Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

“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.