Dead Winter (22 page)

Besides, after Kat, Sylvie’s uncomplicated, fun-loving approach to lovemaking would have been welcome.

So I picked up the receiver and said, “Coyne’s house.”

There was a hesitation on the other end. Then a soft man’s voice said, “Is this the lawyer?”

I sighed. “Yeah. Who’re you?”

“Desmond Winter’s lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“You need a lawyer?”

“Well, yes. But specifically I need you.”

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Cooper. Ernie Cooper.”

“Okay, Mr. Cooper. What’s on your mind?”

“Not on the phone.”

“Oh, Christ,” I muttered. “Call me at my office, then. My secretary will make an appointment for you.”

“No. I have to see you now. Tonight.”

“Sorry. Can’t make it.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Well, hell, man, of course I don’t understand. But I do know that it’s after office hours and I’m sitting here in stocking feet looking at a half-f bottle of Jack Daniel’s—”

“Look,” he said. “Please. This thing has been eating at me ever since… Okay. Ever since Maggie was murdered. I’ve been carrying this thing around inside of me, feels like a shotput in my gut, and I finally decided I had to talk to somebody. And now I’ve got to do it. I can’t hold it in any more.”

“Did you kill Maggie? Is that it?”

“Oh, God, no.”

“But you know who did, then.”

“No. I don’t know. I assumed Marc…”

“Then what?”

“That’s what I want to talk about. Will you meet me?”

I took a deep breath and blew it out. “Ah, shit. Yeah. Sure. Where?”

He paused. “I live in Newburyport. I’d just as soon not be seen by anybody who knows me. There’s a place near the beach on Plum Island—”

“No dice,” I said quickly. “Someplace public.”

“Why? Oh, I get it. You think—”

“I think nothing particular. Three murders and I get cautious. Meet me at the Grog. The upstairs bar.”

“Everybody goes to the Grog. Someone’ll see us.”

“Unless you want to wait until tomorrow morning in my office, you’ll have to take that chance.”

“All right. The Grog, then. How long will it take you to get here?”

“An hour.”

“I’ll be there.”

“What do you look like, Mr. Cooper?”

“You won’t have any trouble recognizing me, Mr. Coyne.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m bald as an egg.”

He was sitting at the far corner of the four-sided upstairs bar at the Grog and he was right. Bald as an egg. He wore dark-rimmed glasses perched on a bulbous nose. He had a generous overbite and not much chin to speak of.

I took the stool beside him and ordered a bottle of Heineken from the girl in the Hawaiian shirt behind the bar. It looked like a wine spritzer that he was sipping.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“You’re welcome. Now tell me what this is all about.”

He nodded emphatically. “I will. I want to. It’s—I was with Maggie Winter that night.”

“The night…?”

“Yes. The night she got killed. God, I loved her. She was the most exciting woman I’ve ever known. I risked my family, my job, everything, to be with her. And now…”

“So when she threatened to tell your wife, you—”

“No!” His magnified eyes glittered fiercely behind the thick lenses. “No,” he repeated more softly. “I told you. I didn’t kill her. And I don’t know who did. But I was with her, and I thought…”

“You’re right. The police should know.”

“The police? I thought if I told an attorney…”

“Any lawyer would advise you to tell the police. You have important information.”

“But I don’t know anything about her murder.”

“You don’t know that.”

He peered at me for a moment. “Yes. I see that.”

“Tell me about it, Mr. Cooper.”

“Ernie,” he said automatically. “From the beginning, you mean?”

“From the beginning.”

“I met her one evening at Shaw’s. That’s a supermarket. It stays open late. My wife was sick. We needed a few things. I don’t know my way around supermarkets very well. She made a list. She wanted salsa. You know, the stuff you dip Doritos in? Anyway, I went up and down those aisles and I couldn’t find any salsa. I must’ve been talking to myself, because this dark-haired woman tapped my shoulder and said, ‘Are you all right, sir?’ And I said, ‘What kind of store is this, they have no salsa?’ So she pointed up an aisle and said that’s where it should be, and she went her way and I went where she pointed. And there was no salsa there, so I said the hell with it, Jane could just do without.

“Anyway, I wheeled my stuff to the checkout, and the dark-haired woman was in the next line over, and she lifted her eyebrows at me and smiled and said, ‘Find it?’ And I shrugged and said no. So she finished buying her stuff and it was all piled in her cart and she started out of the store and then stopped and left her cart there and went to the aisle where the salsa was supposed to be. A minute later she came back and said, ‘They’re out. I’m sorry.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s not your fault. Thanks for looking.’ And she said maybe the Market Basket next door has some, and I said it’s really not important, so she shrugged and smiled and left.

“When I got out to my car, she was putting her stuff in the trunk of hers right next to me. So I went over to help her and we chatted a little. I told her my wife was sick and she seemed really concerned. A very warm person, I could see that right away. She said how it’s really a drag when you want something like salsa and can’t find it. That it makes you feel much angrier than you should. As if she could read my mind, because that’s exactly how I was feeling. And maybe it was that anger, I don’t know where it came from, because I’m not a very bold person, but I asked her if she’d like to have a cup of coffee with me. And she said she would and she smiled that great smile of hers, and I got this feeling, this tense excitement in my stomach. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Coyne?”

I nodded.

Ernie Cooper looked at me for a moment through those thick glasses. “I suppose every man knows that feeling,” he said. “I had forgotten it until I met Maggie. So, anyway, we went to Friendly’s—that’s practically across the street. And we stayed there and drank coffee until the place closed, and by the time we left I was in love, Mr. Coyne. You knew Maggie, of course?”

“Not well.”

“Well, believe me, she was a very lovable woman. Warm, caring, sincere. Not well treated by her husband, I might add. Anyhow, we walked out of Friendly’s and Maggie opened her car door and this funny old basset hound kind of slithered out and went off into the darkness, sniffing around. So Maggie followed the dog and I followed Maggie, and we stumbled around in this field in back of Friendly’s for a while. She was chattering away, so gay and carefree. And when we finally got back to where our cars were parked, we were the only ones left in the parking lot. She opened the door and Barney—that was her dog—he climbed back in and she—she reached up and kissed my cheek and thanked me for the coffee. That’s all. She got in her car, started up the motor, and leaned out the window and said, ‘Call me sometime when you find that salsa.’”

“So you did.”

Cooper nodded. “I lay awake thinking about her, my wife snorting and snuffling and bitching in the bed beside me. The next morning from work I looked up Winter in the phone book and called and she answered and I asked her if she wanted some salsa. We met on the boat. We made love the very first time. And after that we met there many times. She shared my need for discretion.”

“The boat doesn’t strike me as a very discreet place to meet,” I said.

He shrugged. “Maggie always said it was okay. I guess she and Marc had some kind of understanding. No one ever bothered us there.”

“What about the night she was killed?”

“It was like all the other nights. She was there when I got there. We talked for a while and made love. She stayed there when I left. I never had that much time. Always worrying about getting home before Jane started to imagine things.”

“What did you talk about?”

He waved one hand. “Nothing special that I recall.”

“How did she seem that night?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was she distracted, moody, grouchy?”

He shook his head. “She was fine. Her usual self. Exactly herself. I’ve thought about that. I mean, she was about to die, but she had no premonition of it. She was no gayer, no tenser, no sadder. Nothing. Her old playful self.”

“Did she mention any problem? Anything that was bothering her?”

“Just Marc. There was nothing unusual about that. We always shared what we called our spouse stories with each other. I talked about Jane, she talked about Marc. Nothing mean, I don’t mean that. We weren’t complaining. It was just something we had in common, like all married people. You’re married, aren’t you?”

“No. I was once. I understand. What sort of spouse stories did Maggie tell you?”

He smiled, as if enjoying his memories of her. “Maggie thought Marc was seeing someone else. We laughed about that. I never had the impression that Marc’s fooling around really bothered her. She used to say that they understood each other. Still, I think that if it hadn’t been for the way Marc acted, Maggie would’ve been different. I mean, I think she would’ve been happy to stay faithful to him. That’s how Maggie was. Totally accepting of how things were. She was just as happy either way.”

“What time did you get to the boat?”

He gazed up at the ceiling. “Seven, seven thirty. I had dinner, helped Jane clean up the kitchen, and told her I had to go out for a while. Jane doesn’t suspect a thing. She trusts me completely. I suppose she figures, a poor shnook like me, who’d be interested anyway, right? Anyway, it was probably around seven thirty. I left the boat a little after ten. Oh, I guess it must’ve been nearer ten thirty, quarter of eleven, because shortly after I got home the eleven o’clock news came on. I remember thinking that the best news was that Maggie and I had made love, and the worst news was that awful guilt I kept feeling.”

“Did you ever drive by her house on High Street?”

He frowned at me. “Everybody in Newburyport drives down High Street.”

“On that Sunday. The day she died. Did you stop in front of her house and talk with her that afternoon?”

“Oh, God, no. I wouldn’t have risked doing something like that.”

“Not even to set up a date with her?”

“No. We used signals. If the coast was clear for me to talk, either from the office or at home, I’d dial her number and let it ring once. If she could talk, she’d call me right back. Or else she’d do the same with me.”

I drained what was left of the beer in my glass, nodded to the barmaid for another, lit a cigarette, and looked at Ernie Cooper. He had barely touched his wine spritzer. A quiet, cautious man. An accountant type. Trustworthy, loyal, a good father and tolerant husband. No match for a girl like Maggie. “And when you found out she had been killed?”

He blinked at me. “I’m ashamed to say that my first thought was that I hoped nobody would learn she had been with me. Obviously, I’d be a suspect, but that wasn’t it. I knew I didn’t kill her. It was that I’d be found out and my life, quite simply, would be ruined. And then, in a strange way, I was glad she was dead. She could never tell.” He passed his hand over his smooth dome. “After that, though, I felt the sadness. It’s very hard, Mr. Coyne, to grieve privately, to have nobody to share it with, no shoulder to cry on. So since that day I’ve grieved over Maggie’s death and worried that someone would find out about us, and instead of the feelings diminishing, they’ve become stronger. Until I couldn’t bear it.”

“A priest, perhaps? A psychiatrist?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know any.”

“You don’t know me, either.”

“You’re the Winters’ attorney, I know that. I know Des a little. He’s mentioned you. I know you’re—involved in this case.”

“Not really.”

He waved his hand. “Anyway, I figured I needed legal advice. Mainly, I had to tell someone. My own lawyer is a friend. Of me and my wife. I didn’t want him to know.”

“And now we’re going to tell the police,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. I guess I’m ready. Do you think there’s any way that this can be kept confidential?”

“That won’t be a priority for the cops.”

“I suppose not.”

He followed me to the police station in his own car. Fourier, the Newburyport cop, was on duty when Ernie Cooper and I arrived there ten minutes later. I told him my name and he said he remembered me. He did not seem especially overjoyed to see me. I introduced Ernie Cooper, and Fourier frowned at him as if he looked familiar. We went to Fourier’s desk. Cooper repeated his story, leaving out some of the details of how he and Maggie had met, but filling in extra details on the night of her death. He told the story the same way to Fourier as he had to me. Fourier asked a few questions I hadn’t thought of—how Maggie had been dressed when Cooper left her (“Naked, sir. She was still in the berth”), if they had been drinking (“Not on the boat. We never drank before making love. Or afterwards”), drugs (“Of course not”), witnesses (“No. We always tried to be very discreet”). Fourier queried him closely on the time and his whereabouts immediately before and after his session with Maggie, everything Maggie said that night, anything Maggie ever said that might give a clue as to who would want to kill her.

Cooper seemed painfully eager to please. He stumbled around a little, got confused, couldn’t remember, contradicted himself—in other words, he did all the things a distraught, innocent man would do, and all the things that a guilty man, having taken a couple weeks to prepare his alibi, would avoid doing.

I believed Ernie Cooper. Guilt was squashing him. But not the guilt of a murderer.

And I sensed that Fourier believed him, too. He told him that he would pass along his information to state police detective Moran, who was heading up the investigation. He told him that Moran would undoubtedly want to talk to him, but that he would ask her to use Cooper’s office rather than home phone, and that, while he could make no promises, he saw no reason at that point for anyone needing to know what Ernie Cooper had been doing the night Maggie Winter was killed.