“You’re the schoolteacher who bought my childhood home?”
“That’s right. I’ve moved in, I’m happy there. My friend and I have come a long way to talk to you about all those boxes we found when we remodeled the school.” That one line brought dead silence to the other end of the line. “I’m out here at the gate. I know it’s bold of me to ask but…”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave me the hell alone.”
“That won’t work anymore, Cooper.” Running out of ideas, she bluffed. “It won’t work because Brent Cody, the police chief you talked to via email, has DNA from the bloody pieces of shirt left in the boxes.”
“Go away!”
“It’s only a matter of time before Brent shows up here. Wouldn’t you prefer to talk to us like a dress rehearsal before you get down to the gritty details with the cops?”
A long silence followed. “Are you still there?” she asked.
“Okay. Okay. I’ll be out to get you.”
“Nice fake out,” Ryder whispered while they waited.
“It’s called desperation.”
Cooper Jennings appeared on the other side of the iron fence holding a remote. When the gate clicked open, they walked up to a man with shaggy chestnut hair around his ears and bright blue eyes. He looked a lot like his siblings.
Julianne held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I won’t lie. I looked up everything I could find about you on the Internet. You’re quite the photographer. When that went nowhere I hired a private detective.”
By this time they’d reached his little house. He let them inside the living room where there were trains set up all around the room, some in motion, running around track.
“Your grandfather and father adored trains, didn’t they? The deed to the shop was right there in the first box we found.”
“Why are you here?” Cooper stated bluntly.
“Someone told us you might need a friend right about now.” Julianne nodded toward Ryder. “You have two, right here.”
“What would you know about it anyway? This isn’t Facebook. I’m doing just fine, thanks. I have plenty of friends.”
Suddenly Julianne wondered how she could get this man to open up about what must’ve been a very painful time in his life. “So these friends know about what happened to your father that night?”
She watched as the grown man went white as a sheet and dropped into the nearest chair. “No one knows that.”
“Isn’t it about time they did?” Ryder pushed. “I came here to San Francisco to confront my past, a past that has nothing to do with you. We all have our demons that need put to rest.”
“Sure you do,” Cooper said with derision. “I guarantee you’ve never known a demon firsthand.”
Ryder’s eyes met Julianne’s in a worried gaze. “The point is it felt damn good to get it behind me. I happen to think you’ll feel the same if you just talk to someone about it.”
Cooper puffed air into his cheeks, scrubbed both of his hands down his face, and blew out a huge sigh. Tears formed in his eyes. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Your mother seemed…very manipulative,” Julianne prompted.
“She was, possibly the most manipulative woman I’ve ever known. Of course, I didn’t admit that to anyone until just a few years ago on a psychiatrist’s couch.”
“We couldn’t find anyone in town to deny that sentiment.”
The photographer puffed out a muffled laugh. “Oh I’m sure that’s true. No one knew what she was really capable of though, least of all her husband and children. That night, the night it happened, I was sound asleep. My dad had tucked me into bed not three hours before that. But my mother woke me up in the middle of the damn night. She was always waking us up at some ungodly hour for some stupid, ridiculous reason. Like the night my dad had packed his bags to leave after they’d had another horrible argument. But to keep him there, she ran upstairs, made us get out of bed, and then marched us downstairs like little soldiers. She told us Dad was leaving us and he was never coming back. I remember Drea and Caleb started to cry. What kind of mother uses her children like that? What kind of woman treats her kids like that?”
“An unstable one.”
“I knew even then my mother wasn’t right in the head. People around town threw out the word crazy—the neighbors, the kids at school. But I just recall thinking how mean she could be to everyone. At nine, I knew enough to know my dad wasn’t leaving us but was trying to leave her. For some reason, I understood. Of course, I didn’t want him to go. I felt guilty about that later.”
Cooper shook his head. “I knew she didn’t want to see him happy, let alone be happy with Miss Caldwell. That was the ultimate slap in the face. My mother never wanted anyone happy, least of all her own husband or her kids. All she knew was how to be miserable so she wanted everyone else to be that way, too.”
Cooper took a deep breath before he could go on. “Look, I was her son but sometimes my mother could be mean just for the sake of it. I had to accept that about her. Of course, there were always those she fooled.”
“Are you saying she fooled your dad?”
“He wanted something that wasn’t reality. Maybe he couldn’t accept how she really was. I’ve had too much time to think back to my childhood, remember her in action. I was able to go back in my mind and watch her through the years. She was happiest when she created drama. Lots of drama. I watched her lie to my father numerous times. She’d trick him into believing something that wasn’t real. I think I resented him for that, for getting fooled. I kept waiting for him to wake up, to get us away from her. But he never did.”
“Do you think medication would’ve helped her?” Julianne looked into the man’s sad eyes and watched as he sucked in a trembling breath before going on.
“She wouldn’t take it, refused in fact. I’m not sure why.”
“What happened that night when she woke you up?”
“I wasn’t sure at first what she wanted me to do. But then, she dragged me downstairs, waited like a crack addict in an agitated state for me to at least get my shoes tied. Then we trooped out the front door and down the steps. It took me a while to realize we were headed to the beach. But after we crossed the street, she led me over the rocks and under the pier. And that’s when I saw the bodies. First, I spotted my father, lying on his back. He was white as a sheet, no color in his face at all. I had no idea how long he’d been like that. Then, a few feet away, I spotted another body, a female. It looked like Miss Caldwell. I’d never seen two people dead before. It’s nothing like the movies. Her eyes were still open. But my father’s eyes were closed. Funny what you remember. I’ll never forget their ashen faces. They’d both lost too much blood to still be alive. That much I knew. It was too late to help either one of them. They were both gone.”
“That’s a horrible thing for a nine-year-old to see,” Julianne said, reaching for his hand.
“How did a woman and a little boy get the bodies off the beach?” Ryder asked.
“I helped my mother load them into Drea’s wagon. We had to make two trips.”
Julianne exchanged a shocked look with Ryder. “Oh, Cooper. I’m so very sorry.”
“No one saw you?” Ryder asked. “Julianne bought your former home. The proximity to the pier is so close it’s hard to imagine how no one heard the shots.”
“It was the middle of the night,” Cooper said sharply. “Besides, luck always seemed to be on my mother’s side, no matter how many things she stole, there were a lot more times she didn’t get caught. This was no different. I kept waiting for someone to show up. But… No one came.”
“How long did it take you to…you know…?”
“Put them in the ground? It took us the rest of the night. We didn’t finish up until around five in the morning.”
“Where? Where did you…bury them?”
Because Cooper had a h
ard time going on, she said the first logical thing that popped into her head. “It wasn’t on the beach. There’s an archaeological dig very near that spot, the team would’ve discovered them by now with everything they’ve unearthed. They’ve gone down as much as ten feet. But it had to be somewhere close by.”
“We pulled the wagon back home and around the corner, used the soft dirt on top of the compost heap.”
“You buried them at The Plant Habitat?”
Despite the sick look on his face, Cooper nodded.
The three sat there without saying anything else for what seemed like an eternity, the eerie silence hanging over them like a weighted dome.
Finally Julianne broke the tension. “There’s something I still don’t understand. I’m sorry to be so insensitive about this, Cooper, but… I have to ask. Why on earth would you think to put a piece of your father’s shirt in a keepsake box, several boxes in fact? And how did a nine-year-old even think to do that?”
The grown man ran his fingers through his hair, hung his head. “Even at that young age I was ashamed of what I’d done, what I’d been asked to do by my own mother. I needed to take something away of his for myself, a reminder of what I’d done. It may sound crazy but...”
“No, no, it doesn’t.” Julianne said, patting his back like she sometimes did to console one of her students. “You were just a small boy doing what your mother asked of you, doing your best to handle a horrific event.”
“I remember digging in between all the crying. Sometimes I was bawling so hard I couldn’t see what I was doing. But when my mother went into the house and came back with a pair of scissors so she could cut off Ms. Caldwell’s hair, all of a sudden I stopped. I don’t know but something kicked in. I watched in horror as my mother went wild, kicking both bodies, cursing, pitching a fit. I knew then I wanted something of my dad’s. I told my mother I needed to take a break. She starting digging and while she was distracted, I used those same scissors to cut a piece of his shirt. The material was sticky. The dirt had stuck to it. But I didn’t care. Initially I cut out one large piece from the front and then later cut that into smaller pieces. I had these little boxes, one my dad had made especially for me. And after…after helping to bury him… I thought maybe one day Drea and Caleb might want their own box. So I squirrelled away the pieces of his shirt in mine until I could find boxes for them. I ended up locating an old metal one in the garage for Caleb. Drea had a cigar box so I used that until I ended up with four. I guess in my mind, I thought one day my mother might actually do the right thing so I made another box up for her.”
Julianne was beginning to understand. “But you didn’t present them to the others?”
“No. I wasn’t thinking right that night. It took me several days to realize I had a secret that Drea and Caleb could never know. But by this time, I didn’t have the guts to throw those pieces of his shirt in the trash. I couldn’t do it. I thought maybe I should bury them. But weeks later, I knew I couldn’t do that either. I couldn’t pick up a shovel and dig up the ground, not again, not for any reason. I wouldn’t go near the garden center after that.”
“Okay, so was it simply a fluke that you had all the baseball cards in there and the toys, the rocks, the shells?”
He shook his head. “No fluke. I had to finish what I thought was part of the ceremony for saying goodbye to my dad. He needed a funeral, some ritual to mark his passing. I knew that even as a kid. So I took each box, put something from each one of us in there because it seemed like the right thing to do. I thought it was important my dad have something from his kids. Caleb’s matchbox cars went in there—he was barely four at the time—Drea’s collection of seashells, and my cards and rocks. A couple days went by before I realized I couldn’t go back anywhere near where the bodies lay buried. I obviously had to think up something else.”
“So at some point you decided to get all the keepsake boxes out of the house and find a hiding place?”
“That’s what I did. I loaded the boxes up in a tote, rode my bike to the school.” Cooper started to sob. “I buried my own father, I loved my dad more than anyone in the world, but I buried him under a goddamn compost heap because my mother told me to do it.”
“Your mother was ill.”
“That’s no excuse,” Cooper shouted. “Mental illness only explains certain things about her. She wielded love like a sword, used it like a weapon. I wanted her to love me so I did what I could to please her. But nothing ever worked for the long haul. It was always a short-term result that came undone as soon as she needed more attention, more affirmation. I couldn’t give it to her. No one could.”
“That’s incredibly insightful for a child.”
“You think I came to all this understanding as a kid on my own? Think again. It took years of seeing a therapist as an adult. I had to do something about my guilt. Do you understand what I’m saying? I helped my mother bury my own father when I was nine years old and then lied about it for twenty years. I couldn’t take the guilt. It was a shitty thing she did.”
“No argument there. So how did you come by your father’s college ring?”
“That night before I rolled his body in the hole, I slid the ring from his finger before my mother made me toss the dirt over him. It’s the only jewelry he had on. He’d long ago stopped wearing his wedding ring. The ring was right there... I slipped it in my pocket and then later added it to the other stuff. I found a hiding place in the teacher’s lounge for it behind the old part of the furnace.”
“What was the deed doing in the box?”
“I don’t remember anything about the deed being in there. To be honest, I don’t remember all the actual contents. I’ve blocked out a lot of what I put in there.”
“You took the boxes to school because you wanted them found. Is that right?” Ryder asked.
“Yes, I desperately wanted someone to find them. If I left all of them at the school there was a greater chance someone would stumble on at least one box and know what she’d done, what I’d done for her. The only problem was, by then, they’d closed it down. I thought for sure it might reopen any day. So I took my chances, hid them in places I was sure someone would look. I knew for damned sure no one would ever stumble upon them stuck under a bunch of daisies in the backyard. But if someone could find them in a public place, find them at the school they’d somehow know and do something.”
“I’m sorry it took us so long.”
“Yeah? I am too.”
“What about the night she committed suicide?”
An odd look crossed Cooper’s face. “You mean the night she told me the harbor was her only way out, her last chance for happiness? That night?”
“The harbor was her last chance? Really?”
“That’s what she told us. The night she made her three kids sit there in a goddamn boat only to watch while she jumped into the ocean. We must’ve been there in the boat for the longest time hoping she’d come back. She didn’t.”
“That’s when the fisherman found you.”
“Yeah. Old man Sundersen was his name. He towed us into shore. And before you ask, I didn’t go after my own mother when she took that leap into the water. I didn’t want to. I wanted her gone. God help me, but a part of me was glad she was gone. I just wanted it to be over with.”
“How long before you knew it wasn’t over with?” Ryder asked.
“We figure Eleanor is still alive, Cooper. You might as well tell us the rest of it.”
At the words, Julianne saw the grown man flinch. “How do you know that?”
Ryder stuck his hands in his pockets, wandered around the little room. “You mean what gave it away? Julianne and I talked about this quite a bit. There was never a death certificate. We checked. No coroner’s inquest, no attempt by anyone to ever have Eleanor Jennings Richmond declared legally dead. We wondered why? After a period of time it seems people just forgot about the whole thing until one of the workers found the first box.”
Cooper clo
sed his eyes, rested his head in his hands. “I’m so sick and tired of all this. Do you know what it’s like to have a murderer for a mother? She killed the father of her children. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have a mother who made her oldest son an accomplice after the fact? That’s what my counselor called it.”
“No, I’m sorry I don’t. I grew up without a mother. Occasionally misinformed people tried to convince me I was destined for failure because I came from a one-parent home. So no, I’m happy to say, I never had a mother like yours.”
“She was a constant embarrassment.”
“When did you know she was still alive?”
“I was a senior in high school when I got the first letter. At first I thought it was one of my friends pulling a prank, playing a practical joke on me. But then I began to think how could that be? The envelope was postmarked Dallas, Texas. It looked like the real deal. How could kids pull off that kind of detail?”
“Why did she write after nine years of silence?”
“Why else? She needed money?”
“From a senior in high school?”
“Believe me Eleanor wouldn’t care if the dollar came from a kid.”
“How much did you send her?”
“All I had saved up. Five hundred dollars.”
“Why?” Ryder asked. But then he got it. “She was blackmailing you. ‘Pay me, or I’ll let everyone in town know what you did that night.’ Am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“You had to realize at some point she was bluffing. She wouldn’t have let the secret be known to anyone.”
“I know that. But the guilt kept me paying. That, and the humiliation of it all.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell anyone.”
Cooper shook his head. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t tell my uncle or rather the man that treated me like his son. I just couldn’t bring myself to have that conversation. By the second letter, I’d graduated high school. I packed my bags and headed north to Seattle. I figured if she couldn’t find me…the letters would stop.”
Last Chance Harbor Page 30