Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) by Alice Loweecey Page A

understand. Thank you.” She watched the back of his pulsing red neck as they passed through the swinging door.
    Interesting.

Twelve

      
    Head morning chef Edward “just Eddie, please” Marstan looked like a young Colin Firth but without the charisma. Or the voice. An irregular pattern of bacon grease dots marred his uniform, but beneath it lurked the body of a weightlifter. He slumped in the wicker chair opposite Giulia as they sat in the gazebo on the lawn in front of the condos.
    “I don’t get out here often enough. Joanie liked to come here on break to breathe air that didn’t smell like fry grease.”
    Giulia knew a disappointed lover when she saw one. They always wanted to talk. She wrote a header on a new document in her iPad and counted to herself: Five…four…three…two…
    “Joanie and I were equals here. Before she disappeared, I mean. Last month the head chef won two hundred grand in Powerball and quit. If Joanie had been here, the promotion would have been hers, no question. Angie would’ve tried to stab her in the back, but Angie is a hack. Joanie could make this food service glop taste like real food. I’m not up to her level, but I’m working on it.”
    Two women using walkers moved past the gazebo, talking in high-pitched voices about the women in the latest episode of The Bachelor . Eddie waited for them to cross the parking lot to the other row of condos.
    “I’m glad Joanie’s sister hired you. She got all in Chapers’ face when she came here. Did you know he didn’t call her for a whole week after Joanie stopped showing up? The cops guilted him into telling her. We could hear her in his office even through two closed doors. His hairline receded half an inch out of fear. We compared impressions of it after she left.”
    A skeletal woman opened the back door of the main building. She lit a cigarette and indulged in a long, slow inhale and exhale. Then she dragged two bulging trash bags over to a dumpster concealed behind a privacy fence. After a plastic lid slammed, she walked closer to the gazebo and said, “Marstan, the boss says he needs the canned good reorder list ASAP.”
    “Will do, Angie.” In a low voice to Giulia, he said, “If she’d eat something besides kale smoothies and boiled quinoa, she might learn the difference between savory and over-spiced. She’ll never be more than an assistant until she stops being afraid of food.”
    Giulia picked up the tangent and ran with it. “Judging from her specialty cakes, Joanne appreciated food.”
    Eddie frowned at Giulia as though she harbored an ulterior motive. “Just because Joanie didn’t starve herself—”
    Giulia stopped him. “No. That’s not what I meant at all.”
    Eddie relaxed. “Good. I’m sick to death of everyone assuming Joanie was fat and unloved because she didn’t wear a size zero. Joanie was—is—a great person. She listened—listens—when you talk. She even helps out this crazy cat lady from her church. She can hunt with a rifle and a bow and arrow and gut a deer. But she can get all girly-girled up when she wants. For Sunset’s Christmas party she put on sparkle nails and everything. She’s got it all.”
    Giulia typed: Joanne either had no idea Eddie worshiped her or he had made an overture and she turned him down.
    He took an antique pocket watch out of the shirt pocket beneath his uniform. “I can give you another twelve minutes before the ten o’clock group meeting.”
    Giulia leaned forward. “What do all her coworkers think happened?”
    “It was like this: About three months before she disappeared, Joanie started to change. She dropped a bunch of weight and got all ‘I know something you don’t know.’ It got under some people’s skin. When the cops showed, the tall, hot one got some of us to talk, but the Alzheimer’s patients freaked out her minion. He couldn’t even look them in the eye.” He sat straighter. “Sorry. Derail. After the cops left, Chapers couldn’t stop