Dead to the Last Drop (13 page)

Cage took the opportunity to poke and prod me, as well—not with her hands but with questions and innuendo.

“I see you were previously screened to attend one of the DOJ’s holiday parties.”

“Yes, it was held at the Lincoln Cottage. A lovely affair—”

“Affair? Is that a Freudian slip?”

“Excuse me?”

“Were you on a real date or were you with a beard?”

“A beard?”

“Sometimes a prominent man’s wife and mistress both insist on attending a prestigious event. He escorts his wife, and finds a beard to take his—”

“My date was Michael Quinn,” I said, cutting her off. Not only had I heard enough from this impertinent young woman, but the uniformed agent unexpectedly began probing a few tender spots.

“I don’t know any Quinn at Justice,” Agent Cage said suspiciously.

“He’s an NYPD detective on special assignment with the DOJ. If you need to know more, I suggest you call—
Yikes
!”

The gloved hand that slipped inside my sweater and between my breasts caught me a little off guard.

“I’m so sorry,” Cage said in a tone that was not at all apologetic. “After our high-speed chase over here, I asked the security screeners to be
particularly
thorough.”

The hand withdrew and I adjusted my clothing.

“So how close are you to this New York cop?” Cage asked. “Are you sleeping with him, or simply stringing him along?”

I slapped a probing hand away from my ponytail and freed it for inspection myself. As my chestnut hair came tumbling down, I turned to face Agent Cage.

“Look, I understand you have to do your job, but you’ll find I don’t intimidate easily.”

“That’s all I
am
doing, Ms. Cosi, my job.”

“Is it your job to dislike me?”

“I dislike anyone who knowingly endangers the President’s daughter.”

“That’s an unfair charge and you know it. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m a mother, which means I know from hard experience that keeping kids in protective bubbles only works if the kids go along. If they want out, they always manage to find a way.”

Cage stopped goading me after that. She stopped talking to me, too, but in her eyes, I could see that I’d made my point.

She knew as well as I did that Abby
wasn’t
a kid. She was a twenty-year-old woman, smart enough to evade her security detail if that’s what she was determined to do.

And yet, in that moment, I did seriously consider violating Abby’s confidence and telling Cage about her escape to my coffeehouse the night before.

But there would be consequences to my speaking up.

For one thing, Abby would never trust me again. And I sensed she needed people in her life she could trust.

For another, there was my official statement to the DC Metro police. I’d lied to protect Abby, but they wouldn’t see it that way, and I knew the First Family wouldn’t want their daughter dragged into a messy situation like that.

Nevertheless, my internal struggle continued, right up until a male voice called out—

“Agent Cage, would you step over here, please?”

T
hirty-two

A
S Sharon Cage was called to a spot beside Honest Abe, a shiver went through me. For a few minutes there, I’d forgotten that President Abraham Lincoln had once lived on these grounds. That fact swung back on me with awesome force.

I thought about those years when our country was at war with itself—and the Underground Railroad was at work under my temporary home on N Street.

It was hardly the same, yet I couldn’t help seeing the similarities in Abby’s situation. From her point of view, she was waging her own little rebellion, complete with her own secret routes to freedom.

As the voices buzzed across the room, I tried to make out what they were saying. Two stern-looking men in three-piece suits were showing Agent Cage something on a tablet computer.

“Who are those guys?” I asked Carol as she returned my jewelry.

“Oh, they’re the fussbudgets from the Protective Intelligence squad.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Seems they ran some background checks on you and hit a few snags.”

“What sort of background checks?”

Carol tapped her ruddy cheek and turned her blue eyes skyward.

“Well, they surely went to the National Crime Information Center, and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System to see if you’ve ever been arrested. They likely ran your name through the LexisNexis Accurint for Law Enforcement, too. After that, they would have gone to the FBI, the DEA, the IRS, the NYPD . . . Oh, and did I mention Interpol?”

“With that kind of thoroughness I’ll bet a security check on Mother Teresa would have ‘hit a few snags,’ too.”

As Carol chuckled, I hung the cross back around my neck and tucked it into my sweater. Next my escort surprised me with the loan of a compact mirror and a hairbrush. In a few moments I did what I could to control my flyaway hair. I would have to go with the little makeup I had on.

As I handed back the mirror and brush, Agent Cage returned.

“Do you have your driver’s license on you?”

Why?
I thought, blinking at the woman.
Are my parking violations now a matter of national security?
But what I said was—

“Sorry. I don’t have it.”

“Sharon! I’ve got it!”

The Secret Service agent I mistook for a Saudi in my coffeehouse now hurried across the gleaming diamond-checkerboard floor, waving a piece of paper.

“Good work, Agent Sharpe.”

I pointed. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It’s a photocopy of your New York State driver’s license,” Agent Sharpe said as he passed the sheet to his boss.

“Would you mind telling me where you got that?”

“When you opened your club, you applied for a C license to serve liquor in DC. At that time, you were required to submit a copy of your ID.” He flashed a self-satisfied grin. “I contacted the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration, and they e-mailed a copy over to us.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Quinn’s own interdepartmental work in New York had taught me that government bureaucracy was one big happy family. With a very Big Brother.

“But why all the fuss for my license?”

“Your passport and your license both display your photo,” Cage explained. “We need two visual IDs to confirm you are really you.”

“Because you already have my passport photo, right?”

Agent Sharpe nodded. “And by the way, the State Department informed us that your passport has expired. If you plan to travel, you’ll have to renew it.” He paused. “
Do you
plan to travel outside of this country, Ms. Cosi?”

“No, I don’t plan on leaving the country . . .”
And I’m not a foreign operative, I swear.
“But thanks for the advice on the passport—”

Just then, the staccato whip-cracks of snapping fingers echoed through
the quiet space with all the comfort and joy of dry bones rattling in a midnight cemetery.

The sound was especially chilling because it was so familiar.

“Let’s go, Lidia, I have another meeting to get to . . .”

And there she was, Quinn’s boss at the U.S. Justice Department. Acting Director Katerina Lacey.

T
hirty-three

K
ATERINA’S assistant, an attractive young Latina, was working hard to balance herself on high heels while overburdened by a briefcase and a tall stack of legal-sized files.

Acting Director Lacey was hands-free, of course. All the better to snap those obnoxiously impatient fingers.

I had to admit the woman was striking, easily the most attractive person in the room. In contrast to her somber gray pinstripes and pointy leather pumps, Katerina’s flawless alabaster skin seemed almost spectral. She was as tall as half the men in the room, which explained her assistant’s attempt to rise to her level—at least in height. She wasn’t shapely, but her slenderness was fashionable, and with her shiny, blunt-cut, strawberry blond hair perfectly framing her face, Katerina turned a few heads.

Despite the attention from the males in her gravity, however, Katerina must have felt my gaze on her as well, because she looked right at me. Immediately my emerald eyes met her pea-greens. With a toss of her hair, Katerina lifted her perpetual pout into a smirk. Then, to my horror, she turned her kayak-shaped toes toward me.

“Clare, isn’t it? What a place to meet!”

“Funny, huh?”

“What are you doing at the White House? Do tours begin this early?”

“I’m here on official business. And you?”

“The same.” Katerina’s pretty brow wrinkled. “But I wasn’t aware of any catered events scheduled for today. And I certainly didn’t know your little shop had the gravitas to be commissioned for such a function.”

Oh, brother.

“My coffeehouse hasn’t been commissioned for anything, Katerina. I’m—”

Carol reappeared. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but the First Lady is quite anxious to receive Ms. Cosi. Shall we go?”

I expected Katerina to register shock, but she didn’t raise one plucked eyebrow.

“Good luck,” she said instead, in a tone that wished me anything but. Then she whirled on her low, pointy shoes and strutted to catch up with her still-tottering assistant.

After Mike’s revelations, and my own misgivings about this woman, Katerina’s lack of surprise came as something of a shock to me.

Perhaps it shouldn’t have, for as Carol ushered me through the same doorway Katerina and her assistant had exited, my White House guide spoke in a suddenly hushed tone.

“We’re in the presidential residence now. This is the main building of the White House. You should feel honored to be invited here.”

I would
, I thought
. Except that Katerina was just here, which means she likely met with the First Lady or a member of her staff.

And the subject of that meeting?

After what happened last night, all the security I had to pass today, and those snags the intelligence wonks hit, I had a bad feeling about that.

T
hirty-four

O
NCE through the doors, we took a short stroll down a long carpeted hall with a dramatic vaulted ceiling. As we walked, Carol pointed out open doors to the White House Library, Map Room, and China Room.

Sharon Cage followed at a discreet distance. Like a well-behaved German shepherd, the agent knew when to fade into the background.

Carol paused at a closed door, her hand on the latch. “Through here you’ll find the Diplomatic Reception Room, one of three oval rooms at the White House. It is here that ambassadors from all over the globe present their credentials to the Leader of the Free World . . .”

And given the way I’d been summoned, I was willing to lay heavy odds that I was here to do the same.
“Is there a special protocol I should follow?” I asked. “I don’t have to curtsy, do I?”

“Oh, heavens, no. Address the First Lady as ‘Mrs. Parker.’ The President’s wife has many ceremonial duties, but she is a private citizen, like you or I.”

Then Carol surprised me by leaning close.

“I’d also like to say that the First Lady is just regular folk,” she whispered in my ear, “as down-to-earth as you or I, but Mrs. Elizabeth Noland Parker really isn’t.”

With that observation (or was it a warning?), Carol ushered me in, and two things immediately struck me: the majestic nature of the room, and how many people were in it.

On my right, four servers stood at attention beside a white-draped caddy holding china dishes and cups bearing the presidential seal. I also
noticed a silver coffee service—and couldn’t stop myself from wondering (a little jealously):

Whose coffee will we be drinking?

To the left, a stiff middle-aged woman in a stiffer suit of navy blue stood at attention beside a slim man in gray, sporting a silver-blue tie. A pretty, young intern stood between them. As we entered, Sharon Cage took a position beside the older woman in blue.

With sunlight shining through the vestibule facing the South Lawn, the Federal-era mahogany bookcase, and stunning grandfather clock, this magnificent oval room managed to feel stately yet opulent, the latter largely due to its Regency cut-glass chandelier dangling over our heads, and the matching sofa and wingback chairs upholstered in yellow damask.

As Carol whisked me across a thick carpet, I noticed the interweaving stars, a design that felt disturbing, like a spider’s web spinning its way back to the commanding figure posed before an uncomfortably active fireplace.

“Clare Cosi, welcome,” she said, enveloping my rough server’s hands in her smooth manicured fingers.

“Mrs. Parker, it’s an honor,” I said, meeting her penetrating stare. I had to look up, of course. This First Lady was fashion-model five-nine. Her skin was flawless, her figure toned and athletic under a starched, formal coatdress.

“Call me Beth,” the First Lady said after bending low for a hug and air kiss so swift I barely felt the golden brush of her crisp, over-sprayed hair.

“I’m Clare,” I replied, self-conscious about my casual attire.

But if the First Lady disapproved, she didn’t show it. With a dazzling smile, she led me by hand to one of the armchairs covered in yellow silk damask, placed a little too close for comfort to the crackling fire.

“I thought a nice blaze would make the room comfy. By the way, did you know it was Franklin Roosevelt who had this chimney opened? He used this very hearth for his famous fireside chats.”

The First Lady wiped her brow theatrically. “Thankfully, that was before both of our times!”

We laughed together.

“And who installed the wallpaper? It’s breathtaking . . .”

“I confess that’s my favorite part of this room. I understand Jackie Kennedy had it done during her renovations . . .”

The paper was printed not with a recurring pattern but a sweeping wall
mural that circled the oval room with rustic scenes from early America: Boston Harbor, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, West Point, New York, Niagara Falls, and many more.