A softness had settled on his face with the reminiscence.
Joe picked up the album and asked, “Do you think we could borrow this for a while? We’ll get it back to you.”
“I don’t care,” William Friel said, sad once more. “You can keep it. That’s all done and buried.”
Joe understood the sentiment, although he felt in his bones that it was utterly inaccurate.
CHAPTER NINE
After their interview with William Friel, Joe and Lester decided to stay in Burlington overnight instead of heading back to Brattleboro. This, as it turned out, was a good thing, given what Sammie Martens had to say the following morning. Earlier, Joe had asked her to check on the whereabouts and activities of ex-State Senator Gorden Marshall-the unhappy politician who’d been photographed beside Carolyn Barber on her big day.
“Good news, bad news, boss,” Sam reported on the phone.
“I hate that,” he said, wiping the last of the shaving cream from his face and entering the motel’s bedroom. Lester was doing push-ups next to the far bed, in front of the flat-screen TV. He paused to quickly hit the MUTE button on CNN.
“All right,” she continued, ignoring him. “The good news is that I found Gorden Marshall. He’s parked at a place called The Woods of Windsor. It’s one of those over-the-top old folks’ homes where, in exchange for a small fortune, you get three squares a day, a pull alarm beside the toilet, and a one-way ticket to the terminal ward so your kids never have to worry about you when you go ga-ga.”
“Ouch,” Joe responded, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Do we have issues with this?”
“We do not,” she said, adding, “At least, not personally. There are a few things about it, though, that bother me in principle. I think it has something to do with the money involved, but I haven’t given it enough thought to know for sure.”
Joe laughed. “Geez, Sam-that’s very philosophical of you. You already wondering what Emma might be thinking when you and Willy get too old to use that toilet?”
“That’s gross.”
“That’s life, kiddo. What’s the bad news?”
“He’s dead.”
It had the right effect. Joe hesitated, reworking the conversation in his head. “Marshall’s dead?”
“As the proverbial doornail. Last night.”
Joe turned the phone aside to tell Spinney, “Sam says Gorden Marshall died last night.”
Lester turned off the TV. “No way.”
“How?” Joe asked Sammie, putting his cell on speakerphone.
“Natural causes, according to the facility. I called as soon as I read about it during my records search on the guy, and whoever it was in administration at The Woods told me that their medical director was signing it off as a natural.”
“The hell he is,” Joe blurted out.
This time, it was Sam who paused before asking, “Who was Marshall, anyhow? You didn’t go into detail last night. I mean, I know the political part.…”
“That’s about it so far,” Joe admitted. “We found him posing in a photograph next to Carolyn Barber when she was made Governor-for-a-Day. It was just a lead I wanted to follow.” He reconsidered that and added, “Or it was before this piece of unlikely coincidence. Where’s the body right now?”
“Probably at the funeral home. Maybe still at The Woods of Windsor. It was dumb luck that I stumbled over this. I was running all state databases, as usual with missing persons, and there he was in the death registry. I couldn’t believe it. If the Internet used ink, it wouldn’t have even been dry.”
Joe was gesturing to Lester to start packing. “Sam,” he said, “call them back, and the local police. Tell them to freeze everything till we get there. And call the SA-that’s Roger Carbine for that county-and tell him that I’ll be calling him for a big favor and will phone him from the road, right after you let me know you’ve chased him down. We got to get Gorden Marshall an autopsy, but I want to look at him first.”
Sam knew better than to prolong the conversation. Any and all discussion about this could wait until later, especially if some family member was impatiently hoping to get Mr. Marshall cremated.
“You got it,” she said, and gave him the address for The Woods.
* * *
As might befit a place of self-proclaimed high standards, The Woods of Windsor was located near Woodstock, Vermont-one of the few towns in the state wealthy enough to have had its downtown utility lines buried and its streetlamps replaced with wannabe nineteenth-century gaslights.
The Woods itself appeared as a vast country estate, with rolling green lawns, a central pond complete with two fountains, and a driveway more deserving of a castle than a retirement home.
Not that The Woods of Windsor described itself as such. While Lester had driven here, Joe had struggled using the younger man’s smartphone to check out the place and get a feel for what he was about to encounter. By the time motion sickness had gotten the upper hand, he’d become all but convinced that The Woods would be an ample reward for his having lived all these years-if only he had the 400,000 nonrefundable bucks it took to secure a small two-bedroom apartment there.
“Jesus,” he’d said, returning Lester’s phone. “It’s God’s waiting room and J.P. Morgan’s in one package.”
Now, as they passed through the main entrance, feeling a little diminished for not being in a horse-drawn coach, they experienced firsthand the aura of what true money could buy.
They parked, entered the lobby, tactfully introduced themselves to the white-haired receptionist, and were immediately pointed to an unmarked door, halfway down the hall. As they approached it, the door swung open to reveal a tight-faced, balding man in a suit and glasses, with a harried, unpleasant expression.
“You the police?” he asked without preamble, ushering them inside and quickly closing the door behind them, as if to contain a bad smell.
Joe and Lester displayed their credentials as Joe asked, “And you are?”
“I’m Mr. Whitby, assistant to the director. What seems to be the problem? You’re here about Mr. Marshall, aren’t you?”
The cops exchanged glances, instinctively disliking this lemonish man.
“We are,” Joe confirmed. “Is the body still here?”
“It is, thanks to you,” Whitby said testily, “and my phone’s been ringing as a result ever since. What you’ve done has pissed people off.”
“We’ll probably want all their names,” Joe told him levelly. “So if you could keep a log from now on, we’d appreciate it.”
Whitby’s face closed down even more, which didn’t seem possible. “I don’t know about that. I don’t know about any of this. I haven’t been told what’s going on here. As far as I know, one of our tenants passed away of natural causes,” he emphasized pointedly, “and now you people are crawling all over the place as if we’d had a terrorist attack.”
“We just got here,” Lester reminded him.
“I think he means the local police,” Joe suggested, asking Whitby, “Where are they? We probably ought to coordinate with them.”
“They’re causing a stir, guarding the apartment,” Whitby sneered, “as if it would fly off or something. I hope you realize what this could do to a place like this.” He snapped his fingers. “One wrong move, one small piece of bad publicity, and we’ve had it-people’ll be out of here like rats leaving a ship.”
“I’ve got it, George,” said a soothing female voice from behind, entering via the hallway door. “Thanks for your help. Sorry I was late.”
A woman with no-nonsense eyes and practical, short gray hair rounded to the front of them, waited for George Whitby to disentangle himself and fade away, and then extended her hand in greeting. “Hannah Eastridge,” she began. “I’m the director. I apologize for not greeting you personally. Your colleague called, of course, as has the state’s attorney, and the local police have sealed off the apartment, as you heard. I hope that we’ve set everything up to your satisfaction.”