Free Past Perfect by Susan Isaacs Page A

the next sentence, the next page. You never wake three nights later at 4 A.M. with the perfect rejoinder. So I blurted out, “Of course it’s for the show.”
    From the start, Huff made me nervous. I was never sure what he knew about me, other than at one time I had been a writer at the Agency. Had “writer” sounded so boring that he never checked me out? Or did Huff know everything, especially all that I didn’t? Every time I spoke to him I was dying to ask, What happened to me? Do you know? Can you find out? Except I always remembered my mother telling me in fourth or fifth grade, “If you think somebody’s a little creepy, don’t tell yourself he’s not. Stay away from him. Trust your judgment.” So I had never asked what he knew because I sensed there was something strange about him.
    Huff ran his tongue back and forth over his top teeth. The mannerism was especially disconcerting because operatives were trained to suppress any personal characteristics that might hint of discomfort. I’d assumed he was made of sterner stuff. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want me to get on her?”
    “Anything you can. I’d like to get in touch with her.”
    “Why?”
    “Why?” I repeated. Why was he asking “Why?” Curiosity? Hostility? I flashed a girly smile. “I want to contact Lisa because she’s material,” I started to explain, talking too fast, smiling too broadly. “She dealt with brave people who risked everything they had for the Agency. And she probably dealt with others who were the scum of the earth, but who we owed big-time. I want to get in touch with her because she’s capable of noticing even the smallest detail of a person’s style. And most of all, because she would make a terrific minor character for the show.”
    Huff shrugged. “I’ll make a few calls.” But I could see from the way his mouth pulled to the side that he knew something was odd with this assignment. He just had no clue as to what it was.
    The remote possibility of being deprived of his annual fee as well as his personal panorama of the Dani Barber boobs must have posed a sufficient threat because Huff called that evening, minutes after I got home.
    “Your Lisa Golding is out of the Agency,” he said.
    “As of when?” I had started to set the table, so I stood in the middle of the kitchen with a phone in one hand and a bouquet of knives, forks, and spoons in the other. I was about to set down the implements on the counter, but I didn’t want Huff to hear the housewifey clink of silverware.
    “She left in December, a year and a half ago.”
    “Retired or fired?”
    “Retired. Not working anywhere else as per the latest info.” His words were so clipped he sounded like an early version of computer-generated speech.
    “Do you have an address for her?” He gave me an address in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington, an area that had gone from decaying town houses/has potential when I’d lived there to unequivocally hip. When I’d known her, she’d lived elsewhere, in a great house in an up-and-coming neighborhood just outside Georgetown. Obviously she still had a sense of style and real estate smarts, plus money far beyond a CIA salary to indulge these gifts. “Do you know if she rents or owns?”
    “Owns.”
    “What about a phone number?” He gave me her home and cell numbers. “Did you happen to pick up any news or gossip about her?”
    “Just that she doesn’t seem to be in her house. And nobody has a clue as to where she is.”

Chapter Seven
    IF A PERSON from your past suddenly reappears and offers to change your life, or at least your understanding of it, you’d expect that person would be someone who’d been important to you. Like that witty, silky-haired boyfriend from senior year who dropped you for a lute player from the High School of Performing Arts. Or to jump ahead ten years, like Benton Mattingly.
    What you don’t expect in the coming-back-into-your-life department is someone who