The Scarlet Pepper (39 page)

Bomb or not, I needed to do something.

Annie and I locked eyes. She must have seen something in my expression to tip her off that I knew what she’d done. She took off running, not in the hope of escape, but to buy herself time. She was pulling out her cell phone. That was the trigger.

“Jack!” I shouted. “There’s a bomb in the urn by the Oval Office. Frank, move!”

The Secret Service agents in the Rose Garden converged toward the urn. Six members from the Secret Service’s elite military Counter Assault Team, dressed in ominous black battle dress uniforms and armed with large rifles, ran past the window inside the Oval Office. I’d only seen them move in a similar fashion once before. They were moving President Bradley and the members of Congress to safety.

They were doing their jobs, but they didn’t know what I knew.

I had to act as well. And if I didn’t act fast, we might still all end up dead.

My breath was coming too fast. I felt dizzy as I sprinted after Annie.

“There’s a bomb,” she shouted as she ran. “Francesca, run!”

What a clever actress she was. She had her cell phone out and was pushing buttons as she charged out of the Rose Garden and down the South Lawn.

Annie may have been fast, but I had several inches in height on her as well as a lifetime of hard work in the garden.

I also had cracked ribs that felt like they wanted to shatter with every pounding stride. Even so, she didn’t get far. I grabbed her around the waist and, spinning, pulled the both of us to the ground.

Her grip on her phone held fast. She punched more numbers.

She had to be stopped.

I had to stop her. I grabbed the gardening shears from their leather holster on my belt. “Let go of the phone,” I warned.

Annie screamed. But she kept punching numbers into the phone’s keypad.

When I looked at her I didn’t see sweet, muddleheaded Annie. I saw the grizzled face of my mother’s killer. I pulled back and slammed the sharp point of the shears into her hand until the phone dropped to the grass.

Jack grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me off her. He lifted me and wrapped his arms around my chest as two other CAT agents pulled Annie from the ground. Annie’s hand was bleeding. The cell phone was shattered.

“I should have run you down when I had the chance,” she spat at me as they dragged her away. “You had no right to butt into my affairs. No right.”

“It’s over,” Jack said as he pried the bloodied gardening shears from my clenched fingers. “It’s over. We’ve got her.”

I pressed my face against Jack’s chest and fought to control the angry tears and rage pulsing through every muscle in my body.

*  *  *

THE ENTIRE WHITE HOUSE COMPLEX HAD TO
be evacuated while highly trained members of the Secret Service neutralized the bomb. The press conference, the First Lady’s volunteer appreciation tea, everything, had to be canceled.

Because we were all witnesses, Francesca, Bruce, Frank, and I were taken together to a Secret Service bunker deep beneath the North Lawn. The entrance…well, I’m not allowed to tell you where we entered the secret passage that led to the secret bunker with a large conference table and plush chairs, only that the door could be found two floors below the grounds office. At the far end of a hallway.

For the first time since Parker’s murder, Francesca seemed to be in control again. She took deep breaths between each carefully thought-out sentence as she explained why Annie was blackmailing her. “You were campaigning, Bruce. I got lonely. And Frank”—she sighed—“was trying to prove how much he loved the ladies.”

“I have a daughter?” Frank asked.

I held my breath, waiting for him to deny Kelly or tell Francesca that he didn’t care, that even if Kelly bore his DNA, he didn’t want anything to do with her.

He didn’t say a word. He gripped the arms of his chair and bent forward slightly.

Francesca nodded. “Bruce had ended the campaign before I started showing. Remember, Bruce? The money ran out after you were handily defeated in that first primary election. As soon as you called an end to your campaign, I told you I needed to take care of my mother back in West Virginia. That was a lie. I went up to our cabin. Annie came with me.”

“You’d vowed to always be discreet, as I had vowed to you,” Bruce said, his voice a low growl.

“I was discreet.” Francesca spread her hands on the table in front of her. “No one knew.”

Bruce grunted and turned his head away.

Francesca grabbed Frank’s hand. “You understand why I couldn’t keep her and why I couldn’t tell you.”

Frank pulled away. “No, I don’t understand.”

“What made you abandon your own child outside in the cold in the middle of the night? She was a helpless newborn baby,” I asked. “Kelly said that if the neighbors hadn’t found her, she would have frozen to death.”

“What? Annie told me that she used an adoption service. She—”

“Lied,” I said.

“You should have told me about the baby,” Bruce slammed his fist against the table. “We would have raised her.”

“You should have told me,” Frank said, still taking it all in. “I would have made it work. I have a daughter? What a miracle. I never thought I’d have a child, not after I stopped pretending to be something I could never be.”

“I—I didn’t know Annie had abandoned her. She’d promised me that she would make sure my baby found a good home. She’d promised—” Francesca froze. Her eyes filled with tears as she seemed to realize the magnitude of the mistake she’d made all those years ago. “My God,” she sobbed. “What have I done?”

“How long did it take before Annie started demanding payment for her generosity?” I asked.

“Almost—almost immediately,” Francesca answered as she lowered her head to the table and started to sob uncontrollably.

“Bruce,” Frank said. “You do know you’re going to have to resign? When this all comes out about the murders, you’ll be a liability to the President. You already are.”

Bruce’s shoulders raised and lowered in a slow shrug. “I know my duty.”

“So let me get this straight,” Bryce said from the head of the table. “Annie poisoned both Griffon Parker and Simon Matthews to keep them from writing about Kelly’s birth parents because if the story got out, she would no longer have a hold over Francesca?”

“I think that’s what happened,” I said since Francesca was still crying too hard to answer.

“But how did she get close enough to them to get them to drink poison?” he asked.

“My guess is she seduced them, telling them that she could be an important source to their story, that she could tell them all they needed to know,” Jack said.

“She always has been Francesca’s friend, the tagalong,” I said. Francesca refused to look up from the table. Her shoulders shook harder. “I have a feeling that people forgot Annie was even in the room. She’d listen to conversations that she shouldn’t, perhaps even see things that she shouldn’t. And then she used that knowledge to her benefit.”

“Like taking pictures of me,” Frank said.

“What about Gillis? What’s his role in this?” Bryce asked.

“She must have something on Gillis as well and used that to her benefit when she framed him for murder,” Jack said. “She was blackmailing him like she apparently did with everyone else in her circle of friends.”

“But why didn’t Gillis tell us that?” Bryce asked.

“Maybe he didn’t know who was blackmailing him. Who knows how many other people Annie has been extracting payments from?” I said. “But Francesca seemed to be Annie’s main paycheck.”

“Please don’t hate me.” Francesca lifted her head and grabbed Frank’s hands.

“How can I hate you? You gave me a child.” He jumped out of his chair. “She’s in the hospital. She’s hurt. I have to go there. I have to be with her.”

He pushed aside the Secret Service agents standing in his way. “You don’t understand. You can get my statement later. I have to get to the hospital. I have to go meet”—his voice cracked—“my baby girl.”

T
HE
White House came alive for the Fourth of July holiday that year. With Annie safely locked away—denying every charge—everyone seemed eager to celebrate. The last I’d heard from Manny, they’d linked Annie’s phone to the threatening phone calls and the calls directing Jerry and Bower to damage the garden. Also, transactions in her bank account matched the dates and amounts she’d paid the two lazy gardeners. And, the most damaging evidence of all, the police had found three severely pruned yew trees in her backyard.

President Bradley had invited injured troops and their families to a backyard picnic. The First Lady invited all of her volunteers to the picnic to make up for the volunteer appreciation tea that had ended so abruptly. She had made a brief appearance before hurrying back inside.

I prayed that with the worst of the controversies behind us, Margaret could rest and regain her strength for both herself and those darling babies she was carrying.

Dressed in my brightest, happiest sundress, I mingled
with the First Lady’s volunteers while sipping punch. After being stalked by Mable and Pearle for most of the afternoon, Gordon decided to stick close to my side.

“Now, that’s a sight that makes me smile,” Gordon said and nodded toward the South Portico.

I turned to follow the direction of Gordon’s gaze.

Frank, beaming like a proud father, pushed Kelly in a wheelchair toward a buffet table.

“Excuse me,” I said and hurried toward the happy duo.

The doctors promised that Kelly was well on her way to making a complete recovery. I was happy for her. Truly happy.

Why shouldn’t she get her father and her happy ending?

I hated the part of me that felt jealous. I made certain that none of that foolishness showed as I hugged Kelly and then Frank, congratulating them on finding each other.

“If you don’t mind, Frank, I’d like to have a word in private with Casey,” Kelly said once the polite conversation had run its course.

“I don’t know.” Frank hesitated.

“Go on. It’s girl stuff,” Kelly said. “I won’t be a moment.” She reached back and squeezed her father’s hand.

“Don’t let the wheelchair roll down the hill,” he warned me, even though there really was no danger that that could happen.

“I am truly happy for you, Kelly. You found your father,” I said as I crouched down beside the wheelchair once Frank had wandered off to speak with Gillis Farquhar, who’d been cleared of all charges against him. The press coverage had pushed his book to the number one spot on the
New York Times
bestseller list, a fact he’d mentioned to me more than once that afternoon.

“He’s quite a character,” Kelly said as she watched Gillis hand Frank a copy of his book. “He’s promised me an interview as soon as I’m healthy again.”

“How are you doing? And how have you managed to keep the story about your father away from your colleagues?”

“There are plenty of other stories to tell right now,” she said. “I’m sure most of it will come out at the trial. But for now, I’m glad to have Frank to myself without worrying about becoming the six o’clock news.”

“That sounds funny coming from you.”

“Ironic, isn’t it? But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” She reached into a pouch hanging from the wheelchair and handed me a small white envelope. “This is one of the stories Parker was working on before he died. I found it in his desk.”

She put the envelope in my hand, but held on to it as she added, “I would never pursue a story like this. You can trust me when I tell you that I won’t repeat what I read in there.”

“Thank you.” I really didn’t think much about what was in the envelope. Ever since I had bested him that spring, Parker had made a habit of digging for dirt in the First Lady’s gardens. Irritating, but not earth-shattering.

AS DAYLIGHT STARTED TO DIM, MY PHONE BUZZED
in my purse.

Finally
, I thought.

“Are you ready?” the text on the phone’s readout said.

Did he really think he needed to ask?

I typed my reply as I bid Gordon good night and made my way to the nearest gate.

On the far side of the Ellipse, the large park sandwiched between the White House and the Washington Monument, crowds had been gathering throughout the day to find the best spot for watching the evening’s fireworks show. I stopped and searched the faces.

“Looking for me?” Jack bumped my shoulder with his arm as he came up from behind.

I almost didn’t recognize him in his casual khaki shorts and white button-up shirt, a woven picnic basket slung over his arm. He looked so
domestic
. “I hope you’re not stuffed from the White House picnic. I made one for just the two of us.”

I held the basket as Jack spread out a classic red-and-brown plaid picnic blanket underneath a nearby streetlamp. Once we were settled, he reached into the basket and pulled out a spread of wine, bread, and various cheeses. He sliced a piece of the bread and handed it to me.