State Secrets. Linda Lael Miller

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      Finally she hung up, forced herself out of the chair, and took the ka-bob from the microwave. Although she ate, she tasted nothing at all. The ka-bobs she had taken such pride in making might as well have been filled with sawdust.

      David Goddard locked the two Webkinz into the trunk of his rented car, shaking his head as he remembered the way he’d had to scramble for them. He sighed, then grinned. The kids would like them, so it had been worth a few scars.

      On his way back to the parking garage’s lonely elevator, he passed the place where Holly’s Toyota had been. Instantly, his mind and all his senses brimmed with the scent and image of her.

      He reached the elevator and punched the button with an annoyed motion of his right hand. Walt Zigman was full of sheep-dip if he thought that woman was capable of espionage. Holly Llewellyn was harried and she was haunted, but she was nobody’s flunky.

      The elevator ground to a stop; the doors swished open. David stepped inside and punched another button. He smiled to himself, thinking of the first fruitcake he’d ever put together in his life. It was a good thing no one had bothered to taste it; his cover would have been blown then and there. He’d been too lost in Holly Llewellyn’s aquamarine eyes to concentrate on baking.

      Baking. He rolled his eyes. For this I went to law school, he thought. For this I walked the first lady’s dog.

      He reached the first floor of the parking garage, where there was a wine shop and an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor. Ice cream, in this weather? David shivered and lifted his collar before stepping back outside, onto the street.

      At the corner, he paused. Gung ho Christmas shoppers surged past him when the light changed, carrying him along. He went back into the department store where Holly had taught her class and again braved the toy department. This time he bought an airplane, a model that would fly by means of a small hand-control unit. Manito Park, she’d said.

      Half an hour later David entered his apartment, acquired only two days before, with mingled relief and reluctance. It was a small place, furnished in tacky plaids. The carpet was thin and the last tenant had owned a dog, judging by the oval stains by the door and in front of the fold-out sofa bed. At least he had a telephone. David went to it and, with perverse pleasure, punched out Walt Zigman’s home number.

      It was after one in the morning on the East Coast and Walt’s voice was a groggy rumble. “Who the—”

      “Goddard,” David said crisply, grinning. “I said I’d report Monday. This is my report.”

      Zigman swore fiercely. “Goddard, did anybody ever tell you that you’re a son of a—”

      “I met her.”

      “Holly Llewellyn?” Walt’s interest was immediate. Clearly, he was now wide-awake. “How did you manage that so fast?”

      “Simple. I bought yesterday’s paper and read the food section. There was a write-up about her new class.”

      “Her new class in what?”

      David closed his eyes. There was no way out of this one. “Fruitcake,” he answered reluctantly.

      Zigman laughed. “Fitting,” came his rapid-fire reply, just as David had expected.

      “You’re getting corny in your old age, Walt.”

      “Did you find out anything?”

      David unzipped his jacket and flung it down on the couch. It covered the toys and the model airplane in its colorful box—he’d be up half the night assembling that sucker. “Sure,” he snapped. “She fed me grapes and poured out the whole sordid story of her life in the underworld.”

      “Don’t be a smart—”

      “I met her. That’s all. But I can tell you this much, Walt—she’s no traitor. I’m wasting my time here.”

      “You’re getting paid for it. Keep your eye on the ball, Goddard. When it’s time for you to come back to D.C. and follow the new first lady around, I’ll let you know.”

      This time it was David who swore. “Tell me, Walt,” he began dryly, “does she have a dog?”

      “Three of them,” said Walt with obnoxious satisfaction. “By the time the new first family takes up residence, you’ll be back on good old Pennsylvania Avenue, passing out poochie treats.”

      “You’re funny as hell, you know that? In fact, why don’t you take your goddamned job and—”

      “Goddard, Goddard,” Walt reprimanded in his favorite fatherly tone. “Calm down, I was just kidding you, that’s all. You’re a damned good agent.”

      Agent. If he hadn’t felt like screaming swearwords, David would have laughed. “I didn’t work my way through law school so that I could walk dogs, Walt.”

      “You really are unhappy, aren’t you?”

      “In a word, yes.”

      “We’ve been through this before.”

      “Yeah. Good night, Walt.”

      “Goddard!”

      David hung up.

      After a few minutes he hoisted himself up off the foldout couch, dug the stuffed animals out from under his coat and set them on the scarred counter that separated his living room–bedroom from the cubicle the landlady called a kitchen.

      Thinking of his nieces and how they were going to enjoy the Webkinz, he began to feel better.

      Presently, David took a TV dinner out of the tiny freezer above his refrigerator and shoved it into the doll-sized oven. While it was cooking, he stripped off his clothes, went into the bathroom and wedged himself into a shower designed for a midget. After drying off with one of the three scratchy towels the landlady had seen fit to lend him, he went back to the living room and dug his robe out of a suitcase. Someday, he promised himself, he was going to write a book about the glamorous life of a Secret Service agent.

      After consuming the TV dinner, he set about putting the model airplane together. It was after midnight when he finally gave up, washed the glue from his fingers, folded out the sofa bed and collapsed, falling into an instant sleep.

      3

      It was very bad luck that, after a quick visit to her bank that bleak Tuesday morning, Holly encountered David in the neighborhood branch of the post office. Or was it luck?

      Holly looked at the carefully wrapped parcel in his arms and decided he was only mailing the Webkinz he’d bought the night before to his nieces. No doubt he lived nearby and it made sense that he would be here.

      “Don’t you have classes today?” she asked as they waited in line, stiff pleasantries already exchanged.

      David smiled wanly. “One o’clock,” he answered. He hadn’t looked at the address on the envelope Holly carried, as far as she could tell, but she held it against her coat all the same.

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