Eggsecutive Orders

CHAPTER 9

“BACK SO SOON?” MOM ASKED WHEN I RETURNED to my apartment. She must have read the expression on my face, because when she turned away from the sink, her smile withered. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” That didn’t appease her, and I knew it wouldn’t. So I came up with a white lie. “With this investigation, Tom is under a lot of stress. He and I can only meet if it’s official business.”

“The impression of impropriety?”

I nodded. “Something like that.”

The way Mom studied my face I could tell she wasn’t buying my story. Of course she wasn’t. She knew me too well. “And I hate being banished from the White House,” I said, dropping into one of my kitchen chairs. “The whole point of you coming out here was so that I could show you around the president’s mansion. Now I’m not even allowed in myself.”

She made reassuring noises, the kind she always made when I was disappointed or frustrated and there was nothing we could do about it.

I smiled across the table. “I bet you wish you had stayed home.”

She patted my hand. “Of course not. Nana and I flew out here to see you. That’s the whole reason we came. And you know that this problem will get worked out. In the meantime, it’s nice having you all to ourselves.”

“But the tour I promised you-”

“There will be plenty of time for that. If not this trip, then next time.”

My mom always had a way of looking at the positive side of everything. Even when I didn’t feel like it. I couldn’t shake the sadness, but I wanted to let her know her efforts were appreciated. I traced a finger around on my table top. “Thanks.”

“I would like to take that trip to Arlington, though.”

I glanced up. “Of course.”

“Now you have plenty of time to show us around Washington.” Her eyes were bright and her smile just a little too fixed. She knew how much their trip meant to me. She sensed my disappointment and felt sorry for me. And that made me feel even worse.

Taking care of others always worked for getting my mind off my troubles. If I couldn’t control the White House kitchen, I could at least take steps to improve my mood. “You got it,” I said, standing. “Let’s grab Nana and go.”

Nana took that moment to come into the kitchen. Wearing blue jeans with turned-up cuffs, a black fanny pack, and a sweatshirt that read I ♥ WASHINGTON, D.C., she looked from my mom to me. “I’m ready. Where are we going?”

We took the Metro to the Arlington National Cemetery stop and made our way to the bright visitor’s center. Sunlight poured in through the skylights, spilling onto the floor around us, and dappling the potted ficus trees. I was willing to bet they designed this place with extra cheer to help dispel sadness. It worked-to an extent.

“Let’s take the Tourmobile,” I said, grabbing an information brochure. “It’s pretty reasonable, and we can get off and reboard wherever we like.”

My mom placed a hand on my arm. “Will it take us near…?”

I nodded. “I know just where Dad’s grave is. We could probably walk to it,” I said, “but I’m sure you’ll want to visit some of these other sites as well.”

“Don’t think I can manage it, do you?” Nana asked. She smiled, but I sensed a tiny bit of hurt in the question.

I pointed in the direction of Arlington House. “I know you want to visit President Kennedy’s grave, but that’s an uphill walk,” I said. “That, and the fact that there are more than six hundred acres to explore are just too much for me. But if you really want to walk it…”

Telling her I had a hard time making the trek up to Arlington House was stretching the truth a bit, but I knew we had a lot of ground to cover. Literally. The Tourmobile would allow us to enjoy the journey and maybe even learn a little bit from the narration as we traveled.

About fifteen steps away from us, a young man stood, staring out the windows by the front door. He worked his jaw. Handsome guy, from what I could see. Something about his profile seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. I was very good with faces, but I knew that until I got a direct look at him, I wouldn’t be able to make the connection. I wondered if he was here to visit a grave, or just to sightsee. I bit my lip. I sensed a familiarity, but at the same time, a vague negativity. Whoever he was, he reminded me of something unpleasant. I turned away.

Nana spoke. “No, we’ll take that bus of yours,” she said with a grin. “I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself.”

My mother studied the pamphlet I’d given her and eyed the information desk in the center of the room. “Do you think they’re having any funerals?”

“ Arlington averages twenty-eight funerals per day,” I said.

They both gasped. “That many?” my mom asked. “Will we be in the way if we take the tour? I don’t want to intrude on anyone’s grief.”

“We’ll be fine,” I said. “Let’s just not take any pictures of people visiting graves.” I turned toward the east wing. “How about we hit the washroom before boarding?” I asked, moving that way. “There won’t be any others on the tour except-”

I stopped short when a woman emerged from the washroom. She was instantly recognizable: Ruth Minkus. She made eye contact with me as she skirted past and I couldn’t help but notice the hot, red rims makeup couldn’t hide. Ruth gripped a paper tissue in one hand, holding it close to her heart, and I held my breath, hoping she didn’t know who I was. Instinctively I turned to watch the young man who had been staring out the window walk up to her. He took her arm. “You okay, Mom?” he asked.

Joel Minkus and his mother looked exactly as they had on television last night-except yesterday they’d seemed smaller, and somehow less real, less flesh-and-blood. And as much as I had been worried about Carl Minkus’s death, and felt for his family, I had been insulated-at home, away from the immediacy, the fierce reality of their grief.

My mom touched my shoulder. “Ollie,” she said in a whisper, “isn’t that-?”

“Yes,” I said, turning away from the twosome. “Let’s move over there by the trees. We’ll be out of the way.”

Nana had bypassed us to disappear into the ladies’ room. “Damn,” I said, then addressed my mom. “You wait here for her, and I’ll meet you…” I looked around, trying to decide whether I should say something to Mrs. Minkus. I didn’t want to apologize, because I knew I wasn’t responsible for her husband’s demise, but as one of the players in this drama, I felt almost compelled to offer my condolences.

But what, exactly, should a person in my situation say?

My mom hadn’t left my side. She whispered again, “I think she recognizes you.”

I turned. Ruth Minkus was staring. The red-rimmed eyes now blazed with anger.

“Oh, God,” I breathed, turning back. I gripped my mom’s arm and guided her toward the washroom. “Go on,” I said. “Take care of Nana. I’ll find you.”

I attempted to slink to out the side doors, keeping my face averted, but an exclamation behind me caused me to stutter-step. “You!” Ruth Minkus shouted. “You’re the chef!”

Her voice echoed loudly, and I wasn’t the only person who turned to see her pointing at me. I closed the space between us, hoping she would lower her voice-hoping the horde of tourists milling about the visitor’s center wouldn’t recognize us. Hoping they would turn their attention away from our imminent and, undoubtedly uncomfortable, conversation.

“Mrs. Minkus,” I said, offering my hand. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

She backed away from me, horror-stricken. “You killed my husband.”

I don’t know whether I was more shocked by her accusation or more relieved that she’d at least spoken quietly. I answered fast. “No,” I said. “That’s not true. I didn’t.”

“Mom,” Joel said, stepping between us and keeping his voice low, “Please.”

Ruth whirled toward him. “She killed your father.”

“Nothing’s been proven yet.” He shot an apologetic glance toward me, then placed his hands on her shoulders and made her look up at him. “Let’s not make a scene. Please? Dad wouldn’t want that.”

Her posture slumped as her gaze dropped to the floor.

Joel stole a look at me. “I’m sorry,” he said, shifting to stand next to his mother. He kept one arm protectively around her. “We’ve just come from visiting the site where my father… my father…” He faltered, then cleared his throat. “Where my father will be buried. My mother wanted to see it. To make sure…” He cleared his throat again, then shook his head slightly, as though berating himself for providing explanation. He turned to Ruth. “Come on, Kap is waiting for us outside.”

Ruth grimaced, still looking at the ground. I couldn’t tell whether she was reacting to Joel’s mention of the grave site, or of “Kap.” To me it seemed the latter. I was about to make a hasty exit, expressing condolences once again, when my mom and nana appeared, flanking me.

At almost the same moment, an older gentleman stepped up to take Ruth’s free arm. He was tall and fit, with deep crow’s-feet at his eyes, and a full head of white hair that picked up glints of light from above. While he was clean-shaven, he had the look of a man who probably needed to use the razor more than once per day. I put him at sixty-five, but good-looking enough to turn the heads of women of all ages. “You were in here so long, I was worried.”

She recoiled from him, but he seemed not to notice.

“Hello,” he said to us, a quizzical expression on his deeply tanned face. “Are you friends of the family?”

“No,” I began, but Joel took charge.

“Kap,” he said, relief in his voice. “Mom could probably use a little air. And I think it would be good if she sat down.” At first I thought Joel was asking Kap to take charge of Ruth so that he could say something to me in private, but he surprised me by leading his mother away. “We’ll be in the car,” he said.

Kap nodded as they left. He turned back to us and flashed a smile.

“Well, it was nice to meet you,” I said, even though we hadn’t officially been introduced. I just wanted to get the heck out of there.

But Kap seemed unwilling to let us go. He raised an eyebrow. “You look familiar.”

My face went hot. “I’m the executive chef at the White House.”

“Ah,” he said. I felt the weight of his comprehension. In the space of two seconds, his expression shifted from anxious to genial. “Today has been very difficult for Ruth, as you can imagine. We spent most of the morning at the funeral home, making arrangements. Carl, having been a decorated veteran, always wanted to be buried at Arlington, so we made those arrangements as well.”

My mom had moved closer. I couldn’t understand why. The last thing I wanted was to prolong this unexpected meeting. I desperately searched for a polite way to extricate ourselves, but Mom interjected.

“My husband is buried here, too.”

Kap’s awareness shifted. Where he’d been paying attention to me as though I were the only other living human being in the cemetery, he now turned his gaze toward my mother. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said. “Has it been a long time?”

“Yes,” she said. “Very long.” And then she surprised me by adding, “Too long.”

My jaw nearly dropped. What the heck was this? My mom was flirting with a complete stranger in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. While it had been more than twenty years since my dad died, and my mother had had a gentleman friend or two since then, it seemed odd to see her so flushed and eager. Like a teenager.

“I’m here from Chicago visiting my daughter.” Mom cocked her head at me like I was a little kid.

I felt like one-left out of the adult conversation. Who was this guy, anyway? A brother? Brother-in-law? This Kap didn’t look like either Carl or Ruth Minkus. He was older than both of them and looked to be Middle Eastern, or Greek, whereas the Minkuses likely came from Western European roots.

Kap smiled broadly. This was one handsome senior citizen and I understood my mother’s instant attraction to him. Still…

Holding out his hand, he said, “Zenobios Kapostoulos. But everyone calls me Kap.”

My mother placed her hand in his and smiled back. “Corinne Paras.”

“I am delighted,” he said. “And were we in different circumstances, I would very much enjoy continuing our conversation. But, as it is, I must tend to Ruth and Joel.”

My curiosity got the better of me. “You’re part of the family?”

His smile still in place, he shook his head. “Carl and I worked together. He and I are-were-good friends. Business required my presence out of the country for many years and I’ve only recently moved back to the area. Of course, I had hopes of rekindling our friendship.” His eyes tightened. “But, unfortunately, it was not to be. Carl and I had only a short time to catch up. And now this.” He shook his head again. “It is very sad.”

“Kap?” Joel called from the doorway. “We’re ready to go.”

Kap gave a little bow to us all, and held my mother’s gaze for an extra few heartbeats. “It has been my pleasure, ladies.”

Nana sniffed when he turned away. “How come nobody introduced me?” She fanned herself as she watched Kap leave. “My, my,” she said approvingly.

Had my family gone nuts in the head?

“What was that all about?” I asked them. “I thought we were here to visit Dad’s grave.”

Mom still wore the remnants of a smile as she pinned me with a meaningful stare. “Don’t chastise, honey. Opportunities to interact with charming men don’t come around very often these days.” She chanced a look out the window, but the Minkuses were gone. She shrugged. “Just a little distraction.”

I would have said more, but it seemed pointless. “We’ll probably never see him again anyway.”

“Probably not,” Mom said. She sounded wistful.

We got off the Tourmobile at the stop for the Tomb of the Unknowns, but diverted from the rest of the group to follow the road that led toward my dad’s grave site. I had been here plenty of times before. But not with my mom-at least, not when I was old enough to remember. I took Nana’s arm as we stepped off the pavement onto the grass. “You okay?” I asked them.

Nana said, “Sure, sure,” but she glanced nervously at my mom.

“Mom?”

She took in the expanse of green, all the identical white headstones. “I haven’t been back here since…” Her voice caught. “I can’t even remember exactly…”

I reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing lightly. “I know where he is,” I said.

We walked silently past rows and rows of headstones, our feet making soft shushing sounds in the almost-green grass. I came to visit my dad’s grave from time to time because it gave me peace to do so. I thought about how I sometimes talked to my dad, but after noticing how tight my mom’s face had grown, I decided not to mention that. This was going to be tough for her.

“Here,” I said.

Nana stepped away from me to stand next to Mom. The three of us gazed at the white headstone, which read AN-THONY M. PARAS. SILVER STAR.

Mom looked around us. “The trees are a lot bigger now.”

I nodded.

Nana patted Mom on her shoulder. “He was a good man, Corinne. And he loved you very much.”

Mom covered her eyes and cleared her throat. She spoke, but I couldn’t make out what she said. Not that it mattered. I got the feeling whatever she’d said wasn’t meant for me or for Nana.

The three of us spent a long quiet moment there together. Finally, Mom looked up. “Thank you,” she said throatily. “This was important to me.”

I put my arm around her and hugged. “For me, too,” I said.

From there we made our way back to the Tomb of the Unknowns.

“Oh,” Nana whispered when we positioned ourselves behind the brass railing at the top of the rise. “Look at that.”

I’d been here many times but I understood my grandmother’s awe. Stretching out eastward beyond the tomb was a green vista that overlooked hundreds of other graves. But it was here, at the tomb itself, under the sharp blue spring sky, that her attention was captured.

The sentinel walked twenty-one measured steps. He then turned and faced the simple, white monument for twenty-one seconds. Whenever he switched positions, he first kicked out one leg in a taut, well-practiced move, then smacked the active foot against the stationary one with an audible clack. Turning, he faced back down the mat upon which he’d walked, shifting his weapon to his outside shoulder, with another tight, structured move. He then took twenty-one more steps back the way he’d come. A brisk breeze made the three of us shiver, but the sentinel never flinched. When he turned to face the tomb again, Nana asked, “He does this all day?”

“They operate in shifts,” I whispered. I gestured for us to leave and we made our way up the marble steps into the adjacent museum. There were no words to describe the solemnity I always felt in the presence of deceased veterans. Keeping my voice down seemed the only respectful way to talk. And I knew from prior visits that any loud conversation would result in the sentinel’s chastisement of the crowd. “They change every hour.”

“Handsome man,” Nana said, glancing behind us. “Tall.”

“They all have to be between five-foot-eleven and six-foot-four.”

“Really? There’s a height requirement?”

We were inside the small museum now, and although we spoke freely, we still kept our voices low. “There are a lot of requirements,” I said. “You should look it up. They’re a very dedicated group. And only about one-fifth of those who apply are accepted into their ranks.”

“Look it up on the Internet, you mean?” Mom asked.

“You mastered e-mail. There’s nothing scary about surfing the ’Net. Unless you’re downloading from a questionable source, you really can’t hurt your computer.”

“Oh, she isn’t afraid of that,” Nana said. “She’s afraid of becoming addicted to the thing.”

I turned to my mom. “Seriously?”

“One of my girlfriends joined something called ‘chatrooms’ and now she never wants to come over for coffee or go out to movies.”

“Who?”

I laughed when she told me. “You don’t even like her.”

“That’s beside the point.”

After strolling along the outer rim of the breathtaking Memorial Amphitheater and finishing our Tourmobile trek, we took the Metro back to my apartment, where Nana decided to nap for a little while. When she was out of the room and the place was quiet, I realized that I would usually have a phone call or an e-mail to look forward to from Tom. Not so today. My cell phone had been extraordinarily silent and when I checked my inbox, I had only two new non-spam messages. One from Bucky and the other from Cyan. Both were looking for updates. I wrote back, but confessed I had no news.

Speaking of news, I called Mom over to the computer in the spare bedroom-the room where I was staying while she and Nana used my queen-sized accommodations. “Here,” I said. “Let’s give you a quick tutorial.”

She shook her head, but at least she took a seat on the daybed behind me. “I don’t see why it’s so important for me to learn this,” she said, pointing at the headline that described a double-assassination in China. “I can get this from watching the news.”

“True,” I said. “But the news simply projects the day’s biggest stories-or what they deem most important. If you’re interested in something that doesn’t have to do with China ”-I motioned toward the monitor-“you can search for whatever it is you need.”

“What happened there, anyway?” she asked.

I scrolled down the article to find out that two upper-level Chinese government officials had been shot, execution style, in a restaurant in Beijing. According to “unconfirmed reports,” the two Chinese officials had been buying United States secrets from an “unnamed insider.” It appeared that the Chinese government, believing their conduit had been compromised, had sanctioned the double-assassination.

Their killer had been immediately apprehended and offered no resistance when taken into custody. He had, however, been killed himself shortly thereafter. Details were sketchy, but the Chinese police were claiming that he had grabbed for one of their officers’ weapons in a futile attempt to escape. Political pundits were speculating that the police were covering up the fact that the gunman had been shot in cold blood after carrying out his allegedly government-sanctioned hit.

“Just like Lee Harvey Oswald,” Mom said.

“If you believe the conspiracy theories.”

Her gaze was glued to the screen. “I don’t believe our government killed President Kennedy. But Jack Ruby’s oh-so-convenient shooting makes me wonder who did.” She made a clucking sound. “And I’ll bet there are people all over China tonight wondering who was behind this one.”

Still at the helm, I clicked the browser bar and said, “I love the Internet. It’s like having the most comprehensive library available to me twenty-four hours a day.” I typed in the name of an author I knew my mother liked. “Look. Lots of information. Biography, book descriptions, reviews. This is great stuff.” I gave her a meaningful look. “But don’t believe everything you read.”

She moved closer and I let her have my seat. I showed her how to search. It took a few tries before she was willing to take control of the mouse and keyboard, but eventually I stepped away. “Have at it,” I said. “Look up whatever you like. Just keep it clean, okay?”

She looked up long enough to catch my wink.

“You’re going to be sorry if I spend my whole vacation sitting in front of this computer,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen.”

She was already typing. “You’d better not.”