Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (10 page)

Sixteen

Giulia performed the same memory trick in the car. Only when she saved the twenty-three minute recording did she look at the dashboard clock.

“It’s after seven? No wonder I’m starving.”

She dialed her husband and got his voicemail. “Frank, I’m on my way home. If you’re in the shower, please make salads when you get out. I’ll pick up pizza. Be there in forty minutes or so.”

Forty-two minutes later, she pulled into their two-car garage—the true selling point of their small house. Her car smelled of sausage and black olives and right now she could’ve happily gnawed through the cardboard box and called it extra fiber.

When she entered the house, Irish fiddlers played on the stereo and the kitchen table was set with salads, plates, silverware, and red wine. All the day’s tension evaporated from her shoulders.

“Attention, Mr. Driscoll! I will be calling your mother after supper to tell her that she raised you right.”

Frank appeared in his PAL Basketball warm-ups and took the pizza box from her.

“My mother will preen and my grandmother will tease my grandfather that I take after her and not him. Result: Happiness all around. Did you remember black olives?”

“Of course. Did you put extra cucumber in my salad?”

“Of course.” He kissed her. “I’m starving.”

She tossed her coat and bag on the couch and beelined for the kitchen. “As soon as I eat I have to sync the interviews to my iPad.”

Frank transferred two pieces of pizza to each of their plates. “Food first. You look like a ravenous wolf.”

“I feel like one. It’s a good thing I’m not obsessed with my looks.”

“Sit. You know that’s not what I meant.”

They scarfed down pizza, wine, and salad for seven minutes by the clock before any more conversation occurred. When Frank got up to refill the wine, Giulia said, “I’ve been longing for a glass of this since my second interrogation.”

“Embezzling employees or Silk Tie suspects?”

“The latter,” Giulia said and chomped down on the crust of her second slice of pizza.

“You need me?” Frank liberated his third slice from the box.

“Yes. I need a neck rub.” Giulia gazed at him over the rim of her wineglass. “Don’t pout. It isn’t professional. I’ll need you to bounce ideas off of and help me weed the useless from the potential. But not ’til I transcribe all the interviews and stare at them ’til my eyes bleed. No, no more pizza.”

“Would it please you if I said there was rocky road ice cream in the freezer and spray whipped cream in the fridge?”

Giulia pretended to be overcome. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“I could start a list.” Frank tried and failed to look humble.

“Nuh-uh. We’re not going to play one-upsmanship on which of us got the better bargain. I’ll have your father be the judge of that.”

“And I’ll counter with my mother...never mind.” Frank sighed in his best dramatic fashion. “She’ll lecture me on how you’ve improved my life.”

“We’ll call it a draw. I’ll clean up before I recharge and sync my electronics.”

“You’re not going to transcribe those interviews tonight?”

“Good Heavens, no. My brain is fried. Besides, that’s what I have Zane for.” She gathered plates. “Did I tell you I found a temp for Sidney’s maternity leave?”

Giulia slipped out of bed at five-thirty the next morning without waking Frank. A quick shower and she headed for the Caribou Coffee where Loriela’s bartender had agreed to meet her.

Jonathan Stallone walked in as she found a table in the far corner with her coffee and cinnamon roll. She stood by the table ’til he looked her way and then raised her hand. He nodded and got in line, towering over everyone else by a minimum of six inches. Broader than most of them by the same dimension. Giulia couldn’t stop herself from humming the
Rocky
theme.

Over the phone, he’d said he worked two jobs now—bartending nights at the same place he’d met Loriela and teaching a series of morning kickboxing classes at a local gym. Thus this too-early-o’clock meeting.

He came to the corner table with an extra-large coffee and two egg and cheese biscuits; one with sausage, one with bacon.

Giulia inhaled. “I should’ve gone for the bacon.”

“Get a couple for lunch on your way out. I do that all the time.” He took a Hulk-sized bite of the sausage biscuit. “What do you want to know?”

Giulia avoided the spray of biscuit crumbs from his mouth. “I’d like to know about your relationship with Loriela Gil.”

His lip curled. “You mean you want the gory details on how she cut off my balls with one phone call.”

Giulia sipped her coffee. “I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes.”

A hearty slug of coffee followed the Hulk bite. “Why?”

“Roger Fitch’s murder trial starts in less than two weeks. He maintains his innocence. I’ve been hired by him and his lawyer to find evidence which backs up that claim.”

He choked with laughter on his new mouthful of food. This time Giulia’s cinnamon roll got a hail of crumbs and sausage bits. She pretended not to see it.

“Sorry.” He attempted to stifle his laughter with more coffee. It worked, more or less. “That guy could sell fleas to a dog. You’re not telling me you believe him?”

Giulia became Sister Regina, the English teacher feared by every freshman class in three Catholic schools. “My belief or disbelief is immaterial. I’m here to do my job.” She masked her unexpected personality regression with a long drink of coffee. When she emerged, Sister Regina was back in her cell under a vow of silence.

“Damn. You sounded like my grade-school principal.” He looked at Giulia’s newly decorated cinnamon roll. “Let me buy you a new one.”

Giulia smiled. “That’s okay. We both have to get to work, so if you could tell me about Ms. Gil?”

“Sure. No problem.” More coffee. “We got along pretty good for seven or eight months. Then she met this actor type. All about Art and The Stage. He writes these message plays that even the critics don’t get, but he always convinces good actors to put them on. He plays lead when he can too. Lori latched onto him because she wanted to break from her mother and her old neighborhood.” He started on the bacon and egg sandwich. “And from me.”

Giulia waited, her patience with these crammed-together interviews on its last gasp. She craved action.

“Lori wanted out so I let her go. She didn’t last long with the actor. I heard he got an offer from some avant-garde theater in Chicago or Detroit, someplace big enough to have an artsy crowd with money. He bailed. About a year later I saw her with Fitch and it pissed me off. I was better for her than that snake and she needed to know it.” He shifted gears. “Did you ever meet Lori when she was alive?”

Giulia shook her head. “No.”

“You’d understand everything if you had. Lori was gorgeous and sexy and classy. Everybody was jealous when she was mine. She said she would own her own company before her fortieth birthday and I believed her. She was unstoppable when she wanted something.” He stared into his half-empty cup. “I worked in a cube farm when I got out of high school. Phone stuff. Too much pressure, too much backstabbing, and the people sucked. So I went to bartender school and never looked back. People are usually happy in a bar, and I can bust up a fight without much problem. I like what I do. But Lori, she was going places. That’s why she left me.”

“Tell me about the phone calls you had with Loriela and with her mother.”

He stuffed another huge bite of bacon and biscuit in his mouth.

Giulia waited.

A huge swallow finished the huge bite. “You know I’m stalling, don’t you? Geez, you really are like my grade-school principal. Okay, I give. I called her old number but she’d changed it. So I decided getting in touch with her was more important than my pride, and I called her mother.” A shake of the head. “Have you met her mother?”

Giulia kept a straight face. “Yes.”

“She’s a force of nature, isn’t she? That’s the only way I can put it without swearing. She ripped me up one side and down the other. How dare I stalk her daughter? I must know her daughter has always been too good for me. Never call here again or I’ll regret it. And then a click. I bet it really pissed her off that you can’t slam down a cell phone like you could with the handset on an old-fashioned phone.”

“But you didn’t get Ms. Gil’s number,” Giulia said, softening her professional investigator manner to maintain his comfort level.

“Not from her mother. She was wrong, though, if she thought she could shut me down. I have a few connections. I called one who owed me a favor and he called a friend of a friend and a couple of days later I called Lori’s new number.” He crumpled up the wrappings for both sandwiches. “Ever see those cartoons where someone gets yelled at and they shrink down to about two inches high? Whoever animates those must’ve known Lori. She talked for five minutes straight. You might think that the worst way to attack someone is with a string of four-letter words. Hah. Lori used perfect English, never cursed once, and I’m telling you that by the time she finished, I really felt about three inches tall.”

“What did you do next?”

“What could I do? I hung up.” He finished his coffee. “You’re fishing to see if you can catch a killer in a coffee shop. I don’t blame you, it’s your job, but let me tell you something. The only things I’ve ever killed are rats in the bar’s basement. You don’t strangle rats. You poison them.” He plopped his hands on the table. The table quivered. “I’ve heard
Rocky
jokes all my life. Learned early to laugh them off. I even wear the movie costume in the bar on Halloween. Everybody jokes about it and they all like to buy drinks from ‘Rocky.’ But here’s the thing: I can beat the crap out of most people. Had to do it a few times in the bar when morons wouldn’t quit fighting. So of course I’m strong enough to throttle someone and before you ask, yeah, Roger Fitch’s neck was mighty tempting. But nobody and nothing is worth jail time.” He stood. “That’s all you’re getting from me.”

He turned his back on her and walked out, flinging his trash across the parking lot.

Seventeen

When Colby Petit, Esq. arrived at the offices of Creighton, Williams, Ferenc, and Steele at the leisurely hour of 9:25 that same morning, Giulia and the fashion-plate receptionist had discovered a mutual love for Scarpulla’s Deli, pumpkin spice coffee, and Denver and the Mile High Orchestra. They were in the middle of a debate on the finer points of Italian cheesecake when Giulia realized Colby was standing in the entrance way with his mouth open, staring at them.

“Good morning, Mr. Petit,” the receptionist said, the fashion-plate mask back in place. “Ms. Steele would like to meet with you at ten-fifteen about the hockey parent assault case. Mr. Karloff’s assistant wanted to remind you that Mr. Ferenc’s stag party begins promptly at seven tonight at the Rivers Casino. Ms. Falcone-Driscoll has been waiting patiently and would like five minutes of your time.”

“Uh...thank you. Certainly, Ms. Driscoll. Please come with me.”

He didn’t speak again ’til he closed them into his gray-and-white office.

“What magic did you work on our receptionist?” He set his briefcase on the floor next to his desk. “No one’s going to believe me when I say I saw her laugh. Not just smile a genuine smile instead of her formal mouth-curve, but actually laugh.”

Giulia didn’t waste time trying to explain to him that lower-level staff were people too. “Mr. Petit, you neglected to give me copies of the security footage from Mr. Fitch’s apartment building.”

Without missing a beat, he said, “I apologize. I was focused on making copies of documents to give you and didn’t think of the footage as a document.” He booted his computer. “Did you bring a flash drive with you?”

“Of course.” Giulia unzipped a side compartment of her bag and pulled out a plain black sixty-four gig thumb drive.

“Great. Let me open the files...here we go.” He inserted the drive into a USB port and began dragging things from one window to another. “This is going to take a few minutes. Images make for huge files. Is there any progress to report?”

“I’m finishing the main interviews today. This weekend will be dedicated to collating all the data, and you know how much there is.”

“Do I ever. Three minutes to go.” His phone rang. “Excuse me.”

Giulia opened her tablet and checked mail until he hung up the receiver.

“All set, Ms. Driscoll. This is the exact version we’ll be submitting as evidence for the trial.” He ejected the flash drive and handed it to her. “It’s a pleasure working with someone who doesn’t have to be reminded about confidentiality.”

How passive-aggressive, Giulia thought, but said only, “Thank you. I’ll give you a report on Monday. Mr. Fitch knows I might be calling on him any time this weekend. Please go ahead with your schedule. I know my way out.”

The receptionist was fielding two different phone lines when Giulia passed her desk, so she mouthed,
I’ll send you the recipe.
The receptionist gave her a manicured thumbs-up.

Giulia created yet another voice memo in the elevator ride down to the first floor: “Send Grandma’s cheesecake recipe to Cathy at the lawyer’s office.”

Only ten a.m. and already she wanted to escape to the gym for a pounding workout and fifteen minutes in the whirlpool. Since neither were in her morning schedule, she drove to the office. No open spaces to be seen in the minuscule parking lot at this hour, so she fed a nearby meter eight quarters and set an alarm on her phone for an hour and forty-five minutes later.

Her body had burned through the six-thirty meeting coffee. But awesome coffee was never a problem for any Driscoll Investigations’ employee because their offices sat above Common Grounds. Giulia pushed open the door to Heaven with a barista.

“Good morning, Ms. Falcone-Driscoll. What may I get for you?” the dweller in Paradise said.

“Good morning, Gene.” She scanned the specials whiteboard. “An extra-large house blend with a shot of salted caramel syrup and two macadamia nut cookies, please.”

“Coming right up.”

Giulia abandoned willpower on the stairs up to DI’s offices and attacked the first oversized cookie. Her stomach stopped sending her hate mail. The coffee went down smooth and rich and delectable. The day started looking up.

Sidney’s coat hung on the coat rack but her desk was empty. Zane pointed to the bathroom as the printer next to him whirred to life.

“Morning, Ms. Driscoll. This,” he reached for the first page coming out of the printer, “is the first draft of the retainer contract for the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Also, Mr. Fitch called twice, demanding a progress report.”

Giulia rolled her eyes exactly like a sixteen-year-old girl. “We love our clients. They pay our bills. Right?”

“Right.” Zane stacked the papers and handed them to her.

“Trade you.” She took the papers and handed him her iPhone. “What’s your schedule today?”

“Waiting for changes to the contract in your hands and bending the AtlanticEdge data to my will.” He rubbed his hands together like a mad scientist.

“Excellent. Could you take a break from AtlanticEdge and sync my voice memos to iTunes? I backed them up to my tablet last night because I’m paranoid, but it would be a big help if you start transcribing them. Get through as much as you can and I’ll finish the rest tonight.”

Sidney came out of the bathroom. Giulia glanced from her to Zane and back again. Both of them wore green plaid Meier Farms shirts with the bright orange logo on the pocket of an alpaca knitting a sweater out of her own wool.

“Who didn’t send me the email?” Giulia said. “If the store’s running a promotion and needs everyone to be walking billboards, I have to do my part.”

“We didn’t plan it, honest,” Sidney said, easing herself into her chair. “It’s one of the three shirts I own that still fits me. Zane and I must be psychically linked.”

Zane tried not to look worried, and failed. “Is it a problem? I need to do laundry and this was the only decent clean shirt in my drawer.”

Giulia hung her head. “Zane, I swear you will drive me to beat you with a ruler. Of course it isn’t a problem. Relax. But not before you transcribe my voice memos.”

He snatched the spare cord from his center drawer and plugged the phone into his computer. “I’m on it.”

“I look like a country-western whale,” Sidney said.

“You look adorable,” Giulia said. “I’m meeting the last interviewee, thank God, for lunch. The temp will be here to fill out forms at two. The only reasons anyone should knock on my door between now and eleven-thirty are fire or nuclear war.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Sidney said.