Agent Baker, The Soufflé Flies At Midnight

My parents are very close friends with a couple they met in college, even though the couple relocated to the Washington, DC area over thirty years ago. I rarely met this couple growing up due to the roughly 450-mile distance, but I ended up getting a summer internship in DC during college, and my parents and brother decided to visit me that July. [Wife] owned a catering company, and she and her husband invited us all out to dinner at a nice restaurant opened by one of her former employees.

On the way there, my dad made a joke to my brother and me.

Dad: “At some point, ask [Husband] what he does for a living and see if he’ll actually tell you, because we’ve been trying to get a straight answer for thirty years. We think he might be a spy.”

We laughed.

Mom: “No, seriously! He used to travel a lot without [Wife], and he has all this military knowledge but always says he’s not in the military. And don’t they say all the intelligent people live in Virginia, not DC? We’re dying to find out!”

I asked [Husband] about his job during dinner, as requested. He gave me some vague answer about supply chains, then said he was semi-retired now anyway, and smoothly transitioned to a new topic. We had a lovely dinner, and the couple invited us to their house a few days later for the last day of my family’s visit.

Everyone chipped in to help cook and set the table, and at one point, I was the only one in kitchen when my mom opened a cabinet and gasped. She had found a shelf of cookbooks.

Mom: “Look at this! The C.I.A. Cookbook!”

We looked at each other gleefully. Was this it? Had we finally solved the mystery? Did [Husband] really give himself away by keeping a copy of the Central Intelligence Agency’s cookbook? (Why does the C.I.A. even have a cookbook?) Then, [Wife] came back in.

Wife: “You found my cookbook collection! I know, it’s a lot, right?”

[Wife], the high-end caterer, who had a Master’s degree from the Culinary Institute of America.

The mystery remains unsolved.