Nun Too Soon (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 1)

by Alice Loweecey

  She opened a new browser tab and brought up the Arts Weekly archives. Typing his name in the search window brought up a couple of dozen hits, mostly reviews of his plays. But the article title from the month before his Emeritus date on the theater site showed promise. She clicked it and a collage of photos popped up of a man on the order of pro basketball player Dirk Nowitzki: Scruffy blond hair, sculpted muscles, so tall other actors on stage with him looked out of proportion.

  “What a puff piece.” Giulia skimmed to the end of the article. “Come on, where is it...he moved to Chicago...blast. Two and a half months before Loriela’s murder. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the woman Fitch seduced and abandoned.”

  She opened her tablet and scrolled through the interview notes. “Thursday’s...Friday’s...There. Lacy Maples.”

  A new tab and a new Google search. “How nice of you to have a Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile, Ms. Maples.”

  Giulia started with the Facebook page. “And especially nice of you to keep so much information public without needing a friend request. Attending the International Culinary Center in New York City. Not enough. What’s on your Twitter feed?”

  Ten minutes of clicking through tweets and attached comments gave Giulia the answer. “You didn’t move out of Cottonwood ’til this past August. All right, Ms. Maples, what’s your revenge quota?” She clicked through more tweets.

  The end of March:

  @HOWARDGEEK THX FOR DRIVING ME TO THE ER. LOOKS LIKE SURGERY. #NOTFUN

  Nothing for two days, then:

  @BFFJULIE @HOWARDGEEK @BLUEEYEDDOLL I WANT PIZZA! #HOSPITALSTAY #NOTFUN

  A few more tweets complaining about food and making a food wish list for her discharge date, then on April second:

  @BFFJULIE NEWS! ROGER-THE-SCUMBAG IS IN JAIL! SEEMS HE STRANGLED THE SNOTTY BITCH. #POETICJUSTICE

  Giulia read through a four-way conversation between Maples, BFFJulie, HowardGeek, and BlueEyedDoll. Schadenfreude and rejoicing dominated the tweets for the first few days, followed by accusations of bribes and police inefficiency at Roger’s release. This culminated in great excitement from Maples: The police visited her. She bragged about her calm replies, made fun of the haircut on one of the police officers, accepted praise from her friends, and ended with:

  @BFFJULIE NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE HAPPY TO BE IN THE HOSP. CAN’T KILL YR RIVAL IF YR GETTING YR APPENDIX OUT THE DAY BEFORE. #SUX2BROGER

  Giulia scowled at the monitor. “I had hopes for you. Fine. I’ll stick with Tulley, Travers, Fitch himself, and I’ll keep an open mind about Petit ’til I can talk to him about basketball and school rivalries.”

  She opened Sidney’s and Zane’s files on the AtlanticEdge embezzlement case and started to read through them. Columns of numbers and paragraphs of her assistants’ analysis actually relaxed her.

  Zane arrived at eight-fifteen. “Ms. Driscoll?”

  “In here,” Giulia said. “I had to dodge The Scoop. They staked out my house.”

  Zane’s white-blond head popped into her doorway. “No way.”

  “They showed up last night too. Fortunately, their white van looks exactly like a creeper-mobile. We called the cops, who kicked them out of the neighborhood. They returned this morning half an hour before I usually leave for work. I wrecked part of our front lawn escaping them.”

  The rest of Zane followed his head. “Can they do that? Isn’t there a law or something?”

  “Not really. They didn’t attack me. Technically they’re reporters going after a story.”

  Zane snorted. “If they’re reporters, I’m Bill Gates.”

  Giulia laughed. “When you get settled, come tell me what you discovered about AtlanticEdge. You know, whatever you were going to tell me on Saturday before the Great Roger Catfight.”

  Sidney came in at twenty to nine and announced, “I’m not in labor and I’m ready to train my replacement.”

  Giulia applauded from her desk.

  “Mini-Sidney kept me up all weekend, so I am one cranky preggo lady.”

  Giulia called, “You couldn’t be cranky if someone paid you to do it.”

  Sidney waddled into Giulia’s doorway. “That’s what Olivier says.”

  “That’s what everyone who’s known you for more than a week says.”

  Sidney considered the idea. “If I had to stay pregnant for eleven months like Jingle and Belle, I might be inspired to crankiness.”

  “You would be entitled.”

  Zane said in a pleading voice, “You’re giving me the gross-outs with this pregnancy talk.”

  Sidney mouthed something unintelligible at Giulia, but Giulia knew they were thinking the same thing because their grins were identical. Giulia pulled out her tablet and logged onto The Before and After Shop’s website. When she had the image she wanted, she brought the tablet out to Zane.

  “Let me introduce you to placenta art.”

  Twenty-Eight

  Zane’s face shifted from incredulous to horrified to nauseated.

  Giulia and Sidney laughed.

  “I’m totally making a print from mini-Sidney’s placenta,” Sidney said. “Giulia gave me the kit at my baby shower.”

  The door opened and Jane Pierce came in, dressed in black trousers and a bright red sweater.

  “Someone normal,” Zane said. “Thank the gods. Come here, please, and prove I’m not alone in the world. Have you ever heard of...this?”

  “Of what?” Jane walked up to Giulia and Sidney.

  Giulia turned her tablet to face Jane, without explaining the image.

  “Oh, yeah. Placenta art. My tattoo artist transfers them onto mothers in whatever size they want.”

  Zane escaped to his desk, placing his monitor between himself and the three women. “I am scarred for life.”

  Giulia tried to stop grinning and failed. “I love my job. Jane, I’m extremely relieved you showed up. Zane—good Heavens, you two rhyme. I promise not to start giving instructions in iambic pentameter. Zane, I forgot to ask you to make up a timesheet for Jane.”

  “Did it Friday before I left.”

  “Anticipating my needs again. And yet you still question my hiring acumen. Sidney, I leave Jane in your hands.”

  “No prob. Pull up my client chair, Jane. There’s a lot to learn, but I promise it’s all organized.”

  Giulia turned a wide-eyed, incredulous gaze on her.

  Sidney made a repentant face. “Mostly organized.”

  Zane stood. “I can tell you the discovery now, Ms. Driscoll.”

  “Excellent. Come into my sanctum.”

  Zane dragged Giulia’s client chair around next to Giulia’s own desk chair. “You’re already reading it?”

  “It’s a sanity break from The Roger Fitch Show.”

  “Okay. Close those files and bring up the surveillance videos.”

  “Which ones?” Giulia clicked several windows closed.

  “Start with the week of November fifth, two years ago.”

  She double-clicked on the requested video file. Sharp black-and-white digital footage showed her the tops of several heads in the bookkeeping department, plus their desks and computer monitors. The screens pixilated, but otherwise all the elements were crisp and identifiable.

  Zane pointed to a shaved brown head. “That’s Leonard Tulley. He’ll get up and go over to Loriela Gil’s desk...now.”

  Tulley stood and walked to a larger desk in front of a wide window. Loriela Gil looked up and appeared to listen to and answer a question. She smiled without sincerity, the careful expression of an impersonal manager dealing with a subordinate.

  “She doesn’t like him,” Giulia said. “When I spoke with him on Thursday, I got the impression he was jealous of losing his chance at her to Fitch.”

  Zane brought his face closer to the screen. “I don’t see that.”

  “That’s okay. What next?”

  “Week of December fifteenth, same year.”

  In this video, Loriela bent over a
redhead’s desk. Giulia leaned away from the screen and narrowed her eyes. “Is that...yes, it is. Autumn Tate.” Tate’s fingers whitened on the pen she held. Loriela’s index finger poked at the printouts on Tate’s desk. She poked again and again, while Tate nodded and her fingers gripped tighter and tighter.

  “She’s one of my original five embezzlement suspects...If Loriela rode her like that, she may have stolen to prove she was smarter than her boss thinks.”

  “That’s why I pulled this week,” Zane said. “She wasn’t on my list originally, but look at this progression.”

  For the next half-hour, Zane piled video on top of video. Len Tulley spent an inordinate part of each week hovering at Loriela’s desk. Her smiles never got warmer. As the surveillance dates closed in on the last week of March before her murder, she stopped bothering to hide her impatience with Tulley.

  Giulia opened the accounting files that corresponded with the last three months before Loriela’s death.

  “Zane, have you worked some analysis magic that connects Loriela’s emasculation of Tulley to the embezzlement? Please say yes.”

  In reply, Zane got out of the chair and went to the connecting doorway. “Sidney, can you explain what you think you found with the surveillance videos and the purchase orders?”

  “If I can heave myself out of this chair...Thanks, Jane.” The sound of casters and a chair thumping against the wall. “You come too.”

  Both women lined up behind Giulia.

  “Oh, you’ve already got the ledgers up.” Sidney read the dates. “Not those. Go back to two summers earlier. We saw something that coincided with a Fourth of July sale of their retail stock.”

  Giulia minimized all the open files and found the ones for the end of the July Sidney wanted.

  “Whoever designed their bookkeeping system is either clueless or devious,” Sidney said. “We went for clueless first, because they still do business transactions with paper checks. But Zane came up with two companies a little bigger than AtlanticEdge who are still into paper too. So we voted for devious because, well, they had to hire us. See the multiple entries for software purchases the last week of June? Now go to the scanned purchase orders for that same week. Good. Now open the check images from the bank deposit.”

  Giulia manipulated all three windows until they crowded side by side on her monitor. “What am I looking for? No, don’t tell me. Let me see if I can spot it.”

  She stared at one after the other. The ledger entries added up, at least in her head. When she enlarged the check images she compared the numerical dollar amounts versus the handwritten amounts.

  “I didn’t realize AtlanticEdge sold to this many smaller local businesses, but it makes sense. They’re big on keeping money in the community.”

  She turned her scrutiny on the purchase orders. “The numbers match. The delivery dates match the entries in the ledger. The dollar amounts match.” She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Too much staring at computer screens. Give me a second. Sidney, do you need to sit down?”

  “Kinda. My ankles keep puffing up like water balloons.”

  Zane gave up the client chair to her. Jane dragged over Giulia’s empty trash can and placed it upside down under Sidney’s feet.

  “Ohhhh, yes. That’s what they needed.” Sidney eased herself into a slouch. “This’ll calm my back for about fifteen minutes.”

  “I promise not to take that long,” Giulia said. “You’ve challenged me. Nobody say anything until I either spot something or give up.”

  She enlarged the first purchase order by date and its companion check. They looked identical to her. The next ones. Same result. She got through ten when the phone rang.

  Zane picked it up at Giulia’s desk. “Good morning, Driscoll Investigations.”

  A familiar voice spoke on the other end.

  “I’ll see if Ms. Driscoll is available, Mr. Fitch. One moment, please.” He hit the hold button.

  Giulia sighed and held out her hand. Zane took the call off hold.

  “Giulia Falcone-Driscoll speaking. How may I help you, Mr. Fitch?”

  “I want to apologize for that mess on Saturday.” He actually did sound apologetic. “Can you meet me someplace? I’d like to explain things.”

  Giulia couldn’t come up with an excuse. “It’s almost ten o’clock. I have a brief window in half an hour. Where would you like to meet?”

  “Colby’s office is too far, huh? What about we take advantage of the weather and talk under that spiky abstract thing they call art in front of the library?”

  “Fine. I’ll meet you there at ten-thirty.” She hung up.

  “You know,” she said to her three employees, “I never thought the relatively minor sins I’ve committed would merit this kind of punishment.”

  Sidney giggled.

  “I can quote the Buddha on karmic balance,” Zane said. “My sisters and brother would lecture you about the Rule of Three.”

  Jane kept quiet until Giulia twisted around in her chair. Then Jane said, “Don’t look at me. Best I can come up with is ‘it pays the bills.’ My ex would blame it on Mercury Retrograde. He was famous for never taking responsibility.” She gulped. “Uh—not that I mean you’re not owning your own actions—er—sins, or whatever. I mean, um, what I was trying to say...”

  Giulia dropped her face in her hand and laughed. “Jane, stop worrying. But try not to answer the phone ’til you’re used to working under pressure, even the light pressure of this place.” She straightened up. “Okay, everyone quiet again ’til I nail this.”

  She enlarged a purchase order with an attached order for a refund on unsold stock. Nothing there. She closed them at the same moment her brain said that it had seen something “off.” She reopened the two scans.

  “Son of a gun. The handwritten amount was one-zero-three-zero and it’s been changed to one-zero-eight-zero. I can see the place where the other half of the eight doesn’t quite match up.” She shrank the document to its original size. “But when I look at it like this, it’s seamless.” She opened the ledger page. “The wholesale amounts would have less than,” she scrolled down to an actual order for one thousand thirty units, “two hundred dollars’ difference.”

  She tapped her nails in a syncopated rhythm on her desk.

  “If I were going to rip off my prosperous employer, two hundred bucks is nothing,” she said, mostly to herself. “But similar amounts skimmed often enough over the course of two-plus years, invested in a high-yield...no, no, that’s traceable. Gambled with? Played the stock market with? Never enough to trigger an alarm during a cursory check of the books, so they could keep stealing until they decided they had enough. Do thieves ever feel they have enough?”

  She swiveled to face Zane. “This is the first mistake you caught?”

  “Yeah. Once I figured out what it was, I dragged Sidney onto it and we split June, July, and August of that year. Then we had to close up for the night because you said not to pull overtime unless we cleared it with you.”

  “No, no, you did the right thing...” Giulia stared at the documents on the screen. “When did old Mr. Howard have the stroke that forced his daughter to take over the company?”

  Zane ran out to his computer and his fingers tapped his keyboard. “May twenty-third, last year.”

  “She was defending her thesis for her MBA then, right? Right. Dad was in the hospital, worry over that. Yanked from the intensive thesis process to wrangle nearly one thousand employees and a company worth half a million. She’s twenty-five years old. Most, probably all, of the employees are older than her. She’d let them do their thing because it worked for Dad all these years. Zane, when does their fiscal year close?”

  Zane reappeared in the doorway. “January thirty-first.”

  “Did someone complain about their bill or did she finally have time to look at the books? One after the other? Or did our embezzlers play with the numbers to shut the customer up? Both, I bet.”

  She closed t
he documents. “Zane, Sidney, you guys are fantastic. Sidney’s training, so Zane, can you keep digging into the scans, now that you know what to look for? I’ve got to listen to Roger Fitch spread himself. Again.”

  “Already blocked out the day for it.”

  “Perfect. I’m going to bury myself in all things Silk Tie Murder until 3:30.”

  “What’s happening at 3:30?” Sidney said.

  “We might be unwilling TV stars.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Giulia walked as fast as she could through the crowded sidewalks. She could see the roof of the art museum now across the stupidest, most dangerous intersection in the city. She’d perch beneath the sculpture’s variegated spikes and try again to see it as a chrysanthemum, like the artist’s plaque claimed.

  “Hey, thanks for meeting me.” Roger Fitch’s boisterous voice appeared without warning out of the crowd.

  “Good morning. Let’s get out of this crush before we discuss Saturday.”

  They formed a two-person wall, pushing to the edge of the sidewalk as buses and delivery vans whooshed past. The light opposite turned yellow. A taxi sped up, the light turned red, and with a shout Fitch stumbled into the street. Giulia grabbed his arm and yanked him out of danger back onto the sidewalk. The taxi leaned on its horn and kept going. Giulia sat down hard. Fitch landed next to her.

  The other people on the curb crowded tighter around them.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Idiot cab driver!”

  “Somebody call 9-1-1.”

  “Nah, they’re not hurt. You’re not hurt, are you, lady?”

  “Back off, people. Give them some air.”

  Traffic zoomed past. Giulia pulled her trembling feet farther in from the curb. Her hands shook from the adrenaline rush too.

  “Are you all right?” she asked Fitch. “What happened?”

  Fitch looked up at the faces all around them. “Somebody pushed me. Who pushed me, you sons of bitches? Let go of me, Driscoll.” He jerked himself free of Giulia’s quick cautionary grip.