Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (15 page)

Twenty-Nine

They escaped to their room to avoid meeting Mac.

“I’m surprised,” Frank said. “She didn’t seem like the type to screw with you.”

“I’m disappointed.” Giulia poked at her phone. “I think the lure of more publicity seduced her. Think of the Trip Advisor and BedandBreakfast.com spotlight blurbs: A Real Detective Spent Four Days at Stone’s Throw and Witnessed Irrefutable Evidence of the Stone’s Throw Ghost.”

Frank, checking his own phone, said without looking up, “I suggest hiding a ten percent exploitation fee in all the charges on her bill.”

“It’s a thought. Did you happen to be looking at Cedar when the candles blew out?”

“No, Solana’s ghost possession had all my attention. Why?”

“He might have blown out the candles. There. Got it.” She moved from the chair onto the bed next to Frank. “I recorded the séance.”

He dropped his phone. “You are brilliant.”

“True.” She pressed play.

The séance played out as they’d experienced it, with added rustles and occasional sound obstructions from Giulia’s feet brushing the throw rug.

Frank hit stop after the second letter-by-letter Ouija message. “Those pauses weren’t as long as they felt, with us wondering whether that freaky piece of wood was going to drag us around the board again.”

“What do you think moved it?”

“Who, not what. My money’s on Solana.”

“Alone?”

“I think so.” His phone rang with the ESPN update sound. He ignored it. “Joel was too nervous to work with her and CeCe tensed up like the planchette was going to bite her.”

Giulia got to her knees on the other side of the bed and closed one window. “That storm killed the beautiful warm night.” Stretching to the limit of her reach, she closed the other. “Anthony was in the planchette group for research. Marion took notes up to the ghost possession moment. You know, would a haunting add to or subtract from the bottom line of the B&B they plan to open?”

Frank pulled her back against him. “Okay. Solana by herself. If Cedar planted magnets under the table to work the planchette, I didn’t see them. Fishing line wouldn’t have worked because you sat on the far end, not a plant of theirs to play tug-the-wood with.”

Giulia reached over his chest and hit the play button on her recording. “I can’t hear the crying. We found the switch. It must be a recording.”

“It wasn’t loud. The mic may not be sensitive enough to catch it.”

She cranked the volume. They listened to more of Solana’s cajoling.

“The big surprise should be right about now,” Frank said. “Her hands got all stiff and jerked the planchette and then she did her impression of Whoopi Goldberg in
Ghost
.”

“That sound is Marion pushing back her chair,” Giulia said.

Solana/not Solana spoke her first sentence.

“Play it again,” Frank said.

“Shh. She’ll talk some more in a second.”

On the recording, Solana/not Solana continued: “You are obliged to respect this house. I am its warder. No one will remove the treasure from this family.”

Giulia stopped the playback. “If she’s faking it, she’s good. Change to a more formal style of speech, throw in an old-fashioned word, keep the pronouncements generic.”

“Except for the treasure,” Frank said.

“She was looking at Mac when she said that. Everyone and their pet goldfish knows the treasure story because of that newspaper article.” Giulia scrolled the recording back and replayed the possession monologue. “Can my eyes bug out on command like hers did?” Giulia stretched her eyelids.

“You need more practice,” Frank said. “Unless it’s genetic, like being able to curl your tongue or wiggle your ears.”

They finished the recording. The last part was useless after Giulia hid her phone in her pocket.

“Nothing but thumps and swishes,” Giulia said, frowning. “I couldn’t think of a good way to hide it and still record.”

“You got the meat of it, for what it’s worth. We can’t prove or disprove anything on the recording alone. Or on our visuals.”

“Joel’s idea of hypnotism is out too, since she looked more or less the same in real life and in the picture he took.” Giulia switched her phone for her iPad. “We’ve got a phony psychic and a client with a loose definition of honesty. Yippee.”

“As long as she’s honest enough to pay the bill.” Frank listened. “It stopped raining, but I don’t want to go out for food now. Any more ghost chasing planned for tonight?”

“I’m not chasing anything unless I hear that crying again.” Giulia typed notes on the séance into a single document. “I need to make separate research pages for everyone here.”

“But not ’til tomorrow morning, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” Giulia stared into the blackness outside the window, trying to pin down a detail about Solana.

Frank headed to the bathroom. Giulia remembered the last bit and put the tablet away. She turned down the quilt and tossed her clothes in the bottom dresser drawer. No sound from the bathroom. Now. The silky crimson nightgown slid over her bare skin. It hugged all her curves. One side was slit up to her hip socket. The bodice was lace everywhere and the spaghetti straps were held in place by snaps covered with tiny crimson rosettes.

It was the most daring thing she’d ever worn, including the wedding nightgown she’d received from Laurel and Anya at her bridal shower.

Frank came out of the bathroom and stopped cold in front of the window. Giulia leaned against the bedpost, unsure if his reaction was negative or positive. After all, this was the man who was once too shy to talk to her because she used to be a nun.

He ended her uncertainty by wolf whistling as he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. As his hands stroked along the nightgown, he pulled just hard enough to pop one of the little rosette-covered snaps.

“Oh, really,” he said, and maneuvered both of them onto the bed.

Giulia opened her eyes. The pale moon shone into the room. What was wrong with its light? What was wrong with her eyes? Some type of weblike pattern interfered with her vision. She reached out to wave whatever it was out of her face. Her hand wouldn’t move. She twisted and blinked and tried to sit up. The canopy covered her face. She opened her mouth and sucked in a clump of lace. She arched her back and jerked her head from side to side.

“Frank,” she tried to say, but a different name came out of her mouth.

Her eyes opened. The bright moon lit the room like a neon sign. The canopy hung in its proper place over the bed. Frank lay beside her, snoring.

Thirty

At eleven thirty-five Monday morning, Giulia pulled into the parking lot behind Driscoll Investigations’ building in Cottonwood. She blamed her late arrival on lingering over another superb breakfast and the poor driving conditions from a persistent drizzle covering most of Pennsylvania. Luck or someone taking an early lunch got her an open spot in the corner. She climbed the stairs, hearing Zane’s voice on the phone muffled by the door.

Sidney fumbled with her computer the moment Giulia entered the office. Solana’s voice as she discovered the ethereal veil around Giulia’s head blared from her speakers. Zane shot her a dirty look and she cut the voice off.

Giulia facepalmed.

Zane finished his phone call. “Your staff respectfully requests an explanation of that upload before any other news or work assignments.”

“How did you find it?”

Sidney’s face radiated delight. “Olivier’s younger brothers. Their latest hobby is recreating every experiment from this one-hundred-year-old boy’s adventure book they found at the back of their grandfather’s bookshelf. I subscribe to their YouTube channel. They put out a call for ghost pranks to stage a haunting and when I ran a search, up popped The Veiled Woman.”

Giulia knew her face registered an emotion in a whole different zip code from “delight.”

“Solana, the woman who used me as her stage prop in that video, is Mac’s hired entertainment.”

“You’re slipping to the bottom of the first page of results,” Zane said.

“Thank God. More important than my lack of Net notoriety is the discovery that Solana and Lady Rowan know each other.” She pointed kitty-corner across the street.

Zane said, “To be impartial, each of them could be keeping up with the competition rather than working a mark together.

Giulia made a wry face. “The latter was my initial thought.”

Sidney said, “Mine too. This job is corrupting us.”

“True. Speaking of the job, I’m here to use our excellent internet connection for research. Have there been any emergencies?”

“Not one. Life is boring and routine,” Sidney said. “You picked a good time to ghost hunt.”

“That’s right,” Zane said. “Is there a lighthouse ghost?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Giu-lia.”

“Sidney, don’t let your head explode,” Giulia said. “Mac created an elaborate ancestral ghost complete with ancillary newspaper interview to pique local interest. We’ve had a few incidents so far.” She summarized the arson, shower glop, and shattered brick missile in a few sentences.

Sidney’s head still looked in danger of imminent detonation. “You’ve found rational explanations for all of it, right?”

“Well, not yet.” Giulia didn’t let the hint of a smile touch her mouth. “We did find one hidden switch in the living room after the séance and ghostly possession.”

“The what?” her assistants said.

Giulia stood between their desks and described last night’s entertainment in much more detail than the humdrum arson and robbery. She kept having to stop and laugh at their reactions.

Sidney’s fingers drummed on her desk with more and more force throughout the story. At the end, she burst out with: “Pardon my language, but that is a big, stinking pile of crap. These types are nothing more than internet scams in human form.”

“I don’t disagree with you,” Giulia said. “This is one reason I’m closing myself in my office for a few hours. Pretend I’m not here.”

Giulia fired up her computer and dealt with email first. She forwarded another possible client on to Sidney and a Diocesan request for information to Zane. Then took the printouts from their envelope and opened up a new spreadsheet plus a search window.

Page one, Marion and Anthony. Page two, Joel and Gino. Page three, CeCe and Roy. Page four, Solana and Cedar. Page five, Lucy. Page six, Walter. Page seven, Mac.

She didn’t create a sheet for Matthew the handyman. She typed out M-A-T-T, but erased it a moment later. He didn’t have the right feel for the mastermind of fires and brick bombs and theft and hauntings. Thoroughness demanded his own sheet, though. She retyped his name and left that page to be filled in later.

First she plugged in Marion and Anthony’s address. Two point three seconds later Google returned several hundred hits.

“How nice of you two to be so involved in photo-op projects.” She mentally slapped herself. “Stop pegging them as Suspects Numbers One and Two. Impartial research begins right now.”

On his own, Anthony Haswell chaired three different trusts and ran his city’s school board. His condo development business profits had dipped in the early 2000s, but rebounded late in the decade.

Marion started an au pair business thirty years earlier. Today it was a thriving home-based company that placed hundreds of young women and men around the country each year.

Giulia copied and pasted several paragraphs for closer study tonight at Stone’s Throw.

At the end of the third page of results she found a
Forbes
magazine article. The successful couple’s “How We Did It” story and their bucket list.

His list included building condos adjacent to pro football stadiums, in the same way exclusive housing developments sprang up next to golf courses. Hers was simpler: She designed her own hats as a hobby and wanted to grow that into a boutique business.

Their shared goal: Invest in the bed and breakfast business. To that end, they were making the rounds of all B&Bs with historical significance. A charming way to spend their semi-retirement.

The undercurrent in the news articles stank of ruthlessness. Miss Manners might approve their clothing, their upbringing, their business sense, and their place settings at dinner parties, but under all that perfection they clawed and scratched and stabbed with the worst.

“Nice to know my instincts are sound. Okay, you two, just because you have big red ‘suspect’ signs glowing over your heads doesn’t mean you’re actually trying to force Mac out of business. Onward.”

If the internet could be relied on, Joel and Gino had been joined at the hip since the dawn of Google. Of course it could. If it was on the web, it must be true. Right.

They were in theater and soccer at the same high school. Theater and soccer at the same college. Business degrees. Opened their own coffee shop right after graduation. Expanded it to a bar with live music weekly and soccer on several TVs. Made their local TV news as the second couple in town married as soon as Pennsylvania legalized gay marriage.

If ever two people looked to be exactly the way they appeared, those two were exhibit A. Giulia read through their Facebook and Twitter feeds but nothing pinged. Still, a clean record wasn’t a guarantee that they had no sinister plots in mind. If they wanted a ready-made bed and breakfast as a change from booze and sports, who would suspect Mac’s “truant nephews?” Certainly not Mac.

Cedar’s internet footprint was half as big as the Joel-Gino entity and one-quarter the size of Anthony’s. Not even a Facebook page.

A photo with professional qualifications on the site of the accounting firm he worked for; a few mentions in the business section of the local paper. In his professional photographs he dressed like every other employee. Giulia wondered how far he took dress-down Fridays.

Solana made up for her husband’s lack. Giulia found her credit counseling advertisements in local weeklies; she conducted regular seminars at the library and YMCA. Halfway down the first page of hits, Giulia clicked a link that looked out of place.

She got a website with soothing blues and pale greens undulating like fog around plain black type. “Lady Solana” glowed beneath the colored fog. The About tab started with “Lady Solana Bridges the Gap Between Worlds.” The News tab: “Lady Solana Erases the Stigma of Ouija Boards.” The Testimonials tab wept with love and ecstasy. Well, almost all the testimonials. The bottom third of the page sported this: “While we have no doubt Lady Solana contacted my grandfather, the Other Side has not lived up to my expectations. I had hoped that crossing over would have changed Granddad for the better. Even with Lady Solana channeling him, I recognized the miserable bastard’s attitude immediately. I apologized to Lady Solana and she was most gracious.”

She also sold Ouija boards of her own design. Smart of her not to alert Hasbro’s legal team.

Giulia again took screenshots of all the elements on the page and pasted them into Solana’s Excel sheet. What a draw Mac had discovered. Or Lady Rowan had recommended to Mac, knowing the deep trust Mac had in her. Why the title of “Lady” so often? Did it add a regal cachet for the desperate? She wondered if Mac’s “Time to book your new vacation” emails were all about the family legend: A genuine psychic will attempt to contact the Stone’s Throw ghost! Will it manifest? Will it speak? Special pricing for that week only!

The scenario fell into place with ease: Rowan sees the news article. Even though Mac was sure to have told her all about the family legends, perhaps Rowan never really believed the gold didn’t exist. Rowan worries that a new crop of treasure hunters will claim jump. Enter Solana, Rowan’s professional contact, or professional rival, and they declare a truce. Rowan offers to plant the idea in Mac’s head about Solana as a surefire summer attraction, and bargains with Solana for a fifty-fifty split of the family fortune if Solana contacts the ghost who knows its location. Finders keepers and too bad for Mac losing her family fortune.

Once upon a time, Sister Mary Regina Coelis believed all people were good at heart. Giulia Driscoll, Private Investigator, stopped believing that right about the time a crazy Christian cult kidnapped her friends’ baby.

She shoved it out of her head, typed up her theories, and moved on to Lucy the housekeeper. Thank you, social media. Lucy posted college photos with booze. With friends. With booze and friends. With a theater troupe of some kind. Puppets. No, not puppets…marionettes. That might have been why she wanted the marionette song Friday night. Reliving happy college days, perhaps.

Theater degrees were hard to translate into a job that paid the rent. Giulia knew that from Laurel and Anya. So Lucy had a BA or MFA and was cleaning toilets and serving food to make ends meet. Giulia also knew what that was like, after ten years teaching while a nun, yet with no official teaching degree to use in the outside world.

Lucy probably had massive student loan debt, thus her snatch at any job she could find. Would a theater major see the romance in a legendary gold cache, or just the halcyon prospect of a debt-free life? Possibly both.

Unfortunately, she had no criminal record, not even for weed possession or a DUI.

Unfortunately part two: All Giulia’s current theories presumed the reality of a cache of stolen gold coins.

Fortunately part one: Mac’s profitable B&B was real, and a couple or a hardworking solo entrepreneur could make Mac’s profit their own.

That was the next research line to take. A plot to scare Mac into selling her business cheap, then flipping the property and retiring on the proceeds.

She searched for lakefront property values and then for B&B values. The traffic noises and Zane and Sidney’s conversation faded as she dived deeper into the numbers.

The main office door slammed against the outer wall.

“Where are you, homewrecker?”