“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.
Chapter Twenty-seven
It would be judicious to act with magnanimity towards a prostrate foe.
—ZACHARY TAYLOR, THE 12TH PRESIDENT OF
THE UNITED STATES
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.
Taking small, shallow breaths seemed to spare me from the worst of the pain…and panic. Who knew how long I’d be stuck in this sweltering storage shed tucked away from anything else on the White House grounds? Those tiny little breaths also had the added benefit of making my head feel light, as if it might float all the way up to the ceiling.
I closed my eyes and decided not to count the seconds. Someone would come looking for me and for Frank, if for no other reason than the fact that unaccounted staff members posed a serious security risk.
“Casey?” Francesca’s voice never sounded so good. I heard her moving around outside the shed. The metal door scraped as Francesca slid it open. “Casey? I thought you said you saw her come this way.”
“I did,” Bruce growled. “She must have left already.”
“But she told me she’d look for Annie.”
“Well, apparently she didn’t.”
“Help!” I wheezed. Ohhh! That hurt!
Not only that, the plea came out about as loud as one of Pearle’s or Mable’s whispers. Considering my shallow breaths, I considered that quite an accomplishment. Both the half-deaf but wholly dear matrons had quite loud whispers. As I breathed through the pain shooting up and down my chest from the effort, I prayed it had been loud enough for Francesca or Bruce to have heard.
“Come with me back to the West Wing. I have work to do. I’ll call for a car to take you home,” Bruce said. The shed’s metal door scraped closed.
“I suppose,” Francesca agreed, her voice fading as they passed the storage room.
“Help!” I called again. “Ple-ease.”
I groaned as pain bloomed in my chest. If I could wiggle a little to my left, perhaps I could take some of the weight off that one rib that really seemed to hurt.
I wiggled. Groaned. Wiggled.
And didn’t move an inch.
“Stop kicking about,” Frank grumbled from beneath me. “Oh, my head. What the hell happened? Why are you on top of me?”
I was still reeling from my attempt to move. My chest muscles weren’t too happy with me at the moment.
“Casey?” Frank groaned. “What happened?”
“I found you”—shallow breath—“lying on the ground. You”—shallow breath—“were unconscious. Passed out from”—shallow breath—“the heat.”
“It wasn’t the heat.” He sounded irritated about it. “Someone hit me. With a shovel.”
“Why? Were you trying to hurt Annie?” I managed to shift to where, if I whispered, it didn’t hurt too much to talk. “Did she fend you off?” If that was the case, help would be on its way.
“Annie? What? I don’t know anything about what’s going on with Annie. I have nothing to do with her. I don’t know why anyone would hit me. I turned and saw the shovel coming at the back of my head just before—” He groaned. “My head’s splitting. Is help coming soon?”
“No one knows we’re in here,” I said.
“Oh.” I didn’t like how that sounded. I was pinned to the ground with a man who had already killed twice that I knew of and had nearly killed Kelly. And I’d just told him that he had all the time in the world to knock me off the mortal coil.
He’s going to snap my neck and blame it on the shelving collapse.
“Don’t even think about it,” I told him.
“What don’t you want me to think about?” he grumbled. “Getting out of here? Because all I’m thinking about right now is how to get off this dirty floor. Don’t you gardeners ever sweep in here?” He smacked his lips. “What’s that foul taste in my mouth?”
“Fertilizer. It’s in my mouth, too.”
“It’s not going to kill me, is it?”
“Depends on how much you swallow,” I said.
That reminded me…“If I die in here, Jack will know you killed me.”
“What? Who?”
“Special Agent Jack Turner,” I said too vehemently. Needles of pain stabbed me in my chest. I closed my eyes and took several shallow breaths. When I could talk again, I whispered, “I told Jack all about your cover-up. So if you kill me, he’ll know.”
“You’re crazy. Not just a little crazy, but certifiable. You think I want to kill you? I suppose you think I killed Parker, don’t you?”
“I know you did. I heard you admit it to Bruce Dearing. You were going to handle me like you’d handled Parker.”
“With the media, doll cakes. I already told you that it’s my job. Spin the story. Why else would I be parading you in front of the media like that?”
“To ruin my reputation. To discredit me. You promised to stand by me at the Q&A, and yet when it started you were nowhere to be found. You left me to be trampled by the press.”
“I did no such thing. The garden isn’t the only political fire burning around here. I was called back to the West Wing to deal with the budget crisis, but I sent Penny.”
“She didn’t show up until it was all over,” I said. “I think you planned it that way to ruin me.”
“I didn’t plan anything.”
“And then you rushed down here to silence Annie.”
Frank groaned. “You’re crazy. None of that would help this administration one whit. If I wanted you gone, there’s much quieter ways to get rid of you.”
“Like murder?” I knew it! I knew he was guilty.
“No! Not murder. To be honest with you, I came back to the garden hoping to get a moment alone with Annie. I wanted to make sure she understood that I was doing all I could to help Francesca and Bruce and that she didn’t need to…”
“Need to what?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Frank grumbled. “I don’t know why I bother explaining anything. You’re like a broken record. Talking to you makes my head hurt. So let’s stop.”
“Fine.”
His back, which was pressed against mine, felt like an oven. Sweat stung my eyes and dripped down my neck. When would this heat wave break?
After several minutes of baking in the shed’s heat, I said, “At least you have the cool concrete under you.”
“I’d be happy to trade places.”
A long silence followed.
“Move your elbow,” he said. “It’s jamming into my back.”
“Maybe your back is jamming into my elbow. Is that better?”
“Not really.”
Jack would come looking for me soon. I had to trust that he’d wonder why I hadn’t called to badger him about what Manny found out when he questioned Jerry, Bower, and Gillis. I had to trust that he’d worry.
I simply had to trust.
To pass the time, I started to count the seconds after all. I was getting close to two thousand when the shed’s metal door scraped open.
I screwed my eyes shut tightly and sucked in a lungful of needle-sharp air.
“We’re in here!” I shouted. “Ohhh!”
“Casey?” Gordon called. “What happened in here? How did these shelves fall over?”
“Here,” I whispered, panting desperately as my chest paid a steep price for that deep breath I’d taken.
“Back here,” Frank shouted.
“Don’t move,” Jack said, as if that was a choice.
Jack! He came!
I knew he would.
Jack and Gordon lifted one shelving unit. Then another. Finally the last one was lifted from my chest.
Gordon grabbed the fertilizer bag.
“I thought Lorenzo was going to get rid of these,” I wheezed.
Jack gingerly lifted me into his arms just long enough to get me off Frank’s back. With great care, he placed me beside Frank on the cool concrete floor. Finally, my head could rest at a natural angle.
“Are you okay?” Jack asked.
I lightly touched my chest. “I think I bruised a rib or two.”
Jack nodded. “Don’t move,” he said again.
I turned my head and watched as he and Gordon helped Frank roll onto his back. Frank managed to sit up, but ended up cradling hi
s head in his hands. Gordon had found a clean cloth and wiped the spilled fertilizer from Frank’s nose and mouth. He then came over and did the same for me.
“How could this happen?” he demanded. “Those shelves are heavy. I’ve never known them to tip over. Never mind. We’re getting you to the hospital.”
I nodded and closed my eyes. It was over. I was safe.
I listened as Jack spoke quietly with Frank. Slowly, blissfully, my mind started churning again. The shelves wouldn’t have tipped over by themselves. Someone had to have pushed them over. Besides, I’d left the door to the shed open, but Francesca had opened the shed door when she’d come looking for me.
Frank couldn’t have done it. He was unconscious on the floor at the time.
Gillis had been in police custody.
Bruce?
Francesca?
Who else had been around? Who else needed to keep Parker’s investigative report from ever seeing the light of day?
“Jack?” I opened my eyes. “Jack?”
He was immediately at my side.
“I need to talk to Manny.”
When I tried to sit up, Jack gently put his hand on my shoulder and pinned me to the concrete floor with very little effort.
“You need to be still,” he said.
“I can’t. Someone just tried to kill me,” I said. “And it wasn’t Frank.”
“You think?” Frank quipped. “At least no one conked you in the head with the flat end of a shovel. Why would someone do that?”
I stared at Frank. His dark skin. His winsome good looks. His height.
The sticky note left on my desk with Frank’s name on it hadn’t been a warning. It had been a clue of where I needed to look.
“My God,” I said as I turned toward Frank. “You’re Kelly’s father.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.
—JAMES A. GARFIELD, THE 20TH PRESIDENT OF
The Scarlet Pepper Page 26
