I joined him in the kitchen. What must have once been a tiny galley kitchen had been updated and expanded into a huge space that made me salivate. With gleaming pots hanging over a center island, not one, but two built-in stovetops, and two double ovens, this was the sort of kitchen I hoped to have in my own home some day. While my apartment’s small space was serviceable for my personal needs, I knew that if I ever settled down somewhere permanent, my kitchen would look just like this.
“Wow,” I said. “This is amazing.”
“We like it.”
Time to bite the bullet. “We?” I asked. “I didn’t know you were married. Are you?”
He gave a small smile. “Not yet.”
“Kids?”
This time he fixed me with a glare, though not an unfriendly one. “Do I really seem like the type who would have kids?”
“Whatever you’re making smells wonderful,” I said to change the subject.
“Good. I know we’re not going back to the White House anytime soon, and I don’t want to get rusty.”
“Bucky,” I said sincerely, “I doubt that could ever happen.”
He wiped his hands on a towel and removed his apron. “There. Everything’s good for now.” He set a timer. “Let’s go into the living room and take a look at that dossier.”
By the time the little clock dinged, we’d come up with almost nothing, dietary-wise, that we couldn’t have recited from memory.
Bucky pulled out a gently browned spinach quiche.
“Looks great,” I said, coming close to breathe in the aroma. “Smells wonderful, too.”
“Want some?” he asked.
“I’d love to, but I have dinner plans.”
His reaction was smalclass="underline" a slight drop of his shoulders, the quick twist of his mouth.
“But boy, it really does smell good,” I amended. “Maybe just a small piece?”
“Sure,” he said without reacting. But when he sliced a generous portion onto a piece of black and gold rimmed china and placed it in front of me, his eyes were bright with anticipation. “Let me know what you think.”
“Fancy plate,” I said.
“Why save the good stuff for special occasions?”
I forked a piece of the pie-shaped slice and pronounced it heavenly. If I hadn’t had plans to meet with Suzie and Steve in the next hour, I would have asked for seconds-even after this generous first serving. The quiche was so good, in fact, it was all I could do not to request a sample to take home to share with Mom and Nana. “You’ll have to give me this recipe,” I said.
“Already on our books.” He smiled, and it dawned on me what an unusual sight that was. “I plan to include it…” Stopping himself, the smile faded. “I should say, I planned to include it in the next set of samplings for Mrs. Campbell to taste.”
I patted his hand. He flinched but didn’t pull away.
“Well, that’s just another reason why we need to work hard at getting back into the kitchen. I don’t see anything in Minkus’s dietary profile that could have had such disastrous consequences, do you?”
Bucky had started to clean up the area and I marveled, again, at how pristine the place was. At the White House, when we were in the midst of preparing a state dinner, or other big event, the kitchen got a little cluttered. Although we had help and we cleaned up as we worked-there really was no way around that-at home I was not quite so fastidious. Bucky, however, was.
“You know,” I said, “we read over the rest of his dossier but we really didn’t digest it.”
He half turned. “What do you mean?”
“Here, for instance.” I pointed. “Minkus was appointed to his position during the prior administration. He worked hard to make a name for himself as a terrorist fighter. But he also held a position as a counterintelligence liaison to China.”
“So?”
“So isn’t that a little weird? Kind of a strange combination, I think.”
Bucky didn’t seem as interested in my musings as he was in putting his quiche away. “Who appointed him to the liaison position?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Obviously there’s a lot in his file we wouldn’t have access to. They only provided us this top-line information. Stuff that anyone could probably find in an Internet search, if they knew what they were looking for.”
“Hmph,” Bucky said, bustling around the kitchen as I pored through the file.
I mused aloud. “And what about Phil Cooper?”
“That’s the guy who reported to Minkus, right? Another security official.”
I pointed again, but Bucky just worked around me. “Exactly. Cooper worked for Minkus for about two years. It doesn’t say much here about him, except to mention that he’s part of Minkus’s staff.”
“You’re not thinking Cooper killed Minkus just to get his job?” Bucky scowled. “People don’t usually do that. At least not in the real world.”
Almost word for word, Bucky had just echoed Tom’s sentiment.
“What about China?” I asked. “Didn’t they just have that double-assassination in Beijing? The one that’s been in all the headlines.”
Stopping mid-stride on the way to his stainless steel double refrigerator, Bucky cocked his head. “Yeah. Wasn’t that the day after Minkus died?”
“Do you think it’s related?”
“Like… some Chinese official sneaked poison into Minkus’s food? Yeah. Sure.”
“Think about it. According to rumors, the Chinese had insider spies in the United States. Maybe Minkus discovered who that spy was who was selling our secrets. Maybe a Chinese operative got to Minkus before dinner.”
“An operative.” Bucky snorted. “You sound so official. Like a character in a movie, figuring out a global conspiracy.”
Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. I felt stupid for seeing patterns where there were none. For suspecting people like Phil Cooper when I had no reason to do so. I closed the file and placed both hands on top of it. “You’re right,” I finally said.
Wiping his hands after putting the food away, Bucky shrugged. “If someone did get to Minkus before dinner, then I guess we just have to be patient. Let the medical examiner figure out what killed him. God, I hope that’s it. I’m not saying I’m glad he’s dead, you understand. But now I care less about that, than about how it happened. I just hope they find out what-or who-killed him. Until then, no matter what we say or do, we’ll always be known as the killer kitchen.”
Oh God, I thought. The killer kitchen.
Sufficiently full from my healthy helping of quiche, I nonetheless headed to the studio where Suzie and Steve filmed their SizzleMasters television shows. I hoped for two things: that whatever they served would be light, and that the newshounds who had been staking out their home had given up. After my day of interruptions, the last thing I needed was to deal with the media.
The directions they’d provided were perfect and I pulled up to the studio five minutes early. From the outside it looked like a typical industrial building, but once inside, I felt as though I’d just stepped into someone’s home.
“Ollie, thank goodness,” Suzie said, giving me a quick hug hello. Hugging her was like being enveloped by a favorite aunt, all soft and smooshy, and smelling like White Linen cologne.
“How are you doing?” I asked. “Were you able to lose the reporters?”
Suzie was the type who didn’t understand the principle of “personal space.” She held my hand as we meandered through a waiting area that felt more like a cozy living room: two softly glowing lamps, red walls, jewel-toned accents. “Thank you so much for helping us out,” she said, her face close to mine. “I thought Steve was going to lose it.”
“Lose what?” he boomed from behind a thick wall. The side door was open to the filming portion of the studio and I stepped in and then up onto the raised portion, blinking into the high illumination.