Dead Politician Society

Chapter 52: Jonathan

Jonathan sat slumped on the floor of the St. Lawrence Hall kitchen. He should be out in the dining room, being helpful, doing something. But when Diane had announced that John Alton had fallen, it was suddenly too much. The tray he’d been holding at the time now lay with its contents scattered across the tiles.

Where was Diane now? If she’d fallen with a tray, Jonathan would at least help her pick things up. But she was probably too keen to be front and center, soaking up the drama.

He thought of Jessica, watching the scene with her family. She’d wear the right horrified look on her face. But her real feelings would be buried where they always were: beyond anyone’s ability to see them.

And Brian? He was supposed to be Jonathan’s trainee for the evening, but he seemed more interested in positioning himself close to the politicians than learning the ropes of the job.

And why were politicians so interesting to be around, anyway? They were just a bunch of insecure men trying to puff out their chests far enough to convince themselves they belonged to the ruling class.

But Jonathan was no one to judge. He’d still be a computer science major if he hadn’t met Jessica in frosh week and had that conversation at that party—the one she’d no doubt forgotten ten minutes later when she was back on the dance floor with the football star she met the same night and dated for the rest of the year. That conversation had made him change majors so he could follow her until she felt the same way about him. It was happening…finally...but the timing was terrible.

Fuck it, he had to push forward. He took his oversized oval tray and slowly picked up its fallen contents. Two sugar dishes with half the sugar scattered across the floor. Sixteen mugs and saucers. Sixteen teaspoons. Two creamers, both spilled. Thankfully, only one mug had shattered and another had cracked. He chucked the fragments into the broken dish bin.

Elly Shore burst through the swinging door from the main hall. “I can’t take this. This is the third event I’ve catered where a prominent guest is going home dead. Someone is out to get me.”

“Out to get you?” Jonathan wasn’t sure how that added up. She wasn’t the one gasping for life in front of two hundred people.

Elly glanced at Jonathan as if they’d never met. “When the connection gets made, which is only a matter of time, who’s going to want to book Elly’s Epicure, the killing caterer?”

“Maybe a Hallowe’en party.”

She shook her head quickly, like she couldn’t have heard him correctly. “You’re lucky I’m understaffed tonight. I should fire you on the spot for that tasteless remark.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know where it came from. You didn’t cater the event where Manuel Ruiz collapsed.”

“So?”

“So you’re not the connection.”

Some of the saucers had cream spilled on them. Jonathan stacked these into a nearly-full dish tray and put the dirty load into the dishwasher. He liked this industrial kitchen. Everything was so big and easy—not like the thirty-year-old appliances in his mom’s café. He pulled the lever to run the load and went to work refilling the sugars that had spilled.

Elly was still on his shoulder. “Don’t fill those too much. We can’t reuse what they don’t consume. But don’t make it look sparse, either.”

He removed a third of the sugar from each dish, replaced it in Elly’s plastic bin. “Sorry about the bad joke. It was nerves. I really do appreciate the job. And the opportunity.”

“Matthew Easton is a good friend. You might not make the best waiters in the business, but as a favor to him, I’m happy to have the lot of you. Now forget about the dishes for now. It’s coffee time. If we can’t keep these politicians alive, at the very least we can keep the show going for guests who’ve paid good money to be here.”

His tray ready, his left arm fighting to stay steady, Jonathan pushed out once more into the main room, where John Alton lay fighting for his life.