Dead to the Last Drop (31 page)

Abby’s mother must have met her father while she was in Morocco, or maybe he was working there and she visited him for a period of time.

“How does the world
not
know about this?” I asked.

“Because Abby’s father and mother never married. Her mother even refused to put down her real father’s name on Abby’s birth certificate. That made it pretty easy to cover up Abby’s true history—reinvent her story for the public.”

“Reinvent how?”

“According to Abby, her mom worked for President Parker back when he was a senator. That’s how the two fell in love. Parker’s wife died shortly after giving birth to Kip, which made the senator a widower for years. Everyone assumes he had an affair with Abby’s mother during those years he was alone, and Abby was the result—their love child. They think he only married Abby’s mom when he began to consider running for President. He knew he needed a First Lady, not a First Mistress, and it made sense to make everything legit.”

“Then very few people know the truth about Abby’s late father?”

Stan shrugged. “It only matters to me because it matters to Abby . . .” He ran both hands through his thick, brown hair, wrecking it again.

“Ms. Cosi, can you
please
talk to Abby today when you go to the White House? I’m worried about her.”

More than worried
, I thought. Stan looked like a drowning man who’d been denied his lifeline.

“I will talk to Abby,” I promised. “But I can do more . . . for both of you. The Village Blend has been asked to cater an upcoming Smithsonian party. That means I can pick my staff. How would you like to play a waiter next Saturday night?”

Stan’s head shot up, happy excitement in his face. “Ms. Cosi, if I get to see Abby, I’ll play a rodeo clown!”

“I’ll tell her about it when I see her today.”

“If she knows I’m going, she’ll be there. I know she will!”

“Well, there won’t be an exhibition if I don’t box up these things before the courier arrives to pick them up. You’ll have to excuse me . . .”

While I went to work, Madame played the indulgent grandmother with Stan, plying him with more muffins and coffee. Already heartened by the possibility of seeing Abby, he began happily drumming the table.

Meanwhile, I took the computer flash drive, which Tuck and Punch had found in our Jazz Space, and slipped it into a plain, white envelope. No one had stopped by looking for it, and I’d been too busy to send it. This was my first opportunity to get it back to its owner, and I was confident the curator could help.

On the envelope, I wrote—

Helen Hargood Trainer,
Office of the Curator of the White House
.
I’ll explain this when I arrive.

—Clare Cosi

I placed the envelope with the flash drive in the box.

Next I opened the glass case and lifted out the historic sterling silver coffeepot. I felt a thrill knowing that John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline imbibed the brew that poured out of this very spout.

I upended it, to see if I could find the manufacturer’s mark. When I did, the attached lid flipped open, and a piece of yellowed paper flittered onto the floor.

“Ms. Cosi, you dropped something,” Stan said, scooping it up.

He unfolded the paper and scanned it. “What is this?”

Madame glanced over his shoulder and suddenly went white. “Perhaps we shouldn’t look at that, young man.”

But Stan was already grinning in boyish wonderment. “This is a treasure map! There are riddles here, places to look inside this house . . .”

I glanced at Madame. “Didn’t you tell me Mrs. Bittmore-Black was famous for her Washington power parties—and the legendary treasure hunts she staged to break the ice with her guests?”

“Yes,” Madame admitted. “Tenacious liked to put ‘teams’ of people
together who, as she put it, ‘
should
be working together to solve problems, but are not.’”

“Cool,” Stan said. “We should follow this!”

“Perhaps not,” Madame demurred.

I looked over the clues with Stan. The note was handwritten in a delicate script, but clear and legible. A woman’s handwriting
.

Tenacious Bittmore-Black herself?

“This looks like fun,” I said.

Stan nodded. “Maybe there really is a treasure.”

But Madame kept shaking her head; so, with a lame excuse to Stan, I tugged her into the next room.

“What’s wrong with an innocent treasure hunt?” I asked. “At least poor Stan is smiling now.”

Madame’s violet eyes narrowed. “Not so innocent, I fear. A few years ago my old friend came to New York to talk to a publisher about writing her memoirs. Nothing came of it, but we had a two-hour brunch at the Four Seasons, and far too many mimosas. Over dessert she confessed something she shouldn’t have.”

Madame glanced over her shoulder, and then lowered her voice.

“You know Tenacious Bittmore served four years as an ambassador. And her husband, Edward Black, worked most of his life for the State Department.”

“I’ve seen his pictures on the wall.”

“Well, a different kind of diplomacy went on at the Bittmore-Black parties. Influential people came from the U.S. government and the many foreign embassies here in Washington, along with members of the press. Some of those people used this house as a dead drop.”

“Dead drop?”

“It’s a place where spies and counterspies leave information for one another.” Madame crooked a finger and I leaned closer. “During the Cold War and afterward, information was passed. The people making the actual exchange were never at the same party. They were never even seen in the same building with the people who received their information. It was Tenacious’s husband who made sure the right guests got the right treasure map, and that’s how state secrets were safely passed to the CIA by foreign nationals, without anyone being the wiser.”

“That’s insidiously clever,” I said. “But it’s the past. There is no
evidence that this particular map leads to secret CIA intelligence. It’s probably one of many—”

“Did I hear you say this map leads to secret CIA intelligence?”

We turned to find Stan had crept up on us.

“If that’s true, then we’ve
got
to follow the clues,” he insisted. “There could be a national security secret buried somewhere in this very house.”

Madame faced him. “If it’s decades old, why would it have any value?”

“Because truth matters, Mrs. Dubois . . . and a truth about our past can alter how we look at the present, and move forward in the future.”

Madame and I exchanged glances, and she threw up her hands.

“Very well. But if we find the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Stan blinked. “Who?”

Madame rolled her eyes. “I do adore the vitality and optimism of youth, but really? How soon before they forget the Lindbergh kidnapping?”

“The what?” Stan asked, but this time I noticed his mischievous grin.

E
ighty-five

“T
HE game’s afoot!” Madame declared, convinced at last to follow the treasure map. “You may read the first clue, Stanley.”

“‘On the top floor there is a circus, if you know where to look. Find the number on the Big Top, then open the book.’”

“To the top floor!” Madame cried, leading the way.

As part of our “Walton family” living situation, the upper bedrooms had been occupied and then vacated.

“I have to get these extra air mattresses to the basement,” I said absently.

“There it is,” Stan cried, pointing to an original framed poster for a “Broadway Bonanza” called
Pixie at the Circus
. It starred “the singing-est, dancing-est, cutest-est little girl in the whole wide world, Teenie Bittmore!”

“These mementoes date back to when Tenacious was known as Teenie,” Madame explained, “child star of stage and screen.”

I scanned the poster. Under Teenie Bittmore’s dimpled twelve-year-old face, a circus-tent silhouette displayed the words
Opens May 3
.

“There is your number three,” Madame declared. “Now where is the book?”

One of the bookshelves was filled with bound Broadway and movie scripts. Another shelf was packed with hundreds of black vinyl records—78s, 33s, and 45 RPMs.

“Don’t show them to Stanley,” Madame warned, this time with her own mischievous smile. “He’ll mistake them for dinner plates.”

“There it is!” I reached for one book among a battered old
Encyclopaedia Britannica
set. “Volume three. Balt to Brai.”

The book had been hollowed out, and there was a
key
inside!

Madame clapped her hands. “Oh, how exciting! What’s the next clue?”

Stan checked the map. “‘In the library there is a chest of steel, unlock its heart for the next reveal. Shaken, not stirred.’”

Stan looked up. “Maybe James Bond is locked up there.”

“A chest of steel with a heart,” Madame mused. “Is there a metal chest of some kind? A heart-shaped jewelry or music box?”

“I don’t remember any. I don’t recall any hearts, either— Hold on, it must be that suit of armor. It has a breastplate of steel—”

“Protecting the heart of the knight!” Stan cried.

We thundered down the stairs to the first floor, found the library, and gathered in front of the suit of medieval armor. The breastplate was inlaid with an elaborate pattern of silver and gold, but there was nowhere to insert a key.

“Dead end,” I said.

“Perhaps the armor was too obvious,” Madame replied. “Let’s look around.”

The room was a treasure trove, as cluttered as a Victorian drawing room, with a Tiffany floor lamp beside a colossal, hand-painted floor globe depicting the nineteenth-century world. There was an antique rolltop desk—locked, but the key we’d found didn’t fit. In the corner a Willard longcase clock measured the hours.

“I don’t get the ‘shaken, not stirred’ part,” Stan said. “Unless the next clue is hidden in an Ian Fleming novel. Only I don’t remember the word
heart
in any of his titles, just
eyes
and a
finger
.”

“Look,” Madame said, standing next to a side table that was also a replica of a knight’s breastplate, with a keyhole left of center, where the heart would be.

I inserted the key, turned it—and was rewarded with a satisfying
click
.

“Open it, Ms. Cosi!”

The “breastplate” was really two doors that opened in the center, to reveal all the makings of a fine bar—a variety of glasses, mixers, jiggers, cocktail strainers, a muddler, and a shaker made of sterling silver.

“Shaken, not stirred,” I said. Inside the silver shaker I found another key, this one ancient and rusty.

I grabbed the second key and locked up the cocktail server.

“What’s next?” Madame asked.

Stan squinted at the map. “‘In the cellar you might feel all alone, but beyond the hearth you’ll find a home.’”

Down we went, to the basement. This was the only part of the mansion that lacked style and grace, but to be fair, there was not much one could do to glam a laundry room, three hot water heaters, and a giant industrial furnace.

There was a finished room with a television and radio, along with ironing boards, clothing trees, and a sewing machine.

There was also a subbasement, a few steps down from the main section. It lacked overhead lighting and was swathed in shadows. Stan found the fuse box, with a working flashlight set on top. He grabbed it and led the way.

The ceiling was low enough to make things feel claustrophobic. A few cautious steps took us through a doorway to an old coal bin and an ancient fireplace mounted in the wall.

“There’s your hearth,” I said.

The mantel held only dust. The fireplace itself was ancient, and constructed of crumbling sandstone. No fire had graced this hearth in years, though the back wall was still carbon black—or was it?

I took the flashlight, got down on my knees, and looked closer. What I thought was a trace of light stone peeking through the carbonized layers was actually a keyhole—a very old keyhole!

I inserted the key and tried to turn it, but the lock was too rusty. Since Stan’s hands were much stronger, he took over; and when he finally managed it, the click sounded like a lock in some ancient dungeon.

Stan pushed the heavy door aside, and a gush of cool, damp air rushed out of a hidden room.

“What is this?” Stan whispered. “A top secret root cellar?”

“It’s a railroad station,” Madame declared. “An
Underground
Railroad station!”

E
ighty-six

S
TAN cleared away cobwebs with his walking stick, then played the flashlight beam through the opening. It barely pierced the darkness beyond.

“I think there’s more than one room,” he announced excitedly.

He scrambled through, then turned and helped me cross the threshold. Madame wouldn’t be kept out, even though the only way through the hearth’s secret door was to crawl.

“I kissed the Blarney stone. I think I can handle this!” she insisted with a huff.

Once through, we realized the ceiling was much higher here than in the subbasement, and we all stood up. Stan moved the flashlight around and we saw wood-framed beds, their straw mattresses long since rotted away.

Names, dates, and symbols were scratched or carved into the rough stone walls. An antique lantern hung from a railroad spike embedded in a rough wooden support beam in the center of the space.

“‘Joshua from Ken-took-ee, Year of our Lord 1859,’” Stan read in a reverent whisper.

“That was probably etched by an abolitionist,” Madame observed. “It was illegal to teach a slave to read or write. And because escaped slaves couldn’t read, they used symbols and picture codes, even elaborately sewn quilts to trace their secret route to freedom.”

Madame nodded her silver head.

“Thousands of slaves escaped before the Civil War,” she said. “Some of them were hidden right here in this chamber. If only these walls could speak . . .”