Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (16 page)

Thirty-One

Giulia leaped out of her chair, knocking it against the wall.

“I hear you in there!”

Zane’s voice: “Don’t go any farther.”

A string of f-bombs. The printer or the coat rack crashed to the floor. Giulia opened her office door. She wasn’t about to cower in here while her admin dealt with a drunken idiot.

Zane stood between her and Flynt the scumbag. Flynt reeked of beer and cigarettes. His smarmy good looks had deserted him: His jowls sagged, his eyes were bloodshot, and graying stubble covered his chin.

He spotted Giulia and charged. Zane put up both hands and exerted a gentle-looking shove.

Flynt stumbled backwards into the opposite wall. A few seconds later he lurched forward, his lips spraying spit and curses, and launched himself at Giulia again.

Zane slammed a fist into Flynt’s gut. Flynt folded in half. Giulia stepped up next to Zane and landed a clean uppercut to Flynt’s jaw. Flynt crashed to the floor.

Sidney’s voice talking to the 911 operator got through to Giulia’s ears.

Giulia and Zane grinned at each other. Giulia shook out her hand. “Idiot gave me brush burn.”

Flynt moaned and writhed at their feet.

“Dude,” Zane said, “don’t blow chunks on our floor.”

Sidney hung up. “Ew. I can handle Jessamine spitting up, but an adult full of beer? Double ew.”

Flynt started to unknot. Giulia sat on the backs of his knees. Zane knelt and twisted his arms up under his lank hair. Flynt told Giulia what he was going to do to her to make her pay. Zane twisted his arms at a more extreme angle and Flynt shut up. The lovely wail of sirens came nearer and nearer.

“Four minutes flat,” Sidney said. “Thanks for marrying a cop, Giulia.”

Heavy feet pounded up the wooden stairs. Two uniformed officers Giulia didn’t recognize ran in and stopped, each with a hand on his holstered gun. Seeing the Flynt-Zane-Giulia tableau. They kept coming.

“Whoa,” the linebacker-sized one said. “He’s been at the cheap beer.”

Muffled profanity from Flynt.

“Oh, no, he’s drooling on my hand-buffed floor,” Giulia said.

The linebacker moved in. “We’ll take over for you. What did he do?”

Zane and Giulia alternated the story as both cops hauled Flynt vertical. In the middle of Giulia’s explanation of why Flynt disliked her, Flynt twisted out of one officer’s grip and swung a fist wide in Giulia’s direction. Both officers tackled him. While one cuffed him, the other read him his rights. Flynt kept shoving his sneakers against the floor, trying to get leverage, still threatening Giulia.

“If his language blisters our paint, we’ll sue,” Giulia said.

The cops laughed as well as they could while hustling Flynt out the door and down the stairs. The entire staff of Driscoll Investigations followed them.

All the building’s tenants huddled on the sidewalk. The Common Grounds baristas and customers all squeezed against the large windows like puppies in a pet store.

The Scoop
arrived.

The cameraman jumped out of their creeper van before the driver put it in park. Flynt was still shouting accusations and threats against Giulia, all flip-flopping between “You wrecked everything” and the unprintable things he was going to do to her before he wrung her expletive-laced neck. The camera caught it all.

Ken Kanning, the face of
The Scoop
, exited the van’s driver’s side with his mouth moving triple-time.

Giulia said to Sidney, “I’m so pleased at the cheap technology that allows anyone to afford a police scanner.”

The police crammed Flynt into the back of their car. His mouth hadn’t stopped moving, but the closed windows muffled his shouts.

No such impediment blocked Kanning’s voice.

“Be glad you can’t hear him, Scoopers! We’ll have to edit the soundtrack or the FCC will be all over us. The language! The threats! If I were the owner of Driscoll Investigations, I’d be relieved to see this lowlife locked up.”

The camera’s spotlight hit Giulia directly in the eyes. Giulia pushed aside Kanning’s foam-covered microphone and walked up to the linebacker. She did need to speak to him. Her movement wasn’t only because she knew Kanning avoided police interaction at all costs.

Kanning shifted his microphone to Zane.

Giulia looked over her shoulder, caught Zane’s eye, and nodded. They’d planned for future
Scoop
encounters with a stock of non-answers. In cases where Kanning could get details from the police or any number of bystanders eager for their moment on TV, Zane and Sidney had blanket authority to spin the incident any way they chose, as long as the spin didn’t compromise a client or an open case.

Zane gave Kanning an anime-worthy account of the upstairs fight.

Giulia said to the linebacker, “I’ll be asking for an Order of Protection against Flynt for myself and my staff.”

“Good idea, Ms. D. Captain Reilly’ll take care of you as soon as you’re ready.”

“Have we met before today?”

“Not in person, but your Sicilian pizza is the best I’ve ever eaten. Did the Captain talk you into cooking for this year’s Fourth of July picnic too?”

“Oh, now I see. No. Sorry.”

“Damn. Excuse me.”

“No worries. Thank you for arriving so quickly.”

“We were the closest. Just doing our job.”

Flynt banged his shoulder against the car door, spit flying from his lips again.
The Scoop’s
camera swung toward the police car and its spotlight glared on Flynt’s face shoved into the window. The police took off.

Giulia threaded through the thinning crowd and escaped inside the stairwell. Sidney followed, Zane a second later, while
The Scoop
chased the police car.

Up in the office with the outer door closed and locked, Giulia said, “I’m sorry, guys. I’ll stop at the precinct before I drive back to the lake.”

“Don’t be silly,” Sidney said.

“No worries, Ms. D,” Zane said. “This job gives me so many ways to impress my gamer gang. A lot of them are either the fat, pasty geek stereotype or the skeletal, pasty geek stereotype, with or without zits. I’m creating my own badass legend.”

Giulia’s neck muscles unclenched. “I’m so glad you can look at it that way.”

“Really, Ms. D., we’re fine. Chicks dig scars, not that drunk-and-stupid gave me a scar. But chicks dig true stories of danger, and I have a date tomorrow night.
The Scoop
promised to broadcast my interview at the halfway point of their show tomorrow afternoon.”

Sidney added, “And I’ll have a story to tell Olivier over supper.”

“New rule for DI starting today,” Giulia said. “No more divorce cases.”

Thirty-Two

Back in her own office, the remaining Stone’s Throw research had become much more attractive. Walter first. Giulia played the recording she’d made of Frank’s report after his fishing trip while she searched for Walter’s web history.

Sheesh. Even more drinking photos. Walter holding a trophy from a college fishing competition. Walter at one middle-management job after another. Fast food. Video store. Retail sales in computers, shoes, appliances, sporting goods. His smile grew more mechanical with each photograph. His eyes stared into the camera without expression.

“I’d have chucked it all and bought a tiny boat rental business on the lake too, Walter.”

She browsed the boat rental website. The prices were reasonable for rentals and repairs of boats and fishing equipment. Reasonable plus small market on top of a seasonal-only business didn’t make anyone rich.

“So, Walter: Did you want freedom from the grind or are you scoping out the legendary family gold?”

She rubbed her eyes. Many more of these questions and she’d be able to build her own private retreat with them and beat her head against their inflexible walls.

CeCe and Roy.

She got as far as the first of the million-plus results before her higher-level cognitive functions came back from sabbatical.

That
CeCe and Roy. She should’ve recognized their names now that she’d acquired close to a dozen nieces and nephews.

The children’s entertainers boasted eight moderately successful recording projects. Proprietary home-based DVDs for learning guitar, banjo, and keyboard. Voice-over credits in several video games.

Their public face on the Net showed evidence of careful crafting and monitoring. No drinking photos. No unguarded Tweets. Not an R-rated word from either. Smiles in all their pictures: Teaching, interviews, visits to children’s hospitals.

Except in one: A long-distance paparazzi shot of a nurse wheeling CeCe out of a hospital, Roy at her side. No, not a hospital. Giulia zoomed in. A birthing center. Cece’s arms were empty.

Giulia grabbed screenshots. What Frank used to call her “bleeding heart instincts” told her to cross this couple off her suspect list. Three years of detective experience made her override sympathy and slap them into the list. At the bottom.

Onward to MacAllister Stone.

No Facebook or Twitter accounts, but a boatload of professional accolades. Young Mac aged into older Mac with grace as her blonde hair turned silver and her smooth face gathered laugh lines and worry lines. Her offices, all of which looked like clones of each other, became crowded with more and more awards each year.

The inn’s property survey and deed were easy to find. Mac had certainly bought the lighthouse at a bargain, but Giulia had been right about the obscene price of the renovations. “Gutted” would indeed have been the only way to begin.

Write-ups in historical and tourism magazines showcased the B&B at its opening and its five-year anniversary. A handful of ghost hunters and ghost debunkers published about it as well, all with conflicting information. No surprise there.

Giulia spent some time researching the Stone family ancestors and treasure hunting. Those were a pair of black holes to get lost in forever. Genealogy sites proved the existence of the stagecoach-robbing Stone. Also several succeeding generations of Stones, most with families large enough to populate two basketball teams, plus substitutes on the benches. The stagecoach robber starred in a few penny dreadfuls, as well as compilations of legends of the Wild West.

That led to the treasure hunters. The fervor of recent converts to Catholicism or the latest diet miracle was a guttering candle flame compared to the inferno in the hearts of True Believers in buried treasure. According to the many websites, Giulia was a fool if she didn’t abandon DI and purchase a metal detector and equipment to create 3-D sonar images of mounds. If mounds weren’t calling to her, then she must purchase maps and follow obscure diary entries from various criminals who’d secreted their loot and died before they could spend it. A fortune could be hers if only she put forth the effort.

The phone rang in the outer office. Her concentration broken, Giulia checked the clock in her taskbar. Four ten. She still needed to research further into Rowan, but if she wanted to talk to Jimmy and the district attorney, she had to haul it.

No choice. She’d have to suffer under Stone Throw’s slug-paced Wi-Fi to dig deeper into Lady Rowan, friend of Mac, diviner of the future through the Tarot.

Several mouse clicks later, all her research was emailed to herself for retrieval on her iPad. She called the precinct and asked the Bond Girl-in-training receptionist to let Jimmy know she’d be over there by four thirty.

She turned everything off and opened her office door. “Look at these two hard workers. The totalitarian dictator in me is pleased.”

Zane choked. Sidney turned big chocolate chip eyes on Giulia and said, “Your oppressive regime will topple in a cloud of hazelnut coffee-scented dust.
The Scoop
will broadcast exclusive reports of our bloodless coup.”

Giulia laughed so hard she had to sit in Zane’s client chair or fall down. “S-stop or I’ll g-get the hiccups.”

“Serves you right. I thought you’d given up the convent’s tyrannical ways.”

Giulia gasped several times and succeeded in cutting off her helpless laughter. “Who are you and what have you done with Sidney?”

“I’ve been reading the classics to Jessamine every night after supper. Dumas and Dickens rub off on you really quick.”

“Jessamine will grow up to win the Pulitzer Prize in Literature.”

“Or she’ll breed a better, softer, woollier alpaca and make us all rich. Olivier would like the Pulitzer Prize. Mom and Dad would like the better alpaca.” She glanced at her screen. “That’s the thirty-seventh garbage email today. Zane’s going to look into better anti-spam filters.”

Zane said in his old, timid way, which didn’t suit his Humphrey Bogart voice at all, “If that’s okay with you, Ms. D.”

Giulia refrained from lecturing him. “Of course it’s okay. Why would I hire an MIT grad and not listen to him on technical issues?” She stood. “I’m off to hunt ghosts and vandals.”

“Ghosts? More than one?” Zane said.

“If there is a ghost, singular, it’s a Stone ancestor who fell off the lighthouse Widow’s Walk when she saw her husband drown. Sidney, I heard that. An open mind is a desirable attribute in this profession.”

Sidney cleared her throat. “Is any part of that true?”

“Well, there was a Dorothea who married Ephraim Stone and who both died on October ninth, 1918. But the rest of it? I couldn’t discover any confirmation in my research today. There may be evidence of a rigged white nightgown which flies up the lighthouse stairs. I hope it’s only used during Halloween week.”

“A nightgown on wires is amateur,” Zane said. “My fraternity knew how to scare people at Halloween. We set up a morgue one year and only half the bodies under sheets were fake. We dressed as zombies and hid in the bushes. We dressed as ghosts and hid in the bedrooms and waited for the horny couples to sneak off for a quickie. My senior year we turned the frat house into a fairy tale castle. The girls loved it until we ripped off the Prince Charming masks and splattered them with fake blood and realistic amputated body parts. We went through a lot of booze after that reveal.”

Giulia’s mouth was hanging open. She closed it, swallowed, and said, “Next week we’re going to have a discussion about you going undercover.” She picked up her purse. “Now I’m off to see the district attorney about a restraining order.”

Sidney said, “You are? Thanks.”

Giulia gave Sidney her “no one appreciates me” stare. “A client’s crazy husband threatens and attacks us and you’re surprised I’m taking action? Baby Brain is supposed to go away after you give birth.”

Sidney giggled. “It has, I swear. If we catch
The Scoop
lurking, we’ll run the other way.”

“I’ll be back in the office as soon as I solve this lighthouse mystery.” She listened to herself. “I’m living in a
Scooby-Doo
episode.”

“Ruh-roh!” Zane and Sidney said together.