The Scarlet Pepper (20 page)

“I hope so.” I sat on the edge of the center pool and watched the light from the sunset dance on its glassy surface. “My father once told me that the sparkling spots of light on the water were diamonds only the faeries could touch,” I said.

I’d forgotten about that.

“Faerie diamonds?” The old man chuckled. “Your father must have had some imagination.”

“I don’t know. I don’t really remember him,” I answered, still mesmerized by the sparkling water.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the man asked. “If you need something, anything—” He looked up suddenly. A smile pulled up the corners of his lips, smoothing out his wrinkles. He nodded to someone beyond me. “I have a feeling you’re in good hands now.”

I jumped to my feet and whirled around to find Jack Turner standing about a yard away from me. No longer dressed in his black battle dress fatigues, Jack looked no less deadly in worn jeans and light gray T-shirt. There was an intensity about him. I don’t know of any other way to describe it.

He was a trained killer. He made me nervous, and I was beginning to realize that a perverted part of me liked that about him.

He closed the distance between us. “Casey?” he asked, while his eyes flicked a questioning glance toward the older gentleman.

“Jack!” I was so glad to see a familiar face, I threw myself into his arms, which he wrapped protectively around me. I pressed my cheek to his chest and breathed in his scent.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Where did I start? The bomb that wasn’t a bomb and what the First Lady had asked of me afterward? What I’d
learned from Kelly Montague? Or didn’t learn? The overheard conversation between Frank and Bruce?

Or…

Jack, a member of the White House’s Secret Service detail, might be part of the plot. Maybe I shouldn’t trust him at all.

I pulled out of his comforting embrace. The older gentleman, I noticed, had left.

“Um…Jack, maybe I should be alone.” As alone as I already felt.

He didn’t move so I did. I followed the edge of the center pool toward one of the two towers. One side said “Pacific.” I moved toward the opposite tower, the side called “Atlantic.”

“Casey.” Jack’s voice was low. “You called me.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“I was in a meeting about the suicide note you found.” He looked away. Was he trying to hide his guilt? When he looked back, all I could see was concern. “I’m here now.”

“How did you find me?” Was I being followed? I searched the crowd of tourists for plainclothes Secret Service agents, not that I had any hope of spotting one.

Whenever the President or First Lady made a public appearance, the Secret Service placed several agents within the gathered crowd to ferret out trouble.

I’d heard that the Secret Service also used plain-clothes agents on other assignments. Did one of those assignments include following White House employees—employees that needed to be “handled” and who were wearing targets on their backs?

“How did you find me?” I asked again, moving even farther away from him.

He remained by the reflecting pool. “Fredrick watched you leave. He told me which direction you went. If you didn’t want to be followed, you should have turned off your cell phone. It has a GPS in it. And if you think you’re in danger, you should change roads and directions several times. I could give you lessons on—”

“I’m not—” I blurted out. Several people stopped to stare at me. “I’m okay,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m okay.” I hoped that if I said it enough times, I’d start to believe it.

Jack crossed his arms over his chest. “Talk to me, Casey. You ran out of the White House as if terrorists were chasing you. What’s going on?”

He’d followed me to the memorial either to help me or to help Frank and Bruce destroy me.

I wanted to trust Jack, truly I did, but sticky tendrils of fear wrapped around me, whispering into my ear that I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anyone.

My father had taught me that lesson.

I drew a deep breath and held it.

No, I wasn’t going to let my father’s mistakes color my world. Jack was a good guy. One of the best.

Even if the Secret Service was a part of the conspiracy to silence Griffon Parker and now me, Jack wouldn’t go along with that. He wouldn’t.

“I know who killed Griffon Parker,” I said.

Jack grabbed my arm and ushered me away from the crowds. He didn’t stop until we had left the World War II Memorial and found a relatively secluded spot beyond the “Pacific” tower and underneath one of the National Mall’s American elms.

This tree in particular had stood against the powerful Dutch elm disease and survived. While the fungal disease had killed a majority of the elms in municipalities across the country, this tree had given arborists new hope for the elms’ future survival.

Using this disease-resistant tree and others like it that had been planted as part of the National Mall’s original planting of elms in the 1930s, scientists had developed the “Jefferson” American elm, a cultivar that promised to survive against a foe much stronger than itself. In time, clones of this tree might help bring back the iconic American elm to the National Mall and to communities across the country.

I prayed I could be so strong.

“I know who killed Parker,” I said again.

“Is that so? Despite your promises to stay out of the investigation, apparently you’ve turned into a regular Nancy Drew,” he said.

“
Miss Marple
,” I corrected. “Nancy Drew is too perky.”

“And you’re not perky?”

I sneered.

He released my arm. “In case you’ve forgotten, you promised me and your saintly grandmother that you wouldn’t get involved with another murder investigation, that you wouldn’t put your life in danger.”

“It wasn’t as if I went looking for trouble.” Griffon Parker’s death was none of my business. I understood that. “I wasn’t playing sleuth. I wasn’t.”

I didn’t tell him about the side project the First Lady had asked of me. It wasn’t as if I’d started asking questions in that direction anyhow. Not really. Kelly Montague hadn’t been any help at all. “This isn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything other than talk with Detective Hernandez. And I didn’t go to Manny. He came to me, remember?”

Jack nodded, which I knew didn’t mean that he agreed with me. It only meant that he’d heard what I was saying. Sometimes, like right now, I wished he’d talk more. Trying to puzzle out the workings of Jack’s mind was like trying to win one of those giant stuffed toys at the fair, the kind with all the dust on them.

“Tell me what happened,” he said as he casually leaned his arm against the trunk of the sturdy American elm. “What has made you so frightened?”

Anyone who saw him would mistake his easygoing manner as just that. I’d worked around the Secret Service long enough to know that Jack—like all the other agents—maintained razor-sharp reflexes and senses beneath his facade of calm.

“I overheard Frank Lispon and Bruce Dearing in Frank’s office talking. They were discussing me.”

Jack raised his brows with interest.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

His brows hitched up a bit higher.

“I wasn’t. Not intentionally. Not at first. I was delivering the press packet for Wednesday, and I heard angry voices as I passed Frank’s office. Bruce told Frank that he’d have to ‘handle me’ the same way he’d handled Griffon Parker.”

Jack rubbed his chin. “The press secretary and the Chief of Staff said this?”

I nodded.

“You’re sure?”

I nodded again.

His hand moved to the back of his neck.

My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach.

“I don’t know what to do, Jack. No one is going to believe me.
You
don’t even believe me.”

“I don’t?” Jack asked.

“D-don’t you?” I was afraid to hope, afraid to trust.

“Why else would I be standing here? Why else would I have followed you here?”

“Because Bruce or Frank ordered you to find me, to keep an eye on me until they could figure out how to get rid of me like they did with Griffon Parker.”

He didn’t say a word to that.

“It’s not that I don’t want to believe—” I started to say, but he raised his hand and walked away.

I closed my eyes and sighed. What in the world was wrong with me?

Why did I say that? Why did I push him away?

Honey child
, my aunt Alba used to tell me when I complained about being socially inept in high school,
you’re not supposed to know all the answers. If you did, God wouldn’t have put you down here to learn ’em
.

She was right, of course, then and now. I would have hoped, however, I’d have learned a thing or two about trust in my nearly forty years on this confounding planet.

Despite the panic welling in my chest as I watched Jack
walk away, something deep inside me kept me from calling out to him. God knew I couldn’t do this alone. I needed help.

I needed Jack.

Forget that my story sounded crazy, even to me. Jack believed me.

Why couldn’t I believe in
him
?

I
pressed my palm against the American elm until its bumpy bark bit into my skin. I closed my eyes and prayed the long-lived tree would lend me some of its strength.

“Stop,” I whispered as my heart clenched. “Jack, please stop. I need—”

“Damn it, Casey. Do you push everyone away or am I the only one who gets the special treatment?” He stalked back toward me. “When I refused to help you this past spring, you did everything you knew how to win me over, including bribing me with gourmet coffee every morning. Now that I’m willing to lend a hand, to be your friend, you’re the one pulling away. Tell me. What has changed? Where’s my damned cappuccino?”

I blinked. “You want coffee?”

“No, I want answers.”

“I—I—”

“Whether you trust me or not, you need me.”

“I do need you,” I whispered.

In a rare show of raw emotion, Jack ripped off his sunglasses and glared. Anger burned steadily in his green eyes. “Have I ever lied to you? Have I ever hurt you? Tell me, Casey, what have I done to deserve your keeping me at arm’s length?”

I hadn’t meant to question his honor.

“Well?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

“I…” My voice trailed off.

He waited.

“Because…” He didn’t really want me to say this, did he?

He waited.

“Because if I let you get too close—” I said with a rush and then stopped myself. Fire scorched my cheeks.

I couldn’t finish that thought.

If I said any more, I’d have said too much.

“Oh, Jack, you’re a good friend to put up with me.” I playfully punched his arm. “I’m sorry I doubted you. Must have watched too many
X-Files
reruns lately. They’ve made me obsessed with conspiracies.”

He stared at the spot on his arm where I’d punched him. His silence unnerved me, so I kept talking.

“I did overhear Frank and Bruce talking. And I’m scared. That’s not me being crazy. Who else in the administration is involved? I don’t know. Even if it’s just the two of them acting alone, they’re powerful men. I need help. I don’t know what to do.”

He finally dragged his gaze away from his arm. “You could call the police.”

“Detective Hernandez thinks I’m a suspect,” I reminded him. “He’ll probably think I’m trying to confuse the investigation. Besides, it’s my word against Frank’s and Bruce’s. I don’t have proof.”

“That is a problem.” He slipped his sunglasses back on and stepped back.

“If you stick around and help me with it, I’ll—I’ll not only buy you that cappuccino you seem to like so much, I’ll also take you out for dinner,” I said, ignoring my grandmother’s
number one rule for dating—
nice girls don’t ask men out
.

Well, it wasn’t really a date. It was dinner. Between friends. Friends ate dinner together all the time. Didn’t they?

“If you don’t want to go out for dinner,” I continued, blathering on like an idiot while wishing he (or anyone) would stop me, “we could just have that cappuccino. Friends have coffee together. And we could talk. Or whatever you want. Just name it and I’ll do it. I need you, Jack. I need help.”

Alyssa had already warned me not to wait up for her tonight. The most recent amendments to the budget still needed three more votes, votes that she needed to help find, so she wouldn’t be available to help me out of this.

If Jack abandoned me, I didn’t know what I would do.

“You still don’t get it,” he grumbled. He walked away, shaking his head. “Come on,” he said when I didn’t follow. “I’m hungry, and you’ll probably want to stop by your office and pick up your backpack and check the garden for slugs or something before heading to dinner.”

He was right. I did have work to finish up.

Back at the White House, while Jack conferred with another CAT agent, I headed to the grounds office. Lorenzo and Gordon had finished most of the to-do list in my absence and were heading home. I thanked the two of them and promised to treat them to lots of gourmet coffee and pastries from the Freedom of Espresso Café over the next week. Once Lorenzo and Gordon had left for the night, I finished up the tasks that couldn’t wait until morning and met back up with Jack. He followed me out to the vegetable garden. In the gray twilight, we stood side by side at the garden’s periphery. I breathed in the scent of the vegetable blooms.