“Do you know how it was organized?” Joe pursued. “Who its members were?”
“I don’t know about the first, but the members were supposedly very influential-businessmen, politicians. I never knew. Any dealings that we girls ever had with them were under special circumstances, and the lights were either always out, or we had blindfolds on.”
Joe was having a hard time imagining all this. Human debauchery was no stranger to him-not after so many years on the job-but this was still Vermont, and while he’d always assumed that some human misbehavior made it into the state to a degree, something like an organized men’s sex club would have been a stretch.
Apparently not.
“How big was this group?” he asked.
“Not big. I always thought the pins and whatever else they did were just to make them feel special. The funny thing was that their parties and the regular ones sometimes happened at the same time in the same place, like when Carolyn was raped. We’d all go to what we thought was a typical blowout, but we’d never know when some of us might be invited upstairs to entertain the Cavaliers. It only happened once in a while. It wasn’t the norm. I can’t even swear that’s what happened that weekend, with Carolyn. But I did find her in one of the upstairs rooms, which is what made me think the Cavaliers had something to do with it.”
Joe was scratching his head. “A gang rape in the same hotel while the party was going on?” he summarized.
She repeated, “I told you things got out of hand. The Cavaliers seemed harmless till then-group sex with hoods and costumes and stuff that usually made us girls laugh. What happened to Carolyn only happened that once, that I know of. I think it really scared them. I know I was never invited to any of their parties after that, and I don’t know anyone else who was, either.”
Joe pondered what she’d told him while gazing at her in wonder-this small, slim, gray-haired lady with slightly gnarled hands and sensible shoes. He was trying his best not to imagine her in the situations that she’d so frankly detailed, while at the same time recalling what Sammie had told him about some of the shenanigans that regularly took place at The Woods.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s move on a bit. What happened to Carolyn after she told you she was pregnant?”
Kelley raised her eyes to him. “That’s the crazy thing-she made it sound like the most wonderful thing in the world. Carolyn came home one night, waving a wad of money and laughing, saying that her ship had come in and that they were going to do the right thing and take care of her and the baby from now on. She started packing right then and there. That was right after the whole Governor-for-a-Day hubbub, when she made the papers and was squired around like a celebrity.”
“Who did she mean by ‘they’?” Joe asked.
“She wouldn’t tell me. Said that was the deal. If she identified them, everything went up in smoke. If you ask me, everything went up in smoke anyhow, because I never heard from her again.”
“She packed up that night and disappeared?” Joe asked.
“Pretty much. It actually took a couple of days, but that was it.”
“Did she talk any more about it during those two days? Anything that might help?”
She shook her head. “I asked, but she kept her mouth shut, even once accusing me, ‘You want to ruin everything?’ like this was some great move up for her.”
“How about Jerry?” Joe persisted. “You and he must’ve talked about this.”
“We did,” she conceded. “Especially after Carolyn’s big day in the news. But he was as clueless as I was.”
“But he was one of the Cavaliers, wasn’t he?”
“Not Jerry,” she said quickly, her face reddening, which made Joe suspicious.
“What about the baby?” he asked, letting it go. She’d been helpful so far, and he hadn’t been gentle on her. He was willing not to challenge her devotion to Jerry.
But she couldn’t help him. “The baby-as far as we knew-vanished with Carolyn,” she said. “It was like a beam from outer space came down and took her away.”
Joe let out a sigh. “It’s an amazing story. I’m glad you got out of it with a happy ending, to be truthful.”
“I know,” she admitted. “You can be so stupid when you’re young. Good thing I was lucky.”
“What about your life afterwards?” Joe asked, looking to end their conversation on an up note.
“Jerry and I married. That whole world changed anyway. Vermont sort of joined the twentieth century, and everybody started acting more responsibly.” She paused to stare into the middle distance before concluding, “Those were incredible times.”
“I’m thinking Carolyn might agree with you,” Joe said, adding, “She had a sister, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Barb.”
“Did you know her at all?”
Nancy frowned slightly. “No. We met once, but that was it. They weren’t close.”
Joe thought back to his conversation with William Friel, on the same topic. “Really?” he said. “I was told otherwise.”
“Barb was very judgmental. She didn’t approve of Carolyn’s lifestyle.”
“So the break occurred because Carolyn moved to Montpelier?” Joe suggested.
“If there was a break,” Kelley said. “I didn’t know them before. I thought they always hated each other.”
Joe nodded sympathetically, imagining the older, plainer, less playful sister feeling left on the fringes of Carolyn’s supposed happiness. “How ’bout afterwards?” he asked. “After the pregnancy. Do you know how Barb was then?”
“No. The one time I saw her was when Carolyn moved in with me. I always guessed she’d have an I-told-you-so attitude, though. She struck me as the jealous type. That’s one of the reasons I was happy about Carolyn hitting it rich at the end.”
Joe felt bad about having shattered such a cheerful image. But it also triggered one last inquiry. “I’m going to ask you a final question, Mrs. Kelley, and I want to stress to you that if you answer yes, you’ll be in no trouble. I just need to know: Has Carolyn been in touch with you recently?”
She fixed him with her eyes and answered, “No. The last time I saw her could have been her last day on Earth. The break was that complete.”
Joe nodded slowly. “I have a feeling she wouldn’t argue with you there,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dave Spinney was almost as tall as his father, having reached his later teens, and liked to walk alongside him more in public than he’d used to, especially in Springfield, where they’d lived his whole life. Back when he was a kid, with his old man younger and more full of fire-and a trooper for the Vermont State Police-it hadn’t been much fun. Dave’s friends steered clear of him whenever father and son appeared together, and Lester made comments anyhow, if he recognized any of them from a distance-referring to whatever trouble they might have gotten into, or just avoided, or the company they were keeping.
That had been a real drag. Worse than having a dad who was school principal.
But now that Lester had been with the VBI for several years, fewer people knew him, he didn’t chase after them in a cruiser anymore, and-his son could grudgingly admit-Dave had also grown up considerably. Especially after Lester had risked his job to save Dave’s butt when the latter had gotten tangled up with a bunch all destined for jail.
That had been a confusing time, a chance to make some hard choices, and an opportunity to recognize his parents in a more mature light-with their fears, their vulnerabilities, and their love for him and his sister clear to see. He wasn’t happy that he’d gone through it, but he was pleased with the end results-enough to have announced an interest in joining the state police in a couple of years.
They were at the local supermarket, doing the weekly grocery shopping, which Dave’s mom often couldn’t do because of her hours at the hospital.
That was fine with the men, since they had their own style and taste in food, with which Sue didn’t argue.