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

  Giulia didn’t need mnemonics tricks to remember how Cecilia’s story strengthened the connection between two teenagers dead from unknown drugs and her sister-in-law collapsing at her feet from a reaction to an unknown drug.

  Good Heavens, next she’d be calling Ken Kanning for help.

  She turned on the radio. Not on her worst day.

  Fifteen

  Giulia drove home, showered, dressed for work and hit the coffee shop below Driscoll Investigations for coffee deserving the name. The office was all hers at quarter to seven in the morning. Hers and Joanne Philbey’s file folder of bills.

  Ammunition. Arrows. Cast-iron baking pans. Three sizes of mortars and pestles. Outdoor winter gear. A Kevlar vest. Heavy-duty gardening tools. Heirloom seeds.

  Giulia unwrapped her turkey-kale-bacon sandwich. It had seemed so appetizing when she stood at the Common Grounds counter. Now she wanted a BLT and Swedish Fish gummies.

  “Little Zlatan, we have to discuss your meal pairings. Now hush and enjoy this healthy breakfast.”

  She reread the last set of purchases. Joanne’s third-floor apartment had no pots for plants anywhere inside or outside on the balcony.

  More bills. Nine hundred dollars for a water purifier. She opened a search window and typed in the address of the company, then followed that link back to a Doomsday Prepper site.

  Fifteen minutes later, she remembered her breakfast sandwich cooling at her left elbow. She bookmarked the site, needing more time to process the mindset. Next she spread out all the bills from last March through this March. Patterns emerged right away.

  A regular donation to a radio preacher stopped in December. A dating site payment—no, two sites—no, three. Marjorie had been right. Joanne’s March MasterCard bill showed pro-rated refunds from all of them. Cable TV payments stopped in February. Fandango movie ticket purchases stopped then too.

  She looked up the phone number attached to a charge from an unpronounceable string of letters. It turned out to be an Etsy shop of crafts made out of deer antlers. Buttons. Coat hangers. Beads. Lamp stands. Toilet paper holders.

  Her phone chimed. Quarter to eight. She opened Skype and called Diane and Joanne’s older brother. After three rings, the face of a tired man who looked nothing like either of the twins filled the screen.

  “Morning. Thanks for calling on time.” Nick’s voice, though weary, still had definite echoes of Diane’s.

  “I won’t keep you long.” Giulia recapped her research so far, including a toned-down version of the office rumor pool.

  His face showed sardonic amusement at first, then disgust, then frustration.

  “What a bunch of old maid gossips. They spend their time inventing B-movie plots instead of figuring out a way to help.”

  Giulia fed the frustration. “I wondered why no one thought she might be pregnant.”

  It worked. “I’ll tell you why. Jo carried an extra forty or fifty pounds on her and people automatically think no man is going to look twice at a fat girl.” His thick eyebrows met and overshadowed his brown eyes. “Jo had her share of relationships. She always called me when things started to sour. She’d vent about the guy’s ego or how he screwed around on her and I’d tell her to look for a guy with more in his head than his pants. Lather, rinse, repeat.” His eyebrows reversed themselves. “What was the question?”

  Giulia kept her voice neutral. She was getting a lot of practice at that this week. “Why do you think none of Joanne’s coworkers thought she might have been pregnant?”

  “Oh, yeah. Because they’re superficial asshats. Jo could’ve been pregnant, I suppose, but she’s smart. She uses protection.”

  “Condoms break.”

  “And the pill isn’t infallible.” He pointed to himself. “Pharmacist.” His wry smile was exactly like Diane’s. “Look. Jo was—is—everyone’s friend. She always has an ear for everyone to talk into and a shoulder to lean on. She had no reason whatsoever to vanish. The police are wrong. They weren’t happy when I disagreed with their theory, but I care about Jo, not their hurt feelings. You find my sister. If Di runs into money trouble, call me.”

  After the call ended, Giulia tapped her pen on a blank legal page as she stared out the window. Rush-hour traffic noise penetrated the closed glass. The room was heating up like the witch’s oven in “Hansel and Gretel,” but her brain registered the stuffy air and dismissed it.

  The pen tapped. The Thursday morning trash pickup truck rumbled past. Her screensaver blinked on with Godzilla’s iconic roar. Giulia started, stood, and opened the window as Sidney opened the outer door.

  “Hey, you’re back. The most wonderful thing happened yesterday! Jessamine’s tooth finally came in. We slept for seven whole hours. It would’ve been eight if the alpacas hadn’t started a fight. Rudolph and Blitzen both want to mate with Snowflake.” She opened the window on her side of the office. “I haven’t appreciated sleep this much since the week before Jessamine was born.”

  Giulia leaned against her own doorframe. “I’m taking notes for future reference.”

  Sidney unwrapped a whole wheat bagel and the distinctive aroma of alpaca cheese filled the room. Giulia’s stomach flip-flopped. Funny. She never used to mind alpaca cheese.

  “Forget notes,” Sidney said. “Stock up on sleep.”

  Giulia returned to her desk and stared at the random blue dots she’d made on the yellow paper. Everyone liked Joanne because of what she did: listened, helped, cooked, taught. No one seemed to consider what Joanne needed. All her friends and coworkers seemed to take without giving back.

  The outer door opened. Zane struck a He-Man pose. “I am invincible!”

  Sixteen

  Giulia joined Sidney in the main office. “The deadbeat dad sting worked?”

  Zane paced the length of the narrow wood floor. “Textbook, Ms. D. Eight of us showed up to play poker. Jack and beer flowed. Ridiculous amounts of money changed hands. When I won a big pot, which may or may not have had something to do with counting cards, I offered to buy pizza. I called the cops who were waiting to pounce, then I told the guys thirty minutes to food. At minute twenty-eight, I went to the bathroom. At minute thirty-one, the doorbell rang. I yelled through the bathroom door to our deadbeat dad to take the money out of my winnings. One of his buddies let loose a nasty laugh and somebody must have elbowed him, because he got quiet too fast. Next thing I heard was a whole lot of yelling and cursing. The card table got knocked over. A couple of quarters rolled under the bathroom door. The rest of the poker gang ran out the back and I came back into the living room. The guys had taken some of the money and our handcuffed deadbeat dad was getting his rights read to him. I took my winnings, of which I knew the exact amount. The cops dragged him away and I returned home to sleep the sleep of the conqueror.” He finally stopped for breath in front of Giulia. “Ms. D., I love my job.”

  Sidney applauded. Giulia sketched an actor’s bow. “Zane, that was epic. Now go write it up so his wife and four children get every cent he owes them.”

  She went back to her desk and called Diane for the make, model, and license plate of Joanne’s car.

  “It’s missing too,” Diane said. “At least the cops in Penn Hills still haven’t found it.”

  “One more thing. Did Joanne ever talk to you about Doomsday Preppers?”

  Diane said after a moment, “I forgot about that. Her first long-term guy after college was a major Prepper. He got Jo hooked on it for a while. When they split, she still talked about going off grid sometimes. You know, if she could save enough money or hit it big enough at the casino to get herself set up. She tried to talk me into going in on it with her, but I have no patience with that end of the world stuff.” The sound of car horns cut her off. “Quit shoving mascara on your eyelashes at rush hour, idiot! Sorry, Ms. Driscoll. Nobody knows how to drive anymore. So, yeah
, doomsdayers. If the bombs drop, I’m driving to Ground Zero. No reason to hang around without indoor plumbing and limeades from Sonic, that’s what I say.” More horns, but Diane kept on topic. “The last time Joanne got dumped, she swore she was going to find a decent guy if she had to register on every dating site around.”

  “By any chance, would you have her logins?”

  “Nope. She kept parts of her sex life to herself. I’m pulling into my work parking lot now. Give me a few minutes and I’ll send you every username I know she rotated through. Can’t help you with passwords, though.”

  When Diane hung up, Giulia called Frank. “Oh, good, I didn’t wake you. Could you log in to your database and check on an abandoned car? My client’s sister said the police never located it.” She gave him the license plate number.

  Frank’s tired voice said, “I love your unexpected romantic requests. Just a sec.”

  She heard him typing and the chime of a finished search. “It’s in one of the Pittsburgh impound lots. Found three weeks ago behind a grade school.”

  “Rats.”

  Frank laughed. “Such language.”

  She made a face at the phone. “Thank you and go to bed.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The email from Diane arrived as she growled at the phone, “Don’t call me ma’am.”

  Without preamble, it listed seven similar usernames and a corresponding list of dating sites with the largest TV advertising presence.

  Giulia wilted. Not for the first time, she wished cloning technology existed, because this case needed two or three Giulias. But wait…She pulled the stacks of Joanne’s bills toward her. Right. She knew which three sites to search. Not so intimidating after all. She closed the email for now and continued with her planned research.

  This time from the box of Joanne’s papers Giulia took every single receipt and sorted them based on information from Chef Eddie and Cat Lady Marjorie. In a short time, she had a definite trail. Army-Navy stores. The water purifier. Camping gear that didn’t require batteries or electricity. In addition to the heirloom seeds, disease-resistant wheat and barley. A book on substituting honey for sugar in recipes. Another on the spiritual connection of twins. A third about surgically separated conjoined twins.

  She stood and straightened her back. Nine thirty. Time for tea. Since little Zlatan was forcing her to curb her caffeine intake, she’d been driven to herbal tea. So far every flavor was a penance, albeit a much different penance than the ones she’d received after confession in her convent days. Perspective was everything now that she didn’t have to scrub the convent kitchen with a toothbrush because she’d neglected one of the many sets of daily prayers.

  She sipped the next flavor in her sampler: mango ginger.

  Not worth taking a second sip. Her whole body longed for another tall French roast with cinnamon syrup.

  Sidney and Zane were both typing when she took the cup to the bathroom sink to dump its contents.

  “Which tea failed today?” Sidney said.

  “Mango ginger.” Giulia came to the bathroom door, drying the cup. “This child owes me so much coffee.”

  Zane laughed. “My sister said the same thing for both her pregnancies, but for her it was cheeseburgers.”

  Giulia swallowed. The thought of lovely chargrilled red meat wasn’t so lovely at this hour of the morning. “May I hijack both of you for a few minutes?”

  “I’m almost finished with the deadbeat dad report,” Zane said. “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No. That comes first. Sidney, could you look up news stories involving twins? Go back a year from February and grab everything. I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for.”

  Giulia dived into the Doomsday Prepper site. Once past the first flabbergasted moments, she studied the site like a lesson. The model standing next to the gigantic water filtration tank like it was a game show prize made her giggle. She screencapped one of the lists of dried and canned foods to hoard. She and Frank hadn’t gotten around to stocking their cellar in case of a crazy winter storm.

  She couldn’t decide which page was the most extreme. How to survive a volcano, with the first piece of advice: “Move away.” Tactical discussion points, with a link to “tactical bacon” which was an actual product available for purchase on Amazon. She appreciated the sales trick of the glamorous model posing in tactical bug out wear.

  But then there was the Tactical Scarf tutorial. Bug out bags—knapsacks or duffel bags with essential supplies for when the bombs drop and you have to get to your bunker in a hurry. First aid, energy food, water purifier tablets…the list could apply to an extended hike in an area without cell phone reception. Conscientious Preppers made a bug out bag for their dog too, though none of the bags offered for purchase were intended for yappy little dogs.

  Next, the advice to buy several hundred sandbags to keep both water and bullets out. An article explaining why not to dress the whole family in camouflage when you live in the ’burbs: If your family looks like the only prepared family on the block, your neighbors will reenact the Electromagnetic Pulse version of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” Apparently EMP and limited nuclear war were duking it out for the most likely way humanity would destroy itself.

  When she clicked the “Unique Survival Tools” page, she knew she had a clear winner.

  “Trivia, guys: Do you know the four ways tampons can be used as a survival tool for the zombie apocalypse?”

  Silence. Even the typing stopped. Then Zane’s voice with a hitch in it: “Is this a test?”

  Sidney said, “Stop a bloody nose.”

  Giulia said, “Really? How? Oh, wait.”

  “One of Olivier’s brothers referees high school soccer. In one girls’ game two of the players clocked heads and they both got bloody noses. Their coaches each took a tampon from their first-aid kits and the girls stuck them up the bleeding nostril.”

  Zane’s voice got very small. “I feel the need for a mental health day.”

  Still at her desk, Giulia said, “You knew the risks when you took a job in an office with two women.”

  Typing resumed. Giulia checked her notes and the connection fell into place. When Joanne started to change in February and on through March, the advice on the Prepper site about how to survive the coming doom matched it all. Acquire self-sufficiency, sharpen your hunting and cooking skills, join a tight-knit community, and be part of a chosen group.

  “It’s a cult.” Giulia blew out a breath. She knew cults. “This isn’t good.”

  Zane knocked on the doorframe. “Report finished and ready for your stamp of approval. Please tell me you need help with something other than feminine hygiene quizzes.”

  Seventeen

  Giulia squashed the temptation to list the four tampon survival tricks she’d read a few pages earlier. “I need your expertise. I have a hunch about a local Doomsday Prepper group, but there’s no footprint on the web. I don’t have anything else to go on.”

  Zane rubbed his hands together. “Simon says: Hack!”

  “What?”

  “Underdog, Ms. D. The old cartoons from the sixties. Simon Bar Sinister is Underdog’s nemesis. We’ve been watching the shows after gaming nights and they’re awesome.”

  “Whatever works. Thanks.”

  Sidney said from her desk, “I’ve got nothing significant. Do you want me to put the Workers’ Comp investigation on hold and keep going?”

  “No. Now that Zane’s saving my bacon on the Prepper search, I’ll take over the twin hunt.”

  “Emailing you what I came up with so far. I stopped at Memorial Day.”

  Giulia opened the Word doc. So much for her expectations of quirky or feel-good stories about twins. Didn’t newspapers need filler anymore? How could Buzzfeed let her down like this?

 
; But at Christmas, Buzzfeed came through with a heartwarming story about separated at birth twins reconnecting at a Messiah sing-along. Then a lot more nothing until she adjusted the search parameters and found a college research call for adult twins back in September.

  A rabbit trail at last. She opened parallel search windows and ran identical searches on both names. A cartload of results filled the windows: the research abstract. Articles on the psychological makeup of twins. Twitter posts from both men in the article. Reunion photos on Instagram. A burgeoning side research trail on a mythology Giulia was unfamiliar with. She bookmarked the trail as Zane knocked on her doorframe.

  “I found something, but it’s from The Scoop.”

  Giulia groaned. “That show is punishment for sins I don’t remember committing.” She typed in the show’s web address. “What day?”

  “Two months ago today. I’ll keep looking. Will there be foul language?”

  Sidney laughed at the same time Giulia said, “How long have you been working here?”

  “Good point.” Zane retreated.

  For this episode, The Scoop pre-empted its usual histrionic opening. First a compilation of atomic bomb explosions followed by footage of destroyed Hiroshima. Then lingering shots of ebola victims. As the crowning touch, the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11.

  “Kanning,” Giulia said to her monitor, “you are a festering sore on the cable TV landscape.”

  Ken Kanning’s mellifluous voice crushed her muttered invective.

  “Disaster! Doom! The end of civilization as we know it! Scoopers, today we’re introducing you to the Alice in Wonderland world of Doomsday Preppers.”