No Perfect Secret Read online

  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.

  “Are you still cold? Shall I turn up the thermostat?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just the customs of primitive societies always leave me cold. Not cold, cold—”

  “I know what you mean. It’s like the Aborigines in Papua New Guinea who eat the brains of their loved ones, become ill, and die. They called the disease kuru. The Aborigines kept presenting with something like Mad Cow Disease until a veterinarian discovered the similarity between kuru and scrapie—an infectious disease in the brain of sheep.” Anna shuddered. “That put me off red meat for weeks.”

  Oh, man! What had he started? He liked his steaks rare. He had to ask: “If the meat is well done, does that kill the uh...kuru?”

  “I guess not. Only the women and children ate it. The men in the tribe stayed healthy. I had to research it for a senator when the USDA stopped cattle shipments from Canada.”

  Caburn was seriously irked at himself. He had allowed the conversation to wander too far off track. He checked his watch and saw that it was now almost seven-thirty. He was starving and he wanted to stop and get takeout before he went home. Not beef or lamb, though. Maybe chicken or shrimp.

  “Could you drink another cup of tea?” Anna asked, moving from the table to the kitchen counter. “I’m going to have one.” She poured bottled water into the kettle and plugged it in. Leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, she asked: “Do you have any more questions?”

  “Just a few, I need to get going before the roads ice up any worse. Don’t take this amiss, but I think you are one smart lady—you know—to figure out all the places Nesmith carried dispatches.”

  “Carried?” Anna came on full alert.

  “Sure,” Caburn said, trying for a cool recovery. “Carries going out, carried coming home.”

  Anna nodded, picked up where she’d left off, but skepticism coated the words. “There are only one-hundred-ninety-five countries i
n the world, more or less—depending upon revolutions or protests for independence—not counting Taiwan. Kevin has been a courier for fourteen years, so I think he’s probably been to most of them.”

  It wasn’t easy to impress Caburn. It was something that she could pluck data out of her memory as if were ordinary, like a family recipe for lasagna or pound cake. “One-hundred-ninety-five countries. You think one person in a thousand would have that kind of info on the tip of their tongues?”

  “Geography teachers would. A Senator from the Midwest asked for the data; and how much the US gave various countries in loans, grants, or foodstuffs.”

  “And you remembered?”

  “It’s my job to remember. Anyway—the dollar amount was in the billions—and most of the loans have been forgiven. I remember that.”

  “Whoa. No wonder we’ve got a trillion dollar deficit. Not to mention my salary has been frozen.”

  “Mine, too,” admitted Anna. The kettle began to hiss. She unplugged it and poured the hot water over fresh teabags. She put both cups on the table, and the carton of half-and-half. Her hand hesitated near the bottle of scotch; then she put that, too, within Caburn’s reach. “I don’t believe anything we’ve touched on has to do with what is going on with Kevin. He is coming home, isn’t he?”

  He met her look head on. “Yes, he is.”

  “When?” She watched his face for any telltale tics, his eyes shifting away, signs that he was lying. She saw none.

  “In a few days, a week at the most.”

  “You know his schedule, but you can’t tell me what he’s done; what kind of trouble he’s in?”

  Caburn lapsed into silence for a few seconds. His instructions were to put off the inevitable as long as possible. He hated not telling her. Worse, he hated seeming shifty. He could tell she was desperate to know. He figured her women’s intuition told her whatever trouble Nesmith was in was going to change her life. The sleeting rain, relentless, continued. He could hear it pelting the windows.

  “A few years ago one of Kevin’s colleagues was caught smuggling heroin.”

  “No. No, it’s nothing like that.” It was much worse—for her anyway, but Caburn was relieved that her mind was going down that path. It led to a cascade of possibilities and he was certain she would rotate through each one of them, from robbery to kidnapping by terrorists.

  He offered her a small smile. “Has Nesmith brought you anything interesting lately?”

  Anna looked inward. “No. Nothing.” He’d even forgotten her birthday.

  “What do you think that signifies?”

  That he doesn’t care anymore. “That he’s not going places where he can shop, or he has a quick turnaround. If he comes home and sleeps for seventeen hours straight, I think he’s carrying to Iraq or Afghanistan.”

  “How many bank accounts do you have—if you know?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just a routine question.” He poured cream in his fresh tea, passing on the scotch.

  “Does Kevin get asked that?”

  “Sure. And, as far as our records show, he’s always been open and honest.”

  ~~~~

  I see.” But she didn’t really. She watched Caburn’s hands. He scooped up the teabag in the spoon and wound the string around it, and placed it on the saucer. He had nice hands, long fingers with well-kept nails and no wedding band. He poured in the half-and-half, then picked up the bottle of scotch. He held the lip over her cup. She nodded and he poured just enough to float on top of her tea. He put the bottle aside. Neither spoke again until they had each taken a few sips. The man was playing her. She found this a little daunting. Sooner or later he was going to have to tell her about Kevin, about the investigation. She decided she would not volunteer one more jot of information until he actually asked a straightforward question.

  “You were telling me about your bank accounts.”

  “We have a joint household account. Then we each have our own personal account. Clara-Alice has her own account, her pension, but we don’t let her pay for anything.”

  “How does that work? Your paychecks, finances, I mean.”

  “Just like yours, or anyone who works for the government. We never see our paychecks. They’re direct-deposited into our personal accounts. Then we transfer funds from our personal accounts to the household account.”

  “But suppose Nesmith writes a check on the account, then you do the same—how do you keep from having overdrafts?”

  Anna looked at him steadily. “You’re either a dinosaur, or you’re playing dumb. We don’t write checks. We use our ATM cards.”

  “I guess I’m a dinosaur. I write checks for my car payment, rent, and cash—whatever.”

  “Well, we don’t. Our mortgage, car payments, utilities are all auto-withdrawn. Even our car insurances.”

  “And this is the only home you own?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “A lot of young married couples have vacation homes.”

  “We’re not so young. I’m thirty-four. Kevin is forty.”

  “And, no children—right?”

  “No—no children.” A deep sadness washed over her face, leaving it drawn, and she looked down at her hands wrapped around the tea cup.

  Uh oh. Caburn thought of a string of expletives that he could not mouth in front of this woman. But he suspected that when she learned the truth about her husband she would be cleft in two. “Does he call you—say from whatever country he’s in, just to check in, see how you’re doing?”

  “No. Never. He leaves his cell and his Palm Pilot in his car. He does often e-mail me from the VIP lounges. That’s where he has to wait until his flights are called—so he uses the courtesy internet to alert me as to when or what time I can expect him home.”

  “Has he emailed you, say in the past three or four days?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever gone on a dispatch with him? Or met him at the end of run—say in London or Paris?”

  “What? Never!”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be against the law, you know. A courier makes his delivery, and if he doesn’t have a return pouch—or he has to wait for it—he can take a day or two off—meet his wife or girlfriend. It happens.”

  “Not with us. I have a job. We can’t leave his mother for more than overnight. And that’s only if our neighbor stays over. She’s...”

  “—Not well. Right. I understand.” Caburn drained his cup, and returned his pen and notebook to his pocket. “I think that will do it. I appreciate your time—and the tea. If I need anything else, I’ll call first.”

  Anna gave him a curious look. “But why not just wait until Kevin returns?” She wondered how sensitive the documents Kevin last carried had been. Wondered too, if he had been put in harm’s way, but dismissed the thought. Frank Caburn’s laid-back demeanor didn’t augur for that possibility.

  “That makes more sense than you can possible know. I’m going to suggest it to my boss.”

  She walked him to the door, waited while he shrugged into his overcoat. A very fine vicuna, Anna noted. His picked his muffler up off the floor and shoved it into a pocket.

  As Caburn opened the front door the lights blinked. “Oh, Lord, if the ice brings down the lines, we’re in for it.”

  “Well, safe traveling,” Anna said, and shut the door firmly—against the wind, the sleet, and Frank Caburn.

  The brass knocker sounded. Anna opened the door to him again.

  “I forgot. My hat blew away. If it shows up in the neighborhood, would you hold onto it for me?”

  “Your hat?”

  “Yeah. It’s a very nice hat.” He started to say more but a gust of sleet-filled wind slammed into him.

  Anna closed the door and shot the dead bolt. She leaned against it for a moment. Oh, Kevin—what have you DONE?

  She knew without a doubt that her life was going to change—how, she didn’t know, but she understood from this day forward she was going to have to learn to
find refuge within herself—not in her job, her friends—or even Kevin.

  As she returned to the kitchen her mind was racing like the wind outside, touching down here and there on unpredictable currents.

  She was flipping a grilled cheese sandwich when Clara-Alice came into the kitchen.

  “Anna, would you please make me another cup of tea. Like the one earlier—not chamomile, the one that tastes so buttery.”

  Please? Did I just hear Clara-Alice say, please? Anna looked at her mother-in-law. “Sure. Would you like a grilled cheese sandwich, too?”

  “That sounds good. Could we have some cottage cheese with pineapple?”

  Anna nodded, afraid to speak.

  “I’ll be right back,” Clara-Alice said. “I just want to watch the reveal on What Not to Wear. It’s amazing how clothes and makeup change those women.”

  As soon as Clara-Alice was out of the kitchen, Anna poured scotch into a cup, put the tea bag on top, and plugged in the kettle. She returned the bottle to the sideboard, stared at it, then moved it behind the other bottles. As crazy as it appeared, one ounce of scotch had done what two psychiatrists, a half-dozen therapists, Prozac, Zoloft, and Effexor, had not—returned her mother-in-law to the gentle soul she had first met before the tragedy of 9/11. She wondered if there was such a thing as liquor therapy.

  As they finished their meal, Clara-Alice was mellow. Anna wondered if feeding two ounces of alcohol to Clara-Alice was elder abuse. Better not chance it, she thought.

  “Did the man say,” Clara-Alice began. “Is Kevin in some sort of trouble?”

  Anna chose her words carefully. “He just said Kevin would be home in a few days; a week at the most.”

  “That’s good news—isn’t it?”

  “Wonderful news,” Anna agreed.

  “Anna—may I ask you a really, really personal question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “Ask me and we’ll see,” Anna said offering a smile to take any sting out of her reply.

  Still, Clara-Alice hesitated. “I was just wondering—are you and Kevin planning on children?”