The Clock Strikes Nun

by Alice Loweecey

  Giulia resolved to police her language for the word “wonderful.”

  Paul Newman/Pip radiated soothing, adoring protector. “Honey, I was worried about you. I called home to see how you were and Cissy told me you’d gone out. She heard you give the address to the taxi driver, and I came right over.”

  Giulia also noticed the way he said “you’d gone out.”

  Pip said to the trembling lips upturned to his face, “You’re my brave princess. You know that, don’t you?”

  Giulia worked hard not to gag as they murmured endearments to each other.

  Pip detached one hand and shook Giulia’s. “Ms. Driscoll, isn’t it? Thank you for consulting with Elaine, but I’m sure we’ll be able to deal with our unfriendly ghosts by ourselves.”

  “But, Pip—”

  With another gleaming smile, Pip said, “You need to trust me on this, sweetheart. I’m working on a few of my own ghost-busting plans.”

  With the aid of a completely relaxed spinal column, Elaine draped herself like a mink stole onto his broad chest. “You know I trust you for everything, darling.”

  Pip repositioned Elaine over to his left hip. “Ms. Driscoll, what’s the charge for today?”

  Giulia put up her hands. “Initial consultations are free of charge.”

  He nodded. “Always a good business practice. I run a marketing firm. You’d be surprised how many small businesses lose customers because their thinking is too short-term.”

  Elaine’s brief farewell touch of Giulia’s hand couldn’t remotely be called a handshake. Giulia didn’t feel condescended to though. It was more like the woman had little to no face-to-face interaction with strangers.

  Pip led Elaine into the main office. She squealed and unpeeled herself from his side.

  “Pip, look!” Her thin finger pointed out the window. “A Tarot reader.”

  Giulia said, “Lady Rowan is the Tarot reader for the owner of Stone’s Throw Bed and Breakfast.”

  Another squeal. “Pip, it’s serendipity. Do you have time to go with me now, right now, please?”

  The gleaming smile reappeared. “If you’re sure this outing hasn’t been too much for you, darling.”

  “Not a bit. I’ve been preparing myself since last Thursday when I found the websites. I know I can handle a Tarot reading.” She reenacted her mink stole impression on his broad chest.

  “Then I can’t think of a better way to spend my lunch hour.”

  They left after another round of thanks. Sidney watched their progress from the window. “I hope she didn’t drive here.”

  “She came by taxi,” Giulia said. “Why?”

  “She’s glued to the curb. He’s encouraging her to cross the street. The light’s changed twice already. Third time green…and there they go to land safe on the opposite sidewalk. She’s pointing to the merchandise in Rowan’s window. Okay; they made it inside.” She faced the room. “Cinderella and Prince Charming?”

  “Definitely,” Giulia said. “I’m trying hard not to lust after her clothes.”

  Sidney shook her head with vehemence, her long brown braid swishing back and forth. “Fancy clothes all have to be dry cleaned. Did I ever tell you that perchloroethylene causes cancer in humans and animals and can harm your central nervous system, your kidneys, and liver?”

  “But does it contribute to the honeybee die-off?” Zane said.

  Sidney glared at him. “One day I will wash out your mouth with organic soap.”

  Desperate not to laugh, Giulia bit the inside of her cheek until her eyes watered. When Sidney became a mother a whole new side of her appeared at the same time: Organic Mama Bear.

  Zane cleared his throat. “Do we have a new client?”

  “Not this time. They’re making a husband and wife project out of it.”

  “You know,” Zane continued in a thoughtful voice, “if you could create a bogus haunting in her house and then sign on to banish the evil spirit, she’d swallow it whole.”

  “Fortunately, I possess an active and healthy conscience.”

  “I’m just thinking of those months when money is tight.” Zane’s charming smile rivaled Pip’s.

  Sidney returned to her desk. “If we turn into Cottonwood’s Spooks ‘R’ Us, I will quit to raise the alpacas full-time, no matter how much spinning their wool gives me a backache.”

  Three

  At eleven o’clock the next morning, three pairs of hands on computer keyboards made most of the sound in both offices. Zane muttered at his screen as he worked on the complex research Giulia had assigned him.

  Sidney’s head turned left and straight, left and straight as she typed up case report notes. On cue, at least once for every case, she muttered, “I should never have cheated in typing class.”

  “You can still teach yourself to touch type,” Zane would reply, and Sidney would shake her head. “No time,” and return to her head-pivoting exercises.

  Inured to this eternal exchange, Giulia typed a paragraph in her lengthy email to the Diocese of Pittsburgh. She read it over and deleted it. Another paragraph. Another deletion. She had a strong desire to lay a curse on an institution overburdened with wealth that nevertheless tried to cheap out on every business transaction. She had friends who could teach her how to lay such a curse too.

  As always, she thought better of the karma hit and tried a third paragraph.

  Liszt’s “Hungarian Rhapsodies” played at low volume from Zane’s phone. Giulia pictured Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck descending on the Archbishop’s office. The imagined chaos significantly improved her morning.

  The outer door opened. All sound except Liszt ceased for three…four…five seconds. Giulia stuck her head around her monitor. Sidney’s face could’ve posed for a surprised emoji.

  As the music climaxed with crashing cymbals and crescendoing brass, Zane shut it off.

  In a thinner baritone than normal, he said, “Welcome to Driscoll Investigations. May I help you?”

  A feminine voice in the alto range said, “I do apologize for barging in here without an appointment, but would it be possible to see Ms. Driscoll for a mere fifteen minutes?”

  Even though Giulia’s door was open, Zane buzzed her. His vocal cords under control again, he said, “Ms. Driscoll, are you available?”

  Of course Giulia had to know who’d reduced her staff to speechlessness. “Please send the visitor in.”

  A throwback to the late eighteen hundreds swept into Giulia’s office, ruffled parasol and all. The visitor wore white leather button boots, a black and white striped tea-length bustle, copper underskirt, and ivory corset with matching striped underblouse, all crowned with a miniature top hat fascinator balanced on jet-black curly hair.

  Because Giulia had the advantage of Zane and Sidney’s reactions, she stood and held out her hand without missing a beat. She figured the woman was either a major crackpot or here to raise money for charity using steampunk cosplay to grab her victim’s attention.

  If the parasol concealed a rapier, Giulia was prepared to sacrifice her keyboard as a shield and call on Zane’s muscle. He gave her a short nod as he closed the door on them.

  The woman hung the parasol on the back of Giulia’s client chair but didn’t distress the bustle by sitting. “It’s very kind of you to see me without an appointment. I’m Muriel Lockwood. I’m here because of my cousin Elaine.”

  All Giulia’s spidey-senses went on alert.

  The brisk voice continued, “Do you know who she is?”

  “She visited us yesterday,” Giulia said, not wanting to reveal the first name was all she knew.

  “She’s Dahlia.” In a voice which implied Dahlia was recognized the world over.

  Giulia’s mind scrolled through possibilities. Dahlia as in an actress? A singer? An international spy? No way was the scared rabbit a real-life James Bond. S
he responded only with interested silence. Her visitor stalked to Giulia’s side of the desk.

  “Have you been living in a cave? Everyone knows Dahlia.” She pointed a long copper fingernail at Giulia’s monitor. “Google it.”

  Giulia indulged the imperious woman. The search brought up a fashion website. Giulia clicked through.

  “That page, there.” The fingernail pointed again. “Elaine designed that dress. Nordstrom’s stocks it. The purple one too. Dahlia is the place for unique designs, and Elaine’s owned it since her twenty-first birthday.”

  Giulia blinked at the prices and said to Muriel, “Ms. Lockwood, how can Driscoll Investigations help you?”

  “Do you really not know anything about Dahlia?”

  “Shall we pretend I don’t?”

  Muriel’s curls jiggled as she flipped up her striped bustle and settled into the client chair, but the fascinator never budged. “How anyone over the age of fifteen can claim ignorance of Dahlia…All right. In the days of young Madonna and her bullet bras, Elaine’s grandparents expanded their quirky dress boutique into a chain of exclusive clothing stores across the country and into Canada. Then the recession in the early 2000s hit them and they decided to retire. Left the business to Elaine’s parents and promptly died when their Cessna crashed into Lake Superior.” Her thin lips curled into a ghoulish smile. “I heard they only found three pieces of the fuselage and her grandfather’s false teeth.” A shudder wiggled the curls. “Wish I’d been alive to see it. Nothing beats a good murder.”

  Giulia stopped taking notes on her legal pad. “Did the police think they were murdered?”

  Muriel’s hand flipped back and forth. “No, no, no. All perfectly straightforward and boring. He had a heart attack, and by the time his wife got her act together and radioed for help,” her hand stiffened and performed a nose-dive, “neeeeooow, splash, boom.”

  A wink accented the smile. “If they’d been more famous, the story would’ve been optioned for a made-for-TV movie on the fashion channel. Anyway, Elaine’s mom and dad were already going all slash and burn on grandmama and granddaddy’s business. They closed three-quarters of the stores and concentrated on the web presence. You’d think they’d be drowning in bad press from that, right? Wrong. In three years, Dahlia was the hot website and a textbook example of ‘lean and mean.’” The smile turned hard and the lips became a straight copper line. “Elaine’s parents bought and renovated the castle and everybody, absolutely everybody in the fashion and financial magazine crowd tripped all over themselves to feature them.”

  Giulia kept writing. “I’m not sure I see how this relates to your interest in our services.”

  With the smoothness of instinct—or of an accomplished actress—Muriel seized the knobby end of the parasol and thumped it on the wood floor. “How else do you think Elaine got enough money to be a princess in her castle?”

  Honks, bus airbrakes, and unintelligible loud conversation drifted through the window, as did the aroma of barbecue sauce and pineapple for Hawaiian pizza: the restaurant across the street’s Tuesday special.

  Muriel sniffed. “Ugh, pineapple. Unless it’s in a piña colada, I’m not interested.” She gave the side-eye to Giulia’s tea table. “Let me guess: Elaine saw the Constant Comment and her Xanax-fueled brain rolled over and wagged its tail.”

  Giulia smiled. “She mentioned it was the favorite tea of someone named Cissy.”

  “Her housekeeper. Been with the house since Elaine’s seventh birthday. Real mama bear, which Elaine needed since her actual mama stopped just short of going all Mommie Dearest on her little princess.” Muriel leaned forward on the parasol, looking more like a crotchety old woman than a vibrant young one. “I’m airing the family’s dirty laundry for a reason. Now listen: House Beautiful was one of the magazines that sucked up to Mama Dahlia and Daddy Dahlia. A few weeks after the issue hit the stores, three enterprising criminals invaded the castle, stole everything they could carry, and killed Elaine’s parents.”

  Giulia looked up. Muriel nodded, her lips compressed with anger? Hate? Ghoulish delight? No, definitely hate.

  “They didn’t find Elaine because mama had locked her up in some closet or other as punishment. Mama liked doing that.”

  “That’s appalling.”

  “You think? I hope the bitch is rotting in every circle of Dante’s hell on a rotating basis. Sweet, innocent Elaine survived and inherited everything. But a nine-year-old can’t run a company. Elaine’s twenty-four now and still too sweet and innocent to see what’s going on around her.”

  “Which is?”

  “A bloodless coup.”

  This story was almost as entertaining as Muriel herself. “You’re not exaggerating.”

  “I never exaggerate.”

  Giulia did not voice her opinion on that topic.

  “The will left everything to Elaine—she’s an only child—but in the meantime the company was to be run by the three major players: her mother’s personal assistant, her father’s personal assistant, and the Chief Financial Officer. The will named them the Board of Directors.” Another wriggle of the curls. “What would you do if you’d run a fabulously successful company for twelve years and all of a sudden the heiress comes of age and Skypes herself into every board meeting? No more autonomous decisions. The owner checking over the books. Elaine has an MBA from Harvard, you know. It’s amazing what you can accomplish online.”

  Giulia shook out a hand cramp.

  “You can go ahead and type if you want,” Muriel said.

  “I’m fine, but thank you. Elaine has accomplished all this and yet she doesn’t usually go out of her house?”

  “Usually? Make that never. Yet here’s the princess running the family company right out of college and doing a great job at it. Oh no, those three must be thinking, she won’t need us anymore. And then along comes Prince Charming. You met him yesterday too.”

  Giulia nodded.

  “Elaine worships him. He runs his own marketing company. If you were one of the big guns at Dahlia, what are you thinking now?”

  Giulia played straight man. “I’d be waiting for the husband and wife team to force me out.”

  Muriel tapped the side of her nose with an index finger. “Egg-zactly. When I found out Elaine actually left the house to come to you yesterday, I had a talk with Cissy. She told me about how Elaine thinks the house is haunted and what it’s doing to her. Haunted. Seriously.”

  Giulia surreptitiously checked her monitor clock. Still an hour to her next appointment.

  “Does Elaine’s housekeeper think the haunting is real?”

  Muriel hesitated for the first time. “I asked her the same question. She didn’t say no.”

  Giulia treated the idea as fact. “Has she seen any evidence of a haunting?”

  “No, but Pip has. His formal handle is Perry Ignatius Patrick, born on Dickens’ birthday and whose ancestors were some of the first settlers in the Massachusetts Bay colony. Frankly, if I’d been stuck with a ridiculous nickname like Pip I’d have my name legally changed to John Smith as soon as I turned eighteen. Where was I? Oh, right. The haunting. Pip’s heard things and seen things, which is a huge relief, because if Elaine is starting to imagine ghosts, then those three at Dahlia will grab it and run an Olympic relay. Can you see the headlines?” She spread her hands like she was designing a theater marquee: “Crazy recluse heiress unfit to run Fortune 500 company. ‘Loony Leader Dooms Dahlia.’ Those three will hire a bunch of bottom-feeder lawyers to circle her like sharks. The shareholders will lose their minds, and the next thing you know Elaine will be under a shrink’s care ‘for her own good.’” Muriel shuddered. “Shrinks. Elaine’s aunt and uncle—her parents named them in the will as her guardians—dragged her to monthly appointments with one of those leeches for a whole year after her parents were shot.”

  “That’s to be expected a
fter a traumatic event.” The pineapple and barbecue sauce still wafting into the room was distracting Giulia. She blamed pregnancy.

  Muriel thumped the parasol on the floor again. “If those three hand-pick a shrink to root around in Elaine’s little gray cells, she’ll end up with nothing to do in her own company except spend the money they’d be forced to deposit into her bank account. I’m not going to let that happen.”

  Since Muriel didn’t think her cousin was the victim of an actual haunting…“Ms. Lockwood, what is it you want Driscoll Investigations to do for you?”

  “Not for me, for Elaine. I want you to find out which one of those three is behind this haunting business. Maybe it’s two of them. Maybe all three. Find out who’s doing it and nail their greedy carcasses to the wall.”

  She appraised Giulia without seeming to judge Giulia’s hair or makeup or clothes, bland as beige paint in comparison to her own. “I only came here because Elaine did, and I didn’t have time to check up on you. Am I safe in presuming your agency has a positive track record?”

  “We have several years of success stories and positive reviews on Yelp.”

  “Good. I like your no-frills office and your businesslike look. Besides, you didn’t spook Elaine, which is one thousand points in your favor.” Muriel opened her embroidered wrist bag. “What are your fees, and how much do you require for a retainer?”

  Four

  After Giulia showed Muriel out, she placed a small stack of fives and tens on Zane’s desk. “We have a new client.”

  “Who pays with cash anymore?” Sidney said.

  “Forget the cash.” Zane said. “Is she a cosplayer? Her outfit would kill it at next month’s Comic Con.”

  “She’s eccentric because she appears to be wealthy,” Giulia said. “The husband and wife from yesterday are her cousins. The whole extended family appears to have money.”

  “Which makes her eccentric and not a crackpot,” Sidney said.