Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (11 page)

Read Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) Online

Authors: Alice Loweecey

Tags: #female sleuths, #book club recommendations, #murder mystery books, #cozy mysteries, #murder mysteries, #detective novels, #british mysteries, #amateur sleuth, #english mysteries, #mystery series, #private investigators, #british detectives, #humorous murdery mysteries, #women sleuths

Eighteen

  

Alone inside her lemon and ivory retreat, Giulia set the contract draft aside for later and got Roger Fitch’s nerves out of the way first.

He answered on the first ring. “Driscoll? Where have you been? What’s the news? Do you have any updates? Colby Petit just called to say you’d been to his office asking for the surveillance footage from my apartment complex.”

Giulia schooled her voice to patient calm. “Mr. Fitch, I did tell you that it might be late today or even tomorrow before I contacted you. I’m finishing up the interviews and collating other information.”

“You’ve got to move faster. You’ve got to get on the ball.”

“Thorough investigation takes time. You don’t need to remind me that we have very little of it. I’m aware of that.” She took a deep breath
.
“I’ll be able to work with greater efficiency without interruption. When I need to contact you, I’ll do so immediately.”

“All right, all right, I’m chastened. Call my cell when you’re ready. I’ll turn the volume up to the max because I’m going to the Penguins game with the guys tonight.”

The dial tone sounded. “What a delight you are,” she said to the receiver, and hung up.

She dug the flash drive with Petit’s exhibit from its tiny zippered pocket and fitted it into a USB port. When that upload finished, she took the flash drive Frank had given her from a different zippered pocket and plugged it in. A few minutes later, she opened both files side by side.

The complex used motion-sensitive cameras rather than a constant video feed. Its cost-cutting maneuver might turn out to be a bad idea for Fitch. Well, she’d get what she could from the photos.

The slide show from Colby Petit’s office was several megabytes smaller than the one the police received from the apartment complex manager. The first photos were identical: The landscaped ground on the balcony side of Fitch’s building. The rain obscured many details, but the complex hadn’t skimped on curbside appeal.

Side-by-side shots of rain. Of a human-shaped shadow. Of a lightning flash that illuminated footprints in the mulch.

The next still in the police version changed to a shot of the barberry bushes beneath the balcony. They didn’t look like someone had used them for a stepstool. The fourth still in Petit’s version was a shot of the balcony.

Giulia worked all the way through both sets, then reset them to the beginning and opened a spreadsheet. At the end of the second viewing, the Petit column boasted twelve photos. The unedited police column, nineteen.

The meeting alarm on her computer chirped at her.

“I’m in the middle of something.”

A minute later, it chirped again.

“All right. All right. I’m going.” She saved everything. Before she left her desk, she felt around for her phone to make a new voice memo. “Zane still has it. Argh.” She opened the spreadsheet again and wrote her suspicions in a third column. Another save before she logged off.

She grabbed her bag and opened the door.

Sidney sat back down. “I was just going to barge in.”

Zane handed back her phone as she passed his desk. “Second interview almost completely typed up.”

“You guys rock,” Giulia said. “See you before the temp arrives.”

She ran downstairs and in three minutes was fighting lunch-hour traffic. To focus her mind for the interview, she found the local retro radio station and cranked it. The weather had turned again, so her windows were up, but she would’ve sung along at the top of her lungs to Journey and Van Halen no matter what. When she got to the Indian buffet restaurant, she was headbanging to Queen with an invigorated brain.

“All right, disgruntled co-worker, let’s do this.”

A precise, makeup-free blonde sat in the waiting area by the cash register wearing a gray peacoat, jeans, and sneakers with uneven wear patterns.

Giulia walked over to her. “Hello. I’m Giulia Falcone-Driscoll. Are you Shirley Travers?”

The woman held out her hand. “Yes. Thanks for being on time. My lunch hour is limited.”

Her voice was pitched to be heard over a crowd. Giulia wondered where she worked now.

Eight minutes later, armed with full plates and bottles of water, they scored a two-person booth against the window. The other woman dug in like she hadn’t eaten in a while. Giulia sampled her own. The size of the restaurant kept the ambient noise much lower than Giulia feared. She would be able to conduct this interview at standard volume.

“I coordinate the district’s school busses and today I’m pitching in as driver. Breakfast happened before five a.m.,” Shirley said between the saag paneer and the curried chicken.

“My first meeting today took place over coffee at six-thirty. I feel your pain.” Giulia stabbed more of her saag aloo.

“Another one of Loriela’s victims?” Shirley drank half her water.

“I wouldn’t have put it that way.”

“Hah. You haven’t been digging into her past for long then. I didn’t dance in the streets when she died, but I sure didn’t send a sympathy card to Roger, either.” She studied the eggplant pakora and chose the chicken vindaloo instead.

“I understand that Ms. Gil was focused on her career—”

Another laugh. “Is that what they call it now? Come into the ladies’ room with me. I’ll take off my shirt so you can see the imprint of her fancy spiked heel in my back.”

“I see.”

Shirley hacked a second piece of chicken in half. “Well, aren’t you nice and neutral. You don’t have to tiptoe around me. Loriela was a greedy, implacable bitch who wanted to be head of accounting and did anything to get there.” She chewed the chicken hard enough for Giulia to hear her teeth click. “I take that back. She didn’t seduce the VPs or the Big Boss. Guess that means she had some morals.”

Two small children chased each other down the aisle next to them, shouting “Freeze tag! Freeze tag!” A harried older woman followed a moment later.

Giulia said, “And you know about Ms. Gil’s company celibacy because?”

“Seriously? Did you ever work in an office? Anyone who doesn’t pay attention to office gossip is doomed.” Shirley stuffed a piece of naan in her mouth. “I love me some hot sauce. Whew. Look, I ran payroll. Started as a grunt and worked my way up the proper way. Positive employee reviews, volunteered for extra duties, peer reviews that got noticed. Then Loriela arrived. I helped her like I helped all the newbies. Showed her how AtlanticEdge did things, checked her work, stayed late when she got into a crunch. The gossip started five months later, when she became my second-in-command.” She paused to finish the saag paneer. “Loriela was good. She never said anything too extreme or actionable. She never claimed I was cooking the books. All she did was imply that I wasn’t working with the same exactness I used to. And that she heard I’d been keeping late nights. Oh, and my favorite one: That she, Loriela, had been putting in unpaid overtime to double-check my work because she was concerned for the company’s reputation.”

Giulia tore off a piece of her own naan. “To whom did she repeat this gossip? How close together did she start the rumors?”

Shirley leaned back in her chair and appraised Giulia. Finally she said, “Thank you for assuming I did nothing wrong.”

Giulia smiled in a noncommittal fashion, not saying anything about the years of embezzlement.

Shirley returned to alternate mouthfuls of food and mouthfuls of information. “She targeted the company’s best rumor-mongers and gave each one about a month to run with her latest tidbit. Like the smart cookie she was, she never told the boss. The whole company knew that too much stress on him could’ve led to a stroke, exactly like the massive one that landed him in rehab for months. That might be why she never seduced him. His daughter, the one running the company now, isn’t the type that gets fooled by long legs and a big smile. It was to Loriela’s advantage to keep the old guy in his executive chair as long as possible. Anyway, the rumor-mongers spread shit about me around the coffeepot timed for pre-meetings when the VPs all grabbed coffee.”

“Did you try to refute any of the rumors?”

Shirley laughed. “All that would have done is give credibility to her poison. Loriela never stopped being my sweet and helpful Number Two. Anyone who didn’t know what she was doing would have thought I had it made.” She mopped up the rest of the curry sauce with the last bit of naan. “I had a few friends in other departments. That’s how I found out what Loriela was up to. That and the talks the HR manager called me into his office for. The rumors did exactly what they were supposed to, and I got warnings in my file about the conduct expected of an AtlanticEdge employee and about maintaining focus on my job.”

The table of five across the aisle from them scraped back their chairs and made a fuss with coats and last snatches of cookies.

Giulia waited until they left. “But you could prove nothing like that was happening.”

Shirley inclined her head. “You got it. I wasn’t accused of anything quantifiable. The more I denied it, the more Mr. HR got that look which said, ‘women can’t be trusted.’ He’s not a bad guy, but he’s old-school and thinks all women should be in low-level secretarial positions where they can’t do the company any real harm.”

“I’ve dealt with many of those types as well,” Giulia said.

“They piss me off and they’re always the ones you have to suck up to. Fortunately or unfortunately, six weeks after the second written warning I went on an already paid-for Vegas vacation. That was the height of the rumor trifecta. Instead of going all ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,’ half the time I obsessed about work, the other half I gambled and went to shows—also pre-paid. Came out ninety-seven bucks ahead when I checked out of the hotel.”

Giulia gave her a thumbs-up. “That’s willpower.”

A crooked smile. “Nah, just stubbornness. I don’t like to lose. The day I got back from vacation, the HR manager’s assistant called me five minutes after I logged in. Please come to his office at my earliest convenience. Corporate-speak for ‘right now.’ Loriela gave me her widest smile when I walked past her desk. Bitch.” She laughed again. “You get points for not saying ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead’ like my mother nags me about constantly.”

Giulia shrugged.

“Similar things have happened to me.”

“Ah. You’ve had the exit interview that requires you to immediately go out and get hammered.”

Giulia thought of her last meeting with her Superior General not quite five years ago, when Rome had dispensed her from her vows. “More or less.”

“What a joyous exit interview that was. I ‘wasn’t a positive influence in the company anymore.’ ‘My work had not been up to the expected standards.’ All of it nice and vague and all of it damning. You can bet I talked to a lawyer that same day. Pennsylvania doesn’t recognize the implied contract exemption for at-will employment. He advised me to take my severance and walk away quietly. That way when a new employer called them to check, AtlanticEdge’s HR would play the game of just giving them ‘name, rank, and serial number.’ It’s happened to a bunch of people I know.”

Six college-age types took over the table across the aisle from them, laughing and talking at triple the volume of the other diners. Shirley looked at her watch.

“It’s quarter after one. I’ve gotta wrap this up. The bitch got my job and I got four weeks’ severance. Good thing my husband had landed a promotion, because it took me six months to find the job I have now. Started out bookkeeping then showed them how to coordinate the shifts better. Now I’m district coordinator. Amazing how you can get promoted without climbing a pile of your victims, isn’t it?” She tossed her napkin and silverware onto her plate. “Anything else you want to know?”

Giulia debated for half a second. “Two pieces of office gossip. Did Ms. Gil do to anyone else what she did to you? And which of your co-workers liked Ms. Gil?”

Shirley chewed her lip. “Walk me to my car. I have to get moving.”

Giulia followed her out. When they could walk side by side, Shirley said, “Men liked her more than women did. The one word to describe her was ‘focused.’ She hung out with sales a lot, because they spoke the same language.”

Playing dumb, Giulia said, “What does that mean, exactly?”

“Tips and tricks to close the bigger sale. Look at everything like it’s a deal to close. Listen to those motivational podcasts to up your game. She never came to a girls’ night out unless there was someone in the group she could use. Same with lunch.”

They stopped at the door of an old-ish Pathfinder. Giulia had her hand out to thank her when Shirley stopped with her key in the lock.

“You wanted to know who liked her. I think everyone did when they first met her. She had energy, she smiled a lot, she looked and dressed like a model but not enough to make women hate her for being perfect. After a couple of months, when you realized she only talked business and wouldn’t say more than hello when you weren’t in the right circles, people fell into two categories. Either they sucked up to her because she was going places or they stuck to ‘Good morning’ when they saw her.” She held out her hand.

“Thank you,” Giulia said, shaking it. “You’ve been a big help.”

“Glad it’s over.” She opened the car door. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t contact me again.”

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