The Scarlet Pepper (10 page)

Parker had been a fixture in the White House press room for more than a quarter decade. Everyone was keenly aware of his absence.

Had he really killed himself
? many of the staff were asking. Others wondered if someone from the White House, someone who benefited from his death, had killed the crusty old reporter.

It wasn’t my business, I reminded myself—a sentiment with which I prayed Detective Hernandez would agree.

What I needed to do was immerse myself in the tasks of the day. Only then would my nerves settle down.
The devil never bothers with busy hands
, Grandmother Faye had told me time and again. Well, I don’t know about the devil, but busy hands are adept at scaring away unproductive thoughts.

The First Lady’s first harvest was in two days. Advanced publicity photos were planned for today. And with all the last-minute changes to be worked out, there’d be no shortage of tasks demanding my attention.

I’d hoped no one would notice me or want to talk with
me as I kept my head down and headed straight for grounds office underneath the North Portico.

“Casey.” Steve Sallis, a Secret Service agent from the President’s protective detail, dressed in a nondescript black suit, stood like an unmovable pillar blocking the door to the office.

Everyone at the White House knew Steve. Whenever he had a free moment, he’d stop and chat with the gardening staff. Steve was a handsome man with blond hair and an easygoing smile. This morning, however, his friendly smile was nowhere in sight.

He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.

“There’s nothing to see here. Move it along,” I wanted to tell him. But instead I said with a hopeful lilt, “Morning, Steve. If you don’t mind stepping to one side or the other, I’ve got a busy day.” I tried to ease around him and get inside my office.

“Casey”—Steve put his hand on my shoulder—“we’ve got a problem.”

“A problem?”

As in Parker’s death?

As in Francesca’s murder mystery dinner that might have turned real?

My anxiety level notched up by only, oh, one hundred and ten percent. I tried to act like I had no idea why the Secret Service might want to talk with me, but my voice squeaked when I asked, “What problem?”

“In the garden, I’m afraid.”

“The garden.”
Thank goodness
. My tense shoulders dropped at least two inches. He wasn’t here to grill me about Parker or attempted murder.

Wait a minute. Did he say
the garden
? “Which garden?”

He rubbed the back of his neck and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Um…I’m afraid the problem is with the First Lady’s kitchen garden.”

“
You’re
afraid? Then that would make me freaking terrified. What’s happened?”

“I’m not sure. Sometime over the weekend Milo must
have gotten to the vegetables. I noticed it last night. Several of the plants have been dug up.”

“I thought we’d trained him to leave the plants alone.” I sighed. “No problem. We should be able to fix it.” Even if I needed to remove a few plants, there should still be plenty left in the vegetable bed for today’s pictures and Wednesday’s harvest.

The main problem would be if the First Lady’s social secretary got hold of the news and decided to use the opportunity to make me look incompetent. Or worse, he might panic and give everyone on the White House staff a blazing headache.

“Does Seth know?” I asked.

“No. I was directed to tell either you or Gordon, and no one else.”

“Good.” It was still early. I could fix the garden before Seth found out. “Wait a minute. You were directed to come tell me?”

“Or Gordon,” Steve said.

I wondered why Jack Turner hadn’t volunteered to come tell me about this. He’d sought me out on Friday to tell me something, not that he’d stuck around long enough to tell me what. I wondered what it could have been.

Perhaps Jack had been ordered to stay away from me because of what had happened this past spring. I hoped that wasn’t the case. Because if it was, I’d never find out what he was going to say to me last Friday. Not that I cared.

He’d shown no faith in my ability to pass the Secret Service’s training session, a training session everyone else had passed without any trouble. Sure, he’d been right. I
had
failed. Miserably.

Forget Jack
. Yes, he’d saved my life this past spring. But he’d simply been following orders. And yes, he did make my heart race, and not in a scary I’m-having-a-heart-attack sort of way, but with a tingly, warm, fuzzy I’m-running-through-a-summer-rain kind of thumping heartbeat. But none of that mattered.

I needed to focus on what was important—the garden.

I nudged Steve aside and unlocked the grounds office door.

“We’re really sorry about this, Casey,” he said as I turned on the lights and dropped my backpack on my desk. “None of the agents know how this could have happened. We’ve been watching Milo.”

“And Gordon and I have been working with him on his garden manners. Not to mention the extensive work the dog trainer’s done with him. But he’s still a puppy, and puppies are notorious for doing naughty things.”

As if on cue, Milo trotted into the office and plopped down beside my desk. Although not yet fully grown, he already weighed more than fifty pounds. He had shaggy golden fur with one white leg and a wide white stripe running down his chest.

“Well, Milo, what do you have to say for yourself?”

At the sound of his name he started to wag his tail so vigorously his entire bottom half wiggled. His bright pink tongue lolled out the side of his mouth.

As much as I wanted to be upset with him, I couldn’t. He was too darn cute.

“You’re stuffed full of puppy energy, aren’t you, my sweet boy?” I tousled the long curling fur on the overgrown pup’s head, earning myself a sloppy kiss on the hand.

“I’d say he’s mostly dog slobber.” Steve chuckled as I searched for something to wipe off my dripping hand. I ended up wiping the back of my hand on my khakis.

I tossed a couple of trowels and several pairs of gloves into my large sweetgrass basket, tucked my well-oiled gardening shears into a leather holster on my belt, and grabbed my wide-brimmed garden hat. “Let’s go have a look.”

Wednesday was Harvest Day on the White House’s South Lawn.

Seth Donahue had added the capital letters. I think he was on the verge of making them bold and golden after I’d called him at home over the weekend to tell him about how Francesca had booked us Gillis Farquhar as our guest celebrity. Not to be outdone, Seth had spent the weekend
inviting several other celebrities, political power brokers, and all the major television and cable news networks to take part in what I’d initially intended to be a small affair designed for local schoolchildren.

In advance of Wednesday’s big-top circus, the First Lady was scheduled to pose for pictures with the volunteers at nine this morning followed by a brief preview of the garden for the press at ten. On the way out of the office, I checked the large industrial clock hanging over the door. It was nearly seven o’clock.

Thank goodness I liked to come in early.

Despite the troubles Milo had caused and the headache it would no doubt give me, as I walked with Steve down the hill, past the President’s putting green, around the flat portion of the lawn where Marine One landed, and toward the vegetable garden, my step felt lighter. Plants, I understood and could handle. They were what I loved.

Milo loped alongside us. With a happy bark he dashed off to chase a squirrel up a linden tree, but soon returned wagging his tail.

“Oh, Milo,” I cried when I saw the mess he’d made of the garden.

This was much worse than the time he’d pulled most of the pea plants from their ladder trellis. Heads of lettuce the size of basketballs had been pulled out by their roots. I wandered through the rows. As I inspected the damage, I stepped over a small head of red oak-leaf lettuce, a pile of ripped-up kale large enough to have fed a family of four, and a long, uprooted cucumber vine teeming with yellow flowers.

Milo didn’t follow. Instead he stopped at the edge of the garden and dropped to the ground. With a moan he lowered his head between his front paws.

Was I imagining a guilty gleam in his eyes?

Gordon had worked with Milo to teach the naughty puppy that he needed to keep out of the First Lady’s vegetable garden. He’d done a great job. We’d gone all season with only the damaged pea plants.

What had happened this weekend to cause Milo to run amok?

“We’re awfully sorry about this, Casey.” Steve’s face darkened with embarrassment. “I don’t know how it happened. President Bradley was busy with the budget negotiations all weekend, and you know Mrs. Bradley is extremely protective of her vegetables. So it had to have happened when one of the agents was watching Milo. But…” He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “I assure you the agents weren’t pulling a prank on you. We wouldn’t do this. Not on this scale.”

The Secret Service had pulled a few pranks last spring, letting Milo run wild in the Rose Garden. The puppy had dug up a few small rosebushes, so I understood why Steve might worry I’d suspect the tampering had been intentional.

“What’s done is done.” I drew on my gloves and picked up a young tomato plant that had a damaged stem but was salvageable. With quick movements I dug a shallow trench and placed the tomato into the hole, leaving only the top two rows of leaves above the ground. In time roots would sprout along the full length of the buried stem, giving the plant a solid base from which to grow.

“Could you leave a message for Gordon and Lorenzo to let them know I’ll need some help?” I asked as I picked up another damaged plant to inspect.

“Of course.” He headed back up the hill with Milo prancing alongside him. “And we’re going to find out who’s responsible for letting this happen. You can count on that.”

Although at first glance the garden looked like a disaster, with the help of two of the newer members of the National Park Service’s grounds crew, Jerry and Bower—although they weren’t really that helpful—and several volunteers who’d arrived early for the photo shoot, Gordon, Lorenzo, and I managed to save most of the plants. Pearle Stone and Mable Bowls happily dug shallow trenches for the damaged tomatoes, tucking them back into their beds while smiling like silly teens at Gordon. As they worked,
the two speculated on everything from Griffon Parker’s death to Francesca and Bruce Dearing’s future.

“It’s like a scarlet letter pinned to our poor dear’s pink frock,” Mable concluded. “I know of two reporters already sniffing in that direction now. The scandal will eventually come out. There’s no stopping it now.”

Once all of the uprooted vegetables had been replanted and the damaged lettuce leaves and stems had been trimmed, the garden looked nearly as lush and healthy as it had when we’d left on Friday.

I was on my knees, studying an unsalvageable shredded head of cabbage—there didn’t seem to be any tooth marks—when I spotted three Secret Service agents heading down the hill. Several yards behind them Barton Bailey, the First Lady’s official photographer, snapped shots of Margaret Bradley as she gracefully descended the South Lawn and made her way toward the kitchen garden.

The third youngest First Lady in U.S. history, edging Jacqueline Kennedy from that spot of honor by just one week, Mrs. Bradley also held the distinction of being the first wife of a President to be pregnant while her husband was in office since Jacqueline Kennedy. And according to the news reports, Mrs. Bradley was the only First Lady to be pregnant with twins while in office.

Soft-spoken Margaret Bradley was elegant in everything she did, and the press enjoyed making comparisons between her and Jacqueline Kennedy.

As her belly grew, Margaret had let her dark auburn hair grow out as well. She now sported a shoulder-length cut that softened the look of the former Wall Street professional. Six months pregnant, she seemed to celebrate and welcome each change happening to her body.

The pale yellow sleeveless dress she had picked out for the photo shoot accentuated her blossoming figure and emphasized her radiant glow. A gentle smile played on her lips as she spoke briefly with one of the Secret Service agents walking alongside her.

As she approached the garden, I hastily gathered up the plants that couldn’t be saved.

“Good morning, Casey,” Mrs. Bradley called with a sunny smile. “I heard there was some excitement in the garden.”

“A bit,” I answered and discreetly dropped the plants I’d grabbed into the small compost pile tucked into the corner of the garden. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”

“Oh! How wonderful!” She crouched down and inspected a bell pepper that was about the size of her fist. “I can’t wait for the chefs to start harvesting these. They’re my favorite. When I was a child, my mother would stuff the peppers from our garden with rice and sausage and hard-boiled eggs. The rich flavors—” She paused when Seth bent down and whispered in her ear. The First Lady’s smile faded as she listened. “Now?” she said with a sigh.

“I just received notice of it myself,” Seth said, sounding genuinely contrite. “Do you want me to text back and tell Frank to hold off until after the pictures are taken?”

“No, don’t do that.” She forced a smile as she let Seth help her stand up again. “We could use some positive press. John could use it. I’m sure the volunteers will be thrilled.” She turned to me. “Frank Lispon is bringing down some of the pool reporters to interview the volunteers while we set up for the pictures. Do you mind helping out with that, Casey?”

“I’d be glad to,” I said, thankful the garden had been put back together before Frank and the press descended.

After “Watercressgate’s” ridiculous charge that the White House had created a fake garden, I didn’t need the press speculating that instead of fixing the garden this morning, the volunteers were in fact “creating” one.

“I’m curious,” I said, “why the change in plans? And why the West Wing’s interest anyhow? I thought you were directing things.”

“You’ll have to ask Frank,” Seth said.