Max Collins - Executive Order

She gave him the details of her meeting with Fisk, pausing briefly as the two friends ordered.

Reeder looked like he was about to advise her, then he stopped short, seeing somebody approaching. Without looking, she already knew who it was — Joe Reeder wasn’t the only people reader at the table. Kevin Lockwood dropped into the booth next to her and squeezed her thigh under the table — he was working, so a kiss on the cheek was out of the question.

Kevin and Rogers had been seeing each other for the better part of a year now. They’d met when he was a material witness on the last case she and Joe had worked — boy-band handsome, Kevin wore his dark hair clipped short, his tortoiseshell glasses enlarging slightly his impossibly long-lashed brown eyes.

Those eyes had first drawn her to Kevin, even though at the time he wore eyeliner and mascara. Kevin sang at a club called Les Girls where he appeared under the nom de guerre Virginia Plain, though he took occasional shifts here at Bob & Edith’s. Tonight he wore not a sparkly gown, but the customary waiter staff’s white shirt, black bow tie, and black pants.

“Mr. Reeder,” he said, nodding across the table.

“Mr. Lockwood,” Reeder said with a wry smile. She’d noticed some time ago that he’d stopped asking Kevin to call him “Joe.” Just didn’t do any good.

“Working graveyard, huh?” she asked Kevin.

“Yeah, lucky me. Alexis called in sick, so Pinky called me and I said, ‘Sure.’ I hope you weren’t thinking of doing something.”

Pinky was the heavyset, henna-haired gal at the register.

“No,” Rogers said, and raised her coffee cup toward Reeder. “I’ve already got a date.”

“Tomorrow night, then. I’m not working either place. I’ll take you somewhere nicer than this... meaning no offense, Mr. Reeder.”

“None taken, Mr. Lockwood.”

Kevin gave her a wink in lieu of a peck on the cheek, then rose and went off toward the kitchen window where somebody’s food waited.

“Been almost a year, hasn’t it?” Reeder asked.

She shrugged. “Who’s counting?”

“Your folks back in Iowa are going to love him.”

“Don’t be mean.”

“Hey, I like the guy. And I don’t have to be much of a people reader to see that you do, too. In a different kind of way.”

“So,” Rogers said, uneasy talking about this part of her life, “you were going to say something? Right before Kevin showed up? Something that might help us keep Special Situations afloat, I hope.”

“I don’t know...”

“You don’t know what you were going to say?”

He huffed a tiny laugh. “I don’t know if it will keep Special Situations together.”

She felt a tiny rush in her stomach. “You have something?”

“Maybe.” He sipped coffee. “You ever have occasion to meet Amanda Yellich?”

Secretary of the Interior Yellich — a hard worker and valued ally of President Harrison — had died just under a week ago at her desk.

“Just once.” Rogers shook her head, sighed. “Nice woman. So sad.”

“Sad as hell,” Reeder said. “Do you know how she died, exactly?”

Rogers shrugged. “Wasn’t it a heart attack?”

Reeder leaned in. “Are you old enough to remember Mama Cass?”

“Who?”

He rolled his eyes, then said, “The Secretary died from eating a sandwich.”

“A sandwich ? What, did she choke?”

“Are you sure you don’t remember Mama Cass? Food allergy — sesame.”

FBI agent Rogers didn’t love that the cause of death of such a high-ranking public official was unknown to her. “And you’re privy to this how?”

“I know that she died at her desk over lunch because it was on the news. I know about the sandwich — and more importantly, the allergy — because... I knew Amanda.”

“ Amanda? You knew the Secretary of the Interior well enough to call her by her first name?”

With a little shrug, Reeder said, “Her marriage broke up about the same time mine did. We went to dinner a few times. Maybe more than a few times. But it was never anything really serious.”

Rogers wasn’t sure she bought that. “How well did you know her?”

“Well enough to know about her OCD.”

Rogers cocked her head. “She had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”

“I don’t know if it was ever officially diagnosed or anything,” Reeder said, shrugging. “But I do know she ate at her desk every damn day. And that she had the same sandwich from the same restaurant every damn day. Hell, for all I know it was delivered by the same delivery person every damn day.”

With some lightness in her tone, Rogers said, “Please stop saying ‘every damn day.’” Because this clearly was something that was gnawing at her friend.

“OCD or not,” Reeder said, “Amanda knew all about her allergy, going back to early childhood. She would have made sure the restaurant knew about it, too. It wouldn’t take much sesame to kill her, a fact of which she was quite aware.”

“ Kill her? Really kill her?”

“Really kill her. Not a heart attack.”

“Is this being covered up or...?”

“No. There was a general assumption that she died at her desk of a probable coronary, which made the news initially. Follow-up reports mention the fatal reaction to sesame, but that was not page-one stuff. I mean, you didn’t notice it.”

“Who’s investigating?”

Reeder shrugged. “Nobody that I know of. Death by misadventure, an accident. Might be that’s all it is, but the Amanda I knew was pretty damn careful.”

Rogers mulled a few moments, then asked, “You think Situations should look into her death?”

“Do you have any other pressing cases?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Might be worth a look. Death of a cabinet member, if it’s more than accidental or misadventure, could be just the kind of case that would satisfy your boss.”

She smirked. “Or I could be accused of spending government funds just to satisfy your curiosity about the death of someone you knew intimately.”

“Did I say I knew her intimately?”

“Did you have to?”

Their food arrived, fish and chips for her, a meat loaf plate for him.

About to dig in, he said, “Well, if funding is your big concern, if it’ll make you feel better — I’ll buy dinner.”

“Even though it’s my turn?”

“Even though it’s your turn,” he said, lifting his fork of meat loaf in salute.

Truth be told, Reeder could have afforded to take her anywhere in town. His highly publicized success with her on the Supreme Court case had helped turn his already thriving ABC Security into a multinational corporation. But the political paparazzi had made dinner practically impossible at such favorite spots of theirs as the Verdict Chophouse, the Blue Duck Tavern, and Vidalia.

Reeder had first hit the headlines back in his Secret Service days, after stepping in front of a bullet meant for then President Gregory Bennett. Prior to Reeder, Tim McCarthy — protecting President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981 — had been the last Secret Service agent to take a bullet for a president.

Across the restaurant, a couple came in. The man wore a nothing suit, but the woman was wearing expensive jeans and a T-shirt.

“Them,” Reeder said, as they sat quietly eating.

That was her cue for a game they’d been playing. In an effort to pick up her partner’s people-reading skills, Rogers had coaxed him into coaching her as she studied kinesics and tried to improve her powers of observation.

She watched until the couple was seated in a booth in the back, near the kitchen. Even so, she still had a clear view of both.

“Well?” Reeder asked.