by Julie Hyzy
Cyan nodded. Bucky worked his jaw.
I lowered my voice. “And he was here. Doing what he loved most.”
Arms folded, Bucky finally met my eyes. “I don’t believe he was being careless.”
For once he and I agreed. “Neither do I.”
“That’s what they’re saying.”
“Who?”
At that moment, Special Agent-in-Charge Gavin stepped into the kitchen, stopping just as he entered, holding his hands behind his back, surveying us. “Good morning,” he said.
I started to make introductions, but he held up an index finger. His other hand swung around, holding a leather portfolio. “As you were,” Gavin said. He eased over to where Agda was working, smiling as though engrossed in what she was doing. “Pretend I’m not here.”
Oh, sure. Like that was possible. I focused my attention back on Bucky and spoke quietly. “Who’s saying Gene was careless?”
Bucky lasered his gaze on Special Agent Gavin. “His guys.”
Realizing our “Kumbaya” moment was over, I sent Cyan and Bucky back to their stations and returned to my shredding, my attention taken not by the hunk of cheese in my hand, but by the chunk of agent in my kitchen.
Agda offered Gavin a tentative smile. He smiled back. This happened several times while he stood next to her. She may not have known who he was, or what a man in a suit was doing in our kitchen, but she was clearly uncomfortable. She inched away. The two were close in height, and every time she looked at him, he nodded encouragingly. Whether he was trying to ingratiate himself here because he was on a get-to-know-the-staff mission, or because he wanted to ask my new assistant chef out on a date, I didn’t know.
I was about to break up this little meeting of the eyes when he spoke. “That smells delicious. What is it you’re making?”
Agda nodded, smiled, and continued to knead the dough.
Gavin’s grip tightened on his portfolio. He used his index finger to point. “What is it?” he asked again. “It looks good.”
Agda kneaded harder, nodded harder. Her cheeks pinkened and her brows shot up.
Bucky exhaled loudly. “She’s Swedish,” he said. “She might not understand.”
“ Sweden?” Gavin asked. “I visited Göteborg last year.”
“Göteborg!” Agda brightened. She exploded at once, chattering, speaking in lilting, excited, rapid Swedish, making me wonder if the famous Muppet might not have a human cousin counterpart after all.
“Sorry,” Gavin said, backing away. Then to me: “She doesn’t understand English?”
“Not much,” Bucky and I said in unison.
Perplexed, Gavin asked, “Then how does she-”
I’d had enough of Gavin’s kitchen inspection, and I was still more than a little annoyed with his belittling me on-stage yesterday. This was my territory and unless he was ready to start sniffing for bombs himself, I wanted him out of here. “Was there something you needed?”
Realizing she didn’t have anyone to talk with after all, Agda’s shoulders slumped and she moved back into her kneading rhythm.
Gavin licked his lips. “Your department was inadvertently left off the schedule for today’s classes. I’m here to ensure you take the necessary steps to get all your employees to training.” He shot a thumb toward Agda. “I don’t know what to do about her. Don’t you see her lack of communication as a security threat?”
“My job is to bring the best food to the table every time the president, his family, and his guests sit down to dine. Isn’t it your job to ensure our safety?”
He waited a beat before answering. When he did, his words were clipped. “I’m glad you realize that. Makes things easier for me.” His chin came up, surveying us once again. “We will call you out one at a time so as not to unduly burden your staff. Since there are four of you-”
“Seven.”
Our man here didn’t like being interrupted. Maybe that was why I enjoyed doing it. I explained: “Our pastry chef and his assistant are elsewhere at the moment. And we have another chef joining us later today. But the new chef and Agda”-I pointed-“are SBA chefs, which means they are not permanent employees of the White House. I don’t know if they should be counted. Does that make a difference?”
“How long will they be in service here?”
“As long as we need them. Given that we have Thanksgiving tomorrow, the Mothers’ Luncheon on Friday, and a couple of other events over the next week, I see them both staying until at least next Thursday. If the social calendar changes, I may keep them on longer.”
Gavin shook his head. “Neither will be required to participate in our training sessions. Just send your permanent employees down. Here’s the schedule.” He pulled a copy from his portfolio and wiped the already sparkling countertop clean before he put it down. “All personnel are required to attend three sessions, designated A, B, and C. We will commence this afternoon and we expect to have everyone sufficiently trained by the weekend.”
“This weekend?”
Gavin spread his hands and gave me a look that said, “Duh.”
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
I bit back a retort. “No,” I answered, deciding right then that I’d wait until Saturday to send any of us in for training. I’d consult with Marcel, of course, but I knew he’d agree. We faced an already hindered, overpacked schedule, and the next two days would be backbreakers. There was no way I could spare even one person. “How long are the classes?” I asked.
“Depends on class participation. Could be as short as an hour, could be as long as three. If people catch on quickly, we’ll move quickly.” Holding up a finger, he said, “But we can only move as fast as the slowest man. Er… woman.” He smiled, like he expected me to laugh.
I picked up the schedule, glanced at it, and placed it with the rest of my important papers in the already overflowing computer area. “Got it,” I said. “Thanks.”
He tugged at his collar. He hadn’t expected to be dismissed.
Recovering, he nodded. “As you were,” he said, then left.
I WAS HEADING TOWARD THE FLORAL DEPARTMENT, just passing the basement bowling alley, when Curly Sheridan emerged from the long hall that led west to the carpenter shop. Manny shuffled behind him. They both wore workpants and chambray shirts with rolled-up sleeves. Manny was only a few years older than I was, but he seemed to have aged in the past couple of days. He grunted hello and turned away, but I stopped Curly. “How’s your wife?” I asked.
He squinted at me. “How do you know about my wife?”
“Gene…” I started to say. My voice faltered. For the briefest moment I’d forgotten all of yesterday’s horror. “Gene… He told me you’d been called to the hospital. Is she all right?” I’d met Mrs. Sheridan a couple times. Sweet woman. Tiny and dark-haired, she didn’t talk much. I attributed that to her being foreign-born and the fact that she was married to truculent Curly.
He grimaced. “She’s having a rough time.”
I didn’t know quite what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
Not for the first time did I question Curly’s nickname. The man was mostly bald, with a long scar like a J around his left ear, stretching up and across his shiny pate. It dawned on me suddenly that with Gene gone, Curly was next in command. Manny mumbled, letting Curly know that he’d be upstairs in the Blue Room. Curly started to leave, too, but I stopped him with a hand to his bare forearm. He reacted as if burned.
“What do you want?”
“What really happened yesterday?” I asked. “I mean, Gene was always so careful…”
The squint came back. “Why you asking me?”
“You know these things. You understand them better than I do.”
His perpetual scowl deepened and he shook his head, blowing out an angry breath. “Why does everybody think I know what happened there? I wasn’t with him. I wasn’t there. You were there.”
I felt suddenly small, and the words came out bef
ore I could stop myself from asking, “Could I have done something more? Could I have saved him if I’d done something differently?”
The scowl moved, fractionally. Enough for me to wonder if he harbored any sympathy at all, or if he was just trying to decide if I was a crackpot.
“Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling everybody, including those explosives guys. What are they, anyway? Secret Service? Or military?”
I shook my head. “Not sure.”
“Whatever.” He took a plaid handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped around the scar. “Gene hit something hot, that’s for sure. I’m working on figuring out exactly what happened. That’s my job today. That, and getting a million other things done.” He grabbed at his empty shirt pocket, as though reaching for phantom cigarettes. Another grimace. “Gene was a big guy, and if you want to know what I think, I’m guessing he leaned up against something metal when he hit the power. He knew better, yeah, and there shouldn’t’ve been enough juice to kill him, but he was using a bad drill. And Gene was always sweating. I think it just all added up to him being careless.”
“You really think so?”
Taking offense to my skeptical tone, he said, “As a matter of fact I do, missy. You asked your question. You got my answer. Now go take care of the food handling and let me do the job they pay me for.”
CHAPTER 7
WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE KITCHEN, RAFE had arrived. But we had other company as well. I stopped short. “Sean,” I said in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
Sean Baxter was wearing a white apron over his charcoal pants and pale gray shirt, standing at the center workstation, slicing red peppers. “Hey, I was wondering when you’d show up. Look,” he said, “they put me to work.”
Cyan gave a one-shoulder shrug. “He wanted something to do,” she said with a grin. “I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
Just wait till security-crazed Gavin sees this, I thought. But then again, Sean was cleared for much more classified stuff than tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner. If we couldn’t trust the president’s own nephew, who could we trust?
Rafe called out, “Hey, Ollie, how’s it going?”
I waved a hello. “Welcome to the team,” I said to both of them. Still trying to understand Sean’s presence, I turned to him. “What brings you down here?”
He fixed his attention on a pepper, giving it a good slice even as his cheeks rivaled the vegetable for redness. “Aunt Elaine and I were going over some of her decisions. You know, that financial stuff we talked about in the bunker yesterday.”
He didn’t elaborate, but behind him, Bucky raised his eyebrows and shot me a look that underscored his earlier comment about “cozying up to the First Lady.”
I ignored him.
Sean continued. “She was called away and will probably be busy for about an hour. I had some time to kill, so…”
All I could think about was the time crunch we were under. “Are you sure you want to be down here?” I hoped to talk him out of helping. The last thing I needed was an unskilled amateur gumming up our plans for the day. It was one thing to have too many chefs spoiling the broth. It was another to have one who didn’t speak the language. Add an assistant who didn’t know his way around the kitchen and we’d be lucky if we managed to create any broth to spoil.
“Yeah,” he said, concentrating on the peppers again. “I’m just about done here-so if you’ve got anything else…”
I thought about it. One of the surprises I’d discovered when I took over the position of executive chef was that I did less actual cooking than I had in the past. While I was certainly involved in the preparation of every meal, my duties were to create menus both for the family and for events. I also had a number of administrative issues to juggle, not unlike those of the director of a small company. In addition to managing each staff member’s vacation time and sick days, I had to sign off on purchases, attend meetings, coordinate with other departments, and nurture my subordinates’ growth as professional chefs. The administrative stuff took a lot more time than I’d expected, and I began to see why Henry had come in early and stayed late most days. That was what I’d been doing myself since he’d left.
Part of making this kitchen work was learning how to delegate. Why not put Sean to work? I didn’t want to appear ungrateful. I reasoned that another pair of hands was another pair of hands. And we needed a lot of help if we were to get both big events plated on time with the panache to which Mrs. Campbell had become accustomed.
“Cyan,” I said, “have you cleaned the shrimp?”
She gave me a mischievous look. “Not yet.”
“Why don’t you show Sean how that’s done?”
“Sure,” Cyan said, amused. I wanted to explain to her that I wasn’t punishing him for helping out-shrimp cleaning was a job I abhorred-but rather it was a task that gave Sean a wide berth for error. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ruin things too badly. Once he got the hang of it, we’d have plenty of shrimp for our cocktail display. If any were messed up, we could chop those and use them for other purposes. This was a safe bet.
“Shrimp, huh?” Sean asked. “Is this for tomorrow?”
“Sure is. I hope you like it.”
“One of my favorites.” When he smiled at me, I felt my breath catch. There was that sparkle in his eyes that I usually saw only in Tom’s. “Of course, I’m happy with anything you make, Ollie.”
I didn’t know what to say. Sean was a sweet guy. I liked him, even though I didn’t know him particularly well. But he wasn’t Tom. “Thanks,” I said, moving in the opposite direction.
Bucky and Rafe were conversing near the stove as I inched toward my computer station. Between the two men sat a large pan of cranberries, fresh from the oven. All the cranberries had popped and the tangy, sweet smell permeated the area, making me feel for the first time that Thanksgiving really was just one day away.
Agda had proven to be the quickest knife in the kitchen, and she was now chopping vegetables at the center island, full speed.
By the time Sean had followed Cyan around to the refrigerators, Agda had scooped up what was left of his peppers and had all of them chopped before Sean and Cyan returned with two huge bowls of raw shrimp. Sean caught my eye as he settled in to work. “I’m really glad to help out,” he said.
“And we’re glad to have you.” Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the truth, but Sean seemed so… sincere… that I couldn’t have said anything else.
I sat on the stool at the computer station with my back to the bustling staff, Gavin’s paperwork on my lap. Logging in, I immediately accessed the training schedule. He wasn’t kidding when he said we’d been left out. There were enough training spots still open for all of us, but most of them were at times that conflicted with meal preparations. That figured. What was considered prime time for us was prime time for the rest of the staff, too.
The soft sounds of a busy kitchen-muted clatters, bumping, stirring-served to soothe my frazzled nerves. For as much as I’d tried to put the accident, the bomb scare, and the next two days’ events in perspective, I realized how impossible a task that was. There was no perspective on situations like these.
A warm, yeasty scent rose up and I turned long enough to watch Agda pull a perfect tray of rolls from the nearby oven, her cheeks red from the heat. She caught my glance and smiled, her pride evident.
Back to the computer. Marcel would take care of his own training, I knew, and that of his assistant. I just had to worry about my own staff. When I’d finished placing Cyan and Bucky in A, B, and C classes that minimized impact on the kitchen, I set to the unenviable task of assigning myself.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a whole lot of choices left.
As much as it pained me to do so, I took one of the open slots set up Thanksgiving night. I reasoned that dinner would be complete, Cyan and Bucky would have gone home to rest up for the next day’s hoopla, and I would probably be staying late after dinner to clean
up and prepare for the next day’s luncheon. Tom had plans to go home for the holiday, so that left me free. We hadn’t yet made the leap of meeting each other’s family. I glanced toward Sean and wondered, idly, if by this time next year Tom and I would be willing to come forward with our relationship.
Regardless, I was destined to be by myself this year, so I might as well sign up for the security class. Let Cyan and Bucky enjoy the holiday with their families. And maybe, if I was lucky, old Gav would be sitting at the head of his own dinner table and I’d get someone else teaching the training this time.
Sean interrupted. “Ollie?”
I half turned. He’d made little progress on the shrimp-shelling, but he didn’t seem overwhelmed. Yet.
“Hang on,” I said. Returning to my task, I reserved two more open spots, one each on Friday and Saturday. There. Done.
With a flourish, I clicked the file closed.
“What’s that?” Sean asked.
I told him.
He scratched the side of his face. “Would you mind me borrowing your computer for a minute? I didn’t check my e-mail yet today.”
“Sure,” I said, thinking it an odd request. “Let me get you to the Internet.”
Within seconds I had him set up and gave him some privacy. “Let me know when you’re done.”
Although we all shared the same computer in the kitchen, it felt strange to allow an outsider-even if that outsider was the president’s nephew-access. But what harm could he do? Change the ingredients in one of our recipes? Unlikely.
I kept myself busy for about a quarter hour, until Sean raised his head. “Hey, Ollie,” he said.
“What’s up?” I asked, coming over to him.
“I just got an e-mail from Aunt Elaine. Treyton Blanchard is bringing his assistant instead of his wife to Thanksgiving.”
“That’s right.”
He closed out of the Internet connection and headed back to his prior task. “You knew about that?”
“Sure. We’re always informed about guest changes.”