The Scarlet Pepper (5 page)

Lorenzo’s tanned cheeks turned a strange shade of puce. “I…um…will be busy that afternoon. I…I have a date.”

“You do?” I shouted, overjoyed to hear it. His former girlfriend had been tragically murdered this past spring, which had crushed him. Both Gordon and I had been worried about his dark mood for months. “That’s wonderful news! Who is she? Do we know her?”

“Um…” Lorenzo rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s stick to talking about gardening.” He swiveled his chair back around to face his desk.

Although I was the new girl in the group—Gordon and Lorenzo had worked together for the past seven years—I had hoped Lorenzo would have accepted my laurel leaf of friendship by now. We worked long hours together, sacrificing nearly all of our social lives to make sure the grounds always had a showroom shine. Apparently, because the First Lady had personally hired me to develop and implement an organic gardening program at the White House, Lorenzo would always view me as an outsider and a threat.

“Ohh-kaay,” I said as I frowned at the back of Lorenzo’s head. “Perhaps we could—” I stopped when my desk phone rang.

The brisk, no-nonsense Secret Service agent on the
other end of the line skipped the greeting and said, “Ms. Calhoun, we have a situation at the northwest gate.”

“A situation?” I sat up straighter, causing my desk chair to let out a loud squeak.

There was no reason for anyone in the Secret Service to contact me, an assistant gardener, about any kind of situation that would concern the security of
the White House, unless I was somehow responsible for causing it.

After that disastrous training session at the Secret Service training center, I’d been trying to keep a low profile and avoid any and all “situations.”

Oh, hell, whatever it was, I’d simply have to fix it.

Lorenzo had turned around and was watching me with an expression of concern until he realized I’d noticed. He quickly spun back to his desk.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

The Secret Service agent didn’t answer right away, which wasn’t a good sign. “Mrs. Dearing is at the northwest gate.”

“Francesca?”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s brought a guest that she insists you need to meet. She said you asked her to bring him here.”

“She did?” I hadn’t asked Francesca to bring anyone to the White House. And I still had no idea why the Secret Service would consider anyone at the gate a situation. “So what’s the problem?”

“Mrs. Dearing’s guest hasn’t been properly vetted. We can’t admit him. You should have known that,” he scolded. “You’ll have to come out here.”

“That’s not a problem. I’ll be right out.”

I started to hang up, but stopped myself. There had to be something else going on.

Secret Service agents didn’t rattle easily. On a day-to-day basis they calmly dealt with dozens of suspected threats against the President in addition to managing overzealous protesters and the occasional mentally ill patient looking to make the six o’clock news. The men and women who protected the White House and its important residents were too well trained to be bothered by something as simple as an unexpected visitor. “Are you sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“Ma’am…” A low chuckle garbled his words. “Mrs. Dearing’s guest, well, he seems to be wearing a skirt.”

N
OT
knowing who or
what
to expect to find at the gate or what Francesca was thinking, I emerged from the White House basement and onto a paved sunken courtyard adjacent to the North Portico. Although it was close to six o’clock that June evening, the oppressive heat wave made the warm summer air feel like an old damp dishrag. Even the breeze felt hot and wet.

I crossed the courtyard and climbed a concrete stairway to the curving driveway that bisected the North Lawn.

Not for the first time, I felt a surge of pride as I turned a full circle and took in the sight of the White House’s soaring columns. Every inch of the People’s House held a piece of every important man and woman who’d walked these grounds. Stone garlands of oak leaves, acorns, roses, and acanthus leaves had been expertly carved into the White House’s entranceway by stonemasons under the direction of President Thomas Jefferson. President Harry Truman had planted the boxwoods that lined the driveway.

These were the types of things I hoped to not only protect but highlight as assistant gardener.

Even though I served at the pleasure of the First Lady and President, I considered the entire nation my client. Not everyone who visited Washington, D.C., would have the opportunity to tour the inside of the White House. Those who did would only see a small portion of the rooms. But the grounds were on display for everyone to enjoy.

As I took the same path many presidents had walked, I couldn’t help but think that I must have been born under a lucky star.

I’d come from chaotic beginnings, traveling like a gypsy with my parents from city to city, country to country, often changing our names as we’d flee in the night. Whether my parents were criminals or con men, to this day I still don’t know. My father had abandoned my mother and me shortly after my sixth birthday. The next day, a man with a stubbly beard had murdered my mother while I’d watched. When she died, she took her secrets with her.

It wasn’t something I liked to think about, but the memories refused to leave me alone lately. They buzzed my consciousness like a swarm of annoying gnats.

Because I’d lived with a string of false identities for as long as I could remember, it took some time for my grandmother Faye to rescue me from a foster system that didn’t understand how to heal a child as broken and angry as I’d become.

Treating me as cautiously as one would a wounded animal, Grandmother Faye spoke very little and demanded even less as she carried her tense, bitter grandchild back to Rosebrook, the centuries-old Calhoun family home located in the heart of historic Charleston, South Carolina.

The four-story mansion was filled with long shadows perfect for hiding. The house became my sanctuary, my place to curl up and lick my wounds. I often hid up in the attic, where the past could be stored and forgotten. I lived in my own world, cut off from my grandmother and two aunts who desperately wanted to love me.

Then one day as I gazed out an attic window, I fell under the spell of the enchanted walled garden that enveloped Rosebrook.

Hugging my legs to my chest, I’d watch from that high window with fascination as my grandmother and my spinster aunts, Alba and Willow, worked, often on their hands and knees, tending the flowers, planting vegetable gardens, pruning back ancient hedges with fat, tree-sized trunks. The skirts of their knee-length flowered dresses swished like waves on a beach as the women moved from plant to plant. Their hands were always moving in a smooth rhythm that seemed to calm the fury and fear raging inside me.

No matter the season or the weather, the three women worked in their garden with a consistency that had been foreign to me, a faithfulness I’d never realized existed and yet had yearned to find.

One dreary winter morning I crawled down from my perch in the attic and joined the older women as they tended the flowerbeds. Grandmother Faye had smiled, bringing a new brightness to her cornflower blue eyes, and handed me a trowel. Together we planted a rosebush. With its bare roots and thorny, leafless branches, I despaired that the dead stick would ever grow.

But my grandmother gently encouraged me, guiding my hands while teaching me how to care for the hopeless twig. Come spring, a miracle occurred. First the bright green leaves broke through, softening the bush’s sharp edges.

Then the flowers arrived.

Pink. Passionate. Beautiful.

Seeing those flowers, my heart had started to beat again.

The gardening lessons that my grandmother and aunts had lovingly taught me—lessons that had been handed down through generations of Calhouns—were what I carried with me all the way to the White House.

To honor my family and show them in deeds what words could not, I needed to prove myself worthy to tend the President’s gardens. The next test of my mettle was coming
up in less than a week with the First Lady’s first vegetable harvest. In this, I would not fail.

Not even Seth Donahue or Griffon Parker could trip me up.

With pride and passion for my work fueling my step, I headed down the semicircular North Drive toward the northwest visitors’ gate.

“This way, Ms. Calhoun.” A well-built member of the Secret Service’s Emergency Response Team, dressed in black military fatigues and lugging a futuristic-looking P90 submachine gun, came up from behind me.

“Is something wrong?” I had to jog to keep up with his long stride.

The number of uniformed division Secret Service agents manning the gate had nearly doubled.

“Potentially, ma’am,” he said. “You need to provide us with advance notice before bringing high-profile guests to the gate.”

“High profile? I didn’t—” I started to explain, but stopped myself. Shifting the blame wouldn’t change anything. I dug my teeth into my lower lip and pressed on, determined to deal with whoever Francesca had brought and quickly move them to another location.

“Good evening, Fredrick,” I said as I spotted my favorite guard at the whitewashed clapboard gatehouse. His bright red hair and flushed, round cheeks gave the bulky Secret Service agent a boyish look.

He smiled as he greeted me. “Your guests are over there,” he said with a tilt of his head toward the front of the gatehouse.

I saw Francesca Dearing first. I envied her effortless sense of grace. About twenty years older than my almost forty, she reminded me of a glamorous movie starlet from the golden age of Hollywood. She had a timeless taste in clothes, stylishly coiffed brown hair with just a touch of gray, and an apparent knack for always knowing the right thing to say. As a result people wanted to know her and be around her. Including me.

Dressed in a fashionable pink pantsuit, she hugged the arm of the man standing beside her. His square jaw complemented the muscles bulging in his bare arms. Wavy black hair hung wild about his face. His brown eyes shimmered with laughter. His expression held an arrogant smugness that suggested he thought he was God’s gift to women.

And, as I’d been told, he was wearing a brightly colored flowered skirt…er…kilt with a black T-shirt. Below his knobby knees he wore a pair of black combat boots very similar to the standard-issue boots used by the military branches of the Secret Service.

The uniformed division agents manning the gate kept their professional demeanor firmly in place. They were highly trained and prepared for anything. But mischief danced in their eyes as I passed.

I suspected I’d hear about this again.

“Casey,” Francesca said, “you don’t have to worry about anything. You said you needed my help with the harvest preparations and here I am. I’m going to make the First Lady’s harvest an unqualified success. Starting with him.”

A uniformed division agent behind me snickered.

I turned around to glare and noticed that even the sharpshooters on the White House roof had their binoculars trained in my direction. Unwilling to be intimidated, I gave a wave.

I whirled back around as Francesca began the introductions. Not that they were needed.

“You’re Gillis, Gillis Farquhar,” I said, interrupting Francesca, and thrust out my hand. I doubt I would have recognized Gillis if he hadn’t been wearing that outrageous outfit, the same outfit he wore on his weekly gardening show. Take away his colorful kilt, muscular arms, and strong, naked calves, and he’d look rather ordinary.

“Crikey! Aren’t you a bonny lass to know me?” His Scottish brogue rolled across his tongue. “You’ve seen my show?”

“Who hasn’t?” I said.

Gillis Farquhar was the Gordon Ramsay of the gardening world. He hosted two weekly gardening television shows and a daily radio call-in show, and he’d published nearly a dozen how-to books. His latest,
Gardening the Farquhar Way: Organic!
, was working its way up the bestseller lists.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one to recognize him. A small crowd of tourists, mainly women, gathered outside the iron fence, cameras snapping away.

“Gillis! Gillis!” several of the women called in near hysterics.

He tossed his long hair while waving at the crowd and blowing kisses, which only encouraged his fans to yell louder. More tourists came over to the gate, craning their necks to see what was happening.

“I was going to suggest we sit in Lafayette Square and talk, but we’d be mobbed.”

“Oy, canna we go inside, lass, so I can shake hands with your Mr. President man?” He blinked his brown eyes and smiled.

I so wanted to accommodate Gillis. Gardening celebrities turn up at the White House about once a…never. But without prior clearance, there was nothing I could do.

“I’m sorry, but we’ll have to—”

“Ms. Calhoun, you can’t hold a meeting here. Didn’t the training session teach you to stay out of trouble?” Mike Thatch, the special agent in charge of the CAT, trotted toward us. He snarled as his gaze took in the growing crowd pressing against the fencing. “You need to get your guest away from the gate. Now.” The White House Police had already started to herd the crowd of women away. But Gillis kept waving at them, attracting them back.