Free Kissing Arizona by Elizabeth Gunn

confidences with Lois or Nicole?’
    â€˜Confidences?’ She looked at Sarah with something like distaste. ‘I wasn’t a friend. I was just the paid help.’ She considered the ceiling for a few seconds. ‘You can work a long time in somebody’s store without really knowing them.’
    Her eyes came down from the ceiling and landed on Sarah like two hazel searchlights. ‘But as far as I know, Frank didn’t have any more reason to kill his wife now than he’s ever had. And they’d been married over thirty years. They worked together for the last twenty-seven, raised two children and put them to work in the business. Doesn’t that sound like a successful marriage?’
    â€˜Yes. And you’re sure the business was doing all right? Nicole said some of the bankers thought it should be showing more profit.’
    â€˜Oh well . . . bankers.’ She pushed some of her bright hair off her face and turned into a corporate booster. ‘This firm is very successful. Even last year when so many stores went out of business, Cooper’s showed a small profit.’
    â€˜I hear you.’ Sarah decided to touch where she thought there might be another sore spot. ‘Will you be working for the children now?’
    â€˜Well.’ Her arms and legs became restless. After some switching around she said, ‘Nicole’s a tiger for work. I think she’d like to keep the stores, if she can.’
    â€˜Would you be pleased if she did? Does she have enough experience to run such a big business?’
    â€˜Oh . . . I think . . . with the right kind of help, yes. She’s been at it all her life.’
    â€˜And you’d like to stay and be the right kind of help? You wouldn’t mind working for Nicole?’
    â€˜For . . . with . . .’ She rocked both hands. ‘I think we can work something out.’
    â€˜How about Tom? Would you be happy with him as a boss?’
    She shrugged, flouncing and tossing her head the way a woman does when she doesn’t want to answer. ‘He’s never done much merchandising, so I don’t see . . . I don’t know what part he would play.’
    â€˜So you don’t have any impression about his work?’
    â€˜Everybody says he takes care of the family money. That doesn’t – I don’t know anything about that.’
    â€˜Do you expect him to take a more active role in operations now?’
    â€˜I don’t know anything about that either.’
    â€˜Do you anticipate a power struggle now between the siblings?’
    â€˜Oh, no, no.’ She waved dismissively. ‘Nicole and Tom are fond of each other.’
    They are? Phyllis must have seen something I missed. Of course, since Phyllis’s career now depended on the goodwill of the two remaining Coopers, she wasn’t likely to say anything damaging about them, even if she knew it.
    She checked her list of questions, found one she hadn’t asked. ‘Do you own any firearms?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Oh? Nicole said her father went through a stage of insisting that she and her mother ought to keep a gun and learn to use it. He didn’t try to get you to carry?’
    â€˜Oh, he suggested it. Even offered to buy one for me and pay for the training. I didn’t want to do it, so I refused.’
    Sarah’s interview summary read that Phyllis seemed ambivalent about Tom Cooper, friendly toward Lois and Nicole, and almost ready to write Frank’s eulogy.
    It was odd, she thought, looking over her interviews, how opaque the Cooper family appeared. They had lived a very public life as successful Tucson merchants for a quarter of a century, yet their personal relationships seemed clouded in doubt. It was also interesting that Nicole and her mother, though they protested and evaded, in the end had given in and accepted the guns Frank wanted them to have. But