by Bill Bernico
Gumshoe Gumbo
Private Eye Pie
Sleuth Stew
Mystery Mutton Chops
.38 Caliber Peas
Detective Danish
Evidence Egg Salad
Felony Fried Chicken
Robbery Rhubarb Pie
B & E (Bacon and Eggs)
Spy Pie
Undercover Cookies
I looked at Dad.
Dad shrugged and spread his hands. “Whatever works,” he said. “Would either of you care for a slice of Grand Theft Apple Cobbler?”
Dead Letter
“Cooper,” Gloria said from behind her desk.
I looked up from my desk. “What do you want?” I said.
Gloria looked up from her book. “Huh?” she said.
“Didn’t you just call me?” I said.
“Oh, no,” Gloria said. “I was just reading and Cooper came up.”
“How did Cooper come up and what are you reading?” I said.
Gloria held up the book she had in her hands. “The dictionary,” she said. “I just looked up Cooper and it said that it originated in England. Apparently a Cooper is a barrel maker by trade. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Define interesting,” I said. “Are you talking about ‘call Ripley’ interesting, or ‘is that so’ interesting?”
“Probably somewhere in between,” Gloria said. “I just find that kind of trivia fascinating, don’t you?”
“Never gave it much thought, actually,” I said.
Gloria turned the pages and stopped in the S section. “For instance,” she said, “Were you aware that Smith also originated in England and described someone who made horseshoes and other iron gadgets? It’s true. That’s where Smith comes from—a shortened version of blacksmith.”
I didn’t have a reply for this latest tidbit. Instead I cradled my chin in my hands, rested my elbows on my desk and simply smiled.
“And Taylor was a clothes maker, obviously,” Gloria added.
“What sort of business do you suppose Amanda Plummer’s ancestors were involved in?” I said. “Or Mary Tyler Moore’s ex-husband, Grant Tinker? What exactly does a tinker do?”
“Beats me,” Gloria said. “I think it had something to do with mending pots and pans. I only brought this whole thing up because of the origin of Cooper.”
“Really?” I said. “And where did the Campbell name originate?”
“It originated in Scotland,” Gloria explained, “and was derived from two words, ‘Cam’ and ‘Beal’ which meant ‘crooked mouth’ or ‘wry-mouthed’. I guess that pretty much describes me in a nutshell, wouldn’t you say?”
“Whodda thunk?” I said.
“This kind of stuff is almost as interesting as those two guys from that drapery store downtown,” Gloria said. “I mean, they couldn’t have picked two other guys more suited to installing drapes if they tried.”
I shook my head. “You lost me now,” I said. “What two guys are we talking about here?”
“Curtis Hanes and Rodney Talbot,” Gloria said.
I shrugged and spread my hands. “You’ve still lost me,” I said.
“Curtis and Rodney?” Gloria said. “Curt and Rod? Get it? They install drapes and...”
“And curtain rods,” I said. “I get it. Not often enough, but yeah, I get it. Funny. If this business ever goes belly up I can always start my new business of making barrels. I’d have to get one of those panel trucks or cargo vans with my name painted on the side. ‘Cooper the Cooper’ it could say in big bold letters. Of course I’d have to paint them backwards on the hood so you could read them in your rear view mirror.”
Gloria closed the dictionary and stuck it back on the shelf behind her desk. I got back to the file I’d been reading when this whole name game came up. I set the file aside and walked to the door. “I’m going downstairs and check our mailbox,” I said. “The mail should be here by now. Don’t go away now.”
Gloria spread her hands and twisted her body in her chair. “Where am I going to go?” she said.
I walked to the end of the hallway and rode the elevator down three floors to the lobby. Several rows of mailboxes filled one wall just inside the main set of doors. I retrieved my keys and opened the box marked 312, Cooper Investigations. I pulled out a handful of business sized envelopes and closed the door again, locking it with my key. As I walked back toward the elevator, I shuffled through the envelopes. Tucked inside the stack I found a green form, about half the size of the envelopes. It was a notice from the Post Office telling me that they were holding something for me at the counter and that I could pick it up any time after nine A.M. I checked my watch. It was ten-thirty. Rather than take the elevator back up to the third floor only to tell Gloria that I was going to the Post Office, I just flipped open my cell phone and dialed the office. Gloria answered on the first ring.
“Cooper Investigations,” she said in her professional voice. “Gloria Campbell speaking.”
“It’s me,” I said. “I got a notice in the mail that the Post Office is holding something for me at the downtown branch. I’m going down there and see what it is. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I’ll be here,” Gloria said and hung up.
I made it to the Post Office in twelve minutes and found a parking space right in front of the building. I almost hated to give it up when I finished my business inside. I walked up to the first available postal clerk and handed him my green slip. He looked at the identifying number in the upper corner and then looked back at me. “Just a moment please,” he said, and turned and walked into a back room. He returned in less than a minute holding a sealed plastic bag. Inside the bag I could make out an envelope with a strange-looking stamp in the upper right hand corner. It was a five-cent pink air mail stamp, and it had a picture of a DC-4 Skymaster plane on it. The clerk handed me the plastic bag and asked me to sign the receipt. I signed it and handed it back to the clerk. He handed me the bag and looked over my shoulder at the next person in line. “Next,” he said.
I took the bag and walked out of the Post Office and back to my car. I sat there behind the wheel and pried open the plastic bag, dumping the envelope out onto my lap. It was addressed to my office address but the name on the front said Matt Cooper. I turned the envelope over and found nothing on the back. I turned it over again and glanced at the post mark in the upper middle of the space. It was postmarked from Los Angeles with the date of September 23, 1946 inside the circle.
I’ve heard that the Post Office was slow, but this was ridiculous. A trip that should have taken a day or two had taken sixty-six years, two months and five days. A baby could have crawled it here in that time. I couldn’t bring myself to open the envelope just yet. I wanted Gloria to be there when I did, so I drove back to the office, letters in hand.
When I got back to the office Gloria was entering information into her desktop computer from some of our older files. She looked up when I entered. “That was quick,” she said. “Anything interesting in the mail?”
“More of the same old crap,” I said, tossing the envelopes onto her desk as I read the return addresses. “Utility bill, phone bill, tax bill, client payment and oh yeah, Grandpa got a letter.” I held onto that one and took it back to my desk.
“Grandpa?” Gloria said. “Are you talking about Clay? I know he’s old, but he doesn’t have any grandchildren yet.”
“No,” I said. “I mean Grandpa, as in Matt Cooper.” I showed her the envelope and she leaned over my shoulder, eager to get a look at its contents.
“Well, aren’t you going to open it?” she said.
I took a deep breath and turned the envelope over, slipping a letter opener under the flap and running it across the length of the envelope. The flap popped open and I could see a single sheet inside, folded twice. I pulled the sheet out and unfolded it. It was a handwritten letter by the looks of it. I looked up at Gloria and saw the Christmas-morning-little-kid look on her face. I knew she was dying
to read it. To tell the truth, so was I. I handed Gloria the letter and asked her to read it to me.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather read this yourself privately?” Gloria said. “It could have private family information in it.”
“After sixty-six years, I don’t suppose it matters anymore,” I said. “Go ahead and read it.”
Gloria sat on the edge of my desk, cleared her throat and said, “It’s dated September 20, 1946 and starts out:
Dear Mr. Cooper,
You don’t know me, but my name is Nicholas Sawyer and I’m fourteen years old. My mother’s name was Dorothy Sawyer. She told me that she knew you from when we used to live in Chicago. She said you lived down the street from her and that you used to date her. I wonder if you remember her. The reason I’m writing is to let you know that mom passed away three weeks ago. She had been sick for a long time. I never knew my father. Mom said he died before I was born, but before she died she told me that she made that up to spare my feelings. The fact is that it looks like my real father did not die. Mom said he moved to Los Angeles when I was just a little kid. Mr. Cooper, what I’m trying to say is that it looks like you are my real father, at least that what mom told me the day before she died. I don’t have any other living relatives and wondered if I could at least meet you just once before I have to go away. I live in Los Angeles now. I understand if you would rather not see me. I’ll just wait for your letter. If I don’t get an answer I’ll know that you were not interested and I won’t bother you again.
Your son,
Nick
Gloria laid the letter on my desk and looked up at me. “Gees,” she said. “It looks like you have an uncle you never knew about.” Then she thought of Clay. “Oh no, Clay has a brother.”
“Half-brother, actually,” I said. “Different mothers, but yeah, this is big news. Do you think we should tell Dad?”
“Hell yes,” Gloria said. “If anyone has a right to know, it’s Clay.” Gloria held one hand to her mouth and then said, “Do you suppose Nick is still alive?”
“If he is,” I said, “he’d be around eighty years old by now. Christ, he’d be old enough to be Clay’s father. You know Grandpa Matt didn’t even marry my grandma until he was thirty-eight years old and they didn’t have Dad until he was thirty-nine. By then this Nick kid would have already been eighteen years old.”
Gloria picked up the letter and glanced at it again. “It says here that he lived in L.A. when he wrote the letter in ’46,” she said. “Is it possible he could still be out here somewhere?”
“Anything’s possible,” I said. “But what if he was sent to a foster home after his mother died? What if he was adopted and took a different last name? What if…what are you doing?”
Gloria had picked up the greater Los Angeles telephone directory and was paging through it. She stopped in the S section and began running her finger down the pages. Her finger stopped on a Nicholas Sawyer who lived in Inglewood, which was twelve or thirteen miles south of Hollywood. Gloria grabbed a pencil and jotted down the address and phone number. “Well,” she said. “Are you curious enough to take a drive to Inglewood?”
“What about Dad?” I said.
“No sense getting him all worked up if this doesn’t pan out, does it?” she said. “If this is the same guy we can always tell Clay about him after we confirm his identity. Come on, what do you say we at least go take a look? You know this thing will just gnaw at you if you don’t, and just think what it could mean to Clay to know he has a big brother.”
I took a quick look at my appointment calendar and noticed, to my dismay, that we had only one client who wanted to see us later today and no active cases. I slapped my palms down on the desk and pushed my body out of my chair. “You wanna drive?” I said.
I took along the sixty-six year-old letter in the original Post Office plastic bag and we exited to the parking lot behind our building. Gloria slid in behind the wheel, and I slid in next to her and found her L.A. street map book. I told her the best route to take and in no time at all we were on our way to see a step uncle I’d never knew existed.
We drove south to Santa Monica Boulevard and took that west to LaCienega, which ran south all the way to Inglewood. We exited east on Manchester Boulevard and drove three blocks to South Cedar Ave. Nicholas Sawyer’s house sat on the corner of Cedar and Elm. It was a light blue stucco house sitting on a dried out brown and green yard, mostly brown. Gloria parked on Elm, directly in front of the house and then just sat there.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Gloria said. “The man’s gone sixty-six years accepting the fact that Matt didn’t want to see him. Do you think our little visit is going to be a life-changing event for him?”
I thought about it momentarily. “Let me put it this way,” I said. “My dad told me a story of the first date he ever had when he was fifteen. He took this girl out to a movie. They had to take the city bus because he wasn’t even old enough to drive yet. Anyway, when they got off the bus after the movie, the girl stood looking at Dad and even stood on her toes, like she was waiting for that good night kiss. Dad told me he was so nervous that he just said good night and walked away.”
“What does that have to do with this?” Gloria said.
“Grandpa Matt moved the family shortly after and Dad never got to date that girl again. It gnawed away at Dad that he never got that good night kiss from the girl. Well, forty-three years later he met her at a fortieth class reunion and told her about him being too shy to kiss her back then and asked if he could finally get that good night kiss after forty-three years. She gladly obliged and Dad left there feeling like a giant loose end had finally been tied up.”
“Let’s see,” Gloria said. “Forty-three years ago when he was fifteen. He’d have been fifty-eight at the time. He’s sixty-two now. This story took place just four years ago?”
I nodded. “See, for Dad it was a forty-three year loose end that he was glad to have finally resolved. It has to be a similar situation for Nicholas. Only he’s been waiting sixty-six years for his resolution. I think it’s time we gave it to him, don’t you?”
Gloria laid her hand on my forearm and smiled. “I do. Let’s go see the man, shall we?”
We walked up the white sidewalk and up three steps to the porch and rang the bell. I could hear shuffling sounds inside before the front door opened and we stood looking at a white-haired man in baggy pants and suspenders.
“Yes?” the man said. “May I help you?”
“Are you Nicholas Sawyer?” I said.
He looked us over and said, “I already get the paper, I have enough magazines, I have no interest in hearing anyone spout the scriptures and I don’t need anyone to cut my lawn.” He began to close the door.
I quickly said, “Mr. Sawyer, my name is Elliott Cooper. Matt Cooper was my grandfather.”
The door stopped closing and the man gave me a second look. Sixty-six years melted away and I thought I saw a glimmer in his eyes.
He opened the door all the way. “Please,” he said, “won’t you come in?”
Gloria and I entered the man’s home and he closed the door behind us. The man shook my hand and invited us to sit in his living room. Gloria and I sat on the sofa and the man sat across from us in a brown overstuffed recliner with an electrical cord running out of the back. It was one of those electric lift chairs.
“You are Nicholas Sawyer, aren’t you?” I said.
Sawyer nodded.
“Mr. Sawyer,” I said. “This may sound strange, but this morning I got a notice from the Post Office to come down and pick something up that they were holding for me. When I got there, the clerk gave me this.” I handed him the envelope addressed to Grandpa, still in the plastic bag. “Apparently it ended up in the dead letter office and has been there since a few days after you mailed it. The clerk told me that they had recently remodeled the Post Office and when they moved a giant one-ton floor safe, they found your letter lying behind it.”
Ni
cholas Sawyer looked down at the letter and then back at me.
I nodded and smiled. “Go on,” I said. “Open it.”
Nicholas slid the envelope out of the plastic bag. He set the plastic bag on the coffee table and sat staring at the envelope. In his fourteen-year-old handwriting he looked at his name in the return address corner and then saw Grandpa Matt’s name in the front. His hands shook as he lifted the flap and withdrew the single sheet of folded paper. He looked up at me again and then down at the letter. He unfolded it and read the contents again for the first time in more than six decades. When he finished reading, he folded it again and slipped it into the envelope, handing it back to me.
“You see, Mr. Sawyer,” I said. “Grandpa never got the letter so he had no way of knowing about you.”
Nicholas did the math in his head and realized he’d never get to meet his father. “When did he die?” Nicholas said.
“Ten years ago,” I told him. “He was ninety-one and died peacefully at home.” I could almost see the thoughts and questions swirling around in Nicholas’s head. I imagined it was hard for him to know what to ask next.
“Mr. Sawyer,” Gloria said. “Matt had a son named Clay. You have a brother.”
Sawyer’s eyes misted up and he pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Is he still alive?” Nicholas asked.
“Very much alive,” Gloria said. “Clay is Elliott’s father and he lives in Hollywood.”
“That would make you, what, my half-nephew?” Nicholas said.
I nodded. “Something like that,” I said.
“You dad,” Nicholas said, “How old is he?”