Flowerbed of State

by Dorothy St. James

  Isabella blew out a sharp breath. “They’re about as dense as Bill. Oh, the agent I’d talked to sounded very concerned and wrote down everything I’d said in his little notebook. He’d promised to look into it. When I called him this afternoon to see if they’d arrested Lorenzo, he assured me they were working diligently on the case. But I could tell from his condescending tone that he’d ignored everything I’d told him. I handed him all the evidence he needed to make an arrest, and he dismissed it. He dismissed me. It’s a cut-and-dry case. I don’t understand why they’re dragging their feet. Men!”

  I envied Isabella’s unwavering certainty about what had happened to Pauline even if it did cast Lorenzo in the role of villain.

  I knew from personal experience the turmoil of grief and fear, and—worst of all—a burning need for answers a violent death can cause for those left behind, who have to pick up their own shattered lives and survive. More than three decades had passed since my mom had been taken from me in a violent flash, and the pain still burned in my chest with the same force as the day it had happened.

  Last night Lorenzo had seemed shaken and desperate for answers. I knew the feeling. I’d been just as desperate for answers after my mom’s death, answers I’d never been able to find. He’d become like me, a seeker. I had to help him, to clear his name, and to find answers for him.

  And for myself.

  I needed to understand why Pauline had died . . . and why I was still alive.

  I handed Isabella the charm Sal had found. “Have you ever seen this?”

  Tears welled up in her impossibly large eyes as she cradled the golden dollar sign in the palm of her hands. “Of course,” she said. “Of course. This stupid thing. She’d come back with the charm from one of her New York trips. She got suddenly coy about the men in her life. But she was definitely seeing someone. I think he gave her this. I bet he’s married. Men are such pigs.”

  “So the P and B on the back are her initials.”

  She flipped the charm over and ran her long, slender fingers over the engraving. “Yes. And that’s her cell phone number.”

  “Why would she scratch her own cell phone number onto a charm? Did she wear it on a bracelet or a necklace?”

  “Neither. She hooked it to her laptop case. I suppose she added the phone number to protect it from loss.” Isabella shrugged her dainty shoulders. “The charm clanked against the case when she walked. I told her that she sounded like a traveling one-woman band. But did she listen to me? She never listened to me.”

  I remembered the large flower-patterned bag that had been stuffed into the trash can with Pauline. Was that the laptop bag? And if so, how did the charm get into the flowerbed where I was weeding?

  “Wait a minute. The charm clanked against the laptop case? Aren’t laptop bags soft-sided like my backpack?”

  “Not Pauline’s. She carried this metal box like spies used to carry in the old James Bond movies.”

  “A silver briefcase?” Just thinking about it made my chest tighten.

  “Yes, she carried the clanky thing everywhere with her.”

  It suddenly hit me. Actually, a silver laptop case had hit me. I remembered it clearly now. I saw that silver laptop case out of the corner of my eye right before it slammed against the side of my head. The charm must have broken off from the force of the violent impact. Which meant Mr. Baseball Cap had attacked me.

  “Why would Lorenzo kill her and steal her laptop?” I wondered aloud. It couldn’t be him.

  “Who knows? He’s crazy. Does anything he’d do need to make sense?”

  Yes, it did.

  Isabella didn’t care. She started to complain about Lorenzo, her apartment’s superintendent, and the police again. I was beginning to get the impression she didn’t get along well with any of the men in her life. I stood rather abruptly and thanked her for talking to me.

  I walked back to the flowerbed where I’d been attacked and where Sal had found the charm. I stared at the flowers in the bed as if they could tell me their secrets.

  Turner had told me that nothing important had been stolen from either Pauline or me. Had he been lying to discourage me from asking more questions? Or did they not know about the laptop?

  The flowers remained silent on the matter. So with the sun at my back, I headed home.

  Before reaching the edge of Lafayette Square, a disturbing sight caught my attention. A batch of mile-a-minute vines had invaded a second flowerbed near H Street. The weed’s triangular leaves pointed at me like tiny mocking fingers as their spindly tendrils stretched up, entangling themselves around the length of over a half dozen tulip leaves, slowly but surely choking the plants to death. I slipped off my backpack and found my gardening gloves.

  After pulling them on, I dropped to my knees and began the slow process of removing the weeds, roots and all, taking care that I didn’t damage the tulips.

  At about quarter to six I was just about finished with my task. Pulling weeds was just about the only progress I could claim so far that week. The tulips seemed to shiver with delight as I freed them from the strangling vines.

  I’d stuffed the last of the limp weeds in a paper bag when I noticed Joanna Lovell a couple hundred feet away. She was standing toe-to-toe with the balding Brooks Keller. They were an odd pair, what with Joanna in that oversized pale blue flowered housecoat and Brooks in an expensive suit that had been pressed to razor-sharp creases.

  I pulled off my muddy gardening gloves and gave them a shake as I watched Joanna poke Brooks several times in the chest with her slender finger. I was too far away to hear their conversation. But their body language seemed to speak volumes. Brooks leaned in toward Joanna and put his hand on her hip. At first she tensed. But as Brooks continued to talk, her pink lips relaxed into a smile.

  Joanna said something and then laughed.

  Brooks jerked back. Whatever she’d said, it must have been harsh. The balding CEO’s smile dissolved. He jammed a hand in his pocket and pulled out a white envelope that he shoved against Joanna’s chest.

  “There!” he shouted and stalked off.

  Joanna opened the envelope. As she peeked inside, her smile widened.

  That’s when I remembered.

  And I ran.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MY feet pounded as vigorously as my heart as I sprinted down the street, weaving deftly through the steady stream of commuters, apologizing for my rudeness as I went. I took a hard right onto K Street and blasted through the Freedom of Espresso Café doors, crashing to a stop at the front counter. My gaze flitted over the dozen or so round tables and the line of booths at the back of the café.

  He wasn’t there.

  My shoulders dropped.

  He must have already left.

  According to the rooster-shaped clock hanging above the copper espresso machine, I’d missed my coffee date with “Tempting” Richard Templeton by no more than fifteen minutes.

  “Are you okay?” the college-aged barista asked. She had a pierced nose and lip with a gold chain dangling between the two. She poured some water into a paper cup and handed it to me.

  “Thank you,” I croaked. I swallowed some water. “Richard—Richard Templeton?” I asked, still struggling to catch my breath. “Here?”

  I gulped the rest of the water.

  “So you heard about that, too? He left already.” Her cheeks took on a rosy glow as her lips spread to form a mischievous grin, tugging on the chain hanging between her lip and nose. “You’ll never believe what happened.”

  “I think I can guess,” I said dryly, despite all that water I’d been drinking.

  “No, not this. You’re right, Richard Templeton, the Richard Templeton of National Tenure Bank, was in here. But that’s not the exciting part. He was waiting for a woman . . . who didn’t show up. Can you believe that?”

  “Yeah, I can.”

  “I wish she had come in. I would have liked to have seen her. The women he dates are so incredibly beautiful and famo
us. They’re always famous. I bet she’s a model. My brother dated a model for a while. She was supposed to come to Thanksgiving dinner with him. But she stood him up at the last minute. Models are notoriously unreliable like that. If Richard Templeton had invited someone who looked more like you or me, he certainly wouldn’t have been sitting at that table over there all by himself, staring into his steaming coffee.”

  “You might be surprised.” I ordered a double espresso.

  “I’m sure we’ll hear more about this story.” The machine behind the counter hissed as she made my drink. “The tabloids caught wind of Richard’s embarrassment. Someone at the café must have tipped them off. When he left, he was seriously alone and pissed off, photographers hounded his every step. I’m sure it’s already lighting up all the gossip blogs. I wouldn’t be surprised if a TV show picks up the story, too.”

  “Goodie.”

  She handed me my espresso. As I sipped it, she swiped my credit card at the cash register. She bit her lower lip and swiped it again. With a huff, she handed the card back to me.

  “You’re going to have to pay cash. Your card’s no good.”

  “Really?” I fumbled around in my backpack until I found enough loose change to pay for the drink.

  “You must have forgotten to pay your bill,” she said as she dropped the change into the cash register drawer.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it.” I frowned at the useless card. I might not remember yesterday’s attack, but I clearly remembered paying my credit card bill last week.

  I wondered if Lillian Keller had anything to do with this. Did she have the power to wreck my credit rating just because I’d asked a few innocent questions? Would she do that? And if so, I wondered how far she’d go to stop an unfavorable audit from going public. Would she commit murder to protect her bank?

  A BRUTAL WIND PUSHED THROUGH THE CAPITAL the next morning. Young trees bowed in submission to the harsh spring weather while the older trees swayed and creaked. Tender leaves and flower petals scattered through the early morning sky. Their pastel colors swirled and danced as they buzzed past streetlamps.

  My hair, cool and slightly damp from the morning dew, slapped my face while I waited at the White House gate. I couldn’t do anything about my hair. In each hand I held a reusable metal travel mug filled with steaming rich Kona coffee.

  In this wind, I didn’t dare set the mugs on the ground in order to finger-comb my hair or pull it back into a ponytail. With their tapering bottoms designed to fit in a car cup holder, the mugs were top-heavy.

  I had important plans for both coffees, so I couldn’t risk a spill. Biting my lower lip, I pretended I didn’t care how tangled my hair looked by the time Special Agent Jack Turner emerged with his CAT-instilled stealth from the shadowy North Lawn.

  “Good morning,” I said brightly.

  He gave a brisk nod and swung the gate open.

  This morning when Fredrick had instructed me to wait while he disappeared into the guard hut to make a phone call, I had smiled with satisfaction.

  With the wind blowing even stronger, I followed Turner to the far side of the guard hut under the littleleaf linden tree, where we were shielded from the worst of the spring gale storm, and I handed him my backpack even before he asked for it, which wasn’t easy considering how I had to juggle the coffee mugs.

  “How’s the investigation going?” I asked him.

  He did a fair impression of a deaf wall as he dug through my bag. I didn’t let his silence discourage me.

  “Pauline’s roommate visited Lafayette Square yesterday. We had a nice long chat. She thinks Lorenzo is guilty. I don’t, in case you were confused about that. And I’m determined to prove it.”

  His hand stilled as he looked up from my bag. His green eyes met mine and then narrowed.

  “I mean it, Turner. Lorenzo had nothing to do with Pauline’s murder. And he certainly wouldn’t have attacked me. You can tell Agent Cooper at the FBI that I said that. You can also tell him everything points back to the audits. I’m going to prove that as well, even if it means I have to talk with every banker from here to Wall Street.”

  “Does your career at the White House really mean so little to you?” He rolled his shoulders. “You seem to be doing everything possible to justify a swift dismissal. If that’s what you want, I’ll be happy to make it happen.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Really, Casey? All White House employees are expected to follow Secret Service directives. When I told you not to poke your nose where it doesn’t belong, that wasn’t a suggestion you could choose to ignore. Who knows what damage you’ve already done to our investigation, not to mention the damage to the hard work the FBI and D.C. Police have put into this case?”

  “Talking to Pauline’s roommate to find out what she’s been telling you and the FBI and lord knows who else is not interfering with anything you’re doing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I wasn’t going to win this argument, and since my position as assistant gardener was important to me, I decided to keep my mouth shut, but apparently he wasn’t finished.

  “You were also seen questioning Richard Templeton yesterday.”

  “Now hold on a minute.” I held up my hand, but since I was holding those darn coffee mugs, I ended up looking like I was waving the mug around. “He was flirting with me. He asked me out to coffee.”

  “Really?” That seemed to take Turner by surprise.

  I shrugged coyly, using a look every Southern lady worth her salt knows how to use to her benefit. The simple expression hinted at a multitude of secrets.

  “Interesting,” he said. “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Agree to go to coffee with him?”

  “Of course.” I blushed a bit as I thought about how I’d messed up that opportunity. Alyssa refused to talk to me after I’d told her what had happened. Actually, she’d called me an idiot before giving me the silent treatment. Not that I blamed her. I would have done the same if our roles had been reversed.

  “I see.” His dark brows furrowed slightly. “He’s rich and good looking, quite a catch.”

  “It was just coffee.” A coffee date that didn’t even happen. “I brought you coffee. Kona coffee.”

  “I’m on duty.”

  “It’s just coffee.”

  “It’s a bribe. You want me to tell you what I know about the investigation.”

  “You could still take the coffee and not tell me anything.”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Well then, I’ll tell you what I know and you can run and tell Cooper all about it.” I set the coffee mugs on the ground next to the guard hut, where they’d be protected from the howling wind, and produced Pauline’s charm from my jacket pocket. “A member of the grounds crew found this buried in the flowerbed yesterday where I was attacked.”

  He looped my backpack on one arm and took the golden dollar sign charm. His frown deepened as he turned it over in his hand.

  “Pauline’s roommate, Isabella, recognized it as belonging to Pauline. She said Pauline kept it hanging from the handle of a silver laptop case. Remember I saw a man with a silver briefcase?”

  Turner nodded, offering nothing.

  “Was Pauline’s laptop stolen?” I asked.

  “That’s a good question.”

  “And do you have a good answer?”

  “You’re not part of this investigation, Casey. Nor should you be conducting your own investigation.”

  “My conversation with Isabella was very useful, though. Speaking with her sparked a memory. I saw that silver case right before it hit me. I’m sure of it. And the fact that my crew found the charm she kept on the laptop case only proves that what I’m remembering actually happened. Someone stole Pauline’s laptop and hit me with its case. She might have even been killed because of something she had saved on its hard drive.”

  “I see.” His expression remained inscrutable. “Have you remembered
anything else?”

  “No. But I’m sure I will. I have to.”

  “Let me know when you do.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “See that you do. And thank you for bringing me this charm. It could be an important piece of evidence,” he said. “Oh, don’t go getting all smug on me. It might also be nothing.”

  Since we seemed to be done, I reached for my backpack.

  “Hold up,” he said, “you’re not off the hook yet.”

  “I’m not? Why?”

  “There’s this.” He held up the small green hairspray bottle I’d put in my backpack that morning. “More pepper spray? My God, you’re a walking security risk. Tell me why I shouldn’t report this to Ambrose with the recommendation that he dismiss you on the spot.”

  “I walk to and from work alone and often in the dark,” I said quietly. “I need to be able to protect myself.”

  “Then you need to make arrangements. You can’t just smuggle weapons into the White House. It will get you fired.”

  “Give me a little credit, Turner. I knew you were going to search my bag. I knew you were going to find the pepper spray. Perhaps you could return it at the end of the day so I don’t have to walk home unprotected?”

  My heart hammered while I waited for him to say something. Anything. He uncapped the bottle and sniffed the contents.

  “It’s potent stuff,” I assured him. “But you already know that,” the devil made me add.

  “Yeah, I do.” He pocketed the hairspray bottle. “Fredrick will return it to you when you leave for the day.”

  “Thank you. Are you sure you don’t want the coffee?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  “Your loss.” I reached for my backpack, but Turner held it back.

  “I read your security background check the other day while Thatch was questioning you,” he said.

  My insides clenched. “I was afraid that was what was in the folder you were reading.”