Maybe it was the rain, or the hills and curves and crawling farm vehicles, but it took me nearly two hours to navigate the two-lane blacktop through newly green and wooded rural countryside from the Indianapolis airport to Mercer, which trumpeted itself with a red-and-blue billboard proclaiming THE COMMUNITY WHERE HOOSIER HOSPITALITY WAS BORN — AND STILL FLOURISHES! Below it was a smaller, newer sign, in the same colors, that read CONGRATULATIONS TO THE MERCER METEORS FOR THEIR FIRST EVER STATE HIGH SCHOOL REGIONAL BASKETBALL TITLE. A few hundred yards farther down the road, I came upon a motel. The Travelers’ Haven was far from posh, but it looked decent enough — a long, white, one-story stucco building between the road and a field that appeared to this city boy to be freshly plowed. A half-dozen cars were parked nose-first on the blacktop in front of the rooms. I wheeled my rented sedan up to the office and went inside, triggering a bell when I opened the door.
“Afternoon.” A deep voice stretched it to four or five syllables, rather than the conventional three. The voice belonged to a dusty-haired, long-faced guy in baggy, gray flannel slacks and a red wool shirt who ambled through a doorway from the back, grinning and pushing wire-rimmed glasses up on the beak that was his nose. He was at least three inches over six feet, but if he weighed one-fifty, it was only because he wore his boots when he hopped on the scale.
“Afternoon,” I countered, making no attempt to elongate the word. I know my limitations. “Can I get a room for a couple of nights?”
He puckered his lips. “No reason to say no. But we do like the cash up front. We’ve never been much for credit cards here.”
“Always a good policy,” I responded, returning his sober nod. “I will pay for the first night now, and if I decide to stay a second one, you’ll get the greenbacks for that later today. Fair enough?”
He nodded again, this time with a slight grin. “Fair enough.” He quoted me a price; it was higher than I would have guessed, but I was not inclined to negotiate. I opened my billfold and peeled off the bills, which he counted twice aloud and slid into an ancient cash register before handing me a brass key. “Room one-twenty,” he twanged. “Down the line six doors on your right. Everything should be there, but if you need extra towels or another bar of soap, stop back. We’ll take care of you, count on it. A good place for breakfast is the Old Skillet downtown. Right across from the courthouse. They serve a passable dinner, too. Although the best spot for that is Bill’s Steak House, right on this road just south of town on the left — barely more’n a mile from here.”
I thanked him, stifling the urge to say “much obliged,” and walked to my room, which was a pleasant surprise. There was a king-size bed with a firm mattress and a bathroom that looked like it had recently been fitted with new fixtures and light blue tile. The TV set had a good-sized screen, although that was wasted on me: If you strung together all of the television I watch in a given year, not counting the news, the tape would not run as long as it takes me to walk from the brownstone to Lily’s apartment up on Sixty-third between Park and Madison.
I unpacked, washed up, and went back to the motel office, where Indiana Slim was taking a reservation over the phone. “Where do I find the local newspaper office?” I asked as he cradled the receiver.
“It’s right on the courthouse square. Two doors from that restaurant I was telling you about, the Old Skillet.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose again. “ ’Fraid we don’t have a daily paper here; I suppose we’re just too doggone small. The Mercury only comes out twice a week, Tuesday and Friday. It’s all right, though — I always read it straight through front to back.” He nodded with pride. “Fellow who’s the editor, name’s Southworth, comes from somewhere back East. They say he’s a real crackerjack.”
“Much obliged,” I responded, deciding not to fight the urge. With a basketball team called the Meteors and a newspaper named the Mercury, the fine folks in Mercer either liked alliteration or they were big into astronomy — or maybe some of both. I half-expected to find a movie theater named the Mars.
The burg did have a movie house, all right, but it was the Roxy, and the aging letters on the marquee announced that it was CLOSED FOR REMODELING. From the look of the facade, the place more likely was closed for eternity. I parked on one side of the square just as the bell in the courthouse tower tolled twice, in near agreement with my watch. The newspaper occupied the street level of a solid, two-story red-brick building that was in far better shape than the Roxy, although it probably was older. On the big window, silver Old English type spelled out The Mercer Mercury, and beneath that logo, smaller black letters proclaimed it as Proudly Serving Gilmartin County Since 1887.
Entering, I found myself in a reception area manned by a strawberry blonde with a well-shaped nose who was busy driving an electric typewriter. The nameplate on her desk announced she was Barbara Adamson. I had the nose, and the rest of what appeared to be a nicely designed face, in profile while her fingers skimmed over the keys. She got to the bottom of the sheet and whipped it crisply out of the machine, then turned toward me with a smile that would have warmed a penguin’s tootsies. The face was every bit as pleasing head-on as it had been in profile.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, sir,” Barbara Adamson said softly, making me believe every word. “Can I help you?”
I told her I wanted to see Southworth, handing her one of my cards, the eggshell-colored number with only my name, address and phone number on it.
She studied it, nodded, and smiled, both with her mouth and her Scandinavian blue eyes. “Do you have an appointment, Mr. Goodwin?”
“No, but I wish I did. Would that help?”
Another smile, this one accompanied by a slight blush. “Oh, I didn’t mean to sound rude or anything like that. Actually, Mr. Southworth is very accessible. He tries to see everybody. Does he know you?”
“I’m afraid not,” I answered.
“You’re from New York City,” she said, nodding thoughtfully. “At the risk of sounding like this is some sort of backwater, I’ll confess to you that we don’t get a lot of visitors from New York. May I tell him what business you’re in?”
“You may, Ms., Miss, or Mrs. Adamson. I’m a private investigator.”
“It’s Mrs.,” she responded, breaking my heart. “A private investigator? Excuse me and I’ll see if he’s available.” She got up and went through a doorway, leaving me to look at framed front pages of the Mercury that decorated the walls of the reception room. I was reading one from September 1945 with the headline our boys come home to cheering when a husky voice broke in. “I’m Chet Southworth; what can I do for you?”
He was about my height, but had the edge on me both in weight and years. His thick hair, which fell across one side of his forehead, was more gray than brown, and although I wouldn’t have termed him fat, wide blue suspenders were being given a test. I asked if I could steal a few minutes of his time.
He moved his shoulders up and then down. “Why not? Come on back to my office.” I nodded my thanks to Barbara Adamson and followed him through the doorway and along one side of an underrated, high-ceilinged room where a half-dozen people worked at computer terminals. “We’ve only had VDTs for our editorial staff for a few months now,” Southworth said over his shoulder, “but they’re a godsend. I tried for two years to get management to invest in a system, and they finally got tired of hearing me carp and whine.”