The Clock Strikes Nun Page 13

  “No.” He turned left. “Primanti’s run?”

  “Every time we’re in Pittsburgh. I’ll call Sidney.”

  After phoning in their lunch orders, Giulia continued writing. “Did you notice the staff calls Elaine by her first name, but their direct supervisor is Ms. Newton?”

  “They’re fooled by Elaine’s looks and giddiness. Anyone who earns an MBA from Harvard at age nineteen is not to be dismissed.” He pulled into one of the restaurant’s takeout parking spots. “She’ll toss them out if they deserve it.”

  “But with a month’s wages and a decent reference. Although Cissy seems to have them well trained.” She handed him cash for the three orders.

  As they drove back to Cottonwood, Giulia read Zane’s iPad notes. “I’d like to get Cissy alone and also Pip alone to see if Elaine really didn’t remember the hidden room.”

  “If she goes off the rails like that on a regular basis, I’m amazed they keep staff for any length of time.”

  “I’m still boggling at the idea of Cissy inspecting lizard feces under a magnifying glass.”

  Zane navigated downtown lunch hour traffic. “One of the guys in my fraternity kept a pet tarantula, but I never got close enough to observe its bathroom habits.”

  Giulia closed the iPad. “Did you know people used to believe if a pregnant woman was frightened by an animal her baby would be born with said animal’s characteristics?”

  Zane parked in the lot behind DI’s building. When they opened the doors, the aromas of fresh coffee and frying bacon mingled with car exhaust.

  “Therefore if you get scared by one of Cissy’s pampered chameleons…” Zane made the mano fico. “Sorry. Not even as a joke.”

  Giulia made the corno at the same time, both ancient hand gestures to ward off the evil eye. “Agreed.”

  Twenty-Five

  Sidney made ecstatic noises over her giant vegetarian Primanti’s lunch. All three of them sat at the table in the main office with drinks and piles of napkins.

  “Please find clients in Pittsburgh more often.” Her cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s.

  “I will continue to do my best to keep my staff happy.” Giulia kept her bites ladylike. Little Zlatan had begun to object when she ate too quickly.

  Sidney drank plain iced tea. “Now I want to hear all about the exorcism. And please don’t try to make me believe you found an actual demon.”

  “Better yet. We found a hidden room.” Giulia gave Sidney the condensed version of Driscoll Investigations, Demon Breakers’ inaugural breaking. Sidney’s only comment about Elaine’s castle: “Who’d want to live in a house with all those fancy rooms to clean?”

  “Speaking of rooms, we need to know more about the hidden library room. I’m going to sync my phone with my computer.” She carted the rest of her lunch in with her and linked the devices. “All set if you want to see.”

  “Do you have to ask?” Foil-wrapped sandwich in one hand, Zane hovered over Giulia’s right shoulder.

  “Ooh, night vision.” Sidney stationed herself behind Giulia’s left shoulder.

  In varying shades of green, the pictures showed bricks forming two narrow side walls and a back wall sloping to meet the bricks of the fireplace. Cracked linoleum curling at the edges covered the two-foot-wide floor space.

  “Didn’t Elaine say her house used to be some kind of a convent?” Zane said. “Ms. D., could this be a punishment room for bad nuns?”

  Giulia glanced at him, but the face she saw was “Genius at Research,” not “I’m going to attempt humor even though it makes me hyperventilate.” She cancelled her Glare of Death.

  “Modern convents prefer endless prayers on aching knees or loading the miscreant with extra work. Solitary confinement went out with the nineteen hundreds.”

  “What are those markings low on the wall where the corner meets the floor?” Sidney pointed.

  Giulia enlarged the photo, but part of the corner was cut off. “Let me see if I got that section in another picture.” She scrolled through the remaining five. “I see them.” She enlarged that section and played with the resolution. “They’re words: Elaine…is a…good girl.”

  Zane whistled.

  Sidney erupted. “Her mother locked her in this…this storage niche as punishment? There isn’t even room to stand up. There’s no air. Was she trying to suffocate her own daughter?”

  Zane said, “Can I drive?” Giulia relinquished the mouse and he scrolled backwards through the pictures. “Here’s the first one you took with the door wide open. Here’s the last one with the night vision app. See the narrow bright green diagonal lines? The artsy bookshelves aren’t nailed into solid wood. They’re inserted into slots designed with space below for airflow.” He added after a moment of silence, “My college girlfriend majored in architecture.”

  Giulia scrolled through her Muriel notes. “Here it is: ‘Elaine’s parents bought and renovated the castle.’ Cissy said it too. Those bookshelves were new, because Elaine said the library used to be a chapel. Her mother and father found or created the niche and designed it as a punishment room.” She stood up. “I need air.”

  She walked to the window, flung up the screen, and stuck her head out into the heat and stink and noise. A metallic clang and clash and rattle behind her spoke of Sidney’s foot meeting the trash can and the trash can meeting the wainscoting. The sounds broke apart her wall of rage.

  She pulled her head in. “Any damage to the paint comes out of your salary.” But she said it with a smile.

  “Totally worth it.” Sidney gathered the scattered papers and slammed them into the eighteen-inch-high cylinder. Then she knelt to inspect the wall. “One scrape. I’ll come in early one day next week and fix it.”

  Zane looked from Giulia to Sidney and back again, like a spectator at a tennis match.

  Sidney said in a sharp voice quite unlike her usual perky tones, “When you have kids you’ll understand.” She stood and dusted off her hands. “I almost forgot. I have to get a picture of you for Olivier. Come out into the main office. The light is better.”

  Giulia and Zane stood side by side against the section of wall between the window and Giulia’s door. The light came at them sideways.

  “Should I close the blinds?” Giulia said as The Scoop burst into the room.

  Twenty-Six

  Ken Kanning wasted a quarter of a second taking in Giulia and Zane’s outfits. He snapped his fingers and Pit Bull, his bald, bearded, tattooed producer, raised his camera and blinded Giulia with its spotlight.

  “Scoopers, we’re here at Driscoll Investigations to find Giulia Driscoll and her able assistant about to go undercover for their latest client.”

  As one, Giulia and Zane squared up in Kanning’s face. Kanning’s monologue faltered and he signaled Pit Bull. The spotlight died and he lowered the camera.

  “Mr. Kanning, are you here without an appointment to tell me you’ve discovered who owns the white panel van that resembles yours?”

  Kanning deflated, but only for a moment. “Not yet, but we’re working on it.” He flashed his gleaming smile at her. “It’d go faster if you’d tell me the name of your current client.”

  “Once again, it’s not going to happen.”

  He radiated the charm that had garnered him a third season of his cable access show. “Ms. Driscoll, you haven’t forgotten how well we worked together only last month. Our two-part Doomsday Prepper exposé garnered us our highest ratings all season.”

  Sidney opened her bottom desk drawer and hid her face as she searched in it with diligence.

  Giulia pretended not to see. “Congratulations.”

  “You looked terrific in it. You’re the Jackie Chan of ex-nun PIs.” Kanning added a touch of slyness to the charm. “Speaking of nuns, did you hear your old convent got snapped up by a condo developer? All those poor little old nuns might
get tossed into the street. They could use a hero to keep a roof over their veils.” He closed the distance between them. “We could work together digging dirt on the developer. Think of the press. Little old nuns are a great humanitarian draw. We could—”

  Giulia cut him off. “Mr. Kanning, this is the middle of a workday. Please call for an appointment if you wish to consult Driscoll Investigations. Zane, do you have our hourly rate sheet handy?”

  Zane whipped out a half-sheet of paper and slapped it into Kanning’s hand as he herded The Scoop into the hall.

  When the door closed behind the intrepid reporters, Sidney raised her head from inside her drawer. “I’m really sorry. My whole family watched the Prepper episodes. I couldn’t keep a straight face in front of him.”

  “Don’t make me assign the next ghost hunting client to you and you alone.” She pulled a piece of paper out of the printer tray and wrote down Kanning’s teaser about her last convent. “It gives me the crawlies to think Kanning’s slimy fingers are digging into my past.”

  “Wait until he finds out about the Novices forced to be drug mules and the little old nun who built and exploded a pipe bomb a few years back.”

  Zane’s butt hit his client chair. “What?”

  “God protect me.” Giulia turned to Zane. “Back when Frank was in charge, I went undercover in my old Motherhouse—the huge building where young nuns are trained and old nuns retire to—and discovered some very ugly and very illegal happenings. I’ll tell you about it the next time we have to drive to Pittsburgh.”

  He made a note in his phone. “I will not forget to take you up on that.”

  Sidney said, “Before we were interrupted, I was taking a picture of you two for Olivier. Pose again please? Thank you. Now say ‘Ken Kanning!’”

  Giulia said, “That man will drive me to drink.”

  Sidney’s phone clicked twice. “Not while you’re pregnant.”

  “The struggle is real.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Giulia exited DI’s small bathroom no longer dressed like a church choir mouse.

  “Zane, did you notice how expertly Cissy herded us out of the castle?”

  “I did.” He hung his exorcist clothes on the coatrack. “The path from the library to the front door was as straight as possible, yet Melina had to escort us? Cissy didn’t want us snooping while everyone waited for a Xanax to work on Elaine.”

  “Assuming she’s on Xanax. Anyone know how fast they take effect?”

  Sidney said, “Olivier might. Want me to call him?”

  “No, don’t interrupt his workday. I’ll email him later. Could you get the phones for about fifteen minutes while Zane and I compare notes from this morning?”

  Giulia synced her iPad to bring up Zane’s typed notes on the monitor for both of them to read with ease.

  “Their body language said ten times more than their words.” Giulia pointed to Zane’s on-screen comments. “Mike puts on a manly-man face but his eyes shift constantly around the room. When Ms. D. isn’t looking at her, Melina stares at her as though she’s trying to see into her soul.” She looked over at Zane. “She did? I missed that.”

  “She was good at it. The instant before you might have asked her a question, her eyes shifted to her hands or to Cissy.”

  “Brr. There are too many people in this case who want to get into my head.” She returned to the screen. “I’m not seeing much about Georgia.”

  “Her vibes were too normal. She didn’t trust us, didn’t want to believe anything was really haunting the place, but she was crossing her fingers we were all wrong and she was right.”

  Giulia tapped a pen on her legal pad. The random blue dots didn’t form into a cryptic answer from the stars. Rowan would be disappointed in her new student’s inability to read a supernatural message in them.

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary?” she finally asked.

  “Well, the hidden room.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “At one point in the library I wouldn’t have sworn I didn’t feel a possible cold spot.”

  Giulia laughed. “You sound like the fine print on a TV commercial for the latest wonder drug.”

  Zane gave her a one-sided grin. “That entire sentence was a disclaimer, wasn’t it? If pressed, I’d have to say no. I didn’t see anything ghostlike. But that laugh…Why did you hone in on the fireplace?”

  “It wasn’t pre-planned. When I saw those velvet drapes, I knew they were meant to be flung open with all possible drama. But when I walked the circuit of the room, the fireplace called to me—you know what I mean. Those angled bookshelves draw the eyes to it as the centerpiece of the room.” She flipped to the layout she’d sketched in the car. “If I were to learn that the altar in the former chapel stood where the fireplace is now, well, I’d head back to Rowan first and my parish priest second.”

  Zane dragged her keyboard onto his lap and took over. Giulia opened her phone and bookmarked a woodworking site on Etsy with a “Genius at Work” plaque for sale. Zane needed a one year at DI anniversary memento.

  Her cell phone rang. The collision shop popped up on caller ID.

  “Giulia Driscoll speaking…yes…yes, please…Saturday morning is fine. Thank you.”

  Zane said in an absent voice, “You agreed to an exclusive partnership with The Scoop?”

  “Zane, if you continue to tell such monstrous lies, the ground will open up and the devil will drag you straight down to Hell.”

  In the same preoccupied voice, Zane said, “Deadly Blessing, 1981, early Wes Craven with Sharon Stone and Ernest Borgnine. Controversial ending…Aha. I am invincible.”

  Giulia said, “Goldeneye, 1995, yet another movie in which Sean Bean dies.”

  “He’s his own trivia category. Here you are, ma’am—er, that is, Ms. D.”

  Archived blueprints of each floor of Elaine’s house filled the screen.

  “Zane, you’re amazing.”

  “Full disclosure: the house came up a couple of times in my hunt for Dahlia’s finances. I got curious and poked around historical floor plan sites.”

  Giulia enlarged the second floor blueprint. “Honesty does not tarnish your genius.” Her mouse searched the image. “What’s this overlay?” She clicked and a pop-up appeared. “Maybe I’m more than a stage psychic. When the nuns turned whatever the library started out as into a chapel, they bricked up the fireplace and added an altar where the hearthrug is now.”

  “Ms. D., are you saying Elaine’s parents had a sacred space cleansed—”

  “Deconsecrated.”

  “Deconsecrated, but a malevolent presence still latched onto its residual energy?”

  Giulia stopped clicking. “The possibility must’ve been in the back of my mind.” A second later: “No. It’s too pat.” She double-clicked the corner section and a second overlay appeared. She read, “‘During Prohibition the wall in this corner was cut open and fitted with a hidden door for bootleg liquor storage.’ Pip the Wonderful missed his mark by one ocean, one continent, and about five hundred years.”

  Zane returned the keyboard to the desk and tapped the iPad screen and a video icon in the upper right corner. The screen went black. Giulia’s voice reciting Latin came through the speaker.

  “When everyone was watching you, I wormed my hand into your bag and started recording. I figured you might want to use it for practice in case we add it to our list of services.”

  Giulia made a face. “I had to wing the ritual once. Could you tell?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I recited the Nicene Creed until I got myself back on script.”

  Her voice on speaker increased in volume and intensity as she neared the rite’s climax. The recording picked up faint fire truck sirens and then laughter with a brief echo.

  Giulia’s core temperature dropped at
least two degrees. “We did hear it.”

  Zane said, “You doubted it?”

  A barely audible splash of water punctuated Giulia’s final words and the laughing voice cut off.

  “Like someone flipped a switch,” Giulia said.

  “Or like your words and the holy water sent it back to the underworld.” He hunched his shoulders when Giulia stared at him. “It’s the logical conclusion.”

  Immediate rebellion opened Giulia’s mouth. “No. Number one, I don’t accept a demon lurking in the fireplace like a demented Santa Claus. Number two, I’m not a trained exorcist. Number three, if a fifth-rate demon was squatting in the fireplace, are we to believe it chose to practice its evil laugh in Elaine’s house just in time for me to swoop in and intimidate it?”

  Zane pushed himself into the back of the chair. “Ms. D., does being a former nun mean you’re not duct-taped to official doctrine anymore?”

  Giulia made a note to ask Frank if she came across as intimidating without meaning to.

  “If you’re asking whether or not I have an open mind, yes I do.”

  Zane kept a few extra millimeters of distance between them. “I think maybe there was something in the house.”

  “Come on.”

  “All the whisperings and laughter and noises Melina, Georgia, and Mike talked about. Here.” He took the keyboard again and paged up through his notes. “One person hearing voices is cause to check their hearing or their room for what they might be smoking. Everyone in the house reporting unusual phenomena is cause to call for backup. Enter the new and improved DI.”

  Giulia made a conscious effort to keep her voice non-aggressive. “When Stone’s Throw Lighthouse called us in, the source of the ghostly moaning turned out to be a hidden speaker with a remote switch.”

  At least Zane didn’t try to back away farther.

  “I’ll concede that one, but we shouldn’t dismiss the supernatural possibility.”