Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) (12 page)

Twenty-Five

Frank woke Giulia up from a nap at five o’clock.

“What’s wrong? You don’t take naps.”

She stretched. “I’m stocking up on sleep for little Zlatan’s two a.m. feedings. Sidney’s advice.”

Frank sat next to her. “I’m serious. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Of course I am.” She pulled her laptop over. “Come check out the dating sites with me.”

The rest of the day’s harvest of messages made yesterday’s look like grade-schoolers passing notes in class. The first two men made her explicit, vulgar offers. A man who could’ve been Giulia’s grandfather wanted to know if she’d be willing to meet for a coffee and book discussion once a week, or even once a month.

Giulia bookmarked her message. “When this case is over, I may put him in touch with Marjorie the Cat Lady. I counted three cats in his profile picture plus another tail off to one side.”

“You are still a bleeding heart.”

“I beg to differ. Compassion is a necessary character trait for Franciscans. In or out of the convent, crabgrass is easier to uproot than the core Franciscan values. Besides, Crazy Cat Lady plus Crazy Cat Guy has to be a perfect match.”

In the last of a deplorable string of videos, an average guy with average looks, hair, and clothes turned on a karaoke machine and sang, “I like big butts and I cannot lie…”

Frank grasped Giulia’s hands, pulled her off the couch, and danced her around the room, singing along with Maria Martin’s musical suitor.

The silliness defused Giulia’s rising anger. Frank patted her definitely not big butt and they resumed sitting side by side on the couch in front of her laptop. Giulia deleted every single message.

“Aw, honey, even our troubadour?”

“He might have been the least rude, but he doesn’t fit the criteria. I don’t know which are worse: The perverts trolling for sex or the judgmental
cavones
who think only size zero women are worthy of them. Tonight was a complete waste of time.” She pushed the laptop away. “Only Alex the garden guy and Dan the library guy hit my top trigger points.”

Frank stood. “Come supervise me grilling the fish and tell me your triggers.”

“That sounds wrong even though it’s not.” In the kitchen she whisked together brown sugar, hot mustard, and soy sauce while Frank rinsed the salmon.

“I’m working from the premise that if Joanne’s body isn’t decaying in a shallow grave in the Pennsylvania woods, she ditched everything to join a Prepper group.” She daubed the sweet-hot mixture on the salmon with a generous hand.

“Why?”

“The running theme in all my interviews with coworkers, relatives, and friends is how giving Joanne was. Or is, depending on whom I talked to.”

“Good grammar is so sexy. Hold that thought.” He elbowed open the back door, set the fish on the grill, and returned. “So she’s everybody’s friend. Why is that your neon sign?”

Giulia opened a bag of frozen dinner rolls. “Her personality as characterized by everyone who knew her reminds me of me back in my convent days. She breaks her back to be everyone’s problem solver, everyone’s listening ear, everyone’s advice columnist. I would guarantee that her own wants and plans kept moving further back in the queue of everybody and their cat clamoring for her to take care of them.”

Frank set out dishes and silverware. “I’d want to kill myself if I couldn’t shut out the world like that.”

“No, Mr. Police Detective, I’m not saying she killed herself.” She set a cookie sheet with four rolls in the oven. “That is, if she’s dead, which I don’t really think happened. I give it eighty percent to twenty she’s still alive.”

“Gut instinct?”

“Yes, bolstered by evidence from her apartment.” She poured lemonade into two imitation Depression glass tumblers. “We also found a video from
The Scoop.
They were trying to sneak into a Prepper compound and I thought I saw someone who resembled Joanne in there. Therefore I’m pretending to be her clone on those dating sites, looking for men in my trigger profile. First, they have to be True Believers, the kind who make bug out bags for their dogs.”

“Who make what?”

“Not important. Second, they have to want her skill set because she’s valuable as an equal.”

Frank opened the back door. “Those cavemen were not looking for an equal life partner.” He tested the salmon and came back.

Giulia set butter on the table. “No fooling. I meant an equal the way men and women were in pioneer days, both working the land and sharing the chores because they had only themselves to rely on. Third, they have to be overloaded with testosterone.”

Frank turned a chair backwards and sat spread-eagled. “Tell me more.”

Giulia made a wry face. “Joanne likes, as her twin sister puts it, major schlong.”

Frank leaned his forehead on the chair back. “You women. Never looking above the waist.”

“Would you be more complimented if I said I married you for your brain? Don’t answer that.”

“You’re blushing.”

“Am not.” But she felt her cheeks heating up.

He stepped over the chair and came around the table to hug her. “You are complex and adorable and”—he looked down—“barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. I will be the envy of every cop in town.”

“Go check the salmon, caveman.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As they washed the dishes after supper, Giulia made up her mind. “I’m going to go to the scheduled meetings with the library guy and the gardener guy. I told them I would, but that was only to escape their clutches. The gardener gives me a weird vibe, but he hit two trigger points right off the bat. The library guy seems normal, aside from his caveman-itis, but I’m not clueless enough to assume good intentions.”

Frank closed the dishwasher. “The psycho ax murderer’s next-door neighbors always say, ‘But he was so quiet.’”

“Sometimes they say, ‘We knew all along something wasn’t quite right about him.’”

“Hindsight. If they really think the neighbor’s planning to go
American Psycho
on them, they’re spying on said neighbor and making six panicked calls to 911 per day.”

Frank closed himself into the game room for the weekly Driscoll brothers’ family bonding night. Giulia put in a DVD of the Peter Cushing/Christopher Lee version of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
and heaved the box of Joanne’s papers onto the coffee table.

Right about the time the action of the movie switched to Baskerville Hall, she slammed the lid on the box, fetched her Glock from the nightstand drawer, and sat at the kitchen table to clean it. Frank came out of the gaming cave and opened the refrigerator, his wireless headset pushed back from his ears.

“What’s bugging you?” he said as he removed a Harp lager.

“Hm?” Concentrating on her alter-ego strategies, Giulia heard his voice, but not his words.

“You only clean your gun late at night when you’re stuck on a case.”

He got her complete attention then. “I didn’t know I was that obvious.”

“Need help brainstorming?”

She shook her head. “Go slaughter space aliens. I’m about to brazenly deceive two complete strangers.”

“My wife always makes me proud.”

Giulia finished cleaning and returned to the living room where Holmes was being his usual brilliant self on the TV. She opened Maria Martin’s messages and replied to Dan: “Switched shifts with a friend so I could take a vacation day. Open for a hike tomorrow?”

A reply appeared within thirty seconds. “You bet. I’ll bring sandwiches.”

She answered, “I’ll bring homemade pickles and canned peaches.” To the screen, she said out loud, “And my gun.”

Twenty-Six

Pregnant Giulia did not like humidity. Pregnant Giulia’s ankles in her hiking boots and snug socks promised escalating retribution with every mile hiked. Weren’t these problems supposed to hold off until the third trimester? She made a mental note to ask her three sisters-in-law. One of the benefits of marrying into a big family: Lots of advice to draw on.

Maria Martin compartmentalized Giulia Driscoll’s life and continued her foraging discussion with Dan.

They’d been walking uphill and down and sometimes blessedly level for half an hour. The sun bled through the trees in pockets of golden hellfire. The monotonous buzz of every insect native to western Pennsylvania waxed and waned, sometimes loud enough to frustrate conversation.

“I’m looking for wild plums,” Giulia said.

“There won’t be enough in these woods to make a decent canning batch.” Dan’s hiking uniform—his term—of jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved athletic wicking kind of shirt, reminded Giulia of childhood Paul Bunyan illustrations.

“I know. I’ve been experimenting with jam mixtures this summer. Currants and gooseberries should be ripening too. I haven’t seen them in these woods. Have you?”

“Haven’t looked. I’m not into berries. They don’t pack enough nutrients to offset the effort of picking and cleaning them.” He shifted his portable cooler from his left hand to his right and slapped his neck again. “I have to find a decent mosquito repellent recipe. I’m using the internet while it still exists, but the level of idiocy increases the longer I search.”

Giulia pictured her medicine chest in the spare bathroom at home. “Let me guess: They all recommend a certain hand lotion.”

He made a frustrated noise. “People who use commercially made products should be banned from serious preparation sites.” He turned on her. “What are you using?”

Giulia affected embarrassment. “Unscented Off. Mosquitoes hone in on me like someone rang the dinner bell.”

A disappointed head shake. “Not good enough.”

“I know, but I haven’t perfected a homemade recipe yet either.” They passed a cluster of bushes. “Gooseberries. I knew it.” She brought out a resealable plastic container from her backpack and picked all the ripe ones she could stuff in.

Over lunch, they discussed American history and current politics. When he brought out dried violets to sprinkle over the canned peaches, she almost revised her opinion of him.

On the hike back, his tone of voice changed from challenging to cozy. He must have approved of her hiking and canning skills. Giulia adopted the meme “Cynical Giulia is Cynical.” Cozy didn’t suit him, but when he wanted to be friendly, he wasn’t an unpleasant companion.

“Got any family?”

“My parents both passed several years back. My younger brother lives about as far north in Canada as you can and still access the internet.” Once again, Giulia Driscoll the detective lied like a rug. Thank God for Father Carlos and his understanding of her job constraints.

He shuddered. “Too cold for me. I like hot, sweaty summers. My folks are snowbirds now.”

“Florida has giant flying cockroaches.”

“Palmetto bugs aren’t the worst thing I’ve eaten. They taste like greasy chicken.” He glanced sideways at Giulia, perhaps to see if she was grossed out.

“Given the choice, I prefer foraging to throwing a handful of termites into a frying pan.” She opened her water bottle and drank.

“You might not have a choice.”

Giulia said with a tight smile, “Let’s make a deal. I won’t lecture you on the classic roots of modern democracy, and you won’t lecture me on my preparedness preferences.”

They walked in silence. Perhaps none of Dan’s contacts had ever spoken back to him before.

As they reached the parking lot and unlocked their cars, he said, “We’ve got a connection, don’t you think? What about coming out to one of my neighborhood slow pitch softball games? My team is composed of Preppers only. We’re putting together a working group for post-EMP times.”

Giulia thought fast. “I have to check my work schedule since I juggled to get today off. I’ll leave you a message on the site.”

“Yeah, okay. I don’t own a computer or a cell phone, so it’s not like I can give you another way to contact me. I check email at the library and at work.”

Giulia drove home, blasting eighties glam rock to drive the idea of eating a palmetto bug out of her head. What if Joanne was hiding in plain sight in some off-grid community? Hard on that thought: Real life problems seldom tie themselves up in neat Disney movie plot ribbons.

Seven point three minutes after she walked through her own door, her feet were soaking in a tub full of cold water. She watched one of the Benedict Cumberbatch
Sherlock
episodes on her phone while her lower legs turned into beautifully shrunken prunes.

Twenty-Seven

“I am not happy,” Frank said early Sunday morning as Giulia dressed for her outing with Alex the gardening guy.

“That’s because your body’s natural cycle is shot. You should be sleeping the sleep of hard-working law enforcement officials who’ve successfully completed a stakeout.” She laced her hiking boots.

He lunged at her from his seat on the bed and dragged her into his lap.

“No, it’s because your location is too rural for me to follow you as backup.”

She buttoned her short-sleeved shirt. Forced to wear jeans and boots to church because she wouldn’t have time to change and still make the meeting, she hoped St. Thomas’ ceiling fans would work a miracle this morning and do more than merely move the hot air around. Last Sunday she was sure the Hosts in the Tabernacle would spontaneously combust.

For a former nun, her Catholic jokes edged close to heresy. She’d said so to Father Carlos, who wanted the Host joke repeated. He laughed loud enough in the Confessional for three old ladies to be staring at Giulia when she opened the wooden door afterward.

“Husband of mine, I repeat that I am taking care of the baby while I perform my job.”

“It’s not just Zlatan. I’m worried about you too.”

She kissed him. “My gun is in the glove compartment. My keys will be in my pocket. If by any remote chance this goes south, I’ll trigger the retrofitted auto-unlock and shove his nasal cartilage up into his sinus cavity. After that I’ll either floor it and get out of Dodge, or he’ll have a chance to admire my meticulous gun barrel cleaning.”

Early Mass finished at nine thirty. Giulia procured salted caramel dark roast and hit the road. As she drove the Nunmobile north into cow country, she recited all the Prepper lore she’d crammed last night after pruning her feet and making dinner on a modern gas stove with store-bought sausages. Which they ate while streaming the rest of
Sherlock
.

Why Giulia Driscoll would never make it as a Prepper, reason number one: She had no desire whatsoever to live off grid.

An hour later, the entire world seemed to drop away as she drove out of the last of the suburbs. Corn fields and apple orchards replaced cookie-cutter two-story houses with golf course-worthy lawns and streets with no sidewalks. Half a mile northeast, she reached the crossroad indicated in the directions and turned right. Another mile through air permeated with manure and she turned left. A third mile past horse paddocks and more corn, and she turned right again into a dirt driveway marked by a mailbox shaped like a largemouth bass.

The driveway curved back and forth for another quarter mile until it ended at a small farmhouse. Chickens wandered the yard. Over to the right, rows of potted herbs grew in a fenced-in garden four times the size of Giulia’s backyard. Between the garden and the woods beyond, beehives and the beginnings of a patch of corn.

She tapped the horn. Alexander came out from the woods. He too wore jeans plus a long-sleeved shirt and a straw hat. Weeds dangled from the hoe in his hand. Giulia got out and locked the car. He waved.

“You didn’t stiff me.” His voice carried across the beehives and vegetables without effort.

“Did you expect me to?” Giulia asked when he came nearer.

“It’s happened. One woman saw the beehives and backed out of the driveway so fast she sprayed dirt all over the chickens. Guess she was allergic.” He wiped his left hand on his jeans and reached toward her. Giulia envisioned a repeat of Dan’s pelvic width test and kept space between them. His dark, straight eyebrows merged into a single entity. He dropped his hand.

Giulia remembered her character. “Sorry. I had a trial meeting with someone else who didn’t understand boundaries.” When the eyebrows didn’t separate, she said, “He treated my hips like they were his personal property.”

His face cleared. “Amateur. I can tell you’re good breeding stock by your stance and proportions. I wouldn’t have asked you here if you weren’t.”

Giulia gave him the only possible reply not involving physical violence: “I’ve never thought about keeping bees. Does it require a significant initial investment?”

“Can you work with wood enough to build and join several boxes? You can’t cut corners on lumber, screening, and beeswax to build the hives, so that’s a few hundred dollars. Some people purchase bees, which can be expensive. I brought wild bees into my hives.”

She admired the stamped metal borders on the hives. One with maple leaves, one with a Greek key design, a third with ivy, and interlocking animal horns on the fourth.

“I worked in a metal stamping plant in high school.” Alex held out his right hand. A thick scar puckered the base of his thumb. “When I moved up here I bought some used equipment and created my own designs. Our tools in the new world should have beauty as well as usefulness.”

They passed the herb garden. Giulia saw the usuals: parsley, oregano, basil, marjoram, chives, thyme, lemon balm, coneflowers, and several plant leaves she couldn’t identify at a glance. Morning glory vines covered the entire side of the fence next to the beehives.

“I bottle most of the honey. It’s the only sweetener I use. I’ve got two acres here, but growing sugar cane this far north isn’t practical. Besides, with honey I can make mead.”

They discussed drying herbs and canning in greater detail than at their first Home Depot meeting. Giulia held her own for this part of the conversation with ease. He led her past the hives and onto a wide expanse of tilled land.

“Wow.”

His grin became proud. “It’s enough for three or four people to live on for years. I worked out a grid system to rotate the crops. The fruit trees are the exception, of course. Do you spin?”

Giulia was quite sure he didn’t refer to a specialized class at the gym. “No, but I sew.”

He made a wry face. “No one’s perfect. You should acquire the skill. There’s a learning curve, but department stores will be looted or torched or both within a month of the cataclysm.”

Preppers appeared to be prone to mansplaining. Giulia let this one slide.

“I thought hemp was more durable than wool.”

He shook his head. “Why draw unwanted police attention? When flyovers happen out here they’re not reporting on rush-hour traffic.”

Giulia turned her head toward the hedge beyond the beehives. “Do I hear sheep?”

“You do. Also goats. Cows are great for manure, but sheep and goats serve the same purpose and take up much less room.”

“And sheep have wool. I’ve eaten goat cheese but not sheep cheese.”

“It’s quite tasty. Both animals provide milk and cheese and fertilizer. As an added bonus, they’re our garbage disposal for what doesn’t go in the compost pile.”

Giulia was pleased he considered her one of the gang, but she had a creeping sense of time warp. When she got home, she was going to challenge Frank to a game of Tomb Raider to regain her sense of the modern world.

“You’ve got a baseball bat growing under the zucchini leaves,” she said.

He followed her pointing finger.

“I was sure I harvested them all yesterday. Show me.”

They walked the rows and found two oversized zucchinis. Giulia made the standard joke about leaving them on the neighbor’s doorstep at midnight. He laughed. She gave him a point for being polite on a first date.

She met the sheep and goats, avoided the bees, and inspected his hand-carved bows and arrows. “My grandfather would have approved your hedge over there. When we were kids, we swore he used a level to trim it.”

“My neighbors keep pigs. The hawthorn hedge keeps my crops safe, plus I make jelly from the berries.”

“What do you use when the zucchini and cucumbers get attacked by white powdery mildew?”

They discussed cayenne-based natural pesticides and the importance of planting marigolds around the vegetables to keep rabbits out.

“What does your family think of you going off grid?” Giulia said after he made the standard joke about how quickly rabbits multiply.

“I have two younger sisters, identical twins, who live in New York City,” he said. “They think I’ve taken preparedness to extremes. We don’t speak much now.”

Maria Martin’s inner Giulia Falcone did a happy dance. A twin connection. Luck or coincidence, she didn’t care.

“Who would’ve thought? I don’t talk about this much, but I had a twin. She died in a car accident in high school. Drunk driver.”

“That’s rough.”

Silence. Giulia didn’t want to overplay her hand, so she didn’t elaborate on her fake sob story.

“My sisters have a pretty close connection,” he said after deadheading several marigolds. “They say it’s a twin thing. Does it feel like part of you is missing?”

“Yeah. That’s a good way to express it. For the first few years it was pretty bad, but it’s eased up now. Sometimes I still reach for the phone to call her when something we shared comes on TV or when I reread a book we both liked.” Her next Father Carlo confession list was shaping up to be the length of an epic poem.

Awhile later, as he worked with the hoe and she weeded the smaller sprouts by hand, he said, “Have you ever visited an actual preparation community?”

Giulia sat on her heels in triumph as her dating site persona reeled in the mark by virtue of knowing how to grow one’s own food. “Not yet.”

“I belong to one not too far from here. Would you be interested in joining me for a visit?”

Giulia pulled more weeds under pretense of considering the idea. “Yes, I would. It’d be good to meet with like-minded people. None of my friends are willing to acknowledge the current world reality.”

He stepped over the broccoli, easy for his long legs. “Your two jobs. When do you have a day off?”

She couldn’t make it seem too simple, so she brought out her cell phone and poked buttons. In her peripheral vision, she saw his frown of disapproval. At the use of technology? Probably.

“I switched shifts with someone this weekend, so I have Tuesday off starting at noon.”

He took out a pocket calendar and pen. “A perfect opportunity. I’ll clear it with the leader of our community and let you know, but Tuesday should be fine.” He wrote. “Shall I leave you a message?”

Giulia refrained from pointing out the dichotomy of how all these anti-technology Preppers had no problem using evil internet tech to find women. “Yes, thanks. Just for now, you know?”

“Not a problem. Not everyone is trustworthy, not like us who understand.”

Giulia went into full-on rant mode when she got home.

“These guys all seem to think my earthly value rests in my pelvis. As long as I can be their brood mare, my farming and cooking skills and ability to work from before sunrise to after sunset are an added bonus in their beautiful new technology-free world. That is, after they prostitute their values enough to hunt for the perfect pelvis.”

Frank refilled her lemonade. “But, honey, don’t you want to shovel sheep manure on hot summer days and brew mead at night by the light of a whale oil lantern?”

“After I cook three meals over an open fire and clean the dishes using homemade soap, which I’ll also make. In my spare time, of course, between spinning wool and sewing clothes and keeping radioactive dust out of the beehives.” She drank the entire glass of lemonade without taking a breath.

“I thought these guys were into the EMP version of the fall of civilization?”

“What’s the difference?” She opened the refrigerator. “Burgers for supper?”

“Anything you want, my hardworking wife.”

Her head poked around the open door. “Do I detect a touch of trepidation in your voice?”

He joined her. “I was merely trying to show you I know the value of my life’s partner.”

She handed him the hamburger buns. “A sentiment which garners my complete approval.” The barbecue sauce and onions came next. “I want to find evidence these extremists are using the internet to lure and seduce underage women.”

“Nobody’s underage.”

“That we know of. Maria Martin’s dates this weekend are all about making a new generation of Preppers. Younger women provide more childbearing years. It’s been that way for millennia in the Church. Remember, Juliet was fourteen.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
is fiction.”

“Based on current practice in Shakespeare’s time.” She took the barbecue seasoning from her spice rack, but held onto it instead of putting it on the counter. “Maybe we do know they’re targeting underage girls.”

Frank said with his head in the lettuce drawer,” How?”

“The teenagers in the park and behind the convenience store.”

Frank’s head reappeared. “Based on?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

Out came the lettuce and the rest of Frank. “Drugs are drugs. Runaways are runaways.”

“Frank, Frank, Frank. Just because a connection isn’t a blinking neon sign…”

He peeled off lettuce leaves. “Based on skin discoloration, both teenagers had an allergic reaction.”

“Not that simple. If they’d had a standard allergic reaction to the usual suspects, the toxicology reports would’ve pinpointed the culprit sooner.”

Frank bit off the end of a carrot. “When fanatics go off grid they also grow their own versions of their favorite hallucinogens? Possible. Harder to detect, too.”

She separated three burgers from the bag of frozen ones. “And what are all the men of the future seeking in their women?”

He pointed the carrot at Giulia’s hips. “The ability to birth strong sons and hardy daughters.”

“Very good, class. You’ve been paying attention. And what do teenagers think about?”

“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll.” He chomped more of the carrot. “No rock and roll off grid.”

“Not necessarily. Dan the Neanderthal plays the tuba.”

“Like Opus the penguin in
Bloom County?
I hope I never meet this guy. I’ll bust out laughing.”

Giulia punched in a microwave thaw cycle for the burgers. “Extrapolating from the relevant points, we have discontented women of childbearing age ready to be convinced they’re special and chosen.”

“Your client’s sister.” Frank tossed the carrot end in the trash. “Those teenagers.”

“My sister-in-law.”