Death Gone A-Rye Read online

  “Every time Nessa went for an appointment, we all heard about it for days afterward. Gretchen this, and Gretchen that. She had a love-hate relationship with her.”

  “There are a million hairdressers.” I absently touched my hair. I hadn’t had a trim in months. “Why didn’t she just find someone new?” I asked.

  Candace shrugged. “Who the hell knows with Nessa. She liked to complain, so why change—?” She stopped. Thought. Then shook her head. “No, actually that’s not it. She was all about power. She would say things like ‘She’s going to lose her job if she doesn’t do better. I’ll call that salon owner and I’ll have her job. She can’t do this to me.’ Of course, that’s how she was with everyone. Whenever the board disagrees, she sits there and threatens us all. Once she told us we were all idiots for believing the contractor we’d hired and just wait, because it was going to blow up in our faces and she wouldn’t lift a finger to make it right.”

  She really did sound like a piece of work. And from what Candace was saying, the pool of people with a motive to do her in might be pretty big. “Why the superintendent?” I asked.

  “Like I said. Power. Basically, she wanted to be the superintendent. She wanted to run the school district, and doing that as president of the board wasn’t enough because, really, we’re not making the day-to-day decisions, are we? We set policy. Dr. Sharma is accountable to us, but she’s the expert in education. Nessa didn’t see it that way, though. She wanted her hand in everything. She did a pretty good job of alienating people against Dr. Sharma. I’ve been afraid she’d leave us, but now, well, maybe she’ll stay.”

  Motive for Dr. Sharma. “And the principal?” I asked. “Was she in his—or her—business, too?”

  “All of them, but she felt Mr. Davies’s school made her look bad. She undermined and she micromanaged. Look, we’re elected by regions. Certain schools are in my area; certain ones are in Jerry’s; others are in Marge’s. You get the gist. Nessa wanted her schools to be the best, as we all do. It’s for the kids, right? But it was a competition for Nessa, and Chavez Elementary was a thorn in her side.”

  Possibly another motive.

  Candy continued without prompting. “Nessa didn’t care about pissing off a fellow board member by popping into a school in someone else’s area, unannounced, then making a big deal out of some problem she observed. She was . . . difficult. But her position made her untouchable. I mean, we were all at a charity event Friday night and she was up to her usual B.S.” She met my gaze. “I honestly can’t think of anyone who’s going to actually miss her or be sad that she’s gone. Besides Rachel and Tate.”

  “Tate?”

  “Her son. He’s in fifth grade.”

  “It’s so sad,” I said. “Her husband must be beside himself, too.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” She glanced around, then lowered her voice before dropping another tidbit of gossip. “Between you and me, Tate may or may not have the same father as Rachel. But you didn’t hear that from me.”

  Boy oh boy, Candace was dialed in on all of Nessa Renchrik’s drama. If Nessa’s husband might not be the father of her son, who might be? That would be an interesting question to find an answer to. And it certainly meant the husband had a motive. In the ten minutes we’d been talking, Candace had provided me with three viable suspects.

  “What about her family? Parents? Sibling? Is anyone going to come help with the kids?”

  “Her parents are dead. I don’t know about siblings. If I had to bet, I’d say, if she has any, they’re estranged.”

  More bridges burned. “So what you’re saying, in a nutshell, is that anyone she came across could very well have had it in for her?”

  Candace leaned her ample back against the bench. She didn’t hesitate before answering. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Chapter 4

  Mrs. Branford could be a study in contradictions. It was something she worked at. In certain circumstances she played the little old biddy. She knew everything that went on in our neighborhood. She was like the quintessential nosy neighbor, only without being annoying. She genuinely cared about the people around her. Everyone sensed that about her and so they talked to her. They shared. Probably they over-shared. Mrs. Branford seemed to know everything about everybody in her galaxy. She was the sun, and the world rotated around her.

  If her galaxy was our historic neighborhood, then the universe was Santa Sofia. She’d taught high school English forever and had had multiple generations of families in her classroom. Anytime I was with her out in public, someone made a point of saying hello to her. And I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t move away from calling her Mrs. Branford. She’d told me over and over to call her Penelope or Penny, but I just couldn’t do it. She’d forever be Mrs. Branford to me. All her former students felt the same.

  Sometimes she played the part of the elderly woman in need of assistance. Her cane came in handy in these instances. It was, I’d witnessed as I came back in from talking with Candy, the act she’d put on in the boardroom. She was sitting on a folding chair talking to someone. When she saw me, she tried to stand, using her cane for balance. I saw her lips move and imagined her making a little squeaking sound. The woman she’d been sitting next to quickly stood and helped her up. Mrs. Branford made her way over to me, continuing to play the part of the doddering old woman, but when she reached me, she said, “Ivy dear, hold on to my arm.”

  I scanned the room, looking for Captain York, but he was nowhere to be seen. Too bad. I wanted to find out what he thought of the suspect pool. I didn’t know anyone else in the room by face and it looked like Mrs. Branford needed to leave, so I guided her away from the district building with a hand on one of her elbows. She tottered along with her cane, clearly needing my help, the entire walk back to my car. I helped her into the passenger side and gently closed the door. I always worried that one of these times she wouldn’t be acting.

  It seemed like that time had come . . . until I got in the car. The moment I shut the driver’s side door, she turned to me. No more hunched shoulders. No more clinging to her cane, which now lay easily on her lap. “I had to keep up the part until we were well out of sight. You never know who’s watching.”

  I’d often thought that Mrs. Branford had missed her calling. She could have had a successful career in the theater if she’d gone that direction. “Well, what did you find out?” she asked.

  I didn’t miss a beat. “A lot, actually. Candace was pretty forthcoming.” I recapped what Candace had told me, ending with, “That’s a healthy list of potential suspects.”

  Mrs. Branford closed her eyes for a moment, processing what I’d said. She opened them again as I pulled out of the parking lot, and said, “It certainly is.”

  “How about you? Any luck?”

  She patted her bouncy white hair and gave me a look that clearly communicated the absurdity of that question. “I found out that our victim had plans to run for state senate. Like you, I also found out that she had no shortage of enemies. That being said, she seemed to be subscribed to the ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’ mind-set.”

  I directed the car back toward our street before turning to stare at her. She was truly amazing. “In what way?”

  “As you discovered, no one seems to have liked her.”

  “And yet she was reelected and thought she could win the senate seat?” It was a conundrum.

  “That is not inexplicable. Manipulation seemed to be the name of her game. She was her own personal lobby, making deals with this person to satisfy that person, then turning around and changing the terms of the initial deal until she got something she wanted.”

  I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white. “Mrs. Branford, what are you talking about?”

  “Here is an example as told to me by Dr. Sharma, the school superintendent. Not a fan of Nessa Renchrik’s, I might add. There is, apparently, a large learning gap between the white student body population a
nd the Hispanic population.”

  I listened intently as I took another turn.

  “Dr. Sharma says she was given the green light to do what was necessary to help the students being underserved. Not an easy task, to be sure. To have the school board’s support is crucial. Alas, the full support was not actually there.”

  We arrived at Maple Street. I breathed easier as we drove down the tree-lined street with its canopy of newly budded leaves. Each house was different from the next. A Craftsman home sat next to a Tudor, which was next door to a Victorian. Next to that was an old farmhouse. The historic area was eclectic—and I loved every bit of it.

  When I’d first seen it, I’d thought Mrs. Branford’s house was a small Victorian. Since then I’d learned more about the architecture of the old houses in the area and had learned that hers was a Craftsman style. It was ancient—like the owner herself—but she took good care of it. The creamy white window frames contrasted with the warm taupe of the exterior walls. The porch was lopsided and angled toward the street. A marble would roll right off of it. A crooked brick pathway led to the porch steps. It was a little uneven, but it was a bit of character Mrs. Branford didn’t want to replace.

  “A house can be part of a person, Ivy,” she’d told me once. “The Tudor you so love is in your soul in the same way that my house is part of mine. There is history in these old places. It seeps into you in a way that can’t really be explained.” She’d clasped the railing of her porch and looked up at the thick door trim and the pillars holding up the porch ceiling. “I love this old place.”

  I knew exactly what she meant. I’d loved my house from the first moment I’d laid eyes on it. It was like it had called to me, and then it had become mine and I couldn’t see leaving it. That simple fact would pose quite a problem if and when Miguel and I got to the point in our relationship where we wanted to share a living space. His house with its view of the Pacific was like a retreat. My house with its brick exterior, dormers, and arches fed my soul.

  Now I parked in front of her house and turned in my seat to face her. “Let me guess. Nessa Renchrik wasn’t on the superintendent’s side.”

  Mrs. Branford touched the tip of her nose with her index finger. Like in charades, it meant that I’d hit the nail on the head.

  “Dr. Sharma crafted a plan with her team,” Mrs. Branford went on. “They presented to the board. Each member gave their approval. However, when the plan began to be implemented and there was pushback from some of the school leaders—You know people are reluctant to make change, especially when they don’t believe the change is necessary—”

  “They didn’t think change was needed when so many students were failing?”

  At that, Mrs. Branford shrugged. “It is not surprising, Ivy. School politics are just as ruthless as the state and federal brand. When it comes to the success or failure of students, the bottom line is that if the students who look like you are doing okay, that is all that matters.”

  “So since the white kids who look like Nessa Renchrik are successful, she didn’t care about the ones who didn’t look like her and who weren’t successful?”

  “In a nutshell,” Mrs. Branford said. She frowned. “A sad reality, but the truth nonetheless.”

  “Okay. Then some people—like Nessa Renchrik—objected to the superintendent’s plan. What happened?”

  Mrs. Branford gave a quick and audible exhalation through her nose. “What happened was that—and this is according the superintendent—Nessa did a complete reversal of her stance, withdrawing her support and pulling the rug out from under Dr. Sharma.”

  My brain started spinning. With Nessa gone, did Dr. Sharma have her green light from all the other school board members to continue with her plan? Combined with Candy Coffey’s theory that Nessa Renchrik was a thorn in Dr. Sharma’s side because of the former’s constant bid for power, the superintendent’s motive seemed to grow stronger. I’d barely started looking into what had happened and already Dr. Sharma was rising to the top of my list.

  I walked Mrs. Branford to her door, not needing to hold her elbow this time, even on the uneven brick walkway. “I’ll be at the ready for when you need me,” she said.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” I said with a little laugh and shake of my head. The woman was a master.

  Back at home, I let Agatha outside, grabbed my notes from the night before, went to the spare bedroom I’d designated as my study, and found a brand-new journal, then took it all out to the patio table in the backyard. Since I was starting late and didn’t have notebooks for each of the crimes I’d helped solve, I made a list of them on the first pages, briefly summarizing who had died and who had done the deed. Once that was complete, I turned a few pages in and wrote “NESSA RENCHRIK” at the center top. Even this small action made me feel more centered and organized.

  Agatha had nosed around in the bushes for a few minutes, emerging from a secret spot where she took care of business. She dug into the ground with her front and back paws, like a bull ready to charge, as I started by transcribing my initial notes onto the page. I added all the new information I had next. It took a good forty minutes to get it all down.

  I started with a list of names down the left side of the page, beginning with the deceased’s husband, Cliff Renchrik. Next, I added Dr. Sharma, the superintendent; and the four remaining school board members: Jerry Zenmark, Margaret Jenkins-Roe, Katherine Candelli, and Candace Coffey. Then I added Lulu Sanchez-Patrick, aka@Marisas Mama. I didn’t think she had something to do with the murder, but she was a name and had been the first person to communicate how little Nessa Renchrik was liked by people.

  Before I left her, Mrs. Branford had told me that there were eleven school principals. I added them to my list as a single group since I didn’t know any names, but wrote down “Principal Davies, Chavez Elementary School” on its own line, as well as “Parents” with a question mark, and “Nessa’s hairdresser.” There was no shortage of people who seemed to have had a grudge against the late school board president.

  On the other side of the page, I drew a box and added Cliff’s name, as well as Nessa’s children, Rachel and Tate. When I was done, I set my pen down and sat back to think. Agatha looked unworried and blissful lying in a slice of sunlight.

  I, on the other hand, felt the opposite of unworried and blissful. There were a lot of people on the suspect list. I didn’t know Nessa and I didn’t have the excuse of being a police detective to give me a legitimate reason to talk to any of them, yet Emmaline had asked me to see what I could find out. “What to do, what to do,” I mused aloud.

  Agatha lifted her head to peer at me, then laid her head back down and sighed contentedly.

  She was absolutely no help.

  Chapter 5

  Santa Sofia’s Bungalow Oasis neighborhood sat between Malibu and Riviera Streets and was part of the Upper Laguna District, so named by the early residents of the area who’d then formed a neighborhood association. Bungalows were in all the older areas of Santa Sofia, but Bungalow Oasis held the monopoly.

  Miguel’s stucco-sided house was quaint and welcoming. It sat on a knoll, had a single-car garage down below, and red terra-cotta tiled steps running upstairs on the left side of the house that led to a wrought-iron gate, with the house itself raised and built into the hill. Along with his cooking abilities, Miguel had a green thumb. Bright leafy shrubs bordered the steps leading to the arched front door. Massive pots overflowing with draping flowers and greenery sat on pillars at the top of the steps. The courtyard to the right of the narrow driveway had a single tree and abundant flower beds, and Miguel had recently added a bench. Above the garage was a veranda, which was an extended outside room with a view of the Pacific.

  I loved my historic house and I adored my neighborhood, but being at Miguel’s house was like being wrapped up in a warm blanket. He’d bought the place as a fixer-upper . . . and had fixed it up. If he ever quit the restaurant business, he could have his own HGTV home show. There was not
hing the man couldn’t do.

  Agatha and I headed to Bungalow Oasis around five o’clock. Miguel’s restaurant was closed on Mondays; while I was digging around in Nessa Renchrik’s life, he’d gotten his water heater fixed and had messed around in his kitchen, experimenting with new recipes. He had an efficient galley kitchen with a commercial-grade stainless-steel Wolf range. It was a monster with six open top burners, a grill/griddle, and two ovens.

  “Indian street food,” he said when I walked in.

  An array of dishes and ingredients was strewn across the kitchen counters in the kitchen. Whatever he’d conjured up, it had made my stomach growl and my mouth water. “It smells amazing.”

  The long plank dining table sat outside the long galley kitchen, forming the top band of a letter T. He sat me down and went back to the kitchen, returning a minute later carrying a bowl and setting it on the woven place mat in front of me. It burst with color, shapes, and aromas. “Mexican Bhel,” he said. “I wanted to do a little fusion and play off the idea of Indian street food.”

  I took the fork he offered me, scooped up a helping, and savored the bite. Sweet corn kernels and finely chopped bell peppers were mixed with a perfectly seasoned chipotle salsa, whole pinto beans, small chunks of jicama, and cilantro. He’d tossed it all together with homemade tortilla chips and topped it with a dusting of shredded cheese.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It may be a little too simple. Like a salad bowl without the lettuce.”

  I couldn’t answer him with my mouth full of another bite. Whatever he wanted to call it or do with it, the freshness and combination of the ingredients made the dish sublime. I was about to tell him this when the doorbell rang.

  He left me at the table eating the Mexican Bhel. I stopped chewing a moment later when I saw Captain Craig York following him through the living room and into the kitchen. “Can I get you anything?” Miguel asked him, but Captain York shook his head no. York nodded at me. “Ivy.”