“Gladly.” I started to close the paper when I caught sight of another article on page two. This one by Howard Liss in his
Liss Is More
daily column. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Mom asked.
To me, Howard Liss always looked like an aging hippie. His picture stared up at me, his salt-and-pepper hair pulled tight into a ponytail, which draped forward over his right shoulder. Whatever that signified. He wore one hoop earring, and a cocksure grin. “Liss,” the caption read, “is always more.”
“This guy.” I snapped my finger against his face. “He’s covering the Minkus story. And if I’m right, he’s going to blame it on some right-wing conspiracy group.”
I was wrong. He blamed it on me.
I’m not suggesting the president hire a professional taster, as monarchs did in the olden days to prevent assassination by poisoning, but I am asking the question: How safe is the food we serve to our administration? What real safeguards are in place? Who watches the chefs? Is our president’s security really left up to the woman who has made a name for herself by allegedly saving the president’s bacon, not once, but twice? Could our current executive chef, Ms. Olivia Paras (whose name you will recognize from prior action-packed features), be getting bored with her day-to-day cooking responsibilities? Could her taste for excitement have pushed her over the edge to take unnecessary chances with Sunday night’s dinner?
How dare he!
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.
“This . . . this . . .” I couldn’t find the words to express my fury. “He thinks I did this. He thinks I did this on purpose!”
Carl Minkus’s untimely demise may serve as a valuable wakeup call. If we act now, we have a chance to save others from preventable disasters. Let’s not be so quick to assume that Minkus was targeted by someone he was planning to investigate. Let’s take a closer look at our own house first—the president’s house. Maybe a little negligence? Maybe a strong need for attention? Maybe things just got out of hand? Perhaps someone added more than an extra teaspoon of salt to the soup.
“This is ridiculous!” I said, standing up. “What is he thinking? I’ll sue him for libel. Or slander. Or whatever it is you sue for when people make up lies.”
My mom read where I pointed. “He puts it all in question format,” she said. “He isn’t saying you’re guilty. He’s asking, ‘What if?’ ”
I headed to the phone to call Paul, then belatedly realized I’d unplugged it. “Aaah!” I said when I picked up the dead receiver. Mom and Nana stared at me with twin looks of pained confusion. They didn’t know what to do. Neither did I.
“How do I fight something like this?” I asked.
Nana picked up the paper. “This guy is a nutcase.”
“That doesn’t make it any easier for me.”
Mom shrugged. “No one will pay his article any attention.”
“I thought this guy was a liberal,” Nana said.
“I thought so, too. Why do you ask?”
She pointed. “Here, further down he talks about what a great guy Minkus was and what a blow this is to the country. He says Minkus was respected by heroes and criminals alike.”
I came to stand behind her. “What an odd thing to say. I would have thought someone like Liss would never support someone like Minkus.”
“I’m telling you, honey, that’s why nobody will even remember this come tomorrow.”
My cell phone vibrated and I looked at the number. Tom. “Hello?” I said. I caught myself smiling. Mom and Nana exchanged knowing glances.
“How are things?” he asked.
“I’ve been better.”
“Did you read today’s paper?” he asked.
“How could I miss it?”
“I’m sorry you have to go through this, Ollie.” After a moment he asked, “How’s the family settling in?”
I walked into the living room. “Pretty well. Things aren’t going quite the way I’d hoped. Did you get my message?” I’d left him an effusive voicemail the night before, thanking him for taking care of my mom and nana and bringing them safely to my apartment. “I really appreciate all you did for me yesterday. If you hadn’t picked them up . . .”
“Ah,” he said, deflecting. “I was happy to do it. Hey, what do you have planned today?”
“My mom and nana want to go to Arlington.”
“Visit your dad’s grave?”
“They haven’t been here since he died, and now that I happen to have so much free time on my hands—”
“Do you have any time this morning?”
“What did you have in mind?”
I could almost see him shrug. “I don’t have to be back until noon, so I figured maybe, if you wanted to go for coffee or something . . .”
“You want to come up here?”
“No,” he said, almost too quickly. “I think you and I need to talk.”
I swallowed. “That sounds ominous.”
He gave a half-hearted laugh. “Sorry. I just meant it would be better if we could meet one-on-one.” He quickly added, “Not that I don’t want to see your family. They’re great. I just would rather we have a chance to meet alone.”
When I got off the phone and returned to the kitchen, Mom and Nana were waiting expectantly.
“We’re meeting for coffee,” I said.
“He doesn’t want to come up here?”
“Busy day. He’s got to get to work,” I explained. Being part of the Presidential Protective Detail—the elite of the Secret Service—meant that more often than not, our relationship came second to his schedule. I was used to it. Often, my responsibilities took precedence over our relationship, too. That might change over time; it might not. “He only has an hour or so.”
“As long as we’re not holding you back,” Mom said.
I put my arm around her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “You could never hold me back.”
Tom was already at the restaurant when I arrived. We’d been coming to this out-of-the way place almost since we’d started seeing one another. Although it came up short in romantic inspiration, Froggie’s offered all-day breakfast and endless cups of coffee, served by a staff that still hand-wrote receipts and called customers “hon.”
We settled ourselves in an aqua vinyl booth, a framed photo of artfully arranged scrambled eggs on the wall next to us. “You hungry?” I asked.
Tom pushed the laminated menu away with a grimace. “Nah.”
“Just coffee,” I said to the waitress who appeared at our table.
“You got it.” She turned both our mugs upright, poured, and collected our menus.
“So, what’s up?” I asked when she was gone.
Tom stared down at the dark brew in his mug, like the coffee had said something nasty to him.
Uh-oh,
I thought. I didn’t like the feel of this. The look on his face made my heart pound faster, and my neck sweat. I thought if I came up with a witty comment I might relieve the tension, change the subject. But I couldn’t come up with anything.
In the three heartbeats it took him to raise his eyes again, I thought how odd it was that I’d been singing his praises yesterday, so confident that his helping my mom and nana was proof he was willing to take our relationship to a new level. I was so sure we were moving forward. And now it felt more like he was about to break up with me.
“This is going to be hard, Ollie.”
I didn’t think my heart could stand it another moment. It banged so relentlessly I put a hand to my chest to keep Tom from hearing it thud. What had happened? What had changed since yesterday? His eyes provided no clue.
“What’s going to be hard?” I managed to ask. My voice cracked. I hoped he didn’t notice.
He opened a little creamer and poured its contents into the mug. I kept mine black because I didn’t trust my hand not to shake when I grabbed a creamer for myself. I swallowed, my throat starchy-dry. “What are you trying to tell me?”
His brow furrowed and he stared down at the coffee again. Neither of us had taken a sip yet, and when the waitress breezed by with pot in hand, she didn’t even slow at our table.
“Craig,” he said.
“Craig?” My heart skipped. Had I misheard him? “Craig Sanderson?”
He nodded.
“What does Craig have to do with us?”
“Us?” Tom looked up. “Nothing.”
Now I was confused. “Explain.”
“Craig put me on this Minkus death investigation.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“We’ve all been assigned a specific angle.”
I waited.
“He’s assigned me to you.”
I didn’t understand why Tom was so upset. “You know I didn’t do it, right?”
That got the first smile of the day. “Of course.”
“Well then, your job is done. Whatever you need from me, you’ve got. I’m going to be the most cooperative subject you’ve ever known.”
As I spoke, my smile grew. Tom’s didn’t. “You don’t see the problem, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Craig has made me responsible for keeping you
out
of the investigation.”
“That doesn’t make sense. If they think Minkus died because of something I served him, then I’m part of this investigation already. How can he keep me out of it?”
“Okay, maybe I misspoke. You can’t exactly be kept out of it, but he wants your efforts controlled. That’s my job. I’m supposed to make sure you don’t get involved in this investigation yourself.”
“Now, why would I do that?”
Tom shot me a look of exasperation. “Ollie, look at your track record.”
“I never intended—”
“Uh-huh,” Tom said, interrupting my lame attempt at defense. “That’s exactly the point. You make us believe you’re all innocent and out of the loop and then—
bam
—you’re at the very center of a major conspiracy.”
“That was an accident.”
“Both times?”
We were silent a moment. Tom took a breath. “We will be asking for your help. There’s no way we can proceed without your cooperation.”
I made a “Duh,” face, but didn’t say anything.
“Craig’s exact directive is that I’m to act as liaison between the Secret Service and the kitchen. I need to be aware of every single thing you do.”
I started to speak, but Tom held up a hand.
“The reason he picked me,” he said, reading my thoughts, “is because he thinks that if I’m in charge of you, you’ll actually cooperate this time.”
The waitress came by, pot in hand, again. She eyed our untouched cups. “You two positive you don’t want something else?”
We assured her we didn’t and as soon as she turned away, I added cream to my coffee and took a sip. It was something to do. And it gave me a moment to think.
Tom drank his, too. Bolstered, either by the interruption in what had become a tense conversation, or by the coffee, he sat up straighter. “Craig knows you had nothing to do with Minkus. We all know that. But that doesn’t mean we can skate when it comes to your investigation. We have to follow every lead, have to take every step—just as if you were a true suspect. If we don’t, we’ll get raked over the coals.” He held the mug in both hands and stared at me. “But the real reason Craig is doing this is because he doesn’t want you involved.”
I nodded.
“I mean, not at all.”
“Okay,” I said. “Done.”
He waited a moment, then took another sip of coffee. “You promise?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Do you have any idea what this means to my career if you don’t stay out of it?”
I didn’t understand why Tom was getting so worked up. He and Craig were friends. “I’m sure he wouldn’t—”
“Craig has made it clear that if you get involved in this—like you have in the past—I will be dropped from the PPD.”
“He can’t do that.”
“The hell he can’t. He’s my immediate supervisor.”
“I mean, he can’t make you responsible for someone else’s actions.”
Tom slowly shook his head. “Yeah, well, tell him that.”
My fists were bunched and I saw Tom’s gaze stray past them, before he met my eyes. “I know you don’t
mean
to get into trouble . . .”
“I haven’t gotten in trouble,” I said, my voice rising. “In fact, I’d say I’ve helped when no one else could. And I’ve even saved a few lives along the way, too.”
His hands came up, but my anger refused to be abated. “Just how, exactly, does Craig think to keep me out of this? For crying out loud, Tom, I work in the kitchen at the White House. And when a guest dies after eating one of my meals, you bet I’m involved.”
Tom grimaced.
“Shh!”
I lowered my voice. Too late, people around us had perked up. An avid eavesdropper myself, I recognized the body language. “All I’m saying is that Craig would be an idiot to refuse to use me as a resource.”
“I told you. He intends to do just that.”
“Now I’m confused.”
“It gets complicated.”
“Because officially”—I raised my hands to make quotation marks in the air—“I’m a suspect?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s a crock.”
We both took long sips of coffee. The waitress waited across the room, pot in hand, eyebrows raised. When I looked at her, she turned away and set about filling mugs at another table.
After a few tense moments of silence, I asked, “What about Suzie and Steve?”
Tom blinked. “Who?”
“The SizzleMasters. Remember, they were in the kitchen that day.”
“You suspect them?”
I thought about it. “Not really. But my point is that we had a camera rolling most of the day. It would be enormously helpful if I could review it.”
“Not gonna happen.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “This is so wrong,” I finally said.
“It’s only temporary.”
“It’s still . . . wrong.”
When he looked at me, I was taken aback by the alarm in his eyes. “Ollie, don’t get involved. Unless the directive comes from me. Or Craig. Please. I know how you are. I know how you want to fix things. You think you’re helping, but—”