All the President’s Menus (14 page)

Hector was back on his feet by the time the Secret Service took Kilian’s body away. Nate stayed next to his shaky colleague, looking ready to leap into action if Hector so much as swayed. Tibor steered clear of them both, informing us that if they were contagious, he didn’t want to get close.

It took some time, but staff members who’d come running finally dispersed, with strong admonitions from Tom and the other Secret Service agents to avoid discussing the incident with the press.

Tom pulled me aside before he left. “Let us handle this, Ollie,” he said.

“A man dies in my kitchen, another is stricken and almost passes out, and you expect me to pretend it didn’t happen?”

“I’m not asking you to pretend anything,” he said. “Let’s just try to keep things quiet.”

“What about the chocolate?” I watched his face as I pressed the issue. “After this, don’t you think we ought to put a rush on the test?”

He stepped closer, giving quick looks around to ensure no one could listen in. Quietly, he said, “I have already asked them to run scans on Kilian’s body for GHB, is that what you want to hear?”

“Good,” I said. “It’s too much of a coincidence. There has to be a connection.”

“For all our sakes, I hope there isn’t. I intend to check.” He started away just as Peter Everett Sargeant approached.

Following Tom, I asked, “What about Hector? What did he tell you?”

“He takes medication and believes he may have accidentally double-dosed this morning. Exactly the way Marcel did.” Tom raised both eyebrows. “Does that satisfy you, Sherlock?”

I was about to ask Tom what kind of medication, but he anticipated the question.

“The man’s medical history is not my business,” he said. “I didn’t ask because I don’t need to know. Neither do you.”

“Wait,” I said, as he turned to leave again. “What about GHB? You’re having Hector tested for that, too, aren’t you?”

Tom worked his jaw, settled himself, then said, “The only reason I’m answering is because I know how difficult you can be when you think people are hiding the truth from you. Yes, we will request that he submit himself for testing.” Tom straightened to his full height, towering over me. “Anything else you need to know?”

“No,” I said coolly. “Thank you.”

“Ms. Paras,” Sargeant said when Tom was out of earshot, “marriage hasn’t changed you a bit, has it?”

I graced him with a withering glance, which he chose to ignore.

“Yet again we have an international crisis on our hands,” he said. “The Saardiscans may be surprised to find the White House chef at its epicenter, but clearly, no one here is even raising an eyebrow.”

“What do you need, Peter?”

He scratched the side of his mouth. “Your cooperation, of course. There will be questions, many of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Saardiscan government ordered its delegates home immediately.”

“I hope they do,” I said under my breath.

“Oh? And why is that?”

I obviously hadn’t muttered quietly enough. “It wasn’t until these chefs showed up that strange things started to happen.”

He almost smiled at that. “The same could be said of you, Ms. Paras.” Without giving me opportunity to respond, he went on. “You and I will need to discuss all that transpired here, but first I need to contact the Saardiscans and offer our sincere condolences. I have no idea how this incident will affect their decision to allow Ms. Freiberg to return.” He sniffed, glanced around the room, and added, “Margaret will be in touch with you to set up a meeting time. I trust you will make yourself available.”

With that, he turned and left the kitchen.

When he was gone, I made my way into the middle of the room, where Nate and Bucky kept watch over Hector. Tibor studied them from across the room. Kilian’s death, so sudden, and in my kitchen, made my knees weak with sadness, but there wasn’t time to grieve now.

Nate and Hector were talking quietly in Saardiscan when I approached. Although I couldn’t understand their words, I sensed the tone and could read their body language. It seemed to me that Nate was warning Hector to be more careful, or perhaps to take the day off. Hector wore a distressed expression, and nodded a lot.

“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.”