Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (17 page)

Thirty-Three

Criminals must have taken the day off, because for the first time in months Giulia wasn’t deafened by screaming lowlifes as soon as she entered the police station.

The Bond Girl was a vision in teal today, from eyeshadow to fingernails to form-fitting sundress. Giulia had no doubt her pedicure matched as well.

“Katelyn,” Giulia said, “I keep expecting your lipstick to match no matter what.”

The receptionist pouted. “It did before I left the house, Ms. Driscoll, but my fiancé said only clowns wear that color on their lips.”

Giulia planted her elbows on the desk. “Did I hear the ‘f’ word?”

Katelyn’s rose-tinted lips parted in a wide smile. She held up her left hand. The round diamond set in a circle of diminutive blue, pink, yellow, and green diamonds caught the fluorescent light like a laser show.

“I sort of keep staring at it and forgetting to work.”

“It’s gorgeous. Congratulations. When’s the wedding?”

“Not ’til next summer. We have tons of family who have to make travel plans. I sent him out to find extra-strength condoms so we don’t have even the slightest chance of me getting pregnant. I’ve got the clingiest gown picked out. His ex-girlfriends and my ex-boyfriends will die from envy.” The smile turned a shade evil.

Giulia laughed. “Make sure your friends take pictures.”

“I’ve already got my photo brigade on alert.” She pressed a button on her multi-line phone. “Captain Reilly? Ms. Driscoll is here.”

The young man and older woman in handcuffs at separate desks ignored Giulia as she passed them. The detectives all waved at her. Jimmy met her at the door of his office.

“Giulia, we finally have a quiet day for your visit.”

She pecked his cheek. “I don’t know how to handle it.”

When he closed them into his office, he said, “That Jane you sent over for me to interview handled it like a pro. We had three meth-cooking morons in here when she came. The usual: Swearing, making threats, trying to get out of the cuffs to fight each other over whose fault the bust was. She never blinked. One of them made a crack about her hair and she came back with a putdown that actually shut the moron up.”

“I told you she was good. If I didn’t have Sidney I’d hire her, but no one can replace Sidney.” She sat down.

Jimmy pulled out his chair. “She’s not you, but she’s got what it takes. I’m plowing through the mountain of paperwork the City requires. It’ll be my last assistant-less act.”

A single knock at the door and Jimmy opened it on a tall, thin, bald man with flappy ears.

“Ed, thanks for coming. This is Giulia Driscoll, head of Driscoll Investigations. Giulia, Ed Stanek, District Attorney.”

Giulia shook his hand. “How are your youngest daughter’s trumpet lessons progressing?”

Stanek winced. “She stays on key about half the time now. Marsha says if I buy earplugs I’ll scar my daughter for life. Does my wife care about my protesting eardrums? No.”

Jimmy glanced from one to the other. “Didn’t know you’d met.”

Giulia said, “Remember that baby kidnapping case a few years back? We worked out my testimony over lots of coffee and pie at his house. His wife makes a pear and cherry pie to die for.”

“I’ll pass on your compliment.” Stanek cleared a dozen file folders off a third chair and sat. “Reilly says you want an order of protection.”

Giulia summarized the Flynt investigation up to that morning’s incident. Jimmy handed him a copy of the police report.

“I doubt he’ll try anything at the office again,” Giulia said. “Not after the way we took him down. But in case he does, I’d like legal ammunition. Zane and I can take care of ourselves, but Sidney can’t, not so soon after having a baby.”

Stanek scribbled on a legal pad. “This won’t be a problem. I’ll set up a date for you to appear before one of the judges to make it official. Monday’s already shot, so…” He took a tablet out of his briefcase and opened a calendar program. “How’s Wednesday afternoon look?”

Giulia made a face. “I’m up at Conneaut Lake on a case. Email me with a firm time so I can let my people know and we’ll rearrange our schedules.”

“Good. Expect something from me tomorrow morning.” He dropped the papers, legal pad, and tablet into the briefcase and snapped it closed. “Too many assholes in the world. Speaking of, Reilly, can one of your men let me into the holding cells? A DUI with manslaughter wants to plead and his lawyer should already be back there.”

“Works for me.” Jimmy stood. “Giulia, always good to see you. Tell Frank I’ve piled so much work on his desk he won’t be able to see it.”

“With pleasure.” She shook the D.A.’s hand. “Thanks for your help. Your daughter will become a better musician soon.”

He winced again. “If only I could invent a way to speed up that process.”

Giulia pecked Jimmy on the cheek. “I’ll bring Frank back full of energy and ready to work.”

“I’ll try to have a nice, juicy homicide for him. Make him earn his keep.”

Thirty-Four

Throughout supper at the Jimmy Buffet-themed bar and grill, Giulia threatened Frank with spicy pickle spears. She also caught him up on all her research and the Flynt incident.

She added flair to Zane’s explanation of his new way to impress women, but when Frank didn’t respond, she refocused. His “Hulk Smash” air stopped her.

“Honey?”

Frank’s voice came out low and gravelly. “If I ever see Flynt in person, I will tear off his balls and shove them down his filthy throat.”

Giulia waited several seconds for the goosebumps his voice raised to subside. “Yes. Well, it’s unlikely he’ll show his face at the office, and if he has the ambition to track me down at home we both have guns.” She offered him the rest of her fries. “I’m satiated with pickles and red meat.”

They returned to Stone’s Throw in time for the evening’s cookies and iced tea.

Frank chose a lemon cookie from the tray and dialed a number on his phone as he walked through the sunroom. “VanHorne? Driscoll. Got your email. What’s up with…” His voice faded as he moved away from the house’s open windows toward the beach.

Giulia poured herself an iced tea and looked through the collection of CDs beneath the cathedral radio/CD player. Marion and Anthony sat on the couch reading together from a tablet.

“What if we sell the second cottage?” Anthony said. “We haven’t used it in two years.”

“The kids used it…no, you’re right. That was last year.”

From the corner of her eye, Giulia watched Marion sip tea and poke the tablet screen.

“The cottage won’t net enough. Look at the size of this place. We’ll have to ask Mac what her monthly operating costs are.”

Anthony glanced at Giulia, then said to Marion, “Do you think that’s a good strategy?”

Marion’s voice grew sly. “Darling, you should trust me when dealing with other women.”

Giulia opened a CD case and pretended to read the song list, made a face, and put it back.

Marion continued, “What are the comparison numbers between one with a hook, like this one, and one that’s simply another bed and breakfast?”

Giulia reshelved the CDs and clapped her hand to her pocket. She took out her phone, got up off her knees, and touched the screen as she walked slowly out of the living room.

Anthony said, “The numbers bear out my initial thought that a hook increases business by four to seven percent in any given month.”

Giulia pretended to answer the email she hadn’t received and continued into the sunroom. The soft lights in the room turned the world outside the windows solid black.

Marion and Anthony’s voices floated through the open doorway, crunching numbers, debating lakeside property versus historically significant sites versus areas with a current high tourism rate.

Giulia opened mahjong on her phone and played a game as she listened without giving any real attention to the tiles.

“The costs decrease by forty-six percent if we purchase an existing one.” Anthony ran through numbers. Marion interrupted him several times before the discussion changed to interest rates and depreciation.

After five solid minutes of this, Anthony cut his wife off in mid-sentence. “We’re missing
CSI
.” Half a minute later, they disappeared upstairs, no doubt to stream the show on the tablet.

Giulia was about ready to find Frank and drag him onto the beach for a moonlit walk.

“Oh my God.”

Mac’s voice from the kitchen area.

Giulia shelved romantic walk plans and ran through the hall and old-fashioned kitchen into the working kitchen, a narrow space filled with modern chrome appliances. Mac stood before the open refrigerator, her expression shifting between anger and disgust.

Giulia came up next to her. “What’s wrong? Oh, gross.”

Every item in the packed refrigerator was spoiled. Furry mold coated strawberries, raspberries, kiwifruit, and starfruit. Curdled lumps sloshed in the milk. Green and blue splotches marred the bread and English muffins. Stringy things floated in the maple syrup. Four egg cartons leaked sulfurous goo. Mottled black and green oranges had exploded in their see-through drawer. In another drawer, the labels on packages of more white and green fur insisted they had once held Swiss cheese. Next to them, the visible surfaces of the ham and bacon shone like gasoline slicks on asphalt.

On the counter, a cloud of fruit flies feasted on two bunches of blackened, squashy bananas. A battalion of minuscule ants covered the butter.

Mac opened the pantry.

Hundreds of bugs wriggled through the flour. Larger ants infested the sugar. The stench from the rancid walnuts and almonds clashed with the equally rancid peanut and almond butters. The brown sugar had fossilized. The coffee beans smelled dusty underneath more stale oils. The tea leaves resembled fireplace ash.

“I restocked everything yesterday,” Mac said, her voice unsteady. “All the produce, the berries, the milk and eggs. I opened that bag of coffee three days ago. I used the flour and sugar this morning.” She slammed her fists on the counter. “This morning!”

Giulia went for the defuse tactic. “The biscuits and sausage gravy tasted fine. Besides, a little extra protein never hurt anyone.”

Mac turned big eyes on Giulia; eyes like Sidney’s back when she was a bundle of stress and hormones in the third trimester.

Giulia closed the fridge. “Let’s work out the timeframe for this. What time did you go grocery shopping yesterday?”

No answer. Giulia grasped Mac’s closed fist and shook it gently. “Mac. Grocery shopping. What time?” She unhooked the magic marker from the magnetic notepad on the fridge door.

Mac blinked and her eyes returned to normal. “Uh, eleven o’clock. Maybe eleven fifteen.”

One bullet on the page. “I don’t suppose you saved the list.”

“I don’t need to. The breakfast menu is the same every week in the summer.” Mac opened her clenched hands. “I have to restock for tomorrow morning. The farmers’ market won’t be open again until next Sunday. What am I going to do? I only buy local.”

“Who has access to the kitchen?” Giulia kept the question sharp to cut through Mac’s dithering.

“Me. Lucy. Matthew to fix things or grab a drink on hot days.”

“Good. Everything was fine for breakfast. What about leftovers?”

Mac’s replies came faster now. “There weren’t any. I don’t make extra. It destroys the food budget.”

“You didn’t pour the leftover milk from the coffee tray back into the gallon container?”

“Not on warm days like this. Too big a risk to the rest of the milk.”

Mac began offering information without prompts.

Giulia wrote bullet after bullet, tearing the four-by-six pages off one after the other.

“After we cleaned up from breakfast, Lucy went on her cleaning rounds and I went to the farmers’ market. I got back here around quarter to one and loaded up the fridge. I went to my office. I wrote checks and answered email. After that, I played around with ideas for Labor Day weekend. Lucy picked up her check, I don’t know, after three sometime. I went to the kitchen for lemonade after she left. Then I made a sweep of the place and played croquet against Gino. Then supper. I came back at seven to bake the cookies. I buy premade frozen cookies, so I only have to set them on the baking sheet and turn on the oven. The iced tea was already prepared and in the fridge.”

Giulia ripped off another sheet. “So everything in the fridge was fine at seven o’clock?’

Mac’s eyebrows met. “Yes…the cookies finished at seven twenty and I set up the iced tea tray while they cooled.”

“Okay. What made you open the fridge just now?”

“Tomorrow’s breakfast is cheddar potato waffles. I set up everything the night before so it’s ready to go in case I’m a minute or two late in the morning.” She leaned against the counter. “I walk the grounds every night after I set out the cookies and drinks. It’s always beautiful under the trees and by the lake. When I came back inside to set up breakfast, I found this disaster.” She stared at the clock over the sink. “Quarter to nine, I think.” She turned on Giulia. “You were in the house. What time did you hear me discover it?”

Giulia raised her eyebrows. “I heard something wrong in your voice and followed it. I didn’t check the time.”

“No one’s perfect.”

She opened the side of the fridge without the notepad and reached for the milk.

“Stop.” Giulia put out a hand. “Fingerprints.”

Mac laughed, an unhappy sound. “Ghosts don’t leave fingerprints.”

Giulia snapped the pen back into its holder. “No ghost put that bag of slime in the shower in Marion’s room. I’m investigating targeted, tangible vandalism by living people who leave fingerprints.”

“How would a human get the level of the spoiled milk at the exact same place it was when fresh?”

Giulia made allowances for Mac’s frustration. “Is the milk at the exact same level, down to a millimeter?”

Mac started to put her face up to the plastic gallon jug, but backed away a second later. Giulia didn’t blame her. The combined odors were enough to knock over a dead opossum.

“Point to you. I don’t know the exact level. All right. The fridge is yours to examine. I have to find fresh food.”

“We might be able to help with that.” Giulia texted Frank. “Where’s the nearest supermarket? Not one in town. A nice, big, anonymous place. Maybe a Walmart.”

“No, no, no. I never buy Stone’s Throw food from anyplace other than the farmers’ market.”

Giulia made further allowances. “Tonight’s the exception. You have no food for tomorrow morning. You don’t want to create talk in town with an uncharacteristic produce-buying binge. Therefore, Walmart. Where’s the nearest gigantic one?’

“Meadville, but I only buy local, sustainable food from area farmers.”

Frank walked into the kitchen. “What’s the matter? C
ait naofa
.”

Giulia turned on her sunniest smile. “‘Holy cats’ is right. Honey, we have an emergency. Every bit of food in the fridge is spoiled and Mac needs to replace it all. Would you be Superman and drive her to the Walmart in Meadville?”

Frank opened his mouth. Giulia kept the blinding smile trained on him. He visibly regrouped. “No problem. I’ll get the car keys.”