The Scarlet Pepper

by Dorothy St. James

  However, Frank Lispon knew what kind of damage a garden fiasco would cause for me. He knew that a major part of the harvest’s press kit included a list of the plants along with a colorful schematic of the garden’s layout.

  By sabotaging the garden, he would give credibility to the reports on fringe blogs calling the kitchen garden a fake, a conspiracy to fool the American public. A disaster like this would pull those fringe reports over to the mainstream media.

  Frank had occasionally joined his colleagues and volunteered in the garden, not that he knew his plants. I hadn’t forgotten how, early in the season, he’d pulled out an entire row of young pea seedlings he’d mistaken for weeds.

  Had that been an early effort to discredit me?

  Poor Milo had taken the blame when Steve Sallis discovered the garden had been damaged over the weekend. Raccoons had been blamed the second time. But what if it had been Frank all along?

  Perhaps Annie had seen Frank sabotaging the garden and confronted him with the evidence of his misdeeds the morning before.

  I knew of one sure way to find out. I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Jack’s number. Not his personal number, but the number to the Secret Service office in the basement of the West Wing. “We’ve got a problem,” I said to the agent who answered. “I need a team to meet me in the First Lady’s garden ASAP.”

  “We don’t have time for problems,” a deep voice rumbled directly behind me. The owner of that voice must have stepped through the bushes surrounding the nearby Children’s Garden.

  I whirled around and found myself standing toe-to-toe with the devil himself.

  Frank Lispon.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  We do not need to burn down the house to kill the rats.

  —HERBERT HOOVER, THE 31ST PRESIDENT OF

  THE UNITED STATES

  STARTLED by Frank’s sudden appearance, the word that popped out of my mouth was colorful enough to have painted a bright flush on Grandmother Faye’s cheeks.

  “Things that bad, eh?” Frank asked. He pushed his hands into his pants pockets.

  He was dressed in a dark blue tie and light gray suit pants. He must have left his jacket in the office, smart man. The temperature had already climbed close to ninety degrees. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up to his elbows. His dark skin glistened with a light sheen of sweat thanks to this heat wave that refused to break.

  “I should have worn something cooler. We’re all going to be dripping wet before this damn harvest is over. I hope I’ll have time to change before I have to tackle this afternoon’s press briefing regarding the budget fight,” he said as I stared, my mouth gaping.

  I pressed my lips together and wiped a layer of sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. I had to swallow a couple of times before I managed to get my voice to work enough to hurriedly finish my call with the Secret Service agent.

  “I know what’s going on,” I said to Frank. My voice sounded low, menacing, like a warning growl. I knew I’d told Jack that I’d only ask questions, but after finding the garden in ruins how could I not confront Frank? “I know why Annie came to your house yesterday morning.”

  “I see.” He straightened his shoulders, making himself appear even taller. “What do you plan to do about it?”

  “What—what do I plan to do? I’m going to tell everyone. What else would you expect?”

  “I don’t know what I expected from you. You’re from the sheltered South. I suppose the choices I’ve made must sound shocking to you. In D.C., I assure you my lifestyle is more common than you might think.”

  “Lifestyle? Common?” I shouted. “Are you insane? I can’t believe…” No, wait, I could believe it. Washington, D.C., wasn’t like my genteel, old-world Charleston. Some of the people here, especially those with political aspirations, seemed to live in a different world. They played by different rules, rules where winner takes all, and the mentality was always to win at any cost.

  Facts had to be carefully checked, because everyone in this town lied.

  Not Jack.

  Everyone else lied.

  “I’m surprised you don’t deny it,” I said, my anger at Frank and the political environment that had spawned him growing stronger with each beat of my heart. “Lie. Cheat. Steal. Kill. All in a day’s work, isn’t it?”

  My words seemed to bounce off him.

  “Did you run down Kelly Montague yourself? Or did you pay someone to do it? All she wants is to find her birth father, you know. She wasn’t writing a story.”

  “Kelly was doing what?”

  “And Matthews? He seemed like a good guy. Now he’s dead, too.”

  “If you think his death didn’t affect me, you should—”

  “Do you even care that your latest stunt hurts the First Lady? If you’re trying to protect the President, wouldn’t you want to protect her as well?”

  “The First Lady?” His head jerked back. “What do you mean I’d hurt the First Lady? I’d never—”

  “This!” I swung my arm to point at the garden so hard that I actually stumbled to my knees.

  “Have you lost your mind? What are you talking about?”

  “This disaster! I expect you to fess up and fix it!”

  “Fix what?” Frank reached out a hand to help me up and then withdrew it. His gaze shifted toward the White House. “What the hell is going on? What the hell did you do? The press is going to be all over this.”

  A CAT dressed in their battle dress uniforms charged down the hill toward us, rifles held at the ready. Behind them, an Emergency Response Team followed with their menacing P90 assault weapons. With all that firepower coming in our direction, a raw memory of another time, another place, slammed into me with the force of a speeding bullet.

  I’d locked that memory away so tightly, I’d forgotten all about it…until today.

  I was four or five years old at the time that it had happened. My father had charged into our tiny cottage in France. His face was flushed, his breathing quick. A gun was in his hand.

  “Get our things,” James Calhoun barked at my mom. “Now.”

  “Did you get it?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He handed her a package wrapped in a linen handkerchief that she slipped into her dress’s pocket.

  “Did they see you?” She pulled out the box she kept under the kitchen table.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Why are you scared?”

  Daddy had no answers for me. He pulled back the drapes. Standing off to one side, he peered out the window.

  “I’ve been followed. Go out the back way. I’ll slow them down.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom asked.

  “Daddy!” I wailed.

  He grabbed my shoulders, gripping me so tightly it hurt. “I need you to do exactly what Mom says. Don’t talk. Don’t make a sound. Your life, my life, your mom’s life depends on you obeying us. Understand?”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t understand at all.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  Mom grabbed the box and my hand. I had to run as fast as my tiny legs could carry me to keep up with her.

  We were at the back door when I heard a splintering crash.

  “Daddy!” I twisted out of my mom’s grasp and ran back to the front of the cottage.

  A man had kicked down the door. He was dressed in a uniform. Like a policeman?

  Dad stood his ground. His arm was outstretched, the gun gripped tightly in his hand.

  Without hesitation, he fired.

  He fired again.

  And again.

  “Daddy!” I screamed and threw myself to the hardwood floor. I wrapped my hands over my head. To block out the sound. To block out the sight of the dead man lying at Daddy’s feet.

  “Casey? Casey! What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  I peeked out from under the arm I’d wrapped protectively over my head to find Jack crouched down beside me.

  “Jack,
what’s with all the firepower?” I asked while uncurling from my embarrassing impression of a turtle. “I asked for assistance, not an invasion.”

  “The last time you needed assistance on the South Lawn someone was trying to strangle you,” Jack reminded me as he helped get my feet under me again.

  “That was months ago.” Still, instinct had me reaching for my neck.

  Jack brushed a clump of grass from my hat. “I’m sorry we scared you. It must be hard seeing men running at you with guns. That’s how it happened with your mother, isn’t it? And those men shot you as well. You were what? Six? Seven years old?”

  “Six,” I answered. My body shook. There was nothing I could do to stop it, so I hugged my arms to my chest. “That was a lifetime ago. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  My father had killed a man. Was that why we were always on the run? Was that why he’d moved us to Phoenix, Arizona, shortly after the shooting in France? Was that why he’d abandoned me and my mom?

  Those men who’d killed my mother had escaped justice. Had my father escaped justice, too? A lump formed in my throat that refused to go away.

  Justice demanded payment. Then and now.

  It didn’t matter that Griffon Parker had made life difficult for everyone at the White House. Frank Lispon may have thought he was doing everyone a favor. He was wrong. He needed to pay for taking Parker’s life. And now Matthews’s life.

  While I couldn’t change the past or fix what my father had done, I could make sure justice was served now.

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my hand over my face.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

  “I tripped,” I said. Embarrassment bloomed anew at how gravelly my voice sounded. I lowered my hand, wiping my damp eyes as I cleared my throat a couple of times. I hoped Jack wouldn’t notice my misty eyes, but what should I expect? He was a trained observer.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, his voice gentling. “Talk to me.”

  “Where’s Frank?” I asked.

  Jack tensed. The grip on his rifle tightened. “What did he do?”

  I spotted Frank standing next to Francesca and the group of volunteers. He said something to Francesca and then gestured toward me. Francesca shook her head.

  What was the press secretary up to now?

  “Talk to me, Casey,” Jack demanded. His tone turned eerily calm as he kept his gaze on Frank. “Don’t lock me out. What did Lispon do? Why the hell are we down here? I was told you required Secret Service assistance ASAP.”

  “Frank did this.” My father may have escaped justice. I wasn’t about to let Frank get away with murder. I grabbed Jack’s arm. “Look.” I pointed to the garden again. This time I didn’t topple over.

  Jack looked at the mishmash of wrong and missing vegetables and shook his head. “What?”

  “The garden. The plants. They’re not what we planted. Frank did this, and he also killed Parker and Matthews. He must have.”

  I explained what had happened. Jack nodded as he patiently listened. He then called the big guns to come take a look.

  No, not the snipers. They’re nice guys, by the way. I would have preferred that he called them to come and help out in the garden instead of William Bryce, the assistant director in charge of protective operations, and Mike Thatch, Jack’s supervisor.

  The look on Thatch’s face said everything as his cool gaze scanned the garden. His jaw clenched and unclenched.

  This wasn’t the first time the Secret Service had to be called in for advice concerning the kitchen garden.

  Growing food for the President of the United States, or POTUS, was considered a matter of national security from the get-go. The clashes…er…discussions began at the planning stage with the site selection for the garden. The best location for any vegetable garden is right outside the kitchen door. When tucked away at the bottom of the yard, a garden is often forgotten, neglected.

  Not that the First Lady’s garden would ever have been in danger of neglect. But still, the White House kitchen garden was to serve as an example for others to follow, especially during an economic downturn when a little effort in the backyard could have a big impact.

  I’d explained quite clearly three months before to William Bryce that a garden’s success often relied on how close it is located to the house. He’d nodded and smiled and told me he understood.

  Understanding something and agreeing with it were two very different things for him. While he understood the reasons I’d given him, he disagreed that the garden should go where I’d initially proposed. The plants would intrude into the safety zone the Secret Service had established around the White House perimeter, a zone that had to remain clear of any impediments. I got the feeling that if it were up to Bryce he’d tear down every bush and tree within a five-hundred-foot radius.

  At the same time, the garden couldn’t be too close to the fence, where someone could potentially tamper with the food the President might consume. After a lengthy back-and-forth, we had finally come to an agreement. The garden would be placed at the bottom of the South Lawn in a niche that protected it from the damaging winds that Marine One stirred up during landings and takeoffs.

  It was a location that gave tourists the opportunity to stand outside the iron fence at the edge of the Ellipse and see—but not tamper with—the garden for themselves. So even though the garden’s location wasn’t my first choice, I admit that it was the best choice.

  I hoped the outcome of this clash…er…discussion would be just as advantageous and that Frank would be sent to jail.

  “I don’t want to alarm anyone,” I said, trying to remain calm myself. “The tomatoes and—”

  Thatch held up his hand. “Jack,” he said, his tone sharp, impatient. He wouldn’t even look at me. “The situation?”

  Jack’s version took much less time than mine to tell.

  William Bryce, who’d listened with much more interest than his CAT counterpart, nodded gravely. “This is a problem. Surveillance should have picked up and alerted our men on the ground to any suspicious activity.”

  “But you can go back and check the tapes and review what happened, right?” I asked. They’d catch Frank red-handed. “You can see who did this, can’t you?”

  “We haven’t used tapes in decades. But, yes, we can review what happened in the garden. You say the trouble occurred sometime between yesterday evening and early this morning?”

  I nodded and gave him the exact time frame along with the time frames for the other two times the garden had been damaged, which Bryce jotted down in a small notebook he’d produced from his jacket pocket.

  “You did the right thing calling us, Ms. Calhoun. It’s imperative we act before anyone gets hurt,” Bryce said. “God only knows the dangers those things might present.”

  “They’re pepper plants, not a group of marauding protesters,” I said.

  The bright red chili peppers bounced as a warm summer breeze pushed through the garden, rattling the leaves around us. The plants were leggy. Their narrow stems looked too weak to hold the peppers’ weight. And the leaves were a pale green. That tended to happen to plants grown inside without enough natural light. Not only would they easily break in a storm, they’d be susceptible to pests and disease.

  “I’m going to pull out the peppers and the cabbage,” I told them. “Do you need them for evidence, or would it be okay to dump them in the compost bin? I also need to replace the missing tomatoes. I think I have enough seedlings back at the greenhouse. There’s nothing I can do about the spinach. I don’t know what we’re going to do about this afternoon. The chefs were planning on including it in the salads the kids were going to make for lunch. This is a disaster.”

  “Yes. Yes,” Thatch said irritably. “We understand the situation, Miss Calhoun. Plants are missing.”

  “Please save the specimens you remove. We’ll want to analyze them,” Bryce said. His gaze narrowed as he surveyed what was left of the First Lady’s kitchen gard
en. “All of the remaining plants will have to be ripped out as well.”

  “What! All of them? The First Lady is counting on me. I can’t let her down.”

  “We don’t know what else was done to the garden,” Bryce pointed out. “Is this a prank or something more sinister? If we let you go ahead with the harvest, you’ll be putting the schoolchildren, the First Lady, and anyone else who might eat the food harvested from here in danger.”

  I didn’t want that, but to pull out all the plants on the off chance that there might be something wrong with them? No, I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. I paced the length of the garden, desperate for a solution.

  Jack frowned as he watched me. “With all due respect—” he started to say, but stopped when Frank Lispon hurried over.

  “Will, I couldn’t help but overhear. What’s this nonsense about canceling the harvest?” Frank flashed me a don’t-worry-about-it smile.

  For a killer, Frank was damn good at hiding his guilt.

  He thumped Bryce’s shoulder. “It’s good to see you, by the way.” They looked like two old college buddies meeting up after years apart. They clearly had a history together, but also wariness, as if Bryce didn’t quite trust the press secretary.

  Of course there’d be wariness. Bryce and the members of the Secret Service like him had made a career working at the White House, while Frank Lispon served the President and would leave at the end of this administration’s term.

  Yet, those same members of the Secret Service who had weathered many changes in administrations could find themselves demoted and assigned to a turkey farm—a type of career-killing move where the work assignments completely dried up—or worse, fired, if the current President was unhappy with their service.

  “I’m sure if we all put our minds together, we can come up with a solution that won’t embarrass either the First Lady or the President. No one here wants that,” Frank said.

  “Of course not,” Bryce agreed, “but—”

  “I understand there’s a problem with the plants. Some joker changed a few things around,” Frank pressed on as I watched in amazement. If he’d damaged the garden in an attempt to destroy my reputation and career, why was he helping out now?