The Scarlet Pepper (38 page)

Pearle had said that Annie now lived off the generosity of Francesca and others. No wonder the poor woman always reminded me of an overwatered houseplant, all yellowed and drooping. The least I could do for her was to forget about my cracked ribs and pull this damn planter up the hill.

“I’m sorry, you can’t go this way.” The uniformed division Secret Service guard manning the hut at the Rose Garden’s entrance stopped us. “The press conference is getting ready to start.”

Annie gave me a panicked look.

I wasn’t worried. “This urn needs to go next to the podium to replace the one that broke earlier. We’ll be in and out.”

Only the press secretary and his assistant were in the garden, making last-minute adjustments to the seating. The press hadn’t even been allowed out yet, which I pointed out to the guard.

“Just a minute,” he said and stepped into the white guard hut to consult with someone on his radio. “Go on. Hurry up,” he said when he returned.

“Thank you,” Annie gushed.

I nodded as we passed.

The Rose Garden, located adjacent to the West Wing and steps from the Oval Office, often played host to ceremonies and important press announcements. With the Oval Office as the backdrop and flanked on both sides by flowerbeds of roses in full bloom along with colorful foxglove,
fragrant hedges of thyme, boxwood borders, crab apples, little-leaf lindens, and saucer magnolias for height, it made for a stunning setting.

The steps leading up to the West Wing doubled as a podium and raised platform large enough for the President, House majority and minority leaders, and Senate majority and minority leaders to announce their success in the budget negotiations.

Soon, the neat rows of chairs in the garden’s broad center lawn would be filled with reporters searching for kinks in the plan and dramatic angles to take when writing the story.

With Annie’s assistance, I maneuvered the handcart across the garden’s lawn to the now gleaming spot where the other urn had once sat.

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the First Lady’s tea?” Jack hurried across the lawn. Even after everything he’d done for me, the sight of him in his full dress uniform made me nervous and excited and…happy.

“I’m heading that way. Just doing a little fix-up in the garden here.”

Without prompting he slung his rifle over his shoulder and lifted the urn from the handcart. “You shouldn’t be lifting anything heavier than a pencil. Where do you want this?”

I showed him.

After setting the urn down, he brushed off his hands and smiled at me.

“Just fixing up the garden? Not snooping?” he asked.

“Me? Snoop? I won’t dignify that with an answer.” I found his smile infectious.

For the last four days, Jack had been traveling with the President as he drummed up support for the budget deal across the country. Even though Jack had called every chance he got, I’d missed him.

After the great shelf topple, Jack had stuck close to me night and day for two days, going as far as to take personal leave from work so he could manage it. He’d been worried
that whoever had pushed the shelves over would come after me again. That single-minded concern for my safety had ended after he and Manny had talked at length.

The security cameras didn’t focus on the gardening shed’s door, so while they couldn’t reveal directly who came and left from the shed, they could show who went up the path that led to it. From the videos, the men determined that no one had traversed the path until Francesca and Bruce came looking for me.

Both Manny and Jack had started to suspect I’d done something to knock the shelving over. By accident, of course.

Gillis, for reasons still unknown, was the villain in this mystery. Or so everyone was telling me even though the DA still hadn’t pressed murder charges.

I wanted to stay irritated at Jack for following Manny’s line of thinking instead of mine, but his steady smile melted my resolve.

“I suppose y’all are setting up for the press conference,” I said.

“We are.” He leaned forward and whispered, “And you’re not supposed to be here.”

“I’m leaving. I’m leaving.”

The West Wing intern could take care of Annie. She was wandering around, surveying the garden and the other urns. I hoped she’d watch where she was walking this time.

I had to get cleaned up, change into my dress, and hurry to the tea. Aunt Willow would be proud. I was going to be fashionably late to a White House event.

On leaving the garden, I stopped at the podium to wish Frank luck.

“It’s all planned,” he said. His entire body seemed to sag. “I’ll be handing out my statement right after the press conference.”

I patted his shoulder. “You have my support.”

“Frank Lispon!” Francesca burst from the West Wing with a red-faced Bruce following closely behind.

“Fran, I’m warning you. Don’t do this,” Bruce’s gruff voice caused everyone in the garden to turn their heads.

Francesca made a beeline for Frank. She gripped her hands in front of her bosom. “You have no right,” she whispered.

“No right?” Frank pulled back. “What are you talking about?”

“Bruce told me that you’re planning on handing out a statement after the President’s press conference, a statement that makes public the scandal Parker was threatening to uncover.”

As she said the last part the color drained from her pink cheeks.

Frank didn’t say anything. He simply stared at her.

“Francesca.” Annie grabbed her friend’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Francesca batted Annie away.

“We were friends once,” she said to Frank. “More than friends. I’d like to think that would mean something more than a sordid tabloid tale. How much are you getting paid to do this?”

“Paid? I’m not—”

“Francesca!” Annie’s voice grew more urgent. “We need to go. Now.” A couple of Secret Service agents closed in to help move Francesca and Annie along. They wanted the area cleared.

“You may think you’re doing the right thing, but what about Bruce? What will your airing of dirty laundry do to him?” Francesca, teetering on the hysterical, resisted their attempts to herd her back toward Bruce. She raced after Frank, who had moved over to check on the cords to the teleprompter. I followed, hoping to help calm her down.

“Francesca,” I said, “I don’t think you have the entire story.” I knew I sure didn’t. “Frank is going to the press about his…er…lifestyle.”

My cheeks burned. A proper Southern lady didn’t talk about such things. Not that I was a proper Southern lady. My grandmother had tried her best, but I don’t think I’d ever fit the mold.

Still, old lessons remained.

When Francesca didn’t immediately react, I clarified.
“He’s going to tell the press that
he’s gay
. You have nothing to worry about.”

Unless…

What if Annie’s blackmail picture was of Frank kissing Bruce?

According to Mable and Pearle, Francesca already knew of Bruce’s infidelities. She’d even had a few indiscretions of her own. But would she be as understanding if she learned that Bruce enjoyed the company of men? How would she feel about the world learning that secret?

Francesca took several deep breaths as she processed the idea of Frank coming out of the closet in front of the White House press corps.

“Is that true?” she asked Frank.

“What in hell did you think I would tell them?”

“I—” She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

She knew darn well what she thought Frank would tell them. And damn it, why hadn’t I put the pieces together sooner? I was so concerned about who might be Kelly’s father and who might want to keep his identity secret that I’d completely ignored the other half of the equation. The mother.

It was Francesca.

She was Kelly’s mother.

“You put that sticky note on my desk with Frank’s name on it because you were dying to tell someone,” I said. She’d abandoned her newborn baby because Kelly was half black. Francesca would never have been able to pass Kelly off as Bruce’s child. And everyone already knew that Bruce didn’t want to adopt. “That’s why you were acting so oddly. You wanted to tell someone. Not only that,
you
wanted to meet Kelly. How did you find out that she was your daughter?”

“Parker called asking questions,” Francesca whispered. “I denied that I knew anything about Kelly, but the time frame fit. She’s mine.” Francesca shook her head as fat tears fell off her cheek. “
She’s my baby
.”

“Fran-ces-ca,” Annie said, enunciating every syllable in her friend’s name, “if you know what’s good for you, you’ll come with me now. I’m not going to ask again.”

Her red hair fell even more out of place as she stamped her foot against the slate pavement underneath the West Colonnade. She didn’t look or sound like a concerned grizzly bear friend. She sounded like a demanding bully.

And back at the gardening shed, Annie had said that she wished someone would “take Frank up and stop him.” The fake suicide note had used a very similar odd phrasing.

A phrase from the hills of West Virginia?

Why hadn’t I seen it earlier?

Her unnatural attachment to Francesca. Francesca’s generosity that held no bounds. Hell, even Frank had said Annie had threatened to blackmail him. The scandal Parker had dug up hadn’t been about Bruce Dearing at all. It had been about Frank and Francesca and Kelly.

And Annie…

I grabbed Francesca’s arm and spun her toward me. “She’s blackmailing you.”

I
didn’t want to believe it. Annie Campbell seemed so meek. So fragile.

“What did you say about Annie?” Francesca pulled away from me as if I’d suddenly caught fire.

I felt as if I had.

“Poor underprivileged Annie. Your best friend from forever. She’s blackmailing you. That’s how she’s kept her high-priced lifestyle when all she had inherited was debts. She was the one who would rather die than return to West Virginia, to her painful roots, am I not correct?”

Francesca swallowed hard and nodded.

“How far is she willing to go?”

My mind went to that urn Annie had broken. Was that an accident…or another one of her plots? “How far has she already gone? Did she kill Parker? And Matthews? Was she driving the car that hit Kelly?”

“Lord, I hope not,” Francesca breathed. “Not Annie. I have had suspicions, but I’m afraid to ask too many questions. I’m afraid of
her
. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s
always had a mean streak. When I told her about Parker asking questions about Kelly, Annie exploded. She told me that if I tried to contact Kelly, if I talked with anyone about Kelly, she would ruin not only me but also Bruce.”

Time seemed to slow as the pieces of the puzzle started to click into place. I watched in horror as President John Bradley walked in front of the glass door of the Oval Office and stopped. We’d replaced the planted urn just a few feet away from where he was standing.

Annie had said she’d spilled gasoline in the shed.

She’d also grown up around a father who was a miner with experience making ammonium nitrate explosives. A father who had died in a mining explosion. The essential ingredients of such an explosion included fertilizer, a fuel source—like gasoline—and a trigger device.

Had the bags of ammonium nitrate been finally disposed of or simply put back onto the shelf? I hadn’t taken the time to look.

Annie had been convinced Frank was going to tell the press about Francesca’s secret. She’d even tried to blackmail Frank to keep Francesca’s secret.

“Was it Annie’s idea to invite Gillis to the White House?” I asked Francesca.

Manny was wrong. Gillis Farquhar had no connection to the murders.

“It was my idea to invite him.” Francesca bristled at the question.

“This is important. I need to know the truth.”

She closed her eyes. “It was Annie’s doing. I don’t know how she knows him.”

Was Annie blackmailing Gillis? Was that how she’d paid Jerry and Bower to do her dirty deeds?

“How far will she go to keep your secret?” I asked.

Francesca refused to answer. Perhaps she didn’t know. Or was unwilling to fully face the truth.

We were all players in Annie’s play. Like puppets on a string, we’d twitch every time she pulled a thread.

Annie had come to the Rose Garden not to see the press
conference setup. She’d come to knock over that urn and break it. She’d come to plant a bomb.

My head started to pound.

Every bomb scenario the Secret Service had thrown at me had ended in disaster. Jack had said they had been no-win situations.

Was this a no-win situation?

After checking the teleprompter, Frank returned to the podium to set the President’s notes on it. I noticed I wasn’t the only one watching his progress. Annie had given up on Francesca and was watching Frank with an intensity that frightened me.

What should I do?

President Bradley and the top members of Congress were just on the other side of that glass door. A large enough blast might injure or even kill them…and everyone in the Rose Garden.