Triple Cross

“Dinner’s ready,” Nana Mama said. “Spicy salmon-and-sweet-potato cakes, homemade tartar sauce, baby asparagus, and bow-tie pasta with garlic and butter.”

There was no argument from any of us, and we followed Nana back into her beloved kitchen, where the woman who’d spent many years as the vice principal of a tough inner-city school performed culinary magic every day. We sat at the table, said grace, and dug in.

After her first bite of the fish cake, Bree closed her eyes with pleasure. “Oh, Nana, that’s so good. Where did you get this recipe?”

My grandmother pushed her glasses higher up on the bridge of her nose. “I made it up.”

“C’mon,” I said. “This tastes like something you’d get in a restaurant.”

She grinned. “Except you can only get it here, tonight, for the first time ever.”

“So good,” Ali said. “The homemade tartar sauce too.”

“What’s in the cakes besides salmon and sweet potatoes?” Bree asked.

Nana Mama hesitated. “Green onions, some sriracha sauce, a little of this and a little of that. I’m still experimenting.”

“Make them exactly this way again next time,” Ali gushed. “You can’t make them any better than this!”

My grandmother laughed and said, “Want to bet?”

CHAPTER 6

BEFORE ALI COULD ANSWER, we heard the front door open and shut. My seventeen-year-old daughter, Jannie, came in a few moments later dressed in a blue tracksuit, her skin glowing, her eyes and smile wide.

“It smells so good,” Jannie said. “Sorry I’m late, Nana.”

“Everything’s still warm, child,” Nana Mama said. “You must be hungry.”

“I need a shower first.”

Bree waved at the food with her fork. “Take it after. Better sit down and have a few of these salmon cakes before we devour them all.”

Jannie took off her warm-up jacket, sat down, and heaped food on her plate. After several bites, she groaned and said, “These are incredible! Can you try them with crabmeat?”

“I can,” Nana Mama said.

“No,” Ali said. “Just like this.”

“I’ll make them both ways,” Nana promised, then looked at Bree. “You’ve been home quite a while, haven’t you? What exotic city are you off to next?”

Bree smiled. “I don’t know, Nana. I wrapped up a project last week and my boss is keeping my next assignment a secret until our meeting tomorrow morning.”

“Just as long as it’s not Paris again,” my grandmother said. “That was too dangerous, if you ask me.”

Bree and I exchanged glances, and I knew to change the subject. “I’m sure it will be a domestic deal, Nana,” I said, then I looked to Jannie. “How did practice go?”

Jannie was chewing, but she beamed and clapped until she finally swallowed. “Coach said it was my best workout of the season. I’m fast, hundredths off my best, consistently.”

Jannie had grown seven inches in eighth grade and four more in ninth, so she was taller, longer, and lankier than most girls her age. She was also stronger, with tremendous lung capacity and a God-given talent for running the grueling four-hundred-meter race.

Jannie was so good at the event, she’d attracted the attention of coaches at Division 1 schools as well as private coaches. She had already been offered scholarships to several colleges, including the University of Oregon and the University of Texas. But the coaches who’d talked to her and us had been split on whether she should focus solely on the four-hundred-meter or broaden her horizons to the multi-event heptathlon, where her natural overall athleticism shined.

“Are you training for any of the field events these days?” Bree asked.

“Not this week,” Jannie said, taking another salmon cake. “I’m running in that regional invitational Saturday at Howard University, and Coach wants me to focus on the four-hundred. He said a lot of college coaches will be there.”

“There’s always some college coach at your meets,” Ali said. “When are you going to make up your mind and choose?”

“I was kind of wondering the same thing,” I said.

“Take the best track program,” Bree said. “The one that will take you the farthest toward your Olympic dream.”

“The best academics,” Nana Mama said, shaking her fork. “Sports are fleeting.”

For a few moments, Jannie didn’t say anything, just gave us all a cryptic smile. Then she said, “After this race, if it goes the way Coach says it could go, I think I’ll know exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

CHAPTER 7

BREE LEFT THE HOUSE first the following morning, heading off to her meeting at the Bluestone Group’s headquarters across the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia.

Sampson and I were not far behind her.

We drove back to Chevy Chase and the Carpenters’ neighborhood and knocked on the door of many a small mansion. We got very little. Either the residents had not known the Carpenters or they had known them so well that they were too devastated to talk.

Again and again, we were told how wonderful Sue and Roger Carpenter had been as neighbors, friends, and fellow worshippers at the nearby Episcopal church. And again and again, we saw the evidence of the strange, terrible fascination and fear that the Family Man killings had ingrained in the public mind.