The Missing Chapter

“His aunts back in Indiana would be my guess,” she said defiantly. “It certainly wouldn’t have been me — I’m pretty well set, thanks to an uncle who helped develop a computer chip. And Charles knew I was well set. I didn’t need any of his money, if that’s what you were suggesting.”

“It wasn’t. Ms. Mitchell, do you care to nominate a murderer?”

The question stopped her cold, as it was supposed to. She studied the glass top of the coffee table, tracing circles on it with an index finger, then looked up slowly, tilting her head to one side. “Have you met Patricia Royce?” she asked quietly.

“No, but I intend to. Why?”

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I know she is a writer herself, and that she discovered Mr. Childress’s body the day of his death. I understand she was a close friend of his.”

“ ‘Friend’ has many meanings, Mr. Goodwin. It had different meanings to Charles and to Patricia.”

“Go on.”

She crossed her beautiful legs and tapped a shapely knee. “Let’s just say that Patricia expected something more out of the relationship than Charles did.” Her voice was chilly.

“Did he tell you this?”

“Huh! He didn’t have to. Mr. Goodwin, it doesn’t take someone with ESP to spot a woman on the make, and Patricia Royce was definitely on the make with Charles.”

“How did he feel about her?”

Debra rolled her eyes. “He saw her as a fellow author, someone who he could bounce ideas off, someone he could compare notes with. At that, she leaned on him for moral support a lot more than he leaned on her.”

“Did you and Childress ever discuss her feelings toward him?”

She nodded grimly. “We did. I told him I thought Patricia was in love with him, and he laughed at me. He just laughed at me! He said it was preposterous, that’s the word he used.”

“Ms. Mitchell, you’re not going to like this next question, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask it,” I told her, raising one eyebrow and giving her what Lily Rowan calls my “almost-smile.”

I got an almost-smile back. “Fire away,” she said bravely. “You’ll get a straight answer.”

“Okay. Were Charles Childress and Patricia Royce having an affair?”

She handled herself well, but then, she probably saw the pitch coming. “Mr. Goodwin, if I got outraged and said ‘no way!’ you probably would chalk it up as the natural reaction of a woman who was being cheated on, wouldn’t you?”

“I like to think I’m more enlightened than that,” I responded with a full smile.

“All right, then the answer is ‘no way!’ ” she said, not returning the smile. “Maybe it’s arrogance, but I believe I was close enough to Charles to know what he wanted in a long-term relationship, and Patricia didn’t have it. Now if you are going to ask me what ‘it’ is, we’ll have a problem, because I don’t think I can give you a definition.”

“How did Patricia Royce feel about you?”

Now she was toying with the little bronze eagle that perched on the coffee table. “Oh, she was always very polite when we ran into each other — too polite. I got the feeling that she wanted me to think she was this humble little writer from — where’s she from? — Virginia, I think it is. As you may know, she writes historical novels, mostly about the South. Charles always said they were very good, but I wouldn’t know. You couldn’t drag me kicking and screaming into a historical novel. Anyway, Patricia Royce was so damn self-effacing the few times we met that it gave me a pain. I know she never liked me. She and Charles had been friends long before I came along, and it was obvious that she deeply resented me, despite all that phony humility of hers.”

“And I gather you think she could have killed Childress?”

“You are not going to get me to respond to that,” Debra Mitchell said brusquely, giving the eagle another shove before she left it alone. “I know a little about the laws of libel and slander. Let’s just say I hope you spend some time talking to Patricia.”

I repeated that I planned to. “When did you last see Mr. Childress?”

“The night before he died. Last Monday night. We went out for dinner at a little Italian place we like on Second Avenue.”

“Did he seem particularly depressed?”

“Oh, he was kind of sour, but no more than he had been lately. Actually, dinner was my idea; I thought it might take his mind off his problems and cheer him. He’d always liked that restaurant, and we hadn’t been there for a while.”

“Where were you on Tuesday, say from mid-morning on?”

“Well, I—” She recoiled as if she’d been slapped. “Why are you asking?”

“Just my native curiosity.”

Her face went pale with anger, one of the better performances of outrage I’ve witnessed. “Listen, Mr. Goodwin, I’d hardly be encouraging your investigation if I were the killer, now, would I?”

“Probably not. But in my line of work, Ms. Mitchell, I’ve gotten in the habit of asking nosy questions. Do you have a problem with that one?”