Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

“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.”

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?”