OTISFIELD – They’d talk about the little things – what they had done that day, where they had gone, and always, “How’s mom?”

Margaret and Irene “Rita” Martin may have lived half a country apart, but they kept in touch every day by phone, often with several calls over the course of a day.

Now, Margaret, 49, is planning her baby sister’s funeral.

When that’s over with, she’ll await a subpoena. She expects to be called to Zephyrhills, Fla., to testify against the man charged with stabbing her sister to death.

“I have to, for Rita,” Margaret said.

The siblings were so close, Margaret said, that she instinctively knew something was wrong that Tuesday morning.

There hadn’t been any calls for a while, she remembered a week later. And when Margaret tried calling Rita, the phone would go unanswered.

She called Rita’s partner’s friend, a man who lived near the mobile home Rita shared with her longtime love, Craig Thomas.

“I had a gut feeling,” Margaret said. “A bad feeling.”

When Thomas’ friend called Margaret back in Otisfield, he didn’t have good news. Mail and newspapers were piling up on the front steps, he said. And a neighbor had seen Thomas’ car leaving the driveway in the wee hours of the morning.

“I knew that wasn’t right,” Margaret said. “The first thing they’d do is get up and get the newspaper. And they’d never go out that late.”

Margaret called the Zephyrhills police. She asked that they check the house, check on the well-being of Rita, 45, and Craig, 54.

Police found the couple dead on the floor of the master bathroom, about an arm’s length apart.

Craig’s son Kyle has been charged with their slayings. He was arrested in Georgia on a probation violation several days after the bodies of Rita and his father were found. Florida police charged him with their deaths Monday night in two warrants to be served this week, Zephyrhills Police Chief Russ Barnes said.

Margaret said police called her that evening to let her know their chief suspect was in custody. She was also told to expect to be called as a witness in the case, to detail how she had called police to check on her sister’s well-being.

That will put her closer to the trial, she said, and she wants to be there.

It will be the last chance she has to do something for Rita.

And she said she wants to see Kyle Thomas – if he’s guilty as charged – pay for the crimes.

“Florida has the death penalty,” she noted.

Now, though, she and her older sister, Charlotte Martin, who lives in West Paris, are finishing up funeral plans for Rita.

“Her ashes are on the way back here,” she said of Rita. A funeral service is tentatively planned for Wednesday, Jan. 19, at the Dillingham & Son memorial chapel in Auburn, a funeral home spokesman said Tuesday night.

Rita’s twin brother, Irving, “is really taking it bad,” Margaret said before adding, “We all are.”

Irving Martin lives in Lewiston. Another brother, Bob Martin, lives in Durham, and another sister, Isabelle Fisher, lives in Auburn.

Their mother, Gertrude Martin, who is now 78, lives at the Norway Rehabilitation Center, Margaret said.

She said Rita and Craig met while the two were living in the Twin Cities in the early 1990s. They eventually fell in love and began living together here around 1993, she said. They bought their home and moved to Zephyrhills in 1998.

Rita, said Margaret, was a loving sister who enjoyed listening to country music on the radio. She and Craig were living on Social Security disability insurance. They largely kept to themselves, she said. An outing might consist of a drive to Wal-Mart or to a flea market where they’d buy fresh produce.

“She was a wonderful cook, and she made an awesome salad,” Margaret said. “She was a good kid. She didn’t deserve this.”

Margaret said she misses her sister – and the frequent chats they’d share – dearly.

“I keep waiting for the phone to ring.”