Three Can Keep a Secret Read online

“And he didn’t see him, either.” Willy leaned in to ask, “Did the sheriff see you, with all your cuts and bruises from Bud?”

  “No,” Nate admitted. “I was told to stay away.”

  “What happened between Bud and the sheriff?”

  “I heard they met in the mill. That’s where Bud put the coffin—a box, really. The sheriff drove up, talked with Bud awhile, and he drove off. That was it.”

  “What about your mom?” Willy asked. “What was she doing through all this?”

  “I don’t know. When I woke up, after the beating, he sent me to get fixed up by her. She did it, but never said a word, and a day later, he threw me out. I never saw her again.”

  “Where was Eileen?”

  “She came home right after the fight, but I don’t know where she was when the sheriff came. I saw her for a couple of minutes when I was leaving the next day. She didn’t have a clue. Nobody told her nuthin’. She just looked stunned.”

  “You keep in touch, though. She told me,” Willy said.

  “Yeah, sometimes.” Nate’s tone was wistful. “She had it rough, being alone all of a sudden, with Bud and Dreama ending up the way they did. Her whole world blew up when she wasn’t looking. I’m glad she found Phil.”

  “Ranslow?”

  “Yeah. He sounds all right for her.”

  “When was the last time you and Eileen talked?” Willy asked, remembering what she’d answered.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said. “A year, maybe? I’m too embarrassed to say much, so I leave it to her to find me.”

  Willy stood up and paced the floor, an impulse that took him all of two steps. “How’d you end up here?”

  “I got a job logging, after I left home,” Nate explained. “The Kingdom seemed like a good fit. One of the landowners let me build this place. In exchange, I keep an eye out. There’s nothing to see, though.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “Over twenty years.”

  “How do you keep alive?” Willy pointed at the stocked cans and boxes.

  “I trade stuff,” he said. “Animal furs. I still work the woodlot. It doesn’t take much.”

  Willy turned to face him directly. “I have to tell you something, Nate.”

  His host stayed seated but straightened slightly, triggered by Willy’s tone. “Okay.”

  “The recent flooding eroded part of the cemetery where your brother was buried. Herb’s coffin was exposed. There was nobody in it. Just a bunch of rocks.”

  Nate blinked. “What?”

  “Herb’s coffin doesn’t have anybody in it, Nate,” Willy tried again. “Could be he’s still alive.”

  “Herb?” Nate sounded as if he was barely awake.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Willy said, “but you already sentenced yourself to a twenty-year-plus prison term. Your dad may have lied about Herb dying. That’s why he wouldn’t open the box when the sheriff came. As far as I can tell, nobody ever saw Herb after the accident.”

  Nate was slowly absorbing it all. “Why?” he managed to say.

  Willy gave a shrug. “Who knows? Bud had poisoned you against your brother, although not in so many words. He couldn’t believe you took it to the point where you threw him into the saw, so now it was up to Bud to take revenge. He covered his own guilt by making you feel like you’d killed Herb.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Nate said wonderingly.

  “Humans usually don’t,” Willy answered. “For all I know, maybe the whole parenting thing just fell in on him, and he took this way to clean out the stable except for Eileen, who might’ve struck him differently because she’s a girl.”

  He sat back down, still speaking. “Nate, I’m not a shrink. I have no clue what drove him to do what he did, or even what happened to Herb in the long run. For all I know, he died two weeks after. But I think Bud buried a box of rocks in part to put everything behind him, and then let it eat him up until it killed him, right after it had done the same to Dreama. From what I know of human nature, your whole family was fucked up beyond repair and did everything wrong to set things right. But like I said, nobody pays me for counseling.”

  Nate didn’t react. He just sat where he was and stared at his guest as if he’d been beamed down into his chair from a flying saucer.

  “You say you killed your brother,” Willy forged ahead. “I have zero proof of that—no body, no witnesses, no evidence, no crime scene. You guys had a fight, Herb got injured, your dad beat the snot out of you, and then—probably—he covered up by inventing a story, burying the rocks, and throwing his two sons out the door.”

  At that, Nate’s expression seemed to awaken, but Willy cut him off before he could speak. “I know, I know, I can’t prove any of it. But Eileen stayed home, and she never saw Herb again, thinking he was in the box. You and I know he wasn’t, so where was he? Bud chucked you out ’cause of what you did. You say he wasn’t too thrilled with Herb—either because of his sexual orientation or just because your old man was as mean as cat shit—so maybe he threw him out, too.”

  Willy abruptly stopped and fixed Nate with a look, making him squirm.

  “What?” Nate finally said in a small voice.

  “Who was your doctor when you were all living together?”

  “We didn’t go to a doctor much.”

  “Good for you,” Willy said impatiently. “If you’d been the one who got caught up in a saw blade, who would your father have taken you to? Especially if he’d wanted to avoid a hospital.”

  “Dr. Racque, I guess.”

  “Racque?” Willy repeated. “You’re kidding. He live north of Townshend, in Windham County?”

  Nate shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Thomas Racque? R-a-c-q-u-e?”

  Nate scratched his temple. “I guess. It looked French.”

  Willy nodded, pleased. He knew old Doc Racque. Long retired but still alive. He’d actually walked away from the profession after one disagreement too many with the medical bureaucracy, choosing to manage his woodlot and tend to his garden. Willy had dealt with him over twenty years ago on a case, also involving a trauma that should have been reported to the authorities. Thomas Racque was ill-inclined to play by the rules.

  Willy had taken an instant liking to him.

  * * *

  “I have nothing saying Herb Rozanski’s dead,” Willy reported. “Much less murdered.”

  Joe awkwardly shifted his cell phone against his cheek and ear to hear more clearly. He’d once taken the ergonomics of old-fashioned phones for granted. Never again. “Based on what?” he asked.

  Willy did his own readjusting, only in his case, it was Emma’s access to her mother’s bottled breast milk that he was struggling with.

  “I interviewed the old family doctor—a retired old coot I know named Racque. Bud took Herb to him after he finished beating Nate half to death. Herb’s arm had taken the brunt of the saw blade, and Racque sewed it back together.”

  “There any records of this?” Joe asked. He was driving west through the early darkness from a day at The Woods, where he’d been helping Sam and Lester prepare to interview all residents with any ties to Gorden Marshall.

  “That was the whole point,” Willy said contemptuously. “Bud wanted it under the radar and Racque was happy to oblige. Not that Racque thought it was that big a deal. It wasn’t like Bud came to him and said, ‘Hey, one son tried to murder the other; patch him up.’ Racque thought it was an accident, and neither Bud nor Herb said anything different.”

  “So why the subterfuge with the box of rocks?” Joe asked.

  “I met with Nate Rozanski today, too,” Willy said. “Up in the middle of Lockjaw, Vermont, in the Kingdom. He thought he’d killed Herb, till I told him otherwise. After he gave me Racque’s name, we got to talking more easily, and I asked him the same question. He’s a little dim—been living like a hermit too long, for one thing—but he told me Bud said something along the lines of, ‘You’re dead to me now; both
of you are.’ I think Bud got to have his cake and eat it, too. He screwed Nate by making him think he’d killed his brother, on one hand, and I bet he convinced Herb that the fake funeral was to protect the kid’s back, while sending a not-too-subtle message that a queer son was not welcome at home.

  “Herb may have been gay, which his old man hated. But if I’m right, Bud got to throw each of them out as embarrassments in one fell swoop, and kept the daughter until she jumped ship on her own. Father-of-the-year material, he was not.”

  “So you’re done?” Joe asked reasonably. “’Cause we could do with some help up here.”

  Willy demurred. “I think I have a line on Herb. Should be quick, though.”

  The favor was implied, and Joe was struck by the way it had been phrased. Willy was not taken to asking for permission. He kept to himself, didn’t reveal case details, and delivered results like some TV cowboy from the ’50s. Joe occasionally fantasized that had it been feasible, Willy would have slung some of his bad guys over a saddle before bringing them in for questioning.

  “You all right with this?” Joe asked. “Is there something else bugging you?”

  “You want me to do a half-assed job?” Willy challenged him, his attitude surfacing.

  “Just make it short,” Joe told him. “You can give me the details later.” He hung up before Willy did the honors.

  Willy smiled at the phone before putting it down and readjusting the bottle, watching his daughter’s contented face as she worked her cheek muscles rhythmically.

  “Hey, daughter,” he said in a near whisper, his face inches from her downy hair. “I may not be father of the year, either, but you will never not be the love of my life, no matter how screwy I get.”

  * * *

  Joe reached Burlington at a little after seven, and knew without thinking which of Beverly’s two primary addresses—home or office—to visit first.

  Sure enough, after letting himself into the medical examiner’s office via the coded keypad on the employees’ entrance, he wandered through the quiet, tenebrous suite, enjoying the stillness here as he did in his own office in Brattleboro, until he reached her corner enclave, which predictably was filled with light.

  He paused at the doorjamb and made a slight brushing noise with his shoe, enough to draw her attention without startling her.

  She looked up from her desk, a quizzical expression immediately yielding to happiness.

  “Joe,” she said, smiling and rising to circle the desk. “God, what a sight at the end of the day.”

  She’d exchanged her standard scrubs for a summer dress with buttons running down the front, the bottom few of which she’d left open, for freedom of movement and style—of which he thought she had plenty.

  Abandoning the reserve she wore along with her uniform, she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him long and passionately as he ran his hands along her back and below, inventorying what she was wearing underneath the thin fabric.

  “Good Lord,” she said finally, pulling away just enough to speak. “I do like what is developing here.”

  He laughed, kissed her again, and leaned slightly to one side to swing her door closed, his other hand gathering up the hem of her dress. “You mind?” he asked.

  She kissed his earlobe, reached out as his fingertips touched her naked thigh, and snapped the lock shut on the door. “This is a first I’ve been dreaming about for years.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Rob Perkins entered Gail Zigman’s office and this time closed her door himself. He sat heavily in the chair opposite her and said, “We’ve just been royally fucked.”

  Gail removed her reading glasses and stared at him. “What?”

  “Sheldon Scott,” he reminded her in a dull monotone. “You sent me to meet with him. Turned out to be a classic bait and switch. If this goes the way I think, I will take full responsibility, say I acted unilaterally, and resign. I don’t know if that’ll be enough, but it can’t hurt, and I deserve it anyhow for not having advised you better. For what it’s worth, from the bottom of my heart, I apologize, Governor. You should have been better served.”

  Gail was openmouthed. “Rob, what the hell are you talking about? What happened?”

  Perkins took a breath and tried again. “I’m sorry. It was just so boneheaded. So amateurish—exactly what they were expecting from a bunch of tree-huggers. I feel like an idiot. My own arrogance made me careless.”

  Gail quietly slapped the top of her desk a couple of times. “Rob. Enough. You can beat yourself up later. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “I went to see Scott, as we discussed, at his office. Only it wasn’t at his office. It was upstairs.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “In the Monday-morning quarterbacking coming next, it’ll mean I was there for a secret meeting with the Dark Side—if you’re on the left—or that the Zigman administration was being offered holy insight and guidance by the Yoda of politics, if you’re on the right.”

  Gail nodded silently, preparing for what was coming.

  “Scott has a room to make Jay Gatsby drool, all lined with books and photographs of him and the conservative glitterati. I’d never been there before, and I should’ve smelled a rat right off, but instead, I just wandered in—witnessed by some photogenic female flunky who no doubt will have a memory like an elephant’s.”

  “Okay,” Gail prompted him gently.

  “Anyhow, he never actually said that LeMieur put a deal on the table, at least not like what Raffner outlined. Instead, he danced around, referencing LeMieur, avoiding any details, and babbling about how dear Harold is getting old and sentimental, wants to give back to his state, and is at death’s door—which I don’t believe for a second. Basically, it was contrived to make me suggest—very reasonably, of course—that the plan we heard from Raffner would be a bear to put in place in a timely fashion, that FEMA would probably freak out, and that I’d have to report back to you in any case—all of which I said right on cue. What it amounted to was a gigantic stall, designed to interest us, but without enough details to make it actionable.”

  Gail didn’t respond, still waiting for the punch line.

  “Then he stuck his fangs in,” Rob went on. “Like a fucking cobra. Oozing sympathy, he immediately said—if not in these words—that this was clearly above the pay scale of a mere governor, and that the DC-Three should be the ones to handle it. It was put way smoother than that, of course, but that was the gist of it.”

  “He’s telling us to fuck off and he’s pitching it to our Washington delegation?” Gail asked, baffled. “After he initiated contact?”

  “It won’t be that simple,” Perkins replied, not helping to enlighten her. “Or that clear. The punch line, Governor, is that he played us—or me—like patsies.”

  He rose to his feet and began pacing the width of the room, still speaking. “Everything we did seemed completely rational and aboveboard—that’s key to any good con. A rich guy approaches through a trusted intermediary, offering financial aid in a time of public need. What do you do? You respond by meeting with his people and asking for details.”

  He stopped to address her directly. “But the fix is in from the start. ’Cause it has nothing to do with money. It has to do with politics. I will guarantee you that Scott’s people are reaching out right now to the DC-Three—or, better still, did before our meeting—either telling them that LeMieur has made us an altruistic offer we can’t handle, or that we approached him in desperation because we don’t know what we’re doing, can’t figure out how to work with FEMA, and are running out of ideas.”

  Gail blurted out, “But the entire Washington delegation is Democratic, as is the president. What credibility does Scott have, or LeMieur, or any of their pals?”

  Rob’s sorrowful smile confirmed what she already knew. “That’s the whole point, Governor,” he said. “You got elected by thumbing your nose at the Democratic machine, including the D.C. contingent. You and Raffn
er, both. It was a populist fluke; a heady exception to the rule—typical of what can happen in Vermont. But the basics in this state are the same as everywhere else: Money talks, and money talks best to politicians.”

  He sat back down. “The capitalists and the DC-Three were blindsided by your election, but when Scott and LeMieur approach them with this fantasy, a number of irresistible possibilities are going to crop up.” He held up a finger. “One, the Holy Trinity will peg this as a far-right capitalist attempt to take a slap at FEMA, them, and the president, and they’ll hold you accountable for having set it in motion.” A second finger went up. “Two, that reaction will justify Scott and company going into a rant and rave about how big government liberals are standing between the little people and an ailing rich guy’s philanthropy.” With the third finger, he concluded, “And three, after the conservatives have used your own party to crucify you, each camp will fuel the fire of public opinion by portraying you as an incompetent neophyte who’s been caught playing out of her league. At which point—given voter fickleness—anything’ll be possible, come the next election.”

  He paused just enough to take a breath and added, “Which is why I’m perfectly willing to take the bullet and say it was my idea to approach Scott in the first place, without your knowledge.”

  Gail was angrily shaking her head. “Out of the question. I won’t let you do it. This is not a done deal. I will not be outmaneuvered by a bunch of political barracudas. We stuck it to ’em when we won the election; we’ll stick it to ’em on this, too.”

  Perkins didn’t respond. He was distracted by whether she was referring to Scott and his cronies—or to the leaders of her own party.

  * * *

  Joe Gunther rubbed his eyes.

  “Am I boring you?” the old man inquired shrilly. “I don’t want to put you to sleep just because I’m trying to save this institution from shutting down.”

  Joe blinked at Graham Dee and answered, “No, sir. You are giving me a headache; not putting me to sleep.”

  “Well, pardon the hell out of me.”

  Joe addressed the utterly useless assistant director of The Woods of Windsor, “Mr. Whitby. I agreed to meet with you and Mr. Dee out of courtesy. I have done so now for an hour and have run out of time and patience. It has been made crystal clear to me that the board, personified by Mr. Dee, is unhappy with our line of inquiry—”