The Glass House

by Nancy Lynn Jarvis

  “Maybe.”

  Too far. Too fast. Too blunt. Pat tried to think of how to rephrase. But before she could, Suzanne picked up her story.

  “I knew about it, though,” Suzanne said. “I thought you understood.”

  “What do you mean, Suzanne?”

  “Garryn didn’t flirt with other women at the Glass House classes,” Suzanne spoke hesitantly, “because of Lillian. But the first day, he acted like he was interested in you. He acted like he did at other classes when Lillian wasn’t around. I knew what that meant. I knew he had finally gotten bored with Lillian and that my chance was coming.”

  Suzanne lapsed into what seemed like an interminable silence, and Pat began to wonder if she wasn’t going to say anything else. When she spoke again, Suzanne teased out her words.

  “Maybe I more than thought they were breaking up. Maybe I did see something, or at least heard something.”

  Pat waited through another boundless pause, but she was beginning to recognize how Suzanne’s process worked. She didn’t try to push her to go faster.

  Finally, Suzanne began speaking again in a slow, whispery voice, as if she had put herself in a trance so she could not only recall, but see what she described.

  “I saw him go back to the studio after people started leaving the first day. I waited for the class people to leave and then I followed him. I wanted to talk to him and let him know I still loved him. Except I didn’t get inside. Before I could, I heard shouting. He and Lillian were having a big row. They were so loud I didn’t need to go inside. I could hear every word they were saying through the alcove window. It was open a crack, so that made it easy.”

  “What did you hear?” Pat asked, mirroring Suzanne’s halting and breathy speech.

  Suzanne’s pace hastened and she sounded gleeful as she continued. “Lillian said she was ready to leave her husband to be with Garryn. But he said he didn’t want her. He never wanted her, you see. He just used her for sex. He never loved her; not really, not in the way he loved me.”

  “What you heard was Garryn ending his relationship with Lillian?” Pat asked. Suzanne spoke in enigmas, and Pat had to be absolutely clear about what Suzanne was saying.

  “Yes.”

  Two witnesses. Pat took a deep breath. She had confirmation of what Kandi had said.

  “He never would have loved you, either, you know,” Suzanne added, her words delivered in a manner that fell somewhere between bitterness and triumph.

  “Of course not. I could never have had the connection with him that you did.”

  “That’s right. His flirting with you didn’t mean anything to him. Not really. It was just his way of starting to break up with Lillian. Things go wrong along the path to true love; that’s just reality. He may not have realized it that night, but if he’d had more time, if he spent more time with me, he would have made me his star pupil again. I know he would have.”

  Her heart broke for Suzanne. “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Thank you, Suzanne.”

  Pat put her phone down slowly. She had heard from two sources that Lillian had a motive for killing Garryn Monteith. Now, she had only two remaining questions: what to do next, and how to get Lillian to admit her guilt.

  Pat had several options. She could call Mark Bellows again and tell him that, even though he had truly terminated her this time, she was still snooping and had continued asking questions. She could let him know she had discovered Garryn Monteith ended the affair between Lillian and him. She could sit tight for the time being and let Tim know about her discoveries on Saturday morning when he took her for a shooting lesson. She could even use a back door to the Sheriff’s Department and let Greg know what she discovered. He’d be receptive; Syda might already have primed him.

  She didn’t do any of those things, however. Instead, on Thursday morning she called Lillian and invited her over for coffee and chocolate cake.

  “Lillian, how are you holding up?” Pat asked solicitously.

  “Okay, I guess. Joe’s arraignment is tomorrow so he and his attorney are working hard to get ready. You probably knew that already, since you work for Mark Bellows.”

  “Worked for Mark Bellows,” Pat corrected. “I haven’t been employed by him for several days. I’m feeling kind of bad about that and I know this is a difficult time for you, too, so I wanted to invite you to my house tomorrow afternoon. I feel the need for cake, chocolate cake especially, because there’s nothing like eating chocolate for commiseration and mood boosting.”

  “I don’t think we can make it…”

  “Not you and Joe. Just you.”

  “I don’t know. I want to be with Joe when he’s arraigned.”

  “Arraignment is a procedural event with a judge. It’s not like trying to impress a jury with a wife’s devoted support. Joe will be fine in Mark’s capable hands; you don’t need to be there. Come eat chocolate cake with me tomorrow, say at 3:00?”

  “Joe’s arraignment is at 10:00. You know a lot about court proceedings, don’t you? Do you think his arraignment will be over by then?”

  “Arraignments, in addition to being boring, are quick. Joe should be out of court well before 3:00.”

  Lillian brightened. “Then I can be a good wife, even if it’s only for the judge’s sake, and get some chocolate cake, too. Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you for the invitation and for your support.”

  “Oh good. I’m looking forward to seeing you,” Pat said in a voice that was silky and without a trace of guile.

  ※※※※※※※※※※※

  The cake Pat planned to serve was left over from last Friday’s dinner with Tim. It was an old family recipe she made to impress him. Now the cake, somewhat protected from severe drying by its thick frosting and a covered container, was a bit stale. Just the sort of thing to feed a woman as you accuse her of murder, Pat thought as she brought it out of the refrigerator, cut off the exposed slice ends to freshen it, and made coffee.

  She made other arrangements, too. “Dot, we’re having company. Time for you to dress up. I want you to wear this cute bandana collar.”

  Dot gave out a single small woof when the doorbell rang and pranced to the front door ahead of Pat, her ever-wagging tail swinging merrily.

  “Lillian,” Pat smiled evenly, “come in. How did the arraignment go?” she asked as Lillian passed her in the doorway.

  “It was like you said it would be. The judge read the charges against Joe, asked him if he understood them, and asked him how he plead. Joe stared straight at the judge and said ‘not guilty’ in a firm voice. The judge set the trial date for the 26th and then we all left. Murder in the first degree; what happened seemed so perfunctory for such a momentous charge.”

  “Indeed,” Pat said, nodding sympathetically. “Come with me. We have to have our coffee and cake in the kitchen. My dog, Dot, loves chocolate, but it makes her violently ill. I don’t have a dining room, and if I put the cake on the coffee table in the living room, well, she once grabbed an entire chicken off of there and ran with it through her dog door into the backyard. By the time I caught her, she had eaten about half of it, all while running at full speed.”

  Lillian laughed out loud. “I wish I had seen that.”

  “Trust me, you don’t. She’s going to sit at attention between us and beg us for crumbs, but don’t feel sorry for her and don’t give her anything. I have safe doggy treats for her, so even if she looks like she’s suffering. She isn’t. It’s just an act.”

  “That could be hard,” Lillian said as she patted Dot’s head. “Look at those eyes, and her bandana collar looks like a bib, she looks so ready for a snack.”

  They sat at the kitchen table while Pat served coffee and cake, and as advertised, Dot took up her position sitting upright between them. Pat watched Lillian carefully. As soon as she put a forkful of cake in her mouth, Pat asked, “How far are you willing to let this all go before you confess to killing Garryn Monteith?”

  Pat expected a reaction from Lill
ian, but not the casual one she got.

  “That may be up to Mark; I guess he told you his idea. You did such good work for him finding that crazy stalker woman and those other two women in the class with potential motives, I’d like to see him create a doubt defense because of them. He doesn’t think he can make it work, though. Mark says he’ll probably pull the ‘we both had motives to kill Garryn’ idea out of his bag of tricks, but it seems risky to me. I don’t want anyone to think I killed Garryn, even if it’s just a ploy. What do you think of that defense?”

  Pat gulped coffee. The cake was dry and she needed time to think. “That’s one defense he didn’t mention to me. The three women you mentioned: they’ve been ruled out as viable suspects. That’s why he doesn’t think he can use them.”

  “Oh, I know, but Mark said he just had to make them sound like possibilities to cause confusion and doubt in the jurors’ minds. He didn’t have to prove they were guilty of anything. I’d really like to see him try using them.”

  Pat relished what she planned to ask next. “Did Mark tell you all the rest of what I discovered?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I found witnesses who will testify that you and Garryn have had a long-standing occasional affair and that Joe knew about it.”

  Once again, Lillian remained unruffled. “It’s true, Pat. I’m not necessarily proud of myself,” she shrugged. “Joe and I had a sort of open marriage. He didn’t mind. Most people, most jurors, probably wouldn’t understand how our marriage worked, though, and might become biased against us because of it, which is why Mark didn’t want to tell them about us. But since there are witnesses, I guess he’ll have to.”

  “There’s also a witness who overheard you and Joe arguing, and you saying you were going to divorce him.”

  Lillian’s response wasn’t as quick as it had been to Pat’s earlier remarks, but when it came it was dismissive.

  “Oh, that. Every time we argue about anything, one or the other of us threatens divorce. We’ve been married for eighteen years, so obviously saying ‘I want a divorce’ is no more than an idle threat.”

  Doesn’t this woman have any buttons? Pat wondered. I’m pushing everything I can think of and nothing’s happening.

  Dot started to her feet. “Sit, Dot,” Pat said as she gave her a treat. “There is one other bit of information I discovered recently.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Garryn was ending his relationship with you, wasn’t he?”

  Lillian dropped her fork. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” she exclaimed.

  Finally, Pat thought. A reaction.

  “What gave you that idea? What does Mark say about that theory?”

  “Since this is information I discovered after my employment ended, I haven’t told him about it yet or given him my source.”

  “But you’ve…probably mentioned your idea to other people…already—like Syda. I know you two are friends. You probably talk about all sorts of things.”

  “We do. Right now she’s interested in my love life,” Pat giggled, “but you’re the first one I’ve told about Garryn calling off your affair and saying he wouldn’t be teaching classes at your studio any longer. I thought you should hear it from me even before I told Mark.”

  Lillian smiled weakly and said nothing.

  Pat wanted to scream. She had planned her questions so carefully. Each one should have shaken Lillian—Pat had excitedly imagined Lillian acknowledging Garryn’s cruelty as he ended their relationship and delivering a sobbing confession about how she killed him in a sudden fit of passion. But other that a dropped fork and a bit of hesitation, she had obfuscated every answer.

  Their conversation concluded with Lillian successfully evading any incriminating answers to Pat’s questions or even acknowledging that Pat was right about her relationship with Garryn ending. She remained cool and her responses were so artless that, even to Pat, she sounded like an innocent woman. But as Pat and Dot walked her toward the front door, Lillian finally made a mistake.

  “You really haven’t told anyone that Garryn broke it off with me?” she asked.

  Pat could feel the muscles in her stomach contract. “I haven’t had time to yet, and I have a meeting in about twenty minutes that I need to leave for right away,” Pat lied artfully. “Mark will probably have left his office by the time it ends. I don’t have a private phone number for him, so unless you do, I won’t have a chance to speak with him until Monday morning.

  “I also want to tell the authorities what I discovered, and I will, but I have this weird code: I think Mark should know first, and with Joe’s trial date weeks away, I don’t have to rush my information to the Sheriff’s Department.”

  As she started to leave, Lillian grabbed Pat and pulled her in for a hug.

  Pat did a fist pump after she closed her front door behind Lillian. It was a small misstep, but Lillian had essentially admitted Garryn had broken off their relationship, and Pat had it on tape. It wasn’t enough to convict Lillian, but coupled with Kandi’s and Suzanne’s testimony, it would be highly damaging.

  “Sit, Dot.” Pat unfastened the special blue bandana she had made for Dot and put on her everyday red collar. Pat praised her dog. “You were such a good girl sitting right where I wanted you to so the recorder under your bandana picked up everything Lillian said.”

  Dot displayed a huge Dalmatian smile. If asked, Pat would have sworn Dot understood her completely and had enjoyed doing her part to snare a criminal.

  Pat had no code, weird or otherwise. She had no meeting scheduled that would prohibit her from calling Mark Bellows immediately. What she did have was a potentially hours-long wait to hear from Tim. A high-ranking government official was making a brief stop in Santa Cruz, and every law enforcement officer was on duty to protect her, Tim included. He had promised to call when he got a break.

  Pat was even keener to talk to him than she usually was because she wanted to tell him all her Lillian news. She glowered at her silent phone as hours passed. Once she aimed spread fingertips at it like a conjuring magician and shouted at it, “Ring. Ring, will you?” No matter what she tried, not matter how hard she willed it to ring, it refused.

  By the time Tim’s call finally came at a little before 8:00, she had replayed the Lillian tape several times and had mastered speeding through it to the part she considered the good stuff.

  “Tim, it’s so good to hear the sound of your voice.”

  “Me, too,” his voice sounded husky, sexy.

  “Not that that’s not what I mean, but that’s not what I mean,” she said, speeding past how he sounded to her and how it made her feel to get to the business part of their call.

  “Lillian Wentner has become my prime suspect. Both Suzanne Cummings—I know, she won’t hold up well on the stand—and Kandi Crusher—who will—heard Garryn Monteith break it off with Lillian the night before his murder. Both said he was nasty to her and that she didn’t take his rejection well.

  “I invited her over for coffee today and recorded her while I questioned her. She was cool until I got to the part, well, here. Listen. We talked more, but this is the important part,” Pat said as she brought the tape to her phone mic.

  “Since this is information I discovered after my employment ended, I haven’t told him about it yet or given him my source.”

  “But you’ve…probably mentioned it to other people…already—like Syda. I know you two are friends. You probably talk about all sorts of things.”

  “We do. Right now she’s interested in my love life, but you’re the first one I’ve told about Garryn calling off your affair and saying he wouldn’t be teaching classes at your studio any longer. I thought you should hear it from me even before I told Mark.”

  “You really haven’t told anyone that Garryn broke it off with me?”

  “Did you hear that? She admitted Garryn broke it off with her. Two witnesses and her own words. She has motive!”

  Tim’s response wasn’t what sh
e expected. “I get off in two, two-and-a-half hours. I want to spend the night with you.”

  A smile tickled the sides of her mouth. She replied coquettishly, “Isn’t the first-night-together invitation usually the woman’s prerogative?”

  “That’s not what I had in mind. Not that I’d mind…”

  “You wouldn’t mind? How romantic of you,” she teased.

  “Pat, I heard something on that tape that I think you overlooked. Lillian Wentner wanted to make darn sure you hadn’t told anyone about her. I’m worried about you. I’m worried about your safety.”

  “Don’t be. I know how to take care of myself.”

  “I’m sure you do…”

  “Besides, she killed Garryn because she felt betrayed and used. Her actions were passionate and impulsive. She was so composed and in control when I questioned her; she wouldn’t do something rash again, not because of what I said to her.”

  “If she picked up the nearest weapon she could find and smashed Monteith over the head, that would have been murder in the heat of the moment. She didn’t do that. She may not have thought long and hard about it, but if she killed him, she planned what she did. Now you’ve given her a reason to think you’re a threat to her, one that she can eliminate by eliminating you. The first murder is hard; after that it gets easier.”

  “That’s a tired old cliché…”

  “Just because it is, doesn’t make it any less true.”

  Pat took a deep breath. The conversation they were having wasn’t the one she wanted. “I’ll see you tomorrow at 9:00 for my shooting lesson…if you still want to see me tomorrow. But for tonight, we both better sleep in our own beds. Goodnight, Tim.”

  ※※※※※※※※※※※

  Between having heated words with Tim, thinking about his concerns, dismissing them, rethinking them, checking that all her doors and windows and even the dog door were locked, and checking her nightstand drawer repeatedly, Pat hadn’t slept well.