Kissing Arizona (8 page)

‘Confidences?' She looked at Sarah with something like distaste. ‘I wasn't a friend. I was just the paid help.' She considered the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘You can work a long time in somebody's store without really knowing them.'

Her eyes came down from the ceiling and landed on Sarah like two hazel searchlights. ‘But as far as I know, Frank didn't have any more reason to kill his wife now than he's ever had. And they'd been married over thirty years. They worked together for the last twenty-seven, raised two children and put them to work in the business. Doesn't that sound like a successful marriage?'

‘Yes. And you're sure the business was doing all right? Nicole said some of the bankers thought it should be showing more profit.'

‘Oh well . . . bankers.' She pushed some of her bright hair off her face and turned into a corporate booster. ‘This firm is very successful. Even last year when so many stores went out of business, Cooper's showed a small profit.'

‘I hear you.' Sarah decided to touch where she thought there might be another sore spot. ‘Will you be working for the children now?'

‘Well.' Her arms and legs became restless. After some switching around she said, ‘Nicole's a tiger for work. I think she'd like to keep the stores, if she can.'

‘Would you be pleased if she did? Does she have enough experience to run such a big business?'

‘Oh . . . I think . . . with the right kind of help, yes. She's been at it all her life.'

‘And you'd like to stay and be the right kind of help? You wouldn't mind working for Nicole?'

‘For . . . with . . .' She rocked both hands. ‘I think we can work something out.'

‘How about Tom? Would you be happy with him as a boss?'

She shrugged, flouncing and tossing her head the way a woman does when she doesn't want to answer. ‘He's never done much merchandising, so I don't see . . . I don't know what part he would play.'

‘So you don't have any impression about his work?'

‘Everybody says he takes care of the family money. That doesn't – I don't know anything about that.'

‘Do you expect him to take a more active role in operations now?'

‘I don't know anything about that either.'

‘Do you anticipate a power struggle now between the siblings?'

‘Oh, no, no.' She waved dismissively. ‘Nicole and Tom are fond of each other.'

They are?
Phyllis must have seen something I missed.
Of course, since Phyllis's career now depended on the goodwill of the two remaining Coopers, she wasn't likely to say anything damaging about them, even if she knew it.

She checked her list of questions, found one she hadn't asked. ‘Do you own any firearms?'

‘No.'

‘Oh? Nicole said her father went through a stage of insisting that she and her mother ought to keep a gun and learn to use it. He didn't try to get you to carry?'

‘Oh, he suggested it. Even offered to buy one for me and pay for the training. I didn't want to do it, so I refused.'

Sarah's interview summary read that Phyllis seemed ambivalent about Tom Cooper, friendly toward Lois and Nicole, and almost ready to write Frank's eulogy.

It was odd, she thought, looking over her interviews, how opaque the Cooper family appeared. They had lived a very public life as successful Tucson merchants for a quarter of a century, yet their personal relationships seemed clouded in doubt. It was also interesting that Nicole and her mother, though they protested and evaded, in the end had given in and accepted the guns Frank wanted them to have. But Phyllis Waverly, ‘just the paid help', had said, ‘I didn't want to do it, so I refused.'

She was beginning to be glad it was Leo Tobin's case. She turned to her last report, the interview with the Coopers' housekeeper.

Rosa Torres had come to the station late Monday afternoon, clinging to her husband's arm. He walked her into the lobby, stayed with her until Sarah came down to fetch her, and told Sarah he would wait right there till she returned. His look implied, ‘And when I see her again she had better not be crying'. His wife was only a few hours out of the hospital and he was deeply worried about her, he said, because Rosa Torres was not in the habit of giving way to hysterics.

Upstairs, in Sarah's little workspace, Rosa said he was right about her. ‘I never cried like that before in my life. Even in those tough times when I was a widow with two little kids, I never lost my nerve like that.'

Looking at her plain brown face, her straight dark hair gone mostly to gray and pulled back in a bun, Sarah believed her.

‘But coming into that nice house the way I always did on Monday morning . . . and finding them there in the hall – so much blood. I'm sure I screamed, but you know how far apart the houses are there . . . nobody came. I wanted to run but at first I was too scared to move. When I found enough nerve I ran outside as fast as I could go.'

‘That was very brave of you.'

‘I sure didn't
feel
brave. I ran screaming to the house next door and got the neighbors to call the police. Good thing they knew who I was. Strangers wouldn't have let me in – I must have looked crazy by then. That Mrs Cramer was so good to me, put a blanket around me and held my hand till the police came. She was shaking too. I mean, we didn't know if maybe the people that did this were still in there.'

‘I spoke to the officers who took the call. They came as fast as they could.'

‘I'm sure they did, but . . . no offense, it felt like an hour to me. Even so, I was pretty well calmed down by the time those detectives came to question me. But then telling them about going in there . . . something about going over it again made it more real to me and I just couldn't
stand
it, you know? Those two hard-working people that have been good to me so many years . . . and somebody to just come along and . . .' Her face twisted. ‘It was so ugly.'

‘I know.' Sarah waited a couple of ticks. ‘Are you all right now?'

‘Yes. I want to go right ahead with this, OK? Don't want to keep him waiting down there.'

‘I'll try to be quick. First tell me, did you always come to work that early?'

‘Just on Monday. Last year when Enrique got put on four-day weeks, he said, how about you take Mondays off too and we'll work in the yard that day? He had an idea for a container garden he wanted to try. He's so good to me I don't like to refuse him anything, but then Lois, when I told her, was very unhappy. Monday's the day we clean up after the weekend, she said, I like the house squared away on Monday. And what Lois likes, you know . . .' She stopped, took a deep breath and shook her head.

‘I keep saying it that way.
Likes.
I still can't believe she's gone. Such a strong woman, you know, and stubborn, never quit talking till she got her way. That sounds like somebody you wouldn't like, doesn't it? But Lois and I got along fine. She valued my work, she always gave me my due.'

‘So you worked it out about Mondays?'

‘Yes. She said, “We go to work at five on Monday so why can't you?” I wouldn't do it for anybody else but . . . all these years, you know, and they pay me good. So I been going to work a few minutes after five on Monday mornings. It's a little crazy but it works out. By eight thirty or nine I'm done, Enrique and I go have second breakfast someplace and still have the rest of the day for the yard.'

‘That must be some yard.'

‘You'd have to see it to believe. He's a wizard with plants, that man of mine.'

Rosa told her about coming to Tucson, a legal immigrant, just married, thirty-four years ago. ‘We rented a room . . . thought we was rich when we both got jobs and moved into two rooms.' They had two toddlers, and were hoping to rent a house soon, when he was killed in a traffic accident.

‘Me and my kids was very hard up for a while after that, lived in one room and ate very skimpy. I couldn't find work because I couldn't read English yet.' A tiny shrug. ‘Couldn't read Spanish much better. I got a friend to read the “help wanted” ads for me, the day Lois Cooper advertised in the paper for a housekeeper.' She mused. ‘Just luck. That job with the Coopers saved my life.'

One reason it went as well as it did, she said, was that her children and Lois Cooper's were about the same age. ‘So even though we were crowded, I managed to take care of her kids and mine in that first little apartment behind the store on Grant Road. Did the laundry and cooking back there too while she ran the store out front.

‘All those years of work, you know . . . we was never friends, but in some ways Lois Cooper and I understood each other better than we did anybody else.'

‘Did she enjoy her children?'

‘Nicole she was proud of but kind of strict, expected perfection. Tom, oh my, he was her baby and he could do no wrong.

‘After they got the big store and moved to the house they got now in Colonia Solana, by then all the kids were in school and for a while I cleaned Lois's house and two other big ones in that same part of town. Then I got lucky again and met my second husband. Enrique Torres, the man you met downstairs. He was good, treated my kids like they was his own. When he got on steady with the power company he said, “Why don't you take it a little easier now?” So since then I just do Lois's house two days a week and Nicole's every other Thursday. Well, and Tom's little place near the university, that don't take much time.'

‘No cooking any more?'

‘They mostly all eat out now. And they're gone a lot on weekends, all but Lois. She spends most of her free time at church or her sister's house, I think.'

Sarah said, ‘There's some evidence to suggest that her husband killed her and then himself. Do you think that's possible?'

Rosa raised her shoulders, then her arms, and turned her hands up – a three-stage shrug that said life had become too incredible for words. ‘Since this morning I am not sure what is possible.'

‘Sure. But . . . you knew them a long time. Everybody says they fought—'

‘Argued. They disagreed, as married people will.'

‘OK. Did they disagree enough to want to kill each other?'

Rosa Torres watched her toes sadly for a few seconds before she said, ‘Maybe about the boy.'

‘The boy? You mean Tom?'

‘Sure, Tom. Only boy they got.' After a couple of seconds she said, ‘Had,' and her eyes grew bright. Sarah got ready to pass the tissue. But Rosa sat up straighter, sniffed once, and gave her a back-to-work nod.

‘Are you saying the arguments about Tom were worse than the ones about the store?'

‘Oh, the store.' She dismissed the store with a backhand wave. ‘That was just how-to stuff. They both felt the same about the business. It was the center of their lives, and they each wanted to be the boss.' A little sound, almost a laugh. ‘Not so unusual. But the boy –' she shook her head – ‘Frank wanted him
gone
.'

‘Why?'

Rosa shrugged.

‘Were they competitive, was he afraid—'

‘Competitive?' Her expression was amused for a second and then sad again. ‘If only, as my grandchildren say. Nobody told you nothing about Tom yet?'

‘Everybody's kind of evasive about him. He says he invests the family money.'

‘Yeah. With Lois checking every penny before he makes a move, and Nicole keeping close track of what happens after that. They probably only have to spend twice as much time on it as if they kept him out of it.'

‘Then why . . . ?'

‘To give him something to do! Because he's a disaster in the store. He's messed up everything he's ever tried. All the employees know, they've always known since he first started trying to “help out” – don't let that Tom help you out, they tell each other, pretty soon you're getting yelled at by Frank for some dumb mistake. And Tom will be hiding at the other end of the store pretending not to know anything about it.

‘When Lois saw he was hopeless behind the counter, she made up this nothing job for him and enlisted Nicole to help her keep an eye on it. I'm not sure how much they ever talked about it, they just did it. Because Lois loved him, he was her baby. He never went past the first year of college, couldn't do the work. She saw he couldn't survive in the world outside the stores, so she kept him near her and made it seem as if he was doing something important. You see?'

‘Finally,' Sarah said. ‘Yes.'
No wonder nobody wants to talk about it.
‘But Frank didn't like the arrangement?'

‘He just saw it as a waste of money. Let him go out and find a job like everybody else, Frank kept saying. Maybe it'll wake him up.'

‘Does Tom waste a lot of money?'

‘Probably not so much. He don't do any good but he don't do much harm either, Nicole sees to that. But Frank was always looking out for Frank. Got so many good things, but always wanted more. Worked his wife half to death, never said a word of thanks. Some kind of a husband.'

‘You saying he abused her?'

‘You mean beat on her? No. He was just inconsiderate. Like most husbands. I got one of the good ones but I know I'm just lucky.'

‘I'd say you're both lucky.'

‘I guess. Lois and Frank as a couple I don't think they had much going on for quite a while. Away from work, they spent very little time together. Slept in different rooms. Had their lives arranged so they didn't bump into each other much any more.'