The Library Trail Read online

  THELIBRARY TRAIL

  A DILYA’S DOG FORCE STORY

  M. L. BUCHMAN

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  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  When the person you depend on most disappears, where do you begin the search?

  Her mentor, an ex-spy turned librarian, vanishes without warning. Dilya and Zackie, the former First Dog, can’t find her on their own. Before it’s too late, they must reconstruct a trail of hints left in keeping with Dilya’s inner circle of friends.

  But when hints turn into solid clues, Dilya knows they must hurry or they’ll be too late.

  1

  “Not so normal, huh, Zackie?”

  In reply, the Sheltie gave her a sad look from inside her carrier. Neither of them were used to traveling this way.

  For Dilya’s first nine years, travel had been on foot or in the back of a dusty farm truck with tools, animals, or produce during harvest season. All part of being poor in Uzbekistan. But it was okay there, because everyone she’d ever known was poor. It was their normal.

  Three years of traveling with the American military as an adopted war orphan meant she’d never had to think about where she was going or how she’d get there.

  Then from twelve to nineteen—as the First Nanny and later also the First Dog Sitter—she’d gone where the President had gone. More importantly, she’d gone the way the President had gone: Marine One, the Presidential motorcade, and Air Force One.

  Dilya and former First Dog Zackie were now cut loose from the whole apparatus. Four days ago she’d flown from Washington to the First Family’s farm in Tennessee aboard Air Force One—then simply left. A crisis had arisen and she had no choice. Rather than trying to stop her, the First Lady had given Zackie to Dilya and sent them away with her best wishes.

  Together, she and the former First Dog were rapidly discovering aspects of American culture she’d never imagined—like how big it was from a train car.

  “I’ll get you out soon,” she hated lying to her dog. They’d traveled from Tennessee down to Huntsville, Alabama to ask for help from a friend. That hadn’t been so bad. From Alabama to Washington, DC, was twenty hours of horrible. Next time she didn’t care what it cost, she wasn’t going coach. With a sleeping compartment, at least she could let Zackie out of the carrier.

  “We need a car.” She’d never thought about that much—transportation had come with the job. And living in the heart of DC had made a car redundant—though she was a good driver. Training didn’t get any better than Reese Carver, the lead driver of the The Beast, the President’s limousine. In high school, Reese had even helped her finagle training for all of her Chef’s Club out at the Secret Service’s James J. Rowley Training Center.

  The Chef’s Club. Maybe they could help her.

  It originally had four members, she was the fifth. They had all been clique leaders in high school: debate, athlete, social, and nerd. But they’d grown tired of those narrow views and formed a new social group—their own.

  As part of breaking out of their norms, they’d added Dilya for reasons that still bewildered her. Working and living at the White House since Junior High, she’d been the ultimate misfit in high school even by DC standards. Yet for the last two years of school, the five members of the Chef’s Club had become inseparable. At least until college had sent them off in a dozen directions—well, four actually. She had remained in DC and attended Georgetown in between her responsibilities at the White House.

  Zackie whined at her from her carrier.

  “Right. That does it.” Dilya had memorized the train stops out of habit—she’d been taught to always be prepared—and she knew the next big town was less than ten minutes away. Seven minutes on her phone and she had her model ordered from existing stock at the dealership.

  Two hours later, she and Zackie slid into their new British racing-green Hybrid MINI Cooper and were once more on the road to DC. There were definite advantages to having all of her expenses paid by the government on top of the salary that the First and Second families had paid her for the last eight years. She’d never spent a dollar she didn’t have to. And saved every penny.

  And she’d looked up the law. Living in the White House and overhearing all that she did, wouldn’t quite earmark her investment strategy as insider trading. It was a public building after all.

  2

  Trevor Nolan had done it.

  Sort of.

  He’d spent his high school summers, when he wasn’t at soccer practice, working in this kitchen. During those summers, he’d slowly risen from dishwasher to mise en place. For the months between junior and senior year, he and three others had entered the Hay-Adams Hotel’s kitchen while DC was still dark. Together they’d prepared all of the ingredients needed for the day. A slow path from washing vegetables, through grinding spices, to actually cutting the vegetables and cleaning the fish—though none of them were ever allowed to actually cut the fish into portions.

  Mother might be demanding, driven, and a borderline psychotic, but she was also the head chef at The Lafayette inside the Hay-Adams Hotel. A Michelin star might continue to allude her, but there was no beating her address—directly across Lafayette Square from the White House.

  It was also the only time in his life he ever saw her. He didn’t know why he’d kept coming here, Dad had left long ago. A DC cop, he’d long since remarried and they’d made a great home for Trevor in the process. Yet the kitchen drew him back into his Mom’s sphere time after time.

  Last month, after three years training in Paris, Trevor had only intended to come home for a week or so while he’d sorted out where he wanted to go next. After nailing Le Cordon Bleu’s Grand Diplôme de Cuisine et Pâtisserie course, he’d worked as a kitchen slave in three Parisian two-star restaurants for six months each. Three years abroad was enough. It was time to climb out of the dungeon; he wanted to work somewhere better than troll level.

  New York. He’d planned on heading to New York after catching up with some of his old soccer mates in DC. Except Mom’s grillardin had broken his leg while waterskiing on Chesapeake Bay that first weekend after Trevor’s return.

  And he had thought the French were tough to work for. He’d never cooked on the line for Mom before and now knew better.

  “Three dover sole, two filet, and an Amish chicken,” she called out the last as if it was beneath her—probably because it was her sous chef’s recipe. Still, a three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar order from the grill alone didn’t strike him as scoff-worthy. He already had three orders down and wouldn’t have enough open burners for another thirty seconds. Not if he wanted to get the timing right so that everything finished at the same moment, permitting clean service to the table.

  Sure enough, at twenty-three seconds, Chef Mom swung by his station. “The order isn’t down yet? Jesus, Trevor. Get it together.”

  “Yes, chef!” He hadn’t called her Mom since his sixth birthday, which she hadn’t attended but instead sent a chef to make hazelnut crème brûlées for all his six-year-old buddies who wanted chocolate cake with a major load of icing.

  His response went unheard as she’d already moved on to harangue Margo over the state of her black truffle crab gnocchi orders at the next station.

  His phone buzzed as he began plating the prior orders. He was too well trained to let it break his rhythm and he emptied pan after pan onto a wide variety of stoneware. As soon as the expediter grabbed them he queued up the next set of plates under the warmer.

  No meal
at the Lafayette would ever be left to cool and fade past perfect under the infrared lights, they were only for pre-warming the plates.

  He risked a glance at the text message.

  Horse butt.

  From an unlisted number but that didn’t mater. It had been three years since he’d last seen that same message, but only one person could have sent it.

  Trevor failed to cover his laugh.

  His mother, attracted by his reaction like a food critic to a lone fish scale on their plate, snapped at him, “You have no pans down.”

  The expediter had already whisked away all other evidence of his work.

  “I don’t know why I ever bothered having you, Trevor. You’re a waste of space.” She nodded toward the stack of empty sauté pans. “Get your ass in gear. No special dispensation for being my son or having some fancy diploma from Cordon Bleu. Not in my kitchen.”

  Horse butt, his phone automatically refreshed the message.

  “Yes chef.” He intended to reach for the pans he needed, he really did.

  But his hand snagged the tie on his apron as he stuffed his phone into his back pocket.

  As if his hand had a mind of its own, it didn’t stop there. Once it had begun untying his apron, it finished the job. He folded it neatly, watching his hands with some surprise, as they set it on the work ledge along the front of the grill.

  Chef-Mom’s glare heated up faster than an empty copper Mauviel pan.

  He doffed his immaculate white chef’s jacket. Folding it neatly as well, he rested it atop his apron.

  “You can’t leave in the middle of service, Trevor Nolan. Now you just—”

  He pulled out his phone again, now that his hands were once more under his control, and tapped the screen awake to show the message.

  “I should have done this long ago.”

  Then Trevor turned it to face his Mom.

  Horse butt.

  3

  “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Dilya didn’t speak, of course—she didn’t very often. But she’d met the former Mrs. Nolan, which saved Trevor a lot of explaining. The current one, Trevor’s stepmom, was light-years nicer. DC cop tough, had to be to keep up with Dad, but awesome anyway. He needed to remember to tell her that more often than he already did.

  “And, yeah, I really did show her your message with no explanation. I then grabbed a packet of tartare-grade Kobe beef and walked out.”

  Zackie was happily working her way through the treat.

  “That’s probably a hundred-dollar snack for the First Dog. Guess that’s my severance pay.” And the chances of Mom ever speaking to him again were probably worse than none. He couldn’t decide how he felt about that. Relieved or plain old sad? A strife-ridden segment of his life now had the door firmly slammed in its face. But knowing his Mom was a cast-iron bitch and accepting it were too different challenges.

  Horse butt.

  Dilya and Zackie had been sitting in their normal meeting spot, on the lawn of Lafayette Park directly opposite the horse butt of Andrew Jackson’s statue. It placed the North Portico of the White House to their left and the Hay-Adams to the right.

  Tourists were drawn like magnets to the south edge of the park to photograph the White House. Locals crisscrossed the park with determined strides, iced coffees, and a minimum of chatter. It was a great place to sit on the lawn—often they were the only ones in the whole park not on the move—and talk as anonymously as if they were in a secret chamber. Today their spot was near perfect. The first days of September had abated the summer’s heat but still promised many glorious days beneath the arch of the blue sky. The white marble buildings of DC appeared etched against it like the finest sugar lacework on a black forest gateau.

  The two of them had used the park a lot during high school because it was so convenient for both of them.

  “I guess this is a bit less convenient now that I’ve burned the bridge with Mom.” Oh. My. God? Or About freaking time? Nope, he still had no idea which.

  “Is it okay if I say about time, Trevor?” Dilya’s voice was as soft as she looked. Long ruffly brown hair, darkish skin, and vibrant green eyes that saw everything.

  “Yeah, I guess.” After all, Dilya was the smartest one in a group of overachievers, so she was probably right.

  “My adoptive family are the ones I call Mom and Dad. My mother and father were shot dead when I was nine.” Which reminded him that Dilya might look soft, but was pure steel inside.

  “Really? Sorry, I didn’t know.” How could he not know that about her?

  “I never talk about it.”

  “Dilya, you hardly talk at all. But when you do, it’s always so damn interesting.”

  She didn’t respond as a trio of flash teenagers eased by in crop tops and Lycra shorts so short that even the DC midday heat didn’t justify them. Not that he was complaining about the view.

  “Zackie isn’t First Dog anymore,” she said it so softly that he almost lost it under the trio’s inane chatter about some band he’d never heard of. He was only twenty-one, for crying out loud, what was up with that?

  “I don’t think that’s the kind of position you can get unelected from. Maybe an act of Congress, but that seems rather extreme especially for the current group of lunatics under the Capitol Dome who can’t agree on a lunch order. What did you do, Zackie?” At being addressed, the Sheltie rolled onto her back asking for a belly rub. He gave her one.

  “The First Lady gave her to me when I quit my job.”

  “She gave you— Wait! Like quit the White House?” Dilya was such a fixture there it was hard to imagine the building without her. “Got sick of it after, what, your third administration? President Matthews once and two terms for President Zachary Thomas, right?”

  “No. I loved it.” She was staring very fixedly at the horse’s butt. So much so that Trevor finally understood what she was actually doing was very carefully not looking at the White House.

  “When was this?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Holy crap, Dilya. And you’ve been letting me ramble on with a blow-by-blow of Mom’s insanity? Are you okay with it?” All he’d done was call his own mother a horse’s butt in her own kitchen and walk out. Dilya had been kicked out of the White House.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m okay. But I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  “You didn’t have any choice about quitting? The President threw you out but gave you his dog?”

  “No, I quit on my own. And it was the First Lady who let me keep Zackie.” Dilya had taken over the belly rub once Trevor stopped.

  Zackie appeared to both hum with pleasure and fall asleep at the same time with all four paws in the air and her head laid back upon the grass.

  “Why did you quit?”

  Dilya finally looked away from the horse’s butt and turned to face him for the first time. “Tell me what you know about Miss Watson.”

  “She’s your friend, or mentor, or whatever.” The Chef’s Club had met with her once in the deepest basement in the White House. The old woman was an ex-spymaster who maintained a library of spy craft. She had served their group fine tea and homemade butter cookies in an unlikely elegant sitting room behind the battered steel door of Mechanical Room 043. Dilya had been her protégé as far as anyone in the Chef’s Club could guess. The next great female spymaster? Jimmy had tried labeling her the NGFSM but it hadn’t stuck.

  “I need to know what you know.” Dilya’s typical mood rarely emerged from completely serious but never before with this heavy directness.

  “Is this some kind of test? You said we weren’t supposed to talk about her.”

  “No, Trevor, it’s not a test. She’s gone missing. I had to leave the White House to try and figure out what happened to her.”

  “Gone missing? Like, kidnapped?”

  Dilya shrugged uncertainly before looking away to stare at the sleeping Zackie. “Her office is barren. Not empty, barren. She’s gone
. Her entire library is gone. The sitting room. All of it. Kimberlee said you once met her for tea here, above ground.”

  4

  Dilya could feel the change in Trevor’s interest the moment she mentioned Kimberlee. He’d had a huge crush on her in high school. If they’d ever actually gone out, she’d never seen any evidence of it. It was perhaps a little weird that the tall, handsome, soccer team captain—who could have any girl he wanted—had focused on the feisty, hyper-driven, debate-team-captain. Senator’s daughter from Alabama.

  Kimberlee appeared to have never noticed, which was impossible. But it was also Kimberlee who Dilya had met with in Huntsville two days ago and who had sent her to see Trevor about Miss Watson.

  She’d known exactly where Trevor was. Which said what about the two of them?

  Dilya hadn’t even realized that he’d returned from Paris yet.

  “The teas,” Trevor didn’t ask about Kimberlee. “I’d almost forgotten about them.”

  “Teas plural?”

  “Sure. All through senior year. I’d get a note every couple weeks to appear at one DC tea room or another. She said the exposure would do my palate good.”

  “What else did you talk about?” And how hadn’t she known that one of her closest friends had meetings with her mentor?

  “Soccer, especially the problems with American soccer. A lot of schools were scouting me pretty hot and heavy. A couple of the pro teams were too. But she pointed out that soccer was a tough sell in America. It doesn’t get much airtime here in the States because there isn’t enough time for ad breaks. TV networks tried to change the rules when the World Cup came here in 1994 to allow for more ad breaks. In American football, they can do micro ads between downs and ad breaks when teams change the field, during time outs, and a whole lot more. Pro and college soccer, with two forty-five minute halves and no real breaks in the action is a tough sell here.”