No Perfect Secret (37 page)

“No. Yes.” Anna laughed. “I thought I was the only one making life-changing decisions. You just stole my thunder.”

“I didn’t steal it, I’m just sharing it.” Lila turned toward the back door. “If you look for me on Twitter, I’m Sassy Lassy.”

“I’m gonna look for you for coffee in the morning
—that’s it.”

“Well, you won’t see me. The kids and I are going to the Eastern Market for breakfast and then shopping for a swank dress for JoJo for New Year’s Eve.”

Anna threw the deadbolt on the back door. Was that surreal or what? Trumped by a ninety-year-old. She went through the house to collect her phone from her car and stood under the porch light to check missed calls. Two from Lila, two from Helen. None from Frank.

She had to stop her active mind from conjuring up a thousand unreasonable scenarios why the man with whom she was so intimately entwined had not phoned. She deleted the calls from Lila and returned Helen’s.

“I’m sorry, but you can’t have a copy of the investigation,” Helen told her. “However, You can look at it. Give me a time and Albert says I can show it to you.”

“I
—I’ve changed my mind, Helen. I don’t want to read the file. I think I’d just be setting myself up for more emotional baggage. The devil might be in the details—but I’ve decided to move away from that.”

There was a few seconds silence from Helen’s end. “That’s a healthy choice, Anna.”

“There is one thing I need though. The bank kept that de mort certificate and the letter. I didn’t think to make copies. I need to send those to all the credit card companies.”

“No problem at all.” Helen brought up the New Year’s Eve bash at the VFW in Germantown.

“After Cancun, I’m sort of partied out,” Anna said.

“It’s for a good cause, Anna. They’re raising money to refurbish the housing near the VA hospital where the families and recovering vets stay.”

Anna closed her eyes. Will I never learn? she thought. It’s not about me.

“Of course. Of course, I’ll go.”

“I’ll get back to you on the details. Tell Frank you’ll be his date. He always tries to wiggle out of going. The Ladies Auxiliary holds a silent auction in case you have anything you want to donate.”

“You know what? I do. I still have a couple of Christmas gifts I bought for Kevin. I’ve been debating whether I should return them or sell them on eBay. Would they take used items, too
—like a Patek watch?”

“
Are you serious? That would be over the moon. E-mail me a list of the stuff and I’ll get it to Louise. Her brother is the head honcho at the VFW.”

“You could’ve told me that to start with, Helen. I would do anything for Louise.”

“Sorry, but now you know. And good luck with Judge Tinsley tomorrow.”

Anna looked up and down the street. A few of the houses still displayed Christmas lights. She crossed her arms over her chest against the chill night air and walked to the end of the block and back again. It was a nice neighborhood. Nice people lived in the houses she passed. But it wasn’t a neighborhood for a you
ng and vibrant thirty-four-year-old career woman. She found herself quietly saying goodbye to Mr Wilson, to the elderly agoraphobic, to Mrs Nagi.

Car lights flashed as she arrived at her own doorstep. She watched
the car come to a stop behind her own, and for the second time that day, felt her heart plummet into her stomach.

Caburn got out of the car and leaned over the top, his hat cocked at a risqué angle. He was grinning his sexy grin. “What are you doing wandering around the streets after dark?”

Her fingertips fluttered at her throat, as if her words needed help to navigate the space between them. “What are you doing driving Kevin’s car?”

The street light on the corner did not cast her in much light, but it was enough to notice that in spite of her tan, all the color had drained from her face.

“Damn. Damn. Damn. I wasn’t thinking.” Caburn moved around the hood, put his arms around her and held her close. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you a jolt like that. Are you breathing?”

“Barely. Whew.”

“It’s been stored in the parking garage at work. We had to move it. It belongs to you, now.”

“It’s just another Kevin thing. I don’t want it here.”

“I happen not to have a genie in a lamp; let’s see what abracadabra will do...well, that didn’t work. I’ll drive it back to my place until you decide what to do with it.”

“
Wait. No.” Damn it. She had to stop making an issue over every little thing. It was just a car. She took his hand. “Come on inside. I bought some Tecate.”

“Just let me grab my brief
case.”

He stopped dead on the threshold to the kitchen. “What the hell is this?” he asked of all the papers strewn across the kitchen table.

“It’s everything out of the file cabinet in the basement. I’m shredding it, except for that stack.” She indicated a small sheaf of papers on the corner of the table. Caburn put his briefcase on a chair, then flipped through the sheaf: Car title, insurance policies, birth certificate.
Birth certificate
. Unlike the copy of a copy they had in Nesmith’s file at the office, this was an original and had the raised state seal of Maryland where Nesmith was born.

Caburn often denigrated his math and science skills but he could compute with the best of them when it suited him. He knew he owned four sections of farm land which was 160 acres x 4, and if he harvested 63 bushels of wheat per acre and sold that to the Co-op for $8.06 a bushel, he was going to bank $324,979.20.

Anna said Nesmith was forty years old; so had personnel; so had Nesmith’s employment application. That would have the man born in 1969. Yet here was his original birth certificate clearly stating the man had been born in 1959. That made Nesmith fifty years old. Another fat lie. And proof that people seldom read the fine print or took the time to put two and two together. Smudge a number here and there, make a Xerox copy and erase ten years—or more. Creating false documents was a big underground business.  Nesmith had preyed on honest women who took people at face value. 

Anna popped the top on the beer. “You want a glass?”

“No, straight out of the can is good.”

She glanced at the certificate in his hand. “Do you need that for your file at work?”

“Nah. We have one. You can toss it.” He watched to see if Anna had caught the discrepancy in Nesmith’s ages. Apparently not. Perhaps she didn’t care anymore. He could only hope.

Ann
a put it in the shredder. They both watched until it disappeared. Caburn picked up the car title and insurance policies and put them on the kitchen counter. “Can we clear the table?” Even as he asked he was whisking papers back into the plastic garbage bag. “I asked my mom to e-mail me some pictures.”

Out of his briefcase came the notebook.

“Pictures of what?”

“The farm,
my dog.” He looked straight into her eyes. “We’re in a relationship, aren’t we?”

It was not the time to be coy. If
she expected truth from him, she had to give it in return. “Yes, I’d say so.” He wanted her to see pictures of his dog. That was so endearing, Anna felt tears threaten.

It took him a few
frustrating minutes minutes to set up, get on the internet, log into Google, and pull up the e-mail from his mother and click on the attachments. “Pull up a chair.”

Anna did just that, sitting so close their arms were brushing. He smelled of Old Spice, soap, and talc.
This man makes me feel alive all over
, she mused. He didn’t just look into her eyes as others had. He looked with an intensity of truth and desire. She loved the way he smelled, the way he smiled, the cocky way he wore his hat, the way he walked; especially the way he walked. There was just something utterly sexy about the way he moved.

“Here we go,” he said.

There were pictures of his dog, Buddy—a huge brown mongrel—on the porch, riding in the back of a pickup, sitting between Caburn’s knees on a tractor. There were pictures of Caburn in a thresher, his elbow hanging out the cab window; pictures of his mother in the kitchen, her slender back to the photographer in every single one; a snapshot of his grandfather sound asleep in a chair, mouth hanging open; a photo of his three sisters—the top half of their heads hidden by the thumb of the photographer. All smiling—very good pictures of their teeth. Not orthodontics, then. Genetics. There was one of his dad and two brothers in a tractor-pulling contest—all of the men were long and lean with ropy muscles. The last photo was a sweeping panorama of wheat fields.

“Dad hired a photographer to go up in a helicopter to take that shot. It’s all of our land. Sixteen sections. My family has been on that land for over a hundred years.”

“Your grandparents didn’t leave during the drought or the Depression?”

“Nope. Didn’t have to. They never borrowed against the land or the crops. Never spent a nickel they didn’t have. Grandpa said they were down to six hens, a goat, a milk cow, one dog, and a gallon of chokecherry wine by the time the War started, then things picked up.”

“I can’t imagine having so many links to the past, or to so many people.”

“Well, you start off by having a link to one person
—that makes two—and if things work out, there’s maybe a third and a fourth— Hey! Are you crying. Gads. What’d I do? What?”

“Nothing and everything.”

“Holy smokes! It’s going to take me a week to figure that out.”

“It means I think you’re a great guy.”

“For goodness sakes. That makes you cry?” He put away the notebook.

Anna got up to get herself a Diet Coke. “Do you ever think about going home? I mean
—for good?”

“I don’t have to think about it. I know it’s gonna happen. When my dad goes, it’s a given. I’m the oldest son, I’ll be head of the family.” He saw something in her eyes that made him quickly offer assurances. “But that won’t be for years yet. We got longevity in the genes. You saw the shot of my grandpa. He’s eighty-seven and still rolling. When his mind is right he can plow a straight furrow for a mile. When it’s not, or he’s had one beer too many, he can still plow the mile. It just might be in circles. Well.” He smiled. “I just wanted to let you know I got a farm, a family, a dog, a job
.”

“And, a haircut.”

“Umm, yeah, I did. Is that gonna be a deal breaker?”

“Those curls were really cute.”

“Oh, Lord, babe, you are gonna be so much trouble. Now pack a bag.”

“What?”

He took the Coke out of her hand and set it aside. “I’m taking you home with me. We’ll take your Saab.”

“Have you lost your mind? I can’t. I have so much to do
.”

“So do I. And I’m not doing it in this house. Take your to
-do list. I can help with that. Just don’t forget your girly stuff. I don’t have anything like that at my place.”

If there was one thing Anna had inherited from her mother besides her eyebrows and dark eyes with copper highlights, it was the ability to know when a situation required an absolute and immediate decision. Right or wrong, decide!

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go. But I better not find so much as a bobby pin in your sofa cushions.”

She didn’t find a bobby pin, but then she didn’t look. Her attention was caught first by the magnificent view from the wide bank of windows in Caburn’s apartment. She could see all the way down the Mall to the Capitol. Pierre L’Enfant’s design of wide, grand avenues lined with trees, pedestrian walkways and Baroque monuments had stood the test of time. She realized not only was she standing in some of the most expensive real estate in the Capitol of the United
States, but she was only a ten-minute drive from work.

Caburn came up behind her, put his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. “You smell good, you feel good, you taste good. Come on, I want to show you around.” He led her straight to the bedroom. A small lamp on the dresser did not provide much light, but it was enough to maneuver around furniture without stumping toes.

“That’s the whole tour? Living room, hall, bedroom?”

He began unbuttoning her blouse. “Yep. You can see the kitchen in the morning.” Finished with the buttons, his hands slid around her waist and up her back, then faltered.

Anna knew what he was searching for. Smiling, she leaned her head against his chest, her hands on his waist.

“Is there a hook on this thing or what?”

“It’s in the front. We’re not going to get very far along doing this your way. My boots have to come off before I can get out of my slacks.”

He held up his hands and backed away. “Let’s be adults about this, You get naked and I’ll get naked.” He eyed her boots. “First one under the covers get a massage.” He kicked off his loafers, got under the comforter, then began wriggling out of his shirt, pants and undershorts.

Anna laughed. “You are so not cool.” She slid into bed beside him, and ran her hands over his chest, down his abdomen, feeling where he was powerful, and the nearby softer places which took Caburn to another level of consciousness. Small moans of pleasure escaped him. “Anna...stop a minute.”