Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) (13 page)

Twenty-Eight

Frank called Giulia at work the next morning with all three toxicology reports: The teenagers’ and Giulia’s sister-in-law’s.

“You are a miracle worker,” Giulia said. “How did you get access to Anne’s information?”

“I made a vow never to reveal the inner workings of the police department.”

“Which means you convinced Jimmy of the connection between all three women and he worked his magic.”

“You used to be much more gullible.” A sigh. “You were right. They were all on homegrown junk. Most of the concoction is natural. The reports show valerian, hyssop, and fennel, but get this: it also shows traces of tannin and a ton of sugars.”

“Tannin? As in tea leaves?”

“Tannins also appear in fermentation, according to the lab guys who brew beer in their basements. Because of the sugar content, they think a sweet wine was used to hide the kicker ingredient: LSA.”

Giulia opened a search window out of habit. “Define LSA, please?”

“You started to Google it, didn’t you?” The smile in his voice came over the receiver. “LSA is a home-grown version of LSD. Now, class, who can tell me the number one problem with home-grown illegal substances? Ms. Driscoll, I see your hand up.”

“Incorrect extraction, Mr. Driscoll.”

“You’re my favorite student, Ms. Driscoll.”

“You can also add the side effects of mixing it with alcohol.” Giulia typed as she talked. “Oh my, yes, such a bad idea.”

Frank’s voice changed. “Your sister-in-law’s tox report showed traces of LSA as well as thebaine, papaverine, and a few other -ines, all derived from opium.”

Giulia’s mouth tightened. “Is she dead?”

“No, no. She’s out of lockdown but still in intensive care. She hasn’t woken up yet. Don’t worry, there’s still brain activity.”

Giulia suppressed with difficulty the curses she wanted to bring down on her brother, her sister-in-law, and the irresponsible idiots creating their own version of
Breaking Bad
with their gardens.

“So the teenagers didn’t have the extra drugs in their systems, but they did have alcohol indicators?”

“Correct, but their LSA levels were quadruple your sister-in-law’s. Still think all three are related?”

Giulia clicked over to a “how to use LSA safely” discussion board. Good Heavens. “Yes,” she said, reading posts from several people in major denial about their addiction.

“I can hear in your voice you’re already in clue-hunting mode. See you tonight.”

“Thanks, honey.” She hung up and drilled deeper into the drug user blog, then found another, and another. The hardened users fell into two categories: People whose brains were so fried they couldn’t even spell “extract” half the time, and people who posted useful information about portions, how-tos, and potency. If one discounted the inevitable cumulative effect of LSA, one could almost believe the logical-sounding advice about counteracting a bad trip. The discussions of those still having flashbacks after weeks and months belied the pseudo-medical advice, though.

“Anne, you idiot. Salvatore may be a bully and a psychological abuser, but you should’ve thought of the kids before you swallowed that first dose. Plus, you have me talking to myself again.”

If Anne had been a prize idiot using Salvatore as justification, what had been the teenagers’ excuse? Disaffection or abuse or plain old rebellion? The idea of Anne and the teenagers and Joanne in the same Prepper cult took deeper root in her mind. She drew an arrow on the corner of her legal pad.

➔ Anne:

• Trouble at home

• Sneaks out multiple times

• Runs away with camping gear

• Weeks later comes to DI

• High on something unusual and natural

• Regrets change of lifestyle

• Nearly dies

➔ Teenagers:

• Trouble at home?

• Sneak out? Multiple times?

• Run away

• Weeks(?) later regret change of lifestyle? Are afraid?

• Try to return to civilization for help but drugs too much for their younger bodies and die before help acquired

• If afraid, what were they afraid of?

She’d written around the margin of the legal paper and flipped to the other side.

➔ Joanne:

• Trouble at home/work

• “Sneaks out” in the sense of finding strangers through dating sites

• “Runs away” either on her own (voluntary disappearance) or a date attacked her (Mugged? Car jacked? Worse?)

• Happily tripping on LSA and baking cakes in a cast-iron pan over an open fire?

OR

• Regrets change of lifestyle and hides even deeper off grid?

Zane knocked and brought in the mail. “Three checks at once, Ms. D. We’re rolling in wealth today.”

Giulia shook herself out of the drug culture and took the checks. “For certain definitions of wealth, yes. Specifically, this covers the health insurance premium for five months.”

Sidney said from her desk, “Jessamine’s pediatrician thanks you.”

“I aim to retain my employees, and health care helps.”

“A lot.” Zane cleared his throat. “So does the occasional day off. May I put in for a four-day weekend around Labor Day?”

Giulia calculated Zane’s hire date. “Your vacation time doesn’t reset until November fifteenth.”

“I’ll trade off for any Saturday, no restrictions.”

“Let me check the master calendar.” She opened the ginormous Excel doc and clicked the sheets for July through September. “Nothing is worth the trade at the moment. Are you willing to keep the offer open-ended?”

“Yes. This one’s important.”

“Ooo-OOO-ooh.” Sidney’s singsong mirrored Giulia’s curiosity.

Zane didn’t react to Sidney, interesting in itself since he bantered with her much more than with Giulia. Which wasn’t saying they’d become a Vaudeville team, but still.

“All right. An extra day before the Labor Day holiday in exchange for a Saturday to be named later.”

She wanted to know why, but she was the boss, not a friend. Boundaries she understood, unlike Mr. “You’ve got good breeding hips.”

“Breeding hips,” Giulia said out loud. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome?” Sidney said.

Giulia took out her phone. “A chain of ideas connected in my head. Joanne’s friend Marjorie the Cat Lady may be the only person I interviewed who doesn’t have an agenda. Joanne visited her every Sunday, which creates enough of a time gap to notice changes.”

An hour later, she parked the Nunmobile in front of the flamingoes and their siege engines. The front door opened when she stepped on the sidewalk. Groucho and Tallulah zipped out and tried to kill her by weaving around and through her legs as she walked. From Marjorie’s smiles and tee-hees, she considered attempted murder endearing. Inside, Giulia sat in the same chair inhaling the same ammonia/poop/flower odors as cat hair glommed onto her skirt. She managed not to check for cat hair in the glass of iced tea Marjorie handed her.

After the polite preliminaries, Giulia played the ex-nun card.

Marjorie ate it up and gave Giulia even more in return. She took a velvet-plus-cat-hair picture frame from the top of the piano and detached the backing.

“This is my mother, God rest her, on her wedding day in 1952.” The photograph showed a smiling, petite woman in a cathedral train wedding gown with a veil composed of yards of netting and dozens of orange blossoms. Marjorie then produced a second photograph from behind it, of the same petite woman in a plain white gown and plainer white veil. Her smile in this photograph appeared uncertain.

“What Order?” Giulia said.

Marjorie bounced on her sofa cushion, causing the fox-tailed tabby to leap from around her shoulders with a screech. “I knew you’d get it. She joined the Carmelites, but escaped before her final vows. She never said ‘escape’ though.”

“She jumped the wall.”

More bouncing. “Yes, yes, that’s what she used to say. Is it a secret code?”

“Something like that. Your mother looks lovely in both wedding pictures.”

“You’re very kind.” She set the frame and photographs on the coffee table. “Mama always said to trust nuns, and especially to trust ex-nuns. How can I help you?”

Giulia explained about her sister-in-law and the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth lockdown and how she may have detached from her home cult and attached herself to a different cult. She placed great emphasis on Anne’s dramatic collapse at Giulia’s feet and the multiple drugs in Anne’s system. Marjorie made sympathetic faces and sad noises.

“The deeper I look into Joanne’s life the last few months before she disappeared, the more I see signs of similar behavior. Since you knew her so well and saw her outside of her work setting every week, I hoped you could tell me if she showed signs of cult-like behavior or drug addiction.”

Marjorie sipped her tea, the lines on her forehead deepening. “I don’t know anything about drugs, really. I wouldn’t know what to look for. Do you mean like people who take cocaine and their eyes get all crazy and they zoom around at super speed eating everything in sight like on cop shows?”

Giulia held her iced tea glass without drinking from it. “No, nothing that extreme. More like clichéd hippie behavior. Everything is soothing and easy and wonderful.”

Marjorie laughed. The identical calico cats on either side of her growled and resettled themselves. “I was born a few years too late to tune in and turn on, but my older brother wasn’t. I spied on him and his friends often enough to know those signs.” She stroked both calicos simultaneously. “I’ve been thinking more about Joanne since your last visit. Did you know she was passed over for a promotion early in January?”

“Do you think that was her turning point?”

“Yes, well, that and the boyfriend who broke up with her before Christmas. For three Sundays running I listened to her complain about how she lost out on everything because she was a fat woman.”

“I know too many women who think they’ll never have a life until they’re supermodel skinny.”

Marjorie patted her thighs and got two handfuls of cat. “I like apple pie with cinnamon ice cream and I buy pants with elastic waistbands. Joanne, silly thing, was sure her problems would be solved with the right diet. When she came that Sunday with no makeup and in Army surplus clothes, she looked hard. Not the sweet Joanne I knew.” Marjorie tried to scoot the cats off her legs, but they dug their claws into her pants and purred. “If you tell me Joanne found some concoction of drugs that would make her fit and skinny, I believe she would have followed it like a new religion.”

After the drive home, Giulia the pacifist understood why people erupted in road rage. First the construction, then three student drivers, then when she finally got off the highway, the little boy in the minivan at the red light who rolled down the window and whizzed onto the asphalt. In a breeze. Blowing the stream onto Giulia’s windshield. Good thing she’d rolled up her driver’s side window when she realized it was indeed a tiny little pecker sticking out of the minivan’s back window.

Frank made immediate plans to teach little Zlatan that skill as soon as he was potty-trained.

Giulia walked out to the patio and turned the hose full force onto the broccoli. A moment later, she relented and switched the spray to “shower” setting. Only a thoughtless gardener ruined perfectly good broccoli over a temporary snit.

Frank came out with ice water. “I put the laundry in the dryer. All the cat hair appears to have been scrubbed away.”

“I like cats, but I’m still phantom itching.” She shifted the spray to the tomatoes.

“I want to go over some self-defense basics with you tonight,” Frank said, eyes on his phone.

Giulia pinched her lips together for a second. “I don’t expect this Prepper to get me in a headlock and tie me up in a storage bin until I agree to give up flavored coffee.”

“You’re going to an extremist’s stomping ground. He might be a crunchy naturalist who preaches against the evils of iPhones. He might also be a Jim Jones type who wants to brainwash everyone for the cause.”

She turned off the hose. “Point taken. If I’m not home by midnight tomorrow, call out the militia. I’ll leave my phone on and stash it in the glove compartment.”

Frank’s jaw clenched. “The more I hear about this, the less I like it.”

“I’m not a fragile flower.” Giulia advanced on her husband. “I am a successful PI who has repeatedly proven I can take care of myself. Correct?”

Frank inclined his head. “No argument there.”

“Thank you. My Glock will also be in the glove compartment. Remember with the car’s remote unlock I can have it in my hand in fewer than thirty seconds.”

“That makes me feel better.” He took her hand. “Come inside and show me all the different ways you can kick my butt. I’ll sleep better.”

Twenty-Nine

Giulia met Alex the gardener next to his pickup at the same Home Depot Tuesday at noon. Wild eyes, she thought.

“Ready to follow?” he said. “I was told not to give you the exact location because you’re not yet a member of the community.”

“I understand.” If the leader of this community handed her a tin foil hat upon arrival, she’d never be able to keep a straight face.

They got on the highway and off again after only a few miles and began a winding trek north. Giulia missed her small house with its extra-large garden more every mile she followed. She wanted to sit next to Frank on their couch and read a romance novel while Frank watched the Manchester United game.

To business. Cases didn’t get solved blowing the weekly budget at Barnes & Noble.

The city gave way to the ’burbs. The suburbs slipped into cow country. Cow country changed into woods and back again. An hour and twenty minutes into the drive, Wild Eyes led her through four more turns and down a dirt road through thick woods. They parked on more dirt next to an older Volvo and a newer pickup.

She locked the Nunmobile (never trust strangers not to paw through your unattended vehicle) and stretched. First she touched her toes and checked out the bumper stickers on the other vehicles.

“I brake for Bigfoot.”

“Bambi: He’s what’s for dinner.”

The go-to meme for hunters, apparently. Joanne had a t-shirt with the same phrase.

She stretched backwards. As much of the surrounding area as she could scan in a three-second glance was covered with trees. Birch, pine, spruce, cottonwood, chestnut; more she couldn’t identify in that snippet of time.

When she straightened, she faced the hedge. It looked familiar. Not in this context, but she’d seen it.

“Are you ready to meet the community?” Alex said.

Maria Martin put on her signature tentative smile. “You bet.”

Giulia Driscoll, formerly Sister Mary Regina Coelis, heard the way he said “community” and erected mental siege walls.

They walked through a concealed opening in the ten-foot ivy and hawthorn hedge and entered a fairy-tale village. Giulia remembered her parents once taking a young Giulia and younger Salvatore to a kids’ theme park based on nursery rhymes. The condo-sized high-button boot of The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and The Crooked Man’s Crooked House would’ve fit right in among the irregular circle of Tiny Houses. Some were restructured mobile homes, some looked like two or three elaborate sheds bolted together. One was octagonal. One was a perfect gingerbread-fretted Victorian home scaled to doll house proportions. All of them were painted to blend with the trees.

A vegetable garden fronted every house. Looking down the narrow paths between each house, Giulia saw signs of more gardens in the back. A fire pit with a square grill over it dominated the central area. Chickens wandered among the beehives off to Giulia’s right, behind a long herb garden fenced in with wire. Alex had apparently modeled his own garden and land after the design of this community.

Between the fire pit and the gingerbread house’s garden, a middle-aged woman sat at a traditional spinning wheel, working fluffs of off-white wool into yarn. Two teenage boys ran from the woods between two of the houses, the first carrying a football.

“Hey, Alex,” they shouted as they ran off.

The spinner raised her head and nodded without breaking her rhythm. Giulia was relieved on one point: No one wore “Little House on the Prairie” clothing. The boys wore shorts and t-shirts with some kind of slogans. The woman wore a tiered cotton sundress.

“Come on,” Alex said to Giulia. “I’ll give you the grand tour of my own place. It’s pretty typical of what we’ve chosen to bring into the new world.”

Giulia heard goats and sheep now. At least she thought she detected two different types of baas and bleats and maybe grunts and snorts as well. This pre-post-Zombie Apocalypse world would need Febreze.

Why Giulia Driscoll would never make it as a Prepper, reason number two: She had no desire whatsoever to grow her own lamb chops the way her great-great-grandparents did on the farm. Shearing sheep for wool, certainly. Slitting their sheared throats to drain the blood after scooping out their sheepy viscera? Thank you, no.

They climbed two steps to a miniature house similar to the one Joanne’s ex Louis Larabee lived in. A metal sign above the door read “Home of the Horn.” Giulia wasn’t surprised to see Alex’s decorating scheme ran to horns. Lots of horns.

“See the headrests on my chairs? They’re carved from the base of stag antlers, where the antlers meet and form a cup.”

Giulia picked up a candlestick from the mantelpiece. “Is this carved from an antler as well?”

“A goat horn, actually. I carved it myself.” He graciously acknowledged her compliment.

The painting over the mantelpiece illustrated an ancient cult dancing and drinking around a fire with stags and rams watching from the trees. Druids, Giulia thought from their robes and the runes carved on their drinking horns.

Alex wasn’t merely admiring pioneer back to basics. He was looking way, way back. Mr. Peabody and Sherman’s Wayback Machine back.

At the first mention of “sacrifice” she would be in the Nunmobile and halfway home.

No, that worry was silly. She was touring a survival cult with a hip fetish. They weren’t going to sacrifice the Pelvis of the Future.

The photos Diane had given Giulia didn’t show Joanne’s hips to their best advantage. The image of Joanne buried somewhere in these dense woods kept poking at her.

Alex gestured at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves flanking the fireplace. “We all have as many books as we can cram into our houses.” He pointed up to the loft, which was lined with bookshelves instead of wallpaper. “We all possess the essential volumes for survival after the dirty bombs or the EMP destroys this corrupt and lazy modern world. Farming, woodworking, preserving, hunting, and medical care are the main ones. We stock guns and ammunition, but one of the entrance requirements is knowing how to carve and fletch arrows. Those two football players you saw earlier are our best bow makers.”

Giulia ran her fingers over the spines of the books. Mythology from a dozen different cultures. Ancient Greek and Roman history. American history and politics from the Revolution to present day. Not a single mystery or action-adventure or even a political humor. Everyone needed a laugh at some point. Especially if one of the many end of the world scenarios came true. Even gallows humor would be useful.

She played disingenuous. “I don’t see any place for storage. I mean, I’ve never been inside a Tiny House before, so I don’t know how they work. Where are the preserves and dried meat you’re preparing for the winter?”

His long arm pointed to the back of the house. “Let me show you the wonders of my stone cellar.” He led her into a kitchen narrower than the galley kitchen in both of her tiny post-convent apartments.

A cast-iron stove stuck its antique glory much too far into the available space. Alex’s personal choice for Pelvis of the Future would have a heck of a time maneuvering her pregnant self around it.

Why Giulia Driscoll would never make it as a Prepper, reason number three: Gas stoves were a gift from the cooking technology gods. Giulia Driscoll was no Luddite.

Maria Martin, on the other hand, praised the stove, the compact cabinets, the design of the hidden trap door at the end of the kitchen. Following Alex, she climbed down the ladder into a stone-lined fifteen-foot square cellar.

“I expected cinder block.” She shivered. The temperature here was at least forty degrees cooler than the air above ground.

“Stone is much more durable. Why would we use something man-made when the earth provides us with what is best for our needs?”

Giulia feigned embarrassment at the mild rebuke. Alex patted her shoulder.

“Don’t worry. We all make rookie mistakes.”

They climbed up and out the back door onto an entire farming complex. Wheat and barley in tall rows grew between old-growth maple trees. Enough vegetables to feed three times the number of Tiny House families hunkered between birches and cottonwoods. Apple and peach trees alternated with maples, the latter showing signs of having been tapped for syrup.

“I would never have guessed the community possessed this much land.”

“Our leader keeps it well hidden from spies. The government doesn’t like its cash cow taxpayers going off grid. Over the years we’ve pruned the tree cover to let in enough sun to grow our food yet still disguise our true purpose. When one of our members flew over it in a commercial airplane, he couldn’t see the farm at all.”

They walked the narrow path between his house and the next and came upon the football players in thrall to the spinner. One wound the spun wool into skeins, the other weeded the garden.

The woman winked at Giulia.

“They both hate me right now. I’m quite sure they’re planning a catalogue of woes for their father’s arrival tonight.” She brought the spinning wheel up onto her porch. “I’m Cheryl. You’re Maria, right? Come feed the pigs with me.”

Maria Martin joined her with a happy smile. Giulia Driscoll noted how expertly the new recruit was being herded.

Giulia’s great-great-grandmother would have been proud as Giulia spread grain and table scraps. The enormous pink and brown beasts snorted and grunted as they shoved their noses into the feeding trough.

“Would it be rude of me to think of them as bacon on the hoof?”

Cheryl winked. “You wouldn’t be the only one. Who wants to live in a world without bacon? Did you know it contains a nutrient that helps prevent Alzheimer’s?”

They talked about the work required to run the many aspects of the community. Giulia’s compliments were genuine. She’d worked in enough huge schools and spent three years in a Motherhouse filled with more than one hundred nuns of all ages. Both places required exhaustive levels of organization.

Fortunately for Giulia, Maria Martin could ask any number of questions without being considered rude. When they filled the trough, Giulia got a close-up view of the intricate tattoo running from Cheryl’s elbow around her lower arm to the back of her hand.

“Your tattoo is lovely. What is its significance?”

Cheryl rotated her arm as she explained. “We’re all marked when we become full initiates of the community. I chose blackbuck horns, because I once traveled to India as a little girl and one of these lovely animals let me pet it.”

“Do you have a job outside the community that accepts tattoos?” Giulia feigned embarrassment at her forwardness.

Cheryl patted Giulia’s shoulder. “I run a home-based spinning business, so I’m my own boss. My husband’s tattoo is completely hidden under his work shirts. He’s an accountant, so he can’t live here all summer like the boys and I can.”

“What would happen if the worst occurs and he’s in the city?”

Cheryl smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid detailed plans are only open to members of the community. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“It’s natural curiosity, my dear. Come check the coffee plants with me.”

Giulia was surprised at this. “Coffee?”

“We are a sensible community. We understand that no world, old or new, is complete without coffee. One of our other members discovered that coffee can be grown just about anywhere, even in a pot on a desk.” She led Giulia to the brightest corner of the compound. A loose grouping of bushes with shiny green leaves and cascades of red berries sucked up unfiltered sunshine. In a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “It’s not Starbucks quality, but it’s much better than instant. The one part of today’s world I’ll miss is Starbucks. When I leave the compound, my first stop is for my caramel macchiato fix. It’s my weakness, but I’ve taken my caffeine addiction into my own hands.” She caressed the trailing leaves.

Hers was the first sane statement Giulia had heard all afternoon.