in forty minutes. How fast can you shower?”

“Not that fast. You don’t have any clothes I can wear, anyway. Unless you have a secret lover I’m unaware of.”

She scowled at him.
“Hello? Still a virgin at thirty, remember?”

“Someday I hope to change that.” He sat up. “Holy God, it’s freezing. Forget the bus. You’ve got a rental car, remember? I’ll make coffee if you turn up the heat.”

“Your bargaining savvy has won me over. I’m going to turn off that alarm before I heave it through the window.”

She padded to the thermostat. A shiver pattered down her spine. She ran into her bedroom and slapped the clock, cutting off that grating
beep-beep-beep-beep
in mid-beep.

Frank was right behind her when she turned around.

“Did you hear what I said just now? Damn, woman, you do crazy things to me.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her neck. “This is what months of enforced celibacy will do to a healthy male.”

“Who forced celibacy on you?”

“You did.”

nineteen

Giulia’s mouth dropped open.
“I—what?”

Frank looked “Wake up” at her. “After we took down the Falkes, remember? They tried to do some sick stuff to you and it freaked you out.”

“I’m not likely to forget getting stripped naked and threatened with rape and murder.”

He put a hand on her arm. “Stop. You know they’re out of the way now. My point is that afterwards, in my car, you agreed that I might have a chance with you.”

She pictured that June evening, staring at Frank’s dashboard, trying to remember who she’d been before the psychotic Falkes had played their games with her and DI’s client. And then Frank’s odd, unexpected declaration that nothing the Falkes tried to do to her meant anything to him. And shouldn’t mean anything to her.

Her voice softened. “I remember.”

“So you’re the reason I’ve been celibate. Not that I ever tomcatted around; don’t worry. I’ve only slept with three women, and none of them were tomcatters either.” He paused. “I don’t think that word is appropriate for women.”

“
Promiscuous
is a better choice.” She turned around in his embrace, facing him. “Why are you telling me your sexual history?”

“Full disclosure. You’re not shocked?”

She sighed. “I taught high-school sex ed. Not much shocks me. Did you forget that I read
Cosmo?
It leaves little to the imagination.”

“I may revise my opinion of that magazine again.” He stopped talking to the ceiling and looked right at her. “I don’t date more than one woman at a time. When I said I wanted to pursue you, that meant you, exclusively.” He looked over her shoulder. “It’s twenty to seven. Tell me where the coffee is and I’ll make some while you shower.”

_____

After Frank left, Giulia drove the four blocks from her apartment to Saint Thomas church. In a car. A clean, dry, warm car. That didn’t smell like armpits.

“That’s it. I’m buying that used car the Monday after Christmas. This is Heaven on earth. I am not giving this up.”

Only three other cars were in the narrow parking lot, and the little Escort maneuvered into a salted space without a hitch. The wind hit her when she stepped onto the asphalt. She wrapped her candy cane–striped scarf around the bottom of her face and headed for the front doors: the church’s red-tiled spire was the only roof on either side of the street not decorated with three-foot icicles.

“Gotta love those roof ice-melters. Can’t have the faithful entering the church door in fear and trembling of imminent death.” She paused at the end of the walkway. “Although that’d make a great sermon illustration.”

Giulia was sole occupant of the steps this early on a Wednesday. The lingering blackness of the sky might have had something to do with it. Or the wind that picked up the latest snow crusts and flung them like sharpened fingernails at her face. Or the greedy winter that reminded her too much of the unseasonal cold snap back in October, around Saint Francis Day.

The shivers clawing at her spine as she pushed against the wind weren’t just from the weather. The four days she’d spent in her old Motherhouse back in October had rebooted all her convent nightmares.

“Stop griping, Falcone. Taking down Father Ray the scumbag drug dealer and Sister Fabian his accomplice was worth these sleepless nights, and you know it.”

Besides, she’d been slacking off ever since she’d jumped the wall. Back in the convent, six hours of sleep was the norm. Some cloistered Orders still kept up the ancient tradition of praying the Canonical Hours, and that included two a.m. Cut the six to five and a quarter.

“I was never cut out for the cloister.” She brushed snow off her eyelashes. “Or the convent. That last stint proved it. Time to get over myself.”

She climbed the steps to the front doors of Saint Thomas, passing the statue that most of the time was of Saint Thomas kneeling before the resurrected Christ. Under its new load of snow, it looked more like a polar bear in front of a sasquatch.

The wind gave her an unnecessary hand with the double doors, but it failed before the strength gained in her four-days-a-week gym schedule. The
slam
as they closed echoed even through her earmuffs.

She stamped her boots on the runner in the vestibule, then unbuttoned her coat, pulled off her hat, and stuffed it into her coat pocket. As soon as she freed her face from the scarf, she breathed a long, slow, deep, relaxing breath. Incense, lemony wood polish, and candles. The day’s knotted muscles and nerves began to unkink.

The holy water in the font was cold enough to raise goosebumps when she touched it to her forehead. Only the two hexagonal ceiling lamps at the front and the ones above her head illuminated the oak pews. The darkness chilled her until she heard the heat kick in and realized the temperature had to be at least sixty. One older woman knelt in the pew across from the Confessional, but the light from the dogwood, blossom-shaped opening in the central door didn’t reach farther than the floor in front of it.

When Giulia entered the nave, she heard faint voices from the Confessional. The woman’s rosary clacking on the back of the pew made more noise than her rubber soles did on the carpeted central aisle. As she neared the sanctuary, the always-burning candle in its red glass lamp cast an unsettling glow over the tabernacle. Giulia genuflected at the head of the aisle, facing the consecrated Hosts inside their small mother-of-pearl house. A five-tiered bank of tall votive candles stood off-center to the Blessed Virgin statue in its niche on the left. Giulia moved silently to that side of the nave.

She couldn’t hear any voices now; good. Privacy for everyone. Her wallet gave up a dollar bill. She folded it into a rectangle narrow enough to fit into the offering slot before lighting a long wick at an existing candle. A puff of smoke mingled with the odor of hot candle wax and the permeating incense. With another deep inhale of the mixture, the last knot in her chest loosened.

As she lit a new candle in the topmost tier, she breathed a prayer to the Virgin for Katie’s safe return. Then she knelt. The week had been too long and stressful to try and pray a Rosary on her fingers.
I’d lose my place before the second decade.
She settled for wordless prayer. The Lord knew her intention. Her job was to show up and make herself available to Him.

A kneeler banged behind and to her right. Footsteps headed to the door and vanished. Giulia lost track of time.

“Are you here to pre-Confess again?”

She started, and a large, square hand touched her shoulder.

“It’s only me.”

Giulia smiled up at Father Carlos, the priest in charge of Saint Thomas Catholic Church and one of the few people she trusted enough to confide in. “Causing parishioner death by heart attack? Are you trying to get on a reality TV show?”

The priest laughed. “It’s seven forty-five. Everyone else is gone. I was about to head out for my Wednesday nursing home rounds, but I have some wiggle room. If you need it, there’s more than enough time to hear your pre-Confession for sins you might commit in the line of duty.”

“It’s that late? It’s a good thing I have the rental car.” She scooped up her purse. “I didn’t come in here with that in mind, but I could use a pre-Confession.”

Father Carlos’s thin black eyebrows disappeared into his wavy salt-and-pepper hair. “I was joking. Come walk back to the vestry with me.”

She gave Father Carlos the bones of the story as they walked up the small front aisle and across the sanctuary. “I’ve got two potential suspect couples and an envelope full of employee information that may give me more. I’ll be telling them whatever I think will convince them I’m the best listener in Pennsylvania. Anything to get them to drop their guard.”

“I freely grant you permission to deceive evildoers to protect the innocent. He raised his right hand and Giulia inclined her head. He continued, “I absolve you from all sins you may commit in this investigation, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

When Giulia raised her head, he was smiling. “My own Confessor thinks this is an interesting interpretation of the sacrament. Now, you: how are the nightmares?”

Giulia smiled. He tried to maintain formal speech, but his true self usually kicked that aside within a few minutes, revealing the caring, everyone’s-brother he really was.

“I’m dealing. They’ll get better soon. It took about six months for them to loosen their grip the first time.”

He gave her an admonitory frown. “Take care of yourself so you are better able to help others. Did I hear you say that you have a car?”

“Just a rental for this job. But I’m so happy to be free of the city bus that I’m taking the used-car plunge right after Christmas.” She armored herself for the outside again.

“I wish you many years of self-propelled happiness. Drive carefully to work. I’ll see you for Midnight Mass.”

The wind clawed at her hair the minute she hit the steps and didn’t loosen its grip till she shut herself into the Escort. While the heater rattled its way up to a livable temperature, she searched for one of the all-Christmas radio stations.

Oh, I could get used to this.