Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (21 page)

Forty-One

Giulia grabbed clean clothes and shed the towels in the bathroom. A minute later she pushed her phone into her jeans pocket. “Ready.”

Without a word, Mac led her upstairs to the empty bedroom and closed the door.

“They went for a walk before breakfast after they called me up here. Lucy’s downstairs making the bacon and asparagus frittatas for me. It’s in the bathroom.”

Prepared for almost anything, the black shoe prints on the bathroom wall were something of a letdown.

“They dirtied the wall and wanted to apologize in person?”

“No. They said that a series of muffled thumps woke them in the middle of the night, but they went back to sleep. This morning, they found these prints on the wall.”

Thanks to no deadbolts on the first floor doors, all suspects remained on the table. Giulia wanted to smash the delicate bud vase on the windowsill.

“You’re thinking ghosts?” she said.

“Of course I am.” Mac’s voice slashed across the
g
-word. “You need to read this.” She fished a pamphlet out of her apron pocket and shoved it at Giulia. “I didn’t give you the history of the land because I thought it had no bearing on my family haunting. I was wrong.” She grabbed two handfuls of gray hair and yanked. “You’ve got to stop this. Please. You’re clergy. Can’t you exorcise it?”

Giulia didn’t have the hour it would take to explain. She said, “We will stop it,” and led the way out of the bedroom. Mac headed downstairs but Giulia turned around and took photos of the shoeprints, which were on the wall facing the toilet. She sat on the toilet lid and tried to reach the wall.

Her feet fell short by a few inches, but anyone five foot nine or so could have made it. Last, she dragged two fingers over the corner of one of the marks.

She sniffed the dark residue and rubbed her fingers together. Shoe polish. Two years polishing the retired nuns’ shoes had ingrained that smell and feel into her mind for life.

Nine o’clock. The aroma of brewing coffee reached this floor. CeCe said from behind her door, “Come on, honey. It’s our favorite vacation breakfast.”

Giulia sprinted downstairs.

Joel looked next to and around and behind Giulia. “Where’s Frank?”

“Network crash. He’s driving to the rescue as we speak.”

Gino raised his coffee cup in a salute. “More bacon for me.”

“All bacon is shared between us,” Joel said. To Giulia, he added, “We wrote it into our marriage vows.”

Giulia sipped the thin coffee. “That might be the most sensible marriage vow I’ve ever heard.”

Mac and Lucy served frittatas with a side of hash browns and a lemon-blueberry muffin.

Giulia said to CeCe, “Every breakfast I make after this will be completely inadequate.”

“I know, right?” CeCe elbowed her husband. “This one makes up a grocery list every year for when we get home. So every year I tell him I look forward to seeing him in the kitchen.”

Giulia made polite conversation with the new arrivals in between vying with Joel and Gino for the most extravagant frittata compliment. Mac’s hostessing was so professional that Giulia began studying her expressions and mannerisms to use the next time she needed a poker face.

As Mac returned post-dishes to begin her welcome and history speech, Marion and Anthony excused themselves.

“It’s our annual antiquing excursion,” Marion said, the most excited Giulia had seen her all week.

Giulia detected a lack of enthusiasm on Anthony’s part.

She tagged along on the lighthouse tour with the new couple. Mac’s speeches varied little. The suit of armor was admired, as was the new painting. Mac ad-libbed a story about it involving her great-grandfather and a record fish that got away.

They spread out along the Widow’s Walk. On this textbook June day, a handful of cotton ball clouds speckled the blue sky. Sailboats with glowing white sails skimmed across the lake. Like every other morning, kids laughed and squealed and splashed in the water to either side of the lighthouse grounds. A fresh breeze caught Giulia’s hair and clothes.

Mac leaned back against the wooden railing. “The original cap to the lighthouse was one of my great-grandfather’s frivolous touches. In keeping with the legend of the family’s black sheep, he had a weathervane cast in the image of a horse-drawn stagecoach.” She bent farther back and pointed. “If you lean back out just a little, you can see the wind blowing it in—”

With a loud
crack
the railing split apart and Mac fell.

Forty-Two

Giulia lunged and grabbed Mac’s wrists. Mac slammed against the bricks as Giulia crashed onto the gallery face first. For a second she couldn’t breathe. The next second her shoulders announced they were being ripped from their sockets. The second after that, two hysterical female voices assaulted her ears. Behind her, the new guest vented one breathy shriek after another. Below her, Mac screamed for help.

Two knees invaded her line of sight and a pair of longer arms reached down and larger hands took hold of Mac’s forearms.

“Together,” the new guy said.

“Mac, stop kicking,” Giulia said, her own voice strained. “Ready,” she said over her shoulder.

“On three. One. Two. Three.”

They pulled. Mac yelled like she’d been shot. They pulled again, and Mac’s fingernails appeared above the platform. Behind them, the breathy screams had stopped and a normal-ish voice spoke to the 911 operator.

They pulled again. Mac shut up and planted her sneakered toes onto the bricks.

Again, and Mac’s top half showed. With the fourth pull, Mac’s knees hit the gallery but her rescuers didn’t let go until her entire body overbalanced and she landed on top of Giulia.

Mac switched to a string of curses. One curse, to be specific, repeated over and over and over.

If Giulia’s shoulders weren’t quivering like Jell-O, she would’ve laughed. “Mac, please get off me.”

“I can’t.” A different curse this time. “My wrists are broken.”

Giulia’s rescue partner stepped in. “Mine aren’t.” He hauled Mac up by her armpits.

Mac sat next to Giulia, wrists flopped on the wooden walkway. “What the hell just happened?”

“The railing broke.” Giulia leveraged herself into a sitting position, her shoulders protesting at every inch.

“Impossible. Matthew was up here two weeks ago to replace a split board. He said everything was good and solid.”

Giulia pointed to the fresh gap with a grimace. Mac turned her head and cursed again.

An ambulance siren came nearer. They all stopped trying to talk until the driver pressed the off switch. Giulia got to her feet, checked a part of the railing closer to the house and leaned over.

“We’re at the top of the lighthouse!”

A deep male voice said, “Hello?”

Giulia, Mac, and the other couple all yelled, “We’re at the top of the lighthouse!”

Equipment rattling and footsteps on the asphalt, then just the rattling as two EMTs ran across the grass.

“We’re at the top of the lighthouse,” Giulia called a third time.

They looked up, looked at each other, looked up again. “Please tell us you don’t need a stretcher up there.”

Giulia looked at Mac, who shook her head.

“No,” Giulia said. “We think it’s broken wrists.”

“Coming up.” They vanished through the lake-facing door and the sound of their boots echoed up the spiral stairs.

The new guests waited for the EMTs to squeeze onto the gallery. “We’ll get out of your way,” they said and crowded through the opening and downstairs.

“Mac, you’re giving us a lot of business lately,” the EMT with the deep voice said. “What happened now?”

Mac and Giulia took turns telling the story.

The first EMT took charge of Mac. The other EMT inspected Giulia’s shoulders.

“They’re not dislocated. You work out, I can tell. You strained pretty much every muscle and tendon you own, though. Let me see your ribs.” He pulled up Giulia’s shirt and palpated her flesh while she tried not to yelp. “No splinters. Some abrasion. You’re going to want to get checked at the ER. Nothing’s broken, but I’m feeling a couple of bruised ribs.”

His partner said, “We hit the dislocation lottery over here. Left shoulder and wrist. Abrasions on the ribs and legs, but they can wait ’til we get on solid ground.”

Mac’s EMT helped her stand and fit through the opening to the catwalk. Giulia stood with a little help and followed.

The trip downstairs was a slow one. The EMTs sighed in unison when they stepped off the final stair.

“Oh, solid ground, how I love you,” Giulia’s EMT said.

“Thank you for coming up to help us,” Giulia said. “We’re not at our most flexible this morning.”

“Neither rain nor snow nor heights which rightfully belong to the birds can keep us from rescuing damsels in distress.”

Giulia laughed and clutched her side. “Ow.”

“Into the ambulance with you.”

“I think you’re right.”

Giulia climbed into the idling vehicle next to Mac, who was on a gurney with her EMT checking her blood pressure. The ambulance started with a jerk and the siren cranked up a moment later. Mac and Giulia cringed.

Mac’s EMT banged on the partition. “Turn it off, Jim.”

Silence followed a few seconds later.

“Thanks,” Giulia said.

Small town emergency rooms had that generic hospital smell of disinfectant and body fluids and cheap cafeteria food, but they also had one thing over ERs in bigger towns: No crowds. Giulia made it through intake, treatment, and release in a little over an hour. Armed with hospital packets of ibuprofen and a bottle of water, she chose one of the identical uncomfortable plastic waiting room chairs.

No sign of Mac, but over the tinny paging system calls someone was yelling behind the treatment hallway’s double doors. Giulia didn’t dwell on the treatment for dislocated shoulders and broken wrists.

A perky morning show blathered on the wall-mounted TV. Giulia didn’t want to text Frank and worry him, so she reached for her phone to write a memo about this incident and figure out the possibility of everyone’s involvement. It took a lot of hate or greed or both to craft a fatal “accident” like that.

Her pants pocket crackled. Right.

The pamphlet Mac had given her. She pulled it out and tried to smooth it against her thigh.

Haunted Conneaut Lake.

Not more hauntings. For the first time in her life, Giulia considered boycotting Halloween.

To block out the endless
pings
preceding “Doctor Whatsyourname, please call extension one-oh-one,” she opened to the table of contents of the sixteen-page stapled booklet.

Page 1: The Conneaut Lake Monster

Page 3: Natalie Hopewell and Her Poisoned Pecan Pie

Page 7: The Crows in the Church Tower

Page 10: The Three Brothers of Silas Fisher

Page 13: Widow Burke’s Revolutionary War Battle

Given the titles, she went with the penultimate story.

“In 1819, Silas Fisher built a sprawling house on the shore of Conneaut Lake for himself, his wife, their seven children, two pointers, and two retrievers. The family lived by hunting and fishing, and prospered until Silas’ three elder brothers arrived without warning in December of 1822.

“Luke, the eldest, kept a sight too coy about their appearance for Silas’ liking. But family was family, and Silas wouldn’t turn a dog out of doors with winter settling in for a four-month stay.”

No artist herself, Giulia tried to admire the woodcut-style illustration of a large family reading from a Bible around a huge fireplace. But no humans really had bulbous heads with solid demon eyes. When she counted three feet on one of the men and multiple arms on two of the children, she repressed a desire to watch the perky talk show and continued to read.

Blah, blah, blah, evil brothers, bored wife, scared children. Scared dogs. That was new. She found herself hoping for the timely appearance of that Conneaut Lake version of Nessie.

“The showdown happened in the early hours of the morning of February third. Silas’ oldest daughter, Charity, ran barefoot and in her nightdress through a quarter-mile of snowdrifts to one neighbor’s house. She carried her youngest sister in her arms. At the same time, the middle brother, John, carried his two youngest brothers to the neighbors on the opposite side, half a mile away. All the children were in nightclothes and weeping in terror.”

Giulia gave a fifty percent chance to Silas murdering his brothers with the help of the oldest boys, thirty percent to Silas catching his wife Lusilla in bed with one of the brothers and shooting both, ten percent to the three brothers murdering Silas and his wife, and ten percent to the murder of Silas alone and Lusilla casting her lot with one of the brothers.

Great. Now she was thinking in phrases as cliché as the tripe in her hands.

A soap opera had replaced the perky morning show. Giulia kept with the booklet as the lesser of two evils.

Blah, blah, blah, dead bodies everywhere. She flipped the page, but that turned out to be the first page of the final story. Flipping back, she read on until she reached the important element:

“In a wooden chair pushed up against the wall sat Lusilla with open eyes, blue lips, and protruding tongue, a twisted hemp cord around her neck. Mud stains from the soles of her shoes marked the wall. The middle son lay on the stair, another cord around his thin neck, marks from his shoes on the side of the packed dirt stairwell.”

Giulia flung the booklet at the wall.

She was not buying this. Mac expected her to read this and believe some poor man who went insane and murdered his family two hundred years ago was replaying his last hours with such force that his dead and gone victims still left marks on the Stone’s Throw bathroom walls?

She retrieved the wrinkled booklet from the floor and read the story’s last paragraphs. Oh. One of the surviving daughters married a Stone. No denying every generation of Stones had plenty of eligible sons and daughters to go around.

Her shoulder registered a delayed protest at the fling. Guess she’d better not put off taking the ibuprofen any longer.

A nurse wheeled Mac through the double doors as Giulia screwed the cap back onto the water bottle. The nurse parked Mac at the front desk and brought papers on a clipboard over to her. Mac signed them with her right hand. As Giulia came nearer, she saw the dark blue sling around her left arm and the Ace bandage on that same wrist.

“Hey, Mac. Would you like me to call for a taxi?”

Mac handed all the papers back to the nurse. “I’ve already called Lucy. She should be here in a few minutes. Help me out of this contraption, please.”

“Ms. Stone,” the nurse said, “the hospital has a policy.”

“Bullcrap,” Mac said. “I haven’t been admitted and I’ve signed myself out. You have no say over what I do.”

Giulia took her imperious upraised arm and helped her stand. The nurse backed the wheelchair out of range.

Mac took a second to adjust the sling, pointing a warning finger at the nurse who advanced to help.

“There. Stupid contraption. I apologize for all the yelling back there. You people did a great job getting me to a state where I can still run my business.”

The nurse who had wheeled her into the emergency waiting area returned with a bag of supplies. “Use these, Ms. Stone, or you’ll end up back here needing surgery. This is a snap-and-go ice pack. Use one twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off for the rest of the day on both injuries. Tomorrow you can go a little longer between icings, but use your judgment if the swelling gets too much. There’s also ibuprofen for the pain and swelling. Keep your shoulder and wrist as motionless as possible. The more you follow these rules, the quicker you’ll get out of the sling. Don’t forget to follow up with your primary physician in a week.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I’ve taken care of myself for most of my seventy-four years. I can handle this too.”

The nurse dropped her professional smile as soon as Mac turned away. Giulia winked at the nurse and followed Mac to the sliding doors.

“Nothing’s broken after all?” Giulia said, breathing air free of disinfectant.

“No, thank God. I don’t know how you managed it, but only my left wrist and shoulder are dislocated. Guess that side took the brunt of your grab.”

Giulia counted to ten in Latin again. “You’re welcome.”

“Here’s Lucy.” Mac stepped toward a rusted Volkswagen Rabbit.

But it was Walter behind the wheel.