“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.”