“She’s taken many of Garryn Monteith’s classes at the Glass House. Joe says she was a regular, and who knows where else she might have followed Garryn. It seems she’s obsessed with trying to rekindle the star pupil thing—which apparently is a euphemism for a romantic liaison during a class—that they had previously. Garryn was no longer interested in her, and she was clearly distraught about that.”
“She sounds like a stalker, and stalkers have been known to kill the object of their stalking. Suzanne Cummings sounds promising as a murder suspect.”
“I thought so, too, especially after she broke my windshield in the parking lot at Gayle’s Bakery when I shook her up by reminding her that Garryn hit on me during the glass class.”
“What?” Mark asked incredulously. “Did you file a police report? If you did, I could really make a case that she’s prone to violence.”
“I did report her, sort of. I told Deputy Sherriff Greg Gonzales, who’s a friend of mine, what happened. He took notes, but I didn’t make an official report because I didn’t see her do it. Even though I know she did, my evidence would sound speculative and could be taken apart by any merely adequate DA.”
Mark’s enthusiasm didn’t wane. “Do you have anything else on her that I can use? If you can find any other instances of aggressive behavior on her part, well, coupled with her provable stalking behavior, I could still use what she did to your car to make a strong case against her.”
“I’ll see if I can find anything else she’s done.” Pat’s lack of enthusiasm was conspicuous.
Mark noticed and prompted her. “What else do you already have that’s not going to be helpful?” he asked.
“Suzanne Cummings spent long periods of time in the bathroom during lunch breaks. I thought she could easily have slipped out and put Super Glue tubes in the kiln while everyone assumed she was still in the bathroom.”
“That’s perfect. That screams motive and opportunity.”
Pat shook her head. “Joe said that she always sequestered herself after the morning session because Garryn always ignored her. He said she’d have a good cry and then try to make herself look good, and my friend Syda, who was also at the class, confirms that. Suzanne Cummings probably was in the bathroom sobbing during the whole lunch break and not sneaking out to kill Garryn Monteith, so there goes opportunity.”
“So you’re saying she’s a stalker capable of violence toward perceived competitors, but you don’t think she went after her love interest?”
“Right now, I think that’s the case.”
“Who’s up next?” Mark asked.
“Kandi Crusher. I found out that her brother was also swindled by Garryn Monteith. She knew all about cyanide in Super Glue, and she definitely told me she didn’t like Garryn. That’s the problem with her as a suspect. She was the one who brought up what happened to her brother and how she felt about it. She was open about her dislike of the man and her plan to embarrass him in front of the class. I don’t think she’d tell me what she did if she killed him. She’d be quiet or have another story ready to tell. I just don’t see her as the killer.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
“So does my dog.”
Pat instantly wished she could take back her last words, but Mark began laughing with her like she’d made a joke, not at her like she was a flake. Hopefully that meant she hadn’t damaged the professional image she was intent on projecting.
She recrossed her legs and began speaking again, going for a fresh start.
“Now we get into the bad news part. Kandi told me Lillian Wentner and Garryn Monteith had been involved intermittently for a long time. She quoted her brother’s firsthand knowledge that Lillian and Garryn got together every time he taught a class at the glass studio. She thought Joe had to know about their relationship and was okay with it.
“I immediately thought: Suppose he didn’t know and just found out, or suppose he simply got fed up with them carrying on right under his nose?”
“Major motive for murder,” Mark said like a man who had just lost all hope. “You believe her?”
“I do, but it doesn’t matter what I think. Her brother died a couple of years ago, so he can’t testify—”
Mark talked over her, “—Which makes what Kandi Crusher says hearsay.”
“Exactly.”
“Thank God,” Mark mumbled. He leaned his head forward, dropping it into his hand, and began scratching it just above the hairline.
“I’ll quiz Joe,” he sighed. “You take another look at Suzanne Cummings. What a mess.”
Pat had her marching orders. She rose and started to leave. Just as she reached for the handle on Mark’s office door, he called after her.
“Oh, Pat? Just to make things clear, this was a business meeting. I asked you to come to my office for a professional work matter. That way, the next time I ask you out to dinner, you’ll know that we’re on a date and not at work.”
He flashed a disarmingly broad smile at her, and she thought she might have gotten some color in her cheeks.
“Good to know,” she smiled back before she left his office.
※※※※※※※※※※※
Pat was relieved that her phone call the next morning reached Lillian instead of Joe. Now that she knew what she did about Lillian’s relationship with Garryn Monteith, it was going to be hard enough to carry on a nothing’s-up conversation with Lillian. She wasn’t sure she could pull it off with Joe, regardless of how many college drama classes she’d taken.
“Good morning, Lillian. How are you holding up at the Glass House?”
“Hanging on by our fingernails, although we have a class scheduled next week—if we have anyone willing to come by then. We’ve already had almost half the students cancel. It’s amazing how far word about murder spreads and how quickly it moves. At least it’s a class I’m teaching, so we don’t have to worry about the instructor quitting.”
Lillian tried to end her statement with a lighthearted little laugh, but it failed. Pat responded similarly with the same result.
“Lillian, I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything, especially if it will help Joe.”
“I’m hoping it will. Joe mentioned Suzanne Cummings was a regular. I need you to check your records and find classes Garryn Monteith taught where Suzanne Cummings attended. Can you do that?”
“It should be easy. In addition to doing all the cooking for the classes, Joe keeps detailed records. I’m useless with computers, but he should be able to find that information in a flash.”
“If he finds other classes she attended, I’m going to need class list contact information for students in those classes, too.”
“I don’t think it will be hard for Joe to do an additional search. Do you want him to email the results to you, or do you want to pick them up?”
“I’ll come to you. I want to have a private talk with you anyway, so perhaps we could get together when Joe is doing something else?” Pat questioned.
“Joe has a phone conference with Mark Bellows at 11:00 this morning. Would that work for you?
“I’ll see you then.”
The day was balmy and bright with sunshine, and Pat decided it was time to christen her convertible for what it was. She drove with the top down and neatly folded in the trunk for the first time. There was nothing Dot liked better than a ride in Pat’s car; a top-down adventure would make her week. Dot was one happy Dalmatian as they drove toward Bonny Doon. She sat upright in the passenger seat, letting the wind blow her ears back gently, her mouth open and filled with air. Pat was sure she was smiling.
“You’ll have to stay in the car when we get to the Glass House. I don’t know how they feel about dogs, and you can’t run around outside. I know you: you’ll see a squirrel and be gone.”
When they reached the Wentners’ house, Pat parked under trees for shade, pushed the button to put up the convertible top, and cracked her window so Dot would be comfortable. “You stay here; I
won’t be long.”
Lillian greeted Pat at the front door when she knocked. “Come in. I have Joe’s printout ready for you, but you said you wanted to talk to me?”
“I do,” Pat said as she settled into a cushy seat in the living room. “I want to know about Suzanne Cummings’s behavior in classes taught by Garryn Monteith. Where you in the studio whenever Garryn taught, like you were when I took the class?”
“That’s right. I was always in the studio as Garryn’s unofficial assistant.”
“Garryn seemed, um, willing to give me some private lessons during the class.”
Lillian straightened up until her seated posture was starched.
“Suzanne Cummings, who was seated next to me and had been friendly until Garryn made his offer, wouldn’t have anything to do with me after that. What I’m wondering is, would you have noticed who Garryn Monteith was especially interested in at other classes and what Suzanne Cummings’s reaction was to them?”
“I noticed how Garryn tried to treat you at the class, but I can’t say I noticed Suzanne Cummings having any unusual reaction to it.”
“What about at other classes?”
“Garryn would sometimes talk to me after class and say he noticed a student who seemed especially talented, but I’m unaware that he offered any of them special help. I never noticed Suzanne Cummings acting oddly toward any of the other students.”
Lillian hadn’t exactly answered her question, and for a minute, Pat thought she hadn’t been clear enough about what she wanted to know. She was about to clarify her question when she instead chose to go in a different direction.
“Did Garryn talk to you about me?”
“No,” Lillian said dismissively. “We were especially busy during your class because it was larger than usual, and we didn’t have a chance to speak privately about you or anything else. And then…then the class ended differently than it usually did.”
Their conversation was interrupted by loud barking. Pat recognized the bark at once. She jumped up and rushed to the window. The roof on her car was slowly retracting into the trunk. Dot bounced friskily outside the car and barked at it urgently.
Within seconds, Pat was out the front door, running full speed along the porch toward the stairs, heading for the commotion.
“Dot! Sit! Sit!” she yelled. “Sit right now or I’ll never take you for a ride again.”
Pat bounded down the front stairs, past the decorative flower garden, and over the lawn to her dog, who had obeyed immediately, but seemed ready to change her mind at any moment.
Was it possible Dot had figured out which button to push to turn her new car into a convertible? Pat was afraid the answer was yes, she had. The only question was, had Dot done it accidently or was she capable of doing it deliberately?
Lillian followed Pat to the car at a much slower pace, the printouts of information Pat requested in her arms. She obviously thought what had happened was funny, and she was laughing loudly as she followed Pat.
“You have quite a trickster for a dog,” Lillian continued laughing.
“Dot is a notorious refrigerator door opener,” an exasperated Pat offered. “I’ve convinced her to stay out of mine, but I met my next-door neighbors the day they were moving in after retrieving her and the string of sausages she had stolen from their refrigerator. They left their front door open as they unloaded boxes and furniture, and she couldn’t resist going inside and helping herself.”
Lillian’s laughter tinkled with delight.
Pat reached into her car, pushed the convertible button, and reversed the car-top’s direction. Once she was sure her dog couldn’t squeeze out through the not-quite-secure roof, she pushed Dot back into the car.
“I think I have what I need,” Pat said as she took the papers from Lillian. “I’ll say thanks for your answers and head home. It looks like I have an afternoon of dog training in front of me.”
※※※※※※※※※※※
Pat got an early start the next morning matching up the names and phone numbers from classes Garryn Monteith taught at the Glass House with women who had attended them. The work was tedious; the results shocked her. My gosh, she’s been stalking him for at least eight years. Suzanne Cummings might have been following Garryn Monteith for even longer, she realized, but that was as far back as the Wentners’ records went.
Over the years, an average of fourteen women attended each class that Suzanne Cummings attended: 168 names. Subtracting the 16 for the class she and Syda attended brought the number of names down to 152. She subtracted Suzanne Cummings’s name twelve times, since she wasn’t going to call Suzanne and ask her about her behavior, and removed duplicate entries of the women who had attended more than one class. She was left with 117 names. She sighed, poured herself a mug of coffee, and set to work, dialing women from classes in reverse order.
By 2:30, when her stomach insisted she take a break, she had reached eighty-three women and discovered twenty-two of the phone numbers were no longer in service. That left her a dozen numbers to dial or redial so that she could ask them the same question: Do you remember a woman named Suzanne Cummings in the class you took? Few did. She scratched those who didn’t remember Suzanne off her list, reasoning if she hadn’t made a lasting impression on them, she hadn’t threatened them.
Of those who did remember her, Pat asked a good open-ended question: What do you remember about her? Most remembered her as a tablemate; none of their responses led to her final question: What did she do to you?
At 4:30 she was hoarse and frustrated. What a useless exercise. Pat wanted to stop calling, but she wasn’t a quitter. She was determined that, at her next report, she could honestly tell Mark she had tried heroically to get another witness to Suzanne Cummings’s violent behavior, but that none existed, at least among those who attended class at the Glass House.
Pat spent the rest of the afternoon researching Garryn Monteith online to see where he most often taught besides the Glass House. The list was long. He taught an average of six classes a year elsewhere and seemed to repeat in only a couple of locations. She called as many class locations as she could find. When she told the venue’s owners what had happened to him, most were willing to look for the name Suzanne Cummings in their contact lists. When she got a hit, she asked for names and phone numbers of students who shared a class with her.
Pat’s email was loaded with dozens more names and phone numbers by the time she completed her Glass House calls in the early evening.
She couldn’t face another day like she had just had. She needed help and knew where to ask for it.
“Syda, are you creating?” Pat asked when her friend answered her phone.
“I am. It turns out that I’m a terrific writer. Let me read my opening lines to you.
“Private detective Rowdy Dick looked down at the body that washed up on shore with crabs clinging to it and chewing on the flesh on its face. He turned to his stacked re- haired secretary and said, “Whew, thank God it’s only crabs eating her. If it was lobsters, I don’t know what I’d do, Babe. I could never eat one again.
“Good, isn’t it?”
Pat bit her lip. “It’s interesting. I’m not sure about the PI’s name, though.
“It’s just a working name. I have other ideas for his name, too.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d help me do a really boring job, but it sounds like you’re busy.”
“No, no,” Syda said quickly. “Writing is exhausting. And after that really strong opening, I’m experiencing writer’s block. I could use a break. What do you want me to do?”
“Help me make phone calls.”
“What kind of phone calls?”
“Calls to women Suzanne Cummings might have threatened.”
“After what she did to your darling car, I’m in. Come to me. We can work in my kitchen.”
※※※※※※※※※※※
The first words out of Syda’s mouth when she opened her kitchen door for Pat t
he next morning were a dismayed, “Oh, gee. Jeans and a baggy pink tee-shirt; that’s what you’re wearing?”
“Since when do you care if I get comfortable for a hard day’s work?” Pat protested.
“I usually don’t. It’s just that…if you at least tucked in the tee-shirt, I have a nice belt you could borrow. Or you could tuck in the front, French style. That would help. There’s no help for your flats, though. They look like they’re ten years old.”
“That’s because they are ten years old.”
Syda shook her head. “I can’t help with those. Your feet are bigger than mine, so I can’t loan you a pair of decent shoes.”
“You don’t look that fancy this morning yourself, Syda.”
“I know,” Syda blurted out, “but I’m not trying to impress anyone.”
“Neither am I,” Pat parried. “Syda?”
“Well, it’s possible that Greg forgot to take something with him this morning and he’s going to swing by to pick it up, and he’ll be here around coffee-break time, and so he might as well come in and have coffee here, and it would be rude to leave his partner in the patrol car, and so he might come in, too, and…”
Pat’s eyes were closed by the time Syda got to the end of her explanation, and she heaved an exaggerated sigh.
“It’s your fault,” Syda chastised. “You’ve been making it impossible for Greg and me to introduce you to his partner. You can’t blame me for getting frustrated and jumping on the only chance I saw of having you two meet. They’ll be here any minute. Tuck,” Syda mimed. “Tuck.”
Pat had just divided up the list, explained how to order questions, and called one woman so Syda could hear what she said, when Greg burst into the room and gave Syda a kiss.
“Hey, Pat. I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Greg said in a voice Pat thought was rather high for him. He strung his words together unnaturally, with even spaces between them. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten my book, but as long as I’m here now and it’s break time, how about we join you for a cup of coffee? This is my partner, at least for a couple more days, Tim Lindsey. Tim, you know my wife, and this is her best friend, Pat.”
The Glass House Page 10
