Affairs of Steak (24 page)

As the dark sky turned from inky blue to gray, I thought about how hard it had been to sleep last night. In an effort to keep our secret safe, Gav had waited in his car in the apartment’s lot until my security detail arrived. Before he’d left, he’d put his arm around my shoulders and said he wished we could have gotten that chance to talk. He promised we would. Soon.

When he was gone, I’d wandered back to the space where my computer had been. Empty. Exactly how I was feeling right now. Gav had moved quickly to protect me. He’d done everything in his power to ensure my safety and he’d even
been willing to expose himself by ordering the guard until I’d offered to do it.

So why did I still feel left out of his life?

Staring out the windows, sitting in the backseat of this utilitarian sedan with a driver who didn’t talk, didn’t help my frame of mind. All it did was make me feel more alone.

As soon as I arrived in the kitchen and checked the day’s schedule, I realized Peter and I had a meeting planned at eleven regarding the secretary of state’s party. Not for the first time did I think how odd it was to be planning such a festive event while the White House was in official mourning for its murdered staff members. But events of this magnitude didn’t plan themselves and if we expected to have everything in place a month from now, we needed to keep moving forward.

With an eye on the schedule, I tapped a finger against my lips. A Cabinet breakfast had been scheduled for nine, which meant I could be free to visit the calligraphy department by nine-thirty. Despite Cyan’s and Bucky’s warnings, it wouldn’t kill me to go talk to Lynn on Sargeant’s behalf. Sargeant wasn’t a nice man, but he wasn’t a careless one. If the Baumgartners’ name had been accidentally dropped from the guest list, I knew it couldn’t have been his fault. And if there was one thing that kept
me
moving forward, it was curiosity when pieces of a puzzle didn’t add up.

Bucky arrived just a few minutes after I did, Cyan shortly after that. We were preparing breakfast for the president’s Cabinet, a task the three of us had handled more times than I could count. I let myself get lost in the moment. Our team worked together in a companionable, easy silence. Comfortable with one another, good at our jobs, and confident that our teammates had our backs, we had produced hundreds—thousands—of meals that had been served to world leaders. Most important, we’d done all this by ourselves. It felt so good to have Virgil gone. I bit my lip. Who knew what trouble he was stirring up for us during his stint at Camp David?

As I pressed shredded potatoes into the bottom of a
skillet with a spatula, I thought about Henry, who’d made his famous hash browns a staple in the White House. It was due to Henry’s leadership that Bucky, Cyan, and I worked so well together. He had been teacher, mentor, and almost surrogate dad to all three of us. I turned the hash browns so that they’d be brown and crispy on both sides, considering where I might be falling short. What could I do to foster the same sort of collegiality Henry did, with Virgil in the mix?

It wasn’t enough to complain that Virgil didn’t fit in with the rest of us. While it was true that I’d worked hard to make him feel welcome, I had to admit to having concerns about being muscled out for the top job. Could I have unintentionally projected my unease and alienated him?

As breakfast was completed, plated, and gone—sent to the president and his advisors via the hands of our trusty butlers—I vowed to do a better job in creating a more cohesive team. It wouldn’t be easy, but I pledged to plan while Virgil was gone.

Warmed by the feeling of trying to make the world a better place, and remembering that Sargeant had stepped out of his comfort zone to talk to Milton on my behalf, I set out for the calligraphers’ office to talk to the elusive Lynn. Sargeant and I had never gotten along, but if I could smooth out our working relationship, it could benefit us both. Just like I hoped to do with Virgil.

Flush with confidence and brimming with good cheer, I made my way to the East Wing and up to the calligraphers’ office. It was a sizeable room, filled with desks and hunched-over artists working at slanted top desks. Bright adjustable lamps illuminated each individual workspace. “Hello,” I said to four backs.

They all looked up. The head of the department, Emily, waved a pen at me. “Hey, Ollie, what can I do for you?”

“Could I have a minute of Lynn’s time?” I asked.

The girl’s head jerked up. “Me?” she squeaked, pointing her pen to herself. With a panicked look at Emily, she raised her shoulders. “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just need to ask you about invitations.”

Emily waved Lynn toward me. “Ollie’s great,” she said. “Please do whatever you can to help her out.”

Lynn put down her pen and followed me out into the hall. “You’re the chef, aren’t you?” she asked. “I don’t understand what you need from me.”

“I’m acting as liaison for the secretary of state’s party, but I’m not completely in charge, thank goodness,” I said with a smile to put her at ease. Skittish, she was like a malnourished, abandoned kitten. With pale hair, close-set eyes, and petite features, she was also just about as unimposing. “Mr. Sargeant has a question. About the guest list.”

She blinked those teeny eyes. “What does he want? He scares me.”

He scares a lot of people
, I thought. “Nothing to be afraid of. There’s a problem we can’t figure out and we need your help. Do you have any idea how Mr. and Mrs. Baumgartner got dropped from the guest list?”

“They’re not missing now,” she said quickly. “We added their names back. Right away. Not a single person is missing from the guest list. We double- and triple-checked. We made sure.”

Lynn seemed to think I was looking to point the finger at her. “Great,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is how Sar—Mr. Sargeant skipped the Baumgartners’ name when he sent you the list. He can’t remember making that adjustment, but clearly the file was changed. I’m working backward to figure it out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me just get a couple of things straight. It was you who noticed that the Baumgartners were missing, right?”

Her pale face colored and she looked away. “Well, kind of.”

“Kind of,” I repeated. “If you didn’t notice, who did?”

Her cheeks were bright red and she stammered as she explained, “I like to get in super early to get my work done in the quiet,” she said. “I work better when I’m all by myself.”

I waited.

“I’m just a calligrapher. I do the invitations and cards and whatever they assign to me. I don’t go looking for why we’re sending them and I really don’t pay attention as to who gets what. I just make sure that my work is good.”

“Go on.” By her own admission, she didn’t pay attention to guest lists. Why had she done so this time?

“When I came in the other morning, there was a sticky note on my overhead light. It read that I should cross-check the guest list for the secretary of state’s party against the current one. I thought Emily left the note for me, even though it didn’t really look like her handwriting.” She lifted her shoulders. “So I cross-checked. We print out hard copies of every guest list. It’s not a real green way to do things, but it makes it a whole lot easier for us calligraphers.”

“I understand,” I said, just to keep her talking.

“When I compared the two—line by line—I saw that one of the names was missing. I went to Emily and told her she was right about a discrepancy. Except she didn’t know what I was talking about. She hadn’t left the note for me to find. Either way, we made sure to fix the problem.”

“So who left the note?”

“Emily asked around, but nobody owned up to it.”

“That’s odd.”

Lynn’s cheeks still burned bright red. “Emily gave me credit for finding the mistake. I guess this would have been a really bad one if that Baumgartner couple hadn’t gotten an invitation, but it really wasn’t me. It was like a guardian angel came in and left it to make me look good.”

“You did double-check,” I said, “that’s what counts. If you hadn’t, there would have been problems. So take credit for that.”

“That’s the same thing Emily says.”

“She’s right.” Lynn’s admission still didn’t explain how Sargeant’s file had been changed. “Can I ask you about the file you received? The one where the Baumgartners’ name was missing?”

“What about it?”

“Was there anything unusual about its delivery? I mean, did it seem as though perhaps someone other than Mr. Sargeant sent it to you?”

“I don’t get files from Mr. Sargeant. Emily gets all that stuff and assigns projects to us, but she keeps us updated on what the whole department is doing. According to Emily, Mr. Sargeant put a message in the latest e-mail that noted this was the revised final. That’s why we planned to use it.” She bit her bottom lip. “Until I found that sticky note.”

“Thanks, Lynn. You’ve been a lot of help.”

Her expression perked up. “Really?”

She’d actually created more questions than provided answers. There was a fishiness to this story I couldn’t put my finger on. “Yes, thanks a lot.” As she turned to leave,
I stopped her. “Has anybody else asked you about this?
I mean, other than Mr. Sargeant and Emily?”

“Nobody.”

“Thanks, Lynn.” I hesitated, then added, “Let me know if anyone does.”

“Sure thing.”

“What’s wrong?” Cyan asked when I got back.

“Nothing really.”

Bucky snorted. “Like I’ve said before, you should never play poker. Your face gives you away every time.”

“It’s just—”

They waited. I hedged.

Cyan smirked. “It isn’t even noon yet, Ollie. All we’ve done is prepare breakfast. It’s a little early to get into trouble, even for you.”

“Remember I told you about Sargeant’s problem? The mistake on the guest list? A mistake he swears he knows nothing about?”

Bucky frowned. “You couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

“It just doesn’t make sense.” From the looks on their faces, I knew I was losing them. “There’s no reason to let
him be hung out to dry for a mistake he didn’t make, right? I admit Sargeant is hardly my best buddy—”

“There’s an understatement,” Cyan said. “He’s always had it in for you. If there was a chance to get you fired, don’t you think he’d jump all over that?” When I didn’t respond, she said, “He would. And you know it.”

“Let me guess…you’re getting involved and asking questions on his behalf because no one else on staff would lift a finger to help him.” Bucky gave a deep, resigned sigh. “Even when there aren’t life-threatening issues involved, you can’t stop yourself from snooping around, can you?”

“The problem is that I keep coming up with more questions than answers.”

Bucky and Cyan exchanged a look. “So what else is new?” Cyan asked. “Just let it go, okay? For your own sanity as well as ours. Like I said before, for all you know Sargeant is setting you up.”

There was no sense continuing this conversation. Picking their brains wouldn’t work. At least not where helping Sargeant was concerned.

“You may be right.” Just to change the subject, I moved toward the computer. “What’s next on our agenda?”

Bucky sidled up next to me and indicated a new addition to our schedule. “We’re hosting Secretary of State Quinones for lunch today. He and President Hyden are having a private meeting this afternoon.”

“In addition to the Cabinet breakfast meeting?”

Cyan nodded. “After the news conference.”

“Whoa. What?”

“While you were out sleuthing, we got an update from Doug. We’re on the hook for a late lunch for the president, secretary of state, and assorted others. The full slate is on one of the document tabs.”

I studied the information there. “We changed the president’s lunch from soup and salad to cheeseburgers and fries?”

Bucky shrugged. “You can always tell when the First Lady is out of town.”

“Speaking of that,” Cyan said, “any idea when she and the kids are coming back?”

“You mean when is Virgil coming back, don’t you?” Bucky asked. “The longer he’s gone, the better. I like it quiet. Like this.”

Cyan had pulled out a tray of seasoned ground beef and begun shaping it into patties. “I do, too. If there was some way to engineer Virgil getting fired, I’d be in on that plan. Even more than I would to get rid of Sargeant.”

I looked up. There was no way either Bucky or Cyan would have played fast and loose with the guest list, was there? How would they have gained access? I was convinced that whoever had dropped the Baumgartners’ name had also left that sticky note for Lynn to find. The culprit apparently wasn’t interested in ruining the party—just in ruining Sargeant.

Bucky was back to concentrating on his task. Cyan was back to humming.

No way. I trusted these two. They might not shed a tear if Sargeant got the boot, but they wouldn’t be party to an underhanded scheme to make it happen.

After the glorious lunch we served—bacon-topped cheeseburgers, crispy hot fries, and a side salad that no one had requested but that we’d added to inject a little extra nutrition into the mix—we cleaned up the kitchen again. Soon it would be time to start all over again for dinner. “The president’s dining alone tonight, isn’t he?” I asked. “No changes, right?”

“None that we know of.”

I meandered over to the computer and clicked in to watch the live broadcast of the press briefing going on upstairs. Cyan watched over my shoulder. “Why are you so interested?”

I didn’t want to tell her that Gav had predicted this media event and that I wanted to see how close his prediction came to the real thing. “Ever since I met him and he gave me that present for helping with his father-in-law, I’ve felt protective of the family.”

“That’s so like you.”

“His father-in-law was just a lost soul,” I said. “And his wife—”

“You met her?”

“I only caught a glimpse of her at the briefing after her father came back. She seemed so fragile.”

Bucky had been listening in. “You got all that from a glimpse?”

I wiggled my finger at them both. “Be very afraid,” I bantered back. “You should see what I come up with after I’ve known people for a while.”