Murder, She Wrote: The Ghost and Mrs. Fletcher

by Jessica Fletcher Donald Bain

  “I know that you don’t want people traipsing around in the house,” I said. “I’ve ordered a large tent. Is it all right if we have the sale but confine it to the tent outside?”

  “I don’t see why not,” he said.

  “But we will have to let people come into this room to remove all these boxes. Okay?”

  He nodded. “Anything else, Mrs. F?”

  “You mentioned that Tonelero is being brought back here for questioning. I’m curious about what he knows about the body in the basement. Someone had started sawing a hole in that wall. I don’t know who else it could have been but him.”

  “That’s what I want to ask him. We collected some tools in the barn to test for plaster dust. Maybe he was just curious about what was behind the wall. Maybe he got scared when he had an idea of what it was, and took off. But he’s not a suspect. Cliff Cooper did us all a favor by leaving that note.”

  “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Cliff would specifically say in the note that his son Jerry hadn’t done it? I mean, if he’d simply taken the blame, its purpose would be clear.”

  “I think your creative juices are acting up, Mrs. F., if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I suppose you’re right, Mort. It’s just that—” I turned to Arthur, who was still perusing books. “Last night, Arthur, you said that Tony must have had some barrel makers in his family’s past.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I didn’t pay attention to it then, but I’ve been thinking about it since.”

  Mort scratched his head. “Why, Mrs. F? What do you care about the handyman’s family?”

  “Arthur, I’m not fluent in Spanish, but you are. Does his name, Tonelero, mean barrel maker in Spanish?”

  “Right you are,” Arthur said, not taking his attention from the book he was examining.

  I looked at Mort. “And another name for barrel maker in English is ‘cooper.’”

  “Cooper? No kidding?” Mort said. “That’s funny.”

  “Cooper,” I said, “as in the name Cooper.”

  “I’m not sure I see where this is going.”

  “He calls himself Tony, but he introduced himself to me as Geraldo, pronouncing it Heraldo.”

  “Heraldo?”

  “Yes, Spanish for Gerald. And the nickname for Gerald is Jerry. Mort, I think Tony Tonelero is Cliff’s son, Jerry Cooper, the husband of the woman in the basement.”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Mort said. “Cliff Cooper’s son was killed in South America.”

  “And so was his son’s wife, Marina—supposedly! But the note says the woman in the basement is Marina Cooper.”

  It dawned on me that I’d never shared with Mort what had come out of my conversation with Dimitri, the taxi driver, who’d driven Jerry Cooper to the Boston airport. I rectified that by recounting it for him.

  When I finished, he said, “So you’re saying, Mrs. F., that Marina Cooper never went to South America.”

  “That’s right. She never went anywhere except behind the wall in the basement, her head bashed in.”

  “By Cliff Cooper,” Mort said.

  “If you believe the note he left.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  It took me a few seconds to gather my thoughts. “It’s possible, Mort, that Cliff Cooper’s note means exactly what it says, that he killed his daughter-in-law, Marina, and was concerned that if the body was found, his son, Jerry, her husband, would be accused of the murder. On the other hand—”

  “What, Mrs. F? You’re not going to challenge my nicely solved case, are you?”

  “We have to consider the evidence, Mort. Cliff might have left that note to protect his son in the event the body was ever discovered. What if he sent Jerry off to South America to get him out of harm’s way, to shield his son from facing the consequences of having killed his wife? Then he buried the body in the wall and built bookcases to cover up the crime?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. F. That’s an interesting what-if sort of thing, like what you write in your murder mystery books. But I have an open-and-shut case. If you doubt it, you’ll have to show me evidence to the contrary.”

  “I only wish I could, Mort. Maybe when you question Geraldo Tonelero and ask him if he really is Jerry Cooper, things will become clearer. In the meantime, thank you for indulging my speculation.”

  “That goes for me, too,” Arthur said. “I never thought when I came to this sleepy little town that I’d be an eyewitness to a real-life murder mystery.”

  We were interrupted by a deputy. “Sheriff,” he said, “Ms. Phillips from the Gazette is outside, howling like a banshee about seeing you. She’s threatening to bring a lawsuit against the town and keeps talking about some freedom of something act and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” Mort said wearily, standing and stretching against a pain in his back. “Go tell her I’ll give her ten minutes, no more.”

  “She also says she wants to talk to Mrs. Fletcher,” the deputy added.

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “Good,” said Mort. “Let’s keep your what-if thinking between us, at least for a while.”

  “You have my word,” I said.

  “And that goes for you, too,” Mort said to Arthur.

  “Me?” Arthur said, placing his hand on his heart. “These lips have never been more sealed.”

  “Does he always talk like that?” Mort whispered to me.

  “Like what?”

  “You know, sort of, well, sort of artsy-like.”

  I smiled but didn’t respond.

  “I’ll be speaking with those Conrad sisters after I get rid of Ms. Phillips. I promised Elliot I would. Will you come with me?”

  “If you like,” I said. “Go talk to Evelyn.”

  “Okay, but don’t leave.”

  “I’ll be around.”

  When Mort left, Arthur came up to me. “So,” he said, “let’s hear it.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Your thoughts on what’s happened. Let’s say you’re writing a murder mystery with this as the plot, you know, with the body in the basement.”

  “Fiction is very different from reality,” I countered.

  “It is? I’ve read your books. They may be fiction, but they reflect real life. People get murdered all the time.”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “Would you excuse me, Arthur?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I want to take a look in the barn at the rear of the property.”

  “Oh? What’s back there?”

  “It’s where Cliff Cooper had his workshop, and where the man I think is his son, Jerry—masquerading as a handyman with a Spanish name—has been living.”

  “Mind if I tag along?”

  I hesitated.

  “I gave you the big clue, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  I’d have preferred that he didn’t accompany me, but there was no reason for him not to. “Come along,” I said.

  We left the house through the rear kitchen door, crossed the yard, and entered the barn. I switched on lights installed in the ceiling beams and went to the tack room where the handyman had been living. As I stood at the door, I couldn’t help but wonder what had motivated him to return to Cabot Cove with his assumed identity, and to attempt to exhume the skeleton of his ex-wife. He’d been confident that no one would recognize him, and for good reason. His son, Elliot, had been just an infant when he’d left, and certainly couldn’t remember what his father looked like. Even so, Tonelero had kept out of Elliot’s way, telling Eve he was taking the day off when Elliot arrived, and lurking in the cemetery at his father’s funeral, rather than take the chance that someone might remember him.

  Jerry Cooper had lived his teenage years and young adult life as a quiet, introve
rted young man who rarely mingled in society. Few in town knew him well. Some twenty-five years later, he looked nothing like the young man whose face Tim Purdy had circled in the picture of the Explorers’ Club at Cabot Cove High School. College had brought him his only social contact in the form of a perplexing relationship with a young woman whom he married but hid away from the community. Had having a child pulled them apart? What could have precipitated the blow that took Marina’s life and sent Jerry into hiding?

  And why had he returned?

  I went to the bunk he used as a bed and surveyed the books on the makeshift nightstand. Then my eyes went to a far corner shrouded in shadow. One of the boxes I’d seen in the basement containing family papers and photos sat there, its top open, some of its contents spilled on the floor.

  “Who lived here?” Arthur asked.

  I gave him a capsule account of the family history and said I believed it was Jerry Cooper who’d returned to the home where he’d grown up.

  “He was married to the woman in the basement?” Arthur asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So who killed his wife and buried her behind the wall, the father or the husband?”

  “That’s what I want to find out. The note says it was Cliff. But is that true?”

  “How can you prove otherwise?”

  “I’m not sure, but this box may help me.”

  We dragged the box over to the bunk bed. I sat on the edge of the bed and randomly pulled out materials from the box. I quickly rifled through it, not looking for anything in particular. There were letters and notes written by Cliff Cooper, copies of handwritten estimates given to potential customers for his carpentry services, a school paper on the Amazon authored by a teenage Jerry Cooper, his name in an awkward scrawl at the top of the page. I was about to return the items to the box when I retrieved the letters that Cliff had written. This time I examined them more closely.

  “What’s captured your interest, Jessica?” Arthur asked.

  “These,” I said. “If I’m not mistaken, I can—”

  I was interrupted by a commotion from outside. There were multiple voices, and the slamming of car doors.

  “Sounds like something’s happening at the house,” Arthur said.

  I picked out several of the papers and put the top back on the box. “I think I have what I need,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I led us from the barn to the kitchen door and to the library where two officers wearing uniforms from another town flanked the handyman, his hands cuffed behind his back.

  “I’ll take custody of him,” Mort told the police. After an exchange of paperwork and Mort’s expression of thanks, the two officers who’d delivered Tonelero left, replaced by two of Mort’s deputies.

  “I’d like to know what this is all about,” Tony said angrily. “Can’t a man take a ride on his motorcycle without being hassled by the police? Release me now, right now, or get me a lawyer. What crime do you think I committed?”

  His little speech contained more sentences than I’d heard the man put together since I’d first encountered him in the cellar of the Spencer Percy House.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” Mort said. “It’s about your murdered wife who was buried behind a wall in the basement.”

  “I’m not married, and I don’t know anything about anyone buried in the basement. Take these stupid cuffs off me.”

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Tonelero—or should I say Mr. Cooper?”

  “Call me whatever you want,” he said, his voice having taken on a tone of uncertainty, “but get these off me.”

  “Not until we have a little talk. You say that you know nothing about your dead wife?” Mort asked again.

  I could almost see the wheels turning in the head of the man I knew as Tony. He pursed his lips, gave me a nasty smile, and said, “I’ll bet you think you have the whole thing figured out. I knew you were trouble from the first time I saw you.”

  “Leave Mrs. Fletcher out of this,” Mort said. “Just tell us when you knew about the woman in the basement.”

  “When? I knew about it from the beginning. Believe me, it was a shock when he did it.”

  “When who did what?” Mort asked.

  “When my old man—my father—told me what he’d done. It was devastating, that’s for sure. I felt like my whole life was over.”

  “Your father told you that he’d killed your wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why did he kill her?”

  “He didn’t like her, never did, from the minute I brought her home. Thought she was after his money. Said he caught her stealing from him and let her have it.”

  “Who buried her behind the wall?”

  “He did. Who else? He said he’d get rid of the body and told me to get out of town. That’s when he came up with the story that Marina and I left for South America. I thought he was right, that I’d better go or be accused of the murder if anyone discovered it.”

  As he wove his story, I sat quietly, clutching the written materials I’d brought from the barn. I was dying to ask questions of my own but managed to stifle the urge. This was Mort’s show, and he would have been angry if I’d interfered.

  “Didn’t you read the note my father left?” Cooper asked.

  “The note?” Mort said. “How do you know about the note?”

  Cooper responded, “He showed it to me.”

  “Oh, really?” Mort said. “He bashed your wife’s head in, wrote the note to get you off the hook in case the body was discovered, and buried her in the basement.”

  “Right, Sheriff. That’s exactly right.”

  “Mort, I—”

  Mort turned to me. “What is it, Mrs. F?”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’d like to know why he returned to Cabot Cove and decided to exhume his wife’s body.”

  The man I now knew as Jerry guffawed. “Do I have to answer questions from a hack writer?”

  Mort immediately came to my defense. “Watch who you’re calling names. This woman knows a lot about this case.”

  Buoyed by Mort’s faith in me, I said, “I’m asking because I knew your father as a decent, caring man. I find it hard to believe he was a murderer. Why did you come back and start to dig your wife’s remains out from behind the basement wall?”

  Jerry looked to Mort, who said, “Answer her.”

  “If you must know,” he said, “my father called me from the hospital. He said he was dying, was putting the house on the market, and giving the proceeds to my son.”

  “Your father knew where you were?” I asked.

  “I told him just before he went in the hospital.” He snorted. “Matter of fact, I thought that’s what made him sick. Then I saw something in the local newspaper about the famous Spencer Percy House being up for sale, stupid stuff about it being haunted and all. And I thought, okay, they need help, and I need to get in there.”

  “The Cabot Cove paper?” Mort said. “You’ve been living here all this time?”

  “I live down the coast.”

  “Local papers often pick up stories from neighboring towns,” I put in. “You said you needed to get in here. Eve never questioned that you knew there was a room in the barn where you could stay. But when you first got here, you moved into your old room upstairs instead—didn’t you?—the one you shared with your wife. Her blue and green striped scarf is still in one of the dresser drawers.”

  “How do you know what belonged to my wife?”

  “Elliot found a photograph of the two of you. Marina was wearing that scarf.”

  “That’s not all we found upstairs,” Mort put in.

  I rushed on before Mort could bring up the green scrubs. “The most important question is why did you feel it necessary to get rid of Marina’s body if your father left a note confessing to having ki
lled her?”

  Jerry glared at me. “I didn’t want a new owner to discover the body and start raising questions. I thought that if I got rid of the body, I’d be doing us all a favor—me, Elliot, my father, and whoever bought the place. It was wrong. I can see that now. But remember that my father was the killer. He did it. He left a note admitting it. You just said so. Did you hear that, Sheriff?”

  “Your father didn’t write that note,” I said firmly. “You did. And I’m willing to bet you were the one who walled up the body, not Cliff. You wanted another chance to hide your crime because you were afraid if Marina was found, no one would believe that Cliff was capable of such a brutal killing. And you were right. I don’t believe it.”

  Another guffaw. “Yeah, my father was a real good guy. That’s what you think. He built those bookcases to cover up my ‘shabby workmanship.’ That’s all he knew. A hammer and nails. He read all those books and never got any smarter.”

  “Here,” I said, handing Mort the papers I’d brought from the box in the barn.

  “What’s this, Mrs. F?”

  “Examples of Cliff Cooper’s handwriting. And examples of a young Jerry Cooper’s handwriting. I’m not an expert in handwriting analysis, but I think if you consult a professional, you’ll learn that the handwriting on Cliff’s letters is vastly different from the handwriting on the note found with Marina’s body. And since we have samples of Jerry Cooper’s handwriting, too, I’m sure that an expert will be able to verify who really wrote that note.”

  Mort redirected his attention to Jerry. “What about that?”

  “You listen to her?”

  “Most of the time,” Mort replied.

  “Are we finished now? I want these cuffs off.”

  “I have one more question,” I said.

  “Go ahead, Mrs. F.”

  “You say that your father called you from the hospital, Mr. Cooper.”

  Jerry sneered at me. “Mr. Cooper is my father. That’s not my name anymore.”

  I ignored his comment. “What prompted you to visit Cliff at the hospital?” When he didn’t respond, I added, “An aide saw someone carrying a motorcycle helmet enter his room. Your father was suffocated to death by someone who visited him. Was that person you?”