“Your department nicknaming is safe with me.”
“I have a problem with the mouse, too. She’s a stalker,” Tim said, “we’ll give her that…”
“And she has a history of acting out,” Pat added.
“Yeah, but she’s never attacked a person and her breaking the windshield of your car seems to have been as violent as she ever got. Then there’s her long history of knowing about Lillian and Monteith. How many classes did you say she attended at the Glass House? She never so much as raised a finger against either of them before, and she had plenty of opportunity to. Why would she change her pattern now?”
“I don’t know.”
Pat inhaled sharply and dropped the open container of coffee she was holding on the floor, sending grounds everywhere. “Yes, I do! I’ve known why for weeks. Why didn’t I see it before? Suzanne changed her pattern because it was over between Lillian and Garryn, and he wasn’t coming back to her like she always thought he would when they broke up.”
“What?”
“Oh, my golly, Tim, she did it. Don’t you see? She overheard Garryn breaking it off with Lillian. He may have been planning to end their relationship even before Lillian offered to run away with him, and Suzanne may have guessed it. She said Garryn never carried on with anyone at Lillian’s classes because he had Lillian there, but he flirted with me. When Suzanne admitted she broke my windshield, she said she did it not because she hated me, but because I was right.”
“Right about what?”
“When I was trying to unsettle her, I told her he wasn’t interested in her anymore, which is why he tried to come on to me. It turns out that I was probably right.
“Tim, she took so many classes, she knew the drill. Lillian said she always acted like she was going to open the kiln on the last morning, but that Garryn always insisted on doing it. It was part of their performance. Suzanne knew Garryn would be the one to open the kiln.”
“But she never did anything to him,” Tim said. “She only went after the women he was interested in. You said she loved Monteith and would never hurt him.”
“I must have been wrong about that. Or, umm, maybe not exactly...” Pat stopped speaking.
“The case isn’t closed. I can bring her in for questioning in the morning without ruffling any feathers.”
“I need to talk to her. Is there any way I can sit in when she’s being questioned?”
“Not unless you’re with her lawyer.”
Pat’s first call in the morning was to Mark Bellows. Her words were terse and concise. “Mark, you have to rehire me for ten minutes. Suzanne Cummings is being brought in for questioning this morning. You have to get her to hire you, and I have to come with you when you meet with her.”
“What’s going on, Pat? How do you know this?”
“You owe me. No questions; just do it.”
Mark called her back about an hour later. “They’re holding Suzanne Cummings for questioning at the main jail on Water Street. I’m on my way there.”
Pat beat him to the main jail by a few seconds.
“Mark Bellows, counsel representing Suzanne Cummings,” he said when he was asked to identify himself, “and my associate, Pat Pirard.”
They were shown to an interview room where a pale Suzanne sat. When she saw Pat, she jumped up and held out her arms.
“Pat, they think I killed Garryn,” she said, her voice filled with so much emotion and trembling, she was hard to understand.
Pat hugged her and then put her arm around the stricken woman’s shoulder and helped her back into her seat. Pat sat down next to her and kept her arm around her as she took Suzanne’s hand in hers.
“You did, Suzanne, didn’t you?” Pat asked gently.
“No,” she whimpered, “no I…”
“You didn’t mean to, though, did you?” Pat comforted.
“No. Of course not. I’ve never hurt anyone and I would never hurt Garryn.”
“What happened, Suzanne?”
Suzanne moaned. It took a minute before she spoke. “After he and Lillian had their fight, I followed him back to his hotel in Santa Cruz. I knew which room he was staying in. When I knocked on his door, he let me in. He looked awful, poor man.
“I told him not to worry, that I would be there for him. He said not to bother—he was so kind in the way he said it, not at all like he had been when he broke it off with Lillian—because he was flying back to New York as soon as the class was over.
“I knew if he left, we’d never be together. I needed more time with him to make him realize he still loved me. So I decided to make him sick enough that he’d miss his flight. I thought I could take him home with me and nurse him back to health…I-I didn’t know I put too many tubes of Super Glue in the kiln. I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident; I loved him.”
Suzanne leaned against Pat and convulsed in sobs.
“Mark will take good care of you. Everything will be all right.”
As Pat was leaving, Suzanne called after her. “I never would have let them send Joe to jail. I swear. Please tell him I would have confessed if he had been convicted.”
“I’ll tell him, Suzanne.”
Pat called Syda when she got home and told her about last night’s dinner with Joe, Lillian, and Mark and about Suzanne’s confession. She left out what happened during the rest of last night and the wee hours of the morning.
“What a story this would make for a book. We make such a great investigating team, I could be like Doctor Watson and write about our adventures. We’d be a modern-day female Doctor Watson and Sherlock Holmes.”
“What happened to Rowdy Dick?”
“After he became Sam Sleuther, and then Sam Slugger, or Slaughter—I forget—I got bored with him.”
Pat started to laugh, but was overtaken by a loud yawn.
“You sound like a wreck, BFF, but I know just what you need.”
“Some sleep?”
“That, too. But what you really need is a major distraction to take your mind off the whole Suzanne killing Garryn thing, not to mention the Wentners, or that gorgeous attorney things didn’t work out with. How about you let me arrange that dinner with Tim and us that you promised you’d let me do?”
“That sounds like a great idea. How soon can we do it?”
“You’re not going to try to wiggle out of it?” Syda said in disbelief. “In that case, tonight, before you have a change of heart.”
“At this point I think it’s too late for me to change my mind. My heart’s pretty set, Syda. See you tonight.”
“Oh, and remember to wear your green dress,” Syda said quickly before they disconnected.
Did men get circles under their eyes from lack of sleep? Pat wondered about that as she tried to cover hers with a light touch of concealer. She’d know once she saw Tim. She took a look at herself in her long mirror. Syda was right about the green dress; circles or not, she looked good.
“I won’t be too late, Dot, even if tonight is going to be a big one. See you later. Wimsey, you’re in charge.”
Pat parked her sunburst-yellow car behind Tim’s Highlander in front of Syda and Greg’s house and walked toward their front door with a huge smile on her face.
Greg answered the door and invited her inside. Syda was smiling, too. She looped her arm through Tim’s and pulled him toward Pat.
“It’s been a few weeks, but you remember my best friend Pat, don’t you, Tim?”
He didn’t have circles under his eyes.
Tim gave her a once-over worthy of Syda’s original detective, Rowdy Dick.
“Wow!” he said enthusiastically.
He disentangled himself from Syda, slipped his arm around Pat’s waist, bent her backward, and kissed her.
“I certainly do,” he said when she was upright again.
“What have you two been up to?” Greg managed to ask suspiciously. Syda had no words, not one.
Tim walked Pat to her car. “I need to go home and put together a
go-bag,” he said. “Is it okay if I bring it over tomorrow night?”
“I’ll make some space in my bathroom and closet. Just a little bit at first, and then we’ll see?”
“That’s just what I had in mind.”
Their goodnight kiss almost made them change their minds about going home in different directions. But they were now out in public; they could take their time and savor every moment getting to know one another as a couple. No need to rush.
Pat was tired when she got home. Yesterday was rough and, except for a brief nap, it had been almost twenty-four hours since she’d slept, even fitfully. Her office was dark, but the light on her answering device blinked red; she could see it on her way to her bedroom. Much as she knew she should ignore it, it wasn’t in her nature to let anything like a blinking red light go until morning.
“Hey, Pat, it’s Roger Drago. So I hear from Dick Drinker you’re in the private investigating business. I went to a doozy of a funeral last week. This rich dame—she was a client of mine—croaked at the funeral.”
Pat knew Roger Drago was originally from New Jersey, and she could hear it in his voice; but she was never sure if his joy in sounding like a forties mobster was cultivated, or the way he spoke because of his upbringing.
“That was bad enough, but now it looks like she was murdered, and the police don’t know who did it, and I don’t know who gets her dough. Can you be a doll and help me out? Call me.”
Pat fell asleep happy. There was Tim, of course, and watching Syda’s reaction to their announcement that they were, as Syda said, “involved,” and the sorting out of what had happened to Garryn Monteith and why. But it looked like she had another reason to be happy, too. It looked like PIP Inc. was about to become her next full-time gig.
About the Author
Nancy Lynn Jarvis left the real estate profession after she started having so much fun writing the Regan McHenry Real Estate Mysteries series that she let her license lapse. She’s enjoyed writing about Regan and her husband, Tom, but wanted to do something different for her next book.
PIP Inc. introduces a new protagonist and is the first book in a planned series featuring not-quite-licensed Private Investigator Pat Pirard.
After earning a BA in behavioral science from San Jose State University, Nancy worked in the advertising department of the San Jose Mercury News. A move to Santa Cruz meant a new job as a librarian and later a stint as the business manager for Shakespeare/Santa Cruz at UCSC.
Currently she’s enjoying being a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Santa Cruz Women of Mystery.
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At http://www.nancylynnjarvis.com you can:
Read the first chapters of the books in the Regan McHenry Mystery Series.
Meet Mags and her group of octogenarian bank robbers.
Have a look at Cozy Food: 128 Cozy Mystery Writers Share Their Favorite Recipes and Santa Cruz Weird, a short story anthology written about Santa Cruz County by local authors.
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