The Scarlet Pepper

by Dorothy St. James

  “He claimed to have a source that could prove the First Lady’s kitchen garden is a sham. I told him that his source was wrong.”

  “And then what did you do?” Manny asked after a long silence. “Did you follow him?”

  “No. I did nothing. Media Today’s new White House television correspondent, Kelly Montague, had chased after him and accused him of stealing some papers from her desk.”

  “Is that so?” He exchanged a look with his sergeant. “What kind of papers?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “And you didn’t follow Parker to a parking structure?”

  “No. Kelly Montague rushed off in the same direction that he’d taken, toward Seventeenth Street. I don’t know where either of them was heading.”

  Manny seemed satisfied by that. “What did you do after you left the White House Friday night?”

  “I went home, ate dinner, and went to bed.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t go back out later that night?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I was tired so I stayed home all evening.”

  “Did you invite anyone over to visit you?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t hook up with Griffon Parker late Friday evening, perhaps after midnight? Did you have a sexual relationship with him?”

  “Good God, no!” Manny actually thought the mean-spirited Parker and I had shared bedroom refreshments? “Ewww! That would have never happened.” I shook my head, desperate to get rid of that awful image.

  Manny shrugged. “You never know.”

  “Believe me, I wanted nothing to do with him.” I felt like I needed a glass of water to wash the nasty taste out of my mouth. Make that a shower and some bleach.

  Manny smiled at my disgusted grimace. “It’s my job to ask uncomfortable questions.”

  “Well, now you know the answer. If we were the last two people on earth, the human race would be doomed.”

  He followed up with some other questions regarding my past experience with Griffon Parker. Manny had a kind voice and a fatherly way about him, which no doubt made him an effective investigator. While I remained cautious, I found myself offering suggestions and providing as much assistance as possible to help move the investigation forward. Jack had been wrong. I had no reason to clam up around Manny. I wasn’t guilty. I had nothing to hide.

  In response to my answers, Manny would smile and nod and plunge in with another question. And then it was over. Manny’s sergeant closed his notebook and turned off the tape recording.

  “One last thing,” Manny said as we headed toward the door. “Just a little thing. Don’t leave town without contacting someone in the police department first, preferably me.”

  “Don’t leave? Why?” He wouldn’t want to keep a close eye on my whereabouts unless…“You—you actually think I killed Griffon Parker?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s my job to follow the evidence.” His fatherly smile slipped away. He turned his gaze up to the ceiling and heaved a loud sigh, as if he truly regretted what he was going to have to do next. “Right now, the evidence is pointing us toward you.”

  Yesterday I’d refused to believe Francesca capable of murder. Today I was starting to wonder.

  “You should understand by now how this works, Casey.” Manny’s resigned manner sent shivers down my arms. “Motive. Means. And opportunity. You have all three.”

  Chapter Nine

  That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime—to set an example—and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.

  —WILLIAM MCKINLEY, THE 25TH PRESIDENT OF

  THE UNITED STATES

  MY mind buzzed as I stepped out of the Map Room and into the vaulted, pink-marble-walled center hallway. I felt as if I were trapped in a fog-shrouded nightmare as I headed toward the grounds office. With each step I tried to get my hands around what had just happened and define the emotion coiling around my chest.

  Anger?

  Sadness?

  Fear?

  No. No. And no.

  I think I was in shock. Was that an emotion? It felt more like the absence of one.

  How could anyone, especially a trained investigator like Manny, think I would murder Parker?

  Because he’d found my name in Parker’s notebook? Parker disliked my garden, and he hadn’t forgiven me for surviving his attempt to ruin my organic program this past spring. I’m sure my name showed up in his reporter’s notebook many, many times as he’d plotted new ways to make my life as miserable as his own sorry one.

  And how in blooming hell could Manny believe for even a microsecond I’d let Parker into my bed? I’d always considered Manny a highly skilled detective with sharp instincts. What would cause his instincts to say, “Now, there’s a woman who likes her men as cranky as a rabid coon and old enough to be her father?”

  And what about Francesca?

  What game was she playing now?

  “Casey?” Jack caught my arm as he followed me down the hall. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, my voice tinny and as tight as my chest. “Why?”

  “Detective Hernandez suggested I should check on you, that’s why. What happened in there?”

  “Nothing happened. I answered his questions. I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal out of Parker’s death.”

  “The man was murdered,” Jack reminded me, “which also means there’s a killer at large.”

  “But that’s none of my business. I learned my lesson. I’m not Miss Marple.” I winced as I remembered the disastrous Secret Service training session that drove home how ill equipped I was to protect either myself or anyone around me. Compared with the other staff members, who had passed with flying colors that day, my instincts were sorely lacking. “I don’t have the skills to confront a killer.”

  “God, I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you admit that,” he said. “I don’t want you to do anything that would put your life in danger.”

  He didn’t need to worry. I hadn’t done anything. Someone else had apparently done it to me. Was Francesca capable of murder? Was she trying to frame me for Parker’s murder? I started down the hallway again.

  “Casey, don’t run off. Talk to me.”

  I stopped and turned to face him. “I wasn’t running. I have work that needs to get done.”

  “You’re upset,” he said.

  “I’m not—” I nodded to an usher and two maids who hurried past. I stepped closer to Jack and lowered my voice. “I’m okay. I’m not going to charge into the middle of a murder investigation.”

  “I know you’re not.” He sounded so damned calm. So reasonable.

  “Then why are you worried?” I flapped my arms in frustration. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you? You walked right past me just now. Even after I called your name, you kept walking.”

  “Did I?” I shook my head.

  His expression softened. “I think you should sit down. The physician’s office is right back there. You could grab a chair in the nurse’s office for a moment to give you time to catch your breath. Or you could sit in the Secret Service office. I’m sure the duty agents won’t mind.”

  I gave a pained smile and shook my head. “I may be rattled, but you don’t have to worry about me. Really, Jack. Remember I have the Calhoun family’s backbone of steel. It’s withstood much worse storms.”

  “I know.”

  I cringed remembering just how much he knew about me. He’d read my security background report. He knew how my father had abandoned me in a time of great danger. Jack had read the police reports detailing my mother’s murder. He knew I’d also been shot and left to slowly bleed to death at my dead mother’s side. But I hadn’t died.

  I drew a deep breath and straightened my spine.

  “If you can get away for a few minutes, I could use some coffee,” I said.

  His furrowed brows relaxed. “Are you buying?”

  �
��Only if you’re sharing state secrets with me,” I countered. We’d started back toward the Palm Room when I remembered that frustrating thing called work. I had piles of it waiting for me. “I know I invited you, but—” I reached into my pocket to pull out my cell phone to check the time. Every Monday, Gordon held a staff lunch in the grounds office to review the progress of our various projects. With everything going on, it was a meeting I couldn’t miss.

  Along with my cell phone, Milo’s mangled piece of paper from the garden fell out of my pocket. I’d like to tell you that my first thought was to throw the paper into the nearest trash bin, but the devil made me curious. I unfolded the paper and read the handwritten note.

  My chest tightened.

  I read it again.

  “This is impossible,” I said.

  “What?” Jack asked as I hurried past him.

  “I have to catch Manny. He has to see this.”

  With Jack racing alongside me, I jogged back to the Map Room, where I found Manny and his sergeant being escorted toward the Palm Room by Barney, the uniformed division officer who had waited outside the Map Room door.

  “I didn’t write this,” I said and thrust the paper into Manny’s hand.

  He gave me a curious look as he unfolded the paper and read. “What is this?”

  “I think the ‘what’ is pretty obvious. It’s the ‘who’ that should concern you.”

  Manny accepted that gem of advice about as well as my aunt’s old bulldog, Beauregard, accepts his medicine. I half expected Manny to spit it back at me.

  “Where did you get this letter?” he demanded after herding his sergeant, Jack, and me back into the Map Room and shutting the door behind us.

  By this time adrenaline was pounding through my veins with such force I felt short of breath. “The—the paper was blowing around in the garden when the volunteers were having their picture taken this morning. I hadn’t taken the time to look at it until just now. Actually, I was going to throw it out, but thought I should take a look at it first.”

  “You almost put this in the garbage?” Manny shook his head.

  “That was before I read it.”

  His expression grew all the more intense as he continued to study the note. “What did you do to it? Why is it soaking wet and torn?”

  “Well, I didn’t find the note. Milo did. It tore when I pried it from his mouth.”

  “This was in a dog’s mouth?” Manny clutched the mushy paper and started to pace again. “I doubt we’ll get DNA or fingerprints off it, but you never know.”

  Jack tried to pretend he wasn’t interested, but his gaze kept traveling over toward Manny’s shoulder in an attempt to read the note.

  “Sergeant Turk, I need an evidence bag and tag for this.”

  The sergeant nodded and left to fetch them, with Barney serving as his escort.

  Manny grabbed his recorder and set it back on the coffee table. “Who was in the garden at the time?” he asked me.

  “What’s written on the paper?” Jack demanded at the same time. “Evidence or not, that piece of paper was found on White House grounds, in the President’s dog’s mouth at that. The Secret Service will have to review it to make sure that it’s not a classified document before allowing you to take it, Detective.”

  I didn’t know if what Jack said was true or not, but his deadpan, just-the-facts delivery and hard, no-nonsense gaze as he held out his hand convinced Manny to relinquish the crumpled paper to Jack.

  Jack read aloud the short but disturbing note. “‘No law would take me up and stop me, but what I’ve done was wrong.’”

  Jack looked up at us. “Take him up?”

  “I think he means arrested,” Manny said with a shrug. “Although he ruined people’s lives with those damned articles of his—like he tried to do to our police chief—he didn’t break any laws. Believe me, we’ve paid close attention to his actions. He walked up to the line but never crossed it as far as any of us could tell.”

  Jack continued, “‘I can no longer live with myself for the pain I’ve brought on others. That is why I have decided to take my own life. My only sorrow in this is the knowledge that, because of the life I’ve lived, no one will grieve my passing.’ And there’s the hastily scrawled signature of Griffon Parker.”

  “He didn’t write that note,” I said. I’d read enough of Griffon Parker’s articles to recognize his writing style. This note had none of the pompous attitude he liked to pile onto his vile prose.

  “I agree,” Manny replied, “which raises the question—who did? We’ll need to review the surveillance video of the garden from this morning.” He addressed this to Jack, who nodded his agreement.

  “In the meantime, Casey, I need you to tell me who you remember being in that area of the garden. And I mean everyone.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured the volunteers and staff who had been near the tomatoes where I’d first noticed the paper. “The reporters had tromped through there, but Kelly Montague stood near the peppers to interview Mable Bowls and Pearle Stone. And then there are the volunteers. They helped me clean up the mess Milo had made over the weekend. But it was mostly Mable and Pearle who worked in that area. Oh, and Annie Campbell. I believe she helped out over there, too.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I think I was in that area when I talked with Frank Lispon. Jerry and Bower, two of our newest members on the grounds crew, might have spent some time over there, too, not that they were much help. Those two are lazy. Margaret Bradley walked throughout the garden, checking on its progress, but the First Lady, she wouldn’t have written a fake suicide note.”

  “No,” Manny agreed, but I noticed him writing her name in his notebook even as he added, “I can’t imagine that she would. Is there anyone else?”

  “No, I think that’s it.”

  “I saw Francesca Dearing rushing through that part of the garden to join the group for the picture,” Jack said.

  Manny nodded and added her name to the list.

  “I can’t believe she could murder anyone,” I said, despite the fact that she’d obviously tried to turn the focus of Manny’s murder investigation to me. Who was I kidding? Francesca had a huge motive for wanting Parker dead.

  “The murder mystery dinner was her idea. She asked me to help plan it,” I said. “I now wish I hadn’t agreed. She also had quite a bit to gain by the reporter’s death, including saving her husband’s career and her lofty social position.”

  And, again, she seemed only too willing to blame me.

  “Francesca and Bruce Dearing both have alibis for Friday night,” Manny said. “They went to dinner, then a late-night jazz concert that lasted until one in the morning, and their housekeeper was adamant that then the two were in for the night until seven the next morning.”

  “If not Francesca or Bruce, then who killed Parker?” I asked, not because I wanted to join in on the investigation, but because I wanted out of the suspect pool.

  Manny shrugged. “We’re just gathering names. Don’t you worry, Casey. We’ll catch the perp. Turner, can you arrange for me to review the videos now?”

  Instead of answering, Jack looked at me. His dark brows were drawn with concern.

  “We can talk later,” I said and excused myself to let Jack arrange things for Manny.

  As I’d said before, despite the black cloud of suspicion hanging over my head, the investigation had nothing to do with me. Really it didn’t. I could walk away from this and not look back.

  And that was exactly what I did. I walked away. I felt pretty damn proud of myself that I was able to hand over the evidence and trust that the police would find Parker’s killer. I felt no need to get involved. None at all.

  Thank you very much.

  However…

  How did an obviously fake suicide note end up in the First Lady’s kitchen garden? And why would the killer write something like this and then not use it?

  Chapter Ten

  If I were two-faced, woul
d I be wearing this one?

  —ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE 16TH PRESIDENT OF

  THE UNITED STATES

  “YOU need to be careful, Casey,” Gordon said, echoing the concern Jack had expressed earlier. “You can’t open your life to that detective and hope for the best.”

  “But I did nothing wrong. As I’ve said”—many times already—“I gave Manny the fake suicide letter. The killer must have written it. Who else would have a reason to want to make Parker’s death look like a suicide?”

  Gordon Sims and Lorenzo Parisi both watched me as they ate their lunches at the staff meeting in the grounds office. We’d purchased sandwiches from the cafeteria in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and were sitting around Lorenzo’s drafting table. I took a bite of my eggplant parmesan sandwich.

  Gordon had ordered his usual tuna salad sandwich. Lorenzo had ordered a spicy meatball sandwich, quite a change from his regular turkey and Swiss. He’d glared when I’d started to mention that.

  By the time we’d finished our sandwiches, we’d made it halfway through our projects list, checking off completed items and adding new tasks. As usual, we’d already added nearly as many items to our to-do list as we’d removed. With Wednesday’s vegetable harvest looming, I felt antsy. I’d already lost half a day to talking with Detective Hernandez. I had more important things to do than worry about a murder investigation that had nothing to do with me.

  We would have breezed through the staff lunch in record time if Gordon hadn’t kept insisting we discuss what the police may or may not be thinking…about me.

  Lorenzo watched me as he noisily sipped Diet Coke through a straw. I’d expected a snide comment or two from him, but he was keeping uncharacteristically quiet about the entire affair.

  “You need to consult with a criminal lawyer,” Gordon concluded.

  Alyssa had told me the same thing when I’d called to warn her that the police might contact her to verify my alibi for Friday night. My roommate had gone a step further than just providing advice. She’d surveyed several of her colleagues on the Hill. After sorting through the stories of politicians who had escaped prison sentences, she had called me back with the contact information for the top criminal defense attorney in the D.C. area.