Kissing Arizona (4 page)

Sarah found Tom Cooper rummaging through the refrigerator. He backed out holding a bottle of water, looked down over his noble nose, said, ‘Well, so I'm going to be grilled by the lady police, hmm?' and made a small sound that just missed being a chuckle. Sarah put on her Ice Cold Cop face, led him to the interview table, opened her notebook and started the who-what-where-when questions that had to be asked.

Tom said he'd spent the weekend in Madera Canyon. ‘I go there often, I love the place. Stay at a small bed and breakfast and hike on the mountain. My hobby's photography, and the flora and fauna there . . . there are several different microclimates . . .' He seemed ready to launch into a wildlife lecture.

‘I know, I like it too. How did you hear about your parents?'

‘Rosa called me. Soon after she called the police, I think. She was crying . . . kind of babbling, but she insisted they were both dead, I got that much out of her but I still can't believe it. Is it true? Are you sure?'

‘Yes. I'm sorry.'

‘God.' He took a printed bandanna out of his corduroy pants pocket, and mopped his face. ‘Rosa said come right home, so I did. Now I'm here and your sergeant won't let me in the house. How long is that going to last, not being able to get in the house?'

‘Quite a while, I'm afraid. It's a big crime scene and we need to process it all as soon as possible.'

‘Jesus.' He looked at the ceiling and thought. ‘It feels so
unreal.
Like a Kafka novel. They're my
parents
, for God's sake. I rush home after getting terrible news about them and I'm met by a lot of strangers saying, “I'm sorry, you can't come in.”'

Confusion and grief were to be expected at such a time. But Sarah thought part of Tom Cooper's unhappiness stemmed from the fact that he was accustomed to having his own way. He seemed determined to stay on the attack till he got it. She decided to shake him up and see what dropped out. ‘Do you think it's possible that your father killed your mother?'

‘What?' He was startled right out of his chair, jumped up, staring. ‘Of course it's not possible.' He paced around her, waving his arms. ‘Whose crazy notion is that? You shouldn't be repeating it, I won't put up with that kind of talk!'

‘You weren't aware they might be fighting or—'

‘No, of course not. And I want you to stop spreading this terrible lie right now! You should be ashamed of yourself, insulting my parents when they're not here to defend themselves!'

‘Will you sit down so we can talk, please?' He sat on the edge of a chair, crossed his legs, wagged the top foot. He looked ready to fly off again at the next thing she said. ‘When did you see them last?'

‘Saturday afternoon. We have a rule that we all go our own way on Sunday, and sometimes I start a little early. I said goodbye to my father at the East Speedway store about two o'clock, went home and packed my gear in the car and drove to Madera Canyon.'

‘Did he seem at all upset when you said goodbye? Anything unusual?'

‘No. My father was never upset. He was exactly the same every day of his life, always in charge.'

‘Has the house been broken into? Is that what happened, he found somebody stealing something? He was always fierce if he caught anybody stealing anything at the store. If he caught somebody in the house—'

‘We haven't found any sign of a break-in, Mr Cooper.'

‘See, but I'd know right away if anything was missing or out of place. That's why you should let me in, so I could look around and see . . .'

‘Mr Cooper, there was no forced entry. Rosa used her key to open the front door just as she always did.' Cooper looked puzzled and dissatisfied. ‘What about employees? Any of them have a grievance?'

‘Well, it's always possible somebody could be mad at the boss. My father was pretty strict, and he wasn't very tactful if somebody screwed up. Nicole would have a better idea of that, I don't do much in the merchandizing end.'

‘Oh? You just do the buying?'

‘No, no. I don't do any buying.'

‘What other part is there?'

‘The money part. I'm the money man.' He ducked his chin and showed a small, self-satisfied smile.

‘What does that mean?'

‘Just what it says. I manage the money.' She waited. Silence, she had learned, sometimes elicits its own answers. She kept her eyes on his face until he added, ‘We run a big organization, two warehouse-type stores and a third in the planning stage. My parents have always been too busy making money to think much about investing it. So gradually I've taken over that end.'

‘I see,' Sarah said. She didn't, exactly, but decided she had more important questions now. ‘I'll need to see your receipts from the hotel where you were staying, please, and the pictures in your camera, they'll be dated and timed. Anything else that will confirm you were in the canyon.'

‘Dear me, what else? Charges on my gas card, I suppose?' His sarcasm made it plain how insulting he felt it was for her to ask for proof. His pomposity was so annoying, Sarah caught herself thinking how satisfactory it would feel to slap the cuffs on him and read him his rights.

But in the next minute the door of the RV squeaked open, and the floor gave the little bounce that signaled somebody standing on the step. Tom Cooper, whose chair was facing the door, said softly, ‘Oh, God, here's Nicole . . .'

His sister stood motionless in the doorway for a long couple of heartbeats. Then her eyes moved, but not toward her brother. Sarah found herself being assessed. Apparently that didn't take long. Nicole closed the door and moved toward them along the narrow aisle. The small space felt colder with her in it. She said, ‘Detective Burke?'

Despite being six inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than her brother, Nicole Cooper exuded self-confidence in a way he didn't. She wore blond-streaked straight hair in a chic cut, discreet make-up in desert tones and a simple, expensive-looking pale gray suit. Her voice was so quiet Sarah had to lean forward to hear her ask, ‘Are my parents still over there, in the house?'

Sarah said, ‘Yes. I'm sorry you can't see them yet – it's a crime scene, and we have to protect the chain of evidence.'

‘I understand. Where's Rosa, do you know?'

‘Last I heard, still in the hospital.'

‘In the hospital? Rosa? What happened to her?'

‘I understand she had a sort of breakdown while she was telling the first responders about finding your parents this morning.'

‘Breakdown? I can't imagine Rosa breaking down.'

‘Well, she had a pretty bad shock. And look, the rules say I need to talk to you and your brother separately the first time.' Her instincts were telling her to get this odd couple apart and see if she could find out why they didn't speak to each other. ‘Do you mind if we go across the street and sit in my car?'

‘Not a bit.' Nicole walked back to the tinny door at the front of the RV and pushed it open. All her movements were lithe and decisive.

Sarah turned to Tom in the chair beside hers and said, ‘Will you just wait right here, please?'

‘For what?' He was getting red again, hating to be told what to do.

‘For me to come back,' she said, keeping her voice level and her eyes fixed on him in a neutral stare.

‘Oh, well, hell yes, where am I going to go anyway?' He rattled the coins in his pockets. ‘I just feel as if I should be doing something!'

‘You are. You're helping us find out what happened,' Sarah said, to the top of his head.

He looked up quickly at that and said, ‘Oh, I know!' and went back to scanning his shoes.

Like most homicide investigators Sarah sometimes claimed that nothing surprised her very much any more. But she thought, as she caught up with Nicole and led her to the department car, that if Delaney thought Tom Cooper was a piece of work on his own, he should really see him with his sister.

Meeting each other for the first time after hearing about the death of both their parents, most siblings would rush to each other, hold on hard and try to give comfort. Sarah and her sister had often ridiculed the stand-offish behavior of their brother, but now she thought, Even Howard the Stick would give me a hug at a time like this. The Cooper siblings had stood half an RV length apart without saying one word to each other. Didn't say hello, never met each other's eyes. The mutual avoidance was so total it didn't even convey anger. Loathing? Maybe, but it seemed more like dread. As if the sky might crack open and rain lava if they spoke one word to each other.

The contrasts were interesting, too. Tom Cooper was aggressive in a pushy, sneering way that Sarah thought might be a cover for insecurity. Nicole moved and spoke with the quiet authority of a person accustomed to having the final say. Right now, along with her self-assurance, she had the slightly distraught air of someone who has mistakenly locked herself out of a house in a cold rain – an obviously intelligent person taken aback by a shocking event. Sarah thought her demeanor seemed much more appropriate than her brother's, except that she hadn't offered him any more comfort than he'd given her.

She had been driving home this morning after a Sunday in Phoenix with friends, Nicole explained, when she got word ‘from somebody at the police department, I didn't get the name,' that there was a ‘problem' at her parents' house. ‘Neither one of them answered their cell, so I called Phyllis. She told me to pull off the road, and as soon as I was parked she told me what had happened.' Nicole rested her forehead briefly on two fingertips. When she raised her head and looked at Sarah, her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but her voice was steady.

‘She asked me if I wanted to close the stores for a couple of days, to show respect. I said, “What would they have wanted?” and right away we both said, together, “Keep 'em open, take care of the customers.”' She gave a little dry bark of a laugh, halfway between irony and pride. ‘She said she'd see to it, and I should go ahead and take care of . . . whatever there is to take care of. Every organization,' she added thoughtfully, ‘should have at least one Phyllis.'

‘Reliable?'

‘Like a rock. And smart and tireless.'

‘Do your parents . . . were they still working in the two stores?' Sarah remembered them well, the busy, capable couple to whom she'd paid so many dollars when she was decorating her big honeymoon house in Oro Valley.

‘My mother still manages . . . managed East Speedway. Dad's been acting as CEO of the entire operation for some time. We share an office downtown, I supervise the accounting for both stores. Which means I do the lion's share of the ordering too, because the system's set up for reordering to be automatic till we change a line. Just-in-time supply systems, that's the name of the game today.' She perked up a little, began to look better fed and warmer, when she talked about the business.

‘Have you always worked for your family?'

‘Yes. Even in grade school we were expected to run errands and do odd jobs around the store – the first one, the little one on Grant Road. By the time I was in high school we had the big store on Speedway and we built the second one on North Oracle while I was in college. I put in thirty hours a week, split between the two stores, while I got my degree at U of A.'

‘That must have been hard.'

‘Sometimes. But it was also motivating. I was always at the top of my class because I knew exactly what I was studying for.'

‘What's that?'

‘Control.'
I think I'm hearing her power-point speech to Rotary.
‘Control is everything in business. Information. Knowing what your costs are, where everything is, how to move it, what to charge.'

‘And you know all that?'

She shrugged. ‘That's what I do. Yes.' Then she seemed to realize how much of what she had thought she controlled was gone. She said, ‘Will you excuse me for just a minute?' and without waiting for an answer she opened her door and got out. She walked along the sidewalk for half a block to a corner, stared into the middle of the street for a few moments, took some deep breaths. When she got back in the car, she opened her mouth and closed it a couple of times and finally said, ‘I still can't . . . are they really both dead?'

‘I'm afraid so, yes. I'm sorry you can't see them yet. Later today, though.' Sarah let a little tick of time go by and added, ‘I know this is very hard for you.'

‘Yes.' She closed her eyes briefly, swallowed, and said, ‘Thank you.' She took a tissue out of a box on the console and blew her nose. ‘What else do you need to ask me?'

‘Did your father own a gun?'

‘Yes. A big one, uh . . . I don't know much about this subject, but . . . some kind of a big revolver. Does Smith & Wessen sound right?'

‘That's what's in the house there, with his . . . beside him. Yes. What about your mother, did she own a gun?'

‘Yes, she did, because Daddy insisted. He bought two just alike for us, tiny things, from . . . let me think . . . Beretta? I forget because I never look at mine, it's in a drawer in my house.'

‘But you know how to use it?'

‘Yes. Or I did at one time, I guess I'd need a refresher now. He managed to drag us both out to the practice range a couple of times to practice. But we both hated it. Mom kept telling him, “Frank, we're not going to shoot anybody, no matter what you say.”'