Three Can Keep a Secret

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Joe looked up at the knock on the doorframe. The interview room was open, allowing him to see a slim, attractive, gray-haired woman, probably in her seventies, standing tentatively on the threshold.

“Hi,” he said, rising and coming around the table.

“I was told that someone wanted to talk to me about Gorden,” the woman said.

Joe escorted her to the chair facing his. “Yes. Thanks so much for coming. My name is Joe Gunther. I’m a policeman. Are you Nancy Kelley?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, sitting down as he returned to his seat. He’d been handling Sammie’s scheduled interviews for several hours by now, making this number four. It had not been a productive evening so far, whittling down his expectations.

“Again,” Joe began, “I appreciate your being here. I know it’s not what you had planned-”

“Oh, no,” she interrupted happily. “You people are all the talk. I’m delighted to be included.”

“Great,” he said without enthusiasm. “Well, then, as you probably already know, we’re looking into Gorden Marshall’s death-”

“Was he really murdered?” she cut in again.

Joe held up his hand. “Let’s not jump the gun. First things, first.”

She laughed. “Ah. You didn’t answer. That means yes.”

Joe smiled indulgently. “Very good. You’ve been watching your TV shows. Actually, we don’t know that for a fact. It may turn out he died of natural causes. That’s why all the interviews.”

She looked slightly disappointed. “Oh.”

Joe opened his notepad to a fresh page and cued his voice recorder. “I tape all these conversations so that there’s no confusion later on,” he explained. “Do I have your permission to do so now?”

“Of course,” she said. “This is quite exciting.”

“Outstanding,” he muttered, quickly reviewing a few notes from Sammie’s overview file. “Do you prefer to be called Mrs. Kelley, or Nancy?”

“You can call me Nancy.”

“And you swear under penalty of law that everything you’ll be telling me today will be the truth to the best of your knowledge?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Great. I understand that you are the widow of Jeremy Kelley, is that correct?”

“Yes. Jerry and I were married for fifty-one years.”

Joe smiled. “Congratulations. Sounds like you two had a good time.”

“It had its moments,” she said cheerfully.

He looked up from the page he’d been writing on, caught by the phrase. Her face appeared as upbeat and slightly vague as before, but he sensed a look in her eyes that suggested he might have finally ended up with someone with a tale to tell.

“Mr. Kelley was a colleague of Marshall’s, back in the day. Is that correct?”

She nodded. “Oh, yes, thick as thieves.”

“He was also a state senator?”

“Not at first, but he became one. He was a representative for four terms before he ran for the senate seat. Won on his first try. He was always very proud of that.”

“I can imagine. Is that when he and Marshall got together?”

“After Jerry won the senate? No, no. They’d been working together before then. It wasn’t like it is now, with everyone staying in their own corners, calling each other names.”

“They socialized?” Joe asked conversationally. “I’d heard about that.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled.

“Dinners at each other’s houses; things like that?” he pressed, knowing very well that the socializing was often of a rougher nature, and often exclusive of spouses.

She hesitated. “Well, not so much that. They were mostly away from home. You have to remember, before 1965-when the Supreme Court changed everything-it was ‘one town, one rep,’ regardless of population density. That made for two hundred forty-six representatives, most of them far from home, and that was before the interstate came in, too, so travel was much more involved.”

Joe didn’t interrupt, waiting to ask instead, “And where were you at this time? You married Senator Kelley right about then, if I have the dates right. That must’ve made you a little nervous as a young bride.”

Her cheeks darkened a hint. “Jerry was a good man.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t. He was also a man. How did you two meet up?”

It was an obvious enough question, if borderline insulting, but she seemed at a sudden loss for words.

“Where was your hometown?” he asked, hoping that might help.

It did seem easier to answer. “Berlin,” she said, with the Vermonter’s emphasis on the first syllable.

“A stone’s throw from Montpelier,” Joe observed, leaving the implication hanging. By now, his interest in Nancy Kelley had sharpened. It was clear to him that she was being coy and evasive at the same time. Why, he wanted to find out.

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

“You grew up in Berlin?” he asked pleasantly.

She seemed surprised. “Why, yes. I did.”

“Sort of a shame what’s happened to it over the years, with all the development,” he said. “The hospital first and then the mall. Not that much left of what used to be a small town.”

She was surprised. “You know Berlin?”

“Sure.”

She frowned and glanced down, adding. “There’s nothing left, if you ask me. Everything is new and modern and ugly.”

“Well,” he philosophized, “being right next to the capital made that pretty much inevitable, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

“And,” he added with a friendly smile, “I bet as a teenager, you found Montpelier hard to resist, no? You and your girlfriends?”

She laughed, if a bit sadly. “You could say that.”

He made an educated guess. “And that’s where you got your first job?”

The humor spread across her face. “My goodness. You are good. How did you know that?”

He waved away the compliment. “Lucky. But that was the funny thing about those days. State government grew like crazy just before that big change in the ’60s, when the Democrats began taking over. Did you get one of those government jobs?”

“I did,” she admitted. “It was very exciting. There was such energy. Everything was changing, after all those years of … well, nothing, really. It was like the whole state suddenly found a heartbeat.”

“I like that,” he praised her. “What a great image. It must’ve been intoxicating.”

“It was,” she agreed.

“Did you make new friends? I mean, it’s not like a country girl going to New York or anything, but it still must’ve been like entering a new world. I’m guessing you moved to Montpelier to live, too?”

She laughed again. “I did. I had a tiny apartment with two other girls.”

He joined her encouragingly, “Isn’t that great? I know the town pretty well. What was the address?”

Without hesitation, she recited it with a child’s reflex, including the apartment number.

He didn’t give her the chance to ponder her openness. “Right, right. A short walk to downtown. Not so easy when the snow flies, I bet, but not too bad. It’s amazing how little those neighborhoods have changed. Chances are, your place is still housing young people who work for the state. What was your job, by the way?”

She fell into his conversational pattern. “I was a legislative secretary in the statehouse.”

“No kidding? Wow. That’s right where the action was. Well, it makes perfect sense now how you met your future husband. You practically worked together.”

“Hardly,” she corrected him. “We girls were invisible. We called ourselves the Boiler Room, just typing all day-endless piles of paperwork.”

Joe sympathized. “That’s tough. Builds up energy for after hours, though-for everyone, from what I was told. Montpelier was party central. I was living over the mountain back then, and still, I heard stories. People working all day and playing all night.”

Her eyes glistening, she admitted, “We had some lively times.”

“I heard rumors,” he said, “of places just outside town where legislators and lobbyists and bureaucrats and everybody else would all go to drink and have a good time, regardless of their politics or how they’d treated each other on the floor.”

“Those were no rumors,” she said, looking coquettish. “That’s what I meant when I said things had really changed.”

Joe nodded in agreement and made his first effort to bring her into the here and now. “I gather several of the folks from those happier days are here at The Woods now.”

“A few,” she said.

“Like Gorden Marshall?” he asked.

“Well, yes. Of course, among others.”

“How are things between you all, given the passage of time, and how things used to be?”

Her forehead wrinkled. “You mean, who killed him?”

He smiled. “We don’t know that anyone killed him, Nancy. But since you bring it up, was there anyone who had a bone to pick with him?”

“He wasn’t a nice man,” she said candidly. “He never was. Still, if someone had wanted to do him harm, it seems to me they would have acted long before now. It’s not like he had any power anymore.”

“I heard he had something to do with the founding of this place,” Joe told her.

She looked at him blankly. “I didn’t know that.”

“Did you have much to do with him?”

“No,” she said. “After Jerry died, I almost never spoke to him.”

Joe again scanned the fact sheet that Sam had prepared.

“Did you ever know Carolyn Barber?” he asked.

She paled abruptly and seemed ready to fall back into her chair, her other hand reaching to her forehead.

“Are you okay?” he asked, half rising. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, no. Please. Stay seated. It’s nothing. It just surprised me. I mean that name-”

“Barber’s?” he asked.

She seemed to be trying to gather her wits, and with some degree of calculation.

“It’s just been so many years,” she finally uttered.

He frowned at the unlikely explanation. The BOL featuring Carolyn’s disappearance had gotten good coverage in the news, even with the ramped-up competition from Irene.

“Carolyn’s gone missing,” he explained. “It’s been in the news. She was a resident at the state hospital and wandered away during the flooding. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about it.”

Kelley looked confused-but more, he thought again, by what she should say, rather than by what he was telling her.

“I don’t read the news-or listen to it,” she said. “It’s too depressing. Carolyn’s gone?”

Joe wasn’t buying it. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “Like a leaf in the wind. Did you know she was at the state hospital, in Waterbury?”

“Poor soul,” she said sadly.

He moved along. “The reason I asked about Carolyn is because I ran across a mention that she was named Governor-for-a-Day, a long time ago, back when Marshall was at the peak of his power. No one seems to remember the details behind it. Supposedly, it was some weird publicity stunt.”

Nancy Kelley had transformed completely. Her shoulders were hunched, her hands clasped in her lap, her head bowed, and her eyes downcast.

“It was more than that,” she said-so quietly, he wondered if the recorder had picked it up. Instinctively, he moved it closer to her.

“Tell me about it,” he urged.

She looked up almost shyly, her age-creased face suddenly etched with anguish. “Why do you want to know?”

Joe took a stab at correctly interpreting her body language. “I want to see if I can help her. I think she’s in trouble. Did you know her well?”

She nodded without comment, and admitted, “She was one of my roommates.”

“In Montpelier?” he asked, amazed by his good luck.

“Yes.”

“This is great news. We’ve been searching all over for her, hoping she was okay. Have you heard from her?”

She looked up at him as if responding to an electrical shock. “Me? Why would she call me?”

Joe tilted his head ambiguously. “I don’t know. Why not? You were friends once. It’s not that strange.”

Her ready denial spoke of her rising anxiety. “No. I haven’t spoken to her in over half a century.”

“Ever since she was committed?” he pursued.

“I knew nothing about that,” Kelley said with a catch to her voice. “Last I saw her, she’d been heartbroken, but she was happy.”

“In my experience,” Joe quickly followed up, “it takes someone else to break your heart.”

A silence stretched between them, and Joe realized that Kelley was quietly crying, her tears striking the backs of her hands, which remained unmoving in her lap, still tightly interlinked.

“Tell me, Nancy,” he urged her. “What happened?”

“She got pregnant,” was the answer.

“Do you know by whom?” he asked after another long silence.

He could see only the top of her gray head as she said, “No. She never said. And then she went away.”

“Did she have the baby?”

“I don’t know.”

Joe thought for a couple of seconds. “But you were roommates,” he commented. “You must have known who she was dating at the time. Girls talk about that kind of thing, don’t they?”

Her crying worsened, to the point where she began wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve. Joe looked around, saw where Sam had placed a napkin on the counter behind him, beside an empty coffee cup, and brought it to Kelley, kneeling beside her chair in the process.

He rubbed her frail shoulder as she put the napkin to use. “Tell me what happened,” he repeated.

“She was raped,” she whispered.

“Who did it?” he asked.

Her whole body shuddered. “She said there were too many to know.”

Her weeping was uncontrollable by now. Under normal circumstances, given her age and the fact that he had nothing on her legally, Joe would have suggested bringing the conversation to an end.

But he wasn’t so inclined. The absence of Carolyn Barber had been gnawing at him since he’d found her single footprint in Irene’s muddy track. He’d had a foreboding then, similar to discovering that a small child had wandered off into a life-threatening environment. The complete absence of Carolyn Barber ever since had seemed proof of her demise, and hearing what Kelley had just told him only drove the sensation home-along with the dread that her end had not come accidentally. Now he had to consider that her killer might have been after her for a very long time.

Of course, he was sure of none of it, except that the only lead he’d found was sitting beside him right now.

He continued to rub Kelley’s shoulder as he asked, “She was raped by several men at once?”

She nodded silently, still sobbing.

“How do you know this?”

“She told me.”

“When did it happen?”

She didn’t answer at first.

“Back when you two were going to those parties?”

She nodded again.

“When you met Jerry,” he suggested more than asked.

She doubled over in response, as her crying turned to keening and her body began to shake.

Relentless, he rose behind her and began massaging her shoulders, murmuring, “It’s okay, Nancy, get it out. It’s been tearing at you for decades. Get it out. It’s okay.”

She finally calmed enough that he returned to her side, kneeling again, and said, “Tell me about you and Jerry and the parties, Nancy. And Carolyn.”

Taking a deep breath, she straightened slightly, her face damp and her clothes stained with tears. “You were right,” she said. “They were a regular thing, and Carolyn and I and some other girls were there a lot. It was new and fun and exciting. These were the most important people we knew. We ate well and drank like fish and even made some money, which meant something in those days.” She faced him pleadingly to add, “And Jerry and I really did fall in love. That was real.”

“I’m sure it was,” Joe soothed her. “Look at how long you stayed together.”

“Right,” she said. “That’s right.”

“So, what happened to Carolyn?”

“I don’t know, exactly. It was a big night. A crazy night. A major bill had gone through or something. It’s been too many years, and so much was happening back then. But everybody showed up-lobbyists and legislators and staffers. You name it, they were there. There was a river of alcohol and girls we didn’t even know…” She paused before finishing, “Things got carried away, even for us.”

“Do you have any idea what happened?” Joe asked.

“No,” she said. “We got separated. I only found her afterwards, in one of the bedrooms-this was at a hotel outside town. It’s gone now. She was a wreck, only partly conscious, her clothes were a mess-what there were of them. She didn’t remember much of anything.”

“What did you do?”

“Put her back together as best I could and took her home. Two months later, she told me she was pregnant.”

“Did she know who the father was?”

“No. She said she passed out entirely during the rape at one point. She had no idea how many there’d been.”

Joe moved to sit on the edge of the table, still within reach. “I need to ask you some more questions, Nancy, as you can guess. But can I get you a glass of water or something before we continue? Or would you like to take a small break-maybe visit the ladies’ room?”

Nancy dabbed at her eyes one last time with the damp napkin and sat straight up. “No. I’m fine. It’s hard, but I’d like to get it finished with, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” he said. “I want to ask you about what happened afterwards, but before we move on, I need to go over a couple of things about these parties.”

She took a deep sigh. “All right.”

“You made it sound like they happened all the time-or at least frequently. But surely what happened to Carolyn wasn’t part of the norm, was it? Word would’ve leaked out.”

“There were two types of party,” she explained. “I should have gone into that. I was too upset. I’m sorry. There were the regular ones-with drinking and dancing and maybe a little hanky-panky between consenting adults-they happened often, mostly on weekends, involved all sorts of people, and weren’t really organized.”

She stopped to concentrate. “And then there was another type,” she continued, “that involved a special bunch of men. I heard them call themselves the Catamount Cavaliers once, although when I brought it up, I was told to keep my mouth shut, or else. I’d come across a pin-like something you’d wear on your lapel-that had a gold CC mounted on it. Very fancy. And I asked what it was for.”

“Who did you ask?” Joe wanted to know.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s long dead, and I only knew him by his first name anyhow. He told me they were like the Hellfire Club, of Ben Franklin’s day, when he lived in England for a while. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but I knew it had to do with sex. And that it was super secretive. I was told in no uncertain terms never to say a word about any of it, and I never did-until now.”

“Do you know how it was organized?” Joe pursued. “Who its members were?”

“I don’t know about the first, but the members were supposedly very influential-businessmen, politicians. I never knew. Any dealings that we girls ever had with them were under special circumstances, and the lights were either always out, or we had blindfolds on.”

Joe was having a hard time imagining all this. Human debauchery was no stranger to him-not after so many years on the job-but this was still Vermont, and while he’d always assumed that some human misbehavior made it into the state to a degree, something like an organized men’s sex club would have been a stretch.

Apparently not.

“How big was this group?” he asked.

“Not big. I always thought the pins and whatever else they did were just to make them feel special. The funny thing was that their parties and the regular ones sometimes happened at the same time in the same place, like when Carolyn was raped. We’d all go to what we thought was a typical blowout, but we’d never know when some of us might be invited upstairs to entertain the Cavaliers. It only happened once in a while. It wasn’t the norm. I can’t even swear that’s what happened that weekend, with Carolyn. But I did find her in one of the upstairs rooms, which is what made me think the Cavaliers had something to do with it.”

Joe was scratching his head. “A gang rape in the same hotel while the party was going on?” he summarized.

She repeated, “I told you things got out of hand. The Cavaliers seemed harmless till then-group sex with hoods and costumes and stuff that usually made us girls laugh. What happened to Carolyn only happened that once, that I know of. I think it really scared them. I know I was never invited to any of their parties after that, and I don’t know anyone else who was, either.”

Joe pondered what she’d told him while gazing at her in wonder-this small, slim, gray-haired lady with slightly gnarled hands and sensible shoes. He was trying his best not to imagine her in the situations that she’d so frankly detailed, while at the same time recalling what Sammie had told him about some of the shenanigans that regularly took place at The Woods.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move on a bit. What happened to Carolyn after she told you she was pregnant?”

Kelley raised her eyes to him. “That’s the crazy thing-she made it sound like the most wonderful thing in the world. Carolyn came home one night, waving a wad of money and laughing, saying that her ship had come in and that they were going to do the right thing and take care of her and the baby from now on. She started packing right then and there. That was right after the whole Governor-for-a-Day hubbub, when she made the papers and was squired around like a celebrity.”

“Who did she mean by ‘they’?” Joe asked.

“She wouldn’t tell me. Said that was the deal. If she identified them, everything went up in smoke. If you ask me, everything went up in smoke anyhow, because I never heard from her again.”

“She packed up that night and disappeared?” Joe asked.

“Pretty much. It actually took a couple of days, but that was it.”

“Did she talk any more about it during those two days? Anything that might help?”

She shook her head. “I asked, but she kept her mouth shut, even once accusing me, ‘You want to ruin everything?’ like this was some great move up for her.”

“How about Jerry?” Joe persisted. “You and he must’ve talked about this.”

“We did,” she conceded. “Especially after Carolyn’s big day in the news. But he was as clueless as I was.”

“But he was one of the Cavaliers, wasn’t he?”

“Not Jerry,” she said quickly, her face reddening, which made Joe suspicious.

“What about the baby?” he asked, letting it go. She’d been helpful so far, and he hadn’t been gentle on her. He was willing not to challenge her devotion to Jerry.

But she couldn’t help him. “The baby-as far as we knew-vanished with Carolyn,” she said. “It was like a beam from outer space came down and took her away.”

Joe let out a sigh. “It’s an amazing story. I’m glad you got out of it with a happy ending, to be truthful.”

“I know,” she admitted. “You can be so stupid when you’re young. Good thing I was lucky.”

“What about your life afterwards?” Joe asked, looking to end their conversation on an up note.

“Jerry and I married. That whole world changed anyway. Vermont sort of joined the twentieth century, and everybody started acting more responsibly.” She paused to stare into the middle distance before concluding, “Those were incredible times.”

“I’m thinking Carolyn might agree with you,” Joe said, adding, “She had a sister, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Barb.”

“Did you know her at all?”

Nancy frowned slightly. “No. We met once, but that was it. They weren’t close.”

Joe thought back to his conversation with William Friel, on the same topic. “Really?” he said. “I was told otherwise.”

“Barb was very judgmental. She didn’t approve of Carolyn’s lifestyle.”

“So the break occurred because Carolyn moved to Montpelier?” Joe suggested.

“If there was a break,” Kelley said. “I didn’t know them before. I thought they always hated each other.”

Joe nodded sympathetically, imagining the older, plainer, less playful sister feeling left on the fringes of Carolyn’s supposed happiness. “How ’bout afterwards?” he asked. “After the pregnancy. Do you know how Barb was then?”

“No. The one time I saw her was when Carolyn moved in with me. I always guessed she’d have an I-told-you-so attitude, though. She struck me as the jealous type. That’s one of the reasons I was happy about Carolyn hitting it rich at the end.”

Joe felt bad about having shattered such a cheerful image. But it also triggered one last inquiry. “I’m going to ask you a final question, Mrs. Kelley, and I want to stress to you that if you answer yes, you’ll be in no trouble. I just need to know: Has Carolyn been in touch with you recently?”

She fixed him with her eyes and answered, “No. The last time I saw her could have been her last day on Earth. The break was that complete.”

Joe nodded slowly. “I have a feeling she wouldn’t argue with you there,” he said.