The Scarlet Pepper (28 page)

I
stopped by the grounds office just long enough to check my messages, grab my gardening shears, basket, and wide-brimmed straw hat before making my way to the kitchen garden.

Although the White House hadn’t seen the likes of a kitchen garden since FDR’s victory garden, a time when forty percent of the country’s produce came from home gardens and backyards, the practice of raising vegetables for the household on White House grounds actually dated back to its very beginning.

John Adams, the first president to reside in the White House, demanded only one thing before he’d agree to take residence. He wanted a vegetable garden large enough to supply food for the coming winter. Throughout the White House’s history, everything from ponies to sheep to turkeys have munched on the lush South Lawn. It was once as American as apple pie and fireworks on the Fourth.

So why did so many journalists and pundits feel the
need to publish scathing criticisms of the current First Family for reviving one of the most basic home and hearth traditions?

Some said the garden was a fake. Others said it wasn’t organic enough. Still others complained that it was too organic and that the President was forcing his weirdo organic preferences into hardworking Americans’ backyards.

Just that morning Lorenzo had forwarded me an e-mail that had gone viral. The e-mail claimed to have insider knowledge of President Bradley’s sinister plans to force every American family to grow a kitchen garden of their own. Too tired to do anything about it, not that there was anything I could have done, I deleted the e-mail.

If only I could concentrate on gardening and ignore everything else.

I needed to make today about the First Lady and her garden, but I also needed to dig up all the information I could about who knew that Kelly had been searching for her birth father.

Annie Campbell was still not answering her phone. Kelly Montague was still in the ICU, her condition unchanged. And Simon Matthews, the young go-getter geek, was dead.

“No more,” I said. This was going to end today.

From the top of the hill, I spotted several West Wing staffers and the White House pastry chef standing at the edge of the garden. I frowned at that.

Those volunteers had spent enough time in the garden to be able to weed and pluck insects without waiting around for supervision. Actually, many of them had made it a habit to start their day in the garden as a way to grab a piece of solitude before diving into the problems of the world demanding their attention. None of them had gotten to where they were in the world today by standing around and waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

Something had to be wrong. I picked up my pace.

Jerry and Bower from the grounds crew joined me on the walk down the hill.

“Remember, we’re not making any major changes,” I told them.

“God, look at that,” Jerry said and nudged his buddy in the ribs with his elbow. “A giant Pepto-Bismol bottle is heading this way.”

I followed Jerry’s gaze and spotted Francesca Dearing swathed from head to toe in a vibrant pink pantsuit with a white straw hat. She hurried across the lawn from the southeast gate. The tail ends of a pink paisley scarf tied around her neck fluttered in her wake.

Bower chuckled. “Looking at her makes my stomach ache.”

Jerry laughed even harder.

“Stop that,” I snapped.

The two men’s gazes shifted toward me. They glared for several seconds before Jerry shrugged and moved away. Bower followed. I suspected from their smirks and nudges that they were still talking about Francesca’s brightly colored outfit.

Enough was enough. I pulled them aside and gave them a quick but stern lesson in White House decorum.

Before I’d finished, a White House workman dressed in a dark blue uniform and wearing black gloves tapped me on my shoulder. His team was busily erecting a white canopy tent at the bottom of the hill and had several questions for me. He knew the White House chefs planned to use the tent as a workstation for preparing and serving the harvest lunch, but wasn’t sure about the configuration.

I explained what had been decided. “We’ll also need extra tables for the schoolchildren so they can help prepare lunch.” I then showed him where they should put the four extra tables.

“Busy day, today,” Francesca said. “What do you need me to do?”

“I’m planning to make a quick sweep down the rows and check for problems and then pull out the hoses to water the plants. I could use your help.” We walked over to the edge of the garden together. I raised my voice to address the volunteers
who were waiting. “Pull any weeds that might have popped up overnight. Clip off any dead leaves or branches. If you have a question about whether something should be removed, ask me or Gordon, who’ll be along soon, before—”

Get a feather and knock me over.

“Is this a prank?” My voice squeaked as I stared in horror at a vegetable garden I didn’t recognize.

Over two dozen bloodred chili peppers, long and skinny, bounced in the stifling, humid breeze. The spicy devils reminded me of dead men swaying from the gallows, their legs curling in agony.

Or perhaps the feeling of agony came from the growing tightness in my throat.

Three months of work
.

“We didn’t plant red chili peppers.”

Frank Lispon had already provided the press with a detailed list of the garden’s vegetables and had let the press loose in the garden to interview the volunteers
. It had been his idea to do those things. He’d stepped in and changed the East Wing’s plan for press coverage.

Was this his doing?

The First Lady preferred large, sweet bell peppers to their spicier brothers. Where were the red, green, yellow, and chocolate-colored bell peppers?

I’d spent at least an hour every day, sometimes seven days a week, keeping watch over the vegetable crop contained within the fifteen-hundred-square-foot plot. Nearly all of the plants had been started at the White House greenhouse facilities from heirloom seeds provided by Thomas Jefferson’s historical gardens.

In less than three hours, two busloads of inner-city schoolchildren, along with Washington’s major power players, were scheduled to descend on the First Lady’s garden for its first public harvest. Not to mention the press hungry for a scandal. A feast, prepared using the freshly picked fruits and vegetables, was to follow.

The press was going to feast on this all right. They’d gather like aphids on lettuce.

The First Lady had entrusted me with her garden.

The bamboo teepee trellises were still there, but the tomato plants—already bursting with flowers and immature heirloom tomatoes—that had covered the trellises had vanished sometime in the night.

And over there. How did
that
happen? Round globes of cabbages squatted in the section of the garden where Thomas Jefferson’s favorite variety of tennis-ball lettuce had thrived just a day before.

“
This…this is a disaster
.”

“Back up! Casey’s going to faint,” Francesca declared with such passion that the oversized brim of her white gardening hat flopped down and swatted her in the face.

Francesca, however, was sorely mistaken. I had no intention of fainting, thank you very much.

Before I could tell her just that, she brushed her hat’s wide brim back into place and grabbed my wrists. “You need to take deep breaths, my dear.” With a powerful jerk, she raised my arms above my head.

The brightly dressed Francesca didn’t seem to notice the other volunteers watching us with their mouths gaping in various stunned expressions. “Don’t let some silly chili peppers bother you, Casey.”

“But—but we didn’t plant chili peppers, and the tomatoes—”

“Never cared for tomatoes. If you ask me, they’re grossly overrated.”

“The heirlooms we planted were dripping with flavor,” I argued. “Did your husband do this?”

“Bruce? Why would he care about—”

“Or was it Frank? Is this how they plan to get me out of the way? To destroy me? Is this why you invited Gillis? So even more members of the press would be here to witness this?”

“Now, dear, don’t be fanciful. No one wants to destroy you. You’re working yourself into a dither. Breathe with me,” she commanded while yanking my arms up and down
in a broad motion and taking exaggerated breaths. Her arms held surprising strength under her bright pink linen suit.

I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath in concert with Francesca before shaking my wrists free.

Tears sprang to my eyes when I looked at the garden again. I quickly blinked them away. As my grandmother Faye said to me time and again, the Calhoun women weren’t born; we were forged from steel.

My ancestors stood against marauding Union soldiers, crippling economic depressions, and the insidious boll weevil. I could handle a few misplaced plants. I just wished I wasn’t so darn tired.

“Thank God.” Gordon Sims grabbed me and threw his arms around me in a tight hug.

“Mhat grff fuffn?” I tried to ask, but it came out all muffled. I wiggled out of Gordon’s surprise embrace. “What’s going on?”

“You’re safe. When I heard about the attempt on your life yesterday I aged at least ten years,” he said.

“This has aged
me
twenty.” I pointed to the garden.

“Oh, my.” Gordon stood silently beside me. His hands, timeworn and leathery from years of working the land, clasped and unclasped several times before he said anything. “None of the White House staff, not even the staffers from the West Wing, would behave in such an unprofessional manner and pull a prank like this.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I agreed. Everyone at the White House, especially the household staff, took great pride in serving the family in residence with the utmost efficiency and grace.

This may be the People’s House, but to us, we served a family who considered the White House their home.

“If not someone on the staff, then who? Who could have done this?” I turned toward Gordon. “How could this happen? The White House is under constant surveillance. No one could have sabotaged the garden without being seen. Do you have any ideas?”

“It’s rather like one of those lockbox mysteries, isn’t it?” he said.

“I believe it’s called a locked-room mystery.”

“Whatever you call it, I’m sure once you put your Miss Marple skills to work, you’ll track down the plant thieves.”

I had to clasp my hands behind my back to keep from wringing my skin clear off. “This has to be related to Parker’s murder,” I muttered. “The killer is trying to scare me off. Or get me fired.”

Gordon’s silver eyebrows shot up. “Casey, you need to stay clear of that. You could have been killed yesterday.”

“But I wasn’t.”

He kept his eyebrows raised.

I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling him that I felt pretty damn certain Frank Lispon and Bruce Dearing were behind not only Parker’s and Matthews’s murders but also the attempt on Kelly’s life and this…this…garden catastrophe. “If I happen to stumble upon the identity of a murderer, that’s good, right?”

Gordon paled. “Just how deep have you gotten yourself involved with the investigation? Was that car aiming for you yesterday?”

“I don’t know. I’ve not asked enough questions to have anything figured out. That’s something I plan to remedy today. Don’t look at me like that. I need to protect myself. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Parker was trying to ruin me from beyond the grave.”

“Casey, I hope you remember what happened the last time you started asking questions.”

“We don’t have time for a waltz down memory lane,” I said. “Right now we have to fix the plants, and we have to do it before the schoolchildren, the VIPs, and,
heavens
, the press arrive.”

Gordon watched me for a few moments and then sighed. “You work on the garden. I’ll talk with Mrs. Bradley”—he gulped before adding—“and Seth Donahue.”

“Bless you, Gordon.” I kissed his cheek.

“Don’t bless me too quickly.” He stopped me with a
hand to my shoulder. “We also need to apprise the Secret Service of what happened.
You
need to do it.”

“Unless…” My thoughts swirled as if caught in a hurricane. “What if we can get the garden cleaned up before the harvest celebration? Certainly we don’t need to alert the—”

“If we don’t…” He shook his head. “Trust me on this, Casey. Get the Secret Service in on what’s happening now.”

I didn’t like it, but I nodded. Gordon had thirty-plus years as White House gardener. He knew better than anyone what needed to be done first.

As Gordon hurried back up the hill, I called the volunteers out of the garden and had them wait under the shade of a stand of linden trees. Francesca helped by answering questions and keeping the volunteers entertained and occupied.

Jerry and Bower, I noticed, had disappeared. Again.

“What am I going to do?” I muttered to myself as I paced the length of the garden.

How did one solve a locked-room mystery…in the middle of a garden? Was such a thing even possible?

The fences. The twenty-four-hour surveillance. If Frank or Bruce wanted to frame me for murder, why muddy the waters by sabotaging a defenseless garden? The
First Lady’s
garden, at that.

Perhaps they were trying to keep me busy so I wouldn’t have time to best them at their game. Was that the reason? Or was this about something else?

Why embarrass the First Lady?

I rubbed my temples to ward off the start of what promised to bloom into one wicked headache. I didn’t have time for aches or pains. In a couple of hours several members of the White House press corps were going to descend that hill to prowl over every inch of this garden in search of controversy.

A small weather station stood watch over the small slice of Eden we’d created like a silent sentry, dutifully recording the temperature and moisture. Honeybees buzzed about
the blueberry bushes and raspberry vines, while slender green lacewings patrolled the raised beds of deep green rhubarbs in search of insurgent pests.