by Julie Hyzy
“What happened, Hector?” I asked.
His puffy lower lip jutted out like a four-year-old’s pout. “Is Kilian dead?” he asked.
I locked eyes with Nate, whose expression was grim. I would have thought the answer obvious by now. “I’m sorry to say that he is.”
Hector’s chubby lip pulled in and for a moment I thought he might cry. Instead, he clenched his eyes shut for an extended moment. When he opened them again, he pushed his lip back out. “He was always very kind to me.”
“What about you?” I asked Hector. “Are you all right now?”
He ducked his head and didn’t answer right away.
“Hector,” I prompted, “what happened?”
“My medication is new. I am supposed to take only one per day. The old medication was two times per day.” When he looked up at me again, his mouth twisted downward. “I will not make that error again.”
The explanation, the same one he’d given Tom, and one that made sense, tied this coincidence up a bit too neatly for my tastes. My gut told me that Hector was lying—although I couldn’t imagine why he would.
That conviction made me consider an entirely new possibility. One that would be—in my opinion—the worst alternative of all.
“I don’t know,” I said aloud. “This is too much of a coincidence.”
Hector’s expression shifted from regretful to panicked. “It is my fault,” he insisted. “I will be more careful in the future. I give you my word.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I looked up and read the same doubts on Bucky’s face, which gave me enough confidence to continue my thought process. “Marcel has been incapacitated, Hector has suffered ill effects, and now, tragically, Kilian is dead. What if there’s something present—here—that’s making us ill?”
Tibor stepped into the group. “What are you saying? You believe we are being poisoned?” His large eyes bulged. “Do you think it is anthrax? Sarin?”
I held my hands up. “No, no,” I said, “nothing like that.” Heaven help us—I hoped that wasn’t the case. “I’m simply concerned that we may have all come into contact with an ingredient or substance that could do us harm.”
Nate and Hector weren’t as panicked as easy-to-agitate Tibor seemed to be, but they were alarmed nonetheless. Before I did anything, I needed to contain this situation. And to do that, we needed help.
“Listen,” I began, “Kilian was your friend, and this has been a shock to us all. Why don’t the three of you take the remainder of the day off?”
The men exchanged looks that I would characterize as shocked. “But we were sent here to work,” Tibor protested. “Our leaders will be disappointed if we do not fulfill our obligation.”
“Then tell them I changed your obligation. Today, at least, you’re free from responsibility. I’m certain our people are already in touch with your people about Kilian, but I’m sure you’ll be required to report to them, too.” I expected that the Saardiscan government would waste no time in recalling the surviving men home. “Kilian was one of your countrymen and I know you all cared about him. I think an afternoon to yourselves is fully in order.”
Dismissing their assertions that they were capable of carrying on despite their grief, I called for a Secret Service escort to take them back to their hotel.
“While you’re gone,” I said as they gathered their belongings, “I’ll have a cleaning team do a thorough sanitizing of the kitchen and all the areas we work in. Although we maintain a spotless environment, there is always the risk of germs getting in. If there’s any bacteria or germ at fault, we’ll have it eradicated by the time you return.”
Once they were gone, Bucky turned to me. “You really think that’s what it is?” he asked. “Something either airborne or contagious?”
Fatigue swept over me. “I don’t know what to think anymore, Bucky. You know as well as I do that we keep things spotlessly clean around here. We’ve never had a problem like this before. Not until these Saardiscans showed up.”
“Earlier today, you thought Kilian might be responsible for Marcel’s troubles. I get the impression that’s changed?”
“I feel terrible about that,” I said. “The poor man.”
“At least we know he’s probably innocent of lacing the chocolate drink with GHB.”
“I knew Marcel’s accusation was far-fetched,” I said, “but I had to look into it for him.” I shook my head. “What a shame about Kilian. I really was starting to like the guy.”
“I was, too.” Bucky chucked me on the shoulder. “While they’re gone, maybe you and I can discuss what we plan to do about Cyan.”
We called in one of the cleaning teams and instructed them to go over every surface where any of us may have worked in the past few days, including pantries, other kitchens, and storage areas. We asked them to do the main kitchen first, with the understanding that Bucky and I would go over it ourselves and conduct a second cleaning before preparing any meals.
In the meantime, he and I had time to kill. “You hungry?” I asked.
“A little.”
“Me, too.” I washed and hand-dried two plates and some silverware, then made my way over to the refrigeration room, where I dug out a couple of apples and a few hunks of cheese. “Grab some of that bread we baked yesterday,” I called over my shoulder to him. “Ooh, we have leftover spinach salad here, too. I’ll bring that as well. Is there anything else you’d like?”
He came up behind me, baguette under one arm. He’d brought along some butter and two bottles of water. “A feast fit for a president’s . . . staff.”
We decided to find a quiet place to enjoy lunch, which is a fairly difficult thing to do in the White House. “Come on,” I said when the third spot we checked was occupied. “I know a secret place.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Bucky asked, but he trooped along, good-naturedly. “Where are we going?”
“The B-M,” I said, referring to the basement-mezzanine level. The area’s nickname wasn’t one we shared in public, for obvious reasons.
Arms loaded, we made our way eastward across the Center Hall until we reached the stairwell beyond the Library. I made a left and started down.
“Ollie,” Bucky said, behind me, “I’m looking at all this stuff we’re carrying.”
I spoke over my shoulder. “Yeah?”
“What if these items are what affected Marcel and Kilian?”
I stopped my trek down the stairs and turned to face him. “Cheese, bread, salad, fruit.” I let my gaze rest on each one as I listed them. “All of these supplies came in after Marcel fainted the first time, so they couldn’t have affected him.”
“What about his second episode?”
I thought about it. “We may have had the apples at that point, but none of the rest of this. I think we’re safe.”
“Safe enough to bet your life on it?”
“Don’t joke.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t.”
We continued down the stairs that curled down into a wide, half-round room at its base. This spot, and the adjacent rooms and washrooms, served as greenrooms for visiting performers. I could only imagine the famous people who’d traipsed through this place over the years, changing clothes, donning makeup, and rehearsing lines and songs.
We always kept this area open and ready for our next guests. With the sequester going on, however, this section of the home wouldn’t be used for quite a while. It was away from the busy areas of the house, and secluded. Perfect for us to talk and recollect ourselves after the morning’s tragedy.
“So,” Bucky said as we set all the food down on one of the tables, and began arranging it, “what do you plan to tell Marcel?”
I shook my head. “I really ought to call him, but I can’t. It’s too soon.”
“You seem to be taking Kilian’s death pretty hard for someone who barely knew the man.”
I stopped what I was doing. “He died in front of me. In my kitchen. And . . . I’d suspected him
of harming Marcel. At the same time, I had my doubts about Marcel’s accusations. Now, I don’t know what’s going on.”
“So you feel guilty for suspecting him.”
“Not really.”
“You don’t?” He sounded shocked.
“You think I should?” I gave a sad laugh. “I didn’t know Kilian. I mean, really know him. Marcel, however, is our friend, and you know how perceptive he is when it comes to taste. If he truly believes someone spiked his hot chocolate, I’m not about to scoff at the idea. Especially in our jobs, where keeping people safe is of paramount importance. Suspecting Kilian was the right thing for me to do.”
“Then what is getting to you?”
“I feel as though I’ve fallen down on the job somewhere along the line. There’s a connection here I’m not seeing. Kilian’s death ups the stakes and I’m worried that because I missed it the first time, someone else—another one of the Saardiscans, you, me, the president—could be next.”
Bucky sat, pulling the Gruyère from the plate and slicing off a slim chunk. “You could be overreacting, too.”
“I suppose.” Antsy, I remained standing, rearranging the food to make it look more attractive.
“Hey, it’s just the two of us here,” he said. “No need to make it fancy.”
He was right. I was futzing when I should have been relaxing. “My coping mechanism for nerves, I guess.”
With the Gruyère between his thumb and forefinger, he used the rest of his fingers to point to the chair opposite his. “Sit,” he said. “You always tell me that it helps to talk things through.”
He was right. I’d learned that from working with Gav.
The happenings from over the past week had been racing through my brain, and had jumbled atop one another to the point where I couldn’t see where one ended and another began.
“Good idea,” I said. “If we start with when they first arrived—”
I stopped short.
“What?” Bucky asked. “Did you figure it out?”
“The chocolate,” I said. “I meant to move it.”
I could tell from the look on Bucky’s face that he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“This morning,” I said, “I told you that Gav offered to have some of the chocolate tested for me, too. But I was talking about where I’d hidden it when the Saardiscans walked in.”
“You think they heard?”
I bit my lower lip. “I can’t be sure. I’d intended to move it to a new hiding place, just to be safe. In all the chaos, however, I didn’t have a chance.”
Bucky gestured toward the stairs with his eyes. “Go,” he said. “You won’t be able to relax until you confirm it’s still there.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
CHAPTER 19
I tried to ignore the deep pulse of anger building in my chest as I made my way back to the B-M–level dressing room. The chocolate was gone. Gone from what had been—to my mind, at least—an unequivocally secure hiding spot, the substance no longer offered a chance for answers. On the contrary: Its sudden disappearance created more questions.
Frustration weighing on me, I tried to picture what had happened to the small covered cup. Tried to come up with an innocuous reason for it having been moved. But I came up empty. Just like the shelf behind the Brussels sprouts.
My hands clenched into fists as I started down the stairs, eager to share the news with Bucky. I’d left him alone far longer than I’d anticipated. He’d understand, of course, once he heard the reason why.
Turning the curve in the stairwell, I was about to launch into an explanation for my delay, when I halted, mid-step.
“Margaret,” I said.
She and Bucky were seated at the small table. “Look who joined us, Ollie,” Bucky said with a pasted-on smile. “I guess we’re not the only people who know about this hiding spot.”
I continued to make my way down, but at a much slower pace. “I guess not.”
“Hello, Olivia,” Margaret said. Her tortoiseshell glasses were perfectly placed on her tiny nose, but she adjusted them just the same. “I hope you don’t mind me crashing your lunch.”
I pulled up another chair from a nearby table. “Not at all,” I said, lying through my teeth. I glanced down at the halved, crustless-bread sandwich she had before her. She’d centered it on an open napkin and, from the looks of it, had taken only two tiny bites. On another napkin she’d laid out a cellophane-wrapped package of carrot sticks. Next to it, a store-bought brownie.
She lifted half the sandwich and took a dainty bite. I guessed it was Braunschweiger.
“Looks delicious,” I said. I wasn’t lying. It had been years since I’d had what my mom called a liver sausage sandwich, and—despite the bad press the meat had garnered over the years—the smell brought back memories of childhood.
She gave a disinterested shrug, chewed the bite in six seconds flat, and took a sip of water. “Bringing my lunch saves a few dollars. It’s expensive to eat out every day.”
“Have some cheese,” Bucky said, pushing the platter toward us.
Disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to bring Bucky up to date until we were alone again, I sighed, and began helping myself.
Margaret patted her lips with yet another napkin. “Have you heard anything more about the dead guy?”
“Kilian?” I said, feeling oddly protective.
She gave a little smirk. “Unless there’s more than one dead Saardiscan today.”
Bucky chimed in, “We haven’t heard anything more. Have you?”
She took another bite—her pinkie fingers aloft—and shook her head.
“How do you like working for Sarge—er—Mr. Sargeant?”
Bless Bucky for keeping the conversation going.
She smiled for the first time. A genuine smile, all the way up to the eyes. “He’s the best boss I’ve ever had,” she said with absolutely no guile whatsoever.
“How long have you been in the workforce?” I asked.
She missed my sarcasm and, confused, answered, “All my adult life.”
Bucky sent me a look of amusement. “What makes him such a great boss?” he asked.
She put her sandwich down. “The man understands rules,” she said. Raising her fingers and wiggling them, she continued. “Of course, that’s to be expected here. Which is why I really love my job. So many people nowadays believe rules don’t pertain to them. I’m tired of it.”
“Where did you work before this?”
“I served as assistant to a high-ranking senator.” Her eyes took on a conspiratorial glow and she leaned forward. “The man was utterly disorganized and forever making excuses. I’m happy to be away from him.” Raising the napkin on her lap to pat her lips again, she added, “I’d rather not say who.”
“No problem,” I assured her. “We wouldn’t want you telling stories out of school.”
“If there’s one thing people can say about me it’s that I’m trustworthy.”
“I know,” I said sincerely. She’d helped me out several months ago when a situation had developed with national security at stake. From what I could tell, she’d never spoken a word of it to anyone, beyond those who needed to know.
“Has Mr. Sargeant gotten in touch with the Saardiscans about Kilian’s death?” I asked. I carved a slice out of one of the apples and popped it into my mouth.
She’d finished half her sandwich. “He did,” she said. “They were appalled, of course.”
“Do you know if there are any plans to recall the rest of the team?”
She’d taken another little bite, and shook her head instead of answering.
“Maybe they haven’t had time to make that decision yet,” Bucky said.
Margaret swallowed. “You mean cancel the visit? Oh, no. They definitely talked about that. The visiting chefs are staying at least until Ms. Freiberg’s visit.”
“That’s still on, too?”
She nodded. “Mr. Sargean
t was curious as to whether they would cancel this portion of Ms. Freiberg’s trip, but his counterpart in Saardisca said that there would be a revolt in his country if she wasn’t allowed to complete her itinerary.”
“I’m surprised,” I said.
Bucky nodded. “Me, too.”
Margaret hastened to add, “The Saardiscan official said that a final decision would depend on how Kilian died, of course. Right now they’re assuming natural causes.” She looked at me and then at Bucky. “You don’t think differently, do you?”
“Not at all.” Bucky answered so quickly that Margaret’s eyes narrowed.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
“Not a thing,” I said, striving to keep this conversation from spiraling into speculation. “We’re still reeling from the shock of Kilian’s death, and while the kitchen is undergoing maintenance, Bucky and I came here to discuss what to do next.” I directed my attention to the knife and apple in my hands. “We’re going to run into problems for Ms. Freiberg’s visit.”
Her eyes lit up. “Problems?”
“Don’t get me wrong, the biggest thing on my mind right now is Kilian’s family. They’re going to be devastated. But I can’t neglect my duty here, and with Marcel out and now Kilian removed, we don’t have a pastry chef. I hope Peter brings back one of Marcel’s assistants. Unless he does, I don’t know what we’re going to do for dessert for the candidate’s visit.”
Wrinkling her nose in a way that pushed her glasses tighter against her face, she asked, “You mean that with all your experience, you can’t come up with a suitable dessert?”
Bucky and I exchanged a glance. “Of course we could ‘come up’ with something,” I said, with a little snippiness in my voice, “but there are two things to keep in mind. One, dessert is not our forte. The expectation is that every single person who visits the president for dinner will be treated to the best we have to offer. Bucky and I can whip up amazing dinners, and our desserts would be fine, but not . . . not . . .”
