“Yes.”
“He stayed home and did some of the woodworking in the workshop behind the house.”
“They must have had groceries delivered and ordered things from catalogues,” Lettie added. “The only time I saw Jerry was when he’d be walking from the house to the barn in back, and Marina almost never left the house as I recall.”
“What did she do all day?” I asked.
“Ha!” Lettie said. “She did nothing. Word had it that she spent her days reading about exotic, faraway places and dreaming about going to them. She got Jerry all excited about it, too. They never would have gone to South America if it weren’t for her hold on him.”
“Elliot’s birth must have put a crimp into those plans,” I offered.
Lettie and Lucy looked at each other as though trying to decide who should answer, and what to say. It was Lucy who finally spoke. “No one knew that Marina was pregnant.”
“No one? Not even you two, who lived so close?”
“No one!” Lettie confirmed emphatically. “They never went out together, never went to a restaurant or for a walk through town.”
Lucy nodded. “They were like a—well, like a—”
“A mystery couple?” I said.
“Yes, a mystery couple,” she said, smiling. “Like in the books you write.”
“All we knew was that they’d gone away,” Lettie put in. “I asked Cliff about it, and he said that they were taking a little vacation, but he didn’t say where they’d gone. Then, they arrived back with little Elliot.”
“So Cliff knew that Marina was pregnant,” I said.
“He had to know,” Lettie said. “I’m sure that’s why Jerry married her in the first place.”
The front door opened, and Elliot and Beth crowded into the kitchen, interrupting my questioning of the sisters.
“Have a nice walk?” Lucy asked them.
“Yeah, it’s so warm down here in the lower forty-eight,” Elliot said, yawning. “Makes me sleepy.”
“Does the town seem the same as when you left it?” I asked.
“Haven’t had time to see the whole town. Around here nothing’s really changed, I guess,” Elliot said. “Looks pretty much the same, especially you lovely ladies. You haven’t aged a day.”
“Oh, my goodness, what a charmer.” Lucy waved a hand in front of her face.
Elliot grinned. “Now, Beth here. She’s changed a lot.”
“I just grew up, same as you.”
“You grew up prettier than me, though.”
Beth’s face grew flushed. “And you’re more of a flirt than you ever were.”
“I’m getting in a lot of practice. Used to be twice as many men in Alaska as women, but these days it’s a lot more even. You need to sharpen your skills to attract the opposite sex.”
“What about your fiancée?” Lettie asked. “Does she like your flirting with the opposite sex?”
“She’s pretty good at flirting, too. Found herself another man she likes even better than me. So it’s okay if I flirt with the lovely Miss Conrad here. Right, Beth?”
Beth stared down at her shoes. Elliot must have told her that he wasn’t engaged anymore.
“Just remember, he lives in Alaska,” Lettie said to Beth.
Beth rolled her eyes. “Aunt Lettie, we’re just talking. We have a lot of years to catch up on.”
He looked at his watch. “And you’ll have to excuse me now. I have to get into town and meet with the lawyer before I fall asleep on my feet. Good seeing everyone again. Bye.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Beth said, probably eager to escape an interrogation from her great-aunts.
Lucy waited until she heard the door close. “He certainly has grown into a fine young man. Did I already say that?”
“Don’t get your hopes up about Elliot and Beth,” her sister said. “For sure, he’s going back to Alaska after the funeral. Wanderlust runs in that family.”
“Is that why Jerry and Marina left? Wanderlust?” I asked.
“Well, they insisted that they were scientists, but you couldn’t tell it by me,” Lettie said.
“When did Elliot’s parents leave Cabot Cove for South America?”
Lucy answered, “Actually, we didn’t know that they’d left until after the fact. Right, Lettie?”
“Right. I spoke with Cliff one day, and he told me that they were gone and had left their child with him to be raised.” She put her hand on Lucy’s when she said to me, “Cliff didn’t seem to resent being left with the baby, but we could tell that deep down it distressed him plenty.”
“We tried to help,” Lucy said, tearing up again, “but a toddler was more than we could handle.”
“We did the right thing,” Lettie told her. “We weren’t related to him or the child. It wasn’t our place to help raise Elliot.” She turned her gaze to me. “Cliff hired a couple of nursing students to take care of Elliot, two shifts, day and night. Must have cost him a fortune. And one of them got very attached to the baby, began ordering Cliff around and making noises about how she should be Elliot’s mother.” She looked at her sister. “You know, she was pursuing him again in the hospital.”
“Who was?” I asked.
“That little nurse who took care of Elliot when he was a baby. Always did have her hopes pinned on Cliff. He only had eyes for Lucy, of course.”
“Did he keep her on?” I asked.
“No. By that time he could manage without them. Got rid of the nurses and took over Elliot’s upbringing himself.”
“And did very well with our help,” Lucy put in.
“And a few teenage babysitters,” Lettie added.
“Did Cliff have any idea when Jerry and Marina left that they would never return?” I asked.
Lucy picked up the teapot, then put it down. “Did you know, they kind of sneaked off without telling him?”
“He didn’t drive them to the airport himself?” I asked.
Lucy shook her head. “Cliff said they left him a note saying where they were going and that they’d be in touch. He was sure that they’d be returning, but then—”
I waited for her to finish.
“Then the word got back that they’d been killed by a band of savages in South America,” Lettie put in. “There was a short piece about it in the newspaper at the time.”
Lucy dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I remember reading it and asking Cliff about it. Naturally, I waited a decent amount of time until I broached it with him. He was broken up, of course, but Cliff was made of steel. I was so proud of him. He said that what was important was that he and Elliot move ahead with their lives.”
Lettie displayed her first smile of the morning. “Yes,” she said, “that was Cliff all right. They don’t make men like him anymore.”
Chapter Seventeen
I thanked the Conrad twins for giving me their time, left the house, and rode my bike into town, where I stopped in at Tim Purdy’s office. When not acting as the town’s historian, Tim managed farmland in other states from his room on the top floor of a three-story office building.
“Hello, Tim,” I said, knocking on the frame of his open door. “Can you spare a minute?”
“For you, Jessica, more than a minute.” He saved the document he was working on and swiveled in his chair to face me. “Please have a seat.” He waved at an extra chair next to his desk. “What can I do for you?”
“I thought you’d like to know that Elliot Cooper has arrived.”
“Wonderful! Now the funeral can go forward, I assume.”
“Yes. I’m hoping for that, too.”
“Was that all you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” I said. “Remember when we were talking about Cliff Cooper’s son, Jerry, and his wife?”
“Yes, and I finally found a photo of the y
oung man for you. Did you misplace it?”
“No, I have it right here,” I said, patting my shoulder bag. “I know it’s many years ago, but I understand there was a report in the paper announcing the young couple’s deaths at the hands of a tribe they were supposed to be studying. Do you remember that?”
“As I told you, it was the prevailing story, but I’m still a bit skeptical.”
“Why would you doubt the story?”
“I don’t know if you recall what the Gazette used to be like. It wasn’t a full-fledged newspaper at all, simply an attempt on the publisher’s part to come up with local news, more scandal sheet than information. She printed whatever anyone gave her, verbatim, misspellings and all.”
“And you think Cliff gave her the story?”
“In all likelihood.”
“And you weren’t sure it was true?”
“It wasn’t just me. But I have to say, even though Cliff didn’t ask, I took it upon myself to scan the national newspapers.” He leaned back in his chair.
“And?”
“And I never saw any reference to scientists or even plain Americans being murdered in South America. Don’t you think that would have been a newsworthy event?”
“I do, but why would Cliff have lied about such a thing?”
“I don’t know that he did. Might be that Jerry trumped up a story so that he and his wife wouldn’t have to come back, do some real work, raise their own child. They may be dead anyway for all I know. All kinds of contagion in those places.”
“Lucy Conrad said Cliff had no idea that they were planning to go to South America. He found a note they left for him. What I’m trying to figure out is how they got away without his knowing.”
“Probably the same way you get around town.”
“By bicycle?”
Tim chuckled. “No, I meant by cab. It would have been a long trip to the airport on a bicycle with two people and their luggage. Makes quite a picture, doesn’t it?”
“By cab, of course. They could have arranged to be picked up at the end of the driveway, and if they left in the middle of the night, Cliff might never have known they’d slipped out until the baby woke him in the morning.”
“You have to admire the man. Cliff Cooper simply took up the responsibility of caring for his grandson and went about his business. Not an easy task. Pardon me if I sound sexist, but it must’ve been especially difficult without a woman to help.”
“Men can be just as nurturing as women.” My reply was automatic, but my mind was already skating ahead to where I could find out if Jerry and Marina used a taxi in their escape from Cabot Cove. My usual driver, Dimitri, was too young to have had a driver’s license that many years ago. But the business had been founded by his father, an old friend of mine in both senses of the word “old.”
I thanked Tim for his time and trotted down the three flights of stairs. My bicycle was leaning against the side of his building, but I’d had enough of pedaling for the day. I would pick it up later. I dialed the taxi service, and Dimitri arrived in short order. He was surprised when I asked to be taken to his father’s house.
Dimitri Cassis Sr. was the paternalistic head of a family that had emigrated from Greece to the United States many years ago. They’d initially settled in New York City, where the elder Dimitri found work driving a taxi on the chaotic streets of Manhattan. But one summer, the Cassis clan, which included Dimitri, his wife, Eva, and their two children, took a week’s vacation to escape the city’s hot, muggy weather. They drove to Maine, where they spent five days in Cabot Cove.
Dimitri fell in love with the town—he saw parallels between it and the Greek coastal city they’d left—and by that fall, he and his family had packed up their apartment in the Astoria section of the New York City borough of Queens, and bought a small house in a development that had sprung up on the outskirts of town. Not without ambition or imagination, Dimitri saw an opportunity to provide Cabot Cove with something it didn’t have, a cab company, which also provided a way to support his family.
Dimitri’s Taxi Service was born. And it grew. Dimitri expanded to launch a shuttle service to Boston’s Logan Airport, and he established a driving school that flourished under a contract with the local school district. Everyone in the family pitched in. They not only helped run the business; they became active in a variety of civic affairs.
For me, Dimitri and his taxi company were particularly important. I don’t drive a car and never have, and I’ve depended for many years upon Dimitri and his friendly drivers, including his cousin, Nick, and his son, Dimitri Jr., to take me places beyond the capabilities of my trusty bicycle.
The elder Dimitri was retired—although he could always be counted on to don his chauffeur’s hat in a pinch—and enjoyed his days of relative leisure, playing golf, fishing from his twenty-two-foot Aquasport boat, and cooking Greek delicacies. He was in the midst of making his signature dish, spinach pie in phyllo pastry, when I knocked on his door that afternoon.
“Ah, Mrs. Fletcher, my best and favorite customer. My wife will be distressed that she missed you. Come in, come in. Sit down. A glass of Metaxa? Coffee? Tea?”
“Nothing, thank you, Dimitri. I won’t be staying long.”
“Stay as long as you wish, provided you don’t mind my keeping an eye on the oven. I don’t want to burn the spanakopita.”
“I won’t mind at all,” I said as I sat at his kitchen table and breathed in the wonderful aroma of the dish he was lovingly creating.
“So,” he said, “I hope that you didn’t come with a complaint about the service. Sometimes Dimitri runs a little late, and I have been lecturing him about it. He is a good son, but, you know, today’s young people sometimes do things differently than the older generation.”
I laughed. “No, no complaints, Dimitri. Actually I’m here to test your memory.”
“My memory? Ah, it is not as good as it once was.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I remember the past, yes, but not what I had for breakfast yesterday.”
“Then we’re both in luck,” I said, “because what I need is a little history from you.”
He sat across from me and grinned. He was a stocky fellow with a broad, square face, a full head of hair the color and texture of steel wool, and a ready laugh. He was the sort of man you immediately felt comfortable with.
“Dimitri, you’ve been driving people in Cabot Cove for many years.”
“Too many, maybe. After so many years behind the wheel, my back finally protested. I tell Dimitri Junior to be sure and use the backrests in the cabs I provide for all my drivers or he will end up the same.”
“And I’m sure he listens to his father.”
“Sometimes. But since I’m grateful you have only good rides with him, I won’t scold him. Tell me how I can help with your history lesson.”
“Dimitri, do you remember a young couple that lived in the Spencer Percy House?”
His face creased in thought. “Yes,” he said, “I remember them, but I didn’t know them. They were, as we say in Greek, idiómorfos. Peculiar. I believe that carpenter, Mr. Cooper, lived with them.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Cliff Cooper was the young man’s father. Cliff recently died, you know.”
“Yes. I was sorry to read that in the newspaper.”
“His son, Jerry, was married to a woman named Marina. They had a little boy named Elliot and—”
Dimitri waved his hand over the table as though to banish what I’d said. He grunted. “It was terrible what happened to them, terrible what they did, leaving the baby with the grandfather and going off for their own pleasures.”
“To South America,” I said, following up on what he’d said, “where they were killed, as I understand it.”
He simply nodded, got up, checked his spanakopita, and returned to the
table.
“I was wondering, Dimitri, whether you or one of your drivers took them to the airport the day they left for South America.”
“I did,” he said flatly and without hesitation. “It was the only time I ever met the carpenter’s son.”
I was surprised at how quickly he remembered having driven them.
“And I suppose that it was the only time that you met her,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t meet her.”
“But—”
“When I went to the house to pick them up, only the man was waiting for me outside the door.”
“Without Marina?”
“Only him. I remember he told me that his wife had already left and that he was meeting her wherever it was they were going in South America.”
“I’m impressed that you remember it so clearly,” I said.
“I remember because I didn’t like him.” He slapped his palm down on the table. “There was something about him, something in his eyes. After he told me about his wife, we drove to Boston without another word between us. I was relieved when I dropped him off.”
“Did he say how his wife got to the airport?”
“No. Maybe he drove her himself. I only know that I did not drive her, nor did anyone who drove for me back then.”
“Did he mention the baby, Elliot?”
“He said nothing, Mrs. Fletcher, nothing. I am ashamed to admit it, but when I heard that he and his wife had been killed in the jungle, I was not sad. I know that isn’t a nice way to feel—and I wasn’t happy that he’d been killed—but I felt no sorrow.”
“You really didn’t know the man, Dimitri.”
“I am sad when anyone dies, Mrs. Fletcher. I felt sorry for Mr. Cooper, who had a small child to care for and raise. Him I felt sadness for.”
I understood, and I appreciated his candor.
Dimitri opened the oven door and used two pot holders to pull out the pan of spanakopita and set it on the stovetop. The pastry was browned and flaky. “You’ll stay for dinner?” he said. “My wife will be back soon and—”
Murder, She Wrote: The Ghost and Mrs. Fletcher Page 13
