Flowerbed of State

by Dorothy St. James

  Had he contrived this pat down so he could ask me out on a date? My heart started pattering a little faster.

  What was wrong with me? I didn’t like guns. Or men with guns.

  I wanted a sidekick, not a date. But there was something about Turner. He made me nervous as hell. Just the way he moved, like a predator tracking his prey, screamed danger. He probably knew how to kill a man at least seven different ways with his bare hands. But despite that, or perhaps because of it, I wanted Turner to stick close by me. He could protect me from the bad guys in the world. How crazy was that?

  “No suspicious hairspray bottles in your bag today?” he asked and handed me my backpack.

  “I didn’t have the energy to make a refill last night.” I hitched the backpack over my shoulder. “I was too busy trying to find out why Pauline was—”

  “Wait a minute.” Turner lifted his dark glasses. Rich hazel green eyes met mine. I hadn’t noticed his stunning eye color yesterday. I’d been too busy worrying about how red they’d looked. “When you say Pauline, you mean Pauline Bonde, our murder victim?”

  “Yes. And I’ve learned quite a bit about her. Did you know that she—”

  “Ms. Calhoun!” he exclaimed and sucked in a deep breath. He took a second, much slower breath before continuing with a carefully modulated tone. “Casey, tell me you haven’t been playing detective.”

  “You might say I’ve been poking around some bushes.”

  “I see.” He pocketed his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose as if trying to ward off a wicked headache. “And despite express orders to keep quiet about our ongoing investigation, who exactly have you talked to so far?”

  “I’ve been discreet,” I assured him. He had nothing to worry about with me. “I’ve read enough mystery novels to know how to conduct myself.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  Convinced he’d thank me for the information I’d uncovered so far, and hoping he’d share what the Secret Service had learned since yesterday, I told him about the doubts Alyssa and I had about why the killer had stolen my security pass.

  “Why attack me, or anyone else, for a White House security pass? That doesn’t make sense. It isn’t as if he could use my pass to get access to the White House. There are too many redundant security procedures in place, such as the guards at the gate, to keep something like that from happening. He had to be after something else. And I have an idea of what that is.”

  “I see.” Turner rubbed the bridge of his nose again.

  Since he seemed willing to listen, I told him about Lorenzo’s affair with Pauline and her involvement with some kind of investigation into the banking community. I left out the part about how Lorenzo’s shoes matched the shoe I remembered seeing right before the attack. No need to get distracted by what must have been a coincidence.

  It had to be a coincidence. I’d stared at my bedroom ceiling most of the night while trying to put all the pieces of this mystery together. Although it felt like I was working on a jigsaw puzzle where most of the pieces were missing, one piece stood out. Lorenzo wasn’t a killer. I was sure of it.

  “According to Lorenzo, Pauline Bonde had been auditing several banks’ books for months now. I have to get some more information about that, but more than one of those banks she’s been auditing have sent their CEOs to the President’s summit. What if there’s a connection?”

  He leaned his arm against the wall of the guard’s hut. “You’re right about that. She’d been auditing three large banks. And yes, two of the three CEOs are at the summit.”

  “Really? Then it isn’t a coincidence. One of them must have—”

  “Stop right there.”

  “Why? I don’t—”

  “I like you, Casey,” he said, not letting me finish a sentence. “You’ve got spunk. And you’re attractive as hell. Most women I know would be an emotional wreck after what had happened to you yesterday, not leading their own personal investigation to catch the killer.”

  He thought I was attractive? “Um . . . thank you.”

  “But trust me on this. You need to stop.”

  “Stop? Why?”

  “For one thing, you’re on the wrong track.”

  “The wrong track?”

  He nodded. “Remember Thatch told you about that suspected plot against the President yesterday? I can’t talk about it, except to say that we’re almost one hundred percent sure that the murder is connected to that.”

  “But why Pauline? Why her? It has to be something to do with her work.”

  “Not necessarily. She may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That can’t be it.” Her death couldn’t have been so . . . so . . . meaningless.

  “The assassin didn’t take anything from her. Or from you.”

  “My security pass was gone,” I reminded him.

  “And as you pointed out, it’s worthless to him. He used the lanyard attached to your security badge to strangle you. The cord probably snapped off in his hands and he bolted.”

  “That’s why I’m still alive, because the lanyard cord broke? That doesn’t make sense. Why kill Pauline and make such a fuss about hiding her body, but not me?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps you didn’t see what Pauline saw.” He turned and started across the North Lawn back toward the White House. “About the pepper spray,” he said over his shoulder, “you know you could be dismissed for bringing it onto White House grounds. I didn’t send my report to Ambrose. Thatch agreed. It’ll remain in our CAT files, though. And know this, CAT will be watching you. I’ll be watching you.”

  “Wait.” I jogged after him. So many questions churned in my head, all of them demanding answers. “Why was Pauline in the park so early in the morning? What was she doing?”

  “Probably heading to work.” He gave a nod to the large Treasury Building just off to the right of the White House. “Her office was on the third floor.”

  “Oh.” I stopped to look. It was possible that she could have been cutting through the park on the way to work. I did. Still, I wasn’t satisfied. Turner must have sensed it.

  With a huff he pivoted around to face me. “Let it go, Casey. I know you think you’re helping. But I assure you the Secret Service is more than capable of investigating a security breach. The FBI and police, also capable, are working tirelessly to solve this murder.” He sliced his hand through the air in obvious frustration. “We do not need advice on how to do our jobs from an assistant gardener.”

  This time when he walked away, he made it clear that he didn’t want to be followed. Who knew enlisting the help of a sidekick would prove so difficult?

  DESPITE TURNER’S WARNING TO KEEP MY NOSE out of the investigation, questions surrounding Pauline Bonde’s murder kept worming their way back into my thoughts that morning. I couldn’t accept that she’d been murdered simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  When I arrived at the grounds office, I found Lorenzo sitting at his desk next to mine. He must have taken my advice and gone home after leaving my apartment last night. He’d washed and combed his deep brown hair. His khaki pants and white oxford shirt looked fresh and wrinkle-free. But dark purple smudges under his heavy-lidded eyes suggested he hadn’t got any sleep at all. His shoulders slumped forward as if he needed to protect himself from a blow, while his listless gaze stared into a vast void of grief visible only to him.

  Gordon and I tried to distract Lorenzo by discussing the Easter Egg Roll plans with him. He took part in the discussion and had agreed to take on several pressing tasks that day but had made no effort to get started. Instead he remained at his desk, his gaze staring again into his personal void of despair.

  “Go home,” Gordon had urged.

  “I need to work,” Lorenzo assured. “I need to be here.”

  Seeing him like that only added fuel to my desire to help him make sense of Pauline’s murder. Was such a thing possible? Did murder ever make sense?

  Sure,
I didn’t have the experience, the training, or access to the same information available to the Secret Service. And I understood why the Secret Service wanted to handle their part of the investigation in their own way. I got it. They had “Secret” in their organizational title for a reason.

  Nor did I have the time. First and foremost on my to-do list was to convince the First Lady’s personal assistant, Louise Fenton, to make room in Mrs. Bradley’s impossibly tight schedule for another Grounds Committee meeting. As soon as I’d arrived that morning, I’d put in motion a plan to win over Louise’s favor.

  The White House has a greenhouse facility on the east side of town where we propagate and prepare plants for the gardens. About a month ago I’d started using a corner of one of the greenhouses for propagating small tropicals and houseplants for use inside the White House. Begonias propagate quite easily from cuttings and bloom readily in the humid greenhouse setting, making them a natural choice to grow in my special projects corner. I’d heard Louise liked pretty flowering plants, so I when I visited her office that morning, I brought along a begonia bursting with blooms to leave on her desk.

  And I couldn’t forget about the upcoming White House Easter Egg Roll. The First Lady’s social secretary took the lead in the planning and coordination, but every department played an important role in making the event a success. This year, the new social secretary, Seth Donahue, had taken charge of the event with genuine enthusiasm. Planning events for the White House had been quite a change for him from running a private high-profile party-planning company that specialized in catering events for the stars. A sense of civic duty and deep admiration for President John Bradley had lured him into public service.

  His heart seemed to be in the right place, even though some of his decisions had ruffled feathers.

  Ambrose had objected quite firmly—but to no avail—when Seth had turned the White House Map Room on the ground floor into a temporary staging area for the event. As Ambrose had warned, the hallway leading to the room buzzed with deliveries.

  On my way back from Louise Fenton’s office in the East Wing, I skirted around two butlers as they maneuvered a large pallet of boxes down the hallway and through the room’s narrow doorway. A bead of sweat had broken out on Ambrose’s brow as he directed. “Watch the doorframe,” he cried when the pallet came within a hairsbreadth of scraping it.

  “Monday will be here soon,” I assured him.

  “Not soon enough.” Ambrose dabbed his forehead with one of his crisp handkerchiefs. “I have just been informed that Mr. Donahue has decided to expand the Easter Egg Roll by three hours and expand the number of available tickets to thirty thousand.”

  “At this late date?” Today was Wednesday. And the Easter Egg Roll always took place on the Monday after Easter, less than a week away. “Can he do that?”

  The corner of Ambrose’s mouth quivered slightly. “Apparently he can do whatever he wants as long as he has the President’s approval.”

  “And does he?”

  “Why wouldn’t he? This is the People’s House. Why not open up the event to as many citizens as possible? Watch the wall!” he shouted to the butlers, who had managed to get the pallet through the door.

  On the far side of the Map Room, I spotted Assistant Usher Wilson Fisher hunched over one of the cardboard boxes that had been stored there. With clipboard in hand and his hawkish nose twitching with delight, he pulled out an armload of oversized pastel plastic spoons. His pen scratched on his pad as he counted and sorted by color the spoons the children would use to propel their eggs down the South Lawn.

  “And the other wall!” Ambrose called to his men. “Just—just leave it there.” He heaved a deep sigh and turned toward me. “The increase in attendants would have been fine a month ago when we still had plenty of time to make adjustments, not to mention how busy I’ve been keeping up with the ever-changing demands from the banking summit. But that doesn’t matter, does it? It’s our duty to make sure the President’s wishes, whatever they might be, are carried out in a timely and efficient manner.”

  “I know you’re doing your best. You always do.”

  A smile almost made it to his lips. But he caught himself in time and straightened. “Thank you, Casey.”

  At the mention of my name, Fisher glanced up from his work. His gaze met mine and widened. He set down the spoons and started toward me.

  Uh-oh. I’d only managed to get halfway through the pile of paperwork he’d left for me yesterday.

  “I’d better make sure Gordon knows about these recent changes,” I told Ambrose, and took off down the hall. “Tell Fisher that I haven’t forgotten about his forms. I’ll have them on his desk by tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t care how many green ones we have. Just increase the number of all the colored eggs as evenly as possible.” I overheard the assistant chef’s rising voice as I hurried past the kitchen on my way to find Gordon. He was standing in the doorway with a phone pressed to his ear. “Yes. Yes. I know.” His tanned cheeks turned bright red. “It doesn’t matter. We now need nineteen thousand hard-boiled eggs for the children. I know it’s last minute.”

  Apparently Seth’s decision to open the Easter Egg Roll to more families was causing problems for everyone on the White House staff. I wondered why he’d decided to do it.

  Seth was still relatively new. We’d joined the White House team at about the same time, and although I’d only talked to him once in the past three months, he’d seemed friendly enough.

  Perhaps he hadn’t taken the time to think about or even ask anyone how the increase of five thousand available tickets would impact the other departments.

  As for the Grounds Office, the change meant there’d be five thousand extra pairs of feet trampling our meticulously groomed lawn and five thousand extra visitors we’d need to gently direct away from the flowerbeds or keep from jumping into the fountain.

  With less than a week to go, every member of the grounds crew had already focused much of their time and effort on preparing the lawn and the surrounding gardens for the coming assault.

  Even now Gordon was out on the South Lawn overseeing the application of a preemergent crabgrass control and the pruning of the boxwood hedges. He also planned to inventory the snow fencing and various ropes and barriers stored in the maintenance shed. Seth still hadn’t decided what he wanted to use to cordon off the different activity areas.

  The first White House Easter Egg Roll, in 1878, had been an impromptu event. Before then, local families would celebrate Easter Monday on the West Terrace of the Capitol grounds. But Congress, dismayed by the damage the children had caused to their lawn, passed a law banning Capitol grounds from being used as a playground.

  A group of disappointed children had approached President Rutherford Hayes and explained the situation. Hayes, unable to control Congress, offered the kids the use of the White House lawn for their traditional Egg Roll.

  On that Easter Monday in 1878, as families were turned away from the Capitol, word quickly spread that they should go to the White House.

  Over the years the Easter Egg Roll had bloomed into an elaborate event with celebrities reading books to the children, musical performances, health and fitness demonstrations, arts and crafts stations, and the quintessential egg roll races.

  The South Lawn’s preparation had been primarily Lorenzo’s responsibility, but since he had his own troubles to worry about, Gordon and I had divided the tasks between us.

  Before I started work on the decorative planters for the display areas, I decided I should talk to Gordon about the increase in numbers attending. This was my first Easter Egg Roll at the White House, and I wasn’t sure if Seth’s last-minute change put a monkey wrench in our preparations or not. Gordon would know.

  Carrying my wide-brimmed straw hat, I crossed through the light-filled Palm Room that separated the White House from the West Wing. The small room had been decorated to resemble a gazebo. White lattice covered the walls. Potted citrus trees
and President Bradley’s favorite camellias brightened the corners. The three-foot blood orange tree I’d moved from the greenhouse last week had finally started to bloom. Tiny white flower buds dotted its dark green foliage.

  As I passed through the door leading out to the South Lawn, I spotted Special Agent Janie Partners. Red highlights brightened her black hair today, and she was wearing a black pantsuit with a green silk scarf sporting a tiny dollar bill pattern tied around her neck. She gave me a friendly nod, glanced at the crowd behind her, and rolled her eyes.

  “If you’ll come this way, we have a tight schedule to keep.” The young staffer I’d met in the hallway with the bankers yesterday waved a hand in the air as if swatting flies. The three bankers I’d meet yesterday meandered through the grass in the Rose Garden along with about a half-dozen more professionally dressed men and women. None of them seemed to be paying the staffer any attention. Most had their BlackBerries pressed to their ears. A couple of them were wandering in the opposite direction toward the fountain.

  “Ple-ease, this way.” The young staffer waved his hand in the air with even more gusto.

  “It’s been like this all day. Take a break and they scatter. Makes herding cats look easy,” Janie whispered before trotting after the straying bankers.

  I spotted Lillian and Brooks Keller with their heads pressed together in deep conversation near the Jackson magnolia.

  This particular tree, the oldest on White House grounds, was one of my favorite of the presidential commemorative trees. Andrew Jackson’s wife, Rachel, died just two weeks after Jackson had won the presidential election. She never got to see him take the oath of office.

  The grieving president planted two magnolias, Rachel’s favorites, to flank the White House on its South Lawn. What a tribute to everlasting affection. For the past hundred-and-seventy-five years the pair of trees had thrived.

  However it wasn’t the tree that interested me today, but the drama unfolding underneath it. Lillian pushed a white cast iron chair out of her way. It made a loud scraping sound on the patio’s concrete paving stone. She looked angry, though her voice remained too soft for anyone other than the stony-faced Brooks to hear her.