The Scarlet Pepper (34 page)

“
G
ILLIS?
” I couldn’t believe it.

Wait. I
could
believe it. “That scheming, no-good showman! He tried to ruin me just because he wanted to sell more books?”

“I suppose your instincts about him were on the nose. Detective Hernandez is on his way to interview him. I haven’t heard why, but I’d have to assume the homicide detective wants to question Gillis in regard to Parker’s murder.”

“Gillis?”

“He might be our murderer,” Jack said.

“No.” Frank was the killer. I stopped myself to rethink everything for a moment. “No. Unless Gillis fathered a child twenty-five years ago, when he was—what—ten years old or so, he wasn’t involved.”

I spotted Thatch heading our way. “We can talk about this later,” I said. I didn’t want to get Jack into trouble.

Penny was busy directing the press now that the Q&A was over. The chefs were winding down their activities as well.
The kids soon boarded the buses and headed back home.

Frank was still absent.

Francesca was talking with her husband near the South Fountain. She waved me over.

After exchanging polite greetings with Bruce and Francesca, Francesca asked, “Have you seen Annie lately?”

“She was helping Gillis,” I said, but come to think about it, I hadn’t seen Annie since I’d handed her Gillis’s books. A band of worry tightened around my stomach.

“I’m sure she’s okay,” I quickly added. With all the stress Francesca had been under, I didn’t want to alarm her needlessly.

Francesca frowned. “Bruce, have you seen her?”

He shook his head.

“Perhaps she left with the children,” I offered. “That’s when Pearle and Mable went home.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“I’m sure she’s okay,” I said to assure both Francesca and myself. “This is the safest place on earth.”

“She’s right, honey,” Bruce grumbled. “You worry too much. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

Francesca didn’t look convinced. She rose up onto her tiptoes as she watched the White House workmen dressed in dark blue uniforms and wearing black gloves take apart the tents and stack the tables.

“Let me thank you, again, for all your work with the harvest, especially you, Francesca,” I said, hoping to distract her. “I know the First Lady was thrilled with its success.”

At the mention of the First Lady, Francesca seemed to pull herself together.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Bradley wasn’t able to stay longer,” she said. “I didn’t have a chance to say two words to her.”

“You’ll have more time to speak with her at the volunteer appreciation tea.”

“Do you really think so?” She sounded uncertain and not at all like herself. This was Francesca Dearing, after
all, one of the most influential and powerful society ladies in D.C.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked her. “Why are you so worried about Annie? Do you know something?”

“No,” she answered too quickly. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just been a long day.” She turned to Bruce, who’d tightened his grip on his wife’s arm.

“If you need anything,” I told her, “anything—call or text me anytime.”

I didn’t like the way Bruce was keeping a tight hold on her. Bruce and Frank were up to something. And Francesca looked truly worried about Annie’s whereabouts.

Had Frank returned to the West Wing or had he gone somewhere else? And where was Annie? I tried both of their cell phone numbers.

No answer.

I left them both text messages to call me.

The back of my neck prickled. Jack had worried that the killer was growing more and more desperate and needed to silence anyone who threatened him…and the secret he’d already gone to such lengths to protect.

“You shouldn’t frown so,” Gordon said. Using a long compost fork, he’d been turning the vegetable garden’s three-bin compost system and incorporating the harvest’s fresh plant waste into the first bin. When I approached he leaned against the compost fork’s bright blue handle. “You should be pleased. Despite a series of disasters, today was a success. Everyone left smiling. That’s how things happen around here. It’s chaos behind the scenes and perfection to everyone else.”

“I could do with less behind-the-scenes chaos.”

Gordon agreed, but insisted, “Stop worrying. It’s over. You can’t change what did or didn’t happen today. You need to slow down and enjoy these moments.”

“I will as soon as I find Annie Campbell. Francesca has been looking for her. Have you seen her?”

Gordon shook his head as he thought about it. “I think I
saw her with the group helping clean up. Lorenzo is directing some volunteers as they put equipment away in the storage shed.”

“Thanks, I’ll look for her there.”

“Is there a problem?” he asked. “No, wait. Don’t tell me if something is going on. After this morning, I think we’ve all had our monthly allotment of disasters. Make that two months’ worth. I’m going up to the office. I have some phone calls to make regarding the lead in the soil article.”

“Ugh! I wish I could rip up every copy of that magazine. You know it used to be my favorite publication. I hate to do it, but I’m canceling my subscription.”

“Don’t cancel. This isn’t the first time misinformation has been printed about the gardens. It won’t be the last. I have plenty of contacts who can help us get the correct information into the right hands.”

“You do?” I grabbed the compost fork from him. “Then what are you doing here just standing around?”

He pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes and, laughing, walked away.

I carried the compost fork to the far end of the garden and ducked under the nearby stand of linden trees. It was a shortcut that led to a walkway near the southwest security gate. The tree-lined path took me to a metal storage shed located across from the White House’s small basketball court. On the way, I tried to call Annie again.

I then tried Frank.

I finally dialed Jack’s number. With the First Lady and visitors gone, he and the rest of the CAT agents had left the garden.

No one picked up.

I slammed the phone against my hand. In response, the phone vibrated and beeped. A new text message from Jack that had been sent more than an hour earlier appeared on the screen. “Kelly condition guarded but stable,” it read.

That piece of good news would have put a smile on my face if not for my confusion over why it had taken so long
for the message to get from Jack’s phone to mine. Was this Frank’s doing? Was he trying to cut me off from anyone who could help me?

If this were a game show I’d pick door number three, the one with the raving lunatic behind it. I think the heat and stress were finally getting to me. How could Frank block my phone? Because of the amount of security and jamming equipment around the White House, this wasn’t the first time my cell phone had acted wonky.

The shed door was closed, which was odd for this time of day. I slid it open. “Annie?” I called. My voice echoed as it bounced off the metal walls.

It felt cool in the shed’s darkness. Despite being on one of the most famous properties in the United States, the shed carried the same smell of damp, grass clippings, and fertilizer found in any backyard. This was where the push lawn mowers—no ride-on mowers here—meticulously clean hand tools, hoses, pots, and various chemicals were stored. The fish emulsion and compost thermometer were examples of recent additions to the storage shed since the implementation of my organic gardening program.

Unlike the grounds office’s messy storage closet, everything in the shed had its place. The mowers were parked right inside the sliding door. Most of the hand tools were hanging from hooks on Peg-Boards lining one wall. The other equipment sat on three seven-foot-high metal shelving units identical to the ones in the basement closet.

Using only the light from the door, I found a rag, wiped off the compost fork, and hung it on its spot on the wall. The hook next to it, which usually held a red-handled shovel, I noticed, was empty.

It probably was still in the garden. I was about to go searching for it when I heard a scraping sound near the back of the shed. And then a clatter.

Sounded like a rat. I closed my eyes. I hated rats.

I’d started to hightail it out of there when a gonging thunk, followed by a soft groan, stopped me.

The shovel.

“Annie?” I rushed past the shelves to the back of the shed and skidded to a stop.

“Frank!”

The tall press secretary was sprawled facedown across the concrete floor. My first thought was that it was a trap, a clever ruse to get me to let down my guard around him. Backing up, I told him not to move.

He didn’t.

He wasn’t moving. Not at all.

Expecting him to jump up at me at any moment, I moved closer and nudged his arm with my toe. Still no movement. Biting my lower lip, I knelt down beside him to take his pulse.

His skin felt hot to the touch. He must have come in the shed hours earlier to hide out, planning to ambush me or Annie, and, while waiting, collapsed from the intense heat.

“You’re in for it now, Frank. Once they get you back to health, you’re going to have to explain how you planned to handle me.”

I ripped my phone from my pocket and punched the first two numbers for the White House switchboard.

A metallic crash stopped my fingers cold. The phone slipped from my hands as I watched as if in slow motion one shelving unit tipping over onto another. Like giant dominoes the metal shelves tilted toward me, spilling their bags of soil and chemicals, heavy clay pots, and assortment of sharp tools.

I
grabbed the nearest tipping shelf with both hands in the hope that I’d be able to stop it from crushing me and Frank.

With the other two shelving units pressing down on top of it, the shelving was too heavy. My feet started to slip. Pots smashed against the concrete floor as they slid from their neatly stacked locations on the shelves. A ten-pound bag of fertilizer slid off the top shelf and between my arms to slam into my chest. I lost my grip on the shelving and fell backward, landing with a thud sideways across Frank’s back. The darn fertilizer bag then dropped on top of me. It seemed to explode in a puff of white powder as the shelf smacked down on top of the bag not a second later.

Wait a minute. I recognized that bag of fertilizer. It was one of the bags of ammonium nitrate Lorenzo had promised to toss out. He must have stored it in here instead of properly disposing it.

Ohhh! Lorenzo could make me so angry sometimes!

Ohhh! It hurt my chest to be angry.

Breathing as shallowly as I could manage, I stared up at the seams in the metal roof above me. If not for the fertilizer bag, I might have been seriously injured.

True, the shelves pressing against my chest hurt. I couldn’t move. I felt like a turtle unable to right herself. It was quite an embarrassing predicament. With my arms pinned at my sides, I couldn’t get the leverage to lift the shelving. But it could have been worse.

I could be dead.

I could be lying on a dead body.

Neither had happened. With each breath Frank took, he pressed my chest against the fertilizer bag. It didn’t feel good, but as I said before, things could have been much, much worse.

My head hung off Frank’s side at an awkward angle. I tried to lift it. Ow. Ow. Bad idea.

A pillow or even a block of wood would have been a godsend right now.

I turned my head left and then right. I spotted my cell phone on the floor not too far away. One call, and all kinds of help would pour my way. In some ways the White House complex was like a small city within a city. In addition to the President’s personal medical staff on the White House’s ground floor, a full medical team was housed in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. They were like a mini ER. If I asked nicely, perhaps one of the nurses would even bring me a pillow.

With those blessedly soft thoughts floating in my head, I wiggled my arm. It took some work, but I managed to move my arm out from under the shelf and reached for the cell phone.

“Ohhh!” A sharp pain jabbed my chest as I stretched.

Keep reaching
.

The tips of my fingers brushed the phone. Panting through the pain, I reached some more. I touched the phone’s plastic casing.

Just a little more
.

Each effort to bring the phone closer with just my fingertips nudged
it farther and farther away until it lay just out of reach.

I stared at the shed’s ceiling again.

Someone would come looking for me. Eventually.

In the meantime, I’d be fine…as long as I didn’t have to breathe.

Sharp pain bloomed like a razor-edged flower each time I inhaled. I tried holding my breath. A huge mistake. I could only hold it for so long before having to gulp in air spiked with stinging barbs.