Flowerbed of State

by Dorothy St. James

  “Someone attacked you, Ms. Calhoun. And it happened on government property. That is something the Secret Service takes very seriously. For all I know, what happened to you might be connected to . . .”

  I waited for him to finish.

  He didn’t.

  “Connected to what, exactly?” I wanted to know. I’d always felt extraordinarily safe at the White House. Being surrounded by a state-of-the-art security system and teams of highly trained agents, it was easy to forget that there were individuals and groups out there that wanted to harm the President, disrupt the governmental process, or simply make the six o’clock news.

  Turner rubbed his sore eyes. “Nothing specific. We just need to be careful.”

  Had he answered too quickly? “Is there something going on that I need to be worried about?”

  He started toward the White House again. “Every member of the staff is a link in the chain of security. Every one of us must play our part in assuring the President’s safety. So you have to ask yourself, Ms. Calhoun, what did you do to make yourself a weak link in that chain this morning? And did you cause the chain to be broken?”

  “I don’t think I—”

  He turned toward me. “These are vital things we have to assess. If there has been a breach in security, wouldn’t you want us to know about it right away?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Jack! There you are!” Special Agent Steve Sallis called as he lumbered across the grassy lawn. He ducked under a low-hanging branch of a nearby elm to get to us. Special Agent Janie Partners was on Pennsylvania Avenue, speaking with one of the protesters. I knew both Steve and Janie. They were members of the Secret Service’s Presidential Protection Detail, or PPD. They’d often stop and chat with the gardening staff whenever they had a free moment. Steve was a handsome man with blond hair and an easy smile. He was wearing his regular nondescript black suit. And Janie, who always tried to be a little different, was sporting black hair today and wearing a black pantsuit with a red, white, and blue silk scarf. “What brings you outside the iron fence? Thatch was beginning to wonder if you’d gone AWOL.” Steve’s tone was light, joking, and very different from Turner’s take-no-prisoners manner.

  But then Steve got close enough to see my handiwork imprinted on Jack Turner’s face. His grin dropped. His hand went instinctively toward the holster inside his suit coat. “What’s happened?”

  “There was a . . . um . . .” Turner kicked a red brick paver with his combat boot. “An incident.”

  “A what?” Janie asked as she jogged up behind Steve.

  “Incident. An incident,” Turner repeated, the mottled red skin on his face darkened. “It’s nothing.”

  Nothing? Getting conked on the head didn’t feel like nothing to me. I coughed my disagreement, which earned an even deeper scowl from the all-too-serious Special Agent Jack Turner.

  “I mean, I have it under control,” he clarified. “I would have reported in, but my radio’s on the fritz.”

  That’s when Steve noticed me. “Good God, Casey, what happened to your throat?” He caught my chin and tilted my head back slightly so he could get a better look.

  “My throat?” Sure, it hurt to talk. But it was my head that was throbbing. “Someone hit me . . . I think.”

  “Well, it looks as if someone tried to choke you as well.”

  “That’s going to leave quite a nasty bruise,” Janie added.

  “Jack, you didn’t—” Steve positioned himself in between Special Agent Turner and myself as if he believed I suddenly needed protection.

  Turner simply stood there looking as if he’d wished he had strangled me.

  “Someone tried to mug me, I think. It’s kind of hazy right now.” I rubbed my sore head. “But he didn’t get anything. At least I don’t think so.”

  “Ms. Calhoun, we were headed inside, were we not?” Turner tapped his watch’s crystal. “You had mentioned something about being in a hurry.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  After assuring Steve and Janie that I was okay, I followed Turner back toward the White House. I made it only a few steps before I noticed one of the elm trees just off the path. It was a younger elm. Its lower branches would be trimmed away as it grew taller. But until then, its limbs arched up like candles in a candelabrum. When an older tree died or became diseased in the park, it was replaced with a younger specimen like this one.

  The trees in Lafayette Square, representing over two hundred different species, were all lovingly tended and kept well groomed. That was probably why the rough condition of this particular tree jumped out at me. Several of the lower branches on its left side had been broken. Some of the snapped twigs were lying on the ground. Others hung limply from its trunk, attached only by a few wood fibers and narrow strips of bark.

  “I’ll catch up,” I told Turner and stepped around a park bench and over the fallen branches to inspect the damage. It must have been caused by last night’s storm, I told myself. But the winds from the storm had been blowing consistently from the north.

  Turner didn’t go on ahead without me, not that I really expected he would. But I was surprised when he followed me under the tree.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Probably nothing. The storm, perhaps. I’ll send my crew out to take care of the mess and make sure they clean up these breaks where the branches have been torn off so the trunk won’t rot.”

  “Okay. Shall we go?”

  I told myself to leave it, to walk away. I didn’t have time to figure out why a couple of broken branches were bothering me. I still had to answer Turner’s questions, assure him that I hadn’t endangered the President, and then get to my meeting on time.

  And yet . . .

  If a fierce northerly wind had snapped off the branches, the jagged stubs left on the tree’s young trunk would have ripped in the opposite direction. And the branches on the ground would have fallen on the south side of the tree, not the north.

  It almost looked as if someone had backed his way through the lower branches, breaking them off as he went. Where the grass began just a foot or so away, I spotted a short trail that dug up the thick sod in some places as if a sizable object had been dragged under the elm’s canopy and through the lawn beyond.

  Without even thinking about it, I followed the trail. My curiosity simply refused to let this go. Turner followed. Steve and Janie had joined us again. All three of them looked about as confused as I felt.

  “Did you happen to read this morning’s security briefing?” Janie asked Turner.

  He nodded. “That’s why I decided to do a quick sweep of the public parks as well as the outside perimeter.”

  “They sent us to interview the anarchists over there.” Steve hooked his thumb over toward the protesters.

  “They’re an angry bunch,” Janie said.

  “But do you think they’re involved?” Turner asked.

  “Involved in what?” I asked over my shoulder.

  None of the agents seemed willing to give me an answer.

  “It looks as if the rain’s finally stopped,” Janie said after an awkward silence.

  The trail ended near a public trash can. Beside it, I found a dark blue leather ballerina flat with a large buckle over the toes—a sensible but expensive shoe—lying in the wet grass. I’d tried on several similar pairs when shopping with Alyssa over the weekend. I’d liked the style and its comfort. But Alyssa had insisted I buy the black designer pumps with the half-inch heel, saying style trumped comfort.

  I picked up the ballet flat and turned it over in my hand. It was my size. Why would someone leave one shoe behind? And why was the shoe at the end of this odd trail?

  The back of my neck prickled. It felt as if a memory was trying to find a path through my pulsing headache. “There’s something wrong here,” I said aloud.

  “What do you mean?” Turner asked.

  “Another plant out of place?” Janie suggested with an indulgent smile.

&nbs
p; “No. This shoe.” I held it up.

  “Garbage,” Steve said, dismissing it. “It’s amazing what people leave behind. I’ll never figure it out.”

  I had to agree with him. I’d worked as head gardener for two public gardens before taking this position, and I’d encountered all sorts of discarded items, which commonly included puppies, dirty diapers, baseball caps, and shoes. So why did this shoe in particular make me feel uneasy? Perhaps it was because my brain had recently been jostled about. Or perhaps being attacked had scared me more than I was willing to admit. My nerves had been fried to the point where I was seeing danger everywhere and in everything, including broken limbs and discarded shoes.

  “I don’t have time for this,” I said, shaking my head with dismay. I took the shoe to the nearby trash can. I was about to toss it into the metal bucket when I saw it . . . her.

  A woman.

  The ballet flat slipped from my suddenly numb fingers and splashed as it landed in a puddle. I stood there too shocked to move, too frightened to make a sound. All I could do was stand there and stare into the round trash can and at the woman who’d been stuffed inside it. Her knees were pulled to her chest. Her head bowed as if she were meditating. Someone had wedged a brightly flowered tote bag into the trash can with her.

  She was dressed in a hauntingly similar dark gray suit and matching skirt. Her hair, like mine, was long and light brown. She’d styled it in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, a style I’d long admired but had never been able to perfect.

  I barely noticed when Turner approached from the side. With his hands clasped behind him, he leaned over the trash can. “Radio this in, Steve. We’ll need the D.C. Police out here.”

  I appreciated his calm manner. I clung to it, hoping a measure of his steadiness would rub off on me, because my entire body was beginning to tremble. I feared if someone were to touch me right then, I would shatter into a million pieces.

  Turner reached into the trash can and carefully tilted the woman’s head back so he could feel for a pulse. I prayed he’d find one.

  But I knew in my heart we were too late. The woman’s glassy eyes glared up at me. Her deep red lipstick was smeared across her porcelain cheek. Her mouth gaped slightly as if still fighting for one last breath. A fight she’d been doomed to lose. An angry red welt ringed her neck.

  I touched my own throat as Turner slowly shook his head. “It’s a homicide,” he said. “She’s been strangled.”

  Turner, Steve, and Janie’s gazes all turned to me . . . and my bruised throat.

  Chapter Three

  WITH the three Secret Service agents watching me so gravely, my hand froze on the welt I could feel rising a few inches above my collarbone. I took a shaky breath as a dull buzzing sound filled my ears.

  The stormy sky suddenly turned several shades grayer and much darker than it had looked just a few seconds earlier. I got a terrible sinking feeling that things were about to get worse.

  Wait a blooming minute . . . I was sinking! That, or the ground had decided to surge up to smack me in the head.

  Special Agent Turner grabbed my shoulders and gave a sharp tug, rescuing me from planting my face in the muddy ground. I was grateful. Ending up facedown in the mud even once in a day was one too many times in my estimation.

  He set me back on my wobbly legs with about the same care the grounds crew takes when hauling sacks of topsoil off a wood pallet. Despite that, I started to thank him, but he ignored me.

  “I’m going to get our gardener inside while she’s still able to walk,” he told Janie and Steve, “and before the press descends in full force.” Turner gave a nod in the direction of the West Wing and the crowd of White House reporters pouring out the side door.

  “Good idea, Jack,” Janie said. “It’s going to turn into a circus over here.” She and Steve began organizing the agents who’d rushed over to help, their training evident as the group secured the crime scene and a large surrounding area long before any of the reporters would be able to get anywhere close.

  “As for you”—Turner kept one hand on my shoulder as he guided me toward the White House—“if anyone wants to talk to you, you will say ‘no comment’ or nothing at all. Understood?”

  The cool air and brisk walk helped to get some blood back into my dizzy head. My mind started whirling again. And with all that thinking going on up there, my gratitude toward Turner changed into aggravation. He had no right to treat me as if I were a certifiable flake.

  “Give me a little credit,” I told him. “This isn’t my first day working for the White House.”

  He stabbed me with a sharp glance.

  “Okay,” I said, wincing at how red and puffy his eyes still looked and how much they kept watering from the lingering effects of the pepper spray. “I understand your point. I won’t talk to anyone on our way back to the White House.”

  “Not even if you happen to bump into your mother, you say nothing. Do you understand?”

  If only I could bump into Mom.

  You were nearly given the opportunity, child, the voice in my head reminded me, sporting Aunt Willow’s rich Southern drawl unique to residents of Charleston’s posh South of Broad neighborhood.

  “Well?” Turner asked.

  I pressed my lips tightly together and nodded.

  “What happened here? What’s going on?” A woman dressed in an old shiny pale blue housecoat speckled with tiny pink, red, and white roses jogged up to us. A cardboard placard dangled from a silk cord around her neck with neatly handwritten letters that read, SEND THE BANKING CEOS TO JAIL. She was clearly one of the banking summit protesters.

  Beneath the hideous housecoat was a striking woman with high cheekbones and beautifully arching eyebrows. Her light brown wavy easy-care hair brushed her slender shoulders. She looked like the kind of professional do-it-all woman who could take home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and still find time to make her man happy. Her arching eyebrows rose a bit higher as she stared at my bruised and bloodied head. She stepped directly in front of us on the sidewalk.

  “Did you beat her up?” she demanded of Turner with an agitated wave in my direction. “We have a permit to be protesting here today. You have no right to—”

  “She’s not part of your group,” Turner said, trying but failing to skirt around her. He sighed deeply. “Please, ma’am, step out of the way.”

  Instead of moving, she dug around in her housecoat’s large, square pocket and produced a business card that she handed to me. “I do pro bono work and have contacts with many lawyers in the D.C. area,” she said softly. “Give me a call if you need anything.”

  “Um . . . thank you.” Did she think I looked homeless? I glanced down at my clothes. The yellow rain slicker and skirt were caked in mud. My pantyhose were ripped. And my brown leather loafers didn’t match anything I had on. This definitely wasn’t my finest hour.

  Her plain cream-colored business card read, JOANNA LOVELL, ATTORNEY-AT-LAW. On the line below her name was a phone number. No address or five- to ten-name law firm listed.

  “Well?” Turner looked at me expectantly. I glanced at the card again. Did I need a lawyer? I had attacked a Secret Service agent. But it’d been a misunderstanding.

  “Don’t let him intimidate you,” Joanna warned me. “You don’t have to say anything without a lawyer present.”

  “Thank you. I’m fine,” I assured her, but dropped her card in my pocket just in case. “And we’re in a hurry.”

  Turner, tightening his grip on my arm, guided me around Joanna.

  “Call me,” she said in a crisp, professional tone that had me automatically nodding that I would call. “I can help you.”

  Turner stopped and turned back to her. His gaze hardened until he looked every inch the dangerous warrior. “Since you’re so anxious to be helpful, I’m sure you won’t mind answering the police’s questions.” He nodded to a pair of rapidly approaching United States Park policeman dressed in yellow and black.

  Joann
a held up her hands and took a step back, the hem of her housecoat flapping. “I won’t let you bully me. You won’t get rid of us that easily. As I said, I filled out the proper paperwork. We have the permits to hold this protest.”

  “Good,” he said, and let the Park Police take over. Talking in low and unthreatening tones, one of the police officers asked Joanna what time she’d arrived at the park. Joanna crossed her arms over her slender chest but appeared to be willing to cooperate.

  Part of me wanted to stay behind and question Joanna myself. Perhaps she could help explain what had happened to me and that poor woman in the trash can, and why.

  Joanna’s protesters had been standing around sipping their coffee on the opposite side of the park to where the attack had taken place. I doubted any of them had seen anything. Their attentions had been focused on the White House, not the seven acres of Lafayette Square behind them.

  “Do you think one of them saw the murderer?” I asked Turner.

  His grip on my arm tensed. “If they know something, we’ll find out. Let’s go.”

  He picked up our already quick pace and hurried through the emerging press pool. We managed to bypass the reporters with only a few questions shouted in our direction. The press appeared much more interested in investigating why a crowd of Secret Service agents had gathered on the Lafayette Square lawn than in us. I didn’t get the chance to utter “no comment” even once.

  Not that I’d wanted the press corps to hound me, but I felt a certain need to show Turner I wasn’t some half-crazed-pepper-spray-happy plant nut. I knew how to conduct myself in a professional manner without anyone’s coaching.

  “I don’t usually go around fainting,” I explained. “I’m not some clichéd Southern belle who wilts at the first sign of trouble. I can’t remember the last time I’d even come close to fainting. And you’re the first person I’ve ever doused with my pepper spray.”

  “Humph,” Turner grunted.