“This weekend?”

Gavin spread his hands and gave me a look that said, “Duh.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

I bit back a retort. “No,” I answered, deciding right then that I’d wait until Saturday to send any of us in for training. I’d consult with Marcel, of course, but I knew he’d agree. We faced an already hindered, overpacked schedule, and the next two days would be backbreakers. There was no way I could spare even one person. “How long are the classes?” I asked.

“Depends on class participation. Could be as short as an hour, could be as long as three. If people catch on quickly, we’ll move quickly.” Holding up a finger, he said, “But we can only move as fast as the slowest man. Er… woman.” He smiled, like he expected me to laugh.

I picked up the schedule, glanced at it, and placed it with the rest of my important papers in the already overflowing computer area. “Got it,” I said. “Thanks.”

He tugged at his collar. He hadn’t expected to be dismissed.

Recovering, he nodded. “As you were,” he said, then left.

I WAS HEADING TOWARD THE FLORAL DEPARTMENT, just passing the basement bowling alley, when Curly Sheridan emerged from the long hall that led west to the carpenter shop. Manny shuffled behind him. They both wore workpants and chambray shirts with rolled-up sleeves. Manny was only a few years older than I was, but he seemed to have aged in the past couple of days. He grunted hello and turned away, but I stopped Curly. “How’s your wife?” I asked.

He squinted at me. “How do you know about my wife?”

“Gene…” I started to say. My voice faltered. For the briefest moment I’d forgotten all of yesterday’s horror. “Gene… He told me you’d been called to the hospital. Is she all right?” I’d met Mrs. Sheridan a couple times. Sweet woman. Tiny and dark-haired, she didn’t talk much. I attributed that to her being foreign-born and the fact that she was married to truculent Curly.

He grimaced. “She’s having a rough time.”

I didn’t know quite what to say to that. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

Not for the first time did I question Curly’s nickname. The man was mostly bald, with a long scar like a J around his left ear, stretching up and across his shiny pate. It dawned on me suddenly that with Gene gone, Curly was next in command. Manny mumbled, letting Curly know that he’d be upstairs in the Blue Room. Curly started to leave, too, but I stopped him with a hand to his bare forearm. He reacted as if burned.

“What do you want?”

“What really happened yesterday?” I asked. “I mean, Gene was always so careful…”

The squint came back. “Why you asking me?”

“You know these things. You understand them better than I do.”

His perpetual scowl deepened and he shook his head, blowing out an angry breath. “Why does everybody think I know what happened there? I wasn’t with him. I wasn’t there. You were there.”

I felt suddenly small, and the words came out before I could stop myself from asking, “Could I have done something more? Could I have saved him if I’d done something differently?”

The scowl moved, fractionally. Enough for me to wonder if he harbored any sympathy at all, or if he was just trying to decide if I was a crackpot.

“Listen, I’ll tell you what I’ve been telling everybody, including those explosives guys. What are they, anyway? Secret Service? Or military?”

I shook my head. “Not sure.”

“Whatever.” He took a plaid handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped around the scar. “Gene hit something hot, that’s for sure. I’m working on figuring out exactly what happened. That’s my job today. That, and getting a million other things done.” He grabbed at his empty shirt pocket, as though reaching for phantom cigarettes. Another grimace. “Gene was a big guy, and if you want to know what I think, I’m guessing he leaned up against something metal when he hit the power. He knew better, yeah, and there shouldn’t’ve been enough juice to kill him, but he was using a bad drill. And Gene was always sweating. I think it just all added up to him being careless.”

“You really think so?”

Taking offense to my skeptical tone, he said, “As a matter of fact I do, missy. You asked your question. You got my answer. Now go take care of the food handling and let me do the job they pay me for.”

CHAPTER 7

WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE KITCHEN, RAFE had arrived. But we had other company as well. I stopped short. “Sean,” I said in surprise. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

Sean Baxter was wearing a white apron over his charcoal pants and pale gray shirt, standing at the center workstation, slicing red peppers. “Hey, I was wondering when you’d show up. Look,” he said, “they put me to work.”

Cyan gave a one-shoulder shrug. “He wanted something to do,” she said with a grin. “I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

Just wait till security-crazed Gavin sees this, I thought. But then again, Sean was cleared for much more classified stuff than tomorrow’s Thanksgiving dinner. If we couldn’t trust the president’s own nephew, who could we trust?

Rafe called out, “Hey, Ollie, how’s it going?”

I waved a hello. “Welcome to the team,” I said to both of them. Still trying to understand Sean’s presence, I turned to him. “What brings you down here?”

He fixed his attention on a pepper, giving it a good slice even as his cheeks rivaled the vegetable for redness. “Aunt Elaine and I were going over some of her decisions. You know, that financial stuff we talked about in the bunker yesterday.”

He didn’t elaborate, but behind him, Bucky raised his eyebrows and shot me a look that underscored his earlier comment about “cozying up to the First Lady.”

I ignored him.

Sean continued. “She was called away and will probably be busy for about an hour. I had some time to kill, so…”

All I could think about was the time crunch we were under. “Are you sure you want to be down here?” I hoped to talk him out of helping. The last thing I needed was an unskilled amateur gumming up our plans for the day. It was one thing to have too many chefs spoiling the broth. It was another to have one who didn’t speak the language. Add an assistant who didn’t know his way around the kitchen and we’d be lucky if we managed to create any broth to spoil.

“Yeah,” he said, concentrating on the peppers again. “I’m just about done here-so if you’ve got anything else…”

I thought about it. One of the surprises I’d discovered when I took over the position of executive chef was that I did less actual cooking than I had in the past. While I was certainly involved in the preparation of every meal, my duties were to create menus both for the family and for events. I also had a number of administrative issues to juggle, not unlike those of the director of a small company. In addition to managing each staff member’s vacation time and sick days, I had to sign off on purchases, attend meetings, coordinate with other departments, and nurture my subordinates’ growth as professional chefs. The administrative stuff took a lot more time than I’d expected, and I began to see why Henry had come in early and stayed late most days. That was what I’d been doing myself since he’d left.

Part of making this kitchen work was learning how to delegate. Why not put Sean to work? I didn’t want to appear ungrateful. I reasoned that another pair of hands was another pair of hands. And we needed a lot of help if we were to get both big events plated on time with the panache to which Mrs. Campbell had become accustomed.

“Cyan,” I said, “have you cleaned the shrimp?”

She gave me a mischievous look. “Not yet.”

“Why don’t you show Sean how that’s done?”

“Sure,” Cyan said, amused. I wanted to explain to her that I wasn’t punishing him for helping out-shrimp cleaning was a job I abhorred-but rather it was a task that gave Sean a wide berth for error. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t ruin things too badly. Once he got the hang of it, we’d have plenty of shrimp for our cocktail display. If any were messed up, we could chop those and use them for other purposes. This was a safe bet.