Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) (15 page)

Thirty-Three

According to her notes, Larabee worked the second shift at a distribution warehouse. An alarm for six a.m. should get her to his house at the optimal time to wake him up too early and guarantee he’d be tired and punchy.

She opened a SoBe, a result of Sidney’s influence. Her sometimes unreliable taste buds approved the melon flavor, although the amount of processed sugar in this version would rate a long Sidney lecture. Giulia leaned against the queen bed’s headboard and logged in to the Quality Inn’s Wi-Fi.

Larabee’s Facebook page no longer came up in a search. Diane had turned her own Facebook page into a multimedia Find My Sister event. The header mimicked those Missing Person flyers people stapled to telephone poles: The single word “MISSING” in capital letters next to the picture of Joanne and the birthday cake.

First on the page was a short video of Joanne talking about her wedding cake business. Below that, a video of Diane explaining how long her sister had been missing. Below that, Joanne’s physical description and the last places she was seen, followed by a plea from Diane for any information at all. Such a post was bound to bring the trolls a-running, and Giulia wasn’t disappointed. “Never read the comments” was a rule she created long ago, because it kept her blood pressure in check. Now she had to break it.

“I saw her in the airport boarding a flight to Paris.”

“I saw her last week on a bus headed to Canada.”

On and on, vague and useless, giving Diane false hope. Then the sick puppies came out. Three people posted photos of dead women in the morgues of three different cities. Another five posted graphic descriptions of how they killed Joanne.

In her convent days, Giulia would’ve said a prayer for such people. Now she wanted to track them down and practice her self-defense techniques on them.

More fodder for confession time with Father Carlos.

Farther down the page, an edited post informed Diane’s readers of her decision to remove photographs of Joanne’s last few boyfriends.

“No matter what I really think, I don’t want the police knocking on my door asking why I’m in essence accusing those men of kidnapping and murder. So let’s pretend the police are doing their jobs and looking for my sister instead of telling me over and over and OVER how my sister ‘wanted to vanish.’ We all know that’s a big, steaming pile of crap, right? Keep the leads coming. I’m tracking down every one of them when I’m not at the Day Job.”

The replies to this post were lots of cyber hugs and prayers. A few people claimed to be psychics with a message from Joanne from “beyond the veil.” An argument started, creating reply strings dozens of messages long.

Giulia read them all. They got her precisely nowhere on the case, although they did decrease her estimation of the American education system’s ability to teach grammar and punctuation.

She wondered what Lady Rowan would have to say about Joanne.

With a bang, she closed the Facebook tab. She would not bring a psychic in on a case. She was a professional. Calling Lady Rowan would show almost as much desperation as calling
The Scoop
.

At six forty the next morning, she parked the Nunmobile across the street from Larabee’s Tiny House and sipped Italian roast with Dulce de leche creamer. Larabee’s Jeep was parked in the driveway. Remembering his history of violence, Giulia banged the deer head knocker twenty times, then stepped five feet back on the dirt path, out of arms’ reach.

“What the hell do you want?” His eyes had sunk into dark circles and he smelled of beer. His camouflage sweatpants needed a wash and his hand scratched his hairless chest. Giulia thought with fondness of Frank’s morning look, which originated in a universe in which people showered.

“We met a few days ago, Mr. Larabee. I’m investigating the disappearance of Joanne Philbey.”

Score one for years of experience at reading people. Larabee must not be called “Mr.” too often. His mouth curved upward on the left side a quarter inch. He didn’t abandon his defensive posture, but his arm muscles ramped down their level of clench.

“Yeah, I remember you. The Bible-salesman detective. What do you want at this hour? I work second shift, and I’m not in the mood for an interrogation.”

“This won’t take long. May I offer you a cup of coffee?” She extended the extra cup she’d bought at the local coffee shop.

The steam floated toward his face. “Yeah. Thanks.” He popped off the plastic lid and took a long drink.

Giulia’s tongue curled at the thought of his scalded taste buds, but he didn’t blink once. “One cream and one sugar. Good guess.”

He didn’t invite her inside this time either, despite the early hour and the neighbor three doors down taking a long time to close his garage door while looking their way.

She kept to the half-truth, half-lie she’d chosen while waiting in the car. “I see your Facebook page is down.”

All his muscles clenched again. After treating Giulia to several seconds of his opinions of Joanne’s friends, he downed more coffee.

“Getting doxxed would cause that reaction in most people,” Giulia said.

“No shit. So far you’re the only one who seems to have figured out that limerick. I haven’t seen any fat women hiding behind the cows next door or posting signs on my lawn.”

What a charmer. Giulia put on her polite yet neutral smile. Would that be Polite Smile Number Three or Four? She really should keep a list.

“I’d like to ask about the online dating site geared to Preppers. It’s so hard to find the right person these days, isn’t it? You wouldn’t believe some of the photographs and video clips I’ve received.” She made a disgusted face. “My mother keeps telling me about the nice young men at her church, but never again. Been there, done that, still drinking away the memory.”

Three…two…one. The wall between them didn’t crumble but it thinned enough to allow conversation.

“Heh. I don’t know if you’re an uptight broad, but I got four striptease videos. They were all skanks, but they gave me a great free show.”

Giulia didn’t even grit her teeth or count to ten in Latin. She must have been getting better at this detective gig.

He finished his coffee. “I needed this. My car cooler has a leak and the beer I stashed in it yesterday got lukewarm. My mouth tasted like last week’s garbage all the way home.” The neighbor across the street dragged her trash can to the curb, her eyes on Larabee and Giulia the entire time.

“Nosy cow,” Larabee muttered. “You done with your coffee?”

“Yes.”

“Gimme the cup.” He shook the dregs out of both cups and tucked them in his back pocket.

“I can take them back to my car and throw them away later,” she said. DNA possibilities existed on his cup.

He might be thinking the same, if she was reading subtext in his answer. “Don’t you compost your paper?”

Without missing a beat, Giulia said, “Sure, once I rinse them out.”

He nodded. “Next time, run them under hot water and separate the seams. They layer better. We won’t have the luxury of hot water when the world falls apart, but we won’t be using paper cups after that anyway.”

Two girls in Catholic school uniforms piled into a black SUV in the next driveway, followed by a woman in a business suit and running shoes. The girls waved out the windows. Larabee didn’t acknowledge them.

A barely audible woman’s voice came from the meadow side of Larabee’s house. He must have had a window open, because the noise sounded like one of the actors on the local TV channel’s all-night cop show marathon. Larabee had a hidden TV. So much for his stated intention of going off grid if he wasn’t stuck living here and forced to use city power.

“So, yeah, you want to know about me and Josie online. It’s like this. I don’t go for fat chicks, but Josie was great to hang around with. Then she dropped some weight, and I figured it was time to make my move, but she wouldn’t look at me except as a hunting buddy.” He bared his teeth at a dog being walked by yet another neighbor. “So I contacted her on that Prepper site. She was kind of surprised, but we had a real date. Played laser tag. Stupid game, only for amateurs, but it was fun to pretend we were amateurs for a couple of hours.” He squatted in front of a dandelion with leaves a foot wide and dug around it with his fingers until the entire plant came up by the roots. “We went out for a while. It was pretty good until her bitchy friends decided she was too good for me.” He held up the leafy weed. “These are good when they’re boiled.”

Giulia could match him in cooking lore. “Only if you use plenty of water to counteract the bitterness.”

He made a “point to you” gesture with the dandelion.

“Why didn’t you tell me about dating Joanne via the internet when I was here the other day?” Giulia said.

“I don’t know you. Private eye is one step removed from cop. I don’t want the cops here again. It’s bad for my career.”

“It’s bad for Joanne. She’s still missing.”

“Josie’s dead. Her sister should have used her money to hire one of those dogs trained to sniff out corpses instead of giving it to you.”

“What about the Beaver Falls Prepper community? The Home of the Horn.”

He flinched. Another successful long shot. Larabee fit the “stud looking for his personal Pelvis of the Future” profile.

“It took me months of proving I was good enough before they’d give me a trial. They’re a closed group. They kicked me out; said I wasn’t a team player.” He described Alex’s bunch in a succinct unflattering phrase. “How’d you find out about them?”

“I’m a detective. It’s what we do.”

He stepped backward into his living room. “Get off my property. I’m fed up with strangers accusing me of shit. I told you everything you needed to know last time.”

Giulia stood her ground, pleased with the extra space between them. “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Larabee.”

“Bitch.” The door slammed. A cow mooed.

She didn’t laugh until she’d driven around the corner out of sight.

Thirty-Four

The white-haired crocheter at Sunset Shores’ reception desk remembered Giulia’s name after two attempts.

“Our morning chef should be free before nine. Why don’t you look at the lovely handmade items in our craft room while you wait?”

Always ready to maintain goodwill, Giulia entered the glass-walled craft area, but positioned herself to intercept Chef Eddie as soon as he appeared. She admired lacy blankets, shelves of matching gloves and hats, endless slippers, and some imaginative knitted neckties. Before she gave in to the temptation to purchase a metallic silver tie covered with Kelly green shamrocks to startle Frank, the kitchen door opened and Chef Eddie came out.

The receptionist waved her multi-ringed hand at him as Giulia advanced. In such a public situation, he couldn’t pretend not to see her, but the look on his face implied he’d rather be at the dentist.

Giulia put on the smile she reserved for clients and witnesses she needed to charm. “Good morning. I promise this will only take a few minutes.”

His answering smile was not a success.

“May we go out to the gazebo?”

He glanced at the receptionist, whose crochet hook held a loop of pink yarn suspended in mid-air. The woman winked at Eddie. His smile faltered and tried to regroup.

“Sure.” He led the way out the back door and didn’t speak again until they were under the gazebo roof. “Evelyn thinks you’re chasing me.”

“She seems to approve.”

“Unfortunately, yes. I mean, not that you’re not good-looking, I mean…” His hands floundered in the air.

Giulia’s smile widened. “I know what you mean. She’s the matchmaker of the place?”

“One of them. Every morning they huddle like vultures over a fresh kill, planning the lives of all the staff and residents they think need romance. Or the ones whose current romance doesn’t meet their standards.”

“If they only could keep a dozen cats apiece, right?”

He shuddered. “I’m allergic to the hell beasts. The manager’s found three illegal cats in this place because I started sneezing when a cat hair-covered old lady sat near me.” He looked over at a group of men and women in shorts and t-shirts doing modified yoga on the lawn in front of one of the condos. “What else can I tell you about Joanie? There’s no other reason you’d come back here.”

“Have you ever seen the Jimmy Stewart movie
The Shop Around the Corner
?”

For a moment his body language said “fight or flight,” but only for a moment. He dragged off his chef hat. “How’d you find out?”

Giulia said for the second time that morning, “I’m a detective. It’s a job requirement.”

Eddie picked at an invisible piece of food on the hat brim. “I didn’t kill Joanie.”

“I’m not accusing you. You don’t see the police here with me.”

His head jerked up. “You’re serious.”

“Yes. I’m still working from the premise that Joanne is alive. What happened between you two when you contacted her through the dating site?”

The sight of the strong man cringing opposite her said more than he realized.

“You’re right. I tried the
Shop Around the Corner
thing because Joanie was always too busy to notice me. I was her colleague, but that was it. We didn’t have anything in common outside of work. My cat thing was a deal-breaker, plus I don’t hunt.” He twisted the hat around one hand, then untwisted it. “I sort of altered a picture of me to look buff, because I knew Joanie was working out. She recognized me and sent me this God-awful message.”

The joys of letting the witness think she knew nothing. “She was angry?”

“No, she was…kind. It sucked. The next morning, she winked at me when she came in, like we were friends sharing a secret. Friends. Neither of us mentioned the messages again. It was like they never happened.”

If anyone had ever looked like someone kicked their puppy, Eddie was that person.

“Did Joanne ever talk to you about other men she met on dating sites?”

His laugh was bitter. “Oh, yeah. A bunch of hunters and a couple of guys who were all about how the world was going to end any minute now. One of them came to pick her up here at work, and I recognized him from some group hunting weekend pictures she showed me.” His hands smoothed the hat out on his lap with little success. “You’re a woman. Maybe you know. Why was Joanie so insecure about herself when at least two of her friends were all ready to take it to the next level?”

“Every woman is different. I can’t speak to Joanne’s reasons for lack of self-confidence, other than she thought she was too heavy.”

The hat got another wring. “I hate Hollywood and supermodels and fashion designers.”

Giulia stood. Maudlin was her signal to exit. Eddie raised his face to hers, which emphasized the kicked-puppiness. “You really think Joanie’s run off with some rifle-toting jerk with a big dick? Excuse me.”

“I think it’s a strong possibility.”

Hope erased some of the plaintiveness from his face. “That would be awesome. You don’t want to know all the nightmares I’ve been having of her body sliced up and dumped in the woods.”

“I might advise watching fewer
CSI
reruns.”

“Yeah.”

She recorded the interview on her phone while still in the parking lot. Chef Eddie might be further down on her list of suspects, but he wasn’t off it. The lost little boy act meant nothing to her after ten years of teaching high school.

Joanne’s landlord gave Giulia no trouble about letting her into the apartment on short notice, but since he was out of town he sent his minion to unlock the door. His hungover minion. Giulia thanked him in a low voice. He grunted, keeping his head still. When they got out of the elevator on the third floor,
SportsCenter
on maximum volume slammed into their ears. The minion whispered something unprintable.

“I’ll be in the first floor office.” He winced and lowered his voice below a whisper. “Knock when you’re done.”

She closed the door on ESPN and started with the kitchen. First the cabinets above the counter, then the drawers below it. Nothing hidden in the dishes and silverware. Nothing secreted in the complete set of high-end pots and pans.

Oh, how Giulia coveted those pots and pans. But she moved on without Googling the manufacturer’s website and fainting at the prices. Nothing hidden in the oven or broiler or refrigerator or freezer.

On to the bathroom. Sink, cabinet, towel shelves, toilet. Nothing in the tank or under the tank lid. You couldn’t trust movies to give you useful clues anymore.

Bedroom. She ripped apart the bed and shoved the mattress off the box spring. Again, the movies lied to her. Nothing hidden between them or in the pillow cases. Nothing tucked in the boots in the closet or the pockets of the shirts or jeans or the few pieces of clothing in the dresser drawers.

At this point, Giulia wasn’t sure whether she was grateful for only one more room to search or aggravated at coming up blank. She must be right. She must have missed something. She was going to find it.

Into the living room. She opened every single DVD. A plastic sandwich bag containing three hundred dollars was taped inside the cover of
Disaster Movie
. She made a note in her phone to let Diane know about her sister’s emergency money.

All the other DVDs came up blank. So did the picture frames when she took them apart. So did the first two bookshelves.

But when she shook out a paperback titled
A Devil in the Details
, a folded invoice for cake decorating supplies fell to the floor. A flow chart covered the back.

“Giulia Driscoll, you need to recognize the obvious when it’s beating you over the head.”

She sat cross-legged on the carpet and unfolded the paper. A hand drawn grid covered the back of the invoice.

The name “Joanne” with a red line through it headed two lists of words. The first: Bean, Muscles for brains, Challenge, House, Prepared. The second list: Cucumber (with a star after it), Charismatic, Land, Charm, Honest, Allure. “Joanne” without a line through it topped the third list: Zucchini?, Ego, Hard work, Talent, Future, Shift.

Giulia’s first thought was how to break to Diane that the police were two-thirds right about Joanne wanting to start a new life. Her second was how even naïve Giulia a few years back would’ve figured out what “bean,” “cucumber,” and “zucchini” stood for.

Her third was to thank Joanne in her heart for keeping all her secrets in one place. All three vegetables’ names and phone numbers were on the bottom of the sheet: Lou Larabee, Alex Sila, and Kurt Warfield.

She un-pretzeled herself and grabbed her iPad from her messenger bag. The stiff kitchen chairs didn’t do much for her back, but she stayed at the table to get on to the internet. Not five minutes later, the money Driscoll Investigations spent on the complete Whitepages phone plus address lookup site proved its value again. “Lou Larabee” and the Louis Larabee Giulia had twice interviewed were indeed the same person. Hooray for day jobs requiring their employees to have a phone.

“Alex-with-a-star Sila” might be Alex the wild-eyed gardener. Better than a fifty-fifty chance for that because of the Larabee match. She could research this Alex back home on a real computer, so his name went into the hold queue.

“Kurt-with-a-question-mark Warfield” had a number that led to a cell phone with the carrier’s canned voice message. If Kurt thought not recording his own voice message kept him anonymous, he was about to lose faith in the concept of privacy.

She stepped around the stack of books from the successful shelf and took a closer look at the photographs themselves, not at what might be hiding behind them. No clues there. All the pictures were of Joanne and Diane or Joanne hunting, but not with any men.

Where else would a photograph hide? Giulia had stopped her search when she found the chart hidden in the paperback with the pointed title. Like the money hidden in the DVD with the pointed title. Therefore…

She read the rest of the titles on the shelf with the chart in her hand. Ego and talent. Hard work. Not Jane Austen, she failed on ego. None of the erotica titles were suggestive enough. At the far end, a werewolf romance and a ghost mystery sandwiched a biography of Oscar Wilde. The only biography on the entire bookshelf. Thank you, Mr. Wilde, for being talented and possessing a massive ego.

The picture fell out from between the tipped-in set of glossy photos of Wilde in the middle of the book. Joanne standing next to a tall blond dressed in an extravagant military uniform. For half a second, Giulia thought, “Armed forces?” until she saw the stage makeup. The back of the picture read, “
Carmen
, closing night, March 6th.”

And thank you, Joanne, for labeling your photographs. She returned to her iPad and searched for local opera companies performing
Carmen
this past March.

Cottonwood didn’t have its own opera company, only the local theater where she and Frank still played flute and cello in the orchestra pit on occasion. However, Pittsburgh boasted two and, yes, one of them ran
Carmen
from February twentieth through March sixth. A few clicks brought up the cast. Don José: Kurt Warfield, Tenor.

Never trust a tenor. Every musical theater director had said this during rehearsals, and all the tenors had high-fived each other.

Noon. The tenor might be at lunch now and have his phone on. She called again.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Warfield, I’m with Driscoll Investigations. We’re looking into the disappearance of Joanne Philbey.”

“The what?” His voice cracked. He coughed twice, and when he spoke again Giulia understood the continual warnings. Even half-awake and froggy, this voice was meant to seduce. “Who are you and what are you talking about?”

At quarter to one, Giulia sat kitty-corner from the tenor at his kitchen breakfast bar. She sipped chilled orange blossom tea and nibbled a lemon cookie. The tenor dunked Oreos in milk.

“I can only indulge my childhood on days I’m not performing.” He held the cookie in the milk to let it soften. “Dairy coats my throat and cuts half an octave off my range.”

They talked musical theater, favorite pieces, closing night pranks they’d pulled, and ones they’d been the victim of. Kurt’s voice remained impressive even when sabotaged by dairy products. Framed posters of his shows hung on every wall Giulia could see. The apartment’s decorating scheme consisted of black, white, and crimson. Checkered tile. Three white walls and one black. Crimson area rugs. The stark contrast made Giulia restless, but the colors suited Kurt’s easy, modern clothes, poster frames, and hair.

Kurt stopped at five cookies. “Oreos are the perfect indulgence, but my fans don’t want to see a spare tire on Otello.” He sealed the package of cookies. “You’re patient. I like you. You didn’t jump down my melodious throat as soon as you walked through the door.”

Giulia sipped tea. Charmers, in her experience, didn’t do well with silence.

He unfolded his napkin. “You remind me of the nuns in the boarding school my parents tossed me in when they got divorced. They were decent.”

Giulia didn’t offer any of her own personal information. She recognized the double meanings in his words. She used the technique herself. He re-folded the napkin. The current moment of silence lasted less than five seconds.

“You’re probably wondering why I was asleep at noon on a Monday. I teach high school chorus and give private voice lessons. In the summer it’s only private lessons. I get to sleep in.” He drank the rest of the milk, complete with saturated cookie crumbs on the bottom of the glass. “You may not believe I didn’t know Joanne disappeared, but that’s not my problem.” He paused. “Maybe it is my problem. Do the police think she’s still alive? Are they looking for kidnapping suspects?” The cookies appeared to stick in his throat. “Do they think I’m involved?”