Eggsecutive Orders

Brandy had been our liaison to the Egg Board for as long as I’d been working at the White House. She was great. “How long have you two…” I gestured to encompass the house.

She glanced at Bucky, whose lips were tight. Then she winked at me. “Long time.”

Inwardly, I groaned. I think I’d actually tried to set her up with another White House staffer some time ago.

Little had I known. About Brandy-about my colleague Bucky. To me, he’d always been a crochety older guy, brilliant in the kitchen, but difficult to deal with. Brandy was about five to seven years older than I was, and suddenly, next to her, Bucky seemed much younger. Talk about a paradigm shift.

“Hey,” I said in delayed realization. “No wonder you were able to get all these eggs delivered here.”

Brandy flung a grin at me. “It pays to have friends in helpful places.”

“Eggsactly!” I said.

Mom and Nana were confused, but rolling with the punches. The same couldn’t be said for Cyan. “You mean,” she said, “all this time we’ve been working together, you two have been able to keep a secret relationship going?”

Bucky made a face, then turned his back to us. “Better than some people.”

I felt my face redden. Brandy patted Bucky on the shoulder as she passed him to get to the fridge. “How is your handsome Secret Service boyfriend?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Minkus’s death makes things a little rocky.”

Brandy wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I can imagine. Tough times. But Tom’s a great guy. You’ll be fine.”

I nodded, not entirely sure I believed her-and at the same time amazed that she even knew that Tom and I were together.

Bucky had stopped cleaning up. “Seeing as how we’re all here now, we might as well finish the job.”

“Is anybody hungry? I can order in.” Brandy asked. “I would offer to whip up something-heck, I’ve got plenty of groceries-but the fact that I’ve got not one, but three chefs here, is a little intimidating.”

I was about to demur, but Bucky mentioned an ethnic carry-out place he liked. “If we have something delivered, we’ll all be able to check out that DVD.”

For about the fifth time that day, Bucky made my jaw drop.

Two hours later, we had gotten more eggs boiled, the kitchen cleaned, and the DVD started. Bucky maintained control of the remote and we fell into a rhythm of watching, then stopping, then discussing, all aspects of the di

Nana, on the purple couch next to my mom, had fallen asleep shortly after Bucky hit “Play” for the first time.

“This is all great,” I said, when we’d finished dissecting our performances and had restarted the tape from the begi

Bucky, looking thoughtful, pointed the remote at the television, but didn’t press any buttons. Cyan stared at the screen as though waiting for it to tell her something. Brandy asked my mother if she’d like more iced tea.

“Maybe,” Bucky said, “we should be looking at who’s staying off-camera.”

Together we accounted for everyone in the kitchen staff, including Suzie and Steve. Occasionally someone left the room-to get something from storage, or from the refrigerators, or for any number of reasons. With everyone in constant motion, there was no way to determine any u

“If there was anything in Minkus’s food, I doubt it was in the salad,” I said. “Everyone had that. Same with a few of the sides, and dessert. It had to be the entrée. Otherwise there would have been too much chance that he didn’t get the right one.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I sat up.

“You don’t think that maybe it was the salad-or the dessert-and it was meant for someone else?” Cyan asked.

The thought was too terrible to contemplate. Had someone targeted President Campbell and missed? I shook my head. “Let’s not get crazy here. Let’s just deal with what we know.”

“We know squat,” Bucky said.

Mom and Brandy got up and went into the kitchen. After another five minutes of futile food-prep-watching, I took a look at my watch and realized we were ru

Cyan and Bucky both said, “What?” so quickly, it startled Nana awake.

I gave them the lowdown on Ruth Minkus’s phone call.

“That’s a little odd,” Cyan said.

Mom was still out of the room, so I lowered my voice. “Not when you understand the back story.” I told her about Kap and about his efforts to smooth things over between Ruth Minkus and me. “Probably just because he’s attracted to my mom.”

Nana had roused herself enough to add, “He sure doesn’t try to hide it.”

“So, you’re actually going to the wake?” Cyan asked disbelievingly.

“I hate those things,” Bucky said.

I gave him a look. “Like anyone enjoys them.”

I had no desire to visit a funeral home tonight, but I hardly felt able to refuse. Ruth had asked me to come. And though I barely knew the woman, I had to believe she would not have taken the time to call me if she hadn’t felt compelled to. Who’s to say how different people deal with grief? Maybe I represented closure for her.

After stopping back at my apartment to shower off the day’s egg smell and to change into appropriate clothing, my family and I drove to the funeral home in a Maryland suburb.

“Don’t they usually have services in the Capitol for big shots like Minkus?” Nana asked.

I smiled at her in my rearview mirror. “I think they save that honor for presidents,” I said. “Besides, this place is probably near the Minkus home. I’m sure Ruth made the final decision on where her husband would be waked.”

“Took them long enough,” Nana said with a sniff.

“They had to wait for the autopsy,” I said. My heart did that speed-beat thing it always did when I thought about how much my career hung on the medical examiner’s findings. I knew things moved a lot more slowly than they did on television, but it had already been four days.

My mom was riding shotgun and was staring out at the scenery as we drove. “You okay?” I asked.

She had been twisting the rings on her fingers. “Fine, fine.”

I waited.

“I was just thinking about your dad.”

“Still miss him?” I asked.

“Every day.”

CHAPTER 16

RUTH MINKUS HAD CHOSEN THIS FUNERAL home with care. The parking lot was expansive, and the venue stately. I offered to drop Nana off under the huge canopy-covered entrance, but she snapped good-naturedly, “What, are you saying I’m too old to walk?”

I shook my head and parked in one of the last available spots, about a half block from the front door. We walked past dozens of dark government-issue sedans and shiny, expensive imports, my pumps making lonely taps on the sidewalk. Outside, people mingled. Men and women in business suits stood around in small groups. A few of them smoked, and all of them looked up to see who was arriving. Just as quickly, they returned to their conversations, dismissing us as unimportant. I was okay with that. People didn’t often recognize me without my tunic and toque. Tonight, I was grateful for the measure of anonymity.

There had to be a hundred floral pieces in the chapel, all sadly bright and all giving off that peculiar scent that let you know you were at a funeral, even if you were blindfolded. The newspaper obituary had requested donations to charity in lieu of flowers, but apparently lots of mourners didn’t get that memo. Either that, or this was yet another place where even politics didn’t die. An impressive floral arrangement might not provide the family much solace, but it had the potential to say a lot about the generosity of the giver.