The Lucky Ones(32)
Allison put the photographs back exactly as she found them. She made a mental note to ask Roland later who Antonio was. During her time at The Dragon, a handful of kids had come for a week or two each before being placed with relatives. Maybe that’s what had happened to Antonio. They had thought he’d stay for a long time but a relative had been found to claim him. These things were sad but they happened in the system. The question was...why was the photograph with Antonio hidden behind another picture? It wasn’t like Dr. Capello couldn’t afford another frame. She’d ask Roland about that, too.
As Allison was leaving the office, she noticed a framed newspaper article on the wall by the door. The photograph in black and white was of flip-flops, seven pairs of them, all lined up in a row, and the headline read The Lucky Ones—Sick Kids in Oregon Find a Hero in Dr. Vincent Capello and a New Home in a House Called The Dragon. It was a profile of Dr. Capello and his work as a philanthropist and foster father, dated 1998. Allison hadn’t seen it before, or if she had, she’d been too young to remark on it. Intrigued, she began to read.
The call came on a random rainy Wednesday when Vincent Capello was scrubbing out after surgery—a child with a brain tumor that left the boy partially blind.
“The president for you,” Dr. Capello was told, “on line one.”
“President of what?” he’d asked.
“The country,” the nurse said.
It seemed Dr. Vincent Capello was then President Clinton’s top pick to replace the outgoing surgeon general. The call was brief and polite, with Capello turning the offer down in under two minutes.
“It was an honor to be asked,” Capello said of the position. “But I had kids to take care of.”
Allison laughed in surprise. She’d had no idea Dr. Capello had once been offered the surgeon general’s post. And he’d turned it down for his kids? Amazing. She kept reading.
Vincent Capello and his children live in picturesque Cape Arrow, in a grand old house that was built as a gift from a man to his beloved wife and later became the scene of her murder.
Allison paused. Murder? She’d never heard this story about The Dragon.
In 1913, wealthy timber baron Victor Courtney purchased one hundred acres of pristine coastal land and began work on the beach home his wife, Daisy, had longed for since leaving her old-money Boston family to marry the upstart Oregon millionaire. Work was completed on the house in 1921 and Victor and Daisy moved in shortly after. No expense was to be spared as the house was built to satisfy Daisy’s every whim—a Victorian turret, a library of first editions on solid oak shelves, a sunroom, a drawing room, a formal dining room, servants’ quarters and ocean-facing windows galore. At first, the Courtneys were happy in their new home, but a few months later their troubles began.
“My grandmother Daisy had always been cheerful, they say,” Capello said on the day of our interview. “And she loved her daughter, my mother, doted on her, and she wanted many more children. But she miscarried shortly after they moved into this house. Then miscarried again a year later. She fell into a deep depression. Friends said she changed completely and could be found day and night, rain or shine, walking the beach and weeping, talking to herself and her lost children.
“My grandfather had a temper, though it was more bark than bite. But after moving into the house, he changed. He became brutal, even violent. He raged at servants, sometimes beating them, even beating my grandmother, which they say he’d never done before. The abuse was bad enough my grandmother sent my mother away to boarding school back East. It likely saved her life.”
The rages became legendary in their small coastal community. People speculated the Courtneys were cursed or the house haunted, and the suffering couple was called cruel nicknames by locals—Crazy Daisy and Vicious Victor. Victor blamed his own troubles on his wife. He had her subjected to brutal psychological treatments—unregulated drugs, water “cures” and even high-voltage electroshock therapy. Nothing worked to alleviate her depression. When the news came that Victor and Daisy were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide, no one was much surprised. The house remained in the family but laid abandoned for decades until the Courtneys’ only grandchild returned to it in his midthirties.
“It was morbid curiosity that brought me here. I wanted to see the old pile my mother talked about but refused to visit. I knew I’d inherit it eventually and wondered what I’d be getting myself into. Sell it? Knock it down? I was planning for the worst when I drove out here. My mother blamed this house for killing her parents. My grandfather had named the house Xanadu, but behind his back everyone called it Courtney’s Folly,” Capello said. “All up and down the coast you can still hear people telling ghost stories about the house. I was in medical school at the time and had a very good feeling it wasn’t a ghost that caused my grandparents’ troubles. I sent in contractors who tested the paint, tested the pipes. My grandparents weren’t insane and they weren’t bedeviled by ghosts or demons.” What they were, Dr. Capello’s testing found, was ill. Very ill. “They both suffered from lead poisoning, which has both physical and neurological side effects. Unscrupulous builders had substituted poor quality lead pipes for the higher quality copper pipes my grandfather had ordered. My feeling had been right. The house did kill them but not for the reason everyone thought.”
That discovery lead Capello on a quest to restore the house and his grandfather’s reputation in the community. The three-story estate has half a dozen bedrooms, just as many bathrooms and sits directly overlooking the beach. “I stood on the old deck and saw a family of five splashing in the water. One of the kids ran over to me and asked if I lived in the house. I told her no and her face fell. She said that was too bad, because the house was ‘so cool’ because to her it looked like a green dragon from a distance. I’d never noticed that before, but then I couldn’t stop seeing it like that.”