No Perfect Secret (24 page)

“If we go to Cancun we’d end up in bed together.”

Yes!
“No...no...no... Don’t even think like that.”

“You don’t find me desirable?”

Uh, oh. Mantrap.

Anna’s cell phone rang. She held up her hand to keep him from answering.

Reprieve
. Caburn wanted to hug whoever was calling.

She reached into her slender purse for the phone. “I don’t know who would be calling this late at night.” She looked at the phone face. “Oh. It’s Lila. Hey, Lila. Are you all right? It’s way past your bedtime.” As Anna listened, her face became pale in the candlelight. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “I’m with Frank. We’ll be right there.” She closed the phone. “Pay the check, please. We have to leave right now.”

Caburn did not stop to ask questions. The look on Anna’s face was enough. They were in the car and well on their way in less than two minutes. “Seat belt,” he half-yelled as he took a sharp turn, and out the corner of his eye watched Anna’s trembling fingers fumble the seatbelt latch. “Is Miss Lila all right? What happened?”

“
Clara-Alice is in my house. Lila was unplugging her Christmas tree in her front window when she saw her getting out of a cab. Lila thought I was home because my car is parked in front of the house. She was scared for me, so, she went over. Clara-Alice had filled the kitchen sink with water and was dumping my laptop in it. Lila tried to talk her out of doing that, but Clara-Alice started banging the laptop on the counter and screaming imprecations, so she left.”

“I can’t take my hands o
ff the wheel,” Caburn told her. “Reach into my pocket for my cell phone. Phipps and Helen need to know about this. How the hell did Clara get out of that hospital? She was supposed to be on a secure floor.” He plowed through a red light at an intersection.

“Maybe you ought to slow down, Frank. I mean,
Clara-Alice is there by herself. A computer is just a thing. I can replace it. If we get stopped or wreck—”

“Just hit the speed dial. Phipps is on one, and Helen is on two.”

Anna sighed and did as he asked, then handed him the phone. He filled his boss in on the events, his voice urgent. “The police, Albert,” he yelled. “I mean it. Suppose Anna had been there alone with that crazy-ass woman!” He slammed the phone shut with his thumb and tossed it into Anna’s lap. The call to Helen went to voice mail.

“Do we have to have the police involved?”

“Yes we do. Damn it. If the woman could be put where she could do no harm—fine. But, this isn’t working.” Caburn parked in front of Mrs Nagi’s house to keep from alerting Clara-Alice. Lila’s front porch light blinked on and off. Caburn tried to keep Anna in the car, but she wouldn’t have it. They kept to the shadows as they approached Lila’s house. She met them on the porch wearing the Colonel’s great coat over her pajamas.

“She’s lost it,” said Lila. “I stood outside the back door for a minute and she was banging stuff around and caterwauling worse than a pair of tom cats going at it. What’re you going to do?”

“My boss is getting in touch with the hospital. As long as she isn’t burning down the house, we’ll just wait and see who shows up.”

Lila touched Anna’s arm. “Do you want to wait inside where it’s warmer.”

Anna shook her head. “Out here is better.”

Caburn wasn’t at all cold. He had sweat bullets down the sides of his face as he paced the sidewalk. An ambulance cruised up the street
—no sirens blaring, no lights flashing, and stopped in a cone of light cast by a halogen street light. He walked out to meet the EMTs.

“We can’t go in until after the family or police clear us to,” the driver told him. The pair of them leaned against their vehicle and lit up cigarettes.

Phipps pulled up next to Caburn’s car and double parked. Caburn went over to meet him.

Phipps emerged from his car, bent down and spoke to someone in the passenger seat. “Stay in the car, Louise. Things could get dicey.”

He turned to Caburn. “We were just finishing dinner at that new French restaurant iCi Urban Bistro when you called. I thought I’d better come myself. You’re too damned excitable for your own good—and mine. Dr Neal is coming. We’ll wait for her. So, have you seen the old lady?”

Louise got out of the car and came around to greet Caburn. She was wearing the ultimate in politically and socially incorrect
—a full length fox fur coat, and dangling from her fingertips—a snakeskin clutch. He stood still for her to air-kiss him on both cheeks. “Where is this paragon of a librarian that has you in a meltdown, Frank? I want to meet her.”

Phipps touched her arm.
“Louise, take it down a notch. And, I told you to stay in the car.”

“So you did, darling. Point me in the right direction. Oh, never mind. That’s her on that porch, isn’t it?” She peered through the dull gray light. “Standing with that little old man?”

“I’ll walk you over,” Phipps said, swallowing a sigh and tucking her arm into his. “The sidewalks here are all jumbled up.” He looked back over his shoulder. “Stay right there, Frank. Don’t move an inch.”

Phipps returned to Caburn’s side after introducing Louise to Anna. “Albert, did you call the police
—or not?”

“Not. I will, if things get out of hand.”

Caburn groaned. “The neighbor says Nesmith’s mother has lost it. I think we ought to be proactive here.”

“We are being proactive.
Dr Neal is coming. As long as we keep the issue medical, we can control it. Make it criminal, and we don’t. How many times do we have to hash this out?”

“We’re not controlling anything. That old woman is.” Caburn shrugged and felt a twinge of pain in his back.

Phipps removed his gloves, took out his pipe, tapped tobacco into the bowl out of an old-fashioned tin, then tamped it, and lit it. “Nectar,” he murmured on the exhale. “By-the-by... Did Mr Charles come through for us? I haven’t had a chance to talk with him.”

“He came through
—and off-budget.”

“ Bless that man...
and you’ve discussed it with Anna?”

“We were just getting t
o it when the neighbor called.”

“Well, she has to go. I am really fearing a mess with the obit, not to mention the girl Janie
and her parents. They’re very well-to-do. That loaner from upstairs turned in his report. The parents bought the house in Ellicott City for the couple as a wedding gift. And, of course, Nesmith couldn’t put the girl on his Civil Service health insurance without raising a red flag—so he had to pay cash for her prenatal care, and the hospital and doctors when the baby was born. Louise told me that can run into the thousands. I don’t think Anna is going to be happy when she gets into their bank account.

“Oh. That’s not all. Louise s
uggested there might be some backlash from the parents toward Anna. Those people are going to be royally pissed—and why wouldn’t they? Louise says it’s the wives that always get blamed in cases like these—as if they should’ve known what their husbands were up to. Or somehow be clairvoyant, and put a stop to it.”

“Good Christ, Albert. How was she supposed to know anything? When we get in there, I want you to take a look at her to-do lists. They’re all about Nesmith and his mother
—on top of a full time job.”

“All the more reason to convince her to go out of town while we get all of these people sorted
. After this mess is cleared up tonight, you might ask Anna if you could verify the date on her marriage certificate. If she was married like you say, in late August or early September 2001... Well...Helen went on line and checked St Johns County records. That Nesmith woman in St Augustine wasn’t lying. Her divorce from Kevin Nesmith was finalized in October 2004.”

Caburn felt a stab of pain behind his eyes. He had promised Anna transparency and truth. She was alert to every hesitation and omission of fact, so she had to be told
—full disclosure was not an option, but a necessity. Nesmith was a piece of work. It seemed they peeled back one layer of his twisted machinations and lies only to find another layer just as vile, or worse.

A silver Hummer pulled up and parked behind the ambulance. “There’s Joan
Neal,” Phipps observed. “Wow. Psychiatry must really pay.”

Dr
Neal looked stressed as she shook their hands each in turn. “I’m sorry. I got here as fast as I could. I was in the midst of an intake when you called. Too, I wanted to check with the nurses on Clara’s floor. They did give Clara her sedation at eight. I’m thinking she hid it under her tongue and spat it out once the nurse was gone. Otherwise, she would not be functional right now. Apparently she stole her roommate’s clothes. Her purse was bagged and on her shelf in her room. She had access to it. She just walked out when no one was at the nurses’ station.” She cast a glance at the EMTs as she shifted her doctor’s bag from her left to her right hand. “Has anyone been hurt?”

Caburn shook his head. “Not unless she’s hurt herself. We didn’t attempt to go in. The elderly neighbor who did go in told us Clara was beating up on Anna’s laptop. We haven’t heard anything since we arrived.”

The three of them joined those standing on Lila Hammond’s porch. Dr Neal gave Anna a hug. “You look like you’re holding up okay.”

Anna shrugged. “I guess it’s hold up or fall down. I have some good people around me right now. That helps.” Lila had her arm around Anna’s waist; Louise, around her shoulder.

“Well, let’s see if we can get Clara back to the hospital. Is the front door unlocked? Do we need a key?”

Anna took out her keys. “All right. I’m ready,” she whispered. And then they were all whispering.

“No, Anna. No. It’s best if Clara doesn’t see you,” cautioned Dr Neal. She took Anna’s hand. “Let’s talk over here for a minute.” She tugged Anna away from the group. “Mr Phipps tells me he’s trying to get you to go away for a few days, to get you out-of-pocket during some crucial events that might affect you adversely. I’m encouraging you to agree to that.”

“I just learned about the trip tonight. I really haven’t had time to absorb
it at all.” It wasn’t the time to get into the state of her mind or emotions concerning Frank Caburn. “I’ll go, but this feels like one of those interventions you see on television.”

“Well put. In a way it is an intervention. You’re my patient. I’m concerned for both your physical and mental well-being. The way Clara is behaving is a long-standing pattern. She’s shrewd and cunning and a snoop. I would bet my license to practice that she
knows things about her son she feels obliged to keep secret—whether he told her, or she learned them on her own. Whenever someone gets close to ferreting out those secrets or asking questions that she feels compelled not to answer, she acts out. She presents with wholly aberrant behavior knowing full well that it instantly detracts the focus from her son onto herself.

“And, it works.” She gestured with her hand into the gray and cold night.
“Because—here we all are.”

Anna heard the words, the explanations, and still felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold winter air. “What’s going to happen when she learns Kevin is dead?” she said in a voice that did not carry beyond the two of them.

“Fabulous question. We will see a sea change in Clara’s behavior. She is extremely worried that Kevin has done something that will put him in prison. If he were alive, of course that was a strong possibility. Bigamy is against the law. However, he’s dead. When she learns that, she will no longer be obliged to keep his secrets to keep him out of trouble—whether it’s with you, or the law, or his work place. She will have an immense sense of relief. She will not be compelled to act out. She’ll grieve, I won’t discount that—but then her focus is going to be on her own life...but she still won’t like you, Anna. Her rage toward you has been building for years. I haven’t been able to fathom her reasoning.” She looked back toward the group waiting to enter Anna’s home. “Well, everybody is cold and stomping their feet.” She waved to Phipps and Caburn. In turn, Phipps signaled the EMTs to follow them.

Anna stood on Lila’s darkened porch with Louise and Lila as they watched the entourage cautiously enter her home. “I don’t know whether to cross my fingers or pray.”

“Do both,” suggested Louise.

They waited. Lights came on all over the front of Anna’s house; the porch light, the foyer light, the living room, her bedroom. It spilled out in narrow bands across the yard. Still they waited. Anna hugged herself
—not against the cold, but worry, and a deep yearning for her life to right itself.

Voices echoed across the front yards. The EMTs emerged supporting
Clara-Alice by her elbows, though she appeared ambulatory and her steps brisk. She looked neither right nor left. One of the EMTs carried a suitcase. Clara-Alice was helped into the back of the ambulance, the doors closed, and the driver climbed behind the wheel. He did not turn on the siren or the spinning lights.

“Well, that’s that,” said Lila. “I’m old and cold and going to bed. Louise, it was nice meet
ing you. Anna, if you need anything...”

“Thank you, Lila. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Trailed by Louise, Anna walked across the yards.

Dr
Neal met them at the door. “I’m going to walk through the house with Anna. I’m sorry, but it’s not pretty.”