Pat read to the end of the notice hoping that a donations list might give her a clue as to why he died, but the only donation request was to a college fund for his daughter, and there was no wording such as “after a valiant fight against…” and no phraseology like “he died peacefully, surrounded by his loving family.” The article ended with the name of the funeral home and date and time of a service. She was going to need a death certificate to find out how he died.
Pat logged on to the Maryland Vital Statistics homepage and clicked the certificates button. She immediately hit a wall. Maryland only issued death certificates to surviving family members and their authorized representatives and to funeral directors.
She surely wasn’t the former. Her only recourse was the funeral director.
“Do you think Leonardo Grinardi has a long-lost aunt named Dot?’ she asked her pet. “I could call and say I was representing you.”
Dot slumped to the floor and buried her muzzle with her paws.
“Sometimes dogs are simply too honorable,” she admonished. “I bet Wimsey wouldn’t mind me using his identity nefariously.”
She’d asked for various certificates before, but that was when she could declare herself a law librarian and part of a government entity. She was beginning to realize just how much harder everything would be now that she was the self-declared CEO of PIP Inc. It didn’t matter. If she was going to succeed in her new career, she might have to split the difference between her and her pet’s approach to the world. She dialed the number given in the obituary.
“Mortan’s Funeral Home. Mr. Mortan speaking. How may I be of service?” a voice that oozed sympathy asked.
“Hello. I’m Pat Pirard in Santa Cruz, California. I’m hoping you will have some useful information in your file. I’m calling about one of your”—what did you call a body? A resident, a client, a guest?—“about Leonardo Grinardi, who died last May.”
“Ahh, yes. I remember his family well; difficult situation, but they were so brave.”
“Yes, the family is a remarkable one, which is in part why I’m calling.” Pat took a deep breath and slipped into a full-on Wimsey. “His youngest brother was unable to attend the funeral. He’s part of Doctors Without Borders and was on a mission at the time.”
“Oh, bravo. An artist and a humanitarian in one family. I knew that family was special.”
At first, Pat assumed the funeral director was vamping like she was, saying nice things without really remembering who Leonardo Grinardi was, buying time as he frantically searched the funeral home computer files to help jog his memory. But his response had been quick and seemed sincere. Now she wondered. Perhaps there was something else that made the service memorable to him. She took a chance.
“Sudden deaths like Mr. Grinardi’s are always more difficult than most deaths are. Family members often find the circumstances hard to accept.” She stopped speaking and left quiet space in case the funeral director might feel the need to fill the silence with some valuable information. Mr. Mortan did immediately.
“Indeed. Sudden deaths are always difficult. Accidents cause so much grief. Family members frequently say they can’t believe what’s happened and expect to see their loved one return and say their death was just a bad dream. But suicides are even worse. Survivors usually feel like they should have intervened in some way and saved their loved one.”
Suicide. Leonardo Grinardi’s death had been by his own hand. Her mouth formed an O and she almost sucked in enough air that Mr. Mortan could hear it over the phone.
“That’s exactly how his brother feels. I think seeing what the informant told you about his brother might ease his pain, you know, reading all the wonderful things that were said about him for you to use in creating an obituary. Would it be possible for you to send me a copy of what was written?”
“Certainly.”
“Oh, and by the way, would it be possible for you to send a copy of his death certificate, too? For closure. You can snail mail it to me at,” Pat almost gave the Law Library address from habit, but caught her mistake just in time and switched to her home address.
“I’ll put copies in the mail today. There won’t be any charge for them. I’m happy to do anything I can to ease a survivor’s sense of loss.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Mortan. Thank you so much.”
The death certificate would list suicide as the cause of death, but it wouldn’t say anything about why Leonardo Grinardi took his life. There was nothing definitive that said his death and Angela’s plan were related, but the timing of Angela taking the class almost a year to the day after her husband’s death and her promise were suggestive. It might have been just a feeling on her part, but Pat tied them together. She suspected somehow Leonardo’s suicide and Garryn Monteith’s death were connected.
Her first urge was to call Mark Bellows and let him know what she had discovered. As nice as it would have been to hear the sound of his voice and hope that he might ask to see her again, she fought her impulse. Unless she wanted to sound like an excitable amateur, she needed a lot more concrete information before she offered her theory to him.
Pat sat at her desk and drummed her foot. She badly wanted to call Angela Grinardi and ask her to confess. She looked at the phone number listed in Angela’s LexisNexis report and picked up the phone, but the professional she aspired to be stopped her from dialing. She had to wait for the death certificate and think about what to say before she blurted out something that might warn Angela she was a suspect and give her time to concoct a believable cover story.
Besides, she had barely begun her investigation, and there were other potential suspects to consider, good distractions until she got her Angela ducks in a row. A prudent Pat called Syda instead of calling Angela.
“Hey, my detecting friend, I have a job for you.”
“Oh goody. What do you want me to do and do I need to wear a fedora?”
“Hats are optional. I want you to call Suzanne Cummings—she’s in the phonebook, so she won’t think we’re looking at her specially and researched her number—and set up a consoling lunch. You two could be commiserating about Garryn’s loss, and I could just happen by, and you could invite me to join you.”
“Why can’t I make it lunch for three?”
“Because I don’t think she’d agree to that.”
“Oh, right, you were the competition. I forgot about that.” Syda brightened. “A stealth lunch and meeting is great fodder for my research, too.”
Syda was off before Pat could ask her what she meant.
“I’ve been thinking maybe my artistic career hasn’t taken off because so far I haven’t found my true calling. Maybe my muse will come to me if I create with words instead of paint or glass, or some of the other mediums I’ve tried.
“I’m thinking of becoming a writer. Possibly I’ll do a noir story or maybe a first-person Sue Grafton–style private investigator kind of mystery. Lunch could make a great scene in either style book. I’ll get right on that phone call. Should I ask her to meet me tomorrow for Mexican at Palomar?”
“Better make it Gayle’s in Capitola. She lives near there, and I can be stopping by to pick up a pastry.”
“Got it. I’ll see you at oneish. I’ll be the one in the blue fedora.”
※※※※※※※※※※※
Pat spied Syda and Suzanne Cummings the minute she walked through the main door at Gayle’s Bakery, but she pretended she didn’t see them. She took a number—even at one o’clock the line for service was still long—and leaned against the wall separating those waiting for bakery orders and those who had picked up their lunch and were eating in the sunny atrium behind the wall. After her order was filled, she would pretend to leave the eatery-cum-bakery via the atrium exit so she could accidently run into her quarry.
Pat’s long wait for service meant she had a lot of time to peruse Gayle’s array of temptations. When her number was called, she ordered a rustic baguette, half a dozen iced flo
wer cookies, and a lemon sponge beehive cake filled with lemon curd and decorated with edible bees, many more baked goods than she intended to buy.
Her purchases turned out to be a perfect foil as she struggled to carry them all to the atrium exit: she knocked Syda’s hat off with the yard-long loaf of bread as she passed behind her.
“I’m so sorry! Oh, Syda, it’s you,” she sputtered with surprise recognition, “and Suzanne. Can I make up for my clumsiness by sharing some cookies with you? I overbought, but they looked so good.”
Right on cue Syda said, “Cookies—of course you can share, can’t she, Suzanne? Why don’t you get a cup of coffee and join us?”
Pat put on one of her cheeriest smiles and deposited her baked goods on a vacant chair at the table. “I’d love to; I’ll be right back.”
Pat knew looks couldn’t kill, but she could feel Suzanne’s eye-daggers in her back all the way to the coffee counter.
As she carried her coffee back to the table, Pat noticed Syda had her hand on Suzanne Cummings’s forearm and was leaning across the table speaking earnestly to her. Suzanne’s eyes were downcast and she seemed about to cry.
Pat picked up Syda’s last few words as she approached.
“…she didn’t encourage him.”
Suzanne seemed so passive, sobbing in the bathroom, according to what she had told Syda, and avoiding any confrontation with Garryn, Pat, or anyone else she perceived as getting in the way with her imagined love relationship. But if she was a murderer, she had to have a planning, aggressive side, too. Pat made a split-second decision: she wasn’t going to be nice to Suzanne Cummings. She’d prod and see if Suzanne became pugnacious when pushed.
Pat put her coffee on the table, sat down, picked the bag of cookies up from the empty chair where they rested, and held the bag out to Suzanne. She smiled sweetly.
“Suzanne, I know you don’t like me, but it’s not my fault that Garryn Monteith found me attractive. He’s not my type so I didn’t encourage him, but even though I discouraged him, he still wasn’t interested in you.”
Suzanne blinked rapidly. “Excuse me, Syda. Thanks for inviting me to lunch, but I’m going to go now.” She rose without acknowledging Pat and hurried to the atrium door.
“Oh, Pat,” Syda chided, “That was cruel. Why did you say that to her?”
“I needed to see how she’d react. Now I feel like a high school mean girl. I’ll write her an apology note, and after she’s had a chance to think about what I say, I’ll reach out to her and offer a more personal apology. I feel bad. She’s obviously as meek as she seemed, but this is serious business. I had to know if she’d react like a wimp or a warrior. I had to see if she had a temper, if I thought she could get angry enough to kill.”
“You could have asked me what I thought of her. We just had a long heart-to-heart over lunch. She was obsessed with Garryn, all right, but she would never have done anything to hurt him, let alone kill him. No way.”
Syda munched on a cookie and Pat had a couple of sips of her coffee. They sat in silence, any enjoyment they might have had at playing detective at Gayle’s was over. They parted within a few minutes with a quick hug and headed out different doors, Syda via the atrium and Pat, toting her purchases, out the main door toward where she had parked her car.
She stopped abruptly as she got within sight of her beloved sunburst-yellow Mercedes. The windshield had a beginning spider web of cracked glass radiating out from a small hole on the driver’s side just above the dashboard. She hadn’t remembered a rock hitting the windshield as she drove. How could…
Suzanne Cummings drove past her slowly, smiled at her, and gave a little salute-like wave before she left the parking lot. She had committed a perfect crime. Pat would never be able to prove Suzanne had deliberately damaged her car, and yet it was clear that she had. And not only had Suzanne destroyed her windshield, she had waited for her so she could make sure Pat knew what had happened.
All Pat had done was say something unkind to Suzanne. What, she wondered, was the penalty for breaking her heart? Pat wondered if Garryn Monteith, gasping his final breath, had suspected Suzanne Cummings had killed him.
“Pat, you know the irony of this is that Super Glue applied to a windshield ping is said to stop it from spreading.” Greg chuckled as he took down her statement.
“This was a weaponized poke, not a ping. I had to replace my windshield.”
“You also know you’re never going to get anywhere if you charge her, right?”
“I know. My evidence is all circumstantial. I didn’t see her do anything to my car. That’s why I’m telling you about this rather than filing a report with the Capitola police. I just want it on record somewhere, with someone, in case there’s another incident.”
“You think she’s dangerous?”
“I don’t know what to think. Yesterday I was convinced that another class member was a killer. Now I’ve completely changed my mind.”
“Okay, I’ll bury this in the file, but it’ll be there like you want. Just be careful, will you, you and Syda. I love both of you and don’t want anything to happen to either of you. A man is dead. This isn’t just a great adventure for you to play at.”
Was Suzanne Cummings dangerous? Greg’s question was a good one. She was certainly jealous and vindictive, but Syda might be right about her not harming Garryn Monteith. So far Suzanne had taken out her rage on others and, according to Syda, only sobbed in the bathroom and tried harder to get his attention.
Pat made a quick call to Lillian Wentner. Joe answered the phone.
“Joe, you’re a free man!” Pat said enthusiastically.
Joe sighed deeply. “For the time being at least. The judge set bail for me, saying even though the charge of first-degree murder was extremely serious, she respected my standing in the community and long history here, and didn’t consider me a flight risk, although I had to turn in my passport and driver’s license. She said the fact that I didn’t have so much as a speeding ticket helped, too, so I didn’t correct her misperception. I did get a speeding ticket about fifteen years ago.”
“I think you lucked out with an able judge. Who’s hearing your case?”
“Judge Blaine.”
“She is good; wise, too, it sounds like. I had a quick question for you and Lillian about one of the students at the class. Could you check your records and see if Suzanne Cummings took any classes with you before?”
“I don’t have to check anything to answer that question. She’s was regular. Every time Garryn Monteith taught, she was here. She made an impression on me because she never looked the same from class to class. She’d be blonde, and then a brunette. Her weight fluctuated and so did her makeup and what she wore. Lillian and I talked about her. It was like every time we saw her she was trying to reinvent herself.”
“Do you think she was changing her appearance because of Garryn? Maybe trying out different looks to see if any impressed him?”
“You’d have to ask Lillian about that. I don’t know how she behaved during the classes. I only noticed that she always looked different—oh, and that she spent a lot of lunch breaks in the bathroom. I always wondered if there was something wrong with her health that she needed to spend so much time in there.
“Lillian’s in town right now. Shall I ask her to give you a call when she gets back?”
“That’s okay. I’ll catch her next time I have more questions. Joe, I just thought of one more thing I wanted to ask you or Lillian: Did you ever get complaints about Suzanne from any of the people, women in particular, who took classes Garryn taught?”
“No. We’ve never had any problems during any of our classes—from her or anyone else.”
Joe’s observations were interesting. Suzanne’s behavior certainly sounded odd, but it didn’t raise any red flags. She might have hit a breaking point for some reason and become violent toward Garryn Monteith at the last class, but it seemed more probable that Syda was right, and that any hostile behavior
Suzanne Cummings exhibited was directed against her perceived rivals rather than him.
Pat still fumed that Suzanne’s rage had been aimed at her dream car, but she was less certain about Suzanne as a murderer than she had been before talking to Joe.
That meant it was back to work looking at suspects. Pat picked up Kandi Crusher’s file and scanned it for anything noteworthy. She didn’t find anything. Kandi appeared to be what Syda would have called a “good girl.” She had no violations, no bankruptcies, no liens or judgments filed against her, and she hadn’t filed any against anyone else.
The only reason Pat was even looking at her file was because Kandi, like Angela Grinardi, had made a curious comment during the class. Pat recalled she started talking to Kandi because they were both hanging back from the adoring throng at lunch the second day of instruction. If she remembered correctly, Kandi labeled Garryn Monteith self-aggrandizing and implied his class wasn’t worth what it cost. And yet, she said she planned to get a lot out of the class the next day. It wasn’t much as suspicious statements went, but it resonated with her.
Had she known what the future held, Pat might have delved more deeply into what Kandi meant by that, but there weren’t any dead bodies lying around when Kandi made her comment, and that thread of conversation ended as soon as Kandi told her that her full name was Kandi Crusher.
Pat smiled as she remembered how she had suggested ways Kandi could get away from that moniker.
That moniker.
As she thought about it, Pat developed that unsettled feeling that comes when remembrance is there, but the specifics of it are just out of reach. She tried to recall what it was about Kandi’s name that was causing her uneasiness. It troubled her that the cause was close in her mind and yet remained elusive.
She flipped to the first page of the LexisNexis report and reread Kandi’s biographical information: Kandi Mann Crusher, female. That was as far as she needed to go before the synapse closed. She scanned Kandi’s relative connections again: George Harold Crusher, Samuel Mann Crusher, Cindi Ann Mann Crusher, Henry David Crusher, Maryanne Penelope Mann Crusher Frieberg, Peter Mann Frieberg. There were other names, but she had found what she needed.
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