Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1)

by Alice Loweecey

  Sidney replied with a long-suffering sigh. “Baby Brain is not a twenty-four hour condition.”

  Zane said, “Ms. Driscoll, the only reason I graduated magna cum laude instead of summa cum laude was the egregious application of the bell curve theory of grading by the programming professor in my dual major.” He cracked his knuckles. “Bring it.”

  Not a smidgen of guilt disturbed Giulia at Zane’s response. A good boss created opportunities for her employees to succeed. This wasn’t manipulation. It was Business Owner 101.

  “The lawyer’s emailing me more specifics. I’ll draw up a contract before I meet with him tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I’m going to look at those Seminarian background checks and write up that report. My goal is to scratch one thing off the to-do list by four o’clock.”

  Giulia hit “send” on the background check summary at three fifty-one. “They should put us on retainer.” She paused with her fingers hovering over the keys. “Retainer. What a beautiful word.”

  She jumped up and opened the door. “Zane, Sidney, we’re going to convince the Diocese of Pittsburgh to put us on retainer.”

  Sidney looked up.

  “Oh.” She rubbed her belly. “Mini-Sidney likes that word. It sounds like ‘regular income.’ What do you want me to do?”

  “Make up a spreadsheet with everything we’ve done for them since the very first commission they gave us. Hours, fees, and importance of projects in ascending order. When you’re done, pass it over to Zane. Zane, please crunch the numbers and come up with two different dollar amounts that will get us a decent profit but won’t cause the diocesan bookkeepers to throw holy water at me when I bargain.” Her phone alarm chimed the imminent appointment. “It’s Tuesday. Can you shoehorn it into things for Friday?”

  “No problem,” Sidney said. “It fits in with all the docs I’m writing up for the temp.”

  The office door opened.

  “Hello? I’m Jane Pierce. I have a four o’clock interview?”

  Giulia nodded. “You do indeed. I’m Giulia Falcone-Driscoll. Come this way.”

  Zane slapped another covering folder into her right hand as she passed his desk.

  Jane Pierce’s suit was straight out of the lower levels at Macy’s. A few tendrils of black hair trailed out from under a plain brown wig. Theater-quality makeup covered the back of her neck.

  Giulia forced herself not to try to stare through that makeup.

  “Before you ask,” Ms. Pierce said as she sat in Giulia’s client chair, “yes, my mother’s a distant cousin of the fourteenth first lady of the United States. The first-born girl in each generation gets the name. Yay, me.”

  Giulia said without looking up from the resume in the folder, “Teased in grade school?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Is that the reason for the hair and the neck ink?”

  Silence. Now Giulia looked up to catch the interviewee’s hand feeling the mousy wig. Jane’s body language jumped from nervous to antagonistic.

  Giulia smiled.

  “Prove to me that this online degree I see here is worth something.”

  The antagonism broke through the interview veneer. “You want to know what it’s worth? Six years of night classes while keeping a full-time job and putting a slimy, cheating ex through med school.” She leaned over the desk, stabbing the resume with her left index finger. “I pulled off the third best grade in that degree since the state university system started offering online courses.”

  Giulia outlined a hypothetical project. Ms. Pierce told her in detail how she’d handle it. Next Giulia threw a different type of project at her and chewed over her solution. Both answers fit in with the way Giulia ran DI.

  “Why are you settling for temp work?”

  “Because of that blasted hamster wheel employers like to exercise on. You can’t get a full-time job without experience. But how can I get experience if no one will hire me so I can gain some of this bright, shiny experience?” She closed her mouth so hard her teeth clicked.

  “Been there. All right. My assistant’s due date is in two weeks. Her doctor says it’s a textbook pregnancy without problems, so she’ll be here through the end of next week unless she buys a trampoline or goes for the jumping-jack record.” Giulia poked her phone calendar. “Can you come in Friday at...two-thirty to fill out paperwork? Ten dollars an hour but no benefits, sorry. Possible overtime but there’ll be warning. Two months full-time and then part-time for four more weeks while Sidney gets used to interacting with adults again.”

  When she raised her head, fingers ready to type in the appointment, Ms. Pierce was blinking at her.

  “You mean it? You’re hiring me? Don’t you need to think about it or interview ten more people?” She shook herself. “Wait...what am I saying?”

  “I know the right candidate when I see one. Ask Zane out there. He still thinks I’m from another planet. So: Yes or no?”

  “Yes. Of course yes. Holy crap.” She blushed from neck makeup line to forehead. “I beg your pardon.”

  “No worries. Friday at two-thirty then. Paperwork should take less than an hour.” Giulia typed that and opened a new appointment. “Sidney—she’s my assistant—gets in at eight-forty-five, so can you start at nine on Monday for her to train you?”

  “Good God, yes. The insurance thing doesn’t matter. I’m still on the ex’s. It was the one thing I bargained for in the divorce.”

  “Smart. Okay.” She finished the calendar entries and stood. “We have a pretty relaxed dress code. No shorts or exposed midriffs or jeans with artsy holes in them.” She held out her hand. “As long as your tattoos don’t swear or illustrate certain body parts or activities, you don’t have to cover them up. Same with the hair.”

  This handshake gave an entirely different impression. Now Giulia shook hands with a confident, happy woman, all antagonism gone.

  “That reminds me,” Giulia said. “It seems you can go undercover if we need it. That’s good. Sidney’s been out of commission for that part since her third trimester.”

  “I’ve never acted or anything like that, if you don’t count smiling at my ex-mother-in-law when I had to guard against her cleaning out my stuff along with her son’s.”

  “Everything counts.” Giulia opened her office door and walked her new employee to the frosted-glass main door. “See you Friday.”

  Five

  Frank’s brother, his wife, and their three kids left at eight-thirty p.m. The sprawling Driscoll family had embraced Giulia from that first awkward Christmas party two years earlier and Giulia loved it. Usually. Busy weeknights with impromptu family suppers? Argh. Those nights were the only times Giulia didn’t mind that nobody in her own family had spoken to her since she left the convent.

  “Frank.” Giulia leaned against the closed door of their Cape Cod-style house.

  “In here,” Frank called from the dining room, where he was attending to a red wine stain on the carpet. “After three kids, you’d think my sister would know not to pick up a full glass when the baby is in Velcro mode.”

  Frank’s voice got louder as Giulia walked through the living room into the dining room. “What are you cleaning it with?”

  “I’m still blotting.”

  “I’ll get the baking soda.” Giulia did an about-face back into the kitchen. As she mixed the correct proportion with water, she rehearsed different openings for the favor she wanted to ask.

  Frank switched positions with her and she covered the stain with baking soda paste. He tossed the pile of reddened paper towels into the kitchen trash, then snagged the remote as he plopped onto the couch.

  “There.” Giulia sat back on her heels. “I’ll vacuum that before I leave tomorrow morning.”

  Frank clicked ’til he found the Manchester United match replay. “I knew you’d put on a great meal. I’m going to sneak out of bed at midnight and make a sandwich with the leftover chicken and bacon.”

  Giulia opened the novel she was reading and sat in the
corner of the sectional couch, near her husband. She and Frank had celebrated their first anniversary last month and all the cards still made a bright display on the mantelpiece. Their mantelpiece in their house. Their couch and coffee table and just-cleaned wine-stained rug. Life did not get better than this. She knew it because she’d been through much of the worst. Besides, any day she wanted to throttle Frank was one hundred percent better than any day of her final years in the convent.

  Even today, when she’d gone into overdrive to get supper and dessert completed on time. Speaking of which...

  “Twenty-four hours’ notice would be helpful when you invite people for a meal.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, muirnín, sweetheart. Mike really wanted to pick my brain about some financial stuff and the kids love coming here, so I figured supper would be perfect for both.” He reached out with his clicker-free hand and pulled her over to his end of the couch.

  Giulia couldn’t settle in ’til she came clean. “We picked up a new job today.”

  “Damn, woman, sleep is not an optional exercise.” He kissed the top of her curls. “Is it a simple one this time?”

  “Not sure. Remember Roger Fitch? He was one of the pianists at the theater.”

  Frank made a rude noise. “You mean, do I remember the cocky guy who has a thing for strangling people with neckties?”

  This wasn’t starting out well. “That’s him. He convinced the judge that he’s the only one who can prove his innocence.”

  The rude noise repeated. “Only if he’s drawn a corrupt judge along with a smooth-talking lawyer. Isn’t the judge for his trial Pearl ‘Hang ’em High’ Ruiz? Nobody’s going to sweet-talk her.”

  Giulia blew out a breath. “You’re assuming guilt.”

  “A result of long experience.” He jerked upright and yelled at the TV screen: “No! You moron! Aim for the net, not the crossbar!”

  “Roger Fitch won’t get a Christmas card from us, but he and his lawyer have a compelling argument. His lawyer’s Colby Petit.”

  Frank stopped watching the match. “Lawyers don’t come more silver-tongued than Petit. Did he appeal to your sense of justice?”

  “Well, yes.”

  Frank’s head flopped backwards over the top of the couch. “You’re going to work yourself to death. How do I know that? Because I know that if things get tight you’ll take on all the overtime yourself rather than push your employees too far.”

  “I can’t ask them to take on extra work if I don’t do my share of it.” She did not want to have this conversation. It was their one recurring argument.

  On TV two players cleated each other and writhed like dying fish. Frank hit the mute button. “We’ve had this case from the beginning, you know. Jimmy made me lead on it when Rao got promoted.”

  Giulia beamed. “I should thank him, but he’ll only try to get me to give up the agency and come work for him, like always.”

  “He mentions it every couple of weeks. But why does it make you happy?”

  “Because I can pick your brain about it, of course.”

  “No, no, no.” Frank banged his head against the couch this time. “I swear, sometimes it was easier sharing the office with you.”

  “No, it wasn’t. You wanted to run it your way and I wanted to run it mine. You were a sleuth long before me. I can’t believe you didn’t guess that when I got my PI license we’d butt heads like elk in nature films.”

  A deep, theatrical sigh. “I was blinded by your nun aura.”

  She leaned away from him, crossed her arms, and raised both eyebrows.

  Frank bowed three times, hands flat on the couch each time. “Ex-nun. I know. Ex-nun.”

  “And don’t you forget it.” Giulia returned to her snuggle position. “About picking your brain...I’m meeting with Fitch’s lawyer tomorrow to sign papers and make everything official. Shall I call Jimmy to offer information-sharing between DI and the police?”

  “Dear God, no. I’ll never hear the end of it.” He turned the sound back on. “I’ll give you a conditional yes on the back and forth between us.”

  She kissed him. “Teamwork. We have it.”

  “Persuasion is more like it.”

  Giulia didn’t mention how Fitch was one of their prime suspects in the embezzlement scheme. Driscoll Investigations was her business now, to run as she saw fit. She never wanted to return to those days of arguing about work at work and arguing about work at home. So instead of talking any more, she climbed on top of her husband and started to massage his shoulders.

  The next morning Frank had to check ESPN to see if Man U pulled out the win.

  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 put
ting 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.