The Scarlet Pepper (22 page)

“DON’T BE A FOOL WITH YOUR LIFE, CASEY,”
Jack warned as he watched the detective put the branches in the trunk of his black sedan and drive off.

“I’m not being foolish. I only promised Manny that I’d ask a few questions around the garden.” Why not? I’d already promised the First Lady as much.

“That’s taking too much of a risk”

“No, it’s not. I think I’ve finally started to see things clearly. If Frank and Bruce want me to take the blame for the murder they committed, if that’s how they plan to ‘handle’ me, they won’t hurt me no matter what I do. That would ruin their plan.”

“Wrong. The killer, whoever that is, will hurt you if you are a threat.”

“So I’ll be careful.”

Jack punched the wrought-iron railing in frustration, but followed me up the stairs.

His stomach grumbled.

“You’re hungry. Shoot. I asked you out for dinner and then didn’t feed you.” Some date this had turned out to be. By the time Manny had left it was close to ten o’clock. “We could order pizza.”

Jack shook his head. “With all this traveling I’ve been doing with the President lately, I’m burned out on fast food and pizza. I should probably just go home.”

I didn’t want him to leave when he was still upset. I didn’t want him to leave at all. “Wait. You promised to help me come up with a plan. I don’t have a plan yet. If you come inside, I’ll fix you something.”

I’d fix him something?

The offer had tumbled out of my mouth before I realized
what I was doing. I knew how to bake a damn good chewy, gooey pan of brownies. But that one recipe summed up my entire culinary repertoire. If Jack wasn’t in the mood for pizza, I doubted he’d welcome a dish of brownies.

“I image your grandmother taught you how to make all sorts of Southern dishes, like collard greens and hoppin’ John.” He smiled as he said it, probably imagining I’d whip him up some Southern fried chicken with all the fixin’s.

“Um…yes…my
grandmother
is a fabulous cook.”

Jack followed me through the apartment and to the kitchen in the back. “Would you like a beer?” I offered as I leaned against the open fridge door and peered into its frosty depths.

Milk. Soy milk. Beer. Soda. Jar of salsa. Lettuce.

Discouraged, I pushed the door closed, poured Jack’s bottle of beer into a glass, and handed it to him. I then peeked in the freezer. Behind several half-eaten pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream I found a package of chicken.

“Chicken!”

I grabbed the package and held it above my head as if I’d just won a gold medal at the Olympics.

“That’ll work for me,” Jack said with a chuckle.

But what the heck should I do with the chicken? I turned the pink foam package over in search of cooking instructions. There weren’t any.

“Excuse me for a minute.” I sidled toward the living room. “I…um…promised my grandmother I’d call her tonight. She’ll be in bed soon, so…um…I’d better call her right now.”

I stood in the front foyer as I dialed the phone number for Rosebrook, the stately mansion in Charleston’s South of Broad neighborhood that had served as home-sweet-home to generations of Calhouns.

“Hello? Casey? Why are you whispering? Speak up. I can barely hear you,” Grandmother Faye said after answering the phone.

“Is that Casey?” I heard Aunt Willow’s voice in the background.

“Casey? Hand me the phone,” Aunt Alba shouted. “I need to tell her about an article I read on the outbreak of violence in the D.C. area. She needs to—”

“Shush, girls. I can barely hear the child as it is. How are you doing, dear?” my grandmother asked.

“I’m good.”

“Speak up, Casey.”

“I’m good, Grandmother,” I said loudly as I jogged up the stairs and sat on the top step so I could speak without worrying about Jack listening in. I mean, what self-respecting Southern girl didn’t know how to—at the very least—fry up some chicken? “You remember Jack Turner, that Secret Service agent I told you about?”

“The nice young man who helped you this past spring? Of course I remember him.”

“I’ve invited him for dinner, but I don’t know what to make.”

“He’s sitting in your kitchen waiting to eat, I suppose?” Grandmother Faye knew me too well.

“Casey has a man in the house?” Aunt Alba squealed in the background.

“Good for her! A man will want to eat meat,” Aunt Willow called out. “A bloody steak.”

“I had thought we could go to a restaurant,” I explained, “but it got late so quickly. I have chicken.” I listed what else I’d found in the fridge.

“Honey child,” Grandmother Faye scolded, “you need to stock up for occasions such as these. A proper lady doesn’t let her guests go hungry.”

“She shouldn’t have a man in the house at this hour,” Aunt Alba shouted. I heard the click of a second line being picked up. “You shouldn’t have a man in the house at this hour,” Aunt Alba said. “Not only is it unseemly, it’s dangerous. Who knows what he’ll expect you to do? And what if you don’t do it? What then? Will he force—?”

“Shush, Alba. You’ll scare the child,” Grandmother Faye said. In my loving grandmother’s eyes I’d forever be a child. Not that I minded.

“Should I try and fry the chicken?” I asked, hoping to get back to the reason I’d called.

“
No!
” both Grandmother Faye and Aunt Alba shouted.

“Lordy, you’re liable to burn the entire house down,” Aunt Alba said.

“Listen to me, Casey, don’t try and fry anything,” Grandmother Faye warned. “Do exactly what I tell you to do. Put the chicken in a baking dish. Cover it with the salsa.”

She explained how to bake the chicken and suggested I toss up a light salad to accompany it. I tried to keep the directions straight in my head. Did I put the oven on broil or not? It wasn’t easy to follow Grandmother Faye’s instructions with my aunts constantly interrupting with warnings and advice.

“Don’t use salsa, use mustard and lemon,” Aunt Willow said. She must have wrested control of the second line from Alba. “And cook it in a skillet. If you have a potato, cook that as well. Men love potatoes. They also love steak. Are you sure you don’t have time to go buy some steak?”

“Give me that.” Aunt Alba wrested control of the phone again. “Broil the chicken. It’ll taste better that way. And if he tries anything, hit him exactly like I showed you. That’ll stop him dead in his tracks.”

“Don’t tell her that!” Aunt Willow shouted. There was a scuffling as the two sisters fought over the phone again. “She’s going to end up a withered-up old maid like the two of us thanks to your meddling. You’ve made her terrified of men.”

“I’m not terrified. Grandmother, tell them I’m not terrified of men. And tell them that Jack is a
friend
. Just a friend.”

“I will, honey child. Enjoy your evening.”

I can do this
, I told myself after assuring my doting family that I loved them and would visit as soon as I found the time. I disconnected the call and headed back down the stairs toward the kitchen.

Years ago my aunts, who rarely agree on anything, had both tried to teach me to cook.

At the same time.

In the same kitchen.

As a result, while I could grow a cornucopia of vegetables, I didn’t know how to prepare even a simple chicken dish for dinner.

I can do this
, I repeated. All the dishes my aunts and I ever made during those cooking lessons ended up fit for only one place…the garbage can.

So what did Grandmother Faye tell me? Should I bake the chicken at four hundred degrees? For how long?

“How is your grandmother?” Jack asked when I returned.

Did she say I should put the oven on broil or not? “What? Oh, she’s good.” I turned the oven on and set it to broil. Broiled chicken sounded fancier than baked.

“Did you tell her about Parker’s murder?”

“Um…” I placed the frozen chicken fillets in a baking pan and sprinkled some salt and pepper on them (like they do on cooking shows). “No. I didn’t want to worry her about any of that. She worries about me too much already.”

I slid the pan onto the oven’s top shelf.

“Do you need a hand there?” Jack asked, rising from the kitchen chair.

“No, I’ve got it.” I flashed him a forced smile and prepared an oil and vinegar dressing for the salad. “Thank you.”

“Ohh-kaay,” he said, eyeing the oven as if he thought it might explode or something.

“Don’t worry. It’s electric,” I assured him. Grandmother Faye had told me to add the salsa when I turned the chicken over. Which reminded me, I needed to set a timer.

Once that was done, I pulled two more bottles of beer from the fridge, refilled Jack’s glass, and poured one for myself.

I dropped into the kitchen chair across from Jack and sighed. “Been one hell of a day,” I said after taking a sip of the beer.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’re still upset with me. You wouldn’t be frowning so hard otherwise.”

“I risked my life to protect you this spring. I didn’t do it so you could get yourself killed three months later.”

I sank down a little in the chair. “I’m not going to get hurt.”

“You told Hernandez that you were willing to play games with a killer. I’d say the express train to disaster has already left the station. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up in the hospital. If not, you’ll take that train all the way to the morgue.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t want to go to your funeral, Casey. I won’t.”

“What can I do? If Frank and Bruce poisoned Parker, it looks as if they want me to take the blame. It’s not as if I invited them to use the details of the murder mystery dinner to carry out the deed. I certainly didn’t want the police breathing down my neck at the White House. Nor did I ask anyone to dump a bunch of yew branches in my backyard. What do you want me to do, sit on my hands and hope enough evidence builds up against them so Manny has no choice but to believe me? What if that doesn’t happen? What if it goes the other way and I’m arrested for Parker’s murder?”

“We need to be smart about this.” I liked the way he said “we.” I really did want his help. “What we need to do is make it impossible for the killer to keep throwing the blame your way.”

“I agree. Even if Manny doesn’t think I killed anyone, a trial by the press would end my White House career.”

“We can’t let that happen.” Again he used the “we” word. I bit my lower lip in a failed attempt to hold back a smile.

“What do you suggest
we
do?”

Always cautious, Jack took a moment to think about the question before answering. “First, let’s cut through the conjecture and nail down what we do and don’t know.”

I fetched a pen and a pad of paper to take notes. “I know Frank and Bruce killed Griffon Parker.”

“That’s conjecture.”

I frowned even though I knew he was right. “Okay, I overheard them talking. Frank was seen arguing with Griffon Parker the night of his death.”

“What were they arguing about?” Jack asked. “That’s something we need to find out.”

“Right.” I sat back in the chair. “We also know that the killer, who might be Frank, dropped the fake suicide note in the garden this morning.”

“There’s a good chance that the killer dropped the note, although that’s not a known.”

“You’re too logical, you know that, don’t you?”

“Perhaps you jump to too many conclusions,” he tossed back at me with a smile. “But getting back to the fake note. Someone connected with the murder or the cover-up wrote that note and was in the garden this morning. Who in the garden also had a connection with Parker?”

“A motive, you mean?”

“Let’s start with a connection. Motives can be tricky.”

“You’re right. Miss Marple mysteries often follow the thinnest threads to get to the murderer.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “Francesca Dearing—along with her husband—was the subject of Parker’s investigative report. Both she and Annie told Manny about the murder mystery dinner, but made it look as if I’d come up with the entire scenario.”

“Were all three of them in the garden?”

“Bruce wasn’t.”

“Well, for now, let’s put all three of them down.”

I wrote their names on the list even though Bruce was the only one of the three I believed capable of murder.

“Let’s see, Kelly Montague, the new
Media Today
star reporter, was in the garden. Parker had stolen papers that belonged to her. She was pretty upset about it.”

I told Jack about my conversation with her and how she had tried to hide the papers sitting on her desk from me. I also told him about the threatening phone call she’d received.

“That makes her sound more like a victim of the plot than the villain,” I concluded.

“I’m not ready to strike her off our list yet. Didn’t Parker’s death mean she’s now
Media Today
’s top White House reporter?” He tapped the notepad. Reluctantly, I wrote her name on it.

We went through the list of everyone who had been at the photography session that morning. The only other person who had a connection to Parker was the First Lady. Griffon Parker was always writing damaging articles about her, the administration, and her husband. Despite that, neither Jack nor I felt it necessary to add Margaret Bradley’s name to our short list of suspects.

“So these are our suspects?”

“Unless there’s someone else we don’t know about or haven’t thought of yet,” Jack warned. “What else do we know?”

“The killer put the yew branches in my backyard. That’s a clue we can follow. Can you find out whether Frank or Bruce left the West Wing this afternoon?”

“I can,” Jack agreed. “But Casey, let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know who put the branches in your yard or why. It might not be related to the murder.”

“You can’t be serious. It has to be—”

“I’m being cautious. Jumping to conclusions too quickly might prove dangerous. For you. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

Touched, I quickly looked away and cleared my throat.

“So what am I going to do tomorrow and Wednesday at the harvest?”

“Nothing. Act normal. Keep your ears and eyes open.”

“And ask those questions I told Manny I’d ask?”

“Are you trying to kill me?” Jack asked.