Free Second To Nun (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 2) by Alice Loweecey Page B

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