Archie Goes Home Page 8

  “Maybe, but I’ve got to learn to quit griping. Besides, one thing turned out okay.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The bastard who foreclosed on me, well . . . he’ll never foreclose on anybody else again,” Mapes said.

  “How so?”

  “He’s dead, that’s how so.”

  “Oh, wait. Are you talking about that Logan Mulgrew? I heard that he shot himself.”

  “He’s dead, that counts for something, anyway.”

  “Do you think it was a suicide?”

  “That I couldn’t say,” Mapes replied, his expression grim. “Let me show you the milking shed.” This was a low building a short distance from the barn we had been in. There wasn’t much to look at, as the cows were not in it, but were, as I was to learn, out in a pasture grazing.

  “We milk sixty Holsteins in here, twice every day. Using the machines, it goes a lot faster than back in the old days, when it was all done by hand.”

  “I don’t know a lot about cows, but my father was a farmer. I do remember that the Holsteins are the black-and-white ones, right?”

  “Yep, and they give the most milk of any breed. Well, I suppose we should get back to the ladies.”

  “Thanks for the little tour. This is quite an operation.”

  Mapes did not respond. Since Mulgrew came up in the discussion the farmer had become sullen, and I was not about to bring up the man again.

  Chapter 14

  “Well, what did you think of Mr. Mapes?” my mother asked when we were in the car on our way home.

  “Bitter, by his own admission. And far from regretful over the demise of one Logan Mulgrew.”

  “Do you think Mr. Mapes had anything to do with that demise, Archie?”

  “I would like to be able to give you a definitive answer, but I can’t. Do you know if Mulgrew ever foreclosed on any other farmers?”

  “I don’t, but I suppose it wouldn’t be surprising. We had a couple of bad farming years a while back.”

  “Yes, I remember that you wrote me about it at the time.”

  “There is no reason I would have heard about any other foreclosures. I think that when that happens, most people are so embarrassed they try to keep it quiet. The reason I knew about the Mapes situation was that he was so public in his anger toward Mulgrew.”

  “Well, it’s obvious that anger hasn’t gone away,” I said. “The man is seething just below the surface, like a volcano ready to erupt.”

  “Or is it possible that he already has erupted?” my mother asked.

  “Say, there could be a place for you in the detective business. You have just the right amount of skepticism, or is it cynicism? I can never get those two straight, but don’t tell Wolfe. He is forever critiquing my grammar and usage.”

  “You poor thing. And yet you always got good grades in school.”

  “Yeah, but I never had an English teacher who was as much of a stickler as Nero Wolfe, although you corrected me at home on occasion.”

  “That does not seem to have scarred you emotionally.”

  “I’ve learned to live with it,” I said as we returned to my mother’s home. No sooner were we inside than the telephone began ringing. “It’s for you,” Mom said, again cupping the phone. “Katie Padgett.”

  “Hi, Archie,” she said when I was on the line. “I’m wondering what, if anything, you’ve been able to find out.”

  “Not a lot. I have spent a little time with both Purcell and Mapes, but I can’t say I’ve learned much other than to find them both angry.”

  “About Mulgrew, of course.”

  “Of course. And what have you found out since we last talked?”

  “I’ve got a lead on where Carrie Yeager is.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I finally used the brain I was given and talked to the woman who oversees the apartment building downtown that Carrie moved into after Mulgrew died. I told her that I was a friend of Carrie’s and needed to get hold of her because she had left some of her clothes and other personal items with me. It turns out Carrie had given the woman her forwarding address, which I had hoped. She’s living in Charleston, West Virginia, now, and I have the address.”

  “Any idea why Charleston?”

  “No, but she sure left this town quietly. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Carrie lately, and I’m wondering if we haven’t overlooked her as a suspect.”

  “Why would she have wanted to kill Mulgrew, Katie?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she hoped that he would marry her or at least leave her a nice chunk of his fortune, the latter of which didn’t happen from what I’ve heard.”

  “I’ve also heard that Miss Yeager did not get anything from the Mulgrew estate,” I said. “But presuming she knew she wasn’t included in the will, what good would it do her to kill him?”

  “As was once written, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’” Katie said.

  “I’ve heard that line, too, but I have to wonder if Carrie Yeager’s fury, if that’s indeed what it was, would have been enough to drive her to murder,” I observed.

  “Maybe not, but don’t you think that it would be worthwhile to go down to Charleston?”

  “Will your paper send you down there on assignment?”

  “Not those cheapskates, Archie. But I am owed some time, and my editors don’t have to know what I do with my days off.”

  “All in the interest of surprising your bosses with a scoop, right?”

  “Could be. Are you game?”

  “Why not? It’s not that long a drive. Any idea if Miss Yeager has gotten herself a job in Charleston?”

  “No, but I have a feeling that it won’t be that hard to find out. Have you ever been to Charleston before?” Katie asked.

  “We passed through it once when I was a kid. My father had entered his prize bull in a competition at the West Virginia State Fair, which is somewhere farther down in that state. He thought he’d have a better chance than at Ohio’s fair, which is much larger.”

  “Did he win?”

  “The bull took a second-place ribbon in its category, which was a damn sight better than it would have done up in Columbus, so I guess you could call it a successful trip. I recall that my father was unusually happy on the drive back home.”

  “That’s better than my memory of West Virginia,” Katie said. “As a family, we took a driving vacation down there when I was in grade school, and it poured buckets with thunder and lightning for three solid days. We couldn’t go horseback riding or hiking or even canoeing.”

  “Well, if you are serious about going to Charleston, we could do it tomorrow. There’s no rain in the forecast.”

  “Sounds good, and it will give me a chance to see a real live detective at work.”

  “Try to contain your excitement,” I told her.

  Chapter 15

  “So you and this Katie of yours are going off to Charleston on what may be a wild goose chase,” my mother said at breakfast the next day in a less-than-enthusiastic tone.

  “First off, Mom, she’s not ‘this Katie of mine’ by any stretch. But you may be right that we are off on a fool’s errand.”

  “Well, I would be a liar if I told you I wasn’t interested in learning just what the Yeager woman may be up to. I’m afraid I am getting to be like my sister.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that happening, Mom. You and Aunt Edna are poles apart, I’m happy to say.”

  At 8:30, I swung by the building where Katie Padgett lived, and she was standing at the curb wearing a summery yellow dress, sandals, and a smile.

  “Right on time, Archie!” she chirped, stepping gracefully into the convertible. “I came downstairs less than a minute ago.”

  “That’s the window that got broken by a gunshot, right?” I asked, pointing up
at the second floor over Mason’s hardware store.

  “That’s the one, and the scary thing is, I had been standing by that window just a minute or so earlier.”

  “Lucky timing on your part,” I said as we pulled away and began our jaunt southeast toward Charleston.

  “I’ve wanted to get you alone for some time,” Katie said.

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that, silly,” she said, punching my right shoulder playfully. “I want to hear about some of the cases you and Nero Wolfe have worked on. It must be such an exciting life.”

  “On occasion that’s true, but much of the time, it’s me hunting down people or clues in my dogged and plodding fashion and delivering what—or who—I find to Mr. Wolfe, the brains of the operation, and he invariably figures the whole thing out.” I proceeded to tell her about the gun battle in our office with Wolfe getting shot in the arm while sitting at his desk and me then plugging the shooter.2 And also my narrow escape from that angry bull in the Upstate New York meadow.

  “I love your story about the bull. It sounds like you’ve had some pretty wild times.”

  “Not really. I just gave you a couple of exceptions to what is a generally unexciting life. And gunplay rarely enters into the picture. Now it’s time for you to tell me what you plan to do once we locate our Miss Yeager.”

  Katie laid out her scheme, and I was impressed with its structure, if not its integrity. But then, I’ve been known to play fast and loose with facts myself when interviewing suspects and cajoling them into making a visit to Nero Wolfe in the brownstone. After further discussion of the approach to be taken with Carrie Yeager, we crossed the Ohio River into West Virginia and were greeted by a welcome center with a pole that was flying what I assumed to be the state flag.

  “Why are we stopping here?” Katie asked as I pulled into the center’s parking lot.

  “To get a map of Charleston,” I told her. “I don’t relish the idea of driving aimlessly around town looking for an address.”

  “Of course, I should have thought of that,” my passenger said in an abashed tone as she gave me Carrie Yeager’s address.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard to find her,” I said after I brought a map back to the car and studied it. “I see that her street is just a few blocks from the capitol.”

  “Which happens to be the tallest building in West Virginia,” Katie put in.

  “Interesting bit of trivia; where did you come up with that?”

  “I studied an almanac in the office.”

  “Ever the reporter,” I told her as we pulled away and began driving toward the heart of the city. “There’s the capitol dome,” I said. “Looks a lot like the one in Washington.”

  Within ten minutes, we found the street we were looking for and spotted the address, which turned out to be a three-story brick apartment building that had been built well before the war. I eased up to the curb.

  “Time to go in and find out if she’s at home. Oh, and here’s your prop,” Katie said, pulling a Leica camera from her big purse. We stepped into a dark, high-ceilinged lobby that badly needed a fresh coat of paint and some brighter lightbulbs in its dusty ceiling globes.

  Carrie Yeager was among more than a dozen tenants listed on a board that had a button next to each name. Katie pushed hers, and after several seconds came a static-filled squawk that sounded like “yes?”

  “Miss Yeager, the Trumpet back in Ohio is doing a major feature on the life of Logan Mulgrew,” Katie spoke into the mouthpiece, “and two of us from the paper are down in the lobby. We would like to get your thoughts on the life of this outstanding citizen.”

  A long pause. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I have anything to contribute,” came the scratchy reply.

  “Oh, I disagree, Miss Yeager. You were privileged to know him well, and everyone else we have talked to was eager to be quoted. It would seem very strange if I had to put in the article that you refused to comment.”

  Another long silence. “Oh, all right, you can come on up. My number is three-oh-seven.”

  We rode up in a jerky and shabby automatic elevator that would have terrified Nero Wolfe. In keeping with the overall condition of the building, the third-floor hallway was dimly lit. We peered along its length and saw light coming from the far end, where an apartment door was open. “Down here,” a female voice prompted.

  That voice belonged, of course, to Carrie Yeager, who turned out to be pretty, and much as Katie had earlier described her: midthirties, close to my height, dark-haired, and the type that people—particularly men—notice. She wore a skirt and sweater and stood in the doorway eyeing us with a wary expression.

  “Thank you so much for seeing my photographer and me,” Katie said with a smile. “My name is Katie Padgett, and this is Archie.” I held up the Leica to verify my role. “May we come in?” she asked.

  “Oh yes . . . of course,” Carrie said, stepping aside as we entered a small living room with worn furnishings and curtains that looked like they could stand a cleaning.

  “I am only in this apartment temporarily,” our hostess explained, noticing our dubious looks. “I’ll be staying as a caregiver at the home of a man who is getting out of the hospital in the next week or two. His family very kindly put me up here until then. Please sit down.”

  “Thanks,” Katie said, pulling out a reporter’s pad and pencil. “Have you done this type of work for a long time?”

  “Almost since I got out of school,” Carrie replied, “although I was married for two years right after graduation, then got divorced. You don’t have to put that in your story, do you?”

  “Of course not. The Trumpet is mainly interested in the life of Logan Mulgrew, who I am sure you came to know well when you were his wife’s caregiver.”

  Carrie Yeager nodded, lips pursed. “He was a fine gentleman, and he went through a lot because of Mrs. Mulgrew’s long illness.”

  “I’m sure that you must have been a great help to him during that period,” Katie prompted.

  “I certainly tried to be. Much of the time, his wife was unable to communicate, at least not in what we would term a rational way. I know it was heartbreaking for Log—for Mr. Mulgrew.”

  “I know that this is a very sensitive question, but do you think the difficulty Mr. Mulgrew had in watching his wife’s suffering led to his own death?”

  “I . . . suppose that it might have,” Carrie said, studying her fingernails. “I have asked myself that many times, of course. I blame myself for not staying in the house after Sylvia—that’s Mrs. Mulgrew—died. Maybe I could have prevented what . . . well, what happened.”

  “Are you convinced that Mr. Mulgrew killed himself?”

  “Why . . . of course! What else could it have been?” she asked, eyes wide in an expression of surprise.

  “Why did you move out of the Mulgrew house?” Katie asked.

  The woman paused several seconds before responding. “It seemed somehow improper for me to continue to live in the home after Mrs. Mulgrew’s death. But in retrospect, I wish I had stayed. The truth is, I simply did not realize the full extent of the emotional shape that Mr. Mulgrew was in.”

  “But you did remain in town?”

  “Yes, really more as a favor to Mr. Mulgrew than any other reason. He had no children or close relatives, and he asked me to help him sort through his wife’s clothing and other possessions.”

  “That must have been hard—for both of you.”

  “It was, but far more for him than for me. Every time he looked at a dress of hers, he would reminisce about an event where she wore it.”

  “How would you say that people in town viewed Logan Mulgrew?”

  Carrie shook her head. “I really don’t know. I never got involved in the business part of his life, and at home, he never talked about the bank or anything else he was involv
ed with in the town.”

  “Did he have many visitors?”

  “Not very often. Oh, a few times one of his assistants from the bank came over with some papers for him to sign. Those were on days that he stayed home from work because the doctor came to examine his wife, and Mr. Mulgrew wanted to be there to talk to him afterward.”

  “Did you know that Mr. Mulgrew had a gun at home?”

  “Yes, I did,” Carrie said. “He kept it in a desk drawer in the living room. He showed it to me once early on and said, ‘You are here alone with my wife a lot, and this house is fairly isolated. I really believe any kind of break-in is unlikely, but if something were to happen, you need to know how to protect yourself—and the house.’”

  “Did he show you how to use the gun?”

  “Sort of. He took all the bullets out and had me pull the trigger a couple of times just to get the feel of it, and then he put the bullets back in.”

  “And you never fired it?”

  Carrie laughed nervously. “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “No reason, just asking. Do you mind if my photographer takes a couple of pictures of you?”

  “I guess not, although it seems like I really don’t have much to add to your story about Mr. Mulgrew.”

  “This will be a major piece about Logan Mulgrew, and we’ll need photos of anyone who had a major role in his life.”

  “I would hardly call mine a major role,” Carrie protested, but she did let me take some shots, with her wearing both a smile and a serious expression, as I had suggested.

  “One last question, Miss Yeager,” Katie said. “How would you describe your relationship to Mr. Mulgrew.”

  “He was my employer, of course.”

  “Is that all he was?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Carrie demanded, jerking upright and frowning.

  “It seemed a natural thing to ask, given how often the two of you were seen together in public.”

  “I do not like your insinuation, and I would like you both to leave right now!” she said in a quavering voice as she stood. We got up and walked out as the door was slammed behind us.