Three Can Keep a Secret

by Mayor, Archer

  “You got kids?” Lester asked.

  “Two,” she answered. “One of each.”

  “How did you all make out in the storm?”

  She looked around. “Here, thank God, no problem. Good thing, since I was stuck in Waterbury and Brad was out in the middle of it for two days straight. The kids helped out at the town shelter, so we knew where they were. All in all, we got off without a scratch, assuming I still have a job.”

  Joe took advantage of the segue. “Which brings us to why we’re here, of course. I heard that you were pretty close to Carolyn Barber. Is that correct?”

  Swift showed some reservation at Joe’s choice of words. “I wouldn’t put it that way. I think she probably tolerated me better than most, but we weren’t buddy-buddy. She was too lost in her own world for that. Did you get a lead on where she is?”

  “No,” he said bluntly, and then hedged his response. “We’re working on the premise that she got out alive, but that’s mostly because we haven’t found a body yet.”

  Swift looked disappointed. “I really liked her,” she explained. “She was out of it, but in a good way, you know? I mean, we can get some real crazies in there, but she was never like that. And she was a lifer, too, which is really rare. The way things go nowadays, it’s kind of a turnstile operation—they check in, they get their papers, they do their contract, and they leave. They may keep coming back—I’m not saying that—but the Governor was one of the only ones I know of who stayed put.”

  “Why was that?” Joe asked. “If she was calm and no threat to anybody, shouldn’t she have been placed elsewhere?”

  “‘Ours is not to reason why,’” Swift quoted. “I did ask a couple of times, but I just got a runaround. I always figured it was because nobody else knew the answer, either.”

  “Who would know?” Joe asked.

  “That would’ve been Matt Larson,” she told them without hesitation, “but he died last year. I can give you the current guy’s name, but he’s gonna be pretty useless.”

  “An on-the-job-retirement type?” Spinney tried commiserating.

  Her face opened in laughter. “Oh—ouch. That is how that sounded, isn’t it? No, no. I didn’t mean it that way. He’s a good guy. I was talking literally. He’d only be useless because of Larson.” She tapped a temple with her finger. “Matt kept most of the records in his head—at least the older ones. He was lousy at organizing files, even worse with computers, and never shared anything with anyone. The man was a disaster and none of us knew it. We all thought he was just a sweet old throwback who remembered everybody’s name and was super nice to work with. I have no idea how he got away with it for so long, but after he died, it was one of the Big Dark Secrets, especially whenever the federal regulators came sniffing around.”

  She suddenly looked a little shamefaced. “Which means I just screwed the pooch. Is this gonna get out? I don’t need that on top of everything else, if I’m going to get my job back. Matt was like a god to some people.”

  The two cops exchanged looks.

  “We won’t tell if you won’t,” Joe told her, more or less truthfully. “Still, even if Barber got lost in the system, surely her medical records and her financials were kept separate. Who paid for her upkeep all these years?”

  But Swift was already shaking her head. “No clue. Totally not my department. I’m not saying somebody doesn’t know. I mean, I assume they do—like you said. But I never had anything to do with who was paying what and how, and I never really knew anyone in the business office, either. They were like a world apart from us. Maybe if you talk to the commissioner or something…”

  Joe pretended to note that in his pad, to show his support of the suggestion, and then redirected her toward what he hoped was more useful territory.

  “The Governor,” he said. “How did she become known by that? Was it something she said?”

  Swift raised her eyebrows. “Just that she’d been governor once. We didn’t take it at face value. That’s a little hard to fake, you know? Plus, somebody checked on it, just to make sure. We’ve only had the one female governor—Madeleine Kunin. I know ’cause I voted for her.”

  She added upon reflection, “Maybe Carolyn was related to a governor, or slept with one, for all I know, and felt close to the office. Some of the more delusional patients have all sorts of associations like that.”

  “Did she ever go into detail?” Joe persisted.

  But Bonnie Swift wasn’t going to be able to give him that. She shook her head again sadly and then just as quickly turned the tables by saying, “She could’ve had a sister, though. She might know something.”

  Joe and Lester became still. In their business, this was a classic “Oh, by the way” comment, which in the newspaper trade was referred to as “burying the lead.”

  Joe returned to Bonnie and smiled politely. “Really?” he said. “A sister?”

  She held up her hand and wobbled it from side to side. “Maybe. It’s so vague, it almost slipped my mind. It was more like I wondered at the time if it might be a sister.”

  “Go on.”

  “It was years ago—back when I first came on at the hospital. I was going through some paperwork, familiarizing myself with the patients. I saw that Carolyn had someone listed named Barb Barber under next of kin. It stuck with me, I think because of how it sounds, you know? Barb Barber. Kind of musical.”

  “Any address?”

  “Nope. No nothing. And no Barb Barber, either. She never contacted us, never visited, never existed as far as I know. I saw her name that one time, on the form, and that was it. That’s why I didn’t remember her.” She laughed then and pointed at them in mock accusation. “I saw that look. You thought I was holding back. That’s not it. I liked Carolyn. She may’ve been ditzy and thought she was governor, but she was sweet and never caused problems. It’s sad that someone like that had a relative who never got in touch. Maybe Barb’s dead. You think?”

  Joe closed his pad and slipped it back into his pocket. “I think we’ll do our best to find out,” he assured her.

  * * *

  Gorden Marshall had just settled into his armchair with the newspaper, adjusted his reading glasses, and checked to make sure that his ever-ready scotch-and-water was within reach, when the phone rang in his office next door.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he muttered. “Every fucking time.”

  He struggled to rise, pushing on the chair’s arms and dropping his paper in the process, scattering its pages. Standing at last, he tilted forward, caught the rails of his aluminum walker, and began shuffling toward the incessant ringing. His daughter had nagged him to get a portable phone, or at least a long extension cord, but he’d refused, in large part to deprive her of the victory. But times like these were reminders that she was right.

  He got to the phone at last, half expecting to hear a dial tone at the far end, given his long delay, but there was no sound whatsoever.

  “What?” he asked petulantly.

  “You know who this is, Gorden?”

  He sighed and looked around, trying to strategize how to place the walker, find a seat, and not drop the phone all at once. They’d given him the walker just a week ago, and he hated it with a passion. But the choice had been clear: Either accept the recommendation, or they’d move him out of his apartment to the Level One maintenance unit on the ground floor. Everyone here knew what that meant. “LOM,” as they called it, was the next step to the hospital wing. And from there, it was the loading dock for the hearse. The Woods of Windsor may have been the state’s fanciest so-called retirement home, but pragmatists like Gorden knew it for what it was—a gold-plated conveyor belt bridging his present life to an eventual hole in the ground. He was a practical man, though—he’d not only recognized early on that this situation was inevitable, but he’d also played a pivotal role in getting The Woods funded and permitted by the state.

  “Of course I know,” he grumbled. “Wait a second. I have to sort myself out.”


  He put down the phone. One of his friends’ grandchildren had supposedly entertained him for what had seemed hours last Thanksgiving, detailing the story of Harry Potter to him. He’d hated the obligation and disliked the child, but the reference to Voldemort, whose name was never to be uttered aloud, had made him laugh.

  The voice on the phone belonged to such a person.

  Paranoid prick.

  Gorden got himself situated in his desk chair without mishap, blew out a sigh, and picked up the phone again.

  “Sorry. The sons of bitches saddled me with a damn walker. Guaranteed to make me break my neck, if you ask me.”

  “Sorry to hear that, Gorden.”

  “No, you’re not. What the hell are you calling me for? I can’t do you any good anymore. My smoke-filled-room days are long gone. You going soft in the head, too? Want a reference to get into this place? I recommend it. When they give you the lethal injection here, it’s by a pretty girl with a big smile. We cater to your needs at The Woods of Windsor. That’s what we say.”

  “Are you done, Gorden?”

  That voice. Patient, calm, slightly modulated to sound friendly. Gorden had been listening to it for fifty years. Never seemed to change. Never aged, never rose in volume, never showed undue emotion. In time, Gorden and his political cronies had called its owner Hal, as in the movie.

  Except that Hal the computer had been a menace. This Hal—for the likes of Gorden and his ilk—had been more like a sci-fi commingling of Mary Poppins and Rasputin. A combination of financial support, strategic advice, and the sense that, with his backing, you could have the world by the tail. Or, without it, a world of hurt.

  “Okay,” Gorden conceded. “I’m done. Let me tell you one thing, though, ’cause I know you’re a couple of years younger than me. Don’t get old. They’re right about it not being for sissies.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Speaking of the past, since you bring it up, do you remember Carolyn Barber?”

  Gorden Marshall laughed. “That crazy bitch. She finally die?”

  “Actually, quite the opposite. We have a bit of a problem.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Given that Vermont’s major roads to the north had suffered less at Irene’s hands, Joe and Lester, instead of returning home, went back to the interstate after meeting with Bonnie Swift for a quick trip to Montpelier and access to one of the local police department’s computers. The off chance that their missing person had a sister was too good not to act on immediately.

  They weren’t holding their breath, however. The reference had been oblique; there’d been no implication that Barb Barber lived in the area, was still alive, or even existed. And, even if they found her, she’d still never visited Carolyn at the hospital or made an effort to reach out. Would she be likely to help now?

  Those caveats made Lester’s satisfaction all the sweeter when he dropped his hands from the computer’s keyboard and announced, “There you have it. I’ll be a son of a gun.”

  Joe circled around to peer at the screen. Lester had typed in the name Barbara Barber, gotten a hit straight off, and then opened up her involvements. There, listed under a traffic accident, he’d found where she’d recently been the passenger in a minor crash outside of Burlington. The officer called to the scene had taken the appropriate but often ignored extra step of recording the identities and birth dates of all the people in both vehicles. Finding Barb Barber’s name now was a textbook example of how such diligence could pay off.

  “How long ago was that?” Joe asked.

  “Two years.”

  “She list an address?”

  “Yup. Shelburne. From what it says here, she lives with her son. He was the driver.”

  Joe patted his shoulder. That was a town just below Burlington, not more than sixty minutes from where they were now. “It’s getting late. Want to knock on her door tonight or in the morning?”

  Lester twisted around in his seat. “You kidding?”

  * * *

  It was just dark by the time Lester rolled to a stop on Hillside Terrace, in the middle of Shelburne Village, opposite a modest, rectangular box of a house with an anemic interior light smudging a pair of heavy curtains. Through the car’s open windows, they could hear the constant rumble of the heavy Route 7 traffic a block to the west.

  They walked up the cracked driveway and cut across the patchy lawn to the front door, where Joe rang the bell. The house’s siding had started life as white vinyl, but its color and integrity had faded over time, becoming yellowed and marred by chips and fissures, making the entire house look like an old and sleeping dinosaur.

  The door opened to reveal a turnip-shaped man in baggy shorts and an untucked, faded Hawaiian shirt. He wore thick glasses and had a hank of thinning gray hair draped across his forehead, as if a once carefully applied comb-over had undergone a landslide.

  “Yes?”

  Spinney spoke first, having read the old traffic report. “William Friel?”

  The man’s voice was a monotone, devoid of curiosity. “Yes.” Behind him, a television was spilling a game show into the room.

  “Son of Barb Barber?”

  Even then, he didn’t flicker. “Yes.”

  “I’m Special Agent Spinney, of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. This is Special Agent Gunther. We were wondering if we could come in and chat with you a bit. Would that be all right?”

  Friel finally registered a small modicum of emotion by responding unexpectedly. “Wait a minute, okay? I gotta prepare my mother.” Without further ceremony, he shut the door in their faces.

  “Okay,” Spinney said slowly. “That was weird.”

  A minute later, however, Friel was back, pulling open the door and ushering them in, muttering, “Sorry ’bout that. I don’t like her surprised.”

  Unsure of what to expect, Lester crossed the threshold, looking around. Joe followed him into a living room with little furniture, shabby wall-to-wall carpeting, a cheap and garishly bright overhead light, and an old woman in a wheelchair, staring at the TV set, her legs covered with a thin blanket. The walls were bare, the only bookshelf had some clothes and a pile of old newspapers in it, and the air smelled stale.

  Spinney straightened slightly at the sight of the woman. “Hi,” he said with artificial brightness. “Sorry to barge in on you like this.”

  She didn’t so much as blink. Friel said nothing.

  “Is this Barb Barber?” Joe asked softly.

  “Yes. My mother,” Friel explained. “That’s what I meant.”

  Joe cast her a quick glance from across the room before asking, “How long’s she been afflicted?”

  Friel’s eyes seemed to settle on him for the first time. He hesitated and then answered, “Three years.”

  “So it came on fast?”

  Her son pressed his lips together, blinked once, and conceded, “Pretty quick.”

  Joe reached out and touched his arm. “That’s a shame. Hard to bear.”

  Friel nodded without comment.

  “Is she reachable at all?” Joe asked. “We were hoping to ask her a couple of questions.”

  He hesitated before saying; “No. She’s gone. I still talk to her, like just now when you were at the door, but it’s mostly out of habit. She doesn’t really need warning anymore.”

  Friel didn’t seem even vaguely curious about why two cops would be standing in his house, wanting to speak to his mother. As it was, they were still standing as they’d entered, awkwardly in the middle of the room.

  “Maybe we could ask you, instead,” Joe suggested. “You have a place where we could talk and not bother her? A kitchen, perhaps?”

  Friel considered that before admitting, “Yeah.”

  Joe had by now understood the implicit rules of engagement with this man. “Great,” he said, taking their host’s elbow and pointing him toward the back hallway. “Lead the way.”

  They trooped toward the rear of the small house, passing two bedrooms and a bathroom, and ente
red a dingy, worn kitchen with rusting appliances, including a stacked washer/dryer. A small metal table with two chairs was shoved against one wall, a cluster of medications corralled in its middle. Joe pulled out a chair and positioned Friel to sit in it. He took the one opposite while Spinney leaned against the counter near a sink piled with dirty dishes.

  “Is this your house or your mother’s, William?” Joe asked first, following an instinct.

  He had it right. “Hers,” Friel answered.

  “And you’ve lived here how long?”

  Friel seemed a little confused by the question. “All my life,” he eventually replied, adding, “Almost.”

  Joe nodded. His own brother could have made the same claim, the dynamics there being admittedly much different. Still, he had often wondered how Leo would fare once their mother died—just as he now wondered about this man, given the same inevitability. His bets were on Leo coming out of it far better than William.

  Joe rubbed his forehead, as if chasing away such distractions. “Good to know,” he said. “That probably means you knew Carolyn Barber. Is that correct?”

  Friel’s eyes widened a fraction as he stopped staring at the table’s surface and looked at his questioner. “Aunt Carolyn?”

  “Right. She and your mother were sisters, weren’t they?”

  “Yeah.” He paused before asking, “Did she die?”

  It was asked without affect, as if read from a script.

  “No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put that in the past tense.” Joe expanded his response by adding, “I’ve actually never met her. That’s all I meant.”

  Friel nodded slightly. “Oh.”

  “Would that mean anything? If she had died?” Joe asked.

  “Mean anything?” Friel replied questioningly, a furrow between his eyes.

  “Yeah. You know. Inheritance, maybe? Or just the passing of the family’s black sheep. I don’t know. Anything—like I said. I don’t know the woman.”

  “Is that why you’re here? Aunt Carolyn?”