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

by Alice Loweecey

  The shouting from the depths increased in volume. “Don’t mind the trio in the holding cells,” the detective said. “They’re at the mutual recrimination stage of their latest arrest.”

  Giulia gave her a genuine smile, not one of the numbered ones reserved for various levels of annoying interactions. “I’m used to it. My husband’s a detective back in Cottonwood.”

  “Oh, good. I have an empty desk for you and a pile of reports for your reading pleasure.”

  Her desk and Giulia’s temporary one snugged into the corner nearest the lobby door. A crooked stack of manila folders perched in the center of the empty desk.

  Giulia sat in an armless chair and took a legal pad and pen out of her messenger bag. “This is very kind of you. What am I looking at?”

  The detective lifted the top folder. “The initial missing persons report.” She ran her fingers down the rest of the stack. “Compiled interviews of friends, family, and coworkers. My reports from three weeks of investigation.”

  Giulia opened the first folder and saw a copy of a copy of a copy of a fill-in-the-boxes form. Firm, broad handwriting overflowed most of the little boxes.

  “Would you like a coffee?”

  “Thank you, no,” Giulia said. “I’m good.”

  “Smart choice,” Detective Okorie said. “Our coffee is punishment for our failure to find rich, eligible spouses to entrap.” Her desk phone rang. “Poke me if you need anything.”

  Giulia blocked out the ambient noise of multiple conversations, suspect intake drama, and still more shouts from the holding cells.

  Milo Chapers, Human Resources director of Sunset Shores, had made the phone call on April tenth to initiate the missing persons report. An ID card photo of Joanne Philbey was paper-clipped to the report, in which she looked much the same as in the twenty-fifth birthday picture.

  Details about Joanne filled the rows of narrow boxes: Height, weight, eye color, hair color, skin color. Tattoos, none. Drat. So much for an easy way to identify Joanne if she’d gone the “make a new life” route.

  Home phone, work phone, cell. A note next to the home and cell phone numbers read, “Cell goes to voicemail; home phone rings without ans. mach. picking up.”

  Giulia wrote down everything. Chapers’ story filled the bottom half of the report. His version mirrored Diane’s, but in dry officialese.

  “Ms. Philbey last showed up for her usual shift on April second. She has always been punctual and conscientious. We telephoned her several times over the course of the next three days. When we received no answer, we contacted her landlord. He and I entered her apartment on April fifth. The apartment was neat and organized. There was no sign that Ms. Philbey had been in the apartment recently. At this point, I made the decision to contact the police, as Ms. Philbey’s nearest relative lives out of town and I didn’t wish to alarm her.”

  He didn’t call her sister. Good Heavens. Giulia would have to exert extreme control when she interviewed Mr. Pole Up His Butt.

  Okorie hung up from a second phone call and rolled her chair next to Giulia’s. “I’m not surprised the family hired you. We see a lot of desperation. Not all PIs are as polite as you, though.”

  Giulia finished a sentence. “It would be short-sighted of me not to be polite when you’re doing me a favor. Should I ask about the PIs with whom you’re comparing me?”

  “Oh, you should. We got an imitation Mike Hammer last year. Dressed and acted the part, especially treating us like the enemy. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, he got little cooperation from us. Better than him was the Archie Goodwin: 1940s suit, imitated the walk from the old TV show, everything.” She called across the room, “Hey, Martinson, remember that Archie Goodwin type a year ago Christmas?”

  Martinson nodded his shaved head. “He brought out the Nero Wolfe addict in me. I kept feeding him lines from the books, and he’d lose his place in the files trying not to respond.”

  “He sure looked good in the suit, though.”

  “Not my type.”

  “More for me.” Okorie turned to Giulia again. “Anyway, I could have told the Penn Hills version of Archie Goodwin not to waste his time. He’d been hired to find a thirty-five-year-old sales manager. She’d ditched her phone in the Steel Museum and the security camera footage was the last anyone saw of her. We questioned her last two boyfriends, but they had no reason to kill her and the few other leads fizzled out.” She picked up a homemade Missing Person flyer from one of Giulia’s folders. “We have dozens of these in our cold case files. It’s tough on the families, but sometimes people want to disappear.”

  Fatalistic attitudes brought out all Giulia’s stubbornness. She couldn’t squander the goodwill here, but she had to make some kind of reply.

  BANG.

  The gunshot came from the entrance. Shouts filled the hall. Detective Okorie ran for the door and Giulia dived behind the desk. Without her own gun she’d be a liability.

  Another bang.

  A female voice in the hall shouted, “You give me Cal or I’ll shoot this Barbie doll bitch.”

  Detective Okorie’s voice: “I can bring Cal to you.”

  “Then get him out here now, bitch!”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if we went to a quiet room where you and Cal can talk?”

  Harsh laughter. “Hell, no. Do you think I’m stupid? You drag his scrawny ass out here so we can go home.”

  A scuffle, more shouts, and one final gunshot. The bullet came through the wall above Giulia’s head and shattered the glass in a framed photo of the governor of Pennsylvania.

  Two detectives wrestled a massive woman with a meth-riddled face and matted blonde hair into the office. She cursed them, their mothers, and their manly parts as she kicked desks and chairs on her way to the holding cells.

  A female detective came in next, following the trajectory of the third bullet.

  Giulia pointed. “It hit the governor’s picture.”

  “I see it. Thanks.” She took photographs of the wrecked photo and frame, the glass on the floor, and the hole the bullet made in the wall.

  The receptionist came in with a tall detective who resembled Idris Elba. When he spoke, he ruined Giulia’s hope that his voice matched Elba’s as well. Real life could be so disappointing.

  “You’re sure you’re all right, Cassidy?”

  The receptionist fluttered her blue-tinted eyelashes at him. “Really, I am. That crazy meth-head ripped my sleeve, but nothing else. She was shaking like an earthquake when she grabbed me.”

  “Then let’s get your statement so we can keep her in a cell next to the love of her life.” He unlocked his computer.

  Cassidy adjusted her torn shirt. “I am going to get so much mileage out of this.”

  Detective Okorie returned to her desk.

  “You have the knack for negotiation,” Giulia said.

  Okorie straightened her jacket. “The drugs helped. Cal’s true love took an extra hit or two for courage. I know the signs.” She looked Giulia over. “You’re okay, yes?”

  “The last bullet missed the top of my head by several inches. I didn’t expect my day to imitate a Snoopy novel.” When Okorie looked puzzled, Giulia quoted Charles Schulz: “It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out.”

  “The maid screamed,” Okorie said.

  “A door slammed,” Detective “Idris Elba” said from one desk over.

  All three of them finished together: “Suddenly a pirate ship appeared on the horizon.”

  “Huh?” the receptionist said.

  Everyone bent their heads over their work.

  Seven

  Joanne’s apartment house was as nondescript as her choice of clothes. Four floors of brown brick face over cinder block. Giulia knew the drill. The brick face added anywhere from
twenty to forty dollars to the rent. She walked around to the back of the building. Minimal balconies wide enough for two plastic chairs and little else. Hanging window baskets on several. Limp American flag bunting on a few. The stairwell would smell of cabbage or garlic or onions.

  She opened the central door, nodded at the mailman filling the narrow mail slots, and continued through the inner door. Onions. Santa ought to tuck a tiara with “Sleuthing Queen” in multicolored rhinestones in the top of her stocking this Christmas.

  A middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper goatee and wearing a two-piece plaid suit stood next to the elevator, giving orders into a Bluetooth headset.

  “I paid you to fix the leaks in the ceilings…Don’t give me that. I’m standing in a puddle on the first floor, you hack…That’s better. I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning at seven sharp.” He touched the headset and held out his hand to Giulia. “Ms. Driscoll? Ron Jankowicz.”

  Giulia returned his firm handshake. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  “Not at all. Glad to see some progress in the search for 3B. She was the ideal tenant.” He pressed the Up button and ushered Giulia into the elevator before him. “I’d rather have three buildings full of tenants like her than win Powerball.”

  Giulia gave him an arch look.

  “I mean it. I like to work. I hate deadbeats and people who sneak rabbits into my apartments. Those long-eared demon rodents chew through the wires and eat the wallpaper. Then the tenants give me grief about losing their security deposit.”

  A subdued ding and the doors opened. The flat indoor-outdoor carpet on this floor matched the orange paisley carpet on the first floor. The off-white walls needed painting and this floor smelled like someone’s trash should’ve been emptied last week.

  It was still better than Giulia’s first two post-convent apartments.

  “I understand Ms. Philbey’s sister is paying the rent until her sister returns.”

  “No skin off my back,” the landlord said. “She pays on time, she can keep the apartment as long as she wants. So, you’re a private eye. I don’t see many women in that profession.” He took out a pass key. “You carry a Glock, right? I love old-fashioned guns. Got a collection. A tenant pulled a knife on me once. I shoved my .45 in his face and he pissed himself.” He brayed rather than laughed. “The apartment is exactly the way 3B left it. I knew the cops would want it intact.” He opened the door. “Thank God she took her cats with her.”

  Giulia followed him into generic apartment A with generic floor plan B. A lingering musty smell reached her nose combined with a faint odor of cat. A square entrance with a coat closet on the right and an open living room on the left. Ahead, a narrow hallway with one door on the left and another at the end. To the right, a square dining area with a round table and two chairs. Off of that, a galley kitchen. The closed living room curtains created twilight at noon. Jankowicz flipped two light switches.

  Now Giulia could see Joanne had fought against generic for her living space. The apartment reflected the creativity she poured into her fancy cakes. The walls in every room were painted a different color. Lemon in the kitchen. Raspberry in the dining nook.

  “Girly in here, isn’t it?” Jankowicz said. “I’m a plain white wall guy myself. White or paneling, like my grandparents taught me. But if my tenants want to paint, I let ’em paint. Happy tenants renew their leases.” He touched his ear. “Jankowicz…Again? Tell her if she can afford to hit the casino three nights a week, she can damn well pay her rent on time.” He said to Giulia, “I’ll be checking the hundred different things I need to inspect. Call me when you’re done.” He issued instructions to his minion on the other end of the phone call as he walked away.

  Giulia closed the door and stood in the entrance way, getting a feel for the place. The standard beige carpet sank into deserved obscurity beneath the hydrangea-patterned sofa and chair in the living room. Those walls were periwinkle and matched the flowers in the upholstery.

  She walked down the candy apple red hallway. The left-hand door opened into a bathroom with kiwi walls and matching shower curtain. In the last room, three creamsicle walls offset the single vanilla wall in the entire apartment.

  Giulia would’ve killed for a creamsicle right then. Instead, she opened the window’s matching striped curtains and started in on the nightstand drawer.

  Two romance novels, a composition notebook, and a mechanical pencil. Giulia flipped through the notebook: Sketches for fancy cake decorations. She set it on the bed to take with her. You never know.

  Next, the closet. Five pairs of khakis and five polo shirts, the latter with a Sunset Shores logo on the single pocket. Two pairs of sensible sneakers with arch support and a few ghosts of food stains on them. On the far left, a black wool winter coat, black fur-lined boots, and a beige raincoat. On the shelf above, sweaters in white and tan and gray.

  The dresser yielded much of the same. Gray t-shirts with “Crazy Cat Lady,” “Bakers Make It Rise,” and “Bambi: He’s What’s For Dinner.” If Joanne wasn’t dead, she’d either bought specific clothes for her new life or she’d joined a nudist colony.

  Onto the bathroom. Toiletries. Makeup. Interesting that she’d left makeup behind. Giulia hadn’t worn it during her ten years in the convent, naturally, but now she seldom left the house without putting on a face.

  The kitchen gave Giulia an inferiority complex. The best quality pots, pans, and utensils. Cookbooks several pay grades above her own skills, and Giulia was an accomplished cook.

  Fridge, freezer, and pantry, all empty. Cleaning supplies under the sink. Shoved behind them into the back corner, one cat dish for “Wilton” and one for “Springsteen.”

  So the cats died? Both at once, conveniently in time for Joanne to disappear? Giulia wasn’t buying it. She opened the memo feature on her phone and made a note to check the local SPCA online archives. Joanne’s cats were distinctive enough to make a search a notch above hopeless.

  She opened the living room curtains on a bare balcony. Next, she turned on the TV looking for the channels Joanne had marked as favorites, but only the four broadcast stations came in. Duh. The cable would’ve been shut off with no one here to pay for it. So much for that line of inquiry.

  To the bookshelf. Every Adam Sandler DVD on the top shelf plus all the parody horror movie franchises. Below them, a boatload of romances in all the modern genres: paranormal, erotica, fantasy, historical, suspense, contemporary. Between them, framed photographs of the twins at high school graduation, on their twenty-first birthday, Joanne in camouflage holding the antlers of an eight-point buck, Joanne at Diane’s college graduation and vice-versa. On the bottom shelf, Stephen King hardcovers and the complete works of Jane Austen.

  Giulia finally found Joanne’s personal papers inside the ottoman. One of those square plastic document boxes was stuffed with hanging folders docketing Joanne’s recent life: bills, tax returns, receipts, a few extra photos.

  “Come to Giulia, you beautiful organized life story.” She worked the box out of its tight inner space.

  Twelve “meows” sounded from the cat clock on the dining nook wall. Giulia didn’t look down on Joanne for her choice of kitsch, since Giulia’s favorite Christmas clock played snippets of different carols every hour.

  Hotel check-in time at last. Also time to eat. Little Zlatan apparently wanted a turkey club.

  Eight

  When Giulia opened the door of her room at the Comfort Inn, her first thought was: “I need a bigger desk.” Her second: “Maybe I should be happy the only available room had a king-sized bed.”

  The bed could accommodate her, Frank, Frank’s gaming PC, and all her research for this case. Of course, if she brought Frank into this huge bed, they’d get no paying work done at all.

  She unpacked her few clothes and inspected the coffee supplies. No, she would not be squanderi
ng her two cup per day pregnancy ration of coffee in here. The local shop she’d passed on the way from Joanne’s apartment would be her first stop tomorrow morning.

  A bite of the turkey club reinforced her belief that local shops created the tastiest food. She opened a 7-Up since caffeine was now reserved for coffee only and lucked into the last twenty minutes of Godzilla 2000 on the cable TV. The only Godzilla movie with the underlying message, “Smoking will get you stomped.”

  She set the contents of the file box on the bed and pulled out one folder after another. Joanne had left her an unexpected gift: A pocket calendar. As Godzilla’s closing music played in the background, Giulia read about birthday cake commissions, the start of hunting season, reminders to check sales prices at mega-outdoor stores, and a whole series of notes about someone named Marjorie.

  “Make vet appt. for Marjorie.” “Make more Jo’s Special for M.” On every Sunday: “M – 1 pm.”

  Giulia opened the back of the calendar. Diane’s name at the top had an old address scratched out and the address and phone number she’d given Giulia written beneath it. Below that, “Marjorie’s new cell.”

  Giulia dialed the number.

  Marjorie’s vintage 1950s teal ranch house was under siege by plastic pink flamingos. Their siege engines looked suspiciously like multi-level cat scratching posts.

  Giulia liked Marjorie already. She waved at the wrinkled face peeking through the lacy window curtains.

  The face disappeared and several locks snapped and rattled at the door. The door opened with one chain lock still attached.

  “Please show me some identification.”

  Marjorie’s voice was what Giulia’s father used to call a whiskey tenor: low and gravelly.

  Giulia held up her PI license. Marjorie squinted at it before closing the door. The chain slid free. Three cats streaked past Giulia when the door opened.