Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) Read online

  “Ms. Philbey was really quiet,” a pale blonde with polka dot fingernails said.

  A redhead with classic green eyes and freckles said, “You know what they say about quiet ones.”

  “It had to be a cover,” from a brunette several inches taller than everyone in the group, including Giulia.

  “Right, because she was a good cook.” A second blonde, this one with a voice squeaky enough to dub Alvin the Chipmunk. “She had the perfect cover story.”

  The pale blonde: “We heard she liked to go hunting, so she knew how to shoot.”

  The tall brunette: “So she wasn’t kidnapped because she could defend herself.”

  The squeaky blonde: “See? The perfect secret agent.”

  The redhead: “It’s so cool.”

  All four crowded closer to Giulia.

  “We liked her a lot, but please don’t tell anybody,” the brunette said.

  “We’re only supposed to interact with the nursing staff and the patients,” the redhead said, “but Ms. Philbey used to sneak fresh doughnuts to us.”

  “She was such a great cook,” the chipmunk blonde said.

  “We miss her.” The pale blonde pouted. “The new morning chef is a real workaholic. He never does anything for us. The assistant cook is a real—”

  The redhead elbowed her.

  “Shut it, moron.”

  When the Nunmobile passed the “Welcome to Cottonwood” sign two hours later, Giulia’s first stop was her favorite food truck for a barbecue hoagie. Her second was home. She opened the windows, poured a humongous lemonade, and set up her laptop at the kitchen table to transfer all her notes. King-sized beds were lovely to sleep in, but real work was best performed on a not-so-comfortable work surface.

  Conclusion #1: Marjorie the Cat Lady is a source of information, not a suspect.

  Conclusion #2: Ex-boyfriend Louis Larabee was too helpful.

  Conclusion #3: Would Larabee say anything to keep from going back to jail?

  Conclusion #4: Any woman who dates Larabee should have up-to-date self-defense skills. His façade cracked much too fast.

  Conclusion #5: Milo Chapers has issues. No. Has multiple issues. Possibly debts or a gambling problem.

  Question #1: Had Chapers slept with Joanne? Had Joanne turned him down?

  Question #2: Had Joanne been pregnant when she disappeared? With whose baby?

  Giulia reread the last sentence. She hit Enter and typed a subhead.

  If Joanne was pregnant by:

  1. Larabee: Did he try to convince her to have an abortion? Did she run away to keep the baby? Did she regret not using protection in a risky relationship?

  2. Chapers: What were Sunset’s rules about employee fraternization, especially with a higher-up? Did he envision losing his job? Ditto all the above Larabee questions re: Abortion, running, lack of protection.

  3. Marstan: What if his puppy-eyed unrequited love act was cover for an unexpected pregnancy, an escalating argument, and a rash action in a moment of anger?

  She finished the lemonade. What a sordid mind she’d acquired as a PI. Back in the convent, she’d been much too trusting.

  The pregnancy angle might be a leap. Still, it wasn’t a question she should ask Diane. Not knowing everything about her twin sister already had her on edge.

  She turned on the TV to let the ideas percolate.

  “…story will chill the souls of every Scooper parent.”

  Giulia groaned at Ken Kanning’s eager face on her screen. She pressed the on-screen channel guide as Kanning’s sincere voice chewed the scenery.

  “Two beautiful young girls found dead! One in the park and the other by a dumpster! Sensitive Scoopers beware: What follows is a graphic description of young lives cut short much too soon.”

  Giulia gave the screen back to The Scoop. It filled with side by side shots. On the left, the town park on a summer day: children played, people jogged and walked their dogs, the sun shone. On the right, an asphalt parking lot: cigarette butts in potholes, crumpled fast food wrappers, a stained dumpster; no sun shone when this film had been taken.

  “We can’t show you the abused bodies of these poor girls,” Kanning’s voice said. “Their filthy clothes barely cover their blotched, puffy skin. Their faces are swollen almost past recognition. A rash on the skin of the younger girl looks like someone smeared her with maroon paint.”

  As he spoke, the camera closed in on the dumpster. A rat gnawed something next to it. On the left side, the active townspeople moved past the screen to the sounds of conversation and children laughing.

  Kanning’s face leaped out at Giulia. “These young women had their whole lives before them and squandered it all on drugs. Their ravaged bodies were found three days apart. Were they connected? Did they stop to take one more hit of the filth they were addicted to? Were they trying to reach their homes?”

  The screen cut away from Kanning’s expensive dental work to a stock photo of families mourning at a grave. His voice ranted against government bureaucracy, against the sluggishness of the police investigation, against the evils of pushers who cut their drugs with unknown substances.

  “The bodies of both young women showed signs of a long and arduous walk. Both appear to have been sexually violated a short time before their tragic deaths. Did they escape from a pimp? Were they being held against their will by a man? By many men?” His rant escalated, this time against drugs and the lengths addicts will go to for the next hit.

  Giulia plucked three juicy bits out of today’s Scoop hash. The girls took drugs, the drugs weren’t the usual suspects, and they hadn’t only run away from home; they’d returned from someplace much too far to walk.

  She hit the mute button and called Vandermark Memorial Hospital. Seven minutes later, she hung up without learning anything. Sisters-in-law weren’t on the allowed list for access to patient information. She might have to call her brother again, and she couldn’t even fortify herself with wine beforehand.

  She put a hand on her stomach. “Little Zlatan, you’re not helping.”

  Next Giulia called Jimmy to thank him for his help with the Penn Hills police department. After that she called Diane to ask about any other relatives who might have information about Joanne. This second call could also be titled, “How to find out if the twin sister might have been pregnant without aggravating the client.”

  Diane’s voice switched from hopeful to huffy. “I’m her identical twin. You don’t need to talk to anyone else. We know everything about each other.”

  Giulia decided to nickname this case the “Wait for it” case. Here she sat, doing exactly that rather than say the obvious into the phone.

  Three…two…one…

  “Okay, I get it,” Diane said. “I guess I don’t know everything about Jo since her dickweed manager had to tell me she was missing. Sorry I bit your head off. You could call our older brother, Nick. He lives in Philadelphia.”

  Giulia wrote the phone number on a napkin, reassured Diane on the progress of the preliminary investigation, and called the twins’ brother.

  “Diane hired a private eye? She’s been fighting with me over that for two months. Said as the twin it was her decision and went ballistic when I talked to one here, so I let it slide. I want peace in my family. What can I do to help?”

  Nick’s voice resembled Diane’s, but an octave lower. It had the same sharp edges, the same briskness with a hint of humor lurking beneath.

  “I would like anything you can tell me about conversations you and Joanne might have had in the months before she disappeared. I’m completing my preliminary research.”

  A pause. “That’s too much for four in the afternoon. I work overnights at Children’s. I’m a pharmacist.”

  Giulia mentally reorganized her evening. “What ti
me is good tomorrow? I’ll work around your schedule.”

  “That’s real nice of you. You mind Skype? I like to see people when I’m talking to them. I’m on the phone constantly at work.”

  “Not at all.” Giulia’s butt did a happy dance in her chair. She agreed with Nick: Nothing beat face-to-face contact.

  “Great. I get home around quarter to eight in the morning. Is that too early for you?”

  “Quarter to eight works for me. I’ll call you at ten of.”

  Giulia entered the call and his Skype information into her phone and added an alarm, just in case. Then she saved all her work and went up to the bedroom to wake Frank in time for dinner—and other things—before his stakeout.

  Fourteen

  Four forty-five a.m.

  Giulia eased open the nightstand drawer and took out her Glock and its loaded clip. A mid-July morning at quarter to way too early was bright enough for her to see without the risk of fumbling and making a noise. The uninvited intruder downstairs who had tripped on the furniture didn’t know Giulia was about to ruin their entire day.

  She inserted the clip and walked barefoot to the head of the stairs. The round in the chamber should be plenty, but she knew better than to take that risk. Now the stealthy sounds came from the kitchen. Someone had failed Housebreaking 101. People didn’t keep an emergency stash of money in the flour bin or freezer anymore. She descended the stairs quickly and quietly and stopped at the dividing archway between the living room and kitchen. The refrigerator door was open.

  Perfect. She stepped into the kitchen and placed herself behind the open door, ready to shoot.

  The door closed. Giulia’s eleven-year-old niece saw the gun, screamed, and dropped the fork in her hand. A cold meatball exploded on the floor, sauce splattering in a sunburst around it.

  Giulia lowered the gun. “Cecilia? What are you doing here?”

  “Holy crap, Aunt Giulia! You’re badass.” The gangly pre-teen pushed wisps of hair away from her eyes. “I guess wussy Sister Regina is really gone, huh? Can I see your gun?”

  “No.” She set it on top of the refrigerator with one hand and snagged the paper towels from the counter with the other. “Clean up your mess, please.”

  “Okay.” Cecilia got on hands and knees and wiped the linoleum.

  Giulia stood over her, arms crossed. “Why did you break into my house at five o’clock in the morning?”

  The cleaning paused. “My dad’s a dick.”

  “This is not news.”

  A pair of startled brown eyes glanced up at Giulia, then Cecilia gave her attention to finishing with the mess. She brought a wad of paper towels and the flattened meatball to the sink.

  “The garbage can is underneath.”

  Disappointment filled Cecilia’s face as the towels and meat hit the bottom of the trash bag.

  Giulia opened the refrigerator. “Since you’re hungry, what would you like to eat? Eggs? Bacon? Oatmeal? Peach pie?”

  Cecilia’s eyes pleaded along with her voice. “Spaghetti?”

  Giulia sighed. “Fine. Macaroni is in the pantry.” She pointed. While Cecilia found the box, Giulia filled a small pot with water and a pinch of salt. She sent Cecilia back to the refrigerator for the sauce pot. Conversation consisted of directions to hold the pot while Giulia ladled out a serving of sauce and another meatball. While the sauce heated in the microwave, she pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit.”

  Cecilia began talking as though the chair possessed an On button. “Mom’s in seventy-two-hour lockdown at the hospital because she OD’d, but mom never did drugs ever, ever, ever. You know mom’s all about growing our own food and not using processed stuff. I used to trade my friends her homemade cookies for their Twinkies. Mom even made her own makeup before dad took it away from her.”

  Giulia stirred the spaghetti in the boiling water. “What?”

  Another torrent of words. “Dad’s been getting worse and worse for months. He drags us to Latin Mass and we have to study church history with him every night. He won’t let Carlo play video games, and he won’t let Pasquale go to school dances or anything because, ooh, he might kiss a girl. Dad would go ballistic if he knew about Pasquale’s condom stash.”

  Giulia strained the spaghetti and said in a careful voice, “Didn’t Pasquale turn fourteen last January?”

  “Yeah.”

  Giulia mixed the spaghetti into the bowl of sauce while thinking of several medieval punishments for her younger brother. “At least he’s smart enough to use condoms.”

  Cecilia’s jaw dropped in the best theatrical way at yet another instance of how much cooler Aunt Giulia was than Sister Mary Regina Coelis. Then her momentum returned. “He won’t let anyone not Catholic come over to the house, and he won’t let us play any radio stations except EWTN.”

  Giulia set the bowl and a glass of water in front of her niece, who shoveled in spaghetti and kept right on talking. “He made mom quit her gym membership and her book club and threw out all our novels and CDs. He won’t let mom go anywhere but church and grocery shopping. He said she could keep her part-time job, but only because she helps out in the church office.” She paused long enough to drink some water. “He measured all my dresses and all mom’s and had us make the hems longer. Mom started sneaking out of the house at night sometimes. I saw her twice, but no way was I going to rat her out to dad.” She lowered the meatball before taking a bite and whispered, “Honestly, Aunt Giulia, I was afraid he’d hit her if he found out. After we got home from fireworks on the Fourth of July, she snuck out and didn’t come back.”

  In the same calm voice, Giulia said, “What did your father do when your mother didn’t come home?”

  “Besides turn the house into Saint Pius the Tenth prison? Nothing. He made us keep the same routine and told us not to talk about it.” She bit off half the meatball. “This is good.”

  “Thank you.” Giulia kept her body language calm too. “Did you say Saint Pius the Tenth?”

  Cecilia took her dishes to the sink. “Yeah. Bo-ring.” She rinsed everything and put it in the dishwasher.

  Giulia looked at the clock. “Where are you supposed to be at this hour, besides asleep in bed?”

  Her niece scrunched up her face. “Babysitting the bratty twins next door, but not ’til six thirty. It’s my summer job.”

  “It’s already ten of six. Wait a minute. How did you get here?”

  “I biked. It’s not even ten miles from our house to yours. No biggie.” She dried her hands. “Uncle Frank must sleep great if all our noise didn’t wake him up. See, I know his name even though I haven’t met him.”

  “He’s on overnight stakeout. How do you plan to get back home?”

  “Stakeout like on TV? You guys are so cool.” She turned a sweet, winning smile on Giulia. “You’ll give me a ride back, please Aunt Giulia? If I’m late to my job, dad will find out and the shit will hit the fan.”

  Giulia indulged in another sigh. “Scatological interjections are most effective when used sparingly.”

  “Huh?”

  “Stop swearing so much. I’ll be dressed in five minutes, then we’ll open the garage and hook up the bike rack to my car.”

  As they secured the bright yellow bicycle to the back of the Nunmobile, Giulia said, “How did you break into my house?”

  Cecilia froze for only a moment. Then with another charming smile, she said, “Your super-narrow cellar window has a loose lock. The one on the other side of the vegetable garden, I mean. Those turning locks are super easy to wiggle free.” She tugged on the final strap even though Giulia had tightened it a moment earlier. “I would’ve knocked, really and truly, if I couldn’t get in on my own. I wasn’t going to break a window or anything.”

  “Thank God for a solid moral foundation.” Giulia caught Cecil
ia’s blush. “What?”

  Cecilia twisted her unpainted fingernails. “I got really piss—um, angry at dad last week. He sent me to the grocery store for milk, and I met up with two of my friends he won’t let me talk to anymore.”

  When the pause reached three seconds, Giulia said, “What did you steal?”

  Cecilia flinched. In a tiny voice, she said, “A Milky Way Midnight.”

  “Get in.” They buckled their seat belts. “What penance did you get when you went to confession?”

  More silence. Giulia turned in her seat. Cecilia appeared to be fascinated with the thread count of her capris.

  “Cecilia Falcone.”

  She dragged her head upright and cringed.

  Giulia gave her niece the Stern Teacher Stare. “You will confess the theft this Saturday.”

  In the same tiny voice, she said, “Yes, Aunt Giulia.”

  “The priest will probably tell you to donate the amount of the candy bar to charity. Expect a lecture.” A new thought intruded. “You’re still going to your old church, not a Society of Saint Pius the Tenth one, right?”

  Cecilia un-hunched. “Dad can’t drag us to his super-special church. It’s only for super-special men.” She made a gagging face. “The second I turn eighteen, I’m becoming an atheist and never going back to dad’s house as long as I live.”

  Giulia let that slide. She might have thought the same if she were in her niece’s position.

  “Which way to your dad’s house?”

  Cecilia gave directions in a subdued voice. Giulia parked around the nearest corner to keep the Nunmobile out of sight. They unstrapped the bicycle and Cecilia put down the kickstand.

  “You’ll find out what happened to my mom, won’t you? You’re a detective.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Cecilia squeezed Giulia tight and said into her ribcage, “You’re awesome.” Her eyes shone a little too bright when she released her. “I’ll try to be super good and not call you or anything. Dad still lectures us about you sometimes. He’s a total jerk. Bye!” She pedaled out of sight.