Three Can Keep a Secret Page 9

  Joe sidestepped answering. “You haven’t seen her mentioned on the news, on TV? We just released a bulletin on her—should be all over.”

  He responded. “We don’t watch the news. Too depressing. Why is she on TV, if she’s okay?”

  “I didn’t say she was okay. When did you last see her?”

  Friel was shaking his head. “When I was a kid. She’s been in the nuthouse most of my life. What happened to her?”

  “Why was she put there?”

  Friel scowled. “I don’t know. She was off her rocker.”

  Again, his voice was flat.

  “Did your mom ever talk about that? Why it happened?”

  “Not really. She had other things to worry about.”

  Joe didn’t speak. The silence grew heavy in the small, battered room. Finally, as hoped, Friel sighed and added, “My dad was a drunk. Kicked us around pretty good. Aunt Carolyn was the least of our problems.”

  This was sadly familiar to the two detectives.

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Joe said gently.

  Friel sat back in his chair and gave Joe the most direct eye-to-eye contact he’d delivered so far. His half smile was rueful and heartbroken.

  “I got married once,” he volunteered. “Didn’t last long. Lucky we didn’t have kids. It was a mess.” He glanced at the hallway door, toward the sound of the distant TV set, and murmured, “So I came back. Figured what the hell.”

  He straightened, ran his fingers through what was left of his hair, and addressed them in an artificially stronger tone. “Look, I know squat about Aunt Carolyn, but Mom kept some items in an album. Maybe they’ll be useful.”

  His and Joe’s chairs screeched on the scarred linoleum as they stood, and Friel led the way back toward the hallway and one of the bedrooms.

  It was pitch black until he switched on the overhead light, revealing as in a flash photograph what looked like a crime scene, barring a body. The bed was large, old, unmade, and surrounded by several fold-up tray tables cluttered with half-empty glasses, a stained pizza box, crumpled tissues, bags of candy, and assorted junk. The floor was populated by small tepees of piled clothing. The furniture consisted of a single dresser and a makeup table so covered with belongings that only its spindly legs gave it an identity.

  Friel crossed to the dresser, wrestled open one of its top drawers, making about a dozen dusty figurines grouped haphazardly across its surface tremble and rattle, and dug around until he extracted a cheap, pink plastic photo album stamped in gold with the logo, MEMORIES OF YOU.

  This he handed to Joe. “Ton of crap in there—me, the old lady, my dad, Aunt Carolyn, bunch of other people. Postcards, too, newspaper clippings. Like I said…”

  Joe took it from him and looked around. “Mind if I take this back to the kitchen?”

  Friel shrugged. “Knock yourself out. I’ll go keep Mom company.”

  “Before you go,” Joe asked him, “what’s the story behind your name being different from your mother’s and Carolyn’s?”

  “Friel was my dad’s. After he left, Mom went back to her maiden name.”

  Joe nodded. “Thanks. Just wanted to confirm my assumption.”

  He and Lester returned to the kitchen and sat at the small table, Joe imagining Friel and his mother sharing meals here in total silence every night, whether they actually did so or not. It was a Norman Rockwell nightmare.

  William Friel had been accurate in his description of the album’s contents. There were no labels to help them decipher the assortment, but in most cases, none were needed. The shots of small, stiff groupings facing the camera didn’t call for more elaboration than the body language in evidence. Plus, having met Barb Barber and her son, Les and Joe could easily decipher not just those two, if younger and occasionally more animated, but they could also see elements of the son’s features in the face of the brutal-looking man often posing with them.

  “Fun bunch,” Lester nevertheless murmured, leafing slowly through the book.

  Joe stopped him with an extended finger. “That must be Carolyn,” he commented, tapping on a smiling young woman standing beside Barb, their arms interlinked. “She’s cute.”

  “Like a slimmed-down, brightened-up version of her sister,” Les agreed.

  Joe pointed to another shot. “She’s certainly the only one who smiles any.”

  Les came to a page with a folded news clipping, which he gingerly opened until it was about twice the size of the page to which it was attached. The glue had darkened a quarter of it, but it was still legible, and the grainy photograph of a beaming young Carolyn spoke for itself. She was waving at the camera next to a straitlaced man in a business suit, under the headline, GOVERNOR-FOR-A-DAY! The date at the top was just under fifty years ago.

  “Who’s the guy?” Les asked, squinting at the caption.

  “‘Young Caroline Barber,’” Joe read, adding as an aside, “they misspelled her name, ‘had her time in the spotlight as Governor-for-a-Day on Thursday, when Senator Gorden Marshall, R-Chittenden, introduced her to a joint session of the legislature as part of the Administration’s newly launched effort to bring the people closer to state government’s inner workings.’”

  “Who in their right mind came up with that one?” Lester asked, peering at the picture. “Sure doesn’t look like Gorden Marshall thought much of it.”

  “Is there an article that goes with it?” Joe asked, peeling the page back a bit to study the flip side.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Lester confirmed. “Guess the caption did it all.”

  Joe took in the image for another few seconds before refolding the clipping and sitting back so that his colleague could resume turning pages.

  “Oh, here you go,” Spinney said. “Maybe.”

  He’d uncovered a pale blue envelope, mounted squarely in the middle of the page. It was addressed to Barb, with a return address of Carolyn’s. He eased it open and extracted a single sheet covered with small, childish writing. He handed this over to his boss.

  Joe positioned it under the overhead light, the sound of the distant TV still filtering back like a thin fog. Lester sat quietly and watched him work through the letter’s contents.

  Finally, Joe placed it flat on the table, next to the album, and rested his fingertips on it as if to monitor its pulse.

  “Sounds like a sweet girl,” he said thoughtfully.

  “She talk about her big day?” Lester asked.

  Joe sat more comfortably and crossed his arms, looking at the letter. “Yeah. You can really feel her happiness with it all—like a kid at a birthday party. Really like a kid.”

  Lester kept quiet, knowing when Joe was mulling things over. He took a stab at interpreting what was on the older man’s mind. “You want me to ask William back in here?” he asked, standing.

  Joe glanced up at him in surprise. “Huh? Yeah—good idea.”

  Smiling, Lester stepped down the short hall and fetched their host. Friel stood in the doorway as Lester resumed his position by the counter.

  “Mr. Friel,” Joe asked, “did you know your aunt at all? You said that you last saw her when you were little.”

  “Sure—before they put her away.”

  “How would you have described her personality?”

  Friel frowned at him. “Her personality? I don’t get you.”

  “I don’t want to put words in your mouth,” Joe explained. “But what I’m looking for is how you might’ve described her to someone who’d never met her, like us, for example.”

  Friel tilted his head slightly. “Nice,” he said. “She was always real friendly. Talked a lot, too. And laughed. I mean, she was simple, so that’s not too surprising. She wasn’t much given to serious thinking.”

  Joe nodded, as if hearing a confirmation. “How do you mean, ‘simple’?”

  Friel’s voice dropped, as if his mother could hear them from the front room. “Just that. Not too bright. That’s why she was fun company for a kid, I guess. She was still
one herself.”

  “What did she do for a living, back when she was made Governor-for-a-Day?”

  For the first time, Friel smiled. “Was that in there?” He pointed at the closed album on the table. “The governor thing?”

  “Yeah. What can you tell us about it?”

  “It was the biggest thing that ever happened to her, but I don’t know much about it. I remember her saying to everybody, ‘I was governor once,’ again and again. It drove my mom crazy. She used to yell at Carolyn that it was just a publicity stunt, but Aunt Carolyn didn’t care.”

  “How did it happen? Do you know? Or did your mom tell you afterwards, maybe?”

  “Nah. Mom didn’t talk about it at all. Like I said, she hated it. Maybe she hated that Carolyn got the attention, when all she got was me and Dad. I don’t know.”

  Joe returned to his original question. “So, what was Carolyn doing when she was put in the limelight?”

  “Working in Montpelier. That’s all I know. I would hear them talking about it. But it was like when somebody says, ‘He works in Washington,’ you know? It means the government. That’s what I always thought. I can’t swear to it, though. What would they find for her to do, you know what I mean—given how sharp she was?”

  “Right,” Joe said without conviction, thinking that there were plenty of things a pretty young woman might be asked to do in government, especially back then.

  “Did Barb and Carolyn get along? You make it sound like they didn’t,” Joe asked, almost as an afterthought.

  Friel surprised him with his answer. “Mom loved her. Same way I did. There was no getting Carolyn down. With all the bullshit my dad pulled, we needed every laugh we could get, and Carolyn was good for it. She may’ve been a loony, but she was fun. My mom and her were like joined at the hip. Maybe that’s part of what got to Mom about that governor thing—it split them apart a little.”

  A softness had settled on his face with the reminiscence.

  Joe picked up the album and asked, “Do you think we could borrow this for a while? We’ll get it back to you.”

  “I don’t care,” William Friel said, sad once more. “You can keep it. That’s all done and buried.”

  Joe understood the sentiment, although he felt in his bones that it was utterly inaccurate.

  CHAPTER NINE

  After their interview with William Friel, Joe and Lester decided to stay in Burlington overnight instead of heading back to Brattleboro. This, as it turned out, was a good thing, given what Sammie Martens had to say the following morning. Earlier, Joe had asked her to check on the whereabouts and activities of ex–State Senator Gorden Marshall—the unhappy politician who’d been photographed beside Carolyn Barber on her big day.

  “Good news, bad news, boss,” Sam reported on the phone.

  “I hate that,” he said, wiping the last of the shaving cream from his face and entering the motel’s bedroom. Lester was doing push-ups next to the far bed, in front of the flat-screen TV. He paused to quickly hit the MUTE button on CNN.

  “All right,” she continued, ignoring him. “The good news is that I found Gorden Marshall. He’s parked at a place called The Woods of Windsor. It’s one of those over-the-top old folks’ homes where, in exchange for a small fortune, you get three squares a day, a pull alarm beside the toilet, and a one-way ticket to the terminal ward so your kids never have to worry about you when you go ga-ga.”

  “Ouch,” Joe responded, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Do we have issues with this?”

  “We do not,” she said, adding, “At least, not personally. There are a few things about it, though, that bother me in principle. I think it has something to do with the money involved, but I haven’t given it enough thought to know for sure.”

  Joe laughed. “Geez, Sam—that’s very philosophical of you. You already wondering what Emma might be thinking when you and Willy get too old to use that toilet?”

  “That’s gross.”

  “That’s life, kiddo. What’s the bad news?”

  “He’s dead.”

  It had the right effect. Joe hesitated, reworking the conversation in his head. “Marshall’s dead?”

  “As the proverbial doornail. Last night.”

  Joe turned the phone aside to tell Spinney, “Sam says Gorden Marshall died last night.”

  Lester turned off the TV. “No way.”

  “How?” Joe asked Sammie, putting his cell on speakerphone.

  “Natural causes, according to the facility. I called as soon as I read about it during my records search on the guy, and whoever it was in administration at The Woods told me that their medical director was signing it off as a natural.”

  “The hell he is,” Joe blurted out.

  This time, it was Sam who paused before asking, “Who was Marshall, anyhow? You didn’t go into detail last night. I mean, I know the political part.…”

  “That’s about it so far,” Joe admitted. “We found him posing in a photograph next to Carolyn Barber when she was made Governor-for-a-Day. It was just a lead I wanted to follow.” He reconsidered that and added, “Or it was before this piece of unlikely coincidence. Where’s the body right now?”

  “Probably at the funeral home. Maybe still at The Woods of Windsor. It was dumb luck that I stumbled over this. I was running all state databases, as usual with missing persons, and there he was in the death registry. I couldn’t believe it. If the Internet used ink, it wouldn’t have even been dry.”

  Joe was gesturing to Lester to start packing. “Sam,” he said, “call them back, and the local police. Tell them to freeze everything till we get there. And call the SA—that’s Roger Carbine for that county—and tell him that I’ll be calling him for a big favor and will phone him from the road, right after you let me know you’ve chased him down. We got to get Gorden Marshall an autopsy, but I want to look at him first.”

  Sam knew better than to prolong the conversation. Any and all discussion about this could wait until later, especially if some family member was impatiently hoping to get Mr. Marshall cremated.

  “You got it,” she said, and gave him the address for The Woods.

  * * *

  As might befit a place of self-proclaimed high standards, The Woods of Windsor was located near Woodstock, Vermont—one of the few towns in the state wealthy enough to have had its downtown utility lines buried and its streetlamps replaced with wannabe nineteenth-century gaslights.

  The Woods itself appeared as a vast country estate, with rolling green lawns, a central pond complete with two fountains, and a driveway more deserving of a castle than a retirement home.

  Not that The Woods of Windsor described itself as such. While Lester had driven here, Joe had struggled using the younger man’s smartphone to check out the place and get a feel for what he was about to encounter. By the time motion sickness had gotten the upper hand, he’d become all but convinced that The Woods would be an ample reward for his having lived all these years—if only he had the 400,000 nonrefundable bucks it took to secure a small two-bedroom apartment there.

  “Jesus,” he’d said, returning Lester’s phone. “It’s God’s waiting room and J.P. Morgan’s in one package.”

  Now, as they passed through the main entrance, feeling a little diminished for not being in a horse-drawn coach, they experienced firsthand the aura of what true money could buy.

  They parked, entered the lobby, tactfully introduced themselves to the white-haired receptionist, and were immediately pointed to an unmarked door, halfway down the hall. As they approached it, the door swung open to reveal a tight-faced, balding man in a suit and glasses, with a harried, unpleasant expression.

  “You the police?” he asked without preamble, ushering them inside and quickly closing the door behind them, as if to contain a bad smell.

  Joe and Lester displayed their credentials as Joe asked, “And you are?”

  “I’m Mr. Whitby, assistant to the director. What seems to be the problem? You’re here about Mr. Ma
rshall, aren’t you?”

  The cops exchanged glances, instinctively disliking this lemonish man.

  “We are,” Joe confirmed. “Is the body still here?”

  “It is, thanks to you,” Whitby said testily, “and my phone’s been ringing as a result ever since. What you’ve done has pissed people off.”

  “We’ll probably want all their names,” Joe told him levelly. “So if you could keep a log from now on, we’d appreciate it.”

  Whitby’s face closed down even more, which didn’t seem possible. “I don’t know about that. I don’t know about any of this. I haven’t been told what’s going on here. As far as I know, one of our tenants passed away of natural causes,” he emphasized pointedly, “and now you people are crawling all over the place as if we’d had a terrorist attack.”

  “We just got here,” Lester reminded him.

  “I think he means the local police,” Joe suggested, asking Whitby, “Where are they? We probably ought to coordinate with them.”

  “They’re causing a stir, guarding the apartment,” Whitby sneered, “as if it would fly off or something. I hope you realize what this could do to a place like this.” He snapped his fingers. “One wrong move, one small piece of bad publicity, and we’ve had it—people’ll be out of here like rats leaving a ship.”

  “I’ve got it, George,” said a soothing female voice from behind, entering via the hallway door. “Thanks for your help. Sorry I was late.”

  A woman with no-nonsense eyes and practical, short gray hair rounded to the front of them, waited for George Whitby to disentangle himself and fade away, and then extended her hand in greeting. “Hannah Eastridge,” she began. “I’m the director. I apologize for not greeting you personally. Your colleague called, of course, as has the state’s attorney, and the local police have sealed off the apartment, as you heard. I hope that we’ve set everything up to your satisfaction.”

  Joe had no clue what she meant by that, but he already liked her style, especially compared to her colleague. He was also pleased by her mention of the SA. Roger Carbine had evidently made an effort to smooth the way, even without knowing much about their interest in Mr. Marshall. Joe made a mental note to send the man a gift of thanks. However, all he said was, “Whitby also told us that Marshall’s still here. We appreciate that, and thank you for your cooperation. I do apologize if we’ve ruffled any feathers.”