CHAPTER 17
BACK AT MY APARTMENT, OVER MILK AND COFFEE cake, I called everyone to order. “Listen,” I said, “remember when those kids bullied me when I was little?”
Mom and Nana nodded.
“And remember how you told me that by giving in to my fears, I was allowing them power over me?”
Again, they nodded.
“Well, isn’t that what Liss is doing?” I asked.
Mom nodded. “That’s exactly right.”
“Let’s promise ourselves not to read his articles anymore,” I said. “Let’s refuse to let him have power over us.”
“I like that attitude, Ollie,” Mom said.
Nana yawned. “Me, too. As of right now-no more Liss.”
In the morning, when Mom asked, “Anything new in the headlines?” her tone was light, but her eyes asked if I’d cheated and peeked at what Liss had to say.
“More unrest in China,” I said, not rising to the bait. “Can you believe this?” I pointed. “The Chinese government is now claiming that the United States is responsible for the double-assassination.”
Her interest was piqued. She leaned over my shoulder as Nana came in, freshly showered and dressed to go out. We both looked up. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“I have a very good feeling about today,” she said, patting her fanny pack. “I want to be ready.”
“Good,” I said. “Maybe I can take you to see more of Washington.”
“Wow,” Mom said, scanning the article. “According to this, the two men who were killed had been wanted for questioning by the United States. The Chinese government is now saying it was the Americans who assassinated them instead.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Read it yourself.”
I did. The story was written by a U.S. correspondent clearly attempting to distance himself from any factual inaccuracies. He repeatedly talked about his sources and suggested, more than once, that presented facts should not be taken as true until proven. But, he also discussed the wild claims of the Chinese government and what it might mean to the United States if their allegations were true.
“So,” I said, slowly, trying to distill the information down to its key points. “They’re saying that they sent spies here and once we discovered them, we went over there to kill them? That seems so wrong.” I shook my head. “That can’t be the whole story.”
Mom and Nana looked at me.
“Think about it. If they have two spies who have given them information on the United States -and God help us if they got anything important-why would there be any need to kill them? The two men were back in China, for some time. I’m sure they had been debriefed. What possible motive would the United States have to kill them at that point?”
“You know as well as I do that our government does plenty of things in secret,” Mom said.
“True,” I acknowledged. “But this seems pretty far-fetched. Now, if those Chinese spies gave their government bad information”-I shrugged-“There might be repercussions from above. But they shouldn’t blame us for it. The United States gets enough bad-mouthing as it is.”
“Other countries are just jealous,” Nana said.
We both smiled at her.
“You two seem pretty chipper this morning,” she continued. “I take it that means neither of you read that Liss Is More filth.”
“You would be right,” I said.
A knock at my front door. Being on the thirteenth floor in a building that required a buzz-up limited the possibilities of who it could be.
“I’ll get it,” I said, and wasn’t surprised to see Mrs. Wentworth.
She held today’s newspaper aloft, her arthritic right hand clamped around its edge, her other hand gripping her cane. “How come you’re still here?”
I was about to ask what she meant when she pulled her cane up and used it to move me out of the way. “Looks like your friend Liss scooped everybody this time.”
Before I could stop her, she’d tottered into the kitchen. “Good morning, ladies,” she said. Then, catching sight of the newspaper on the table, she turned to me with a glare of impatience. “How come you didn’t tell me you already saw it?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Liss? No way we’re reading him anymore. The lies he prints-”
She made an impatient face. “The guy is good.” Waving away my protestations to the contrary, she said, “Yes, yes, I know what he’s been saying lately. And I know he’s been taking pokes at you. But if you don’t look at his conjecture-if you just look at his facts-he’s been pretty damned accurate so far.”
“Accurate?” I started to protest. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, you better hope he is this time.”
She splayed the newspaper out before us. Standing back, she smiled at us expectantly. “Nice to be the bearer of good news for once,” she said.
Curiosity got the better of me, as it usually does, and I leaned forward. I scanned quickly, looking for what might have spurred Mrs. Wentworth to come knocking at my door. And then I found it:
And You Read It Here First
We join the White House in saying, “Welcome back!”
Liss Is More has learned that the White House kitchen staff has been officially cleared of suspicion in Carl Minkus’s unexpected death. Word is that the staff will be notified shortly and will be expected to return to work immediately. Liss Is More also has it on good authority that the president and First Lady have had their fill of food prepared by well-intentioned but ill-trained Secret Service personnel. I know my good friend Executive Chef Olivia Paras will be delighted by this new turn of events, both for herself and for her staff.
Side note to Ollie: See? You can stop blaming me for the cloud of suspicion that hung over your head. I just report the facts. I don’t invent them.
“ ‘My good friend’?” I asked, fuming. “How does he come up with this stuff?”
Mrs. Wentworth tapped the words. “It sells papers, kiddo.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll cancel my delivery.” As angry as I was at Liss in general, I was mostly furious at his assertion that my staff and I had been welcomed back to the White House. “Accurate? I don’t think so. If he were accurate, wouldn’t I have heard from our chief usher by now?”
At that moment, a phone rang. The sound was faint and the tune wasn’t the one I used for my cell phone, but I instinctively turned toward the little device and picked it up. “Not me,” I said.
My mom got a split-second quizzical look on her face, then jumped up. “That’s mine,” she said, clearly surprised. “I don’t get many phone calls, so I didn’t…”
We missed the rest of her words as she turned into the bedroom. We heard soft scuffling sounds, then the tune ended and my mom said, “Hello.”
Two seconds later, she shut the bedroom door.
“A gentleman caller?” Mrs. Wentworth asked.
Nana snorted. “And I think I know exactly who that gentleman caller is.”
“Kap,” I said. I had forgotten about their “date” today.
“Now don’t get all worked up, honey,” Nana said, patting my arm like I was a four-year-old. “Your mom is allowed a little bit of fun while she’s out here.”
Her words hit their mark. I had wanted to make this trip the best Mom and Nana had experienced. I’d wanted to make them love Washington, D.C., as much as I did-by showing them the White House from the inside. By letting them walk the halls-not like tourists, but like insiders. Instead, the vacation had been sliced to ribbons by Minkus’s untimely death, and my obsession with getting back into the kitchen.
I had to face facts: The only real highlight this entire trip for my mom was her flirtation with Kap. In less than a week, Mom and Nana would be back in Chicago and Kap would still be here. Why was I behaving like an overprotective mother, trying to thwart my mom’s happiness? If she wanted to spend time with a man her age, a man who was clearly interested in her, then why shouldn’t she?