Archie Goes Home

Chapter 7

Katie, as I now refer to Verna Kay Padgett, coughed nervously and drained the coffee from her cup. “Okay, now if I am repeating things that your aunt already has told you, let me know.”

“Let us not worry about dear Aunt Edna. It is your perspective that I’m interested in.”

“Okay, here we go,” she said, coughing again, apparently a nervous habit. “A local man named Charles Purcell started a bank here several years ago, and Mulgrew did not like the new competition one bit. He had been used to having things all his own way for years, so he methodically went about sabotaging the Purcell operation by starting rumors that it was undercapitalized, and that depositors were likely to lose every cent they deposited.”

“Was there any evidence this was true?”

“Not that I have been able to learn. Bear in mind that much of this happened well before I arrived in town, but I have talked to at least a dozen residents, and several of them felt Mulgrew was just plain fighting dirty.”

“Did any of the people you talked to make deposits in the new Purcell bank?”

Katie smiled. “Good question. A few did, but several others admitted they were scared away and later regretted it, or so they then claimed.”

“Talk is cheap. Where were those folks when the man needed them to get his operation going? And where is Purcell now?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to get Katie’s perspective.

“His bank’s failure wiped out the man financially, and he ended up having to sell his house to pay his debts. He started drinking heavily, his wife left him, and he now lives in town with his son and daughter-in-law. He was always good with cars, so now he works as a mechanic for a local garage.”

“Well, at least the man’s employed,” I said.

“Yes, that’s the good news, such as it is,” Katie said. “The bad news is that, as I said, he has hit the bottle pretty hard, and he’s been heard in a bar just down the street from here cursing out Mulgrew and using threatening words like ‘that vicious son of a bitch.’”

“Sounds like a potential murder suspect, all right. Who else is a possibility?”

“A dairy farmer named Harold Mapes, who borrowed money from Mulgrew’s bank. Then he had a bad year — some sort of cow disease is what I heard — and he didn’t have the money to keep up his interest payments. Mulgrew foreclosed on him, and he lost the farm. He and his wife now work as tenants on another farm nearby, owned by a man from out of town, I think. Mapes is bitter, as you would suspect, and like Purcell, he has been heard to berate Mulgrew, saying things like ‘I’d like to strangle that son of a gun.’ Except he didn’t use ‘son of a gun.’”

“It seems that Logan Mulgrew could win the ‘Town’s Most Hated’ award.”

“I’m not done, Archie, there’s a lot more. Your aunt may have mentioned Lester Newman, who was a brother-in-law of Mulgrew and also the grandfather of Donna, the one who found Mulgrew dead.” I nodded but said nothing, Katie’s cue to continue.

“Newman, who people I’ve talked to say is mentally unstable, is absolutely convinced that Logan Mulgrew killed his wife, Sylvia, by giving her an overdose of her heart medicine.”

“Had she lived with a coronary condition for a long time?”

“Several years, and she also had become increasingly senile, hence her death was ruled as accidental, the assumption being that she unwittingly gave herself an overdose.”

“Sounds plausible on the surface,” I remarked.

“Maybe, but from what I hear, Newman was convinced that Mulgrew killed his wife because he was having an affair with the woman who was brought in to be his wife’s caregiver.”

“What do you think of that theory?”

“Despite his age, Mulgrew apparently still had, shall we say... strong urges,” she said, her cheeks coloring. “And he had yielded to these urges on several occasions in the past, if the talk around town can be believed.”

“Some things don’t change,” I said. “I grew up in and around this burg years ago, and it was always filled with what you refer to as ‘talk.’ I seem to remember there were gossipmongers everywhere — with the exception, I am happy to say, of my mother.”

“But not the exception of your aunt?” Katie posed with eyebrows raised.

“No, I don’t except Aunt Edna. She has always been interested, perhaps too interested, in the activities of her neighbors and other townspeople. As I’m sure you have learned, there aren’t too many secrets in these smaller towns. Tell me about this caregiver Mulgrew’s wife had.”

“That would be Carrie Yeager, a professional nurse. I have seen her only once, at that pro forma coroner’s inquest into Sylvia Mulgrew’s death. She must be in about her midthirties and is quite attractive — tall, slender, dark-haired, and with a figure that attracts second looks, particularly from men. She generated a lot of talk around town.”

“And the talk — ah, there’s that word again — is that Miss Yeager, I assume she’s a miss, was involved with the late Mr. Mulgrew.”

“Yes, Carrie is single, or possibly divorced. And it was more than talk, of that I am absolutely sure,” Katie said. “While she was Sylvia’s caregiver, she dined out frequently with Mulgrew, presumably to discuss the bedridden woman’s condition. And after Sylvia’s death, the two continued to be seen at local restaurants fairly often.”

“And she stayed in Mulgrew’s house?” I asked.

“Oh no, they were not quite as blatant as all that. After the wife’s funeral, Carrie moved into an apartment downtown, and Mulgrew was spotted visiting her there. And they also kept on dining together, at least a few times a week.”

“Where is Carrie now?”

“Nobody seems to know. A few days after Mulgrew’s death, she moved out of her apartment and hasn’t been seen around town. And by the way, she did not go to his funeral.”

“I gather you were there. Was it well attended?”

“Sort of,” Katie said. “A lot of people from the bank, of course, and a scattering of others, including a few local businessmen who probably showed up because they wanted to stay on good terms with the bank. There were also a few older ladies there, including your aunt.”

“I’m sure Edna has never been one to miss a funeral, whether she liked the deceased or not. So our caregiver disappeared without a trace?”

“I don’t believe anyone has tried very hard to locate her, Archie. And remember, our police chief would hardly bother, given that he does not suspect foul play, to use a phrase I’m sure you’re familiar with.”

“Foul play? Sure, I use those words all the time,” I said with a wink. “We private eyes would be lost without them in our vocabularies, along with ‘dames,’ ‘gats,’ ‘thugs,’ and ‘coppers.’ Now, have we covered all the people who might have wanted to see Logan Mulgrew six feet under?”

“I can think of one other person who bears consideration,” Katie said as she pivoted on her stool to face me. “His name is Eldon Kiefer, and his daughter, Becky, was once one of Mulgrew’s secretaries at the bank.”

“Go on.”

“You probably have an idea where I’m heading with this, Archie. Kiefer accused Mulgrew of sexually molesting his daughter and getting her pregnant — a pregnancy that is supposed to have ended with an abortion, location unknown. Not surprisingly, Kiefer threatened Mulgrew, who of course denied having any sort or relationship with the girl. He, Mulgrew, acted outraged and claimed that Becky had an overactive imagination. I wanted to write something about all this, but my lily-livered bosses on the paper thought it would open us up to lawsuits.”

“What did Becky have to say about what happened?”

“Ah, there lies part of the problem: she apparently does not have a lot of self-confidence, and if what I’ve heard is true, she begged her father not to press charges against Mulgrew.”

“But she did have an abortion?” I posed.

“That has not even been established, and I’m not sure how it could be verified. After all, a lot of these abortion mills are backstreet operations. And Becky sure isn’t about to tell us anything — if indeed the abortion really took place. I’ve tried to call her repeatedly without success.”

“Speaking of Becky, what is she doing now?” I asked.

“Working at a bank up in Cleveland, and living there in an apartment, as far as I’ve been able to tell.”

“Does her father live around here?”

“Yes, Kiefer is a long-distance truck driver, who has a house in town with his wife. He is a strange duck, withdrawn and not given to socialization, according to those I’ve spoken to who know him. Also, he hangs out in a local tavern, not unlike Purcell. The only time I got hold of him on the telephone, he hung up on me after suggesting that I ‘go straight to hell.’”

“You mentioned earlier that you interviewed Mulgrew once. What were the circumstances?”

“It was just after I arrived here, and one of my editors thought I should do a piece on him, to get his slant on the community and what he thought its economic health was.”

“How did that go?”

“To use his quote, he said that ‘things have never been better, it’s clear that our little city has a great future, and I’m proud to be part of it.’”

“Quite the booster, including of himself, I gather.”

“I’ll say. He insisted on being interviewed at home, which... well, which made me uncomfortable.”

“Even though I’m sure he had a plush office at the bank,” I said.

“Of course. But my editors liked the idea of my describing what his house looked like, or at least his living room.”

“Nothing like local color, right?”

“Yes. My editors thought the interview needed a woman’s touch, including the style of the furniture, et cetera,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

“I’m sure nobody at the university ever told you that being a female newspaper reporter was going to be easy.”

That got a laugh. “One of my professors, a crusty old guy with a white mustache — at least he seemed old to me — once said, ‘Look, Padgett, this may be the 1950s, but girl reporters are still in a minority, and you are going to have to work twice as hard as a man to get the same amount of credit, and probably without the same amount of pay.’”

“Just what you needed in the way of encouragement,” I said.

“Unfortunately, he was right, Archie. This is still very much a man’s game, but I’m doing what I can to compete. I just wish that at least one of my bosses at the Trumpet was a woman.”

“Maybe things will change,” I told her, not believing it. “What made you uncomfortable when you interviewed Mulgrew?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to put into words, but for one thing, he had me sit on a couch and then he sat down next to me — right next to me. And he kept looking me up and down, like he was more interested in me than in answering my questions. He seemed to like my legs. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. At least he never put his hands on me.”

“Well, that’s something anyway. Do you have any other possible suspect to parade before me?”

“Aren’t there enough?” she said with a smirk. “As a detective, maybe you now have some thoughts about all this.”

“Katie, I am still in the process of digesting everything you and others have told me. Please bear in mind that although I am indeed a detective, and I have a license issued by the sovereign state of New York to prove it, I am by no means Nero Wolfe, not even close, either in girth or in brainpower.”

“Well, I am still impressed. Will you promise to sometime tell me about a few of your cases? I would love to hear about them.”

“It’s a deal,” I said as we left the drugstore and parted company at the Trumpet offices. I then headed back to the house on the edge of town where I spent what would be termed my formative years.