Free Three Can Keep a Secret by Archer Mayor Page A

especially as the stakes had grown along with Gail's successes. Beyond that, when Gail had been raped — and Joe almost killed — Susan had been beyond supportive, offering counsel and challenge during Gail's struggle for balance.
    Unusually — if typically for this woman — Raffner's only request in exchange for all of this had not been a cabinet appointment or the leadership of some agency. It had been to request an endorsement from Gail in Susan's run for one of the two Windham County state senate seats.
    And it had worked, if controversially. Winning as a Democrat hadn't been much of a reach in Vermont's southeast corner; but Gail's stirring of the pot by backing Susan against the Democratic incumbent had caused a real hornet's swarm. The man in question had been popular, if only mildly competent, and had been serving for sixteen years before Candidate Zigman had vouched for Susan on the stump. The two women broke the rules and outraged their own party bosses, and created an effective if inaccurate image of Raffner's stunned opponent as a chauvinist, do-nothing male who was probably harboring malicious intentions toward women, children, farmers, gun owners, and the American Way. The poor bastard never knew what hit him, and on election night, Gail and Susan had briefly retreated amid the hoopla to raise a private glass to their dual success.
    It wasn't just the victory they were toasting. On various levels, they were angry women, fed up with the status quo, tired of waiting for change, and happy with the turmoil they'd stirred up. The fallout afterwards would be predictable, of course, and was already starting. Both women winning by popular landslides while thumbing their noses at the Old Guard — including Vermont's Washington delegation, nicknamed the DC-Three — had prompted a chorus of angry muttering from the back rooms that guaranteed an untold number of future headaches for each of them. But in the short term, as for so many idealists preceding them, that hadn't mattered. They were flush with success, and presumed that the spirit that had carried them here would sustain them while in office.
    It was a miscalculation common to many a dreamer.
    In the meantime, Gail now had her best friend in the senate. However, she'd also lost her closest advisor as a result, and Susan had already twice taken opposing views to a couple of the new governor's pet projects, but such was the rigor of their mutual honesty that details like that mattered little. In an ironic homage to much of the politics predating modern extremism, they embodied the older tradition suggesting that close friends could be politically opposed while still finding enlightenment in each other's insight.
    As with right now. Gail pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number she knew better than her parents'.
    "Nice interview on VPR ," Susan answered without preamble. "I might not have gone on so much about that funding issue. Uncle Sam always sounds more generous on the heels of a disaster than he does a year later when the checks need to be written."
    Gail knew better than to be sidetracked by someone else's issue. It was a lesson that Susan herself had taught her early on. Instead, she ignored the comment and got straight to the reason for her call. "Stretching back into Vermont political history," she asked her friend, "what can you tell me about Carolyn Barber? Governor-for-a-Day a long time ago?"
    Raffner didn't mind and didn't hesitate. "Wow — that's a name from the past. Like bringing up the Black Dahlia in Los Angeles."
    Gail raised her eyebrows at the obscure reference, but stayed silent, knowing Susan's process.
    "One of the most famous unsolved murder cases in U.S. history," came the follow-up. "And relevant how?"
    "Okay — a stretch, I'll grant you. But just like you had no clue about the Black Dahlia, most Vermonters have never heard of Carolyn Barber. At the time, it was seen as a publicity strategy run amok, since most of the coverage