Three Can Keep a Secret

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The entire squad was back in Brattleboro, for their first staff meeting in days. They’d been dropping by individually, to catch up on paperwork and collect messages, but it felt odd to have them all in the same room again.

“It’s been a bit of a grind,” Joe told them from his spot of preference, sitting on the windowsill. “But we’re making headway, and I thought we should compare notes face-to-face. Willy, let’s start with you and Rozanski.”

“Nothing to tell,” Willy reported with predictable brevity.

“Aside from what you will tell us,” Joe responded pleasantly and without hesitation.

Willy, feet propped on his desk, sighed. “No runs, no fouls, no errors,” he said wearily. “Herb Rozanski is alive and well, if a little mangled, and living under a legal alias in Burlington. He and his brother, Nate-also alive and a hermit in the Kingdom-agree that they had a fight and that their dad covered it up by pretending Herb got killed. Was it against the law? Yeah, but the old man’s dead, and nobody gives a damn, so I’m declaring the case closed.” He waited for a reaction before adding, “Unless there’s an objection.”

Everyone knew better, and Joe also knew that Willy’s report would be complete and properly filed, if it hadn’t been already. Despite his unregimented demeanor, Willy was maniacal about tending to details.

Joe therefore let the subject slide. “Good. Now to the swamp pit that’s been swallowing the rest of us. To begin with-right or wrong-we thought we had a missing state hospital patient, an ex-politician dead of natural causes, and two people killed by an accidental house fire in Shelburne. Some of us have been pursuing different aspects of these three cases, but since it’s become pretty clear that they’re all cross-connected and a whole lot more complicated, I’m thinking that from here on, we better treat everything as a single unit, just to be on the safe side.”

He held up the photograph of Carolyn Barber and Gorden Marshall on her big day, decades ago. “This, for instance, shows two of our major players, back in the ’60s. There is no way in hell that her disappearance and Marshall’s suspected murder don’t overlap.”

“Like as part of the Catamount Cavaliers?” Willy suggested, adding, “I been reading the reports.”

“Perfect example,” Joe agreed.

“How solid are we on Marshall being a homicide?” Lester asked. “I know Hillstrom found a stab wound in Friel, but are we still relying on Marshall’s damaged upper lip as our only proof of foul play?”

“You got circumstantial stuff, too,” Sammie contributed.

Joe pointed to her and nodded. “Right. It’s not bulletproof, but somebody made an effort to stop us from reaching back into Marshall’s history.”

“There’s no downside to working him as a homicide,” Willy said generally.

“Speaking of Marshall,” Joe said. “Did we get anything more out of his phone records?”

“Not much more than what I told you,” Lester said. “There was a reporter from the old days who told me they just reminisced. The guy said he was writing a history book and found Marshall to be pretty useless. And there was a call from an outfit named Scott and Company. Sheldon Scott is a conservative lobbyist who used to be buddy-buddy with Marshall way back when, but from what they told me, it wasn’t Scott who phoned.”

“Who was it?” Willy asked.

“They didn’t know and couldn’t track it-or wouldn’t-but Scott himself was out of town.”

“It still may not be a dead end,” Sammie said.

“The phone records?” Joe asked. “Or Scott and Company?”

“Either. The messages on his machine were erased. To me, that sounds like it wasn’t ‘who’ that was being covered up, but ‘what’ that person said.”

“What do you think was in the files from Marshall’s desk?” Willy asked. “There doesn’t seem to have been much follow-up about them.”

“Probably related to the Catamount Cavaliers,” Joe stated, “but no way of knowing.”

“Except,” Willy pursued, “that Travis Reynolds said they were already missing, which means they were probably taken at the time Marshall was snuffed. The rest-the picture and the lapel pin and the phone messages-happened later.”

“The killer forgot the other stuff?” Lester asked. “Or he was interrupted?”

“Crazier things have happened,” Willy answered. “But I’m betting on something else.”

“There were two of them,” Joe filled in.

Sam and Lester looked back and forth at their colleagues.

“What?” Sammie asked.

“Somebody knocked off Marshall and boosted the file-,” Willy began.

“-And somebody else hired Travis to rip off his apartment,” Joe finished. “I like it.”

“Two separate parties covering their tracks?” Lester asked.

Sam was already nodding in appreciation. “It does work. I mean, it’s as good a theory as anything else we got.”

“Why, though?” Lester challenged them. “Why kill Marshall, why steal his file, and why would somebody different come back later to steal the other stuff? Pretty unpopular guy.”

“Not just that,” Joe mused. “But the second party heard about the death almost before Marshall’s body started cooling.”

“The former Cavaliers,” Willy suggested. “Horny old fuckers still covering their asses. He was supposed to have coffee with pals on the morning he turned up dead. Think one or all of them might be old Cavaliers?”

“And, if not,” Sam said, “we know how fast news travels in that place.”

“It can’t be that hard to find out who the Cavaliers were,” Lester suggested. “Go back to the archives, find out who was in power, who the local cops were, the hotel owners, all the other players. There’ll be others like Nancy Kelley, with stories to tell.”

“How ’bout Travis’s phone records?” Joe asked then. “We get anything there?”

“We got the numbers,” Sam said. “I’m still connecting them to who they belong to. Won’t be much longer.”

The buzzer went off on Joe’s desk phone. He picked it up and answered, “Gunther.”

“There’s a man down here who’d like to talk to you. Name’s Michael Nesbitt.”

“Hang on,” Joe said. He covered the mouthpiece and asked the group, “Anyone know Michael Nesbitt? He’s downstairs. Wants to talk.”

He got a universal response of blank stares.

“Send him up.”

Minutes later, there was a tentative knock at the door. A small, round, unremarkable man in a baseball cap appeared in their doorway.

“Mr. Nesbitt?” Joe asked. “Come in. What can we do for you?”

Their guest reached into his pocket and extracted a crumpled piece of paper. “I saw this on a wall,” he said, “and thought you’d like to know that I saw this lady. It said to contact you, but my phone’s still out, and I don’t own a cell, so, since I had to be down here on other business anyhow today, I thought I’d just come over.”

Sam, being nearest to him, took the poster from his hand and flattened it on her desk. It was Carolyn Barber’s BOL advisory. Sam held it up silently so the rest of them could see what Nesbitt was talking about.

“You saw Carolyn Barber?” Joe asked.

“I gave her a ride,” he answered.

“From where?” Willy asked.

“Near Waterbury. I live in Williston-well, a little south of there-and I was heading home in the storm when I saw her by the side of the road. She was a mess, so I stopped to see what I could do.”

“This was during Irene?” Lester asked.

“Yeah. I’d been doing some catch-up work on Sunday. I work-well, I worked for the state-Natural Resources-and I was heading home, like I said.…” He paused and looked around, increasingly at a loss for words.

Joe walked over to him. “Mr. Nesbitt, I’m sorry. We’ve been very rude. Have a seat and take a breath. We were just caught off guard by your news. We’ve been looking for Carolyn for a while.” He pulled a guest chair away from the wall and steered Nesbitt into it, asking, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Nesbitt sat but waved away the offer. “No thanks. I’m all set.”

Joe pulled out another chair and sat near him. “Okay,” he resumed. “From the top. The storm was getting bad, you were told to head home, and you saw Carolyn by the side of the road. Is that about it?”

“Right. She was just standing there, soaking wet.”

“How was she dressed?”

“A long … kind of, I don’t know. I guess it was like a robe or a coat of some kind. Not very thick. And she had like a dress underneath it.”

Joe tried to interpret the description. “Did it really look like clothing, or was it maybe more like the kind of thing they give you in a hospital? Was it a robe like that?”

“Yeah, yeah. It was. And she didn’t have shoes.”

“Both shoes were missing?” Lester asked pointedly.

“Yeah. I know that ’cause I commented on it. I was really worried about her. She was out of it.”

“You didn’t take her to the hospital?” Willy wanted to know.

Nesbitt faced him with his hands spread out. “I tried. I really did, but she got so worked up, I didn’t dare. I didn’t want to make her any worse than she was. Plus, she told me where to go.”

“Where was that?” Joe asked.

“To her sister’s, in Shelburne. That’s not that far from me-not when you consider the circumstances. So I was happy to help her out. I mean, I was heading out anyhow, and it felt good to lend her a hand. She was in a bad way.”

“How so?” Sam asked. “Cold and wet only, or something else?”

“Oh, no,” Nesbitt emphasized. “She was that, sure, but she was like, funny, you know? Talking weird and stuff. It kind of made me nervous at first, when I thought maybe I’d picked up a nut. But she was super nice once the heater kicked in and she knew I was doing what she asked.”

“Taking her to her sister’s, you mean?”

“Right. After that, she quieted down. I had a blanket in the back seat that I gave her, too, and that helped, I think.”

“What did you talk about?” Joe asked.

“I asked her what had happened, and she said she’d been flooded out, which wasn’t hard to believe. That’s why she wanted to go to her sister’s. It wasn’t exactly clear with all her muttering. After I saw the poster, I guess I was pretty stupid. She said she was surprised by the rising water, and barely got out with her life.” He paused again and added ruefully, “Guess that’s what happens when you fill in the blanks on your own. I couldn’t have been more wrong.”

“Understandable,” Joe soothed him. “What else did you two discuss?”

“Not much, to be honest. She fell asleep as soon as the heat got to her. I watched her pretty close at first, ’cause I wanted to make sure she was only sleeping. Know what I mean? But she was.” He allowed for a small laugh. “I actually felt better when she started snoring a little. That seemed like a good sign.”

“How did you know where to go?” Sam asked.

“Oh, I woke her up when I got near to Shelburne. She just pointed the way. She didn’t seem totally sure about it, but she got it right in the long run.”

“You remember the address?”

“Not exactly, but it was a dead end, parallel to Route 7.”

“Hillside Terrace?” Lester asked.

“That was it,” he said happily.

“And then what?” Joe asked. “Was the sister there?”

“The nephew was. I knocked on the door when we got there, and this guy opened the door. He was really surprised to see us. You could’ve knocked him over with a feather. He was all pale and at a loss for words. He offered me money, but I said no, that I was happy to help, and that was about it.”

“So you never saw the sister?” Joe pursued.

Nesbitt’s expression saddened. “I think I did, actually, not that I was introduced. But when the nephew opened the door, I saw an old woman in a wheelchair behind him, just staring at nothing. He saw me looking and just said something like, ‘My mom-Alzheimer’s’ or something really short like that.”

“How did you know he was the nephew?” Willy asked.

“He came outside to help me get her out of the car,” Nesbitt explained. “Called her ‘Aunt Carolyn.’”

“How did she act when he did that?”

“She was still pretty out of it,” Nesbitt told them. “She didn’t really say anything to him, and he seemed stunned anyhow. Now that I know more about her from the poster, some of that makes sense. I guess he sure didn’t expect to have her show up on his doorstep.” Nesbitt looked around at them all before asking, “What was she in the hospital for, anyhow?”

“Mr. Nesbitt,” Joe asked instead, “Why did you take all this time to get hold of us? It’s been a while.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I been out of state. Like I said, I sort of found myself on involuntary leave-that’s the way they put it-so I went south to visit family for a while. Wasn’t till I got home yesterday that I saw that poster at the town office, where I was settling a bill. There’s no picture, but my eye caught on the name Carolyn. That’s what the nephew called her. And then the description on the poster did the rest, mentioning the date and Waterbury and the storm and all the rest. Even down to her outfit. That’s when I decided I better get in touch, since I was coming to Brattleboro anyhow.”

Joe stood up. “We’re glad you did, Mr. Nesbitt.”

Lester stood also and took their guest’s elbow. “Why don’t you follow me next door so I can get this all down as a sworn statement?” he asked. “That way, we’ll get the whole process squared away and you can be free of us from now on.”

Nesbitt began following him outside, but hesitated at the door to ask, “Is there any reward for what I told you? I’m sorta between a rock and a hard place right now.”

“No,” Joe told him. “Sorry.”

Nesbitt shrugged and left, following Lester.

“Milk of human kindness,” Willy said as the door closed.

“Good for us, though,” Joe said. “What d’you make of it?”

Willy was first. “Tells me Friel was lying his ass off when you and Spinney dropped by to chat.”

Joe nodded, remembering the greeting that he and Lester had received in Shelburne. “Friel asked us to wait at the door, in order to prepare his mother for our coming in-more likely, it was to make sure Carolyn had time to go into her bedroom in the basement.”

“It also means Carolyn wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t know what to do once she got out of the hospital,” Sammie added.

“Okay,” agreed Joe. “But then what? She escapes; they put her up and keep mum to protect her; then something goes off the tracks.”

“Marshall gets killed, for one thing,” Willy said.

“Right after it’s circulated that Carolyn’s on the loose,” Sam added.

“But not circulated by us,” Lester pointed out. “We took a while with her posters.”

“So, by an insider,” Sam came back.

“And then, one-two-three,” Joe chimed in, “Friel gets stabbed, Barb gets cremated alive, and presumably, Carolyn gets grabbed.”

“Or killed,” Willy suggested. “No point keeping her alive, and it would probably be easier to kill her before smuggling her out of the house.”

Joe recalled something Jonathon Michael had told him; “The bulkhead door was unlocked. Anyone could have gotten in, whenever they chose.”

The other two stayed silent, playing out a list of variations in their minds. Joe stood up, pushed the guest chair back against the wall, and reached for his jacket.

“Where ya headed, boss?”

“The scene of the crime.”

* * *

Sam turned to Willy upon Joe’s departure. “That mean anything to you?”

“He has a itch he wants to scratch in private.”

She used that to change topics. “You would know about that.”

“That a loaded comment?” he asked. “Or just practice?”

She smiled, used to how his inborn paranoia processed things. “Checking your dipstick,” she answered him. “You been on some kind of odyssey. I just want to make sure you’re okay. That we’re okay.”

Instead of the usual quick one-liner, he kept quiet, which made her rise from her chair and sit on the edge of his desk, where she rested a hand on one of his crossed legs.

“Herb Rozanski?” she asked.

He didn’t look at her. “He’s got an arm like mine,” he said.

“From the saw?”

“Yeah. He got it sewed up, but it never worked again.”

“He okay?”

He gestured dismissively, but answered nevertheless, “He’s coping. Might as well be hollowed out, though-a living pumpkin. Smile on the outside; nuthin’ inside.”

She squeezed his leg. “There but for the grace of God? That what you’re thinking?”

“Grace of something,” he offered. “Don’t know about God.”

“How ’bout grace of yourself?” she suggested. “Grace of the people that love you? What’s Herb got?”

She’d heard enough about the Rozanski case to know part of what was eating at him. Willy was deemed unapproachable by most people, but to her, he wasn’t that complicated. This was a smart man with a big heart that had been stepped on enough to make him angry, suspicious, and in pain. That’s how she saw it, all the babble about PTSD and the rest notwithstanding. She’d seen him with their daughter, and had been won over by him herself.

“How’d you leave it with Herb?” she asked, thinking that might have played a role in his present mood.

“Told him to go back to his brother and sister.” His voice was so quiet, she barely heard his words.

“You think he will?”

“I doubt it,” he admitted candidly. “He’s pretty far gone.”

“You tell him they’d be open to it?”

His voice rose slightly. “Oh, sure. Mouse fart in a high wind, if you ask me.”

“And so there it sits,” she mused, hoping to be echoing his thoughts. “Like a ball game suspended in the middle of the last inning.”

“Yeah, well…” He left it there.

She leaned over and kissed his cheek, and spoke into his ear. “Unless maybe you get one of them to get in touch.”

He straightened in his chair, pulling away from her a bit. “Not my problem, babe. They wanna fuck up their lives, I’m not their nursemaid.”

She moved her hand up his thigh, smiling. “You know you want to. You just don’t want it to fail. It’s already failed. How can your giving it a small push do any damage?”

He looked at her then, his expression critical. “Jesus, listen to you. Mother Frigging Teresa. You’d think you would’ve learned by now.”

She laughed and got up, knowing better than to push. “I had, till I met you. You made me an optimist.”

* * *

Joe stood beside his car, taking in the neat, square, rubble-filled cellar hole on Hillside Terrace. He was struck by the sad irony that what was once the foundation of a family home had become the custom-made receptacle for its charred remains. There was a discussion about preserving the wreckage as a crime scene, complete with around-the-clock guard, but the consensus had been that it was all too little, too late by now, and that the case against the killer of William Friel and his mother would have to rely on evidence beyond what might be lurking here.

Which is what had lured Joe back. For, while the site had been destroyed-no doubt with the hope of erasing all traces of a crime-that crime had nevertheless taken place. And it was Joe’s experience that-as with a lingering odor-the residue of such an event often hovered in place, sometimes to the advantage of those in search of it.

As if on cue, he saw what he was looking for, even sooner than he’d anticipated. There was a movement at one of the windows neighboring the Barber property, indicating-Joe anticipated-the presence of the almost customary neighborhood busybody.

He left his car and crossed the street to knock on the front door.

He didn’t get the opportunity. The door opened as he reached the front porch steps.

“Are you from the insurance company?” a woman asked, whose body and hairstyle reminded Joe of a Saint Bernard on its hind legs.

“Police,” he countered. “Joe Gunther. And you are?”

She stepped out onto the porch. “Karen Freed. I thought the police were finished here.”

They didn’t bother shaking hands, having already passed that part.

“Oh, you know,” he said lightly. “The usual ton of follow-up paperwork.”

“I thought it was a homicide,” she said, her voice rising.

He continued up the steps. “What makes you say that?”

Her eyes narrowed craftily. “Okay. I get it. Don’t worry about me. I’m going to my grave with all my secrets intact. People know that about me around here.”

Joe wasn’t quite sure what that meant. He stayed quiet.

“I saw it go up,” Freed said. “My house was built the same time as Barb’s. If you’re telling me that was an accident, I’m selling tomorrow, ’cause it exploded like a bomb.”

“And that’s why you’re thinking homicide,” Joe suggested.

She smiled, and for a moment, he thought she added a wink. “That’s why you’re thinking homicide,” she said.

He didn’t argue. “Okay. You seem to be aware of what happens in the neighborhood, could you tell me what you saw that night?”

“I already told a cop in uniform.”

“I’m aware of that,” he lied, having relied on Jonathon Michael’s narrative, rather than on individual statements. “But sometimes, with the passage of time, memories sharpen.”

“It was real sudden,” Freed recalled, needing no further prompting. “I was sitting watching TV, and there was a bright flash out the window-and a boom, like an explosion. Shook the house.”

“When was this, roughly?”

“Late. About eleven.”

She hadn’t asked him in, so Joe settled onto the porch’s broad wooden railing, enjoying the sun on his back. She remained standing, framed by the open doorway behind her.

“Any comings or goings from there earlier that you noticed?” he asked.

“Earlier that night? Nope.”

“How ’bout right after?”

But she rejected that. “There was tons of action after the fire department got here, and that was pretty quick. They were really fast and good, moving cars around and setting everything up, just like on TV. But it was a goner as soon as I saw it through my window. The whole house looked like the mouth of a volcano. That’s why I know it’s a homicide-that a bomb did ’em in.”

“I take it you knew Barb and her son?” Joe asked.

Freed looked disapproving. “Oh, yes.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” he said, leadingly.

She pursed her lips. “Very odd people.”

“How so?”

“Oh, you know…”

Joe didn’t let on that he did, remaining silent.

Freed sighed impatiently. “You ever meet them?”

“Once,” he admitted. “Of course, that was after she’d been disabled.”

She broadened her stance slightly, as if responding to a boat deck’s slow roll. “I know it’s horrible to say, but that disease was the only thing left that could quiet that woman down.”

Even for Joe, who’d heard some pretty harsh things, that was a corker.

“Really?” he said as blandly as he could.

“She was like the Wicked Witch of the West,” she explained. “Treated everybody like dirt, no matter what they did. Most negative person I ever met. And the way she talked to him. It was terrible.”

“Yelled some?” Joe prompted.

“I’ll say. He could never do anything right.”

Joe tried to be philosophical. “They say that anger and paranoia often run hand in hand with Alzheimer’s.”

But Karen Freed was having none of it. “Bah. Unless she’d had it for forty years, I wouldn’t hide behind that fig leaf. She was just a terrible person. Sometimes, there’s no getting around it.”

“And yet he stayed with her.”

She considered that. “Yes,” she agreed. “That confused me, too, at the beginning. But sometimes a man is just too spineless to act in his own best interest. Plus,” she added. “It was her house, and as long as he could put up with her, he lived there for free. I bet he used all her money for groceries and the like, too. I never saw him work a lick, so that has to be true.”

Joe thought back to something that Beverly had mentioned in passing. “You think he might have killed her and committed suicide?” he asked.

She looked genuinely astonished. “Good Lord. What a thought.” She paused. “I suppose it’s possible,” she added without conviction.

“I’m not saying that’s what happened,” Joe carefully followed up. “But you knew them better than I.”

“Then I’d say no,” she replied. “He didn’t have it in him. Besides, the smart thing would have been for him to kill her and live happily ever after. Nobody would have been suspicious-a woman in her condition.”

Joe reflected on an earlier comment. “Mrs. Freed, you said that when the fire department showed up, they moved some cars. What did you mean by that?” He turned to point across the way. “I see his Chevy right there, and it looks like it got burned pretty badly. Did they move it?”

“No, no,” she said. “The other one. Her car. That’s the one they moved. It was closer to the house.”

Joe was still for a second, trying to process this. “What kind of car?” he asked. “Is it on the block now?”

She moved, marching to the edge of the porch, resting her hands on the rail like Captain Bligh, and scrutinized the street.

“No,” she announced. “It’s not there. Maybe they towed it. It hadn’t been legal for years. It was a Buick Skylark-dark green.”

“You remember the plate number?”

She gave him a withering stare. “I don’t go around keeping things like that in my head.”

“Of course,” he said agreeably. “Did you actually see the car being moved? I’m just trying to figure out who drove it.”

She tucked in her chin thoughtfully. “No. One minute it was there. The next, it was gone.”

“And now that we’ve been discussing that whole evening, can you recall anything else? Something you saw through one of their windows, maybe? Or something you heard?”

A look of distaste crossed her face. “I’m no Peeping Tom. What do you take me for?”

Joe kept that to himself and thanked her for her time.