Lettie answered the door and invited us inside. Judging from the surprised look on her face when she saw me, Mort hadn’t told them that I’d be with him. But she didn’t say anything. We were ushered into the living room, where Lucy sat by the window, her Christmas tree quilt wrapped around her knees.
Mort took out the pad he used to make a report. “As you may have heard,” he said, reading his notes, “‘the Cabot Cove Sheriff’s Department is investigating as suspicious the death of one Clifton Cooper, age eighty-three, who resided at . . .’” Mort recited his boilerplate introduction, and looked up uneasily. “It’s customary to interview witnesses individually,” he said, “so I’ll have to ask one of you to leave temporarily. I know it’s an inconvenience, but it’s standard procedure. If you object, we’ll have to invite you to police headquarters for the questioning. I thought this would be a more pleasant environment for both of you.”
“Is Jessica going to leave, too, or is she an official interviewer?” Lettie asked.
“Unofficial,” I said. “The sheriff asked me to participate since I’m a friend of yours and was a friend of Cliff’s.”
“That’s if it’s okay with you,” Mort said. “Wouldn’t want to put you on the spot if you’d prefer to be interviewed without her present.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Lettie said, “but I want to know why we’re considered ‘witnesses.’ We weren’t at the hospital when Cliff died.”
“Merely a technical term,” Mort said. “We’re talking to all the deceased’s friends and acquaintances to get the lay of the land, so to speak.”
“You mean to find out if he had any enemies?” Lettie said.
“That, too,” Mort said.
“Is Elliot or Beth here?” I asked.
“No,” Lettie said. “They’ve gone into town to make arrangements for tomorrow’s funeral. I mentioned that you were going to be here this morning, Sheriff, but they said they were sure you’d track them down when you wanted to talk with them. Isn’t that right?”
“It would have been handy if they’d been here. Saves wear and tear on the patrol car, but, yes, I can talk with them another time.”
Lucy, who’d said nothing beyond hello, picked up her quilt and walked to the door. “I have things to do in the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll be there when you need me.”
Mort and I sat on the couch; Lettie took a ladder-back chair from a corner and placed it across the coffee table from us. “What do you wish to know, Sheriff?” she asked, a challenging expression on her angular face.
“Well,” Mort began, “maybe you can fill me in a little about your friendship with the deceased, Cliff Cooper.”
“You mean my sister’s friendship with Cliff Cooper,” she said.
“Weren’t you friends with him as well?” I asked.
“We were neighbors nigh onto forty or fifty years.”
“Yes, but you were also familiar with details of his life, of his relationships with his family. That makes you more than simply an acquaintance,” I said.
“I guess you could say we were friends of a sort, but it was really my sister he was interested in. I was just along for the ride. He’d probably have been just as happy if I hadn’t been around.”
“Okay,” Mort said, “why don’t you tell us about your sister’s friendship with him?”
“Don’t you think you’d be better off asking her that question?”
“I’ll get to that,” Mort said. “Right now I’m asking you the question.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
Lettie was becoming agitated.
“Why don’t you tell the sheriff about Lucy’s friendship with Cliff,” I said, hoping to smooth the waters.
“It was more than friendship,” Lettie said. “He was courting her. He asked her to marry him, and she agreed.”
“She did? Then why did they never marry?” I asked.
“Because I put my foot down and said no.”
“You said no?” Mort said, mirroring my reaction.
“What did Lucy say when you told her you were against their getting married?” I asked.
Lettie looked at me. “You probably think it sounds selfish, don’t you?”
“I’m not in your shoes, Lettie. I don’t know what you were thinking. Why did you oppose their marriage? Didn’t you like Cliff?”
“Oh, I liked him well enough as a neighbor. Liked his wife, too. When she died, we brought him casseroles and such like neighbors always do. Like lots of women in town did, for that matter. He was an eligible bachelor. Not bad-looking, with a big house and his own business. Plus, his son, Jerry, was going to go off to college in a few years.”
Not a very romantic assessment, I thought but didn’t say. To me, Lettie always appeared to be the practical twin, so her opinion of Cliff as a prospective husband was not surprising.
“Was Cliff interested in marrying Lucy many years ago, when Jerry still lived at home?”
She shook her head. “No. He didn’t start to court her until after Jerry and his wife took off for parts unknown. We helped him out a lot when Elliot was a tyke, watching the boy until the babysitters arrived, things like that. I think that’s when he took a shine to Lucy. For a while, I thought I was the one he was interested in, but no, he wanted the prettier one. Always that way, isn’t it?”
“But you’re twins,” Mort said.
“All identical twins will tell you that people always like to say one is prettier or handsomer than the other, as if that’s the only way they can tell us apart.” She looked out the window with a view of the Spencer Percy House across the road, and was silent.
“You were going to explain why you didn’t want Lucy to marry Cliff,” I reminded her.
Lettie shook her head as if I’d just interrupted a dream. “It was selfish on my part, I admit. She was willing to marry him but not to live in that monstrosity of a big house with all those rooms to clean. Cliff didn’t have a lot of money, you know, only the property over there, the house and barn.”
“Did she want him to sell the house?”
Lettie snorted. “I wish. No, she invited him to live in our house. Can you believe it?”
“That wasn’t good?” Mort asked.
“Good for him maybe. Good for her. But what about me?” Lettie was working up steam. She glared at me. “I’ll bet you think Lucy is the sweet one. I’ve heard that my whole life. But let me tell you, she might seem to be the sweet one, but she always got her way. My fault. I let her get away with it because it was no skin off my nose. Besides, everything was peaceful as long as she thought she was in charge. I’ve always been content to let her handle the household finances and write out the shopping list based on what she wanted us to eat. Then I did the cleaning and shopping.”
“Who cooked?” I asked, trying to move Lettie off her complaints about her sibling. It seemed a logical question even though it had nothing to do with Mort’s inquiry into Cliff Cooper’s murder.
“We both do, although I make the main dish and do all the baking.” A smile crossed Lettie’s face. “She does make cookies every now and then,” she said. “I’ve always gone along with what she wants; I don’t care what we eat as long as we don’t go hungry. I don’t like confrontation, although people who know us find that hard to believe.” She paused, wiping away a tear. “I feel as though I’m betraying our most intimate family secrets.”
“Whatever you say stays right here,” Mort said. “Isn’t that right Mrs. F?”
“Of course. Lettie, I have a question if you don’t mind.”
“If I did, it’s a little late,” she said.
“Was there anyone aside from you and Lucy who got close to Cliff?”
“Virtually no one,” she replied. “There was that nurse when Elliot was a baby, but I put an end to that. I told him she was just after his
money. He laughed and told me he didn’t have any.”
“Maybe that’s why he wanted to move in here,” Mort suggested.
“If that was the case, he would have been using Lucy and her feelings for him.”
“Did Mr. Cooper have any enemies?” Mort said.
“Knew you’d get around to asking that,” Lettie said. “Aside from me stepping in between him and Lucy? No one that I knew. Frankly, he was a loner, like his son. That’s where Jerry got it from. That’s why, after he retired from carpentry, all Cliff did was read. Maybe there’s someone in town who has a complaint about his work—you know, the door came off a cabinet or a step was loose. Ask around.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Mort said.
I was pleased that he’d deflected Lettie’s sarcasm instead of responding with anger.
“Anything else?” she asked. “I’ve said all I wish to say.”
“No, ma’am,” said Mort. “Would you please ask your sister to come in now?”
A long period passed before Lucy entered the room, and I assumed that she and Lettie had had a conversation before she joined us. She took the chair that Lettie had vacated, smoothed the quilt over her lap, and smiled. “Lettie says that I’m free to say anything about our family. I hope she didn’t reveal too many secrets.”
“Not at all,” Mort said. “She did say that you wanted to marry Cliff Cooper and have him move in here with you and your sister.”
She nodded demurely.
“But Lettie was against it,” I said.
“Yes, she was.”
“That must have been difficult for you, being in love with him,” I said.
Lucy hesitated before saying, “I have to admit that I really didn’t love Cliff. He was a kind man and so well-read, never without a book in his pocket. Not that he was a snob about books, mind you. He liked the popular novels as well as history and philosophy. I liked him a lot. But I didn’t love him.”
“Then why did you want to marry him?”
“It’s complicated. I’ve never been married. It would have been nice to experience that once, to be called Mrs. Cooper instead of Miss Conrad. I’m not so modern that I would have kept my maiden name.”
“Is that the only reason?” I asked.
“No. That would have been very selfish of me if that was the only reason. I thought we could all take care of one another as we got older. That’s not such a bad idea, is it?” This time a few tears came from Lucy, which she wiped away.
“Is there more to it than that, Lucy?” I asked.
“There is, but you mustn’t say anything to anyone, especially Lettie. Promise me, Jessica.”
“Our conversation is completely confidential,” Mort said.
I agreed.
Lucy’s eyes met mine. “All right. I’ll tell you. I’ve been feeling myself starting to lose my faculties and—I just hope that you never experience this, Jessica. It’s so distressing.”
“Everyone has forgetful moments, Lucy,” I said, “even young people.”
“Mine are different, though. I don’t have them all the time—at least I hope I don’t—but when I do, they’re bad. It isn’t just, ‘Where did I leave the keys?’ It’s more, ‘What is this cell phone doing in the refrigerator?’ And I keep forgetting things.” She clutched the quilt to her chest and sighed.
“Go on,” I said. “Is there more?”
“What?”
“You were telling us why you wanted to marry Cliff,” I said.
“I was? Oh, yes. I thought that if Cliff moved in with us, it would be security for Lettie, company and help for her when I could no longer manage our affairs and needed caring for. Lettie’s mind is still sharp; she remembers everything; every little thing I’ve ever said to her. She throws it back at me when she gets mad. She’ll tell you she’s the easy one, but I’ve been walking on eggs around her since we were children. Mama tried to protect me, told me to get some backbone and stand up for myself. I try. I’m not always successful. Lettie will let me do what I want, but then she’ll fume and fuss, and eventually she’ll explode. Well, she got her way. Cliff didn’t move in. He got sick instead. At the end of his life, he was so pale and so frail, he didn’t even want me to visit him in the hospital.”
“He did say he wanted you to remember him as a healthy man, not how he looked in illness,” I said.
“People think women worry over their looks, but I think men are worse. I didn’t care that he was grizzled and weak. I just wanted to tell him how grateful I was that he cared for me, and how he’d been a wonderful friend and neighbor and an even better grandfather to Elliot.”
“Was he a good father to Jerry?” I asked.
“Who?”
“Jerry, Cliff’s son,” I said.
“Oh, right. Yes, he was a very good father, although Jerry never appreciated him.”
“What kind of relationship did they have, Cliff and Jerry?” Mort said, following up.
“You’ll think this is funny, but Jerry was the one who got Cliff reading all those books.”
“Why is that funny?” I asked.
“Well, it isn’t actually funny at all. Jerry called his father names, said he was uneducated and ignorant.”
“Jerry said that to Cliff?” Mort asked.
She nodded. “Isn’t that awful, belittling the man who raised you, who paid for your college education? Yes, Jerry said that to him. He was an awful boy, even if I’ve defended him to Lettie. Once Jerry left for college, Cliff started reading everything he could get his hands on. He wanted to be able to have an ‘intelligent conversation’ with his son, he said. I told him he was already an intelligent man, but he felt he had to have book knowledge and kept it up even after Jerry was gone.”
“Did Cliff have any friends other than you and your sister?” I asked.
“He knew just about everyone in town, but he mostly kept to himself. That’s why I felt it was important to be close to him, so he would have someone in his life who cared for him.”
“Tell me about the day Cliff died,” Mort said. “Had you seen him that day?”
“He left specific orders that I was not to visit him. And that nasty nurse was only too happy to make sure I knew it. She’s wanted to marry Cliff since Elliot was a baby. I was horrified when I learned that Carolyn, of all people, was his nurse on the evening shift. I knew he didn’t like her—not romantically anyway—but a sick man is vulnerable. She was there to comfort him, make him feel wanted and loved. There was little I could do about it.”
“What about your sister?” Mort asked. “Did she visit him?”
“Lettie? Heavens, no. She was never close to him the way—the way I was.”
“Lettie told us a few minutes ago,” I said, “that she was against your marrying Cliff and having him move in here.”
Lucy gave her answer some thought before replying. “We fought over that, I’m afraid. I understood her objection, but her attitude left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I was trying to protect her.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “Of course I never told her that. I don’t want her to worry about me. She will, you know. We’ve been sisters since before we were born. All we have left in the world is each other.”
When Mort didn’t raise another question, I did.
“You’re sure that Lettie never visited Cliff in the hospital?”
“Don’t you think she would have told me if she had?” She shrugged and gazed up at the ceiling. I was sure she was evading the question.
I didn’t feel that I was in a position to challenge Lucy at that juncture, but the hospital aide’s description of one of Cliff’s visitors fit Lettie to a tee. The aide’s description of the younger woman placed Beth at the hospital, and while she’d denied being there at first, I’d gotten her to admit that she had, in fact, visited Cliff. From what she’d said, s
he was there on the day that he was killed, and Beth had possibly placed Lettie there as well. I’d promised Beth that I wouldn’t say anything to her great-aunts, and I would keep that promise. But I would inform Mort before he or one of his deputies questioned the young woman. Beth had lied about visiting Cliff, and I found it odd that she had seemed to be planning a visit to Sitka, Elliot’s new home, even before she supposedly learned that he’d broken his engagement to another woman. Was she intending to woo him back? And was she being honest when she said Cliff had been sleeping at the hospital and that she had left immediately?
We talked for a few more minutes before Mort announced that we were leaving. Both sisters accompanied us to the door, and Lettie said that she hoped that Mort and his investigators would soon identify the person who’d killed Cliff Cooper.
“We’ll do our best,” Mort assured her.
I wasn’t about to leave without asking Lettie an obvious question, but couching it in such a way that it wasn’t a direct confrontation.
“What was Cliff like when you visited him in the hospital, Lettie?”
“Visited him?” Lettie said haughtily. “I never visited Cliff.” She turned to Lucy. “Did I, Lucy?”
It was obvious from Lucy’s expression that she wasn’t comfortable being called upon to confirm or deny it. She simply said, “You already said you didn’t,” and disappeared back into the house.
Chapter Twenty-one
We’d had a run of lovely weather on coastal Maine for a few days, but on the Sunday morning of Cliff Cooper’s funeral, the skies darkened and a steady rain began to fall. Seth called to ask if I planned to go. He’d routinely attended the funerals of his patients in years past but had begun cutting back recently. “At my age, if I go to the funeral of everyone I’ve ever seen professionally, I’ll never get out of the cemetery.” When I told him that I intended to join the mourners, he decided to accompany me, which worked out not only because he provided company, but because he’d be driving to the church and the graveyard. I love my bicycle, but not in the rain.
Murder, She Wrote: The Ghost and Mrs. Fletcher Page 16
