The Scarlet Pepper

by Dorothy St. James

  Years ago my aunts, who rarely agree on anything, had both tried to teach me to cook.

  At the same time.

  In the same kitchen.

  As a result, while I could grow a cornucopia of vegetables, I didn’t know how to prepare even a simple chicken dish for dinner.

  I can do this, I repeated. All the dishes my aunts and I ever made during those cooking lessons ended up fit for only one place…the garbage can.

  So what did Grandmother Faye tell me? Should I bake the chicken at four hundred degrees? For how long?

  “How is your grandmother?” Jack asked when I returned.

  Did she say I should put the oven on broil or not? “What? Oh, she’s good.” I turned the oven on and set it to broil. Broiled chicken sounded fancier than baked.

  “Did you tell her about Parker’s murder?”

  “Um…” I placed the frozen chicken fillets in a baking pan and sprinkled some salt and pepper on them (like they do on cooking shows). “No. I didn’t want to worry her about any of that. She worries about me too much already.”

  I slid the pan onto the oven’s top shelf.

  “Do you need a hand there?” Jack asked, rising from the kitchen chair.

  “No, I’ve got it.” I flashed him a forced smile and prepared an oil and vinegar dressing for the salad. “Thank you.”

  “Ohh-kaay,” he said, eyeing the oven as if he thought it might explode or something.

  “Don’t worry. It’s electric,” I assured him. Grandmother Faye had told me to add the salsa when I turned the chicken over. Which reminded me, I needed to set a timer.

  Once that was done, I pulled two more bottles of beer from the fridge, refilled Jack’s glass, and poured one for myself.

  I dropped into the kitchen chair across from Jack and sighed. “Been one hell of a day,” I said after taking a sip of the beer.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re still upset with me. You wouldn’t be frowning so hard otherwise.”

  “I risked my life to protect you this spring. I didn’t do it so you could get yourself killed three months later.”

  I sank down a little in the chair. “I’m not going to get hurt.”

  “You told Hernandez that you were willing to play games with a killer. I’d say the express train to disaster has already left the station. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in the hospital. If not, you’ll take that train all the way to the morgue.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to go to your funeral, Casey. I won’t.”

  “What can I do? If Frank and Bruce poisoned Parker, it looks as if they want me to take the blame. It’s not as if I invited them to use the details of the murder mystery dinner to carry out the deed. I certainly didn’t want the police breathing down my neck at the White House. Nor did I ask anyone to dump a bunch of yew branches in my backyard. What do you want me to do, sit on my hands and hope enough evidence builds up against them so Manny has no choice but to believe me? What if that doesn’t happen? What if it goes the other way and I’m arrested for Parker’s murder?”

  “We need to be smart about this.” I liked the way he said “we.” I really did want his help. “What we need to do is make it impossible for the killer to keep throwing the blame your way.”

  “I agree. Even if Manny doesn’t think I killed anyone, a trial by the press would end my White House career.”

  “We can’t let that happen.” Again he used the “we” word. I bit my lower lip in a failed attempt to hold back a smile.

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  Always cautious, Jack took a moment to think about the question before answering. “First, let’s cut through the conjecture and nail down what we do and don’t know.”

  I fetched a pen and a pad of paper to take notes. “I know Frank and Bruce killed Griffon Parker.”

  “That’s conjecture.”

  I frowned even though I knew he was right. “Okay, I overheard them talking. Frank was seen arguing with Griffon Parker the night of his death.”

  “What were they arguing about?” Jack asked. “That’s something we need to find out.”

  “Right.” I sat back in the chair. “We also know that the killer, who might be Frank, dropped the fake suicide note in the garden this morning.”

  “There’s a good chance that the killer dropped the note, although that’s not a known.”

  “You’re too logical, you know that, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps you jump to too many conclusions,” he tossed back at me with a smile. “But getting back to the fake note. Someone connected with the murder or the cover-up wrote that note and was in the garden this morning. Who in the garden also had a connection with Parker?”

  “A motive, you mean?”

  “Let’s start with a connection. Motives can be tricky.”

  “You’re right. Miss Marple mysteries often follow the thinnest threads to get to the murderer.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “Francesca Dearing—along with her husband—was the subject of Parker’s investigative report. Both she and Annie told Manny about the murder mystery dinner, but made it look as if I’d come up with the entire scenario.”

  “Were all three of them in the garden?”

  “Bruce wasn’t.”

  “Well, for now, let’s put all three of them down.”

  I wrote their names on the list even though Bruce was the only one of the three I believed capable of murder.

  “Let’s see, Kelly Montague, the new Media Today star reporter, was in the garden. Parker had stolen papers that belonged to her. She was pretty upset about it.”

  I told Jack about my conversation with her and how she had tried to hide the papers sitting on her desk from me. I also told him about the threatening phone call she’d received.

  “That makes her sound more like a victim of the plot than the villain,” I concluded.

  “I’m not ready to strike her off our list yet. Didn’t Parker’s death mean she’s now Media Today’s top White House reporter?” He tapped the notepad. Reluctantly, I wrote her name on it.

  We went through the list of everyone who had been at the photography session that morning. The only other person who had a connection to Parker was the First Lady. Griffon Parker was always writing damaging articles about her, the administration, and her husband. Despite that, neither Jack nor I felt it necessary to add Margaret Bradley’s name to our short list of suspects.

  “So these are our suspects?”

  “Unless there’s someone else we don’t know about or haven’t thought of yet,” Jack warned. “What else do we know?”

  “The killer put the yew branches in my backyard. That’s a clue we can follow. Can you find out whether Frank or Bruce left the West Wing this afternoon?”

  “I can,” Jack agreed. “But Casey, let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know who put the branches in your yard or why. It might not be related to the murder.”

  “You can’t be serious. It has to be—”

  “I’m being cautious. Jumping to conclusions too quickly might prove dangerous. For you. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

  Touched, I quickly looked away and cleared my throat.

  “So what am I going to do tomorrow and Wednesday at the harvest?”

  “Nothing. Act normal. Keep your ears and eyes open.”

  “And ask those questions I told Manny I’d ask?”

  “Are you trying to kill me?” Jack asked.

  “What? You’ve tasted my cooking before?”

  We both laughed.

  “I just wish Francesca would tell me what’s going on with her. She’s upset. I’m afraid it’s because of the story Parker was going to write and that her husband and Frank ‘took care of matters’ before the story could get written.”

  “Besides the Dearings and Kelly Montague, who else was Parker investigating?”

  “Me,” I hated to admit.

  We talked more about the evidence that Manny had against me. Griffon Parker had written my n
ame in his notebook. It had been his last entry.

  “I think Gillis Farquhar might have talked to Parker about me. He had nothing but complaints about my—I mean, the First Lady’s—organic program for the gardens. And he admitted to knowing Parker,” I said. “I’m sure my name was in Parker’s notebook because of the article he was planning to write about the First Lady’s garden.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions about that,” Jack said. “We don’t know what line of research Parker was following when he jotted your name down.”

  I didn’t agree, but to keep the discussion moving along I let him have the last word on that. After a while, I managed to steer us back to my main focus: Frank Lispon and Bruce Dearing.

  “Those two have a long history together,” Jack told me as he sat back in the chair. “They roomed together in college and have worked together in politics for decades. I haven’t seen it myself but I’ve heard other agents talk about Frank. When we’re traveling, he’ll sometimes go off radar for a while. The speculation in the ranks is that he’s meeting someone.”

  “Well, he’s a good-looking man for his age and not married.”

  “Bruce sometimes disappears as well,” Jack added.

  “You think they might be out trolling for women when they travel?”

  Jack shrugged. “It could be the scandal Parker was planning to spring.”

  “I don’t know. The way the society lionesses were talking about it, they made it sound as if it had to be something bigger. What’s so shocking about an affair? Those seem to erupt on a monthly basis. There has to be a nasty twist. Wait a minute, Lorenzo was telling me about some rumor about Frank and Bruce that was going around the White House last year. Do you know anything about that?”

  Jack closed his eyes as he thought about it. “There was something…” He opened his eyes. “Oh, it was pretty far-fetched. Some of the other guys were saying that Frank and Bruce were close. More than friends.”

  “You mean…?”

  Jack nodded. “Romantically involved. I never believed it. I’ve seen those two together. They aren’t involved in that way. Or if they are, they’re experts at hiding their feelings for each other.”

  “That reminds me,” I said. “Manny told me that Parker had sex the night he died. Don’t ask me how he knew.”

  Jack started to explain forensics. I stopped him.

  “I don’t want to know,” I said. “If the killer slept with Parker, which Manny seems to believe happened, and the killer is either Frank or Bruce, perhaps the rumors are true. That would be an embarrassing scandal for Francesca, and it would likely ruin Bruce’s political career.”

  “So we need to find out if Parker preferred men or women?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll let you handle that one. Thinking of Parker getting down and jiggly with anyone makes my skin crawl.”

  “It’s not something I want to picture, either, but I’ll do it,” Jack said.

  “I’m not sure who he slept with even matters. Frank killed Parker.”

  “That’s conjecture,” Jack reminded me.

  “You’re probably right about that. Francesca seems to know what Parker had been threatening to expose. If the scandal did involve an affair between Frank and Bruce, I can’t imagine Francesca would stay with Bruce knowing that that was going on behind her back. I simply can’t imagine she’d put up with something like that. Besides, Annie insisted that Bruce and Francesca were above reproach, that they were the perfect power couple.”

  “Perhaps Annie doesn’t know her longtime friends as well as she thought. Or perhaps she does and doesn’t want to say anything.”

  “I’ll ask Annie about this,” I said. “She’s known Francesca since childhood and Bruce for nearly that long. She should know what’s going on.”

  “In the meantime, I think you should be careful around Bruce Dearing. He’s got a nasty way of destroying his enemies both politically and professionally.”

  “And perhaps also literally,” I added. “As in murder.”

  Jack made a face. “I think the chicken’s done.”

  “It can’t be. The timer hasn’t gone off yet.”

  Narrow ribbons of gray smoke danced in a spiral pattern as they escaped around the door’s seal.

  I jumped up and threw open the door. The room filled with a cloud of smoke just as the fire detector started to scream.

  “Open a window,” I shouted over the deafening sound. I pulled on a thick oven mitt and rescued the chicken from the billowing smoke.

  I quickly set the table and served the salad—a mix of romaine lettuce, hydroponic cherry tomatoes, and the oil and vinegar dressing. By that time most of the smoke had cleared and the fire detector had, blessedly, stopped screaming.

  “Alyssa and I usually opt for takeout or delivery,” I admitted, eyeing the chicken’s thick black crust. I had to use a metal spatula to scrape the fillets from the pan onto a glass platter. I poked at them with the side of the spatula.

  Perhaps if I scraped off the blackened crust…

  “It’s fine.” Jack took the platter and pushed one of the unrecognizable lumps of meat onto his plate with his fork. He chiseled off a blackened corner. “I’ve had…” He took a bite and chewed.

  And chewed.

  And chewed.

  Finally, he washed it down with half his beer.

  I put the other unappetizing piece of chicken on my plate. Even though I rarely ate meat, I cut into it to find that although the outside had burned to a crisp the center was not only raw…it was still frozen!

  “Don’t eat that.” I grabbed his plate before he could bravely carve off another piece, and I dumped the chicken into the trash. I then piled his plate with more salad.

  “You would have been better off with the pizza,” I said and set the plate back in front of him. My insides clenched. What Jack must think of me! I’m worthless in the kitchen. Worse than worthless. What with the looks of the charred chicken and the bitter stench of smoke lingering in the air, I thanked providence I didn’t burn down the apartment. “I could make you a peanut butter sandwich.”

  “No, Casey. Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the effort you made.” He shoveled the salad into his mouth. “This tastes…different. What did you put in the dressing?”

  “Just vinegar, oil, and a dash of Italian spices.”

  He swigged his beer. “I can really taste the vinegar.”

  I took a bite of the salad and was nearly knocked out of my chair from the vinegar’s sharp tang. “Gracious, I must have added too much.” I really did know better. My aunts had given up on my cooking lessons before we reached the salad section in the famous Junior League cookbook Charleston Receipts.

  “It’s different,” he said just as his cell phone beeped. Frowning, he read the screen and punched in a quick reply.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  “No. Not really.” But he kept frowning. He shot a glance to the clock on the wall. “I’m sorry, Casey, I’ve got to run. Dinner was…”

  Awful?

  Stomach pump worthy?

  I put my hands on my hips as I waited for him to finish that sentence he’d left dangling. I’d never known him to lie to me.

  He cleared his throat. “Next time, I’ll cook.”

  “Good idea.”

  He leaned toward me, his lips nearly brushing mine.

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

  Closing my eyes, I drew my tongue over my lips and waited for him to close the distance between us.

  “Don’t do anything rash, or even slightly daring,” he whispered. “I won’t be able to watch your back like last time. I’ve not been assigned to protect you. This time, Casey, you’re on your own.”

  A featherlight kiss brushed my cheek. When I opened my eyes he was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.

  —LYNDON B. JOHNSON, THE 36TH PRESIDENT OF

  THE UNITED STATES
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br />   NOT long after, Alyssa stood in the middle of the kitchen with her hands on her hips and her nose crinkled with concern. I’d just finished telling her about my day, every embarrassing and frustrating detail. Not that I needed to spell it all out. Evidence of my mortifying meal could be found in the blackened baking dish that sat soaking in the sink filled with warm soapy water and in the bitter stench of charred meat lingering in the air.

  “It was a disaster,” I told her, wringing my hands. “Not one thing went right today. Not one blasted thing. If I’d read my horoscope, I bet it would have warned me to hide under my bed.”

  Alyssa looked at the soaking pan with its blackened bottom, then at me, and broke out laughing.

  “It’s not funny,” I protested, which only made her laugh harder. “First the garden—”

  “Yeah, yeah. A disaster,” she said, grabbing her knees as she continued to laugh.

  “Detective Hernandez—”

  “I know, I know.” Tears filled her eyes.

  “And Gillis—”

  “Terrible.” Her shoulders shook so hard that her black hair slipped free from its tortoiseshell barrette.

  “And the fertilizer—”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m mortified for you.” She snorted, which made her laugh that much harder.

  “And then this.” I swung my arms wide.

  She started laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.

  “What do you find so blooming funny about this?” I demanded.

  “Because”—she had to gulp for air—“honey, you—you served a trained killer f-f-frozen chicken and he choked it d-d-down for you! You know what that means, don’t you?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “No. What? That Jack’s got terrible taste in food and women?”

  “No, silly goose.” She straightened and pulled me into her arms as she twirled in a circle. “It means I’ve been right all along. Jack lo-o-oves you.”

  “Did you even listen to me?” I pried myself loose from her well-meaning but overbearing grip. “He—”

  My cell phone chirped that overly cheery Katy Perry song. I was going to have to change the ringtone. I was not feeling at all cheery or perky.