~~*~~
The Communications Bullpen
"There's no one here," Toby said sullenly.
"It does appear to be empty, doesn't it?" CJ agreed, looking around with her hands on her hips.
"Let's go then," he said impatiently.
"Come on, Toby. This is supposed to be fun."
"Supposed to be, is right."
"I bet you sneak in a whodunit on your days off."
"What days off?"
"There has to be some literary merit between political oratory and Beowulf."
"Doesn't mean I have to pay attention to it," he grumbled, looking behind doorframes. Whether he was looking for Margaret or an escape route was uncertain to his companion.
"And that innocent comment about the butler's guilt?"
Toby muttered something unintelligible.
"Hmmm?" CJ prodded, leaning back against some intern's desk and folding her arms complacently.
"Agatha Christie."
CJ shook her head knowingly, and smiling like the Cheshire cat, took his arm. "Well, come on, Hercule, let's see if we can find Margaret in one of those ever present hallways."
The Parking Lot
"I don't see her car," Donna said worriedly.
"I don't see anything."
"That's cuz you're not looking."
"True. That and maybe it's really dark out. And you know, raining," Josh said, pulling his raincoat closer to his chest.
"Where could she be? She was only supposed to be a couple minutes late"
"Can we go inside now?" Josh whined, shaking the umbrella they were standing under.
"What if something happened to her?"
"If we go inside, you can call her."
"Maybe she's out there, cold and helpless, lying in a pool of"
"Rainwater."
"Josh!"
"Well- less dramatic, but utterly true. We can call the DC cops and ask them if they found a damp redhead wandering aimlessly on the streets carrying various weapons."
"Various?
"You know, a candlestick, a rope, a revolver"
"A wrench, a lead pipe, and a vial of poison?" she finished, with the same sarcastic tone.
"Hey- poison isn't a weapon!"
"Is too- in the 50th anniversary edition."
Josh raised his eyebrow.
"Margaret has the game. How did you think she came up with this?" Donna said sheepishly.
"You. Are weird. Can we go inside now?"
"Oh all right, we can go inside."
Leo's Office
"You really need to lighten up more."
"With all due respect, sir," began Leo, as they walked down the corridor to his office. "I think you're taking this a little too far."
"I think it's was a very sweet and considerate gesture that Margaret invited me to her party."
"I think it's evidence of insanity."
"I hardly ever get to go to fun parties anymore. It's always about greasing this guy or impressing this ambassador-"
"In all honesty, sir, it hasn't been much of a party. Our host is missing, dinner is no where to be seen, and we sat in a room sharing feeble witticisms with each other-"
"Sam served cheesepuffs," Bartlet pointed out.
"Right now, I question his sanity too."
"_He_ at least got into his role. You should have worn a monocle."
"I will not now or at any time in the future wear a monocle."
They turned the corner and found Charlie reading at his desk.
"Hey Charlie, have you seen Margaret?" Leo inquired.
"She left about an hour ago, said she needed to pick up a few things at home," Charlie answered.
"Okay. Thanks, Charlie," said the President.
"She'll come in," said Leo, gruffly.
"It's one hell of a storm out there, sir," said Charlie.
Leo shrugged. "She'll come in. Eventually."
The Mess
Wadsworth made his way to the mess with the dignified air of a butler of butlers. That is, until he almost fell down the stairs, slippery with rainwater from those careless individuals who don't wipe their feet before they enter an establishment.
Readjusting his jacket, he proceeded into the cafeteria with his little diminished dignified air.
He then selected a tray and carefully began to arrange coffee cups in a perfect 180* arc on its surface, adding spoons and napkins, carefully laid out in a fan arrangement.
Wadsworth was a man proud of his work.
He belatedly realized he was supposed to be looking for his missing hostess. He had almost persuaded himself to commence a search of the area until he recalled his duty to the kitchen.
A butler's duty to the kitchen always, always comes first.
So he filled up the coffee cups and began to look for other edibles to bring upstairs that would go nicely with a side of cheese puffs.
Then he saw a shoe on the floor. With a foot in it. Attached to a body. Near scattered belongings.
This was not a tidy kitchen, Wadsworth mused gravely.
~~*~~
Lightning crashed again. Seconds later, the White House was dark.
Miss White screamed.
Mr. Peacock, startled by Miss White, stubbed his toe on someone's desk, fell into Miss White and crashed to the floor, taking the lady with him while cursing loudly and luridly.
Mr. Green began to itch his head and muttered something about "cheap theatrical stunts" and "bad movies."
Ms. Scarlet chided Mr. Green for his remarks, pointed out that Margaret couldn't possibly have orchestrated it so that the entire White House lost electricity, and then promptly fell over someone's wheely chair.
The colonel calmly picked up the phone to find out what was going on while Professor Plum made remarks about how fitting it should be that the power be out alternatively with speculation on how many seconds it would take the emergency generators to kick in.
Wadsworth was standing in the mess nonplussed. One cannot clean an untidy kitchen in the dark, especially one with a possible dead body in it.
In precisely fifty-nine seconds, the power returned.
Very soon after that, everyone had reconvened in the room, with the exception of Wadsworth.
"Where's Sam?" asked Josh, rubbing his shins.
"What happened to you?" asked Leo.
"I, uh, fell."
"On me," moaned Donna, rubbing her shoulder.
"You were the one who screamed."
"And you were the one who fell."
"Only because you screamed."
"Did anyone find Margaret?" interrupted CJ, knowing that that sort of thing could go on forever if not properly stopped.
"No," said the President glumly.
"And now Sam's missing too. The bodies pile up," remarked Toby, gesturing with his hands.
"What happened with the power?" asked Josh.
"A surge- lighting hit one of the power cables. It should be fixed by tomorrow and the emergency generators should hold until then," said Leo.
"Took them a whole fifty-nine seconds," said the President triumphantly. "Never got that kind of service in New Hampshire."
"Mr. Pres- I mean, Professor Plum, I really appreciate everything you've done tonight but she still hasn't arrived and something might have happened to her" began Donna, speaking rapidly in a distraught voice.
"Colonel- call her," ordered Bartlet.
"But sir-"
"Colonel, I believe you should follow the order of your commander in chief," joked Josh, receiving one of Leo's best glares in return.
As Leo was leaving, Sam returned carrying a tray of coffee at a precarious angle.
"Finally. What took you so long?" Josh asked.
"I have made a discovery. I cannot tote coffee from one place to another without spilling it."
"So much for the butler of butlers" cracked CJ.
"I should have listened to Ainsley," Sam continued, oblivious, and walking very, very slowly over to a table, holding the tray out in front of him as if it were a live nuclear device. " 'Don't fill it to the brim,' she said. I ruined my shirt."
"What a tragedy," added Toby, eyeing Sam warily as he set the tray down on a table near him.
"And the weirdest thing happened downstairs. I stopped cleaning the countertops to look for some more food to bring up here"
"You were cleaning the countertops?" asked Donna with a smile.
"There was residue left over from dinnerbut that's not the point."
"There's a point to all this?" Toby said, raising his eyebrow.
"The point is, I found this body"
"Oh, please, do not bring Mr. Boddy into this," pleaded Josh. "You've gotten carried away enough as it is."
"Not Mr. Boddy, a body. Margaret's body."
"What?" the party exclaimed simultaneously.
"You found Margaret??" Donna asked anxiously.
"She was on the floor"
"Was she dead?" Josh asked with a smirk, receiving a whap upside the head from Donna.
"She was unconscious, I guess. I'm not sure."
"You're not sure?" CJ asked skeptically.
"Well, I rinsed out my sponge and when I went over to where she had been"
"What?"
"The lights went out. When they came back on, she was gone."
"Margaret's body was gone?" Josh said in an attempt to clarify the situation.
"Why was she on the floor?" whimpered Donna.
"Why did you have to rinse out the sponge?" questioned CJ.
"Irrelevant. What matters is that she's gone again. Obviously under her own steam," remarked Toby, smoothing out his mustache in a way very evocative of a certain Belgian detective.
"It is not irrelevant. What the hell happened to her, that she was unconscious in the cafeteria?" responded CJ angrily.
"Maybe she was bludgeoned with something," suggested Josh.
"Like what?" asked Sam.
"I don't knowA blunt object?"
"Or maybe she tripped on something," suggested Sam.
"A banana peel," scoffed CJ.
"Hey, do not underestimate the power of Chiquita. Bananas have deadly potential," said Josh feelingly.
"Sorry- I forgot your brush with death," CJ deadpanned.
"Maybe she was impaled with a salad fork," Josh remarked, eyeing Toby.
"Or knocked into oblivion by a flying rubber ball," CJ added.
All eyes in the room were focused on Toby, who bared his teeth and began to shake his head. "I'm the prime suspect, is that it?"
"You have the most violent sensibility in the room," Sam said.
"You were the one who was there," Toby pointed out with venom.
"But I have a weak constitution."
Josh nodded in agreement. "Sam could never stab someone with a salad fork. And he has a lousy pitching arm."
"He'd do the banana thing though," CJ said thoughtfully receiving an agreeing nod from Donna.
"You're saying I'd leave a banana peel in someone's way with the express purpose of having them fall down and become unconscious?" Sam said incredulously.
"Yes."
"Oh. Well, I suppose. But I didn't."
"Do you have an alibi?" asked the President.
"Uh, no"
"Then he's probably innocent. Only the guilty ones take the trouble to think up alibis," said the President with an informed air.
"And this is the logic used in the Situation room?" Toby scratched his head with frustration.
"I'm going to ignore that remark, Mr. Green, and remember it at another, more suitable time wherein I can exact the utmost retribution."
"Okaaaaysir."
"So, let me see if I've got this straight," said Bartlet, leaning forward with his elbows on his thighs. "None of us had any luck finding her here- her car wasn't in the lot?"
"No, sir," said Donna.
"But Sam thinks that he saw her lying unconscious in the mess. The lights go out and sometime in that 59 seconds of darkness, Margaret disappears again."
"That about sums it up pretty adequately, I think," said CJ looking dispiritedly at the bottom of her empty glass. She waved it at Sam, who got up with a martyred sigh to refill it.
"Wadsworth, have you been into the sherry again?" the President asked as Sam was bringing back CJ's drink.
"I am not drunk, sir. I know what I saw. Or what I thought I saw. I know what I thought I saw was there. I just don't know how it got there, or why it was there, or how it disappeared, but it was, she was. There, that is."
"Very coherent, Sam. Are you sure you're not soused?" remarked Toby wryly.
Wadsworth pulled himself up to his full height and looked down at his nose at Mr. Green.
