The Scarlet Pepper (3 page)

“Do you think
Media Today
would truly replace him with a television reporter?” Pearle asked.

“D.C. would certainly change without him around to stir the pot. At least he’s still here now and kicking. I heard the story he plans to write will kill any and all political
aspirations the poor dear’s husband has cultivated.” Mable tsked.

“Bruce’s sights were on the presidency. And now…” Pearle said sadly. “Poor, poor Francesca.”

Francesca
? I whirled around, searching the group of volunteers behind me.

Francesca Dearing, my most dedicated gardening volunteer, was also married to the President’s hard-nosed—and plump as a ripe eggplant—Chief of Staff, Bruce Dearing.

Let me tell you, President Bradley didn’t need this kind of trouble. His approval rating had recently plummeted thanks to this spring’s banking scandal. He couldn’t afford to have another erupt so soon.

Although I didn’t spot Francesca among the dozen or so volunteers trailing me across the South Lawn, the petite Annie Campbell was only a few paces behind me. Francesca and Annie grew up in the same small town in West Virginia and were as close as any two women I’d ever met.

I held my breath, hoping Annie hadn’t overheard the snide remarks. But how could she not have heard?

Annie’s gaze met mine. Her shoulders noticeably tightened.

“Mrs. Bowls, Mrs. Stone,” I called, desperate to get Mable and Pearle’s attention.

“Is it Bruce or Francesca that Griffon Parker is after?” Pearle Stone wondered quite loudly.

I picked up my pace to catch up with them. “Mrs. Stone!”

“Does it matter?” Mable crowed. “Soon the two of them will be forced to pack up their things and disappear back up into the mountains.”

With a strangled cry, Annie rushed past me. Her hair, cut in a pageboy style and dyed a red that was much brighter than a woman her age could honestly claim, bounced with each agitated step. Her gardening outfit, which looked as if it had fallen out of a high-priced designer’s closet, swished as she went.

Pearle shook her head as she watched Annie jog the rest
of the way to the vegetable garden at the bottom of the hill. “That one would be nothing without Francesca.”

Mable tsked again. “Didn’t Francesca swear she’d rather die than return to that Hicksville of a hometown?”

“That she did,” Pearle replied. “Many, many times.” She stopped and turned toward me. Though her stiff movements betrayed her advanced age, her indulgent smile made Pearle look positively angelic. “Did you want something, dear?”

She looked me up and down with her keen, assessing gaze. Not a single strand of her curly, blue-tinged hair moved.

“You don’t have your hat,” I said, deciding not to mention Francesca. The damage had already been done. Admonishing the pair would only give them cause to keep their focus on the gossip surrounding Francesca.

“Speak up, dear,” Pearle said.

“Your hat,” I repeated, louder this time. “Where is it?”

D.C. had been in the grip of an intense heat wave for the past week. The humid June air already felt warm enough to make a beetle sweat, and the sun had only barely peeked over the horizon. In a few hours this area of Washington, which had once been swampland, was going to feel like the interior of a seafood steamer. I didn’t wish to lose any of my volunteers to heat exhaustion.

“My word, she’s quite right. Where is your hat? You know how badly you freckle in the sun,” Mable Bowls scolded. She grabbed Pearle’s arm to help support her as several volunteers breezed past us. Mable enjoyed reminding everyone how she was only seventy-nine, a full six months younger than her “ancient” friend, and still as spry as a spring chick.

“I believe I must have left it back at your house, Mable.” Pearle tapped a slender, neatly manicured finger to her chin. “Yes, I believe I did.” She turned her angelic gaze toward me again. And smiled. “Would you be a dear and—”

“I beg your pardon,” I said as my cell phone belted out the first few lines to Katy Perry’s bubblegum pop song
“Firework.” It was a playful tune that reminded me of the biblical parable that no one should hide their light under a bushel. “I’d better take this.”

I usually sent my calls to voice mail when I was working. However, if Pearle, who reminded me too much of my grandmother Faye with her genteel smiles and refined manner, finished her request, I knew I’d soon find myself on a wild-goose chase in search of the lady’s garden hat.

Praying the caller didn’t hang up before I could answer, I dug into my pocket for my cell phone. This wasn’t as easy as it sounded considering how I had to juggle the large sweetgrass basket in order to manage it. Several garden gloves slipped to the grass.

“The harvest celebration is next Wednesday, and there’s still quite a bit that needs to be done. This phone call might be a question regarding one of the details,” I explained. We’d been coordinating the garden details with the White House chefs, which was the easy part, and with the First Lady’s high-strung social secretary, Seth Donahue, who tended to give me a searing headache.

As more gloves tumbled from my sweetgrass basket like leaves in the fall, I flashed a self-deprecating grin and turned away from the two sweet, although half-deaf, ladies. “Hello?” I said as I pressed the phone to my ear. “This is Casey.”

“
Casey
,” the woman on the other end implored in a raspy whisper. I lowered the phone and glanced at the caller ID display. It gave no number. No name.

The readout simply read, “Unavailable.”

“Hello?” Did I know anyone with a blocked phone number? Not even Secret Service Agent Jack Turner blocked his number.

I don’t know why I picked that moment to think of
him
. Or why my heart suddenly sped up. He’d not called in weeks, not since my disastrous training session with the Secret Service. And to think I’d started to convince myself that Jack had developed feelings for—

“
Casey
.” The raspy whisper turned more urgent. “
You have to help me.
”

“Francesca? Is that you?” It sort of sounded like her. “Where are you calling from? Is this about Griffon—?”

“Don’t say his name! Not even over the phone.”

“Okay,” I said. “Aren’t you signed up to work today? I could use your help in the garden.”

“I don’t have time for that right now. You know the charity murder mystery dinner you’ve been helping me plan? I’ve had an idea about it. We need to talk. Can you meet me at the Freedom of Espresso Café in a half hour?”

“I’m sorry. I can’t. We could talk while we work here, though.”

“Oh, no, I can’t do that. I’m very busy. I have to deal with”—she sighed loudly—“
that reporter
. But I need to run an idea by you while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

“Francesca, I’m at work. I have responsibilities and gardens to tend.”

“Casey, you don’t understand. I need your expertise with
plants
.” She whispered the last word into the phone. It came out muffled, as if she’d cupped her hand over the receiver, as if she didn’t want anyone around her to hear. How she spoke that one word, as if she were talking about something dark and sinister, sent a shiver down my spine.

“
Plants
?” I asked. But she’d hung up.

“
I
s
something wrong, dear?” Pearle asked as I frowned at my phone.

“I don’t think so.” I jammed the phone back into my pocket, which caused more gardening gloves to tumble out of the basket and onto the lush fescue. “It’s just that I’m—”

“Yes?” Pearle leaned forward. Excitement danced in her ice blue eyes as she waited for me to hand her a piece of juicy gossip for her and Mable to chew on.

“It’s nothing,” I said and forced a broad smile to my lips. “Here.” I handed her my floppy straw hat to wear. “I don’t want you to get overexposed to the sun.”

I continued down the hill toward the vegetable garden, scooping up gardening gloves as I went.

“There
is
something wrong,” Mable pronounced as she and Pearle followed me across the lawn.

“She does look troubled,” Pearle agreed. She adjusted the straw hat so it sat at a jaunty angle atop her blue-tinged hair.

“Who was on the other end of the call?” Mable wondered aloud.

“Someone who clearly doesn’t know our Casey well,” Pearle said. “She’s dedicated to the White House and her plants.”

I smiled at that. The volunteers, most of whom were old enough to be my mother, if not my grandmother, had adopted me as their own. Even Francesca, in her own self-absorbed way.

What many people don’t realize is how much the White House depends on its volunteers. With all the regular day-to-day demands pulling its paid employees in several directions at once, the White House’s relatively small staff couldn’t possibly handle running the household plus the numerous special projects—such as decorating the White House for Christmas, organizing daily public tours, opening the garden to the public twice a year, or developing and maintaining a world-class vegetable garden for the First Lady. Volunteers regularly offered a helping hand in the First Lady’s office
and
in the gardens.

Although volunteer positions were highly coveted and generally had many more people vying for any given position than was needed, in Francesca Dearing’s case, it had taken a bit of bribery to convince her to come to help out in the vegetable garden.

But I’d wanted Francesca. Her experience in growing prize-winning vegetables in the D.C. area was well known in the plant community.

Up until about six months ago, I’d spent most of my career working under the canopy of live oaks thickly draped with Spanish moss in Charleston, South Carolina. While D.C. and Charleston shared deep roots regarding our nation’s history, they existed in very different microclimates with unique problems. I needed to recruit a knowledgeable volunteer with on-the-ground experience, someone like Francesca Dearing.

Unfortunately Francesca had existing obligations to charitable and political organizations. When I’d asked for her help, she’d politely refused. It wasn’t until she’d learned about how I’d solved a murder this past spring that
she’d
contacted
me
.

In addition to her passion for plants, Francesca devoured murder mysteries. She never missed an episode of
Castle
or
The Mentalist
and had read nearly every cozy mystery series in print.

Although I’d tried to explain otherwise, she fancied that she’d found herself a real-life amateur sleuth. In exchange for her help, I agreed to play along with her fantasy.

Since there were no crimes for us to investigate, thank goodness, she invented a game of her own. We would combine our knowledge of mystery plots and…

Oh, I hesitate to admit this. I promise you my stern but loving grandmother Faye raised me to have better judgment. It was simply that I needed to make the First Lady’s vegetable garden an unquestionable success. To do that, I needed Francesca’s local expertise.

So, yes, I did agree to play her silly little game. In exchange for Francesca’s assistance in the garden, I agreed to help her plan the perfect murder.

For charity.

At a dinner.

No one was supposed to die.

No one
had
died, I reminded myself.

Not yet
, my pesky inner voice chided.

Just because Francesca had called out of the blue with an urgent need to talk about the charity murder mystery dinner on the same day rumors were swirling about her impending social death didn’t necessarily mean she was planning to host a
real
murder dinner. That was just my fanciful imagination working overtime…I hoped.

My cell phone sang its cheery pop song again. I set down my basket at the edge of the First Lady’s vegetable garden and reached into my pocket. Again, the caller ID readout proclaimed, “Unavailable.”

“You should answer it, dear,” Pearle said as she came to stand next to me.

“It’s probably important,” Mable agreed as she stood on the other side of me.

“I doubt it.” If Francesca wanted to talk to me about murder, she knew how to find me. I needed her help in the garden.

AN HOUR LATER MY CELL PHONE STARTED TO
sing again. I paused in tying a young pepper plant to its bamboo stake and checked the caller ID.

“Unavailable.”

She’d called at least four other times in the past hour. Not that I’d talked with her. I’d hit the “ignore” button, only to have her call back fifteen minutes later, which only fed my concern that this Griffon Parker business was straining her nerves. It would be wrong of me to turn a deaf ear to her cry for help.

My finger skipped over the cell phone’s “ignore” button, and I answered the call.

“Cherry leaves,” Francesca said.

“Cherry…
What
?” I must have misheard her.

“Cherry leaves,” she replied as if I should know exactly what she meant. “They could be ground up and put into a tea.”