No Perfect Secret (21 page)

In the office Helen was in the closet making coffee. “I don’t believe it
.”

“Somebody has to make it when you aren’t here.”

“May I massage your head, Helen? Where is it?” He spread his arms out. “Over here? Over here?”

“My head is perfect, thank you.”

“For Big Foot maybe.”

“Ha. Ha. Good one Frank.”

“Seriously, do you need a ride over to Anna’s to pick up your car?”

“No. My tenants are taking care of it. They’re doing some stuff with Lila. JoJo’s gonna drive my car home.”

“JoJo’s old enough to drive?”

“JoJo is twenty-eight.”

“Geez. All that purple hair. She looks fourteen.”

Phipps squeezed into the tiny room. He raised his eyebrows at Caburn, but spoke to Helen. “We can’t get any work done if you spend all day in here brewing coffee.”

Caburn grinned at Helen. “Head’s fine, eh?”

“Shut up,” she snarled sotto voce.

“Quit your bickering, both of you, and come into my office,” said Phipps. “We’ve got business to handle and decisions to make.”

In minutes Helen and Caburn were settled in Phipps
’ office. Caburn started. “Anna went to the bank this morning. She can’t get into her household account without a death certificate. Can we get hold of that?”

“I actually have a copy of it,
” said Phipps. “An embassy staffer faxed it.”

He reached behind him to a stack of files, rummaged through them
for a few seconds and passed the paper to Caburn.

“Hey. This damned thing is in French.”

“It has
de mort
on it. That’s dead.”

“I’ll type up an attachment letter on State Department stationary over Albert’s signature, and notarize it,” offered Helen.

Both Albert and Caburn looked at her in amazement. Caburn recovered first. “Did I just hear you actually volunteer?”

Helen’s chin came up. “I’m doing it for Anna, you cluck. She a sweet girl in an awful situation. I like her a lot.”

Caburn was wise enough to say: “That’s really kind of you, Helen.”

Helen shrugged his comment off, but he could tell she was pleased.

“Okay—that’s out of the way.” Phipps looked down at the legal pad on his desk. “Next order of business. The issue with Nesmith notebooks—has that been cleared up to your satisfaction?”

“Pretty much,” sai
d Helen. “Nesmith was keeping a...a sex log. He had a system—to make certain he didn’t get Anna pregnant.” She turned to Caburn. “You filled her in on that, right?”

“That’s a woman’s issue.”
Caburn clenched his jaw tight and was not about to open it.

“All of life is a woman’s issue, you coward. You have to tell her.”

Caburn kept his eyes on a spider web in the corner above Phipps’ head.

“Well, we could put it in a letter,”
suggested Phipps.

Helen frowned at both men. “
You worms. That is so cold-hearted. Why don’t we ask Dr Neal to tell her?”

“Excellent idea.” Phipps began stuffing his pipe. “I’ll make the call before I go home. I have to talk to
Dr Neal anyway. There was a message on my machine that Nesmith’s mother tried to leave the hospital yesterday.”

Caburn was on his feet. “Holy hell, Albert! Why didn’t you let me know?”

“I’m telling you now. I would’ve told you first thing this morning, but you argued for the day off. You are annoying me, Frank. You want life frontwards, backwards and around the corner.”

Caburn sat down. “Okay, I’m properly chastised. What else is on your list?”

“Just this: There is a window of opportunity to bring Nesmith home sooner rather than later. The military is bringing some of our guys back from Iraq. I can get Nesmith on the flight.”

Caburn leaned forward. “Are you talking about combatants? Injured? Or killed in action.”

Phipps nodded. “Yeah. The whole nine yards; flags on the caskets, honor guards. Taps.”

“If I were a family member and discovered a slime ball like Nesmith returned on the same plane and was accorded those kinds of honors, I’d be royally pissed. I might even say something to the media.”

Helen put her fingertips on Caburn’s arm. “I’m with you, Frank. You can’t do it, Albert. That’s unconscionable.”

“Well, I just thought the wife might want to get the funeral done and over with. You know
—so she can go on with her life.”

“You know what, Albert,” Helen said, eyeing Caburn out the corner of her eye. “Anna doesn’t have any family. I’d say Frank and I are bonding with her, but she’s still confused about what she feels. She needs time, and the holidays are emotional. I’d vote for leaving things as they are. Anna does have some good friends that she’s kept up with via e-mail, birthday cards and so on. She told me her friends used to ask could they come and bring the kids to see the Capitol. But her mother-in-law complained so loudly about strangers and kids running loose in the house, Nesmith nixed any invitations. So there’s only her neighbor, Frank, and myself for her emotional support.”

Caburn was recalling Anna’s outburst:
No parents, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins.
“I’m with Helen,” he said. “We have to be the family Anna doesn’t have right now.”

Helen looked at Caburn askance. “Wow. Your sensitivity is
hanging by a thread.”

Caburn rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Uh, Frank,” Phipps said to Caburn, “Are you still getting het up over this girl?”

“I don’t know what het up means.”

“Yes, you do.”

“We’re not going there.”

“I guess that means, yes.”

Helen took Caburn off the hook. “Listen, Albert, Frank and I talked about something. We decided not to bring up the funeral unless Anna did. Right now, this entire situation is abstract for her
—”

“The other woman and the baby aren’t abstract,” said Caburn.

“True. But seeing her husband in his casket is gonna make everything solid. You know what I mean?”

Phipps tapped ashes out of his pipe. “You think she’ll freak out?”

“Not outwardly. Anna is sophisticated to the nines. But the funeral is going to be a...an...
event
. Anna is wondering if there are any more women out there.”

Albert almost swallowed his tongue. “Mary, Mother of God! Let’s not put an obit in the paper.”

“Wrong thinking, Albert,” said Caburn. “An obit needs to go in every paper that feeds any of his stops or layovers in the US I’m talking New York, New Jersey, LA, Miami, Atlanta. Did he ever fly out of Washington State going to the near East? We don’t want women popping up six months from now. We’d never be certain a buried Nesmith was the end of it. Hand me the file again, Albert. Anna mentioned a city in Florida. It’s in my notes.”

“St. Augustine,” Helen said. “Before Anna married him, Nesmith and his mother used to vacation there.” Helen got up and stood behind her chair. “I wasn’t going to mention this until I checked with the legal department
—but, there may be an issue concerning Anna’s marriage to Nesmith.”

Caburn’s jaw dropped.

“I feel sick,” said Albert.

“I had our off-budget staffers
—”

“Off-budget?” Caburn mused. “Does
one have three-inch eyelashes and the other, purple hair?”

“
—pull up the phone books of the area on their computers,” continued Helen, ignoring him. “Clarence and JoJo called every Nesmith listed in St. Augustine, Anastasia Island, and Jacksonville. They just asked for Kevin Nesmith. They got two hits. One was a nine-year-old—no relation. Then the very next call, JoJo asked for Kevin Nesmith. The woman who answered said: You have got to be kidding me. I divorced that son-of-a-bitch seven years ago. JoJo told the woman that she was trying to find her biological father.

“
The woman laughed. She told JoJo, ‘Well, you’ll be getting a world-class philanderer for a dad and a grandmother from hell. The bitch dumped fifty pounds of washing powder in the spa attached to my swimming pool and turned the jets on. It cost me thousands to have it cleaned up. You’ll probably discover a half-dozen brothers and sisters out there.’”

Phipps looked puzzled. “We already know Nesmith’s mother is a kook. And Nesmith was a lothario, so what’s the issue?”

Caburn had already done the math. “Nesmith married Anna nine or ten years ago. The Florida woman divorced him seven years ago.”

Phipps leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “No need to check with legal,” he groaned. “Unless they married after the divorce, she’s in the same position as the girl up in Ellicott City.
This is such a screw up.” He sighed. “Well, I’ll go upstairs to legal anyway—have them find the marriage and divorce papers. I’ll ask legal to write the obit, too. We’ll have it in the papers over the holidays. Lots of people home then, reading the papers, catching up on news—if there are any hits, Anna can let us know.”

Caburn was speechless.

Helen seldom was speechless. And definitely not at this moment. “Albert, you need a brain transplant. That idea plain sucks mud. That girl has enough grief on her plate to feed a platoon, and you want her to field phone calls from other women crawling out of the woodwork like worms?”

Phipps
had the grace to blush. “Uh...uh...no.
No!
Of course not. What I meant was—we’d put an answering machine in the house—”

“Let’s put
our
phone number in the obit—to inquire about funeral details,” said Caburn, reclaiming his voice. “That takes the onus off Anna.”

“Yep,” said Helen. “Then all anybody has to do, is pull up t
he telephone book on line and call Anna. Maybe even come prancing up to her door:
Hi, Anna. I was married to Kevin, too. Wanna compare notes?
Merry Christmas from the State Department
.”

Phipps mused, “Merry Christmas from the State Department. That sounds like good PR, Helen. We could send Anna to a spa or something over the holidays while the obits are in the papers. You know the one Louise goes to? It’s only a thousand dollars for a week. That won’t break the budget.”

“You misheard, Albert. That spa is in Palm Beach. It’s a thousand dollars a day.”

Phipps’ Adam
’s apple bobbled as he tried to swallow. “What? A thousand dollars a
day
? Oh geez—and I bought her an amethyst necklace for Christmas. I’m probably broke.” He looked at Caburn. “You owe me a hundred bucks.”

Caburn took out his wallet and counted out five twenties.

“They were silver certificates, remember?”

Caburn took out another twenty. “Interest. Are we good?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Phipps eyed Helen. “A thousand a day?” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

“Well, Louise is a beautiful woman. She seldom stays over three days, you know. She doesn’t need to.”

“There’s that,” Phipps replied with a sound more like a moan than a sigh. “Well, the spa thing is out. We’ll have to come up with something else. Helen, why don’t you go upstairs and see the travel master. Don’t let him come up with anything too costly.”

Caburn nodded his head. “That’s a great idea.” Anger coated every word like silk. “In fact, it’s a super idea. Let’s ship Anna off somewhere by herself. Make certain she’s among strangers to contemplate the mess Nesmith and his mother have made of her life. Meanwhile, the rest of us can celebrate the holiday with friends and family. There’s also this
—if Anna isn’t legally married to Nesmith—why should she bear the cost of the funeral?”

Helen was picking at a thread on her blouse. “You made your point, Frank. I would adore a paid vacation, Albert, but I’ve got commitments, as you well know. Louise and I always take food baskets to the elderly and shut-ins on Christmas Eve. Let Frank take her somewhere. He’s hung up on her something awful
anyway. He needs to get it out of his system. Otherwise we might not get a decent day’s work out of him for months.”

Phipps scowled at Caburn. “You wouldn’t take advantage, would you?”

Caburn’s cheeks flushed a guilty pink. “You know me better than that.”

“I’d better,” Phipps warned. “One last thing,” Phipps
added. “The other wife’s parents will be home Wednesday, so Thursday bright and early, I want the both of you in Ellicott City. Call her parents to meet you over there, then lay everything out—no beating around the bush.”

“Frank can handle that on his own,” said Helen. “I’m needed here.”

“I have to visit the ER to get the staples out of my back on Thursday. Anyway, Helen has spent more time with the other woman. I mean this is a sensitive issue—with the baby and all. She’s better at it than I am. In fact, Helen is better at most things than I am. I’m just a farmer from Kansas.”

“I’m better at this than you? When did th
at epiphany strike?”

Phipps banged his fist on his desk, sending his pipe and ashes dan
cing across files. “You are both going! And in the same vehicle. Work it out. Remember, be diplomatic. But make it plain that the girl has no standing, no legal standing. Although, the child might. He’d be eligible for Social Security benefits. The mother could draw the Mother’s Helper benefits. We’ll get them a copy of the death certificate once it’s translated or issued here. If they have any questions you can’t answer, call me. About the time you are telling the girl and her parents, I’m going to be telling the mother.”