Three Can Keep a Secret

by Mayor, Archer

  “Nice interview on VPR,” Susan answered without preamble. “I might not have gone on so much about that funding issue. Uncle Sam always sounds more generous on the heels of a disaster than he does a year later when the checks need to be written.”

  Gail knew better than to be sidetracked by someone else’s issue. It was a lesson that Susan herself had taught her early on. Instead, she ignored the comment and got straight to the reason for her call. “Stretching back into Vermont political history,” she asked her friend, “what can you tell me about Carolyn Barber? Governor-for-a-Day a long time ago?”

  Raffner didn’t mind and didn’t hesitate. “Wow—that’s a name from the past. Like bringing up the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles.”

  Gail raised her eyebrows at the obscure reference, but stayed silent, knowing Susan’s process.

  “One of the most famous unsolved murder cases in U.S. history,” came the follow-up.

  “And relevant how?”

  “Okay—a stretch, I’ll grant you. But just like you had no clue about the Black Dahlia, most Vermonters have never heard of Carolyn Barber. At the time, it was seen as a publicity strategy run amok, since most of the coverage made fun of it. But there were rumors that some kind of deal was responsible.”

  Gail frowned at the phone. “A deal? What was the point? Did money change hands?”

  But here, Susan proved less helpful. “Not that I know of. Barber was a nobody, and as far as I know, nothing happened as a result except for the bad press. Of course, I wasn’t there, and it wasn’t like it was news even a month later. I only know about it because I love this stuff, and I went to school with a girl named Carole Barber—no relation, I think—and it stuck in my head.”

  Gail considered what she might be missing. Susan interrupted her thoughts. “Why do you want to know about her?”

  She opened her mouth to pass on Joe’s news from the state hospital, but then shut it again, reconsidering. She had lived for years in Joe’s company, often serving as his sounding board on complicated cases. Discretion had become ingrained over time, and she felt its tug upon her now, if for no discernible reason. “Her name came up in conversation,” she answered truthfully enough. “It didn’t mean anything to me, but it sounded odd. I just wondered if you knew anything.”

  “I can dig into it, if you want,” Susan volunteered. “You are the governor, after all.”

  Gail laughed. “Right—like you have nothing better to do. I wouldn’t even put my own staff on this.”

  They chatted about other matters for a few minutes, mostly the flooding and its impact and implications. There was little else being discussed anywhere in the state, and probably wouldn’t be for some time.

  Nevertheless, once the call ended, Gail remained thoughtful about what had stimulated it. She still wanted to know how a governor—even a bogus one—could have ended up in a mental facility, and then gone missing.

  As for Susan Raffner, she wasn’t the least misled by her friend’s dismissal of Carolyn Barber’s importance. As she pocketed her phone and set out for her next meeting, she made a mental note to dig into Barber’s moment of fame—and why the chief executive had thought it worthy of special inquiry.

  * * *

  Willy negotiated the washed-out road gingerly, pausing occasionally to figure out where to point the SUV next, sometimes opting for the field alongside.

  “Might be faster if we walk,” Sammie suggested, clinging to the handhold by the doorframe.

  “Might be,” Willy agreed, to her surprise, “but I like having the radio nearby.”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “You expecting trouble?”

  “I’m expecting a half-wit Li’l Abner,” he countered. “We don’t show up in some official-looking vehicle, he’ll shoot our asses off for sure. Probably will anyhow.”

  Willy had been born and bred in New York City—a place that he’d clearly left only in body. “It’s a rural state,” she instructed him defensively. “Not a backward one.”

  He laughed and jutted his chin straight ahead to indicate the road. “Right—clearly.”

  “That’s the flood, you moron,” she remonstrated.

  “It is now,” he suggested. “You ask me, it was no better before.”

  The large vehicle gave a lurch and there was a grinding, scraping sound from underneath that made them both wince. They’d borrowed it from the Brattleboro police, and while Willy clearly didn’t care about its condition later, Sammie was less sure about how they’d gotten hold of it in the first place.

  “You sure you got the chief to sign this over?” she asked, settling herself more securely after the jostling.

  “It’s gotta be over the next hill,” Willy avoided answering, adding unexpectedly, “You call Louise?”

  Sam cut him a look. “You know I did.”

  “Emma okay?”

  A sarcastic comeback offered itself, but not about this. Emma was sacred ground for them, if for divergent reasons. While each was a wounded survivor of childhood, their own child represented a different type of hope. To Sammie, Emma was a reward to be cherished and protected; to Willy, she was more like the cross between a miracle and a mirage—the latter image being one that could wake him up in a cold sweat and make him visit her bedroom just to confirm her existence.

  Instead, therefore, Sam merely said, “She’s great,” and changed the subject. “What’s the name again? Rozanski?”

  “That’s what’s on the headstone,” he told her. “Herbert Rozanski. But this woodchuck empire belongs to somebody named Jeff MacQuarrie—Jeffrey, according to the records; Jeff on the phone. He’s supposedly a relative.”

  “You talked to him?” she asked, startled.

  “Kind of. I didn’t really say who I was, and he didn’t do much more than grunt. You know…”

  She did. When you went to interview someone who might have something interesting to say, you didn’t want to show more cards than you had to.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  “Just that we’d found the grave exposed and needed to know about next of kin for legal reasons. I told him I had a form to fill out—made it sound boring as hell.”

  “He’s related how?”

  Willy gave a shrug as they edged over the top of the rise and finally saw a farmhouse ahead, nestled against the forest behind it like a newborn tucked up against its mother.

  “Beats me,” he said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  The road was slightly better on the other side, so they closed in on the house in a couple of minutes. Nevertheless, they paused in the dooryard with the engine running, respecting the rural protocol of giving homeowners time to take notice—and to call in any near-feral dogs that might be prowling about.

  But it didn’t apply here. The peeling front door to the battered house yawned open, and a large bearded man stepped out and waved to them.

  “Gee,” Sammie muttered as she slid out of the SUV. “Not a blood-dripping sickle in sight. Bummer.”

  “Next time,” Willy assured her.

  They approached, still watching the terrain before them, if this time for chunks of wood, randomly scattered tools and farm equipment, and assorted other lumps and clumps that had acquired a thin skin of earth and weeds over the years.

  “You Jeff?” Willy asked, drawing near.

  The man nodded. “Yup.”

  He stepped free of the threshold, leaving the door open, took two steps forward, and waited for them, the sun to his back. There was no shaking of hands or other formalities. Jeff simply waited, his hands hanging loosely, for his guests to speak their piece.

  “Jeffrey MacQuarrie?” Willy repeated. “Just for the record.”

  MacQuarrie acknowledged with a single, silent tuck of his chin, his eyes steadily on Willy’s.

  “We’re from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation,” Sam announced, showing her credentials, which MacQuarrie ignored, his gaze unshifting. “We’re here about the grave of Herbert Rozanski,” she fini
shed.

  “So I heard,” was MacQuarrie’s response.

  “From me?” Willy asked, who’d neither introduced himself nor shown his badge. “Or someone else?”

  “Both.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “The water opened up the grave.” MacQuarrie’s voice was deep and friendly in tone, although his body language remained neutral.

  “That all?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “They tell you what they found inside?” Sammie asked bluntly.

  “Yup.”

  “What do you make of that?”

  The hint of a smile lurked within the heavy beard, and MacQuarrie’s eyes narrowed with humor. “The grave was missing something?”

  Sam laughed while Willy grunted, “Very funny.”

  MacQuarrie tilted his head to one side. “You gotta admit.”

  “Okay, okay,” Willy conceded. He looked around at the disheveled front yard. A rusty pickup was parked nearby, and he walked over to it to sit on the lowered tailgate, using the trailing edge of the truck bed as a backrest. The move also allowed him to shift from where the sun had been hitting him in the face—a position he wasn’t convinced that MacQuarrie, presumably a seasoned hunter, hadn’t calculated.

  “Now that we got the country hick bullshit out of the way,” he told their host, “you want to tell us how you connect to Herb Rozanski?”

  “You found me,” MacQuarrie told him. “Don’t you know?”

  Willy just stared at him.

  “Cousins,” MacQuarrie yielded as Sam crossed over to join Willy, at the opposite end of the tailgate. MacQuarrie followed suit by settling onto a large, leveled-off tree stump whose scars attested to its use as a wood-splitting station.

  “My mother was Herb’s father’s sister,” he explained.

  “Herb’s father being Bud Rozanski,” Willy suggested.

  “And his mom being Dreama. They died, so I got the place.”

  “Just like that?” Willy asked. “They didn’t have other kids?”

  “A couple more,” Jeff said.

  Willy chuckled and shook his head. “You must really like us.”

  In the silence following, Jeff shifted his attention from one to the other of them. “Pardon?”

  “The ‘yup-nope’ treatment,” Willy expanded. “We actually get overtime for sitting around listening to this crap. I can do it all day.”

  Jeff MacQuarrie appeared to consider that. “Another son named Nate, and a daughter—Eileen Ranslow,” he stated, thereby announcing his choice to be more communicative. “Nate pretty much took off. Eileen got married and never liked living here anyhow. We all talked it over when Bud was about to pass. I was starting a family, and Bud didn’t see just letting the place go; Eileen was cool about it, and Dreama was long dead. So, I got it.”

  “For future reference,” Willy said, “we’ll need a list of relatives, complete with contact information and how they fit into the family tree. You good with that?”

  MacQuarrie nodded.

  “Okay,” Willy kept talking. “Tell us about Herb. And don’t hold back.”

  The bearded man smiled again. “Not much to tell. Bud was the eldest. My mom was the youngest; about twelve years apart, and Mom had her kids later in life—just the opposite of Bud. So, Nate, Herb, Eileen, and me didn’t mess much. I was a kid when Herb died. All I know was that he got caught up in some equipment and was killed. Used to happen all the time, back when.”

  Willy waved his hand around vaguely. “Here?”

  Jeff pointed into the distance. “They had a lumber mill set up in an old barn, out that way. A big shed, really. ’Bout ten years ago, I had the fire department come out and burn it down as a training exercise. Wasn’t much left to it. Bud had sold all the equipment long before, and Mother Nature had done the rest.” He contemplated his comments briefly before adding, “Anyhow, that’s about it. Like I said, Herb got tangled up somehow. It ran off a truck PTO, with open pulleys and leather belts running every which way, and no guards or safeties on the saw blades. I seen pictures—crazy dangerous. One wrong move…” His voice trailed off, as if surprised by its own sound.

  “He was working the mill alone?” Sammie asked, speaking almost for the first time.

  Jeff shrugged. “You wouldn’t think so, but I don’t know. It got to Bud pretty bad, I can tell you that. But he was a stoical man. Dreama? Family stories have it that it killed her. I guess Herb was like her favorite, or something. She died soon afterwards, people said of a broken heart.”

  “So why did they bury a box of rocks?” Willy asked.

  MacQuarrie spread his hands. “I didn’t know they had—not till old Irene brought it up to light. That’s what the Bible says, right? About the cleansing power of water?”

  Willy pushed out his lower lip thoughtfully, not having the slightest clue about MacQuarrie’s allusion. “You a big churchgoer?”

  The other man laughed gently. “Not hardly. My wife would like me to be. I just stick to weddings and funerals.”

  Sam read Willy’s body language and hopped off the truck bed. “Okay, Jeff, could we get that family tree off you?”

  MacQuarrie rose more awkwardly and led the way back toward the house. “More like a shrub. I got most of it stuck to the fridge, near the phone,” he said.

  “What about people who might have a better memory about when Herb died?” Sam asked. Willy was already wandering around the yard, as if exploring the more obscure piles of junk.

  “Oh, sure,” MacQuarrie said without looking back. “I mean, it may’ve been almost thirty years ago, but people remember. Shit, it’s all they got to do. I figure every screwup I’ve ever pulled, from childhood on, is like carved in stone with some of the people around here. It’s crazy.”

  “You think there’re any other coffins filled with rocks?” Willy asked from twenty feet away, having not indicated he’d even been listening.

  MacQuarrie let out a deep laugh and faced Willy with his arms spread wide—the innocent bear, incarnate. “Hell,” he said. “Could be. I wouldn’t put it past one or two of them. But you’re the police, eh?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bonnie Swift lived in the Waitsfield–Warren area, about fourteen miles south of Waterbury—if also, some argued, on a whole different planet. There, they’d be speaking economically, although the geography was tellingly different as well. But where Waterbury was dominated by the state office complex and the Winooski River, Waitsfield–Warren was best known for the Sugarbush ski resort—among the state’s largest—and the far more picturesquely labeled Mad River, which had clearly lived up to its name on Sunday.

  Lester Spinney’s attention was more given to the neighborhood’s economic reputation. “This is where they tow your car away if it’s last year’s model, isn’t it?” he commented, observing a large spread, anchored by a mansion standing regally at the back of a manicured if soggy field.

  Joe laughed, negotiating a tight curve between traffic cones. Also unlike Waterbury, this was mountainous terrain, which in parts had made traveling the washed-out roads even tougher. “That’s Manchester. Get your prejudices right.”

  “Right,” Lester said, jerking a thumb at the big house. “Makes me a believer.”

  “That’s more like Warren than Waitsfield,” Joe said. “Back in the old days, which for me stretches pretty far, Waitsfield was for the regular crowd, and Warren was where the rich skiers hung out. Things have changed, though.” He slowed to a crawl to show his badge to a flagman, “Especially now.

  “We get through?” he asked. It was another blessedly beautiful, dry summer day.

  The flagman spoke into his portable radio and eventually waved them past. “Stick far to the right. You goin’ beyond Waitsfield proper?”

  “Nope.”

  “You should be okay, then. They’re still not sure about the covered bridge in town.”

  Spinney shook his head. “What d’ya want to bet even the rich guys don’t have
flood insurance?”

  Joe slowed down before cutting onto a side road and heading uphill. Immediately, the road was in perfect condition. “I heard the water reached seven feet above flood level in spots, including parts of Waitsfield.”

  They continued for another half mile, gaining height, before seeing a mailbox labeled SWIFT on the left. Joe took the dirt driveway, rutted and narrow, and drove them another five hundred feet to the parking lot of a well-kept double-wide trailer with another of Vermont’s ubiquitous, partially rusted-out, older Subaru station wagons out front.

  “Ah,” said Spinney, swinging his long legs out of their four-wheel-drive SUV. “This is more what I’m used to.”

  A woman appeared on the deck at the top of a short flight of wooden steps. “Are you the ones who called?” she asked.

  The two men pulled out their IDs as they climbed. Joe spoke for them. “I’m Joe Gunther. This is Lester Spinney. Really appreciate your agreeing to meet with us.”

  She gave him a rueful expression. “Bonnie Swift—and it’s not like I have much to do right now.”

  They reached the top and shook hands. “No, I guess not,” Joe said. “What is the latest about the hospital?”

  “Too early to say,” she told him, heading toward a picnic table that was set up at the far end of the deck. “Right now, we’re just hearing rumors and waiting around, none of which is doing anybody any good. You want some iced tea or coffee or something?”

  They demurred and took places at the wooden table overlooking the parking area and the woods beyond. There was a shrouded gas grill off to one side. Joe imagined this spot saw more than a few pleasant weekend gatherings.

  “You lived here for long?” he asked, stretching his legs and pulling out a pad to take notes if necessary.

  “Fourteen years,” she said. “Brad owned the property before we married—he works on the road crew and does jobs on the side. We lived closer to town for about five years, and then took the plunge, moving this monster in. That was a neat trick, coming up the drive. I thought the whole damn thing was going to end up at the bottom of the mountain. But Brad and his pals know what they’re doing.” She laughed. “They just scare the bejesus out of you while they’re doing it.”