Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) (7 page)

Fifteen

Stupid of her to panic. She’d forgotten the bonfire. The tall woman with stooped shoulders at the fire pit had to be Mac. A shorter male in dark clothes stood on the patio coaxing the flames to grow.

Giulia’s next thought: S’mores. Not a healthy supper, but sussing out possible ghost-making equipment had been more important than finding a place to eat.

Right after that thought: Here was her casual way to meet the guests. She closed her iPad, tied her sneakers, and headed downstairs.

The temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees with the breeze off the lake. Lights from the town prevented stargazing this close to the shore.

A single motorboat passed them headed east. Competing music from the beachfront bars reached as far as this section of beach, but not loud enough to be intrusive.

Giulia should’ve changed into jeans. She held out her hands to the bonfire.

Two men about her age sat on the patio sofa with their arms around each other.

Mac opened a cooler and passed out forks. As she walked around the group with an open bag of marshmallows, she said, “S’more’s may be a way of reliving our childhood, but adulthood has its privileges. I have here regular chocolate and wine-infused chocolate. I recommend the dark with sherry.”

Giulia toasted her marshmallow to an even golden-brown on all sides before choosing regular chocolate to accompany it. She smiled at the two men on the sofa and they waved her over.

“Did you just arrive?” the one with the close-trimmed beard said. “We didn’t see you earlier today.”

“Yes. I fought rush-hour traffic all the way. I’m Giulia.”

“Joel. This is my husband, Gino.”

Gino swallowed marshmallow and graham cracker bits once, then again before he opened his mouth. “Pleased to meet you. You’re here all alone?”

“My husband got sucked into a work crisis right before we were supposed to leave. He’s coming tomorrow.”

A different couple arrived carrying half-empty martini glasses: The woman plump, with one of those haircuts designed especially for the customer, the man stocky and short, especially when he stood next to Mac. They declined s’mores and monopolized Mac’s attention.

Joel and Gino wandered out to the beach. Giulia regretted the bit of chocolate and marshmallow because it emphasized her lack of real food. A third couple ran up from the beach and stopped next to the sofa, panting.

“Did we miss it?” the woman said.

Mac waved the bag of marshmallows as she listened to the perfect haircut and husband. The woman, tall with an afro, plucked the bag from Mac’s hand. Her husband, the same height but with a buzz cut and built like a soccer player, found long-handled forks and the rest of the ingredients. When their snacks were ready, they sat down,
plump
, on either side of Giulia.

“Hi! I’m CeCe and this is Roy. I promise I’m safe to sit near. No birds are nesting in my hair despite its craziness.”

“Your hair is beautiful,” Giulia said, then gave them the same explanation she’d given to Joel and Gino.

“That’s a bad start to a vacation,” Roy said. “This your first time here? You’ll love it. We’ve been coming here since the place opened.”

“Mac’s breakfasts are to die for,” CeCe said. “You tell your husband that the rest of the week will make up for missing out on today. I can’t wait for the séance on Sunday. Mac’s always adding something new.”

Roy leaned closer to Giulia. “We found a Ouija board in an antique shop back home. Haven’t had the guts to try it yet. Are you game?”

Giulia said, “I’ve never tried one either.”

“Let’s do it,” CeCe said, bouncing up and down on the hard cushion. “I’ve seen
Paranormal Activity
and
The Exorcist
, but movies aren’t real life. We’re on vacation. Let’s live a little.”

“Besides, what are you going to do all alone in that big bed without your husband?” Roy gave her an exaggerated wink.

CeCe aimed a slap at him. “He’s a pig; just ignore him.”

“You love it,” Roy said. “Come on. It’s dark out. I’ll borrow some candles from Mac and we’ll do this right.”

Giulia followed CeCe up to the Starfish room on the third floor.

“We always have this room,” CeCe said, opening their wardrobe. “I fell in love with the clawfoot bathtub our first year. Here’s the board. Go ahead; look at how huge the tub is.”

“Wow,” Giulia said. “You could fit two people in that.”

“You sure can.” CeCe set the tattered-edged board on the starfish-shaped throw rug. “It’s a good thing this rug isn’t a pentagram or anything. Me and Roy and a demon would definitely not fit in that tub.”

Giulia opened her mouth to lecture on the actual meaning of the pentagram, but shut it immediately. Undercover, undercover, undercover. Instead she said, “Don’t these wardrobes make you think of Narnia?”

CeCe squeaked. “I say that every year! We ought to suggest that to Mac.”

Roy opened the door carrying three shallow bowls and three tall candles. CeCe pounced. “Giulia says the wardrobes make her think of Narnia too. We should tell Mac to put fur coats in the wardrobes and open the first week of December for a Narnia winter getaway. They’d have to be faux fur, could you imagine the cost? What do you think, honey?”

Roy set one candle on the nightstand and two on the floor at the inner angles of two furry starfish arms. “You know I can’t stand those books, doll.”

“Yeah, but what do you think of the vacation idea?”

He struck a match and lit one candle. “I guess, if you could find enough adults willing to pay these prices to play kids’ dress up for four or five days.” As the wick burned, he said, “How are we going to make these stand up?”

Giulia came over next to him. “Like this.” She picked up the candle and tilted it over the center of its bowl until several drops of wax had fallen. Then she pushed the base of the candle into the wax.

“Son of a gun.” Roy nodded at Giulia. “Clever. You two set up the board?”

CeCe took a battered planchette out of a brown paper bag with “Blasts from the Past” stenciled on it. “We weren’t sitting up here comparing nail polish. Too bad the glass in the center is cracked.”

“Maybe we’ll contact the spirit of a glassblower.” Roy created wax bases for the other two candles. “Okay, lights out.”

CeCe flipped the wall switch, made an annoyed noise, and walked around Giulia and Roy to turn off the bathroom light.

Giulia sat cross-legged facing CeCe. The candles combined with the canopied bed and antique furniture created a slumber party atmosphere.

Giulia kept her imagination on a tight leash. Too many Hammer films and Asian horror movies.

“Just a second.” She took her cell phone from her pocket. “I don’t want this ringing at the wrong time.”

Roy and CeCe took out theirs. “Good point.”

Giulia turned off her ringer and using small, quick movements turned on the voice memo function before she returned the phone to her pocket. At this point, everyone was a suspect. Especially complete strangers who just happened to invite her to their room for a Ouija board experiment on her first night in a haunted B&B.

CeCe giggled. “I’ve always wanted to try one of these, but my pastor would’ve beat my butt so bad. Mama would’ve beat it more when he sent me home.”

“I’ve never seen one of these in person before,” Giulia said.

“The class troublemaker snuck one into Bible camp when we were thirteen. It might’ve worked if we all hadn’t giggled so loud the counselor came to check on us.” CeCe sat on her heels. “Okay; everyone’s fingers on the planchette.”

Roy said, “Let’s not imitate the movies. That never ends well. I’ll try the straightforward approach. CeCe, stop shaking this thing.”

She took several deep breaths, let out one last nervous giggle, and settled.

“Spirit of Stone’s Throw, speak to us,” Roy intoned.

They waited.

“Spirit of Stone’s Throw,” CeCe started, giggled, and started again. “Girl, come have a chat. Ignore that man over there.”

They waited. Roy sneezed and the planchette skidded over to the letter “L.”

“Sorry.” He reset it to the middle of the board.

They waited some more.

“Giulia, you try,” CeCe whispered.

Every Cradle Catholic molecule in Giulia’s body rebelled. She couldn’t. She really couldn’t.

Yes, she could, because it was her job. Father Carlos would tease her to no end at next week’s confession.

“Come speak to us,” Giulia said in a coaxing voice. “It’s a good night for some girl time.”

Below them, on the patio, someone screamed.

Sixteen

Giulia jumped up. CeCe and Roy started. The planchette skittered over the board.

Giulia yanked apart the curtains and opened the window.

“Fire!” Several voices yelled.

“Oh my God, oh my God, the ghost started a fire.” CeCe’s voice quivered. “We’re going to be arrested for arson.”

“Cec, don’t be ridiculous.” Roy blew out the candles. “Come on, we’ve gotta help.”

CeCe turned on the room light, glanced down at the Ouija board, and backpedaled until she hit the wardrobe. “Look at her message.”

Roy and Giulia looked where CeCe’s bright pink fingernail pointed. The planchette had stopped over the word “Yes,” the letters cut in jagged halves by the cracked glass.

“Damn,” Roy said.

Giulia shook her head. “We pushed it there when we all stood and ran to the window. It doesn’t mean anything. Come on.”

She opened the door and ran downstairs, a bodiless voice in her head repeating, “Too many horror movies. Too many horror movies.” Which had to be the reason for all the little hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. That was all. Period.

Through the sunroom windows, she saw a confusion of orange flames and black smoke whipping back and forth two feet above the ground. Mac shoved past her, carrying the kitchen fire extinguisher. Giulia followed, right into a faceful of smoke. She bent in half, coughing and eyes stinging. The world stank of burning plastic. Mac’s silhouette crossed in front of the largest flames and the hiss of spraying chemicals mixed with popping wood from the still-lit bonfire and ululating approach of sirens.

The smoke morphed from black to gray as it flowed over the house.

“Dammit, this thing is empty.” Mac flung the small extinguisher aside. Someone hopped over it as it rolled onto the grass, possibly Joel or Gino.

The sides of the cooler melted in on each other. A small explosion whipped against the sparking cushions and reignited the stuffing. A new set of stenches joined the rest. Giulia pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth and flattened against the sunroom windows as three firefighters appeared around the corner of the building, hose flopping behind them.

One turned on the pressure and another held the hose while the first one drowned the flames in a thick spray of foam. The third shouted orders and then all at once the fire was out and floodlights on the second floor overhang turned on to illuminate the wreckage.

That’s when the police arrived.

The entire patio looked like the remains of a gigantic campfire doused with whipped cream. The firefighters clustered around the fire pit like Macbeth’s witches as one detective conferred with the chief over the remains of the cushions. The noise level dropped by half. Giulia returned her shirt to its proper position. CeCe and Roy squeezed through the sunroom door together, looking exactly like all of Giulia’s nieces and nephews caught pushing their parents’ envelopes.

Giulia walked over to them. “Don’t you dare tell Mac we goaded her family ghost into starting a fire, because we did no such thing.”

With an “Excuse me, please,” Mac brushed past them into the house.

“She looks angry,” CeCe said. “I’ve never seen her angry.”

Roy said to Giulia, “You seem to know a lot about ghosts, but how can you be sure—”

“Police!” Mac screamed from inside.

Giulia made a movement to run inside, but stopped herself. The uniformed officer walked inside. A minute later, he came to the door and called to the detective. When the opening was clear, Giulia caught CeCe’s and Roy’s attention and jerked her head toward the door. All of them went in. Giulia followed Mac’s stressed voice to the kitchen area and the locked room, which turned out to be Mac’s office.

Mac was cursing the beige walls blue. “My laptop and my purse. Miserable little drug addicts.”

The uniformed officer called for assistance with fingerprints. The detective cautioned Mac not to touch anything.

“Do I look like I just crawled out of the underwater caves? Of course I didn’t touch anything as soon as I saw that dust-free rectangle where my laptop used to sit.” She cursed at the walls some more.

Giulia walked away and gestured Roy and CeCe to follow. When the three of them made it back to the sunroom, the firefighters were packing away their equipment. The remains of smoke clogged the air in the sunroom. Giulia went out to the edge of the patio and the others followed her. What she really wanted was Frank’s perspective on this. What she wanted most after that was to drop this “guest” mask.

Too bad life didn’t order itself to her wishes.

“Have you ever heard Mac swear like that?” she asked them.

“No way,” CeCe said. “But she never got her purse stolen when we were here either.”

Roy looked from the remains of the fire to the inside of the house and back again. “This is like a TV cop show. I bet someone set the fire to get everyone outside, and then the thief got in by the front door to steal her purse and laptop.”

Giulia had never been so thrilled to sit back and let someone else voice the deduction.

“Excuse me. Did you say someone set this fire as a cover for a robbery?” A young woman channeling 1950s television Lois Lane
tick-tacked
across the flagstone patio in three-inch heels, pencil skirt, and matching jacket.

Giulia activated her best imitation of beige wallpaper. The young woman aimed a micro recorder at Roy.

“Well, yeah, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Are you with the local paper?”

“Yes. My photographer is shooting the remains of the fire but we’d love to get an inset of some of the guests.”

Perhaps to block out the noise from the people still around the patio wreckage, the reporter turned her back to the lake and by default to Giulia. Giulia slipped away, sidling among the croquet wickets in the grass. Once out of sight, she sprinted around the opposite side of the house and up the porch steps. Voices still came from the small office. Giulia entered the dark kitchen, avoided the spill of light from the office doorway, and used the antique stove as a shield for eavesdropping.

“Mac, we’re going to need fingerprints from you and Lucy and Matthew for comparison.”

“Fine. Whatever you want.”

A series of clicks and snaps and footsteps.

“Lucy will be here tomorrow at eight. Matthew doesn’t usually show up until after breakfast. If that’s too late, you know where they both live. God, this ink is disgusting. I’ll be right back.”

Giulia leaped into the dining room. Mac stomped across the wood floor into the actual kitchen. The sounds of running water and splashing followed, then more stomping back to her office. Giulia returned to spy mode.

“We’re all set here,” a deep male voice said. “Lock the room, please. We’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”

“Thanks, Ronnie.” Mac’s voice sounded more tired than angry now. “I’ll hide the key. The windows were locked already.”

Three sets of footsteps neared the kitchen. Giulia dived into the dining room again.

“We’ll get right on this,” Ronnie said.

“I know you will. Tell Sheila I need more blackberry preserves, would you?”

“She’ll bring a new supply over tomorrow.”

The screen door closed a minute later. Giulia came out into the open.

“Oh. You.” Mac sat on the end of the bench seat at the trestle table. “What did you hear?”

“Not enough.”

Clomping footsteps came in from the direction of the sunroom. One of the firefighters stopped at the doorway, her braid coming loose from its elastic band.

“Mac, we need you out back.”

Mac stood, her movements more like those of a seventy-year-old than Giulia had yet seen.

“I’ll talk to you afterwards,” Giulia said.

Mac palmed the office key into Giulia’s hand.