The Scarlet Pepper

by Dorothy St. James

  My finger skipped over the cell phone’s “ignore” button, and I answered the call.

  “Cherry leaves,” Francesca said.

  “Cherry…What?” I must have misheard her.

  “Cherry leaves,” she replied as if I should know exactly what she meant. “They could be ground up and put into a tea.”

  Francesca couldn’t be serious. I handed the soft cotton strips I’d been using to tie up the pepper plants to Mable and stepped away from the gardening bed. Gordon Sims, the chief gardener at the White House and one of my closest friends in Washington, was helping out in the garden this morning and could answer any questions the volunteers might have in my absence.

  I spotted his full head of silver hair gleaming in the morning sunlight over near the tomatoes. An easy smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he waved in my direction. His smile grew a bit wider as several of the older volunteers mobbed him, swallowing him up as if he were a rock star, with Pearle and Mable leading the charge.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Francesca. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was on the Internet last night,” Francesca explained. “That’s where I read about the cherry tree. Did you know its twigs and leaves contain cyanide?”

  “I did know that.” With the cell phone pressed tightly to my ear, I walked away from the volunteers. I didn’t want anyone listening in on my end of what I suspected would turn into an odd conversation. “But, no. No, cherry leaves.”

  I stopped near the South Fountain. That was when I spotted Jack Turner dressed in the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team’s black battle uniform, striding down the hill like a man on a mission.

  What was he doing here? And alone?

  I hadn’t seen or heard from Jack since the disastrous training session with the Secret Service. I figured he was embarrassed to be seen around me.

  “But if the cherry leaves are poisonous,” Francesca argued, “then if we added a handful to someone’s herbal tea it would be the perfect murder weapon, right?”

  “The tea would likely make someone sick,” I warned. “I’m sure if anyone were to accidentally ingest it, he’d likely notice the symptoms and get himself to the hospital in plenty of time to be treated.”

  Jack walked past the garden and straight toward me.

  God, he looked dangerous in his uniform, and not in a bad way. My heart started to beat a little faster.

  “That wouldn’t do,” Francesca murmured.

  “What did you say?” I asked, completely distracted by Jack. He stopped several feet from me and mouthed, “I need to talk with you.”

  I held up one finger and smiled.

  He didn’t smile back.

  “It has to be the yew leaves then,” Francesca whispered. “Just as you had suggested last week. You frighten me how you come up with these scenarios. It’s the perfect murder plot, you know, even in real life.”

  Real life?

  “No, it’s not,” I blurted out. “It’ll work for the mystery dinner. But in real life, the police would run toxicology tests. They would still figure out who had a motive.”

  I’d said that last part too loud. Jack’s head snapped in my direction. His frown deepened.

  “It’s not what you think,” I mouthed. I’d promised Jack and my family that I wouldn’t get involved with even the whisper of another murder investigation.

  I knew I wasn’t a younger, hipper version of Miss Marple.

  Even though Miss Marple and I both loved our gardens and our mysteries, I wasn’t a fictional character. I was flesh and blood and bones and this past spring had learned firsthand just how badly I could get hurt. Murderers tended to go after obstacles with, well, murderous intent.

  Imagine that.

  “We’d have to leave a suicide note on the body. And perhaps some pills,” Francesca continued, despite my protestations that she needed to stop. Apparently she’d stopped listening to me…again. “No, not pills. An empty pill bottle. That would slow the police down in their investigations. Of course, we also have to make sure to muddy up the motive.”

  Francesca and I had discussed this part of the murder plot—the motive—many times. In novels, the obvious suspect never turns out to be the murderer. There’s always a twist.

  “This is still for the mystery dinner, right?” I asked.

  Jack checked his watch. His frown turned into a scowl as he started to pace.

  “Of course it is,” Francesca said, gentling her voice as if she were talking to a child. “But what you’ve suggested is so perfect. It could be real. That’s what I like about it. If someone followed your suggestions, she could get away with murder.”

  “This is still just a game?” I asked again.

  She laughed, a high-pitched birdlike titter. “You wouldn’t think that I—?” She laughed again. This time it sounded forced, nervous. “I wouldn’t—”

  “There are rumors that your husband’s career could be ruined because of an article Griffon Parker plans to write, and all of a sudden you’re obsessed with wanting to talk about how to commit the perfect murder for real. What would you think if you were in my shoes?”

  “You—you know about Griffon Parker’s story?” she sputtered and then quickly drew a deep breath. “What exactly have you heard?” she demanded.

  “I haven’t heard anything. But I’m worried about you, Francesca. I don’t want you to do something—something…” I stumbled for the right word. “Irreversible.”

  Jack’s head snapped in my direction again. He dredged a hand through his short-cropped black hair, turned, and started to walk back up the hill. If I was going to find out what he wanted to talk to me about, I needed to get Francesca off the phone.

  “I don’t think we should talk about this anymore,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” She was silent for a moment. “Sometimes I wish I could get away with murder. It would solve so many troubles in my life right now.”

  “And create about a thousand more,” I warned as I jogged after Jack.

  “Of course you’re right. It’s just a game we’ve been playing. And a way to help raise money for the garden club. I’ll think of a way to handle Parker.”

  “Legally?” I pressed.

  “Naturally,” she drawled a moment before she disconnected the call.

  “Jack!” I called as I ran after him.

  He stopped and slowly turned toward me.

  “You—you needed to talk to me?” My heart started pounding again. I swallowed quickly.

  He scowled at his watch. “I’m sorry, Casey, but I’ve got to go.”

  “What did you need to tell me?” I asked while following along with him as his long stride carried him back toward the White House. “Or did you want to ask me something?” Like out to coffee or dinner? Like a date?

  “I wanted to—” he started to say, but shook his head. “It wasn’t important. I’ve got to get back on duty.”

  “Maybe later, then?” I said and then mentally kicked myself for sounding so blooming needy.

  I didn’t need Jack. Or anyone.

  “I didn’t want to know anyhow,” I grumbled. But he’d already disappeared inside the West Wing.

  “THAT’S THE LAST TIME I HELP OUT WITH THE volunteers, Casey,” Gordon Sims warned later that afternoon.

  I glanced up from the pile of paperwork on my desk, which I’d been hopelessly trying to organize, and found him leaning against the open door frame that connected the grounds office with his own office situated directly underneath the White House’s North Portico.

  With thirty-five years’ experience tending the President’s gardens, Gordon’s incredible knowledge of plants, along with his relaxed demeanor, made him an invaluable asset to the numerous administrations he’d worked under. Over the years, he’d weathered nearly every kind of disaster imaginable. Very few things in his life upset him.

  “Why’s that?” I asked, surprised that he was complaining about this morning. Ap
art from Francesca’s absence, everything had gone smoothly.

  “While you were chatting on your cell phone, those ladies treated me like I was a juicy tomato they wanted to squeeze. I think a couple of them came close to actually squeezing.” He shivered dramatically.

  He watched while I struggled to decide what I needed to do with an invoice from one of our approved vendors. I dropped it back into my in-box and spotted a handwritten to-do list for the upcoming harvest day festivities.

  “You loved every moment of it. Admit it, I did you a favor,” I said somewhat absently as I ran my finger down the list. It’d been a good day. Nearly every task had been checked off.

  Gordon’s smile faded. “Did you see the newspaper the East Wing dropped off when we were outside?”

  “No, why?”

  “Your kitchen garden was featured in an article,” Lorenzo Parisi, Gordon’s other assistant gardener, chimed in from where he sat at his drafting desk on the other side of the room. Above his head on the whitewashed cinder-block wall hung a colorful schematic for the First Lady’s vegetable garden next to a design for the White House grounds, made by Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr., that dated back to 1935.

  He tossed the newspaper across the room for me to catch.

  The newspaper wasn’t Media Today, I was glad to see. So there was no danger the odious Griffon Parker had penned a scathing attack on the First Lady’s garden or her organic gardening program. The newspaper was one of those free political rags that employed homeless men to hand out copies at all the Metro stations.

  The headline on the second page read, WATERCRESSGATE: SCANDAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE VEGETABLE GARDEN.

  My shoulders sank in concert with my heart. I swallowed before reading the first paragraph. Then the second.

  “‘The First Lady’s garden is an elaborate hoax designed to dupe the American people into eating their vegetables,’” I read aloud. “Why in blazes would anyone even think that?”

  Paragraph after paragraph, facts were jumbled together with conjecture. The article then concluded with, “It’s impossible to believe the plants in the White House’s garden could have grown so quickly in the chilly D.C. spring climate or produced so much. We are forced to conclude the garden has been staged.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” I tossed the newspaper at my desk. It landed with a satisfying slap. “The plants in the garden are on display for any tourist to see. We’d have had to sneak in at night week after week, replacing baby plants with slightly bigger ones. Even then, someone would have seen us!”

  “It’s just a throwaway newspaper, Casey,” Gordon soothed. “No one takes those articles seriously.”

  “I suppose not.” The article just below it on that page touted, PRESIDENT’S LOVE CHILD.

  “Bogus or not, I wouldn’t let Seth see that article,” Lorenzo said with a smirk.

  “He does seem to be gunning for you lately,” Gordon agreed.

  I wondered if the First Lady’s social secretary was one of the unnamed sources. Would he stir up trouble for the First Lady just to hurt me? Probably not.

  “Now that you know the story is out there, you won’t be blindsided by it if a reporter asks a question about it,” Gordon said as I rubbed my temples to ward off a Seth-sized headache. “That’s how these things work.”

  “I doubt anyone in the press is that interested in the vegetable garden.” Lorenzo slid his dark Mediterranean gaze in my direction. “The rumors swirling around Bruce Dearing are distraction enough for everyone.”

  Gordon nodded his agreement. “I heard the press secretary complaining in the hallway this morning that none of the journalists listen at the daily press briefing. They’re all too busy Googling on their BlackBerries, trying to scoop each other, and Media Today, on their witch hunt for a scandal. I can’t remember ever seeing a darker cloud hanging over any member of the West Wing, especially not over the President’s Chief of Staff.” Gordon had to raise his voice to be heard over a sudden series of loud bangs. The grounds offices were adjacent to the carpenters’ shop, where they’d been frantically working all week on a special project for Seth Donahue.

  “Don’t forget about those nasty rumors that circulated about a year ago about the press secretary and the Chief of Staff,” Lorenzo said.

  Lorenzo grinned in my direction when I took the bait and asked, “Rumors about Frank Lispon and Bruce Dearing? What were they about?”

  “Nothing,” Gordon said. “Just some nasty backstairs gossip that doesn’t deserve repeating.” Gordon wiped his hands together as if brushing off a day of hard labor in the garden.

  Repeat it, repeat it! I wanted to scream.

  But I didn’t. I was no longer a slave to my curiosity. I didn’t need to know everything about everybody. And I was mighty proud of myself for my extraordinary display of self-control.

  “Does the scandal have to do with—?” The words popped out of my mouth.

  “Lorenzo”—Gordon turned away from me—“are you still planning to attend the First Lady’s volunteer appreciation tea? I need to send word to the East Wing who I’m sending in my place by the end of the day.”

  Lorenzo rubbed the back of his neck. “Actually, I can’t do it this year.”

  I didn’t blame Lorenzo for wanting to wiggle out of going. From what I’d heard, I’d rather catch a bad case of the mumps than attend this year’s volunteer event. But I was surprised by Lorenzo’s sudden change of heart.

  Lorenzo was the kind of guy who lived for the chance to rub elbows with powerful people like President John Bradley and First Lady Margaret Bradley. Appearances mattered to him. He wore suits to work even though we all worked in the gardens. When he worked outside, he wore a dark green garden apron over his dress shirt to ward off stains. He looked as if he should be puttering around an English estate. Even now at the end of the day the creases in his pants were sharp enough to scythe grass.

  I, on the other hand, wore sensible loafers, khaki pants, and knit tops. Although I started each day looking fresh and professional, I rarely ended that way. Even when I managed to avoid getting splattered with mud during one of our many gardening projects, Milo, the overgrown presidential puppy, would happen.

  The fluffy fifty-pound, six-month-old goldendoodle had developed a bad habit of digging in the lawns and gardens. Lately the task of cleaning up both the garden and Milo’s muddy paws fell into my lap.

  Lorenzo conveniently kept his distance whenever Milo was in need of a bath, claiming to be allergic. I suspected he wasn’t allergic to dogs, but to dirt.

  “I thought you were looking forward to the volunteer appreciation tea. What’s happened?” Gordon asked Lorenzo.

  Lorenzo’s tanned cheeks turned a strange shade of puce. “I…um…will be busy that afternoon. I…I have a date.”

  “You do?” I shouted, overjoyed to hear it. His former girlfriend had been tragically murdered this past spring, which had crushed him. Both Gordon and I had been worried about his dark mood for months. “That’s wonderful news! Who is she? Do we know her?”

  “Um…” Lorenzo rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s stick to talking about gardening.” He swiveled his chair back around to face his desk.

  Although I was the new girl in the group—Gordon and Lorenzo had worked together for the past seven years—I had hoped Lorenzo would have accepted my laurel leaf of friendship by now. We worked long hours together, sacrificing nearly all of our social lives to make sure the grounds always had a showroom shine. Apparently, because the First Lady had personally hired me to develop and implement an organic gardening program at the White House, Lorenzo would always view me as an outsider and a threat.

  “Ohh-kaay,” I said as I frowned at the back of Lorenzo’s head. “Perhaps we could—” I stopped when my desk phone rang.

  The brisk, no-nonsense Secret Service agent on the other end of the line skipped the greeting and said, “Ms. Calhoun, we have a situation at the northwest gate.”

  “A situation?” I sat up st
raighter, causing my desk chair to let out a loud squeak.

  There was no reason for anyone in the Secret Service to contact me, an assistant gardener, about any kind of situation that would concern the security of the White House, unless I was somehow responsible for causing it.

  After that disastrous training session at the Secret Service training center, I’d been trying to keep a low profile and avoid any and all “situations.”

  Oh, hell, whatever it was, I’d simply have to fix it.

  Lorenzo had turned around and was watching me with an expression of concern until he realized I’d noticed. He quickly spun back to his desk.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  The Secret Service agent didn’t answer right away, which wasn’t a good sign. “Mrs. Dearing is at the northwest gate.”

  “Francesca?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s brought a guest that she insists you need to meet. She said you asked her to bring him here.”

  “She did?” I hadn’t asked Francesca to bring anyone to the White House. And I still had no idea why the Secret Service would consider anyone at the gate a situation. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Mrs. Dearing’s guest hasn’t been properly vetted. We can’t admit him. You should have known that,” he scolded. “You’ll have to come out here.”

  “That’s not a problem. I’ll be right out.”

  I started to hang up, but stopped myself. There had to be something else going on.

  Secret Service agents didn’t rattle easily. On a day-to-day basis they calmly dealt with dozens of suspected threats against the President in addition to managing overzealous protesters and the occasional mentally ill patient looking to make the six o’clock news. The men and women who protected the White House and its important residents were too well trained to be bothered by something as simple as an unexpected visitor. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

  “Ma’am…” A low chuckle garbled his words. “Mrs. Dearing’s guest, well, he seems to be wearing a skirt.”

  Chapter Three

  Sometimes I wake at night in the White House and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream.