Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3)

by Alice Loweecey

  Her twin’s baggy gray sweater didn’t hide the difference in their figures. She carried at least fifty pounds more than her sister. Where the twin at Giulia’s desk combated the bland on multiple levels, her sister either didn’t care or had given in to it. Her light brown hair fell straight to her shoulders, free of embellishment. She wore little makeup and no jewelry. Her shoulders slumped, but her smile was genuine.

  “Joanne made that cake for our twenty-fifth birthday, two years ago.”

  “Where can I sign up to take lessons from her?” Giulia said.

  The bottom layer of the cake was decorated to look like the redwood base of an above-ground pool. The top layer framed pool-blue frosting with two marzipan figures on it. On the “water,” a girl in a bikini lounged on a float made of gummy worms. On the “redwood” deck, another figure in shorts and a shirt played with a cat.

  “I’m not joking,” Giulia said. “Your sister is talented.”

  “She’s also been missing for three months.”

  Three

  Giulia flipped to a fresh page on her current legal pad.

  Diane Philbey sat up. “Now I’m happier. Do you always pull a quick-change act when you get down to business?”

  Giulia said, “Where does your sister live?”

  Diane’s thin lips quirked. “Thank you for assuming she’s still alive.”

  “Since you’re here, I presume, if you’ll forgive blunt speaking, the police haven’t found her body.”

  “Don’t.” She trampled Giulia’s final word. “Everyone’s telling me to ‘accept reality.’ Her friends, the people at the nursing home where she works, even the police. Guess my sister isn’t important enough for them to spend more than three weeks on. She’s an adult, they said. Sometimes adults choose to start a new life, they said. Then they asked me if we’d had any differences recently.” Diane faced northwest and flipped off the world. “Everybody’s Jo’s friend. She’s not like me. I’ll shoot my mouth off when I think it’s called for. Drives my boss nuts.”

  Giulia wrote faster than she thought possible rather than put the brakes to this revealing gush of information.

  “Jo never drives anyone nuts,” Diane continued. “Even her ex-boyfriends hang out with her after they split up. She dated this one singer. Man, he was six feet of walking ego. Even though she dumped him, he sent her flowers for her last birthday.” She swallowed. “Not her last-last, because she’s not dead. I meant her—our—most recent birthday.”

  She sprang out of Giulia’s client chair and leaned out the window. “A Tarot Reading shop and a pizza place. Get your future told first in case you’re supposed to die right after you eat that pizza. Best last meal choice ever, right?” She turned around and sat on the windowsill. “I’m not scattered like this when things are normal. I’ve been bottling up my escalating freak-out about Jo, and I have to keep moving or I’ll break something. Jo got into Tarot once. She dragged me to this Halloween setup with a guy in a wizard cape. He told me I’d been separated at birth from a long-lost male twin. I suggested he keep his day job.”

  “Does your sister often find new hobbies and hope you’ll join her in them?”

  “Nah, not so much. She’s into cooking and hunting and cats and guys with mondo shlongs. Who isn’t? Into mondo shlongs, I mean. The Tarot thing happened when her boyfriend from Le Cordon Bleu school dumped her on their graduation night. She got over it when she got over him.” Diane walked over to the framed watercolor on the wall facing Giulia’s chair. “Not bad. At least it looks like what it’s supposed to be, a garden with lots of flowers. I dumped a mondo shlong because he only liked radical modern art.” She massaged her temples. “I’m getting distracted again.” She turned on Giulia. “You’re like the missing person whisperer. You’ve got to find Jo. All those reviews have to mean something. I wouldn’t have come here if I wasn’t impressed by them.” She wiped her eyes with her ring fingers. “I swore I’d keep my act together. Did I smear my mascara?”

  She pulled a tissue from the box Giulia held out to her. “I haven’t said any of this out loud to anybody except our older brother since April.” She opened the tissue and made an approving face at its lack of black mascara streaks. “What was I saying?”

  “You were telling me how well people liked your sister.”

  “Oh. Right. So you see what I mean when I told the detective in Penn Hills to get her head out of her butt. Jo didn’t have a fight with an ex. She isn’t involved in dangerous activities. She bakes fancy cakes as a side job. I mean, seriously, what’s dangerous about that except packing on the pounds?” Diane leaned both arms on Giulia’s desk. “And she didn’t up and decide to walk away from everything and everyone, no matter where her cats went.”

  “Cats?” Giulia kept her voice at the same encouraging yet neutral level.

  “Yeah, her super-friendly rescue cats, and I mean super-friendly. Weirdo beasts think they’re lap dogs. I like cats who don’t give a crap if you’re in the house or not. Hers are huge, like fifteen or twenty pounds. When they flop on your lap, you know it. The orange one is missing an ear and the gray one’s got seven toes on its front paws.”

  “The cats are missing too?”

  “Yeah. Good thing, I suppose, since when I got her landlord to open her apartment, I was sure we’d get a noseful of rotting cat carcasses.” A deep breath. “My brother doesn’t approve of gallows humor, but I’ve got to cope somehow.”

  Giulia’s imagination gifted her with a detailed multi-sensory image of a closed apartment perfumed by deceased cat.

  “Her place was in perfect order, like always. She’s the OCD twin. I’m the wild twin. The police said the neatness of her apartment was a classic sign of someone trying to drop off the grid on purpose.” She slammed the balled-up tissue into the wastebasket. “They are wrong, wrong, wrong, and I want you to prove it.”

  Giulia set down her pen. “This kind of investigation can take time. Here are our rates.” She took a half-sheet of paper from her center drawer and slid it across the desk.

  Diane studied it. “I expected worse. I’ve got some savings, but do you take plastic? My credit card gives me cash back.”

  “Certainly.” Giulia buzzed Zane. “Please bring in a standard down-payment invoice for Ms. Philbey.”

  After the payment finished processing, Giulia flipped to a fresh page on her legal pad and asked Diane several specific questions about police involvement so far, sifting through Diane’s rancor for essential information. “Today is Monday. I’ll spend the next two days gathering information and traveling. I should be back here Thursday. Expect a preliminary report Friday morning.”

  Diane typed it into her phone. “Finally something concrete. I’ve been a pig on ice for weeks.”

  “If we have an unanticipated breakthrough, of course we’ll call.”

  Diane dropped her phone into her purse. “If you succeed in four days where the police failed in three months, you’ll have earned another gushing review. But only if you bring my sister to the PT clinic where I work so I can kick her butt.”

  Giulia tried a tentative smile. “Why there?”

  “So I can begin the physical therapy she’ll need after I pound some sense into her.”

  Four

  After showing her new client out, Giulia called her former temp, now personal assistant to Captain James Reilly of Cottonwood Precinct Nine.

  “Jane? It’s Giulia.”

  “Oh my God, how did you know I was going to call you? Are you in league with the psychic across the street now?” Jane Pierce’s sometimes bitter voice rivaled Sidney’s in excitement. “My ex got caught padding hydrocodone prescriptions and selling the extras. He lost his medical license and his fancy house and his fancy fiancée dumped him. Schadenfreude is my new favorite word.”

  Giulia loved hearing happy Jane. Her smile g
ot wider as Jane took a catch breath and barreled on.

  “Suddenly my mother is thrilled I took nothing in the divorce except health insurance. Even better, I dropped the jailbird’s insurance last week for our insurance here, so I’m free, free, free. I hope his next move is really stupid and he gets dragged in here while I’m at work. Payback, sucker.” Another quick breath. “Oh wait. You called on business, I bet.”

  The smile evident in her voice, Giulia said, “Yes, but your story was worth the wait. I could use Jimmy’s influence. Would you ask him to give a heads-up to a Detective Okorie over in Penn Hills?” She spelled the name. “I’ll need access to the missing persons reports and cold case info for Joanne Philbey. Hopefully he can smooth the way for me.”

  “Just a sec.” The sound of Jane’s hand over the receiver turned the call into the equivalent of putting a seashell to the ear. Giulia heard male and female voices like the teacher voice buzz in all the Peanuts cartoons. Then the seashell got tossed back into the ocean. “He’s calling right now.”

  “He’s a gem and so are you.”

  “Anytime. I’ll keep you updated on my ex the ex-doctor.” Jane’s laugh dripped with gloating as she hung up.

  Giulia opened her door in time to catch Sidney yawn like a bear about to hibernate.

  “Jessamine’s first tooth is coming in,” she said. “The poor thing is too miserable to sleep, which means mama and daddy don’t sleep either.”

  “Tell Jessamine she has to push that tooth out now, because you and Zane are in charge for the next two days.”

  Sidney and Zane, one after the other, rattled off their existing caseloads. Giulia gave them two thumbs up.

  “I’ve trained you well. I’m headed to Penn Hills, which is just far enough away for it to be a waste of time and energy for me to drive back and forth at rush hours while I interview every name I extract from the police reports. I could run back here in case of emergency, but I don’t expect to. Unless,” she said to Zane, “you think the deadbeat dad will Hulk out on you.”

  Zane’s formidable chest expanded. “I haven’t told you about last night. I followed him to his usual bar and picked a fight on purpose.”

  “What?”

  “No worries, Ms. D. I learned how to choreograph a fight in karate back when I was ten. Did you ever see that old John Wayne movie The Quiet Man?” When Giulia nodded, he continued, “We played it out like the climactic fight between Wayne and Victor McLaglen, but I didn’t throw him through the front door. Afterwards, we drank to seal our new bond of friendship and respect. He invited me to his house on Wednesday for his weekly poker game. The police will be making a scripted appearance.”

  Giulia fist-bumped him. “I knew you’d be good at undercover work.”

  Shouts and screeching tires came from the street. All three of them ran to the window.

  Ken Kanning, the face of The Scoop, Cottonwood’s wannabe-TMZ show, lay flat on the sidewalk outside Lady Rowan’s Tarot Shoppe. As shorter Giulia switched places with taller Zane to see better, Jasper Fortin, Lady Rowan’s nephew and apprentice, chased The Scoop’s cameraman out of the shop with raised fists. The cameraman dived into the open door of their white creeper van while Kanning butt-walked off the sidewalk into the street. A taxi swerved into the opposite lane, horn blaring.

  “He’s talking into his mike while beating an ignominious retreat, isn’t he?” Zane said.

  “I would expect nothing less,” Giulia said.

  The cameraman’s arm reached out the passenger door and yanked Kanning into the van. A second later, the van pulled into traffic without signaling. More cars honked and swerved out of its way. Jasper returned to the Shoppe. From the way the purple awning shuddered, Giulia figured he’d slammed the door with a wee bit of excessive force.

  “I guarantee Kanning’s defenestration was well deserved,” she said.

  “Ms. D.…” Zane said.

  “I know. Jasper tossed him out of the door, not the window. But it’s such a lovely word.”

  Five

  At seven o’clock that night, Giulia and her husband Frank ate barbecue chicken on their patio.

  “Wife time and home-cooked food before another all-night stakeout,” Frank said. “Life is good.”

  Giulia kissed him after he licked a dab of sauce from the corner of his mouth. “I keep thinking I should go to the hospital to check on Anne.”

  Frank sucked more sauce off his fingers. “Your brother’s slammed the door in your face how many times since you jumped the wall?”

  “That doesn’t matter if their kids need help.” Giulia downed half her lemonade. “I put too much hot pepper in this batch of sauce. Weird. I didn’t change my recipe.”

  “Tastes the same to me. Look. You’ve got clients. Your brother can take care of his own family.”

  “It’s what she said, ‘Get me back to my kids.’ I think she may have left him.”

  “Any sane person would have left your brother years ago.”

  Giulia set down her plate. “No argument from me, and you’re right. I have a client who’s sending me to Penn Hills for the next two days. I’m crashing at the Quality Inn to use my time with the most efficiency.”

  Frank whooped. “Pizza and beer for dinner.”

  “As long as you remember to water the vegetables. See all those huge green tomatoes? If you forget to soak them every night, they’ll crack.” She stepped off the patio over to the raised bed and cupped an unripe tomato in one hand. “Neglect this beauty now and there’ll be less sauce for your spaghetti in January.”

  Frank made the malocchio at her. Even as she laughed at his inept attempt at the Italian evil eye, she still pointed her index finger and pinky at him in the traditional corna to ward it off.

  He said with wounded dignity, “I would never do anything to jeopardize your sauce. You hear that, plants? Cooperate and I won’t let the neighbor’s hyperactive terriers into the yard.”

  Giulia facepalmed. “Haven’t you heard the research about talking softly to plants to make them grow bigger and stronger and more succulent?”

  “Driscolls don’t pamper their plants. How else will we win the war? It’s us against genetically modified food.”

  “Have you been talking to Sidney?”

  Giulia turned on the hose and began watering the peppers in the far corner.

  “No, to my brother Ben. His middle child, the future entrepreneur, came home from some agricultural summer camp aflame with purpose. Big corporations are poisoning our ground water and killing off the monarch butterfly population and they must be stopped. I remembered an important appointment when he started on the honeybee die-off.”

  “Do not introduce him to Sidney. They’ll be arrested for sabotage, and who’ll take care of the office while I’m away?” She turned the water onto the tomatoes. “Speaking of, Jimmy paved the way for me to talk to the police in that precinct.”

  Frank stuffed a giant forkful of potato salad into his mouth and said around it, “My boss still worships you even with Jane at his side.” He swallowed. “Maybe it distracted him for a few minutes from the two teenagers we found dead.”

  “What?”

  “Three days apart. One in the park, the other behind a convenience store dumpster. Both OD’d on something, but initial tox reports aren’t coming up with the usual suspects. We’re waiting on more in-depth results.”

  Giulia turned off the water. “What if there’s a connection between Anne and those kids?”

  His fork in the last of the potato salad, Frank said, “How and why?”

  “Drugs are as out of character for Anne as leaving her family was. The EMTs this morning seemed to think the same thing you just said about the teenagers, that Anne appeared to be on something out of the ordinary.”

  Frank held out his hand for the hose. G
iulia gave it to him and he watered the cucumbers without leaving his lawn chair. “VanHorne started in narcotics. I’ll see what he thinks. Anything to stop him talking about his nephew’s Pop Warner football games all night.”

  Giulia watched Frank’s watering technique with approval. “You’ll be that dad one day.”

  “God forbid. Soccer all the way.” He reached out his free hand and patted her still-flat stomach. “Did I ask you how you felt about naming him Zlatan?”

  Six

  The next morning, Giulia entered the Penn Hills police station wearing the top half of her hated navy blue interview suit, but khakis and flats on the bottom. Not even the Second Coming could force her into pantyhose on a dripping humid July day.

  Well, maybe the Second Coming.

  The Penn Hills and Cottonwood police stations shared fashionista receptionists and garbled shouts from the depths of the holding cells. Penn Hills’ linoleum needed replacing, however, and those hospital-green painted walls—ugh.

  Detective Okorie came out herself to greet Giulia. “Good morning, Ms. Driscoll. Your friend Captain Reilly could charm the scales off a snake. Come on back to my desk.”

  Giulia followed the detective, admiring her warm gray suit, her rich black hair with a subtle blonde streak in her wraparound braids, and her elegant walk. Giulia didn’t waste time envying all those things. She knew she’d never be elegant and had long ago learned to like her short hourglass figure and wild curly hair.

  The detectives’ group office was a mirror image of Cottonwood’s as well. Six desks so close they might as well be on top of each other. Older, clunkier computer screens obscured by coffee mugs and stacks of file folders. More scuffed linoleum flooring beneath well-used rolling chairs.