No Perfect Secret (4 page)

“That’s a really nice thought. Let’s talk to Kevin about it when he gets home.”

“I’ll convince him. You know he always minds me. I got pregnant with him on my honeymoon, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” Anna said.

“You’ve never seen his baby books, have you?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Maybe we could get those out of storage. I don’t remember where we put everything after—after it happened.”

Anna smiled at
Clara-Alice. A genuine smile, not one she had to paste on to hide dismay or irritation. “Kevin put all of your things in the basement. We can look for them this weekend.”

“Oh. Let’s put a bug bomb down there first. I hate spiders.”

“Ew, me, too,” said Anna.

Later, as she lay in bed, each time she closed her eyes, thinking of Kevin, another face rose up to plague Anna. An angular face in which dark
gray eyes tracked her every move, mocking her, piercing her brain, so that all her secrets were laid bare for inspection.

She turned on the lamp, propping herself up on a pair of pillows, forc
ed Caburn’s image from her mind and devised ways to reclaim the rapture in her marriage. Kevin was coming home. Frank Caburn had said so. For some unfathomable reason she believed him.

CHAPTER TWO

Every tree limb
, bush, wire and car was coated with a thick layer of ice. The sun was barely up, casting no warmth, but the faint rays activated gleaming prisms of green and blue and purple, a still-life kaleidoscope. Anna offered a mental blessing for those New York feminists who years ago had balked at skirts and began wearing pantsuits in the work place. She was clad in her favorite—lined tweed slacks with a jacket fitted at the waist, beneath which she wore a green cashmere sweater. She had a matching knit cap on her head, pulled low and wore a pair of black leather ankle boots with sensible heels.

She
had awakened energized, made swift work of breakfast—coffee and buttered toast, a three minute shower, and dressed in five minutes flat. She had made up her mind that whatever the issues with Kevin—they would work them out. Moreover, to her utter astonishment, Clara-Alice had perked the coffee, tuned the kitchen radio to an Appalachian station putting out slow talk and merry-mood fiddle music. Clara-Alice seemed
perky
.

The Saab’s remote had unlocked the car doors but the
damned things were frozen shut, the windshields coated in ice, and the scraper was on the passenger seat.

“Hey! Anna. Girl, you should’ve put one of those NASA space age blankets over your car last night. Didn’t you listen to the weather report?”

Lila Hammond came barreling across the yard, wearing rubber camouflage boots, her dead husband’s greatcoat over her flannel nightgown, and a fedora plopped on her grey-white hair. Lila looked like a thousand-year-old mummy, claimed to be a hundred-fifty, but was really almost ninety. She had the energy of a teenager. Lila had been in the WACs until 1978, served as a nurse in Philippines during the Japanese invasion, and eventually married Lt. Col. Charles Hammond, a survivor of the Bataan March. “Any man who got through that was tough enough for me,” she claimed. “Of course, I had to fatten him up before I got him into bed. When I fell for him, he was only about two inches wide, but after he filled out some—yum, yum—he was man to the bone!”

Anna adored the old woman and often guiltily wished Lila was her mother-in-law. However, Lila had become friends with
Clara-Alice and for that, Anna was everlastingly grateful.

“Is Clara up?”
Lila asked.

“Yes, and there’s coffee made.”

“Oh, good. We were going to the movies this afternoon, but that’s out. I’d brave these icy streets if I owned an Abrams tank—but all I’ve got is that godawful Gremlin—which should’ve been buried with the Colonel.” She came around the Saab, took hold of the door handle and gave it a jerk. The door opened. “There you go.”

“
Good God, Lila, what do you
eat
?”

“Fried worms, mostly,” she said with a straight face and an air of insouciance.

Anna laughed. “I love you, Lila, I really do. Tell me, where’d you get the hat?”

“Found it on my porch this morning. Thought there might be a good-looking leprechaun beneath it
—but no such luck.”

“I might know who it belongs to.”

“Uh, uh. Finders keepers. This is a Borsalino—an Ernie Pyle exclusive. Look him up in that wonderful library of yours.” She ran her tiny pink tongue around her thin, desiccated lips. “On the other hand, if whoever owns this hat comes calling for it—I might give it up. I’d like to get a look at him.”

“I’ll mention it,” Anna said.

“Do! See ya.” Lila moved briskly up Anna’s walk, throwing an exit line over her shoulder. “Time to beard the lioness, see what she has to moan and groan about this morning.”

“
You might be in for a surprise.” Anna started the engine, turned on the heater and scraped windows while the car warmed up.

~~~~

Francis ‘Frank’ Caburn was having a terrible morning. He had suffered nightmares that kept jerking him awake. At first he had dreamed of a woman in a white caftan with a dangerously provocative décolletage, her eyes focused with an intense desire upon him. Her lips were swollen with desire, and he got so close to her he could actually feel her skin; it was creamy—soft, softer than silk. Their lips were so close he could feel her breath. Then she was turning him around to face the Mayan King. The King, wholly naked except for a feather cape, shoved him onto a sacred stool, handed him an obsidian dagger, and a bowl dripping with blood.

The image had been so real and scary he’d awakened with a yelp. When he’d finally gotten back to sleep, Anna Nesmith materialized in her kitchen. She was preparing him dinner. He was breathless with admiration at her gracefulness as she moved between stove and counter. Once, she even brushed the top of his shoulder as she poured wine into a blue crystal goblet. She told him she was aching for his touch. She smiled when she served him
—he looked down at the bowl to discover cooked human brains in a skull.

He couldn’t countenance it, but he woke up hungry. When he got to the Golden Arches, he discovered he’d forgotten his wallet. He counted out the change in his pocket
—he was short a nickel for a sausage biscuit and coffee. The guy in line behind him put a nickel on the counter. When Caburn turned to thank him, he almost jumped out of his skin. The teenager had tats all over his hands, up his arms and on his neck. His eyebrows and ears were pierced and linked with tiny chains. There was a piece of metal in his nose, and when he said, ‘you’re welcome’, his tongue flicked out displaying more metal. Geez. Ancient rituals? American teenagers were keeping body mutilation alive and well.

On the drive to the office, he missed his turn and found himself on the wrong end of C Street; low-income housing, broken chain-link fences, glass layering the streets like confetti after a New Orleans Mardi Gras, and dozens of homeless pouring onto the sidewalks from shelters or vacant, boarded up buildings. When he finally maneuvered around Capitol Hill and into the State Department employee parking facilities, he was almost reluctant to take the elevator down to the warren of tiny, windowless cells that made up personnel investigations, fearing the elevator might zip past the basement and stop at one of the Nine Gates to Hell.

He tossed his ID and keys into the tray and passed through the security check without a beep—since he didn’t have so much as a dime in his pocket.

Almost every government building in Washington, D. C. had wide-open and elegant passages aboveground, often tiled in marble with exquisite mosaics, carved statues and impressive artworks. Below ground at the State Department was a warren of narrow claustrophobic corridors lined with discarded furniture, file cabinets, trunks, army footlockers, rolled carpets, outdated podiums, and broken lamps. When he’d been an unpaid intern, Caburn had discovered a leather-topped desk that was rumored to have once been used by Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson. He’d tried to move the monolith into his own cubical, but discovered he couldn’t get it through the door.

The corridor Caburn now negotiated also smelled like cat. How the creature had found its way into the building was a mystery. But it had to have found a way in before there was security at every entrance and exit.

Helen, the general factotum of the office was a cat person, so she set out dry cat food, a litter box, and refused to allow the maniacal animal to be trapped. For fun she insisted the creature was the reincarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “the finest, best-looking, and most astute president this country has ever seen.”

Caburn felt Helen’s eyes on him as he shrugged out of his overcoat, his suit coat and loosened his tie. She had once worked in the old FBI building, but had been overheard to make a remark about the ‘prissy’ FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, gotten herself fired and somehow managed to weasel herself a job in the State Department.

“Where’s your hat?” she asked.

“I sent it out to be blocked.”

“Right. Suddenly you don’t care if your bald spot shows?”

“I do not have a bald spot.” He hung up his coat. “Could we make an appointment to have a halfway courteous conversation?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“Do you mind telling me how you pay your mortgage?”

“I don’t have a mortgage, Frank. My brownstone’s been paid off for more than fifteen years. I rent the basement apartment to a sissy Congressional aide and the second floor apartment to a pair of call girls. Well, they might be cross-dressers, but they haven’t been late with their rent in more than
eight years.”

“Prostitution is illegal.”

“Really? Did you see that painted on the Russell Building?” she said, mentioning one of the three Senate office buildings.

Sighing, Caburn took two steps to the break room, a converted closet that held a coffee pot, a microwave, and a miniscule fridge. He started a pot of coffee, put his cup on the burner, and waited impatiently for the cup to fill. He took cream from the fridge, checked its sell-by date, then took a sniff. Sour.
He muttered an expletive.

“Constipated again, Frank?” Helen
called.

On his way to see his boss, he stopped at the corner of Helen’s desk. “I just want you to know, I’m about to order your Christmas present.”

“Is this another of your stupid knock-knock jokes?”

“I’m serious, Helen. I just need to know your favorite color.”

“Okay. I’ll fall for it. Turquoise.”

“I think that’ll work
.”

“Well, what’s the punch line?”

“A silk-lined casket. For an extra ten bucks, they’ll throw in a stake.”

“Good one.” She actually smiled at him. “But don’t waste your money. I know the secret to eternal life.” She turned
on the ancient computer on her desk and waited for it to boot up.

A moment later Caburn sat in the cracked leather chair in front of Albert Phipps’ desk. Albert was filling his pipe with an acrid, foul smelling tobacco. He lit the thing with an old-fashioned kitchen match that sent sparks to flare and die on the papers across his desk. “One of these days I’m going to find you in here fried to a crisp, Albert.” It did no good to mention the no smoking rules. Phipps made his own rules.

“I’ve been here too long to get off on being politically correct, Frank. So, what’s your take on the Nesmith women?”

“I want off this case, Albert. It’s giving me nightmares.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I’m getting there. Do you know what kuru is?

“Sounds like some kind of sushi.”

“Do you know how many countries there are in the world?”

“Are you practicing to go on
Wheel of Fortune
or one of those game shows? My grandson loves
Are You Smarter Than a Fourth Grader
? I watched it with him once. Lemme tell you. I didn’t know a single answer. I came away from that thinking,
praise Jesus
I already have a job—if they asked questions like that on those dinky intelligence tests, I’d be bagging groceries at Wal-Mart.”

“Have you ever heard of Mayan Kings and their occult practices?”

“Oh, dear Lord. Don’t tell me Nesmith was into that stuff, too.”

“No, no. It was just something that came up in an aside.” Caburn shifted in the leather chair, trying to avoid the loose spring. “Any idea when we’re getting him back?”

“Oh, damn. I forgot to tell you. There’s a snag—besides Nesmith having to pass through the
Direction generale des douanes et droits indirects—
that’s the civilian customs service, then the Gendarmerie National, then some medical stuff, to make certain he’s not a carrier of some exotic disease, or maybe got shot up with some rare poison.
As if
—” Phipps snorted. “Anyway, the French have already started their Christmas holidays. Nesmith is gonna be on ice until after the New Year.”