The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 23 Classic Mystery Stories

A certified true copy of his birth certificate, again bearing the notary stamp of Emma Pruett, showed he had been born in Heather Ridge.

His three references rated his character high. One was from a Reverend Donald Hartwell, one from County Judge Albert Baker, the third from Dr. Emmet Parks.

While it was standard procedure for people to give their family physician’s name when references were required, the frequency with which I was running into Dr. Emmet Parks’ name began to intrigue me.

I took rather detailed notes of the information about Paul Manners contained in his file.

From the Capital Building I went back to association headquarters and gave a computer operator a question to ask the monster brain. Its answer lessened my suspicion. In addition to the five typhoid cases, Paul Manners had placed twenty other policies with various carriers since he had been in business, and all of these insured were still alive. It looked more and more as though the insurance broker had merely had the misfortune to start business in a territory where previously no one had ever been approached by an insurance salesman, had done remarkably well with his virgin territory, but had immediately run into an epidemic.

If it hadn’t been for Dr. Emmet Parks’ signature on all the claim-payment checks, I would have dropped the matter right there. But I had to check that out. I decided to visit Heather Ridge.

I drove up on Wednesday, arriving in the middle of the morning. The town was a good forty miles from the nearest main highway, back up in the hills in rugged, sparsely settled country. The last thirty miles I traveled on washboard gravel road, and I didn’t see a single other car. As a matter of fact, except for power and telephone lines strung on poles alongside the road, I saw few signs of civilization. Occasionally I spotted a farmhouse or a barn, but most of the time the view from the winding mountain road was of steep hills densely covered with pine.

I didn’t see any heather, and Heather Ridge itself turned out to be in a valley instead of on a ridge, although there was a sharp, jagged ridge just north of it.

Later I learned the town and the county had been named after Amos Heather, a trapper who back in the mid-1800s had stood off an Indian attack from it for seven days before he finally lost his scalp.

The town was like something from the last century. There was a town square with a squat, one-story, redbrick courthouse in its center. A half dozen overalled old men chewing tobacco lolled on the low wall edging the courthouse lawn. There were a few tired-looking business establishments ringing the square, but there were no shoppers on the street. Only two vehicles were in sight, both parked in front of the courthouse. One was a 1932 pickup truck, the other a Model T.

The tobacco-chewing old men regarded me with silent speculation when I parked and entered the courthouse.

There was a long corridor running the length of the building, with offices off it on either side, labeled with the familiar titles you see in any courthouse. Most of the doors stood open so that I had to pause and look in to read the lettering on the doors. The sheriff’s office was to the left just inside the main entrance, and directly across from it was the district attorney’s office. Both were empty. I passed other empty offices labeled TAX ASSESSOR, REGISTRAR OF MOTOR VEHICLES, COUNTY RECORDER, COUNTY CLERK and CORONER. Opposite the coroner’s office was an empty office labeled COUNTY JUDGE, and a small, equally empty courtroom.

By then I was halfway down the corridor, and I finally found some sign of life. In a small alcove, behind a counter flush with the left wall of the corridor, a young woman sat before a telephone switchboard. She was a rather plain-featured brunette of about twenty-one or two. A sign hanging above the counter said INFORMATION.

“Morning, miss,” I said. “Is the courthouse closed today?”

“Oh, no,” she said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Where is everybody?”

“Oh, they’re all available.” She indicated the switchboard. “I can have any official you want over here in ten minutes. They don’t hang around here because we have so little business.”

She laughed at my quizzical expression. “Kind of throws you at first, doesn’t it? It took me some getting used to when I first came here. I’ve been in this job only a year. I’m from Holoyke. When I answered the ad for a secretarial position, I didn’t realize I’d be practically running a whole county, but I’m clerk of the court, secretary to the D.A., the county clerk, the county recorder and the coroner, registrar of motor vehicles, switchboard operator and information clerk. My name’s Emma Pruett.”

The woman whose notary seal had been stamped to all the death certificates, I remembered. I said, “Doesn’t anybody but you work around here? You’re the staff?”

“When it’s necessary. The population of the whole county is only about twenty-five hundred, and all the county jobs except mine and the sheriff’s are part-time. The D.A. has his private law practice, for instance, and so does the county judge. The recorder of deeds runs a general store. The coroner’s a practicing physician, and so on. The salaries of none of them are more than a few dollars a month. They hired me to coordinate things. I always know where to reach everybody when something comes up. The sheriff’s usually around, but he happens to be over at the coffee shop at the moment.”