Pat had already scanned the information Lillian sent her and narrowed the field of interesting subjects to three: Kandi Crusher, Angela Grinardi, and Suzanne Cummings. All had made comments to her that were in one way or another thought-provoking. Certainly other class members might have had suggestive things to say about Garryn Monteith, too, but she had to start somewhere. So for her first detecting gig, she decided to limit her work researching class members to the three of them. Armed with her suspects list, she was ready to go back to her old haunt.
Force of habit almost made Pat aim her car toward her old parking spot. She turned left rather than right just in time to avoid having to do a backup maneuver out of the employee lot and into the melee of general public parking at the County Building. It would have hurt to see who had assumed her plum labeled space—she was sure it hadn’t been turned over to Jefferson—so she convinced herself it was a good thing she had to park with all the people doing ordinary business at the five-story building.
By the time she had made her way to the Law Library door, high heels again clacking down the long concrete hall on the way there in what was a homely sound to her ears, Pat was ready to greet Jefferson, her newly elevated assistant, in what was now his domain, not hers. At least she thought she was.
Her face must have betrayed her, even though she plastered on a brave smile, because he jumped up from behind the reception desk and crushed her in a consoling hug.
“It’s so good to see you,” he overstated.
“I’ve only been gone a few days.”
“But it seems like forever. Mr. Drinker called and said you’d be stopping by to use the LexisNexis if it was alright with me—like it wouldn’t be—and I told him of course it would be. Would you like to use my office to set up?”
“Thank you. That would be perfect.”
Stepping across the threshold of what had been her office and not being greeted by Syda’s surfer painting and her rainbow files was harder than she thought it would be. Jefferson had already redecorated the office and made it his with old movie posters, the most prominent a Pulp Fiction poster signed by Quentin Tarantino. Her eyes lingered on it because she was afraid to look left or right to see what had become of her judges.
“Isn’t that one great?” Jefferson effused. “My husband got it for me for my birthday. I absolutely love it.”
“Yes. It’s very special.”
Jefferson was nothing if not a kind man. “Well, for now let’s call this ‘your office,’ yours to use as you see fit for as long as you need. Oh, and I like the arrangement you made of our retired judges. I’m keeping them just the way they are.” He closed the office door and returned to the seat behind the intake counter.
Pat logged on to the LexisNexis program, relieved to see that the program password hadn’t been changed. It was a detailed search engine that compiled several public records for law enforcement and government agency groups to save them hours of search time. Almost thirty categories were examined—everything from boat license registrations to real property records—with a myriad of more specialized and not necessarily easy-to-find public records. And there were other categories on the database, as well. Information about potential relatives, business associates, neighbors, employment records, legal entanglements, cell phone numbers, and an address summary were also part of the reports. Researching such records was akin to the sort of work an FBI agent might do for a background check, and it was irresistibly at Pat’s fingertips.
She wasn’t yet certain what information might prove useful to her, so she intended to print out everything the program could tell her about her three classmates. As she typed, she added two other names she knew she needed to research: Joe Wentner, because tracking his background might help Mark Bellows prepare a defense, and Garryn Monteith because understanding the murder victim was important.
Almost as an afterthought, Pat added Lillian Wentner’s name to her search. Pat wasn’t sure why she made the last-minute addition of Lillian’s name, but a little voice in her head told her that she had heard something curious about Lillian that she couldn’t remember at the moment, and that it was a good idea to add her name.
Pages printed in another location in the library and when Pat saw the amount of documentation her five names generated, she was glad she had brought her leopard-print briefcase with her. She scooped the documents into her briefcase and hoped she could slip out with just a wave while Jefferson was occupied helping a patron. She had almost made it to the Law Library door when Jefferson called her name.
“Pat, that was fast. Are you finished already?” he asked.
“I got what I needed.” She patted her briefcase. “Now I have to go home and make sense of it.”
“Mr. Drinker tells me you’re working on something for Mark Bellows…?” Jefferson, kind, but a gossip, dangled the end of his sentence.
“That’s right. I’m a private investigator now.”
“How cool is that! You astound me. What an amazing juggler you are, working here and putting in all the hours you need to become a PI?”
“Hours?”
“Yes. It takes three thousand hours of supervised experience to become a licensed PI. I looked into it once. I was trying to impress a date and thought it would sound good if I said I was a PI. A librarian wasn’t the image I was going for then,” he chuckled and made little keystroke finger movements. “I wanted to be a he-man, and being a PI sounded so thrilling, so macho.
“Oh, why am I saying this to you? Of course you know how it works. You can’t become a PI just by saying you are, can you?” he chortled. “Now I have to know, are you a master juggler or did you have your license before you started here?”
Pat smiled and evaded answering directly. “Let’s just say I have many hidden talents.”
Jefferson’s face, which a moment before glowed with unabashed admiration, shifted through confusion into concern. “You are licensed, aren’t you?” he stuttered. “I mean; you couldn’t use the LexisNexis program if you weren’t an employee here or licensed, even if Mr. Drinker...” His voice quivered ever so slightly. “I don’t think you would meet the program’s criteria for use if you weren’t licensed. It wouldn’t be legal, and Mr. Drinker said it was my decision…”
Pat twittered. “Don’t worry. I have business cards and everything.”
Jefferson looked reassured.
Pat feared his relief was only going to be momentary. “I’ve got to hurry, bye-bye,” Pat said quickly as she pushed open a massive Law Library door.
Her heels clicked double time as she rushed down the hall and out to her car. She drove out of the lot hurriedly, half expecting to hear a siren wailing for her to stop and surrender her ill-gotten documents before she was taken to jail, and hoping she had selected the right candidates for her investigation, because she knew she wasn’t going to get a second chance to research them with LexisNexis.
※※※※※※※※※※※
Syda had already finished one glass of wine that Pat knew about and was sipping her second. “I’m so glad you asked me to solve Garryn Monteith’s murder,” she intoned solemnly.
Even a modest amount of alcohol amplified Syda’s dramatic tendencies, and the fact that she had skipped lunch wasn’t helping. Pat hoped the chuck roast would be ready soon.
“And I’m so glad you came over for dinner with me. I wasn’t looking forward to eating alone. It’s just too bad that Greg and his partner had to pull a double shift, or I could have invited him, too, and you could have met him.”
“I…we…have work to do. Tonight wouldn’t have been a good night.”
“What do you want me to do, exactly?”
“Take a report and highlight anything you think deserves a closer look in yellow,” Pat instructed. “For example: I don’t think the number of boats or aircraft one of our suspects owns matters, but NODs…”
“What’s a nod?”
“…notice of default might, and real property might. Bankruptcy might,
too, and certainly potential relatives, business associates, personal associations, neighbors, and employment records need to be highlighted.”
“What about criminal filings? Trouble with the law sounds juicy.”
“That, too.”
“Oh, this is going to be fun. Could I have Garryn’s file? I’d love to see what dirt the program turned up about him.”
Pat handed Garryn Monteith’s file to Syda without hesitation. Syda could play detective, but Pat would go over the pertinent parts of all the reports in the morning.
A few minutes later Syda announced, “Garryn Monteith was a very bad boy. He has all sorts of legal actions filed against him. The IRS wanted money, and the State of California and the Feds were after him, and a couple of business partners sued him, and then it looks like he filed bankruptcy.” Syda poked through more pages, her yellow marker flying.
“Never mind. It looks like a new Garryn rose from the ashes like a phoenix. He seems to have gotten his act together after a while and made a lot of money and bought property. I guess his legal problems history was just because he was an artistic youth who didn’t know how to handle money.”
Syda pulled the hair stick out of her informal bun, retwisted her hair, and then repinned it higher up on her head. “I can relate to that. If I wasn’t married to Greg, I’d be a starving artist, too. It’s nice to know that people other than Grandma Moses and Georgia O’Keefe can come into their full artistic expression once they are more mature. There’s hope that I’ll be a raging success yet.”
“And I can say I knew you when,” Pat teased.
Syda held out her hand. “Since I’m finished with Garryn Monteith, let me see Suzanne Cummings’s file. I hope there’s nothing bad about her past in it. I liked her.”
“She talked to you? She wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“That’s because you were a threat; Garryn was too interested in you. I’m happily married so I wasn’t.”
“When did you talk to her? I never saw her around at lunch time.”
“No, she wasn’t. She spent lunch breaks in the bathroom crying and then trying to redo her makeup so she didn’t look like she had. It was sad, really, how she would arrive in the morning all happy and chatty and convinced Garryn would suddenly look at her—see her—and be interested in her again. She told me she still loved him, even though it had been many classes since he loved her back.
“It never happened for her, though. She’d spend the morning watching him flirt with you and be ready for a good cry by lunch break. She never gave up, though. I guess you’d say she never learned. But true love is like that, isn’t it?”
The oven timer buzzed. Syda smacked her lips. “Thank goodness. I’m famished already and now all this detecting has made me extra hungry.”
Pat was glad the interruption meant she didn’t have to answer Syda’s question. She knew love could die. And she didn’t care to enlighten her romantic friend that after hurt, love often became anger before it did.
Her cursory review of the LexisNexis files of her classmates last night with Syda hadn’t produced any startling results. Based on the reports, the lives of the three women seemed pretty mundane. There were no criminal proceedings to note; names changed because of marriages; relatives seemed to be husbands, children, parents, brothers, and sisters: all the connections ordinary people had. None appeared to be hiding a guilty secret or a suspected axe murderer history.
With the start of a new day, Pat settled at her desk with the six files stacked neatly to her left and her mug of coffee still steaming even after she added a hefty pour of half-and-half to it on her right.
Wimsey had settled on an office window ledge, his routine on sunny days, to soak up warm rays. He’d fall off the ledge with a start once the sun lulled him to sleep, but he’d land on the broad back of a padded chair set under the window and fall asleep again almost instantly. She’d seen his fall repeat many times, and after she had chuckled at his awkward dismount, she realized he always positioned himself so he would end up on the chair back. Her opinion of him had changed from one of mocking to one of great respect. He now seemed to her to be a clever and possibly brilliant cat.
Dot joined them in her office just after Wimsey plunged, as if her sensitive ears could hear the subtle sound of a cat landing on padding, and had taken up a position at the base of the chair. Pat was comfy and ready to work.
She began with Garryn Monteith’s file. Syda was right; early on he hadn’t handled his finances well. He had skipped paying state taxes in California, where his address history said he lived until he was thirty, and he hadn’t filed with the IRS for a period of time. When those two oversights became apparent, both the State of California and the IRS had filed claims and received judgments against him.
Two other actions had been taken against him, but those had been dismissed. Looking at Syda’s highlighted marks, Pat noted both men who had filed failed lawsuits came up as business associates of Garryn Monteith’s. They were Peter Mann Frieberg and Leonardo Grinardi. Pat stopped reading abruptly as she hit Leonardo Grinardi’s name.
She grabbed Angela Grinardi’s file from the stack and flipped it open to the potential relatives section. The first name that came up under first-degree relatives was Leonardo Grinardi. His file had a red triangle with an exclamation point after his name. Pat knew what the symbol meant. It indicated the person referenced was deceased.
Pat scanned the rest of the information about Leonardo Grinardi and compared it with Angela Grinardi’s file. Leonardo was born four years before Angela. They shared a residence in Maryland at the time of his death at age fifty-one, and there were three names listed with the same residence address: two girls and a boy who would have been twenty-two, twenty, and seventeen at the time of their father’s—and yes, she had every reason to assume they were his and Angela’s offspring—death a year ago.
Pat thought back to her conversation with Angela in the Wentners’ kitchen. If she remembered correctly, Angela knew Garryn Monteith, although she said she hadn’t taken his class before. She called him a thief and a cheat and said she looked forward to watching him squirm.
A shiver went up Pat’s back. She may not have remembered some of what Angela said precisely, but she absolutely remembered one thing Angela stated. She pledged to destroy Garryn Monteith on the third day of class. Pat was sure she remembered Angela’s promise correctly because its delivery was venomous. It had impressed her.
And now she had found a connection between Angela and Garryn Monteith. Angela’s late husband had sued him and lost. Was that enough connectivity to provide a motive? Was it enough to make Angela a suspect in murder? Probably not, but it was enough to excite Pat’s curiosity.
The first thing she wanted to know was why Leonardo Grinardi had sued Garryn Monteith. With her background as a law librarian, she knew just where to find that information. Pat logged on to the Public Records Access to Court Electronic Records site. Even though the suit had taken place years before, details about it would be there. And unlike LexisNexis, at ten cents per page the database was cheap to use and only required registration and billing information to access. Pat smiled. No restricted access, no user reviews and secret handshakes. Perfect.
Dot gave out a soft woof and left the room. She returned a minute later with her red leash in her mouth. She sat dutifully for a few seconds before she nudged Pat’s leg.
“Okay. Cross your legs and give me just a few more minutes and then I’ll take you out for a bathroom walk.”
Dot gave Pat a classic sad-eyed-disappointed-dog look and dropped the leash at Pat’s feet, seemingly resigned to obeying her mistress.
Pat was into the database and reading in a few minutes. The suit complaint stated that Garryn Monteith had stolen Leonardo Grinardi’s patented system for attaching glass flowers to support systems in a way that enabled the glass portions to be significantly larger and heavier than previously possible.
The Judge hearing the case accep
ted Garryn Monteith’s statement that, even though they were business partners, both men had small studios and worked independently. He stated that he had created his own highly similar system independently and without observation of Leonardo Grinardi’s work. The judge agreed and ruled against the charge of patent infringement. Pat hit print and sent the court documents to her printer.
“Let’s go, girl,” she leaned over and cupped Dot’s head in her hands and then gave her a quick head scratch. “We’ve had a good morning and deserve a sunny walk.”
Pat’s office answering machine blinked red and the time stamp indicated she had just missed a call. “Have we solved the case yet?” Syda’s voice on her answering machine sounded slightly breathless.
“Are you so excited about the prospect of being a crime solver that you can’t catch your breath?” Pat asked when she returned her friend’s call.
“No. I recorded during a yoga workout. I know you are supposed to keep your breathing even, but I’ve never managed to master that during a warrior two pose. Well, have we?”
“Not yet, but we’re hot on the trail.”
“Really?” Syda asked incredulously.
“I found a connection between Angela Grinardi and Garryn Monteith. Let me get back to work and see if it looks stronger after some research.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Of course.”
Pat had been thinking about that connection as she and Dot walked, especially since Angela was recently widowed. One piece of information she didn’t have was how and why Leonardo Grinardi died, and she wanted to know.
She began her afternoon work by looking up year-old obituary notices in the Maryland town newspaper where Angela lived. She found Leonardo Grinardi’s notice quickly. It confirmed that the three names listed in the LexisNexis report were his children. The obituary stated he created beautiful glass art, but it didn’t mention important placement of his work; and it said he was an art teacher in a local high school. So, Pat decided, he had never attained the prominence of his former business partner.
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