Three Can Keep a Secret

by Mayor, Archer

  In the silence that followed, he added, “But at least it tells us something.”

  “Like?” Lester asked.

  “Well,” Joe answered. “I don’t know about you, but I’m officially comfortable calling Marshall’s death suspicious. Your little run-in with Stocking Mask gives us more freedom to pull off the gloves.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Joe found the place without much trouble, beyond South Woodstock, along Route 106. A huge barn with smaller offspring, several fenced-in pastures and exercise rings, and lots of open, empty space, thickly buttered—as was the current norm—with a smooth, gray coating of what Joe had come to call “flood mud.” The solid muck was interspersed with deep ragged fissures and fingerling ravines, carved and salted with white stones, and decorated with garnishes of uprooted trees, a tossed-aside pickup truck, and scattered pieces of broken barn and shattered fencing, among other wreckage.

  It was raining ineffectually now, ironically without great effect, making the sky match the earth, and prohibiting any action by the heavy earthmovers and other equipment Joe could see strategically spread across the visible acreage, in preparation for rebuilding the facility, virtually from scratch.

  This was wealthy horse country—reportedly, one of the most densely horse-populated regions in the United States, which Joe found hard to believe, especially now, as he pulled into the deserted parking area and took in the surrounding devastation. Specifically, this was the Green Mountain Horse Association, the center of the area’s equine culture. Since the 1920s, Joe had learned earlier, the GMHA had grown to become the go-to place for riders of all stripes, appealing to everyone from backcountry trail ramblers in jeans to folks in hard hats, cutaways, glossy boots, and a fondness for dressage.

  But it was all a post-combat battlefield now, littered, gouged, battered, and abandoned. He was here—suitably or not, he didn’t know—to meet Michelle Mahoney, the late state senator’s heir.

  It had struck Joe as interesting, however, that when Hannah Eastridge had told him of Michelle’s arrival from Connecticut, she’d added that his best bet for meeting her was to head straight to GMHA. It seemed that Michelle’s primary devotion in Vermont, at least lately, had not been her father, but her investment in—and love for—horses.

  He wasn’t about to be the judge of that. At least not yet. From the little his team had pulled together concerning the late senator, his daughter may have been well advised to prefer animals.

  He crossed the lot toward a low-slung, ranch-style building with a shingle hanging out front and entered an informal reception area with a computer-equipped desk and nobody tending it. He heard voices in the back and took his cue from the relaxed look of the place to follow wherever his ears led him.

  That was a small, cluttered office in the back containing two athletically trim middle-aged women with sensible haircuts. They were wearing the kind of minimal jewelry that speaks of the wealthy’s flair for everyday baubles whose trade-in value might purchase a good used car.

  The one at the desk looked up as he appeared at the edge of the door.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “I was told I might find Michelle Mahoney here.”

  Her guest chimed in—tellingly, he thought—with, “Who are you?”

  He smiled thinly, his guess all but confirmed, and entered introducing himself, “Joe Gunther. Vermont Bureau of Investigation. I’m here about your father.”

  The desk owner was already rising. “Michelle,” she said. “Use the room. I have to talk with Jimmy anyhow. Take all the time you need.”

  Without waiting for a response, and not receiving one from Michelle in any case, she squeezed by Joe and closed the door behind her.

  Joe stood where he was, impressed at the smoothness of the transition. He had clearly just brushed by someone keenly attuned to the ways of the privileged.

  He gestured at the door. “Sorry about that. There was no one in reception.”

  “There often isn’t,” Mahoney said, watching him with her hands folded. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but—as with the jewelry—of high if muted quality. “Especially lately.”

  Joe nodded politely. “Right. Looks like the place really got hammered. Too bad.”

  Her face was a mask of polite reserve. “Yes. No flood insurance, either, which is why I’m here. Who knew that our tiny, picture postcard creek would turn into the Mississippi?”

  “A lot of people are saying that,” he said. “Did you have horses here at the time?”

  “No,” she replied. “But I do have five, and they usually spend a large part of the summer here, so it was just dumb luck none of them were. You, of course, probably know all that.”

  He tilted his head. “Pardon?”

  “That I have horses, live in Connecticut, work as a lawyer, and came here first before checking on my father. You knew where to find me, after all.”

  Joe considered arguing against his omniscience, but then thought better of it. Instead, he opened a folding chair leaning against the wall and sat down. In fact, he had no idea where Gorden Marshall’s body had ended up, except that Beverly Hillstrom had released it to a funeral home. Nor had he known of Michelle’s fondness for horses before now.

  “We are interested in your father’s death,” he stated.

  Her demeanor was unchanged. “So I understand. Why? I thought he died of natural causes. That’s what his physician told me on the phone. He’s a little miffed at you, by the way.”

  Joe shrugged. “It happens. Gorden Marshall was a prominent man. It makes sense to dot the i’s and cross the t’s when someone like him dies.”

  She gave him a long, level look before saying, “No, it doesn’t.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her, privately impressed. She was, of course, perfectly correct. “Oh?”

  “It makes people think you’re hiding something, which you are.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “What did you say your name was?” she asked.

  “Gunther. Joe Gunther.”

  “Well, Joe Gunther,” she explained. “My father was a selfish, narcissistic, mean-hearted son of a bitch. But he taught me two things: One, never get married, because one half of every marriage—regardless of who it is—will end up with the shit end of the stick. Two, everybody’s got an angle and/or an ax to grind—at the very least. The first I learned by seeing how he treated my mother. The second I picked up trailing along behind him and conducting post-evisceration interviews with all the people he gutted on his way to the top. Being his only child and a girl, I was groomed to be his aide until I finally woke up. I learned to hate him and respect his wisdom.” She paused before concluding, “So what are you up to?”

  Joe took a risk. “I think your father was murdered.”

  She took her eyes off him long enough to stare thoughtfully into the middle distance. Then she commanded, “Explain.”

  Joe didn’t overdo it. “It’s a small forensic finding,” he said. “But in addition to it, today, one of my men was put in the hospital by somebody removing something from your father’s room. We don’t know what, exactly.”

  She shook her head slightly. “One of the other asylum inmates?” she asked.

  He smiled. “The Woods? Your opinion or his?”

  Her eyes widened. “His? Good lord, no. You don’t know of his involvement with that place?”

  Joe hesitated.

  “He all but created it,” she finished. “Put money into it, rounded up backers, helped fill it with cronies—him and a bunch of rich pals. Mostly, he used his influence to get it through the regulatory bear traps. They figured that instead of losing their money to an old folks’ home, they should get other people to pay for their living in one—and a luxury one, at that. Sweet revenge straight to the grave. It was the last laugh, as far as he was concerned, although I don’t think he figured on getting murdered.”

  Especially if you’re the one who had him done in, Joe thou
ght, at once admiring her steadiness and wondering what fueled it.

  “Did you?” he asked.

  “Figure on my father getting killed?” she asked, as if the question were purely philosophical. “I asked myself that years ago, when he was doing his best to piss people off. But now? As a crotchety old man? Not unless the cleaning lady did it, or somebody else who had to deal with him daily.”

  “Not the ideal tenant?” Joe asked.

  Michelle Mahoney got up and crossed to the window of the GMHA director’s office. She stood there, looking out onto the rain-slicked, deserted wasteland.

  “I love this place,” she finally said, turning to face him. “I’ve been coming here since I was a young girl. The people are generous, kind, friendly, enthusiastic, and—believe it or not—from every walk of life. You’d think they’d all be like me. Entitled rich bitches with no husbands or children. But they aren’t. They just love horses. Some of them are certifiable, just like everywhere. They talk to the horses like they were babies and carry on like lunatics. You’ll see some of them not eat so their animals can have food—they push themselves to the edge financially, and then go to pieces when reality hits and they have to sell the horse or can’t afford the vet bills.”

  She left the window and waved toward a collection of framed photographs on the wall, all of people posing with their mounts in one configuration or another. “But that’s a tiny minority,” she continued. “The rest of them are salt of the earth, even the rich ones. They don’t mind being peed on or shoveling horseshit, or pitching in when all hell breaks loose.” She gestured back toward the scene outside. “You saw what happened here. This place has some sixty-five acres, one hundred and sixty-five permanent stalls, six barns. Hell, even the dirt has to be imported so it’s the right consistency for competition. And it’s all been decimated. Wiped out. No insurance to speak of. Not a huge amount of reserve capital.”

  She sat back down, leaning forward to sell her point, her face at last animated. “So why the sob story? Because it’s not one. How long has it been since the storm? And already, money and manpower have been pouring in. This is a confirmation of love and dedication—of belief in an ideal.”

  She indicated the empty desk. “That’s what I was talking to Judy about. We’re having to manage this like the Normandy invasion. We’ve had so many offers of help, we can’t keep them straight.” She reached out and grabbed his wrist. “These people give a damn, because it’s more than horses or competitions or winning events or strutting around in thousand-dollar outfits or driving up in trucks that cost more than your house. It’s about getting rid of all that crap and taking care of the basics: a horse to ride and a fellow human to rely on—the same as it was with the Plains Indians or Genghis Khan and his bunch.”

  She stopped abruptly and sat back, crossing her arms and legs and giving Joe the stony look she’d delivered when he entered. “It’s not about screwing people just for the fun of it.”

  Joe let a moment’s decompression pass before suggesting, “Like your father did?”

  “I thought he was a monster,” she said plainly. “But he was just a guy like so many others—into politics and power and money and landing the deal. I am the direct beneficiary of all that bloodshed—well educated and rolling in dough—and that’s why I’m here, doing my best to put this seemingly self-indulgent playground back together. Because it’s got the values and the caring and the vitality and the honesty that my father and his friends touted but subverted for their entire adult lives.”

  Joe cupped his chin in his hand and smiled at her. “Wow.”

  She surprised him then by smiling broadly and looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry. The double whammy of this place being wiped out and my father dying … And now you’re telling me he was killed.”

  “I don’t actually have proof of that, Ms. Mahoney,” he said. “And I told it to you because tongues are already starting to wag. You had a right to know.”

  “Plus,” she added, “you wanted to find out if I’d done it.”

  “Did you?” he asked.

  She looked at him contemplatively, “No. I considered it when I was a teenager. Not very realistically, but still. He was such an arrogant bastard, treating my mom like he did and walking around like God’s gift. But, to be honest, now that he’s dead—especially if you’re right about how—it’s more of a pain than anything else. I’d just as soon he’d died of having no heart. Now there’s guaranteed to be a stink.” She shook her head. “He would have loved that.”

  Joe considered what she’d told him—and how—and was left with a grudging respect. He didn’t think that he could ever truly like Michelle Mahoney as a person. There was too much anger and privilege combined, despite her obvious appreciation for the simpler, kinder aspects of life. But he liked her mettle, and her willingness to appraise herself honestly.

  He was also thinking that she might be a good source of information.

  “You mentioned,” he began, “that he helped create The Woods. You also suggested that my colleague was mugged by one of ‘the inmates,’ as you put it. Could you flesh that out for me?”

  “The first part is easy,” she said. “Gorden spent most of his political career catering to the rich and powerful. He was Old School with a vengeance—the very politician that everyone thought died with Boss Tweed and James Curley. People forget what Vermont used to be like before World War Two—ultraconservative, hyper-parochial, provincial, and isolationist. There are plenty of reasons that there’s not more industry or big business in this state, but some of the major ones stem from the old-timers wanting nothing to do with the outside world. You could argue that quite a few of today’s tree-huggers toe the same line, despite their ‘think global’ bullshit.”

  Joe watched her speaking, her words at such contrast with her Greenwich, Connecticut, look. She’d referred to shadowing her father down the corridors of power. She’d obviously been one hell of a student—stimulated, according to her, by her disgust with what she was witnessing.

  “When the inevitable came crashing in on them,” she continued, “when the war cracked the shell and allowed young men to escape and restless veterans to return—and Vietnam then made a lie of so much that we’d taken for granted—people like my father saw a chance to cash in like never before. There was a sudden chasm between the horrified old conservatives and the dope-smoking, commune-living, back-to-nature bunch. The shift from Republicans to Democrats in the ’60s was less uniform or universal than people remember today, and for opportunists like dear old Dad, it meant that some Republicans became pragmatic—if they couldn’t have the statehouse, they would control the money that was coming in at last with the postwar tourist boom. They slipped into that gap between paying lip service to the wide-eyed, crunchy-granola newbies, and doing deals with the hard-eyed capitalists who were figuring out how to make a buck in this new reality. Old Gorden—bless his cynical little heart—took the money from one side, finessed the idealists on the other with carefully crafted legislation, and made out like a pirate. There was no good cause that he wouldn’t embrace, and no cash deal that he wouldn’t consider.

  “Long story short,” she concluded, “even before his drinking and bad habits took their toll, he’d been looking at ‘the plight of the elderly’ and saying all the right things in committees and on the stump—while greasing the skids to turn The Woods into a viable project. Old IOUs got called in, from politicians and millionaires alike, and a bunch of seemingly minor and even unrelated bills slid through the legislative process until the first silver shovel hit the dirt at the ground-breaking.”

  Michelle Mahoney sighed and delivered her punch line: “The Woods of Windsor is what it is, Mr. Gunther—a retirement home for people rich enough to pay the entry fee; but it’s also a snake pit of a few bastards like my father who may look like their fellow residents, but who are in fact unrecognized and untraceable founders and beneficiaries of a highly lucrative business venture. And that,” she said, “is
why I said what I did about the inmates. There are secrets galore at that place, and I wouldn’t doubt that in the minds of a few of those old coots, some of those secrets are worth killing for.”

  By now, Joe could no longer resist betraying a bit of his ignorance about her background. “What kind of lawyer are you, Ms. Mahoney?”

  The smile she gave him was wry and self-deprecating. “Corporate, Mr. Gunther. The apple fell close to the tree.”

  “I don’t know,” he complimented her. “It doesn’t sound like your father was blessed with your integrity.”

  “Why did you want to know?” she asked.

  “I don’t usually get such an organized and clearly delivered summation.”

  “You’re being polite,” she said. “My colleagues tell me I’m a bully and a bore.”

  “You may be the first,” he agreed in part. “I don’t know about that. But you certainly aren’t the second. Have you been to your father’s apartment since he died?”

  “No,” she replied. “Why?”

  “Before I answer that,” he said, “I’m wondering if you were ever there.”

  Her face expressed surprise. “Of course I was. I dropped by every time I came here. I didn’t like him, but he was my father, and he’s all I have, or had left.”

  “How old were you when your mom died?” Joe asked.

  “Eleven,” she replied softly. “She was a poor, hapless, bullied creature, but a good heart. I don’t think she ever knew what to do with me, but she did try—I’ll give her that. That’s why I took her last name when I reached majority.”

  Joe nodded and moved on. “The reason I asked if you’d ever been to your dad’s apartment is because I’m hoping you’ll go there with me and tell me if you think anything’s missing or different from what you’re used to.”

  “You want to find out what was stolen when your cop got mugged.”

  Joe didn’t want to prejudice her beforehand. “In part, maybe. Would you be willing?”

  She answered by standing, flattening the front of her jeans with her hands. “Let’s go. I can finish with Judy later.”