Dead to the Last Drop

by Cleo Coyle

  “Me?” Helen looked confused. “Heavens, no. I assumed Abby wanted to keep her music private, and I respected that . . .”

  I sat back, still bothered by the mystery of that first invitation. Somebody wanted her to play at our coffeehouse. The question of who remained unanswered. But I was finding answers to other questions; and as the two friends continued to talk, I finally learned why Helen first contacted Jeevan Varma.

  “Abby asked me to use my expertise as a historian to find out what happened to her father—her real father.”

  Ninety-one

  “YOU have to understand, Ms. Cosi. My dad died overseas in a bombing. That’s all I was ever told. He didn’t marry my mother, and she never wants to talk about him, not even to me . . .”

  She leaned forward. “Then a few months ago, my mother finally let something slip. She said if the truth ever got out about my father, it would be a terrible scandal. I had no idea what she meant—and when I pressed her, she refused to say anything more. That’s when I went to Helen and asked her to research the truth about him.”

  Abby paused and looked down at her hands in her lap. “I still remember the day . . . right after my dad died, going into my room and finding all of his photos missing. I was only eight years old. I cried and cried . . .”

  “That’s so cruel . . .” I whispered. How could anyone do that to a little girl?

  “I can barely recall what my dad looked like, sounded like. But I remember that he was a loving man and a very good musician. He taught me to play the piano. Do you know the first song I learned?”

  “‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’?”

  A sad smile came over her. “That was the second song. The first was ‘Chopsticks.’”

  I studied her a moment. “Is that why you played ‘Chopsticks’ on national television?”

  She nodded. “I was furious with my mother for forcing me to perform alone on that show. Then she announced my wedding. And out marched Preston! I didn’t see any of it coming.” She wrung her hands. “It was my own little rebellion, playing ‘Chopsticks’ like that. And I let loose on my mother, too. But it cost me.”

  “Cost you?” I frowned. “How did it cost you, Abby?”

  “My mother said my behavior proved that I was ‘unstable’ again. She decided that all the publicity I got because of my performance was now a security risk. So I’m not allowed to go back to class. I attend from the White House, using Skype, and I’ll be taking my final exams here, too. My mother even hired a nurse.”

  “For what?”

  “Medications. I take them three times a day, like clockwork. If I don’t, Mother’s threatened to send me back to the hospital—the one that took care of me after I . . .” She held up her wrist, the one with the terrible scars.

  I leaned toward her. “Stan is worried about you, Abby. He wants to see you.”

  “I know, but Stan can’t come here. Preston works in the West Wing. If he saw Stan’s name on the daily guest list, it would be a disaster. I’ve tried to tell my mother about my feelings for Stan, but she says I’m talking crazy. She says, ‘You don’t marry boys like Stan. You play with them, sure, but you don’t marry them.’ She says Preston is devoted to me, but Stan is just infatuated with the idea of being with a President’s daughter. She says I’ll be very sorry if I betray Preston and throw him out for some ‘drummer boy.’ She says musicians aren’t interested in being saddled with a wife and kids—and the truth is, Ms. Cosi, I do want to be married and have children. I want a family of my own.”

  “Whoa, hold on,” I said. “How do you know Stanley McGuire isn’t interested in those things, too?”

  “He never talks to me about things like that. I mean, he says he wants me to be happy. But everyone says that, and . . .” Once again, she stared at the scars on her wrist. “I’m not sure I even know how.”

  “Of course you know how. You’re happy when you play music. I’ve seen it. And you looked very happy onstage with Stan ten days ago. When you kissed him, you were beaming.”

  “That’s because I love him. But I love my family, too, and I have a duty to them . . .”

  There it is again, the Stepford Abby voice.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” I assured her, “and it’s noble of you to think of your family. But I believe they’re taking advantage of you. I also know how difficult it is to watch your child make her own decisions. But that’s what adulthood is, Abby, making choices for yourself, standing up for who you truly are, not what others bully or manipulate or guilt you into being. Adulthood is filled with trials and burdens and hard decisions. But you’ll never find peace and happiness, you’ll never meet your true self or free your full potential if you’re hobbled by what people think, or define your limits by what others prescribe for you.”

  Tears welled in Abby’s eyes. “I know you’re right, Ms. Cosi . . . but with my past . . . and my mother . . . and the army of security . . . and the medications . . . you don’t understand what I’m up against . . . I’m feeling so confused . . .”

  I took her hand, the one attached to that scarred wrist, and held it in both of mine. “Would it help you to sort out your feelings if you could see Stan again, face-to-face? Spend a little time with him?”

  “Are you kidding?” Her foggy eyes instantly brightened. “I would die to see Stan!”

  “Then come to the Smithsonian party next Saturday night. He’ll be there.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Then I’ll be there, too. I won’t miss it!”

  A loud KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK made us all jump.

  “Ms. Parker? Are you in there?”

  The tone was deep and authoritative. Even through the thick door and the drone of the C-SPAN lecture, I recognized the voice of Agent Sharpe of the United States Secret Service.

  Ninety-two

  LIKE a rabbit caught in the hunter’s sights, Abby froze, dark eyes wide.

  Helen moved to answer the door, but Abby grabbed her arm.

  “I’ll go,” she said.

  A few steps later, the President’s daughter turned and whispered, “Thank you, Ms. Cosi, for helping me and Stan. Thank you . . .”

  “It’s almost time for your next class, Ms. Parker,” Agent Sharpe informed her in the doorway. “And Mr. Emory has been looking for you—”

  “Honey-bunny, there you are!”

  Preston Emory’s golden good looks moved into the frame. He hooked Abby’s waist, pulled her close, and kissed her cheek. She smiled blandly.

  “What are you up to in there, my darling?” He peeked in at us.

  Abby quickly pulled him away. “You know I enjoy visiting with Mrs. Trainer,” she said, voice diminishing as they moved down the majestic hall. “She knows so much about history. I always learn something when I stop by her office . . .”

  Helen rose to reclose the door, jumping slightly when she found Agent Sharpe still lurking there.

  Like Preston, the Secret Service agent peered into the room, but his gaze was more than curious. He looked openly suspicious.

  “Hello again, Ms. Cosi,” Sharpe said. “What are you up to in there?”

  “We’re working on a contribution to a Smithsonian exhibition,” Helen quickly replied, frozen smile in place. “And we must get back to it. Thank you, Agent Sharpe!”

  Helen closed the door, practically in his face. Then she stood, ear against wood, until Sharpe’s steps receded.

  With a frustrated shake of her head, she went to Pete’s computer and selected another online lecture—

  The Oval Office is the official office of the President of the United States. Located in the White House’s West Wing, the office has a unique elliptical shape. Join us now, as we will explore the history and meaning of that shape . . .”

  Helen’s frozen smile melted as she strode back to me and sat down.<
br />
  “Get this flash drive out of here,” she rasped.

  I picked up the small, plastic rectangle and moved it toward the jacket of my little blue suit.

  “Not in your pocket,” she whispered. “Somewhere safer.”

  My eyebrows rose as she pointed down her neckline.

  “You want me to hide it in my . . . ?”

  She nodded.

  With a shrug, I did as she asked. Then I asked her to tell me everything she knew about Abby’s father and Jeevan Varma—

  Two dead men.

  Ninety-three

  “ANDY Aamir Ferro, that was the name of Abby’s real father,” Helen began. “She remembered her mother calling him Andy in this country and Aamir when they visited him in Morocco.”

  “What was he doing over there?”

  “From what I’ve been able to dig up, he was a young professor at a local university. His own mother was an American who taught at several schools in France, including the Sorbonne. His father was a French national of Arabic descent. Both are deceased. Andy/Aamir was born in Virginia, making him a U.S. citizen. But he quickly became interested in world music, and he studied in France, Spain, and Morocco, as well as here in DC.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He was killed in the 2003 bombings in Casablanca, the worst act of terrorism in Morocco’s history. There was a hearing about the death of Andy/Amir and I reviewed some redacted testimony by a deputy secretary of the State Department—”

  “Redacted? You mean . . .”

  “Anything deemed classified was blacked out.”

  “I see.”

  “But what bothered me was the terseness of the deputy secretary’s testimony. It was in such shorthand that I knew he’d had offline discussions before he’d come to the hearing room. So I decided to review his e-mail correspondence with the head of the committee—Senator Parker. I used an FOIA request to look up the deputy secretary’s archived e-mails for the entire month before the hearing—”

  “FOIA?”

  “Freedom of Information Act—it’s used by journalists, historians, and citizens to request documents from the government and review the work of our public officials. I wanted to learn more about the deputy secretary’s testimony, but guess what? When the archived e-mails arrived, there was a black hole, a terribly suspicious one. Rose Mary Woods suspicious . . .”

  “Rose Mary Woods? President Nixon’s secretary? You think someone deleted the e-mails?”

  “Yes. As I said, classified documents are redacted when they’re released, the sensitive information blacked out. But these e-mails weren’t redacted. They were missing completely.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I contacted the Office of the CIO at the State Department with my concerns about the missing e-mails, and Mr. Jeevan Varma got back to me. For years, he’s worked in IT for State, and I was sure he could help me locate the e-mails. But he did not want to meet at the White House—he was emphatic about it. So I suggested meeting at the Village Blend on the night of one of Abby’s Open Mike performances. I thought, If this man has information, I’ll call Abby over and we can all quietly talk. But he claimed to know nothing of Abby’s father or why the e-mails were missing!”

  “Why do you think he lied to you? And why meet in the first place?”

  “Now that I know he was hiding that computer flash drive, I think Mr. Varma must have thought one of two things: Either I was planning to offer him money for the missing e-mails. Or I was setting up a sting to have him arrested for deleting them. Either way, he had to play it safe. And that was very smart. He didn’t want the evidence on him. But he wanted it close by. I remember he was already sitting at that table near the wall when I arrived.”

  “Why do you think he kept it there? Why not take it with him?”

  “When our meeting was over, I didn’t leave. I told him I was waiting to say hello to the President’s daughter before her Secret Service detail escorted her back to college. After that, he left very quickly. Either he was planning to come back to retrieve it, or he was planning another meeting. Perhaps with a journalist to sell the information. Or with someone else who would pay him handsomely for it—a rival of the President, for instance, who would use it to harm him politically.”

  “Helen, how secret are these e-mails, really? I mean, if this digital discussion took place between Senator Parker and the deputy secretary of State, then why didn’t you simply request to review the missing e-mails among Parker’s archives?”

  “Because they don’t exist.”

  “What?”

  “For years, officials have been conducting business using private accounts, which means there is no transparency, no answering to the public, and no record for historians.”

  She frowned in frustration. “Rose Mary Woods is infamous for erasing eighteen minutes of a crucial Watergate tape—‘the eighteen-minute gap.’ What much of the American public doesn’t realize is that there is a thirty-year gap when it comes to archiving government e-mails. And Senator Parker was part of that. The deputy secretary, on the other hand, followed the law, clearly stated in the Federal Records Act, and used the government servers, which allowed his e-mails to be archived. As a result, the only historic record of the e-mail discussion about Abby’s father is right here, in this file, and, well—”

  She pointed to my bra.

  “Clare, we don’t yet know who killed Mr. Varma, so do not hand that flash drive to anyone in the federal government. Only give it to the Metro DC detective assigned to Mr. Varma’s murder case.”

  “There is no detective assigned. But I trust Sergeant Price. He’s been questioning me and talking to Mr. Varma’s family.”

  “Good. Very good.”

  “What about this secret file you’ve labeled Bathsheba? Can you decipher what the two men are discussing and why?”

  “I recognize a name in these e-mails from my years here at the White House—the previous President’s chief of staff. He lives in Virginia now, and I’m going to reach out to him to see if he’ll speak with me. It will all be off the record, of course, but I can and will do the research I’m trained to do as a historian to put the pieces of this story together. Then I’m going to tell Abigail. This is the People’s House, not the Parkers’ or any one President’s, and I am the custodian of its history. That girl is an adult. She came to me in search of answers about her own history, and she deserves to know the truth.”

  “But, Helen, from what you’re telling me, that truth got Mr. Varma killed.”

  “That’s why we have to be careful, you and I.”

  “Then I’ll take this flash drive right to the police precinct.”

  “No, Clare, don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you may be under surveillance. We don’t yet know who murdered Mr. Varma, and we don’t want this evidence to ‘disappear’ once it’s in police hands. Just go about your business, as usual, and ask Sergeant Price to come to the coffeehouse. There’s nothing suspicious about a police officer stopping for coffee.”

  “No, I guess—”

  “Shhh. I hear voices . . .”

  . . . and over the years, Presidents have decorated the Oval Office to suit their personal tastes . . .

  Beyond the online lecture, I heard voices, too—a man and a woman. When we realized it was simply Pete and Beatrice returning to their desks, we sat back with relief.

  Helen shoved Bathsheba into a desk drawer and quickly flipped open books. “Let’s get on with our other work, Clare.”

  “Fine,” I whispered as Helen’s staff burst into the room, “just tell me how long you think it will take to get some answers?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll be sure to see you at the Smithsonian party. I’ll update you then . . .”

  . . . and because of its closed elliptical shape
, all sound is sent to that focal point in the room. By design, then, the President can sit at his desk and hear whatever anyone in his office is saying, even when whispering . . .

  Ninety-four

  THE doors to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History opened at eight o’clock sharp. By eight thirty, most of the invited guests had passed through security. Now, at nine, the party was in full swing, and I was nervously watching and waiting for the First Family to arrive.

  The venue was Flag Hall, located at the entrance to the Star-Spangled Banner gallery, home to the flag that inspired our national anthem. The walls of this vast space were magically illuminated with shifting colors—electric blue to ivory white to dramatic rose red. Laser lights projected giant stars onto this changing canvas, as well as the ceiling and running balconies, where guests could view the festivities below.

  On the far end of the room, an eighteen-piece orchestra played beneath a shimmering replica of our U.S. flag, built from hundreds of reflective tiles.

  As for the Village Blend’s contribution, I’d set up a wine and spirits bar, an espresso bar, and a drinkable exhibit I called Good to the Last American Drop, where guests could enjoy four-ounce sample cups of Matt’s specially sourced coffees from Hawaii as well as Central and South America.

  Tonight’s guests would also have access to all four levels of “America’s Attic,” including a first look at the museum’s Coffee in America exhibition and the Coffee and the Presidency sidebar that Helen and I had worked on.

  Among our star artifacts were Teddy Roosevelt’s “bathtub”-sized coffee cup; Jacqueline Kennedy’s sterling silver coffee service; the last cup Abe Lincoln drank coffee from before leaving for Ford’s Theatre; and the coffee urn, on loan from its home at Monticello, an exquisite example of Parisian silversmithing, purchased by Thomas Jefferson in 1789.

  I’d even found a working replica of Jefferson’s urn to serve our Great Americas blend, which I’d created expressly for this event.