The Glass House

by Nancy Lynn Jarvis

  “Great. Just one thing: let’s not tell Greg or Syda about this. If it turns out we hate spending time together, they don’t need to know we did. And if it turns out we do like spending time together, they really,” he emphasized the word, “don’t need to know that, at least not until after our tenth date.”

  No drawn-out lead-ups for him, no mixed messages. Pat added that and his strategy about Syda and Greg to Tim’s other attractive qualities.

  ※※※※※※※※※※※

  Pat’s phone rang mid-morning the next day. It was Mark Bellows.

  He didn’t say hello, but launched right into his dialog.

  “Hey Pat, I have a conference and dinner with the governor and a bunch of attorneys in San Francisco tomorrow. Would you like to come with me? You’d be on your own tomorrow afternoon, but you could join us for dinner and we could stay overnight and play in the City on Sunday.”

  Pat’s heart rate sped up. He’s finally asking. Her thrill only lasted for a few seconds.

  “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

  “Last time I checked it was.”

  “Mark, I wish you’d asked sooner. I already have plans for tomorrow night.”

  “Well, break them.”

  Pat had accepted an offer for her senior ball from a guy friend only to have the star football player ask her to go with him a few days before prom night. She had hesitated for several minutes before she told him she already had a date. He suggested the same thing Mark had. She hadn’t accepted the late offer then, and she wasn’t about to now, even though she badly wanted to both times.

  She’d had a great time with her friend, but when she saw the big man on campus at the prom with another girl, it stung. Though her decision hurt, even as a girl she knew she made the right one. As a woman with a fully formed sense of self-worth and principles, she had no hesitation making the same decision now.

  “I’m sorry, Mark. I don’t behave like that.”

  “Well, another time, then,” he said with a shrug in his voice, and hung up.

  The star football player never asked her out again. She wondered if Mark Bellows, the man who made her heart flutter, would.

  Pat’s ringing phone woke her up on Monday morning. She was ready to complain to her tormentor that 6:30 was too early for someone to call unless they were bleeding and needed her help, but when she glanced at the time on her cell phone as she answered it, she noted that it was 8:45. She panicked for a second before she remembered she was no longer the law librarian, obliged to be at work at 8:30, and realized that she hadn’t overslept. In the next instant she saw that her caller was Mark Bellows.

  She ran her tongue over her teeth in an attempt to freshen them before she remembered—with a great sense of relief—that he couldn’t see her. As she pulled herself upright and pounded her pillow behind into a backrest, she debated how she should greet him after the Saturday fiasco.

  Friendly, she decided. She smiled as she spoke to make it convincing. “Good morning, Mark.”

  “Good morning, Pat.” His good morning sounded more formal than sociable. “Could you put together an invoice for the hours you’ve worked and bring it by my office this afternoon?”

  “Of course,” she stammered, “if you want me to.”

  “Great. I’ll expect you around 1:00, then.”

  Pat was dressed in her yellow skirt and high heels and had a green cropped jacket on over a silky cream blouse when she arrived at Mark Bellows’s office. Her work log and invoice were in her leopard-print briefcase. If she was going to get fired for the second time in a little over two weeks, she was braced for it.

  She was full of righteous indignation as she parked her car in the law office parking lot. It seemed he was willing to overlook how much information she had discovered in a short time. It seemed he was about to fire her, but not for performance. He was going to fire her because she hadn’t accepted his last-minute offer of a date and a potential night together—which was something she wouldn’t have agreed to on a first date anyway, she reminded herself. If that was what Mark Bellows was about, well then, so be it. He wasn’t worth her time.

  She stepped into his law office lobby with her head held high, her heels clicking smartly, and her face set into a look of professional detachment.

  “Pat Pirard to see Mr. Bellows,” she informed the receptionist in a chilly voice.

  Her certitude dissolved when he came down the hall toward her smiling like he was genuinely glad to see her.

  “Hi, Pat. Come on down to my office.”

  He directed her to the seat in front of his desk and took up his position facing her from behind his desk. They’d occupied the same places during their last meeting, but this time Pat felt he was using his desk as a shield to keep his distance.

  He held out a cup of Starbucks coffee to her. “With cream,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She worked hard to maintain a sense of disinterest. “I have my record of time spent and my invoice like you requested.”

  She dropped the documents on his desk and watched them closely to avoid making eye contact with him as she used her fingertips to push them in his direction.

  “Pat, I can tell you’re upset. I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with me being dissatisfied with your work. It’s just that Joe…I shouldn’t say more because of attorney-client privilege and all that.”

  “If you tell me something before you dismiss me, aren’t I a part of that privilege?”

  “Nice try, but, no.” He took a few long draws of coffee and said nothing. She wondered if he had ended the conversation and his silence was her cue to leave.

  Finally, he cleared his throat. “We might discuss someone I’m representing without naming names, though, now that you don’t work for me. Naturally, I would expect our conversation to go no further, especially not to your Sheriff’s Department connections.”

  Pat drew her fingers across her lips in a mime of zipping them.

  “I hope I don’t make a slipup and say something to them that might help with an unnamed person’s case. Anything I say would just be my opinion, though, since I don’t work for you anymore, but you do know that I’m a highly opinionated woman.” Pat smiled guilelessly. “Or perhaps you don’t, since we haven’t seen each other except at work.”

  “About that,” he screwed his face into a contrite expression, “I missed you this weekend. Perhaps we can do something about our neglected opportunity as soon as things settle down with Joe’s case, I mean with the unnamed case I’m working on.” Mark smiled merrily.

  The smile Pat returned was more complex than the one she had given him previously.

  “I suppose, if you have everything you need, I should be going. Thank you for the work; when should I expect payment?”

  “I don’t do billing, but I think within a week. After you do get paid, would you consider being on a retainer here? We have a good working relationship, and I’m sure my associates would be interested in your services, too.”

  “I’d like to think about that.”

  His fingers raised off his desk like her response startled him. “Uhh, if you need to.”

  Sure of himself.

  “In the meantime,” he continued, “you haven’t finished your coffee and I haven’t told you about a frustrating case I’m working on, not as employer to employee, but as a friend to a friend.”

  Pat crossed her legs and leaned forward as she took a sip of her coffee. “Is it anything I can help you with? As a friend.”

  He shrugged. “Hard to say. I’m in a conundrum with this case. I have to prepare a defense for my client in a murder trial. I have three possible defenses I could use, but my client is making preparing them difficult. My client professes he didn’t know about a long-term arrangement his wife had with another man because no such arrangement existed. His wife also insists there was no such arrangement. He absolutely refuses to let me or anyone who works for me do more than take him and his wife at their word.

  “If I was
sure the DA didn’t have any reliable firsthand witnesses to testify she was cheating, I would put both of them on the stand to say he had no motive for murder because nothing was going on between his wife and the murder victim. Defense number one.

  “If someone not in my employ did happen to discover his wife had a long-term arrangement and he knew about it, I’d have to convince him to let me take a different approach. In that case, I’d have his wife take the stand, confess, and say she told him about what she was doing years ago. I could argue, if he knew about her actions and did nothing about them over a period of years, why would he act on old news now? That sort of question might lead a juror to have reasonable doubt about my client’s guilt. I would also try to direct the jury to consider someone else who might have a motive for murdering the victim. Defense number two.

  “I wish I knew if there were any reliable witnesses out there who would testify that they had firsthand knowledge that the wife was having an affair and that my client did know about it. That would mean both my client and his wife were lying to me—which does happen more often than you would think—but at least it would let me know where to spend my defense efforts.”

  “How interesting. I understand your problem,” Pat said.

  “I thought you would.”

  “What happens if it turns out she was involved and he just found out about it?” Pat asked.

  “Then he’s screwed and probably guilty,” Mark chuckled. “Defense number three will be aimed at trying to make sure he doesn’t die in jail.”

  Pat put her empty coffee cup on Mark’s desk. “Well, I better be going. I have a busy day in front of me. Thank you for the coffee.”

  Pat smiled all the way back to her car. She wasn’t really fired, just on a technical Joe-driven hiatus. She wasn’t told not to keep poking, quite the opposite. And Mark still seemed interested in her outside of work.

  That last realization caused her to cease smiling and bite her lip. After Saturday night, her life might be getting rather complicated. Being around Mark still made her heart beat faster, but the unexpectedly tender kiss Tim had given her as he dropped her off after their Frank Sinatra retrospective had left her tingling from her lips to her toes.

  “Work,” she said to herself as she slipped into her car. “Work, and don’t think about either of those two men.”

  ※※※※※※※※※※※

  Pat could redouble her efforts to investigate Suzanne Cummings, looking for instances where her threats were directed at people rather than objects—for Mark’s second defense; but Tim was following up on that. She needed a different line of research to pursue until he had a chance to conduct his own investigation.

  She started with a quick call to Kandi Crusher for a follow-up question. Either Kandi wasn’t screening or she recognized Pat’s number, because she answered her phone immediately.

  “Hi, Kandi, it’s Pat Pirard.”

  “I know.”

  I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Was it common knowledge in the Glass House classes that Lillian and Garryn were involved?”

  “Hard to say. To me it was obvious.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because of the way Garryn fawned over her and let her play queen to his king in his back-to-work processions. You must have noticed that he led his class—his court—back to the studio with Lillian on his arm after breakfast and lunch.”

  “I did notice that, and thought like you did, that he enjoyed feigning royalty.”

  “It’s good he’s dead. If he heard you suggest he wasn’t real royalty, unless you were going to say he was a lesser god, he’d bust a gut.”

  Pat chuckled. “So, you and I thought we should doff our hats, but what about everyone else? I believe they treated him royally, but did they think Lillian was his queen? You were primed to see things that way because your brother told you Garryn said he and Lillian had a fling whenever he was in town. But did you ever hear any of the students say anything about the two of them? I’m especially interested in knowing if anyone said they saw something between them…besides the procession.”

  “I’d have to think about that. Right off the top of my head, I’d say no, but I’m not sure.”

  “What about Joe? Did he ever say anything about them to you? Or did you ever notice him looking at them spitefully?”

  “No to both questions. But if you ask me, he was too unaware. You know what I mean? It was like he went out of his way to look somewhere else when the procession rolled by.”

  “Thanks, Kandi. That’s all I needed to know.”

  “Wait. Don’t hang up. Tell me what’s happening with Joe.”

  “He’s still charged and still out on bail.”

  “What’s his attorney got you doing now? How is he going to defend Joe? I hope he has some good ideas, because Joe is such a decent guy; it wouldn’t be right if he got blamed for ending Garryn Monteith.”

  “I no longer work for his attorney, so I wouldn’t know what his plans are.”

  “What happened?” Kandi trilled.

  “I was let go.”

  “No foolin’. Then why are you still asking me questions?”

  “I’m curious—or maybe nosy—and I have some free time, so I thought I’d ask.”

  “If you think of anything else, ask again. We curious women have to stick together.”

  “I will, and Kandi, I agree with you about Joe.”

  There was no way around it: she’d have to call all the women who had taken Garryn Monteith’s classes at the Glass House for a second time. When she tallied up newly added names from the class she’d attended and subtracted duplicates and no-longer-in-service numbers, her new list was long and her task daunting.

  She needed to give careful thought to what she wanted to ask this time, because she was determined this was going to be her last ear-numbing phone call exercise.

  Pat thought better when she walked, and her mind-reading dog had appeared with her leash in her mouth as soon as Pat got off the phone with Kandi.

  “You don’t have to give me that sad-eyed, need-to-pee look, Dot. We’re going for a walk right now,” Pat promised.

  Dot dropped the leash at Pat’s feet and opened her mouth in a full-on Dalmatian smile.

  Pat walked with earbuds in place. Their cord terminated in her pants pocket where they didn’t connect to anything. She liked to formulate potential questions and consider how they sounded by asking them out loud, and the unconnected earbuds let her. Passing people assumed she was on her phone, not some deranged woman talking to herself. Sanity was so much easier to fake in the age of the iPhone.

  “Did you ever notice Lillian and Garryn flirting?” She shook her head and said, “No. Did you happen to notice Lillian and Garryn touching?” God, no. “What did you think of Lillian Wentner and Garryn Monteith’s relationship?” Better. “Did you ever think Lillian Wentner and Garryn Monteith might have had a relationship that was more intimate than a business one?” Getting there. “Did you ever think Lillian Wentner and Garryn Monteith might be more than business associates?” Pat smiled. “There’s my opening question.”

  Follow-up questions were easier to frame; she had them in one try. “Why is that? Did you ever speak to any of your classmates about them?”

  Her final question was the one she wanted to ask immediately, but groundwork had to be laid before she could. “What do you think Joe Wentner thought of his wife’s and Garryn Monteith’s involvement?”

  Pat pulled out the earbuds and stuffed them into her pants pocket with her imaginary phone. Sane people could talk to their dog; no one would fault her for that.

  “Have you had enough of a walk, Dot? I hope so, because we need to go home now. I have a busy afternoon with lots of phone calls to make.”

  Pat didn’t get a hit in her first twenty-two calls, which covered women in the first class and most of the women in the second class Garryn Monteith taught at the Glass House. She scored with th
e second-to-last interviewee in the first year of classes.

  “Garryn and Lillian? I wondered,” Jonsey Meyers said.

  “Why is that?”

  “You know how people look at one another when they’re in love? That’s how they looked at one another. Business associates have one way of interacting, and good friends have another way, but lovers? They share special glances.”

  “Did you ever speak to any of your classmates about them?”

  “Not anyone from that class, but I took another class the next year and I saw the same thing going on. I did talk to one woman about it. We sat next to one another in class and were friendly. We both took another class the next year and the same thing was happening. Of course we speculated. There were rumors, too, although I don’t know who started them. Word was just out to watch Lillian and Garryn.”

  “What’s the name of the woman you talked to about Lillian and Garryn?”

  “Jean something. I can’t remember her last name. We didn’t take any more classes together after that and we lost touch.”

  “What do you think Lillian’s husband, Joe, thought about their behavior?”

  Pat’s interviewee let out a snort. “I thought he was either the densest man on the planet or a saint. I couldn’t figure out which one he was, though. Oh, I just remembered where I heard the rumor about them. It was from that woman you called about last time. Suzanne.”

  “Suzanne Cummings?” Pat tried not to sound surprised, but she was.

  “Uh-huh. Suzanne Cummings.”

  Pat had finished as many of the phone calls as she intended to make for the day by 7:30. She was hungry and ready for a late dinner, but by then she had no energy left for cooking. She settled for a bag of prewashed greens dumped in a bowl and topped with a can of precooked chicken. She stared at her uninspiring supper and then reached for the open bottle of Chardonnay in her refrigerator. It needed drinking soon, and a glass or two of wine would finish the bottle and might help make her insipid dinner salad palatable.