Nun But The Brave (A Giulia Driscoll Mystery Book 3) by Alice Loweecey Read Free Book Online

two: Snuggle. Cows. Was Larabee a farmer? No, a hunter. People don’t hunt cows. What did snuggle mean, then? Hug? Pet? Sleep with? Only if he was too poor to afford his own house and secretly lived in someone’s barn.
    Snuggle also meant to cuddle. When people snuggled, they…hugged. Spooned. Sat or lay next to each other. Next to.
    Larabee lived next to a farm? Possibly.
    Line three: Numeral nine.
    Line four: Numeral four.
    Ninety-four [something] Street.
    Cows lived on farms. Giulia opened a new tab and pulled up Google Street View. A search for Farm Street, Avenue, Boulevard, and Lane yielded a lot of nothing. She tried actual farms, but none had an address near ninety-four anything.
    Cows say moo. Good Heavens, she was already thinking like a See ’n Say.
    Okay, cows who say moo, where are you hiding Louis Larabee?
    Barn Street, Avenue, Boulevard, Lane—zilch.
    Field Street, Avenue, Boulevard, Lane—the same.
    Meadow Street, Avenue, Boulevard…Lane.
    One more notch on the sleuthing tiara.

Ten

      
    At three thirty, Giulia parked the Nunmobile in front of the smallest house she’d ever seen. Address: 94 Meadow Lane. Neighbor on the right: A ranch house surrounded by alternating red and white azaleas. Neighbor on the left which was also the corner: A working dairy farm whose address was listed on the cross street.
    The house was smaller than small. A Tiny House, that was it. She’d read about them online. This box with windows on a postage-stamp plot of land couldn’t be more than three hundred square feet. Instead of a sidewalk to the door, a dirt path bisected a lawn of dandelions and clover. More vegetables and weeds surrounded the sides of the house. She could even see a short way around the back from where she stood.
    She banged the deer-head shaped knocker.
    “Who’s there?”
    A mixed martial arts type appeared in the space between houses. Giulia walked toward him. Because he wore only a tight black t-shirt and camouflage pants, she got an eyeful of his arm tattoos and well defined torso. A scar split his left eyebrow; Giulia guessed from a bullet graze. His dark hair was cut in a military-style buzz.
    “Good afternoon. I’m with Driscoll Investigations and we’re looking into the disappearance of Joanne Philbey. May I have a few minutes of your time?”
    “You sound like a door-to-door Bible-thumper.” He knocked dirt from the trowel he was holding. “You can talk to me while I weed.” He glanced at his watch. “I don’t have to leave for work until four thirty.”
    Giulia followed him into a regimented vegetable garden. A row of broccoli, a row of cauliflower, rows of beans and peas, tomatoes in cages, eggplant, corn, and carrots.
    He knelt next to the first row of beans. “I like my privacy. How did you track me down?”
    “I’m afraid you’ve been doxxed,” she said.
    “I’ve been what?” He tossed crabgrass into a compost bin.
    “In this case, it means your home address is out on the web. I found it on Facebook.”
    The trowel stopped moving. He cursed. “I haven’t been on that troll pit in months.”
    “You may want to log in and report it. It’s part of a discussion on the two-month anniversary of Joanne’s last post. The person who doxxed you disguised it in a piece of poetry.”
    He indulged in unflattering comments about the women in that particular thread. The weeds got the worst of it. When he wound down, he refocused on Giulia. “Guess I should be glad you were the one to figure it out and not some random stalker. Fine. What do you want to know?”
    Giulia opened her mouth, and he cut her off before the first syllable. “Wait a minute. First I bet you want my side of that argument. The one on Facebook.”
    “As a start, yes.”
    “You got something to write on? This one has a long history.”
    “Of course.” She brought out her iPad. Holding it in her left hand and typing with her right wasn’t ideal, but it was better than having to remember everything for a