Archie Goes Home

Chapter 3

My mother was at least mildly startled by my suggestion that I pay her a visit. “My heavens, of course I would be delighted to see you,” she said. “I am afraid, though, that you are going to find things just as dull around here as you remember them.”

“I will take that chance,” I said with a chuckle.

“Although,” she added, “I should tell you there has been a death in town that some people think is suspicious. Do you remember Logan Mulgrew?”

“The banker.”

“The very same. He was found dead at home last week, sprawled on a sofa in his parlor with a hole in his forehead and a pistol next to him.”

“Suicide?” I asked, playing the innocent.

“Possibly, although some people, including a local newspaper columnist, seem to think otherwise.” My mother did not mention Edna, which probably means my aunt had not shared her suspicions with her sister.

“What is your opinion?” I asked her.

“Well, I certainly would not have thought that Logan Mulgrew was a candidate for suicide. But enough of that. When do you think you will be coming down?”

I told her I planned to leave the next day and would telephone her when I reached Columbus so she could be ready for me. I then wrote checks for all the outstanding bills, got caught up on Wolfe’s correspondence, and entered into a file the germination records that orchid gardener Theodore Horstmann had brought down from the plant rooms.

Next, I telephoned my good friend Lily Rowan to tell her about my plans. Calling Lily a “good friend” does not come anywhere close to describing our relationship. We met years ago in an Upstate New York meadow, where I was being chased by an angry bull while involved in a case.{Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout} To avoid said animal’s horns, I leaped over a fence and sprawled on the ground at the feet of two young women, one of them clad in a yellow shirt and slacks who said to me, “Beautiful! I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”

That fetching female in the yellow shirt and slacks, and with blond hair and dark blue eyes, was Lily Rowan, whose companionship I have enjoyed ever since that fateful day. Lily, who still calls me “Escamillo” after the toreador in the opera Carmen, is a very wealthy woman, having inherited a fortune from her late father, an Irish immigrant who made his millions by building much of the New York City sewer system.

Lily has a Midtown duplex penthouse apartment where she throws lavish parties, although many of them are fund-raising affairs for the various charities she supports. She and I go out on the town frequently, to dinner, dancing, hockey games at Madison Square Garden, and, on occasion, the opera. But just so you know, I always foot the bill.

“So you’re off to the place of your origins,” Lily said. “I hope your mother is well.”

“I hope she is, too, and I will be sure to give her your best.”

“Please do, Escamillo, and try to get her back up here to New York. You know how fond I am of her, and how much fun we have hitting the stores along Fifth Avenue.”

“I remember all too well the piles of packages you both bring back on your return from those money pits. My plan is to have her stay in the brownstone this fall. You will be the first to know — after Nero Wolfe, of course.”

“Of course. Try not to get into any trouble in Ohio.”

“Heaven forbid, my dear. See you soon.”

That night after a dinner of Fritz’s superb curried beef roll with a celery and cantaloupe salad and blueberry pie, Wolfe and I sat in the office with coffee. “I will be leaving for Ohio right after breakfast,” I told him. “Everything in the office is up to date, and I have left a note on my desk for Saul Panzer, assuming you’ll have need of him.”

“I may,” Wolfe said. “Have you packed?”

“I’ve still got a few things to shove into a suitcase, but otherwise, I’m all set. I will take the convertible, of course. That way, Saul can chauffeur you in the Heron if by the rarest of chances you need to leave the brownstone.”

“Not likely,” Wolfe said, leaning back. “How many miles will you be traveling tomorrow?”

“Several hundred,” I told him. Wolfe shuddered. He has a distaste for all motorized vehicles, and he ventures forth as a passenger in an automobile only to visit the barber, or to see the annual Metropolitan Show, or to travel out to Louis Hewitt’s Long Island home for his annual dinner there with his fellow orchid fancier. He will only ride in a car if it is driven by me or by Saul Panzer, and even then, he sits tensed in the back seat gripping the passenger strap that had been specially installed.

I said my good-byes to him and went upstairs to finish packing, which included my Marley .32 revolver, just in case. I asked myself what the real reason was for going to Ohio. Was it because the old banker’s death intrigued me, or was it concern for my mother? Or was it a combination of the two? I gave up trying to figure it out.

The next morning was as beautiful as anything one could ask for, and it put me in mind of one of the few poetic lines I could remember from my long-ago high school time: “And what is so rare as a day in June?” Just don’t ask me who wrote it. I went to get the convertible from Curran’s Motors on Tenth Avenue, where we have garaged our cars for years.

“Hey, Archie, you off on another case?” asked Art, a longtime Curran’s employee, as he eyed my suitcase.

“It’s way too early to say,” I told him. “But we have all got to earn a living.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” he said, scratching his head. “But somehow, your way of earning a living seems like it’s one hell of a lot more interesting than mine.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” I replied as we folded down the convertible top. “Some of our work can be pretty dull, like going through court records and running down tips that end up being worthless.”

“Hell, I’d still trade places with you,” Art said as I climbed behind the wheel and drove away. Traffic in Manhattan was blessedly light that morning as I drove south and entered the Holland Tunnel that burrowed under the North River, as old-time New Yorkers still refer to the Hudson. I emerged into daylight on the Jersey side, navigating the car through Jersey City, Newark, and a series of suburban towns before finally getting into open country and pressing down on the accelerator.

I had forgotten how small New Jersey is, so the Delaware River came along sooner than I expected. At Trenton I crossed into Pennsylvania, skirting the north edge of Philadelphia and sliding onto the turnpike, which tunneled beneath several tree-covered mountains as I made my way west.

About halfway across the state, I left the pike and stopped for a ham sandwich, a slice of apple pie, and a glass of milk in a white frame diner I encountered along a wooded and twisting country road. The grub might not be up to Fritz’s standards, but it was more than bearable, and the well-nourished waitress, whose name tag read Fran, was pleasantly chatty.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” she said as she wiped the counter with a rag. “How did you happen to stop in?”

“Just luck,” I told her. “I was going west on the turnpike and decided to pull off and explore the pleasant countryside.”

“Aw, shucks,” she said, snapping her fingers. “And here I figured somebody must have told you how good our food is.”

“I am not complaining at all. Maybe it was fate that led me here. You seem to be a happy individual.”

“My friends call me ‘smiley’ because it seems that I always look like I don’t have a care in the world, which is mainly the case. Compared to others that I know, I have a pretty doggone good life.”

I nodded. “I will second that. If I start complaining, I stop and scold myself. I have got little or nothing to gripe about.”

“Glad to hear it. Where are you headed, or is that none of my business?”

“To see my mother, two states away. Haven’t been back in a while.”

“I am sure she will be glad to see you,” Fran beamed as I rose to pay the cashier, but not before I had laid a healthy tip on the counter.

I had no intention of getting back on the turnpike and instead headed southwest on winding two-lane roads through Pennsylvania farming country. It was good to have the top down and feel the sun and the warm breeze. I clipped off a corner of West Virginia and crossed the Ohio River into my home state.

This now became a trip backward in time for me as the terrain got hillier and I began to see landmarks that rolled away the years: the well-kept red barn west of Steubenville with the farmer’s name printed on it in foot-high white letters; the lake just south of the road with a pier for swimming that had been there since I was a kid; the small-town brick church whose steeple clock had stopped at 5:15 years ago; and the antique store whose weather-beaten sign still proclaimed, “If we haven’t got what you’re looking for, we will do our darnedest to find it!”

On the outskirts of Columbus, I stopped to get gas, and I used the filling station’s pay phone to call my mother.

“This is just about when I expected to hear from you, Archie,” she said. “I am beginning to start dinner, and it is one of your favorites.”

I knew within minutes how long it would take me to reach my destination, and so did my mother. I started on the last leg of the trip, seeing more familiar sights. After my father died several years ago, Mom sold the farm acreage to a neighbor but kept ownership of the farmhouse. My brother and both my sisters had moved out of state like me, and my mother thought they, and her grandchildren, should have a place to come back to on holidays. And it certainly was a spacious house, with five bedrooms upstairs.

Mom lived alone but was not lonely. The local Presbyterian church occupied a lot of her time. She was chair of the hospitality committee and also filled in when the regular organist was away or indisposed. She regularly visited ailing members of her congregation, played bridge twice a week, and was part of a quilting group. Her own quilts had won awards at the county fair more than once. Mrs. James Arner Goodwin, as she still signed her checks and any legal documents, lived an active life. For the record, she does have a given name — Marjorie.

I arrived in the late afternoon and pulled the convertible into the driveway and parked behind the two-story white frame colonial-style house with its blue shutters on the south edge of town. I hadn’t been there in at least seven years, but it appeared as if nothing had changed.

Before I could ring the bell, Mom swung the door open, smiled, and pulled me to her with a hug. “Archie, it is so good to see you. And I am happy to say that you look well fed, although I should not be surprised, given Fritz Brenner’s culinary skills.”

“You do pretty well in the kitchen yourself,” I said, stepping into the cozy living room, where everything seemed to be just the same as I remembered it. “Speaking of kitchens, I detect a very pleasant aroma coming from that direction.”

“It’s something that I just happen to know you like,” she responded. “But you probably want to freshen up before dinner. The north bedroom is all ready for you. Take your time.”

I went up to a room I remembered well, with its solid maple bed and matching chest of drawers, the yellow-and-white-striped wallpaper, the painting of the Rocky Mountains at sunrise, and the view down onto Portsmouth Road from a window that was framed by plaid curtains.

When I descended the stairs, Mom was waiting for me at the dining room doorway, arms folded over her chest and a mischievous gleam in her blue eyes. “Dinner is served,” she said, gesturing me to the chair at the head of the table.

We sat and she said a brief grace, then took the top off a serving bowl, releasing that aroma I had detected earlier. “Pork tenderloin in casserole, with carrots, celery, and onions,” she announced triumphantly. “And a wine I believe you will approve of.”

The wine was good, but the pork tenderloin... magnificent. “I didn’t know you were so good with—”

“So good with this dish, which I happen to know that you particularly like? I was taught by a master, Fritz Brenner by name.”

“When did — oh, wait a minute — that time a little over a year ago when you were in New York, one night we had this entrée, didn’t we?”

“We did. I asked Fritz about it later, while you and Mr. Wolfe were in the office with coffee. Fritz whispered to me it was one of your favorites and, bless him, he gave me the recipe along with some special instructions.”

“Well, this is every bit as good as Mr. Brenner’s culinary work,” I told her after I had polished off two helpings. “What about this wonderful apple pie?”

“My own creation, as you of all people should remember.”

“Oh, I do. And don’t forget just who picked all those apples from the orchard out back for those pies.”

“How well I remember, Archie, although that orchard is long gone. I want you to know how happy I am to have you here, but I also want you to know that I am not a big believer in coincidences.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I believe that my dear sister has had something to do with your arrival in this usually placid corner of the world.”

I paused, trying to pick my words. “Well, I...”

“I am not trying to put you on the spot, dear, but for the last several days, Edna has been talking about how she is positive that Logan Mulgrew was murdered. And interspersed with her suspicions have been questions about how you are and how long it has been since you visited here.”

I laughed. “I could try to tap-dance around, but you know me too well. It’s true that Aunt Edna has been calling and writing me and trying to get me interested in the Mulgrew death.”

“It seems to have worked,” she said, arching an eyebrow and smiling slyly.

“Maybe, but I don’t think I would have driven all the way down here without the added incentive of spending time with you. And one thing you should be aware of: Aunt Edna does not even know yet that I’m here. And just in case she has eyes everywhere in this town, which I suspect, I intentionally parked the car behind the house where it can’t be seen from the road.”

Now it was my mother’s turn to laugh. “Ever the detective. Well, come tomorrow, you probably will want to telephone Edna. You can’t stay hidden here forever.”

“Good point. Now I would like to spend some time, one, finding out how other members of the family are, and two, getting your thoughts on the life and death of one Logan Mulgrew.”