The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “Beats me,” Otis said. “Hey, I gotta get back to work. Catch you later, Matt.”

  I raised my coffee cup in a salute. “Great eggs, as usual.” I finished the last of my toast, paid for my breakfast and left an extra dime for Otis. I hit the street again and made it to my office in just a few minutes. I took the elevator to the third floor and walked to the end of the hall. I made a mental note to have the lettering on my glass door redone. It was looking pretty worn.

  I hung up my coat and hat and took my seat behind my desk. I’d planned on taking a shot at balancing my checkbook but didn’t get the chance to even start before my phone rang.

  “Cooper Investigations,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

  “Uh, hello, uh,” the female voice on the other end said. “I’m uh, not sure if you’d be the right person to call, but I, um, I need to talk to somebody and your name came up while I was asking around.”

  “And who am I speaking to?” I said.

  “Do I have to give my name?”

  “Only if you want to continue this conversation,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “It’s, um, Judy.”

  This was getting tiresome. “Well, um Judy, do you have a last name or do you want to make that one up as well?”

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said right before the phone went dead.

  I hung it up and sighed. I was hoping that wasn’t an indication of how the rest of my day was going to go. I opened my checkbook and flipped back through the check stubs until I got to July. I hated this chore but my bank was saying that I had nearly eighty dollars less in my account than my checkbook said. It was going to take some time to find their error. It couldn’t be my error, after all. I’d just begun to check my figures when my outer office door opened and closed again. Small feet tapped across the linoleum before I heard the knock on my inner door.

  “It’s not locked,” I said from my seat.

  The door opened and a small woman peeked in, while the rest of her remained in my outer office.

  “You can come all the way in,” I said. “I don’t charge by how much space you occupy.”

  She stepped inside, leaving the door open and then just stood there, looking at the furnishings and then at me. It took a full minute before she felt comfortable enough to close the door and approach my desk. I gestured toward my client’s chair.

  “Have a seat, won’t you?” I said.

  She sat, still looking around the room. Finally she said, “I need some help, Mr. Cooper.”

  I casually said, “And what is it I can do for you, Judy?”

  “Judy? Oh, well, I...” She stopped and gave me a strange look.

  “That’s your name, isn’t it, Judy?” I said. “Didn’t you just call me a minute ago?”

  She sighed with a bit of relief. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper. It’s just that I...”

  “Please,” I said, interrupting her. “Call me Matt. I don’t bite so try to relax and tell me what’s bothering you.”

  She paused, trying to form her next sentence in her mind before she spoke. “It’s my boyfriend.”

  “Is he steeping out on you? Do you want me to tail him for you? Is that it?”

  She reached into her purse and withdrew a handkerchief, dabbing her eyes with it.

  I stood and leaned over my desk, placing my hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Take you time.”

  She wiped tears and sniffled into her handkerchief for a while longer and then tried to sit up straighter in her chair. “It was last Friday,” she began. “Scott and I were shopping for a ring. We were going to be married but he died last Friday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Miss...” I stopped and looked at her. “By the way, what is your name?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “It’s Bembenek. Sharon Bembenek.”

  “And Scott’s last name?”

  “Peters,” she said. “Scott Peters.”

  So what happened to Scott last Friday?” I said. “And why is it you wanted to see me?”

  Sharon wrung her hands in her lap. “Well, like I said, we were shopping for a ring over on Western Avenue. Scott wanted me to be involved in the purchase, since it was a ring I was going to be wearing for the rest of my life. Anyway, we had just crossed the street at Sunset and were walking south when this car jumped the curb and came at us. Scott pushed me out of the way, but the car hit him and then just sped away.”

  “I was just reading about that in this morning’s paper,” I said. “Have the police caught the driver yet?”

  “That’s just it,” Sharon said. “They can’t or won’t tell me anything, since I’m not a relative. He has no family here in California. They’re back in Indiana and then there’s just his grandmother, Ida. And she’s not much help. She’s in a nursing home and barely knows her own name, let alone what’s going on around her.”

  “And how’s Scott doing?” I asked.

  Her eyes teared up again. “He died this morning, at seven-fourteen,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the handkerchief. “Oh, Matt, Scott was on a lot of heavy-duty pain medication, so with the help of that he passed on painlessly and peacefully. He turned his head at the very end and almost seemed to be looking at someone and actually had just the faintest hint of a smile on his face. I can’t help but to think that someone he loved was coming to meet him, and it made him happy to see whoever it was.”

  I could feel my eyes welling up and excused myself. I walked over to my sink and filled a water glass. I looked back at Sharon and saw that she was staring out my window. I quickly wiped my eyes and returned to my desk.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Like I said, the police won’t tell me anything because I’m not family. I’d like you to look into his death just so I can put my mind at rest. I need to know that it was just a freak accident and not someone who was out to get Scott. Would you do that for me, Mr. Cooper, er, I mean Matt?”

  I took a drink, stalling for time. I set my drinking glass down and slowly said, “Just what is it you think I can do for you that the police can’t?”

  “I don’t know if there is anything,” she said. “But if that’s the case, at least you can tell me that’s all there is. I can’t go on wondering.”

  She had me there. And it’s not like I was overloaded with work. “All right,” I said finally. “I’ll see what I can find out, but I can’t promise you that it’ll result in anything more than you have now. If that’s agreeable then I think we can do business. I get twenty-five a day and expenses.”

  Sharon agreed and I had her sign my simple contract for services. I walked her to my outer door and watched as she walked down the hall to the elevator. Well, at least now I had something to do instead of balancing that stupid checkbook.

  I left the office and drove down to the precinct. I still had connections from my years on the force. I found Sergeant Dan Hollister’s office and rapped on the doorframe. He was on the phone, but motioned me in and pointed to the seat across from his desk. A moment later he got off the phone and turned to me.

  “Matt Cooper, what brings you down here on a day like this?”

  I reached into my coat pocket and withdrew a ten-dollar bill and bent over in my seat. When I sat up again, I had the sawbuck in my hand and held it out to Dan. “You drop this?”

  Dan looked sideways at me. “Huh?”

  “Isn’t this yours? I found it here on the floor. Gotta be yours.”

  “Okay, Matt, what’s the story here? You don’t just hand over ten bucks for nothing.”

  I dropped the bill in front of him. “Let’s just say it’ll cover the cost of the paperwork I need from you and leave it at that.”

  “What paperwork?”

  “Last Friday,” I began, “You had a hit and run over on Western Avenue just south of Sunset and a kid was run down.”

  “Yeah,” Dan said. “I remember it. What about it?”

  “The kid, Scott Peters, d
ied this morning and his fiancé wants to know the details. She also says you can’t or won’t tell her anything.”

  “Little woman?” Dan said. “Five feet nothin’, skinny as a rail? That woman?”

  “That’s her,” I said. “She hired me to look into Scott’s death and I figured once you pay for the paper and the ink, you’ll still have enough left for yourself to buy a decent dinner for two somewhere in town. How’s that sound to you?”

  “Sounds fine to me,” Dan said, “But I’d be stealing your money. I don’t know any more than you do at this time.”

  “I thought I could at least start with the police report and get the names of whatever witnesses you found at the scene.”

  “Matt,” Dan said, “Our guys were on the scene within five minutes and no one stepped forward with any information. There were very few people on the street then and those that were said they were looking someplace else when it happened. What are the odds that no one else saw what happened?” Dan picked up the ten and tossed it back to me. “Keep your money, Matt. There’s nothing to find out.”

  I grabbed the ten and stuffed it into my pocket. I rose from the chair and thanked Dan for the time and agreed that I’d share whatever I came up with on my own, if anything.

  I decided that since I’d come up dry here, that I’d start at the second best place—the scene of the crime. It took me less than fifteen minutes to drive to Western and Sunset. I parked on Western and started walking the same steps that Sharon and Scott had taken last Friday. I could still see the scuff marks where the car’s muffler dragged on the sidewalk and some black tire marks where the car had swerved back onto the street. There was a small bloodstain up against the building where Scott had pushed Sharon out of the way. There was a bigger stain at the spot where the car connected with Scott’s body. That spot was right in front of a bar called Jake’s and the sign in the window said they were open at six a.m. and that they closed at two a.m. I guessed that Jake could survive on four hours of sleep.

  I pulled the door open and stepped inside. It took my eyes a while to adjust to the dark but I managed to feel my way over to the bar. There was an old guy in a white apron, probably in his sixties, wiping bar glasses as I approached. He didn’t bother looking up from his work. I laid a dollar on the bar and asked for a beer. He set the rag and the glass down, reached behind him in one fluid motion and found a beer glass. He filled it and slid it down to me as if that’s what he’d been born to do. He scooped up the dollar and took it over to the register and was about to hand me my change.

  “Keep it,” I said, taking a drink from the beer glass.

  He dropped the change in his pocket and went back to wiping the glass with the rag. Every now and then he’d glance up at me and I’d smile.

  “So, you had this bar long?” I said, trying to make it sound like small talk.

  “Yup.”

  So much for small talk. I decided the direct approach was the best way to go. “You on duty last Friday when that kid got hit out in front of your place?”

  “Yup.”

  “You see what happened?”

  “Nope.”

  I pulled the ten that Dan had turned down out of my pocket, ripped it in half and laid half of it on the bar, edging it toward the man. “Sure you didn’t see anything?”

  He reached for the half bill and I pulled it back out of reach. He looked at me.

  “Mighta seen somethin’,” he said, eyeing the ten.

  “That something worth ten bucks?” I had him now.

  “Could be,” he said slyly. “Won’t know ‘til I have the sawbuck.”

  I pulled my hand off the ripped bill and he scooped it up with one quick motion.

  “I seen the car,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  “All I seen was the back end as it was squealing away. Then I went out to the sidewalk and seen the kid laying there. What a mess that was.”

  “You tell the police what you told me?”

  “Nope. I keep my nose outta other people’s business,” he said.

  “Unless there’s ten in it for you,” I reminded him.

  “There’s that,” he agreed. “But I don’t like cops, either.”

  “But you’re talkin’ to me,” I said.

  “And you ain’t no cop, neither.”

  “How can you tell?” I said curiously.

  He leaned in close to my face. “‘Cause no cop ever paid for information. All they try to do is bully it outta you and I don’t like that, see?”

  “So what can you tell me about the car?”

  “It was a Lincoln,” he said. “That much I know for sure.”

  “How’s that?”

  “The guy across the street owns a Lincoln, so I got to know what they look like, since he parks his right over there every day.”

  “So he owns a Lincoln? Which guy are you talking about?”

  “I know what you’re thinkin’ but it wasn’t him. He owns the flower shop over there,” he said pointing. “His name is Del MacMurray. But his Lincoln is cream colored. The one that jumped the curb here was black. Same year, though. I could tell by the taillights. The ‘45’s taillights are taller and narrower and the ‘46’s are wider and shorter.”

  “Sounds like you got a pretty good look at it,” I said.

  “I guess I did,” he agreed.

  “I suppose it would be too much to hope for that you got a look at the license number.”

  “It went by so quick,” he said. “I only got a short look at it and all I saw was a C and a 2. That’s all I saw, and I don’t even remember what order they were in. Ain’t much help, is it?”

  “Well, see now,” I said. “You’re more helpful than you know. Did you see which way the Lincoln went when it left here?”

  “South,” the bartender said pointing down the street. “I didn’t see it turn anywhere before I looked back at the kid. Just south down Western.”

  I finished my beer and dropped the other half of the sawbuck on the bar. He grabbed it and put it in the same pocket with the first half. By the time he looked up again I was out on the street. I decided to pay Del a visit.

  I caught a break in the traffic and rushed across the street to the flower shop. Out on the sidewalk Del had several shelves of bright red roses and a shelf of posies directly beneath them. The display sat under his red-and-white striped awning. Across one window he had painted in gold lettering, “Del’s” and on the opposite window it said, “Flowers.” I stepped through the front door into a wonderful smelling world of many colors.

  There was a tall, thin man standing near a large refrigerated unit with glass doors. The doors were open and he was arranging flowers in vases with something green serving as a filler around the flowers. He stopped arranging when he saw me. He wiped his hands on his white apron and smiled as I approached.

  “Good morning, sir,” Del said. “Can I help you find something today?”

  “Your name Del?” I said.

  The man nodded and I extended my hand. “My name’s Cooper. Matt Cooper. I was just across the street talking to the man at the bar.”

  “Jake?” Del said.

  “If that’s his name, yes. He the owner?”

  “Yeah,” Del said, shaking my hand. “Jake’s been there since before I opened this store. Let’s see now, that would be six, no, seven years now that I’ve been here so I’d guess that Jake’s been there for eight years. Yes, eight years. When I moved in he came over and introduced himself and told me at that time that he’d been open for a year already. So, what did you talk to Jake about, if I may ask?”

  “He was telling me about your Lincoln and it sounded like a car I was thinking of buying.” I lied, trying to draw him out. “Says yours is a cream color.”

  “That right,” Del said, almost proudly. “Last year’s model but it still looks brand new. I got it with only nine hundred miles on it. Can you imagine? The original owner died in his sleep four months after he bought it brand new and I bough
t it from his widow. Saved a bundle over a new one.”

  “Sounds like a terrific car,” I said. “Can’t be many of those around here.”

  “You’d think that,” Del said. But you know, I saw one like mine just last Friday. Different color, but the same year and model.”

  “You don’t say? Where was that you saw it?”

  Del pointed toward Jake’s Bar. “Right over there, across the street. Oh, that was terrible. I’ll never forget it.”

  “Why do you say that?” I said.

  “Didn’t you hear? It ran up on the sidewalk and ran down that young man who was walking with his girl. Terrible, it was. Just terrible.”

  “Hey,” I said, trying to put a little surprise in my voice. “I did read something about that in the paper. And you say it happened right in this block?”

  “Not fifty feet from where you’re standing,” Del said. “I was working on my window arrangement when I hear a scraping sound from somewhere close. I looked up and there he was.”

  “He?”

  “The man in the black Lincoln,” Del explained. “Something underneath his car was scraping on the curb and that got my attention so I looked up just as he hit that kid and then he swerved back onto the street again and drove off. Never even stopped. Then the girl he was with screamed. I’m the one who called the police, you know. They must have called an ambulance, because one showed up right behind the police car.”

  “Whoa, that would be a memorable day, I guess. Did the police ever talk to you about what you saw?”

  “No,” Del said. “I thought that was kind of peculiar, but they just went into Jake’s and were back in their car in no time at all. I got busy with a customer just then and I didn’t get a chance to go over there again before they left. Later I just figured they got what they wanted from Jake and forgot about the whole thing.”

  “What else could you have told them?” I said.

  “Oh, I could have told them what the driver looked like, but no one ever asked me and I really couldn’t afford to close up shop and go downtown and sit with them for too long. I have a store to run and I’m here all by myself. You see how it is?”