No Perfect Secret (2 page)

Anna
turned back to the door, still cracked open and allowing in freezing air. “Sorry. Show me some identification.”

“Sure thing
.” Teeth chattering, he pulled off a leather glove, slipped his hand into his inside coat pocket, and produced his wallet. He flipped it open to reveal his photograph and ID. “State Department.”

Anna felt a sudden weakness envelop her. Kevin worked for the State Department. “Has something happened?”

“Not that I know. We’re doing routine security checks on our couriers. Mrs Nesmith—Anna—your given name is Anna, right? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m freezing my buns off out here.”

“All right,
come in, but don’t drip on my kilim rug.”

He looked at her with a sense of
frost and frustration. “Sure, Okay. Where would you like for me to drip?”

The wind died abruptly, as if pausing for breath. He stepped inside and closed the door behind himself
and not at all gently. Next he unwound his muffler, dropped it to the floor and wiped his feet on it.

Anna stepped back.
Oh great! Another person with attitude
. “That looks awfully like cashmere,” she said of the muffler. Cold was coming off him in waves reminding her that she was barefoot and entirely naked beneath the caftan.

“Yep, early Christmas present.” He pulled off his
other glove and stuffed both into a pocket then shrugged out of his overcoat. There was an antique coat tree in the foyer. Sans invitation, he hung his coat on it. Sleet was sliding off the coat onto the floor—but not the rug. Anna affected not to notice.

“You let him in...” came accusingly from behind.

“This is my mother-in-law,” Anna said to the man. Damn. She’d seen his ID, seen his picture—but had paid not one whit of attention to his name. “Clara-Alice, would you get a towel for the gentleman.”

“No. I’ll watch him. You get the towel.” The look on her face said she was ready to hit one or both of them over the head with a
tire iron or golf club.

“Fine, watch him. Answer his questions, too.”

Clara-Alice paled. “What questions? About what? I don’t know anything.”

“Me, either,”
Anna said and left the two of them standing the foyer. She went into the guest bathroom, buried her face into a wad of towels, and screamed.
I don’t want to do this anymore. God help me, I don’t.
Why, oh, why couldn’t Kevin acknowledge that his mother was an affliction on their marriage? She sat on the edge of the cold porcelain tub and pondered her past and her future because the present was too awful to contemplate.

“What’s going on with you?” said the man from State, standing in the bathroom door.
“I heard a funny noise—sounded like a muffled scream.”

Anna stood.
“Nothing is going on with me. I’m having a bad hair day.” She shoved the towels into his hands and moved past him, down the hall through the dining room and into the kitchen. The kettle was sputtering steam and singing. She put Lipton tea bags into cups and poured in the boiling water. The steam felt good on her face. She inhaled it greedily.

~~~~

“Does the old lady have dementia or something?” Caburn emerged into the kitchen drying his face and head. Finished, he draped the towel on the back of a chair, ran his fingers through his hair, smiled and looked at Anna as if he’d known her a lifetime. Next, he was looking into the stainless steel fridge, taking out the half-and-half, trying to be casual, wondering what he had stepped into. Nothing in Nesmith’s file had prepared him for this pair of loonies. He understood about old people going off—his grandfather had. But a beautiful woman? Going into the bathroom and screaming her head off? That was scary—Virginia Wolff scary. Or Maybe Ayn Rand, who wrote wonderful books but lived dead evil—using people. He was half-way through
Atlas Shrugged.
Maybe he could finish here, go home, pop a beer, put his feet up and read another few chapters. That is, if he didn’t get killed by some fool driver on icy slick streets.

“
Clara-Alice was in the Pentagon on 9/11.” Anna answered. She loathed this type of bureaucrat that the Patriot Act had let loose on ordinary citizens. She didn’t think the Act concerned people much any more, but in the nation’s capital it was alive and well. She held her tongue on that score because she was anxious about what the visit meant for Kevin. Everything in this city was political and above the fold. The rest of the inhabitants were worker bees, seldom on anyone’s radar. Now, Kevin was in a spotlight of some sort. It couldn’t be good and she didn’t think it routine for anyone from the State Department to come knocking on her door in the worst of a winter storm. Or putter around in her kitchen as if he owned it, either.

The man exhaled. “That was bad.”

“Still is,” Anna said while fishing for a teabag with a spoon. She poured in the half-and-half. So much for a year at
Le Cordon Bleu
where one brewed tea in a porcelain pot, allowed to steep at least three minutes, then gently poured it into delicate cups; warmed cream added if desired. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name. And, I’m sorry about your scarf.”
I’m sorry about 9/11, I’m sorry Kevin isn’t home, I’m sorry Clara-Alice is so difficult; and I’m sorry I can’t cope anymore.
God, are you listening?

~~~~

“No harm done. It’s Francis Caburn. Frank or Caburn will do.” He noticed an array of liquors on a sideboard, inspected the bottles, then chose a decent scotch. She had made three cups of tea. So. One was for him. He could use it. He was chilled to the bone. He poured a generous measure of scotch into Anna’s tea, hesitated over his own cup. Regulations be damned, and who was looking? He’d need it to sort through the god-awful mess Nesmith had left behind.

Anna watched him add whisky to their teas.
Oh! He was too much.

“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?
” She stepped away from the granite counter out of his personal space and the faint hint of Old Spice.

“Thanks. I will.
”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I could tell.” He gave her forgiving grin. “I’ll take the old lady her tea. You might want to find a pair of socks or something, your feet are blue.”

Clara-Alice
appeared in the kitchen door. Caburn took her arm and gently turned her around. “I was just bringing you a cup of tea, dear heart.”

“You really know my Kevin?”

Geez, the old woman listened around corners. He’d have to keep that in mind. “I do.” In name only and only by the files in his briefcase, but 9/11 hung over the old lady like a dark cloud. If Caburn’s instincts were right and they usually were, the dark cloud had girdled the entire household as well. What a shame.

When Anna returned, she
wore blue snuggies on her feet and a knee-length sweater over the caftan, belted at the waist.

“We can do this at the kitchen table, if that suits,”
offered Caburn. “It’s warm in here.”

Anna shrugged. She sat. He put a tea in front of her, and took a seat across from her. She took a sip. It was ambrosia.
Le Cordon Bleu
notwithstanding, never in a thousand years would it have occurred to her to add scotch to tea. Still, she couldn’t let him get away with it. “You’re being very forward. Do you always go into people’s kitchens, snag their liquor, and pass it around? How do you know a person even drinks?”

“You look like you need it. So does the old lady.”

“What is routine about you coming to our home? Usually Kevin gets a memo or a letter when it’s time to recertify his security clearance, He goes in for a polygraph, answers a few basic questions and that’s it.”

“Sometimes that’s the way it happens, sometimes not.”

~
~~~

Caburn knew interviewing Anna in her own surroundings put her at an advantage. The rules were to first bring some discomfort to the situation, which he considered he’d done by barging into her house as if he owned it, but maybe not. Second rule, become a best friend. The idea being that the interviewee would be more forthcoming. He did the best he could with the situation at hand. In addition, he had a bad, bad feeling these women didn’t have a clue. Nesmith’s mother was loose as a goose and the wife wound as tight as a tripwire.

“This is a beautiful kitchen,” he said, looking around. “State
-of-the-art.” All the appliances were stainless steel, the counters a pebbled granite. “Is that one of those new-fangled convection ovens? My sister has been hinting around for one for months.”

“Yes. I used to enjoy cooking.”

“What’s the difference between a convection oven and a regular oven?”

“It cooks faster.”

“That’s it? So does my microwave.”

Anna almost smiled.

Getting there,
Caburn thought.

A gust of wind
rattled the windows. Caburn observed Anna as she glanced for a long moment toward a pair of French doors that led to the glass and wood sunroom. It was sheathed in ice. She took another sip of scotch-laced tea and exhaled. “Something is terribly wrong, isn’t it?”

Oh, yeah
, thought Caburn.
Way wrong
. “What makes you think that?”

“You.
Did you think I was dumb as a rock? A State Department person…you are an investigator, aren’t you? What is routine about knocking on my door in the middle of a winter storm? In ten years no one from his department has so much as sent us a Christmas card. So your visit means trouble—or a conspiracy.”

Caburn forced a nice smile, his second best. “It’s nothing as elegant as a conspiracy.”

“Kevin is in trouble. You might as well tell me. It would explain a lot.”

“
Really? Like what?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on—just a feeling. So, spill it. Because coming to our home is not routine, poking your nose into my fridge is not routine and pouring whisky into tea is not routine…”

Caburn watched her face, could almost see her brain flexing. “Are you getting wound up again?”

“
Yes, I am. Eight to four-thirty. Those are regular government working hours.”

“Those are
your
regular work hours. My department works 24/7.” He took out a notebook and pen. Caburn would have preferred to use the small tape recorder, but left it in his coat pocket, lest its appearance undo the small measure of balance she had managed. “Do you feel up to answering a few questions?”

“But that’s just it. Why ask me anything? Kevin
is the courier—not me.” Anna tried to read him, taking in the military short haircut, the lived-in face with a light beard stubble that was all the rage among men these days; the full lips that pursed when he was trying to compose his thoughts. He was certain of himself. He was soft spoken as if he knew he did not have to shout. People listened to him. The charm and empathy he displayed toward Clara-Alice was probably part of a cultivated persona.

Anna had a sudden and curious feeling of
her body suspended in in space; a miniscule human island anchored to nothing beyond a wisp of cloud. She discovered her cup was empty. That was it. The warm scotch on top of an empty stomach. That undid her equilibrium.

“Mrs Nesmith... Anna
—? Are you with me?”

“Yes. A little scotch-fogged, I don’t usually drink hard liquor
in my tea.”

“Do you know where your husband is right now?”

“Making a courier drop is all I know.”

“So, he doesn’t mention where he’s going before he goes.”

“You know he’s not supposed to do that. But, I can usually figure out where he’s
been
.”

“Oh? How do you do that?”

“If he brings me a box of Swiss chocolates, I guess Switzerland. Once he brought me a black pearl. I thought Japan. A good piece of leather or a pair of Clarks suggests London. Hermes scarf says Paris. Oh, he once brought me a set of carved amber animals—so I figured the Baltic States. Five yards of a fabulous, intricate patterned silk said China. I had one of the wing chairs in the living room upholstered with it.” She closed her eyes, thinking. “He brought me a replica of a Mayan...” she started to say
a Mayan fertility goddess
, stopping herself before it slipped out. It was on her bedside table. Before she and Kevin made love, she always touched it for luck. “—a statuette of some sort.”

Caburn had heard enough. Hoping to ease out of gifts and get on with it, he said,
“I’ve read about the Mayans—lots of bloody sacrifices. Even the Mayan king sacrificed his blood—” Caburn stopped. His memory was hitting on a date with a girl who worked at the Smithsonian. She had blabbed the entire evening about Mayan Civilization, the Long Calendar and painted a visual picture of the Mayan King sitting on a stool in all his feather and gold finery and cutting with a stone knife the underside of his own penis, a sacrifice to a sun god. He had not kissed her goodnight or returned her calls. He shivered and crossed his legs beneath the table.