I nodded in sympathy. “How many relatives does he have here?”
“Two aunts, and I think some cousins. I’ve never met any of them.”
“Is there any scuttlebutt around town about Childress that you’ve come across?”
I got a glare. “Nothing I’ve ever heard; It may surprise you, Mr. Goodwin, coming as you do from the self-anointed cultural capital of the western world, to learn that not all small-town newspapers are gossip sheets. We didn’t win all those awards we’ve gotten since Chet took over by chattering about personal lives and peccadilloes.” She sucked in air and let it out with an indignant whoosh.
“Whoa!” I leaned back and held up a palm. “I’m not taking shots at you or the paper. And I’m not interested in idle gossip for its own sake. Remember, we’re talking about the possibility that a murder has been committed.”
“Okay, sorry.” Gina smiled sheepishly and slapped herself lightly on the cheek. “I guess maybe I get a little defensive sometimes.”
“Dammit, get defensive!” Southworth barked, punching the air with a beefy fist. “I love to hear you defend the Mercury. I know Goodwin meant no offense, though. If he didn’t come up with questions like that, then he wouldn’t be a good reporter. Do you need to talk anymore to Gina?”
When I said no, she stood up and came over to me, offering a hand to show there were no hard feelings. I took it and smiled.
After she walked out, the editor motioned toward the doorway. “She’s damn good,” he said, “best we’ve got, and I know I’ll be losing her before long. There’s only so much variety and challenge you can offer an enterprising reporter like her in a town this size and on a twice-weekly. But... that comes with the territory — you train ’em to lose ’em. Tell me, what makes your boss and his client — and you, too, I assume — so sure that Childress was murdered?”
“Nothing tangible, except that life had been going more or less well for him,” I replied. “And he was supposed to be married in the fall.”
He nodded. “So I heard. I suppose you’re going to talk to his relatives?”
“The aunts, anyway. Can you point me toward them?”
“Barbara — that’s the woman you met out front — can give you directions to where they live.” Southworth got to his feet and stretched. “Normally a few whiffs of a thing like this would get my old police reporter’s juices flowing, but from what little I know and what you’ve told me, I don’t see any arrows that point to murder. If you do find something, though, I’d appreciate a call.”
“I have a prior commitment to a paper in New York,” I told him. “But if you don’t mind being second in line...”
He laughed heartily. “Don’t mind a bit. I understand that you’ve got to keep your primary sources happy. But I’d sure as hell like to scoop the argyle socks off those arrogant bastards who run the fat, self-satisfied daily over in the next county.”
“Sounds like a healthy attitude to me,” I told him as we shook hands. “If and when something happens, I’ll be happy to supply you with some boulders for your catapult.”
Eleven
The twisting, two-lane blacktop took me southeast out of Mercer past small farms; all their houses and barns cried out for fresh paint and a handyman. Any dude from the city who feels the American farmer whines too much about his lot would be advised to take the route I did on that rainy April afternoon.
Following Barbara Adamson’s neatly drawn map, I turned right onto a stretch of gravel called Bailey’s Road and, after leaving a wake of dust for a quarter-mile, found the house, which was as Barbara had described it: two stories, faded yellow clapboard, with an almost-dead oak in a front yard that was more dirt than grass and a sway-backed barn off to the left. The mailbox, which had meeker hand-painted on it in faded red letters, perched atop a spindly post that didn’t figure to survive the next strong wind.
I steered my car into the ruts that passed for a driveway and pulled up behind a grimy pickup truck of indeterminate color with more dents than a Manhattan messenger’s bicycle. I climbed the three sagging steps to the front porch, which actually was just a stoop covered by a small roof. Finding no bell, I knocked on the screen door, which rattled with each rap of my knuckles.
After thirty seconds, the front door was pulled open. A chalk-white face with jet-black eyes and black hair pulled back against the sides of her head peered warily at me from behind the screen. “Yes?” she said in barely more than a whisper. Her skin was unhealthily pale.
“Are you Melva Meeker?” I asked, giving her what I hoped was an earnest smile.
“Oh, no, that’s my mother,” she replied with reverence. “What do you want?”
“My name is Goodwin, and I am investigating the death of Charles Childress.” I held up my P.I.’s license, realizing that I sounded like somebody reading a grade-B movie script. “I would like to talk to Mrs. Meeker.”
The woman, whom I guessed to be in her early to middle thirties, frowned, did an about-face, and silently dissolved into the murky interior of the house.
“It’s a man about Charles,” I heard her say. Another voice responded, but the rest of the conversation was muffled. Then footsteps grew louder on the creaking floor, and a second face materialized behind the screen. “I’m Melva Meeker,” the woman said tentatively. Her broad face, framed by white hair that was pulled tightly back like her daughter’s, had all the animation of her offspring’s. “Why are you here, sir?”
Give both of them points for being direct. “As I told your daughter, I am an investigator from New York. My name is Archie Goodwin.” I held up the license again. “There is suspicion that your nephew may have been murdered, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about him.”
She twitched her shoulders and sniffed. “You with some insurance company?”
“No, I work for the private detective Nero Wolfe, and he has been hired by a friend of your nephew.”
“Huh. That television woman he was supposed to marry?”
“No, but she — Debra Mitchell — also believes that Mr. Childress did not commit suicide.”
“Why?” she snorted, hands on hips.
“Both Ms. Mitchell and our client say that Mr. Childress had no reason whatever to kill himself. Do you know of any reason he would want to end his life?”
“Mr. — what is it? — Goodwin, Charles had been living in New York for years and years,” she said icily, rubbing her palms on the light blue apron she wore over a print dress that reminded me of ones my own aunt back in Chillicothe fancied. “He wasn’t one of us anymore. We almost never saw him, except when he came back to Mercer to be with his poor mother during her last days.” She looked down and shook her head. “I have no idea what his life was like in that place or who his friends were. I mean no disrespect, sir, but why someone would want to live there, I have no idea. You couldn’t pay me enough to even make a visit.”
It was clear that I was not about to be invited into the Meeker domicile. “Was there anybody here who had any reason to want him dead?” I asked through the screen.
“That’s a fool question, a fool question,” she snapped, her face still expressionless. “Of course not. As I just got done telling you, if you were bothering to listen, Charles hadn’t lived in these parts for years. If someone did kill him, and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to, the answer must be in your New York, where people murder each other every day for no good reason and don’t give a second thought about it. Now I’ve got work to do,” she huffed, taking a step back. The door was shut firmly. So much for Mercer’s vaunted Hoosier hospitality.