Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1) (5 page)

“That’s correct, Mr. Fitch.” Giulia packed away her tablet and stood. “If Mr. Petit will give me an oversized folder to protect this evidence, I’ll look it all over and come up with a plan of action later today.”

Fitch looked from Giulia to Petit and back again. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

Giulia restrained an eye roll at the pout in his voice. Petit left and returned with a large-sized shipping box.

“This should work. It’s good camouflage too.”

Together they fit everything into the box and sealed it. Petit turned the smile on her again. “We can do this.”

Giulia returned a lower-wattage version. “Yes, we can.” Her smile widened. “Why are you quoting Rosie the Riveter?”

His expression became faraway for a moment, then he laughed. “Because she’s my hero, of course. Everything a lawyer says is the perfect truth.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” She left before she said what she really thought of that last sentence.

Seven

Giulia called Sidney from the Glass Tower’s parking lot.

“I’m heading back with food from Scarpulla’s Deli. What is mini-Sidney craving today?”

“You’re a life saver,” Sidney said. “Eggplant on wheat with feta, please. It’s on their specials menu.” Her voice turned sing-song. “Giulia, Zane is making faces at me! Tell him to stop.”

Giulia laughed. “Zane is still acclimating. Ask him if he wants me to pick up lunch.”

Muffled conversation followed, then Sidney’s voice again. “After many pauses and apologetic noises, he says he would like a Reuben.”

“Got it. Explain how this works, okay?”

Giulia caught the deli right before the lunch rush. She’d come here the first day they opened a satellite location in Cottonwood thereby making the world a better place.

The owner welcomed her with his usual exuberance. “Ms. Driscoll, I have the perfect sandwich for you on this sunny day.” His three chins jiggled as he nodded at her.

“Giuseppe, you’ve never steered me wrong.” Giulia inhaled. “Is the pasta fagiole ready?”

“No, no, not for you today. Today you will try the new sausage my wife makes, yes?”

She caved. “Of course. I have lunch for my staff to order too.”

“The pregnant lady, she wants peppers and cheese again?”

“Not this time.” Giulia gave Sidney’s and Zane’s orders.

“
Bene
. Eggplant is very healthy. Good for the brain. Angelo!”

A teenage version of Giuseppe, minus the extra chins, stuck his head around the door from the kitchen.

“Yeah, gramps?”

“One Reuben. One fried eggplant with feta on wheat, dry. One of your grandmother’s new sausages on a bun with peppers and onions.”

“Got it. Hey, Ms. Driscoll.”

“Good morning, Angelo. Spring break?”

“Just started. Next year, France.” He vanished into the kitchen and the sound of sizzling came a moment later.

Giuseppe wrapped a whole pickle in waxed paper and then in a Ziploc bag. “That boy, he will be a great chef one day. He promises to make fancy French desserts for me to add to the menu.”

“You’ll have to beat people away with a stick.” Giulia opened her wallet. “Three bottled waters, too, please. What exactly are you giving me to eat?”

He rang up the three orders. “It is lamb and fresh romano and
chicoria
. The spices she will not reveal except to Angelo.”

“That sounds wonderful. Now I want to make greens and beans. My husband says he’s getting fat.”

The bell over the door rang and six people came in by twos. Giuseppe handed over her change. “That is the sign of a good wife.”

Angelo came out of the kitchen with three wrapped sandwiches. His grandfather set them in a plastic bag and Angelo handed that bag and the bag with water over the counter to Giulia. “Here you go, Ms. Driscoll. You’ll love the sausage.”

“Thank you both.” Giulia made way for the new customers.

By the time she pulled into her building’s small parking lot, her mouth was watering from the mingled aromas rising from the deli bag. She walked up the stairs and into the office balancing both bags in one hand and the box of documents on the other arm.

“Somebody take this food before I eat all of it in front of you.”

Sidney tried to leap out of her chair, but the baby foiled that. “No fair. The baby’s sabotaging me. Zane, rescue our lunch?”

Zane stood, took a sideways step, and froze in place. Then with a palpable effort he reached across his desk and took the bags from Giulia’s hand.

Giulia pretended to grimace. “Fine. You win. The bill’s in the bag with the water bottles. I’m eating at my desk, but remember, you do not have to do the same.” She stared pointedly at Zane. “The machine can get any phone calls.”

“I’m reading a new thriller on my Kindle,” Zane said.

“Excellent.”

“I’m working through,” Sidney said, “but that’s because I have to leave an hour early for my OB/GYN appointment.”

“Remind your doctor that you can’t go into labor ’til you train your replacement.”

Sidney was already unwrapping the eggplant. “I know, I know, or you’ll bring her to the maternity ward for instructions.” She took a bite. “I totally need to get this recipe.”

Giulia shook her head. “Too late. You’d have to marry into the family.”

“Rats.”

Giulia closed herself into her private office. Before anything else, she unwrapped the sausage and peppers and took a bite.

“Madonna mia.”
The chicory lent a bite to the lamb and the romano smoothed out the spices. “Angelo will get his grandfather’s deli into Zagat’s.”

Chewing a second bite, she gauged the space on her desk and chucked that idea. She pushed the sausage sandwich and its wrapping nearer the edge of the desk and planted herself on the floor. A drink of water—that last bit had been extra-spicy—and she opened the shipping box.

The photographs she set directly in front of her, face down ’til after lunch. Three years in this business hadn’t hardened her to the point of being able to look at certain things while eating.

DNA test printouts at her right. Fingerprint reports at her left. Like a clock face: Photos at twelve o’clock, DNA at three, fingerprints at nine, herself at six. Police report from the April call at one o’clock, documents inventorying similar break-ins in the area at two o’clock, move the DNA reports down to four o’clock and set the autopsy at three. Move the fingerprint pages to six o’clock. Affidavits from neighbors at eleven. From her relatives at ten, from his relatives at nine. More photos, this time of the outside of the apartment. Shove everything on the left down an hour and put the apartment photos at eleven.

“Whoa.” Her breath fluttered the fingerprint records. She backed out of her circle of documents and found a bag of butterfly clips in her bottom drawer. When each stack of papers and photographs was clamped together, she groped on the top of her desk for the sandwich and took another bite.

“This is at least ten hours’ work. I need Sidney.” She stepped over the affidavits and opened her door.

Kitty-corner from the doorway, Sidney was chugging water with one hand and typing with the other. While not too different from the eager college graduate Frank had hired four years ago, this Sidney’s skills were sharper with her energy undiminished.

“Pregnant lady, can I borrow you when you have a minute?”

“Be right there.” Sidney typed for another few moments and stood. “We’re at your service.”

“Zane,” Giulia said, “when your lunch hour’s over, can you join us?”

Zane nodded, eyes on his Kindle.

Sidney stopped in Giulia’s doorway. “Whoa.”

“That’s what I said. This is going to take more time than I thought, so can you give me a rundown of where we’re at with AtlanticEdge?”

Sidney handed Giulia seven dollars and leveraged herself into Giulia’s client chair. “Here’s for my lunch. I love being pregnant, but I’m ready for mini-Sidney to vacate the premises. Did you know that alpacas are pregnant for almost a year? No wonder they spit when they’re cranky.”

“Jingle didn’t spit on Olivier again, did she?”

Sidney hung her head. “She did. It’s a good thing our condo lease was up three months ago, because Olivier wouldn’t set foot near Jingle or Belle again if we weren’t living in the cottage.”

“You’d think the girls would accept him because you’re married.”

“It’s the exact opposite. I raised both of them and they’re wicked jealous.” She rubbed a sudden bulge in her stomach. “God knows what they’ll do when the baby’s born.”

“They’re both moms too.”

“I guess. Olivier’s threatened to paper the inside of their barn with pictures of rump roasts and fried chicken legs if the girls spit on the baby.”

Giulia snorted. “Isn’t that a little passive-aggressive for a psychologist?”

“You think?” Sidney belched. “Gah. Sorry. The tenant just punched that tiny place she shoved my stomach into.” She shifted position. “Okay, AtlanticEdge. I’ve organized it so it makes sense to me, but not to anyone else yet. Can you open my files and I’ll explain?”

Giulia clicked the icon titled “Sidney” and then the “AtlanticEdge” folder. Sidney scooted her chair next to Giulia’s.

“Now the Word doc labeled ‘Week of March 2’ and the Excel doc labeled the same.”

Giulia opened both and a kaleidoscope of colors filled her screen.

“Okay. Page one of the spreadsheet has seven columns, one for each of the employees I think is a likely thief.”

“Wait a sec.” Giulia turned on her tablet. “I started one of these this morning at the lawyer’s office.” She checked hers against Sidney’s. “Yes. Yes. Yes. Him? I didn’t think he was that suspicious. Yes. Yes. Really? Why her?” Giulia pointed to the last column.

“She’s heavy into online gambling. I found video footage of her checking one of the biggest sites on her phone while she was at her desk. I didn’t need to be able to read lips to see that she was losing.”

Giulia typed onto her tablet.

“Okay, she’s added to my list. But why the box of crayons guy?”

All the names on Sidney’s spreadsheet had photos from their employee passcards next to them. Only the fourth one made Giulia cringe.

Sidney wrinkled her nose. “I know, right? I’m secretly hoping he’s stealing money to buy clothes that actually go with each other.” The bald man in the picture wore a purple shirt, green plaid tie, and orange checkered pocket square.

“I just get a weird feeling about him,” Sidney said. “Like if this was a horror movie he’d be the guy training an army of rats in his mother’s basement or making sculptures out of dead bodies.”

“Both hobbies would take significant funds,” Giulia said, crumpling her sandwich wrapper and tossing it into the trash can. “Plus, either scenario would be easy to trace. Massive plaster purchases or antibiotics and bandages.”

“I guess. Okay. Page two.”

More colors.

“We organized two years of sales and returns and bonuses and all that stuff. Zane helped me a lot with this.”

“What did I do? Whoa. What’s with the conjuring circle?” Zane stopped in the doorway, money in hand.

“It’s all the documents from the lawyer with related information grouped together,” Giulia said. “Bring in a chair and squeeze around everything, please.”

“I’d rather stand. Thanks for picking up lunch.” He placed the money in Giulia’s in-box and came around to her other side. “Oh, the books.”

Sidney pointed to the cells highlighted in yellow. “These are the retail software sales. Green is consulting, pink is monthly contracts, blue is big corporate sales. The blank column is only there to separate income from outflow. Light brown is sales staff expenses, gray is bad debts, red is manufacturing, purple is advertising. We used light green for paychecks and pale yellow for bonuses.”

Giulia leaned back in her chair. “I am officially impressed.”

Sidney jerked a thumb in Zane’s direction. “He showed me how to organize it so if I got hit by a semi someone besides me would be able to figure out what I did.”

“Sidney.”

She grinned at Giulia. “Don’t worry. It’s the hormones. It’ll pass once I evict this one.” She patted her stomach and got kicked in return. “Brat. Don’t beat up mommy. My desktop has the link to the company surveillance footage stored offsite. I’m spot-checking it against dates where Zane found what he thinks are small discrepancies in the books.”

“These guys are slick,” Zane said. “They’re not using an easily detectable pattern. What’s ticking me off is how long it’s taking me to pin down their pattern. It’s mimicking complete randomness, which is just another way of saying they think they’re smarter than everyone else.”

“Guys,” Giulia said, “we’ve had the job just under four weeks. The company employs a thousand people.”

“Eight hundred seventy-three full-time, ninety-six part-time.”

“Zane,” Giulia said.

He turned away from the monitor to look at her. Giulia didn’t say anything else as she watched his face. When everything slid into place behind it, his pallid skin lost all traces of color.

“Ms. Driscoll, I apologize. It was never my intent to be disrespectful.” He placed his palms together before his face and bowed.

Giulia waited a few seconds for him to move. When he opened his hands, she smiled at him.

“Zane. I’m not your teacher or your spiritual leader. I’m your boss. You’re still learning the boundaries between college and a real job. Like, for example, not correcting the boss when she chooses to use a rounded number.”

A touch of color returned to Zane’s face. “We were expected to challenge our professors at MIT.”

“Of course. And at PayWright you were sat on like suitcases ’til you were latched and stuffed into your slots.”

He nodded. “We got written up if we had any conversations on shift that weren’t directly related to a call.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I got written up on average once every twelve days.”

Sidney made an indefinable noise. “Why didn’t you go into computer programming like you got your degree in?”

He gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “I like the analysis but I didn’t want to sit at a desk staring at a screen all day. My student loan grace period ended and I had to do something. The call center was half a step up from cleaning portable toilets for a living, which I actually considered, since I can’t cook and don’t know how to bartend.”

“Portable toilets.” Giulia shivered. “That beats any cleaning job we got stuck with in the convent. And that’s saying something.”

Sidney stretched her back. “You people are making me dread diaper changes, and I’ve cleaned alpaca poop for years.”

“Zane,” Giulia said, “I’ll give you the two extra employees that aren’t on my list. You and Sidney give me reasons to keep all seven or to narrow it down to five or fewer by Friday morning.”

“Deal.”

“All right, go away. I’ve got piles of police reports and evidence and photographs to plow through.”

“You used to be all shy and soft-spoken like a nun in the movies. Power has gone to your head.” Sidney’s voice broke on the last words and she giggled ’til she got the hiccups.

Giulia face-planted on her keyboard and then made a big show of typing up a fake “Termination of Employment” notice. Zane ran to the bathroom and returned with a cup of water. Sidney choked it down, reduced the frequency of the hiccups, and hit the escape key on Giulia’s keyboard.

Zane’s reaction to Sidney’s audacity ruined all her efforts to eradicate the hiccups. Only deep-breathing and determination kept Giulia from catching them.