Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (4 page)

Six

On Wednesday at ten minutes to ten Giulia arrived at the Tower of Blinding Glass. Every cell in her body needed coffee. If God was good, this place would have a Keurig with a flavor she hadn’t tried.

The receptionist led her to the kitchen.

“Flavored?” Giulia said.

The receptionist smiled. “You have the voice of someone in desperate straits. We’ve got just the thing.” She spun the countertop carousel and inserted a nondescript plastic pod into the machine. “Raspberry chocolate truffle.”

“Oh, my.” Giulia slid a Styrofoam cup under the spout and pressed the brew button. When the aroma reached her nose, she said again, “Oh, my.”

The receptionist laughed. “Everyone I introduce this flavor to reacts like that.”

“You are a life saver.” She added plain creamer and whimpered when she took her first sip.

“My work here is through for today,” the receptionist said with a bow. “I’ll take you to Mr. Petit’s office.”

She led Giulia down a narrow hall patterned in wallpaper the color of lightly buttered toast. After a quick knock she opened Petit’s door.

The lawyer nodded at Giulia and waved at his rectangular conference table as he talked on his phone and banged on his keyboard. There was no sign of Roger Fitch to curdle her decadent coffee. From the half of the phone conversation she could hear, it sounded like an involved one. She took out her iPad and opened the files on AtlanticEdge while she waited.

Sipping coffee with her left hand, Giulia worked on a spreadsheet with her right. They’d narrowed it down to a short list of employees, and she named a column for each one: Leonard Tulley, Miles Park, Denise Burns, Autumn Tate...and Roger Fitch.

“It’s one of these five,” she muttered. “Probably more than one. Definitely more than one.”

The company suspected careful, systematic embezzlement, possibly dating back three years. Four weeks into the process of reviewing video footage and data analysis, Giulia, Sidney, and Zane had confirmed that someone—or a handful of someones—were skimming profits. They’d been covering their tracks so well, Giulia was impressed. Zane wasn’t, since he still hadn’t spotted the clue he was certain existed, the one small mistake that would lead to the altered entry that would point to the falsified purchase orders and onward into book-cooking that was real artistry.

Three corporate heads exploded when Giulia delivered the preliminary report to AtlanticEdge. The anger in that meeting overwhelmed the proposed agenda. So much so, not one of the gathered Vice Presidents kvetched at Giulia’s ten- to twelve-day timeline for pinpointing the actual embezzlers. Surprising for a company that claimed to solve every client issue within seventy-two hours or the bill would be pro-rated all the way down to zero. When she left, the lawyers at the table were already salivating over the anticipated prosecution.

Petit’s call sounded like it was about finished. Giulia saved and closed the document. Petit hung up.

“Ms. Driscoll. Thanks for being prompt. I see you found the coffee.” He brought his Pittsburgh Pirates mug over to the table and took a swig. “Blech. Cold. I’ll be right back.”

Giulia swallowed more of her new favorite coffee. A couple of extra minutes to add notes. She reopened the Five Embezzlers doc...and Roger Fitch sauntered in the room.

She chastised herself in her best convent manner for putting a negative spin on everything Fitch did. Some people walked like that. It didn’t have to mean Fitch had an inflated opinion of himself. Giulia closed the tablet once more. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” Fitch yanked out the chair opposite and fell into it. “Caffeine gives me migraines. Could use some this morning. Can’t even use those five-hour bottles.”

“Have you tried a protein shake?”

Fitch snorted. “Once. It cured me forever. Usually I mix up some Muscle Milk, but I ran out the day before yesterday.”

Petit returned, French roast in hand. Giulia pinpointed the intense aroma right away.

“Mr. Petit, I’ve brought our agency agreement for us to sign.” She took a nine-by-twelve brown folder and a pen from her bag. “This document is specific to your situation based on the information you emailed me last night. If you look at the bottom of page one, paragraph three, you’ll see that I’ve limited the scope of our services to the two-week period before the scheduled trial date. On page two, paragraph one, I noted the exact amount the judge authorized for this project.” She handed a copy to the lawyer and finished her coffee while he read it.

Next to her, Roger Fitch sighed, fidgeted, and played poker on his phone.

Giulia, comfortable with silence and patience, waited without irritation until the lawyer looked up from the last page.

“You’d never make it in the legal field, Ms. Driscoll. This is much too clear and concise.” He gave her that jury-winning smile. “Surprisingly, I have no issues with this as-is.”

Giulia pretended to look skeptical.

“Not one?”

DI’s standard contract often raised eyebrows. She had badgered Frank into retooling it when they set up the business as a partnership. It only took him a month to admit that less obfuscation meant happiness all around.

“Not one.” He took it to his desk and picked up his phone. “Jean, can I borrow you for a minute?”

A silver-haired woman in pleated trousers and a green-striped shirt opened the door. “Yes, Mr. Petit?”

“Please make three copies of this.”

“Certainly.” She returned two minutes later, paper-clipped copies still warm.

Petit brought them back to the table. “Roger, sign all three of these.” He handed Fitch a pen and pointed to the appropriate signature line.

“Whatever you say, legal whiz.” He scribbled a set of loops and points three times.

The lawyer signed next and Giulia last. He took two copies over to his desk, and Giulia returned one to her folder.

“I’ll file this with the court,” Petit said. “Now that the easy part’s out of the way, let’s get to the real paperwork.” He brought over from his bookshelf an expandable manila folder crammed with papers and dropped it on the table. “Ms. Driscoll, this is the discovery file. It contains everything we got from the police and the prosecution.”

Giulia whistled.

“Let’s see what we have to work with.” She tipped the contents of the box onto the table. “Police report. Another police report. Autopsy. Glossy eight by ten photos. Lots of them.” She contained her initial reaction to the close-up of Loriela Gil, deceased, with a pastel striped tie cutting into her neck. “DNA report. Fingerprints. Affidavits.” She shook her head. “I need several hours of complete silence with all of this. Is there anything you want to tell me before I take this back to my office?”

Petit shuffled stapled sets of papers. “It will make much more sense if Roger gives you a timeline of the events leading up to the murder.”

Giulia powered up her tablet again. “Go ahead.”

Fitch grinned at her, but he lacked Petit’s charisma. “Lori and I’d been living together for a couple of months when she wrangled me an interview at AtlanticEdge. I’d gotten pretty fed up with the commission structure at my last place.”

Giulia typed as fast as he talked. “Was Loriela in Human Resources?”

“Hell no. Accounting. She had a head for numbers. In charge of the department. Got there because she talked them into overhauling the whole system. Everybody listened to her. She was going places. You know the type.”

Giulia nodded, typing.

“Lori got my foot in there, but I proved myself in eight weeks. Pretty soon it was her and me, head of sales and head of accounting. Alpha types, both of us. Strong leaders.” He leaned forward onto the table. “Here’s where you’ll hear shit from her catty friends and her buttinsky relatives. You can’t put two alphas together and expect a peaceful sail down a calm brook.”

Without raising her head, Giulia said, “You fought. All couples fight.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t always fight in the privacy of our own place. She liked Long Island Iced Tea and I like single malt. We’d go out to relieve the stress of a hard day. I’d check out a hot babe and Lori’d get all jealous bitch on me. So we’d fight. Not like she didn’t stare at a good package in tight jeans, but whatever.”

From the corner of her eye, Giulia caught Petit give a facial signal to Fitch. Fitch shifted in his chair.

“So anyway, you’ll see in that stack of papers that our nosey-ass neighbors called the cops on us once, and there was this set of emails that got us both in trouble. Sent ’em from work. Stupid, I know, but she said I was screwing around and I said she was and...well, you’ll read it all. Cops got printouts from HR.”

Giulia finished typing that last sentence and waited. When he didn’t speak, she raised her eyes and saw Fitch and Petit making faces at each other.

“Gentlemen, it will be difficult for me to help you if you keep out pertinent information.”

Petit looked sheepish. “The way this next part sounds, Ms. Driscoll, it might prejudice you against Roger.”

“Mr. Petit, I am not a fragile flower that needs to be protected from the harsh realities of the world.” If only he knew what she’d seen since joining DI.

“See, Colby? Told you she could take it. Listen to Uncle Roger when he speaks.” Fitch leaned forward again. “My birthday’s on April first. We’d made up again and went out to celebrate. Man, we got hammered. Only a twenty in the pockets of the bouncers kept them from tossing us out of the bar. Made it home without running into a cop or a telephone pole—stop looking like that, Colby. Ms. Driscoll, here’s where the important stuff starts.”

“I’m paying attention, Mr. Fitch.” Giulia heard her voice revert to “teacher losing patience.”

“I knew you were. Sorry. When we got home we decided to end the night with awesome makeup sex. Best girlfriend ever, you know? I got four of my ties and tied her to the bedposts. Uh...so...skipping to the end. I untied her but left the ties hanging where they were. She was out before I turned off the light and I was out a second later.” He shifted in his chair, his voice losing the “great bar story” tone. “My ringtone woke me up. I made it pushy on purpose, see?”

He held up his phone. It played that klaxon alarm from World War II submarines in an emergency dive. Giulia winced.

“Can’t remember the last time I got hammered enough to sleep through Lori’s phone alarm. She set it up with ocean sounds and birds, because she didn’t like loud noises in the morning. When I rolled over to grab my phone, I could tell even with my eyes closed the light in the room was way too bright for it to be our usual wake-up time of seven a.m. My chief underling was on the other end, asking me if I was coming into work that day. I unglued my eyes and it was like the signal for a hangover headache bad enough to make me want to cut my head off. I reached out to shake Lori awake, but her side of the bed was empty.”

“What time was it?” Giulia said.

“Ten-something by the digital clock on the cable box. I said I’d be there soon and hung up. That’s when I saw the glass door to the balcony was open. My jeans were on the floor, so I dragged them on even though they were still wet from the rain the night before. Didn’t want my junk flapping in the wind.” He chuckled, but sobered up right away. “I went to the door to get some fresh air and saw the neat little hole in the glass. Turned around and grabbed the phone and called 9-1-1. Reported the robbery, figured it’d save time because if someone knew enough to do that glass-cutting thing it was a no-brainer what they did it for.”

Giulia raised her eyes. “Didn’t you wonder where Loriela had gone?”

“Didn’t think of it—the phone call was instinct. After I hung up, I called out for her—thought she might’ve been ralphing in the bathroom. The wind blew some new rain in from the open door, so I went back there to close it.” A pause. “That’s when I saw Lori. She was all crumpled up on the balcony, her blouse from the night before plastered half on her and half against the railing, and one of my ties wrapped around her neck.”

“Did you call anyone?”

“Shit, yes I called someone! I called her! I yelled her name and shook her and loosened the tie and tried mouth-to-mouth. Took me forever to hear the cops knocking on the door. When I opened it, I screamed at them to get an ambulance for Lori. Gotta hand it to them, they figured out what was going on in about five seconds flat. But it was too late. The EMTs called it as soon as they showed up.”

Giulia stopped typing. “If you altered the crime scene, where did the photographs come from?”

Petit broke into Fitch’s narrative. “They asked Roger to return Loriela’s body to the same position in which he found it.”

Giulia pictured having to do that to a dead lover while police and medical personnel watched. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I had to do it so the cops could catch her killer.” He shook himself. “They took pictures of everything in the apartment and around the balcony. There was a big dent in the landscaping and a trail of brush-type marks toward the street.”

“Someone jumped down and ran away,” Giulia murmured.

“That’s what it looked like. And covered up their tracks. Despite all that, the fuckers still arrested me.” He slugged Petit’s shoulder. “Superman here got me out in forty-eight hours. Had to pony up a stupid amount of bail, but he convinced the judge that on top of everything being circumstantial, I wasn’t any kind of flight risk. Hell, I wanted to find out who killed Lori more than the cops did.”

“Circumstantial in what way?” Giulia said then waved the question off. “I’ll read that later.” She checked the time in the corner of the tablet and hit save. “It’s almost eleven-thirty and I have prior obligations to meet. Mr. Petit, I’m going to schedule several meetings with Mr. Fitch. Will a summary email from each be enough?”

Petit began to stack all the documents and return them to the folder. “Absolutely. I know what you mean by prior obligations.”

“Hey.” Roger Fitch looked from one to the other. “What about me? I’m the one going on trial for my life in two weeks. My life, people.”

Petit held up both hands. “We know. We’re professionals. We’ve got this.”