Read Online Cold and Pure and Very Dead by Joanne Dobson - Free Book Online

grocery store. Keep my eyes and ears open. Try to get the scuttlebutt on Mrs. Milly Deakin Finch. Try to find some clue as to why she would panic at the unexpected intrusion into her country life of a big-city news reporter. Across the blur of highway and horizon, I projected an image of the novelist—the only picture I knew—black and white, young and beautiful, poised for her book-jacket photo, cigarette held gracefully in a long, thin hand. Then I added forty years to that image: black and white, mature and beautiful, cigarette held gracefully in a long, thin hand. Then I added goats.
    When I arrived in Nelson Corners, having left the Pike at the first New York exit and navigated a labyrinth of winding roads, my plans to stake out local establishments promptly evaporated. There were no local establishments in Nelson Corners. There was no
town
. Along the main road, Route 295, long driveways led back to derelict barns and farmhouses in dire need of fresh paint. I slowed as I came to the intersection of 295 and County Route Three, which on the New York State road map pinpointed the town’s name. Sure enough, here was a green rectangular road sign announcing NELSON CORNERS . The intersection offered a white post office, converted from what had once been a small house, a shuttered brick church with a sign that promised ANTIQUE EMPORIUM—COMING SOON , and two houses, one a run-down Gothic Revival with peeling yellow paint, and the other a spiffed-up gray Colonial sporting a dried-flower wreath on its plum-colored front door. Beyond that—more long driveways leading back to more derelict barns, and a road sign directing me to CHATHAM 8 MI . What on earth could have brought a Manhattan sophisticate like Mildred Deakinto this forsaken speck on the map? Whatever connections Nelson Corners might possibly have in this age of cyberspace to the larger world of life and literature would not even have been dreamed of in 1959.
    I must have missed something
, I thought. Turning the Subaru in a narrow lane, I headed back. As I slowed again at the Nelson Corners intersection, a heavy woman in orange stretch pants and a sleeveless beige shell stepped out of the post office with a broom and began sweeping the small porch.
Good. Someone I can ask for directions
. I pulled into the three-car parking lot and rolled my window down. The woman stopped sweeping, but remained where she was. I stuck my head out of the car window. “Could you tell me …” Then I hesitated. Did I really want to begin my acquaintance with this hamlet by asking directions to a house where a sensational murder had just taken place? The locals would think I was nothing but a sensation-hungry ghoul. There must be more subtle ways I could get the information I needed. The sweeper waited for me to complete my question, dark eyes neutral in a round, ruddy face. “Can you tell me … uh … where I could get a good cup of coffee?”
    She leaned her broom against the porch railing and ambled down the steps, over to the car. “Coffee, huh? Well, turn around and head back for Chatham.” She eyed me speculatively. “Don’t know how
good
you’ll think it is—won’t be none of your
ex
-pressos or lat
-tees
. But it’s coffee. Best bet’s at the Homestead, just off Main Street.”
    My informant watched me steadily as I turned the car. When I pulled out onto 295, I glanced into the rearview mirror. The dark eyes were fixed on the Subaru. Obviously not much happened on a Wednesdaymorning in Nelson Corners; the postmistress would know me again if I ever came back to town.
    A s far as its central business district went, Chatham was a two-block town, one block of Main Street and one block of Church. The Homestead Restaurant was just across the railroad tracks from the intersection of those two streets, adjacent to an elegant old stone train station that had been restored as an elegant new bank. At 12:37 on a September Wednesday the Homestead was doing what my mother