Keep No Secrets

by Julie Compton

  "No, I didn’t. You just assumed it, and I didn't bother to correct you." She moves in his direction for the doorway, lowering her head like a ram planning to plow right through him. He steps to the side and blocks her exit. "Stop it, Jack.

  I'm cold. I want to get dressed."

  "I think you should stay just as you are.

  It might give you an advantage, don't you think?"

  He moves forward, causing her to

  move backwards. They engage in a

  strange dance, but she runs out of dance floor when, without even touching her, he has backed her up against the island. She still clutches the towel with both hands.

  "Who were you talking to?" he asks, even though he knows.

  "Brian." She whispers the answer.

  "Who were you talking about? Who are you so sure 'doesn't know'? And who is the 'she' you're meeting?"

  "It doesn't concern you. It has nothing to do with you, or us."

  "No?"

  "No."

  "What if I said I don't believe you?"

  She shrugs, but won't meet his eye.

  "Have you been talking to Claire? Are you both going behind my back now?"

  "You’re out of your mind. I’d be the last person Claire would talk to."

  His phone rings with Mark’s ringtone.

  He ignores it.

  "We had a deal," he says. At her silence, he asks, "Whose feelings are you so sure of? Who are you manipulating now?"

  He knows the answers to the last two questions. Still, they're the ones that get a real reaction. She whips her head up. In her dark eyes he finally sees the aggression he expects. "I'm not manipulating anyone. You think you know everything, but you have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Maybe you should tell me, then.

  Maybe you should honor your

  agreement."

  She grunts and shakes her head.

  "Tell me something." He reaches up and slicks her wet hair behind one ear, letting his thumb brush her cheek. She closes her eyes as if enduring something painful. Slowly then, he peels her hands—

  first one, then the other—away from the towel. She watches but doesn't fight as he substitutes his hands for hers. Her fingers are icy and her skin has the faint scent of Dial soap. "Have you fucked my brother yet?"

  She doesn't answer, but he knows she hasn't. Except for the rise and fall of her chest, she doesn't move. Except for her nervous breathing, she makes no sound.

  Goose bumps develop on her bare skin.

  His breathing is labored. His heart is beating so hard his whole body throbs.

  He knows intellectually what he wants, why he's doing this to himself, to her—he needs to prove to both of them that he can resist her—but his body refuses to cooperate with his brain. It wants something else entirely. It wants to rip off the towel and devour her.

  She sneers. "It's interesting. I'm the one who's cold and wet, yet you're the one who's shivering."

  "Why'd you lie to me?"

  "I didn't lie to you." She tries to pull his hands away but he holds tight. Let her be the vulnerable one, for once. She doesn't try again.

  "I think you did. You mailed those letters to yourself. Why?"

  "What are you talking about? Where are you coming up with these things? I didn't."

  "I saw the tapes," he lies.

  " What tapes?"

  "I guess you didn't cover your tracks as well as you did with Maxine."

  "You're so wrong. I didn't kill her."

  "You're a liar, and you're a murderer."

  "I'm not, Jack." Her voice breaks.

  The rumble of Mark's automatic garage door interrupts them. She grabs at his hands again, but she's no match for his strength. "Quickly, tell me why you sent the letters," he demands. "Convince me I'm wrong."

  For a moment she looks as if she might answer, but at the slamming sound of a car door she tugs one last time and he lets go. She hurries to leave the kitchen. This time he doesn't try to stop her. He feels her hesitate in the doorway behind him.

  "Sometimes the culprit is right in front of you, Jack."

  He wheels around. "What are—?"

  The door connecting the kitchen to the garage opens. Mark stops at the sight of them. Jenny races for the back of the house, Jack for the front door.

  "Jack, wait," Mark yells. Jack stops with his hand on the doorknob. "What's going on?"

  Jack turns to study the expression on his brother's face, searching for any evidence of duplicity.

  "I don't know, Mark. You tell me."

  After a quick glance in the direction Jenny headed, he mutters "You tell me"

  again. He slams the door behind him and leaves without an answer.

  His hands shake so much he has trouble inserting the key into the ignition. No sooner has he pulled out of the driveway, his phone rings again. He pulls it from his coat, confirms the caller is Mark, and tosses it on the passenger seat. He doesn't know what to think. He doesn't know where to go. He only knows he needs to get himself away from here.

  So many thoughts and competing

  emotions bombard his mind. He can't hold one still long enough to make sense of it. He tries to recall the things Jenny said to Brian on the phone, but he only grows more frustrated. None of it means anything to him, not without more information, information that only she can provide. He considers whether she might have talked to Claire. If so, why would Claire keep this information from him? He doesn't think she would. Despite Claire's simmering disgust with him that erupts at the slightest provocation, he trusts her.

  He wonders what his brother knows, and why he's providing shelter for Jenny behind Jack's back. What did she mean, the culprit is right in front of you? Is Jack overlooking another reason she accepted Mark’s invitation, other than the obvious ones of money and preferring the luxuries of his Clayton home to the dirty

  bathroom and thin mattress of the motel?

  Is there any reason she’d want to keep an eye on Mark? Jack can’t even fathom a connection.

  Mixed in with all of these thoughts is the image, vivid in his mind's eye, of her trapped against the counter, so exposed and yet so defiant. And so beautiful.

  Despite his anger at her lies, the memory causes his body to betray him all over again. The raging hunger returns. It's so strong even in her absence that he wonders whether, but for his brother's arrival, he would have withstood the desire to satiate it.

  Like an alcoholic who recognizes when his attendance at an AA meeting is long overdue, Jack suddenly knows, simply from having asked himself the question, where he must go and whom he must see.

  Even though Jack knows Claire's class schedule and office hours, he still tries the handle on her fourth floor office door.

  It's locked, as he expected. He reads the various scribbles on the dry erase board beside the door. After determining all the messages are outdated, he rubs clean a large enough spot to leave her a

  conspicuous one of his own: I'M ON

  THE 5TH FLOOR. COME ON UP. He

  doesn't need to sign his name or specify his exact location. She'll know who wrote it.

  He finds his usual spot in the largest seating area on the fifth floor. The rest of the floor is made up of faculty offices that line the perimeter, a few study rooms, a few stacks of federal materials, and many stacks of periodicals. Three students are scattered among the two tables at the center of the space, but the chairs and couch at the edge are empty. The students watch him as he takes a seat on the couch, but their attention returns to their open books when they don't recognize him. Or maybe they do and they simply don't care.

  He sends Dog a quick text message: Surveil ance job for u. 77## davis dr. If tal indian woman leaves, fol ow, cal me & report

  Dog texts back: U mean dodson boss?

  Jack sighs and texts: yes, I mean dodson

  He spends the next half hour trying to read and respond to the emails he's let accumulate over the past few weeks. He can't concentrate b
ecause his phone, now set to silent, vibrates every time Mark tries to reach him. He shoves it in his back pocket and switches to his laptop, using Claire's pass code to access the university wireless. Yet even this solution fails; another half hour passes and he's done nothing but stare at the computer screen and replay in his mind what happened at his brother's house. Her last words— sometimes the culprit is right in front of you—gnaw at him.

  There's not a window in sight, but as time passes, he feels the sun ease toward the horizon. One by one the students gather their backpacks and leave.

  When he is alone in the immediate area, he finally answers one of Mark's calls. "I'm not somewhere I can easily talk," he says, keeping his voice down.

  "Then listen, at least, will you?" At Jack's silence, Mark launches into his defense. "She called me right after Christmas and asked if my offer was still open. She felt like you already had too much to contend with to deal with her problems, so she wanted you to think she returned to Chicago. She asked me not to tell you. I agreed because I think she's right. If you meant what you said in my car that night, then you need to stay away from each other." Jack understands the last comment to be a reference to what Jack said about his marriage. "She has a meeting today with someone she says will help her investigate the letters—she wouldn't tell me who—and then she plans to go home. She—"

  "Her home is St. Louis."

  "Jack." Mark sighs. "That would be her call, wouldn't it?"

  "She ran for a reason."

  "You still believe she did it? Even in light of the letters?"

  "The letters are a red herring. She's lying. She lied to me, and now she's lying to you. She sent those letters to herself."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Just what I said. She sent the letters to herself. I don't know why, or why she came back. I'm still trying to figure that out."

  "You're not making sense."

  "That's true. None of this makes sense.

  Let me ask you, where is she now?"

  "I don’t know. Whatever happened between you two before I walked in, it upset her. She apologized to me—"

  "For what?"

  "Everything. She was rambling. For coming back, for causing problems between us, for being at my house. You name it, she apologized for it. She packed up and left after you ran out."

  Damn. Does that mean Dog missed her?

  "Did she apologize for murder?"

  Mark grunts with disgust. "Look, I really don't think she's lying, to either of us. You didn't think so, either, the night we drove out to the motel."

  "I guess I was thinking with my dick instead of my brain" —Jack laughs bitterly— "like you said."

  "Is that what you were doing on Christmas, too?"

  The question startles Jack, and rankles him. "Not by a long shot. Why, is that what you were doing?" he shoots back, remembering the holiday card he

  interrupted at his own home.

  " What? "

  "Forget it. Look, I gotta go."

  "What are you suggesting, Jack?"

  "Nothing. Just forget it. I have to go."

  He glances at his watch; Claire's class should be long over. "I have to meet Claire."

  "Really? That's interesting, since Claire is at a law school bash."

  Her message earlier, which Jack just remembers, now makes sense. She'd mentioned the event—a reception for a visiting Supreme Court justice—several weeks back, before Christmas. At first, Jack thought she wanted him to

  accompany her as he always did to such events, but she quickly corrected his assumption. "I just think it will be less awkward for everyone if I go alone," she'd said. He also understands why the library emptied out so quickly tonight. How did Mark know, though?

  " I pay attention when she talks," Mark says, as if to answer Jack's unspoken question.

  "Fuck you. You don't have a clue what happens between me and my wife. You'd better hang up and think about what your house guest said to you. Just don't forget to read between the lines."

  "Yeah, right," Mark snarls. "Spoken by a man who learned the hard way."

  When Jack hangs up, he sees he missed an earlier text from Dog—Target left house, fol owing—then another just a moment ago: Just entered Ritz. Think checking in.

  Jack has no idea when Claire might return and the Ritz is just down the road.

  Thx. I'l take it from here, he texts back.

  He's decided to do a bit of surveillance of his own.

  He nods briefly to the doorman who holds the door for him as he enters the warm foyer of the hotel. The howling wind and the noises of rush hour traffic are replaced by soft classical piano music and the murmurs of guests and staff. Two extravagantly-decorated Christmas trees still cast their glow over the small foyer, and the elegant sofas and stately chairs in the wood-paneled lobby lounge to his left are lit by subdued table lamps. A long, marble bar at the far end of the room completes the tableau. It's a welcome refuge from the cold.

  He makes his way through the wide entranceway leading into the lounge. A flash of color—so out of place among the subdued blacks and grays—catches his eye. He stops and quickly moves behind a post. The hostess says, "Sir, would you like me to show you to a table?" She doesn't recognize him.

  What kind of bar requires a hostess to show the clientele to a table? he wonders, even though he knows. This kind, where tea and petit fours trump the cocktails.

  Realizing she's waiting for an answer, he says quickly, "No. No thank you."

  The color comes from the rear of the room, near the bar and grand staircase, where a woman in a turquoise blue sari and headscarf perches on a sofa across from a young woman who can't be more than twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. The younger woman is dressed in jeans and a short black leather coat. Her legs are crossed, one swinging as she talks, and her black boots sport unusually high heels. Her highlighted auburn hair is pulled back into a stylish ponytail, giving him a clear shot of her face. She's attractive in a tough, urban sort of way.

  The face of the woman wearing the sari is hidden; the head scarf blocks his view.

  But he sees her hand when she picks up a cup of tea from the table between them.

  He knows that hand.

  He finds it odd that she’d wear such a bright color when she doesn't want to be noticed, but then, maybe the ones who look as if they're trying to hide are the ones who stand out.

  "Sir?" the hostess tries again. She can't discern what, exactly, Jack wants.

  "You wouldn't happen to know the name of the woman in the sari, would you? Did she have a reservation for high tea, maybe?"

  The hostess hesitates. Jack sees it's a privacy concern, so he pulls out his credentials and flashes them so fast that she gets the point without reading his name.

  "No reservation, sir. But the other woman arrived first and said that if an Indian woman came in looking for her, I should direct her over." She motions to the woman in the sari as if to say And there she is.

  "And the young lady's name? Do you know it?"

  "Rebecca Chambers, I believe she said."

  The name means nothing to Jack, but thanks to the internet, it soon will. He stares, waiting for Jenny to turn even just a bit so that he can confirm it's her.

  Although the scarf covers most of her face, he's certain he'll recognize her eyes.

  "Are you sure I can't seat you, sir?" the hostess asks again. He hears voices approaching; the question is her way of telling him she has others to attend to.

  He pulls out a twenty and hands it to her. "No, thank you. You've already helped me more than you'll ever know."

  While he waits them out, he uses his phone to search Rebecca Chamber's name on the internet and discovers she works for a private investigator named Lee Randolph. Does this mean Jenny told Mark the truth, that she really did hire someone to help her investigate the letters? But then, why involve Jack in the first place? And why did she lie to him?

  Why did she want him to think she'd returne
d to Chicago?

  He thinks of the comment Earl made when Jack told him about the threats: Thirty years after the fact? Doesn't that strike you as odd? It does strike Jack as odd. He's certain Jenny is the woman Demetri described from the tapes, but if she sent the letters to herself, why would she hire a PI? It has to be for some other reason.

  If Jenny won't tell him, he'll have to find out another way.

  After the Dodson woman leaves for her room upstairs, Rebecca takes off on foot for her car, which she parked several blocks away. As she turns the corner at Bemiston, she senses she's being followed.

  The tentative tapping of her boot heels on the slippery sidewalk is matched by a more solid footstep. She tests her theory by ducking into the lit alcove at the entrance to The Fatted Calf. No one passes, and when she reemerges, the masculine tread resumes behind her. She digs in her purse for a compact, slowing to open it and then pretending to check her hair in the mirror. She stifles a gasp when she sees who's on her tail.

  He waves at her reflection and says, "I don't mean to scare you. Can we talk a minute?"

  She stops and lets him catch up.

  Despite the cold, her face grows hot as the blood rushes to her cheeks. Whether her blush comes from her assumption that he saw her with Jennifer Dodson, or from the girlish thrill she feels in his presence, she can't say. She only hopes the dark hides it.

  "There's a Starbucks a block over," he says. His voice has the same smooth quality as when he speaks to reporters.

  "Can I buy you a coffee?"

  "I don't really like Starbucks," she says, managing, she thinks, to speak the words breezily, "but okay, sure."

  He laughs, and a small dimple appears in his right cheek. "You do look a little anti-establishment."

  He holds open the door and helps her shrug off her coat. She can't remember the last time a guy did either for her. Get a grip, Rebecca. This guy cheated on his wife. The chivalry is skin deep.

  "What's your pleasure?" he says as he carefully hangs the coat over a deep leather chair. It's apparent he believes introductions are unnecessary. He's right, of course.