Flowerbed of State

by Dorothy St. James

  “What do you think about Senator Pendergast’s ideas about how to regulate the banks?”

  “They’re tough, but needed. Some bankers are more interested in hitting the jackpot year after year with their profits than they are in making good long-term decisions.” Joanna cursed and jumped up from the bench. “What does the Secret Service think they’re doing now? I’ve got to go put a stop to it.”

  She jogged down the path back to where two uniformed Secret Service agents were talking to a couple of her protesters, her high heels clacking against the pavement. “We’ve got a permit to be here!” she shouted.

  BROOKS. EVERYTHING SO FAR POINTED BACK to Brooks Keller.

  Perhaps Pauline had warned Brooks that she’d found some compromising information during the audit, and he needed to stop her from making that information public. He needed to kill her and steal her laptop.

  Or perhaps he didn’t care about the audit. Perhaps there was something else on that computer of hers, like a racy e-mail that Pauline had threatened to use against him. I could imagine the PR disaster that would erupt if it got out that Brooks was sleeping with the government employee who was supposed to be making sure his bank’s accounts were in order.

  I hurried to the White House gate and waved to Fredrick.

  After my surprise meeting with the President and First Lady yesterday, I was beginning to understand why Lorenzo dressed so formally. This morning I’d decided to wear a dark gray tailored pantsuit with a white silk blouse that was more fitting for the office than the garden.

  “Could you let Special Agent Turner know that I need to see him right away?”

  “Only if I want him to move more slowly,” Fredrick replied.

  I tapped my foot impatiently while I waited. I was anxious to tell Turner my new theory. It had to be Brooks. Or his sister.

  “Come on, come on.” I didn’t have time to stand around waiting like this. Spring was the busiest time of year for a gardener. Working at the White House only increased the workload by, oh, one hundred and ten percent or so.

  There were plans to be approved, soils to be amended, plants to get into the ground, shrubs to be pruned, and not enough hours in the day to do it all.

  Not to mention the string of outside public events and the expectation that the grounds always look immaculate.

  I checked the clock on my cell phone. Five minutes had passed. And then ten.

  Finally I spotted a dark shadow lumbering down a treelined walkway. Unless Jack Turner had grown a few inches both in height and girth, the Secret Service agent heading my way was not the understanding agent I kept accidentally assaulting.

  As he got closer, I recognized the CAT agent as the same one who’d given Turner a tough time in the West Wing lobby after the—um—pepper spray incident. He’d insulted me. I am neither itty nor bitty.

  “Where’s Turner?” I demanded.

  Perhaps Turner had wised up and decided to keep his distance, regardless of his supervisor’s orders to handle me. Or perhaps he was more seriously injured than he’d let on yesterday.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. It’s his day off. That coffee for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I handed him the mug. “But Turner’s okay, right?”

  “Don’t rightly know. I suppose so.”

  I detected a Southern twang in his accent. “Where are you from originally?”

  He regarded me for a long moment before answering. “Mississippi, ma’am.”

  “Imagine that. I’m from Charleston, South Carolina. We were once practically neighbors.”

  “I have a cousin in Charleston. Nice place,” he commented, and then asked for my backpack.

  While he searched my belongings, I decided to see if all Secret Service agents were as close-mouthed as Turner.

  “I heard that the investigation is moving forward, that an arrest might be made any day now.”

  He grunted.

  “What about Brooks Keller? Did you know he was involved with Pauline even though she was conducting a financial review of his bank? Sounds a mite suspicious if you ask me.”

  He grunted again.

  “And have you heard about the cows?”

  “Cows?” He kept searching my bag.

  “Congress voted to send a colony of them up to live on the moon.”

  He looked up and stared at me for a moment. “Ha! That’s a good one.” He zipped up the backpack and thrust it at me. “Keep out of trouble,” he said, turning away. “Oh, and thanks for the coffee.”

  “Wait! What about a little tit-for-tat? That’s the best coffee in town.”

  He took a sip and let the coffee’s rich flavors bathe his palette. “Yeah, it’s much better than the muddy crap in our coffeepot. Wouldn’t call that coffee, but we drink it because that’s all we’ve got.” He took another sip and smiled. “Thanks.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And I’d mind my own business where this investigation is concerned. You might have Turner wrapped around that pretty pinky of yours, but I’m from the South, missy. I know how you Southern women use your charms to trick us men into looking like fools. And you’ve done plenty of that with Turner-boy, but you’ll not be doing that with me.”

  “Now see here—”

  “I know you’re fixing to say that I don’t know you and blah, blah, blah. Save it for someone who cares.”

  Stunned, I closed my mouth and stepped back. This guy was really something else.

  And he wasn’t finished. “How or why you managed to make a straight-shooter like Jack look incompetent—to make the entire CAT team look incompetent—is beyond me. But I do know one thing, you’re damned lucky Jack took his damned babysitting gig so seriously. You’d be dead right now if he’d let those crazy protesters get their hands on you yesterday.”

  “You mean the banking protesters out on Lafayette Square? You think one of them followed me to the greenhouse?”

  The Secret Service had been suspicious of the protesters even before Pauline’s body had been found. “You think one of them murdered Pauline Bonde?”

  “Damn. You didn’t know that?”

  “Apparently, I don’t know much of anything. My life is on the line, and yet no one cared to tell me who is trying to kill me.”

  “Why else do you think Thatch put Jack on babysitting detail? Jack’s responsible for keeping you alive.”

  I glanced out at the protesters chanting fervently. They didn’t look so harmless anymore.

  I lowered my voice. “And you suspect that one of the protesters out there has been plotting to attack the President?”

  “You know about that already?”

  “Thatch told me.”

  “Well, then.” He cleared his throat. “Now you know everything.”

  “I don’t know who killed Pauline, or why. I don’t even know—Wait! How’d he get out?”

  A not-so-small fluffy ball of golden and white fur bounded toward us at full speed, clumps of mud flying in every direction.

  “Milo!”

  Why wasn’t anyone watching the puppy? He could easily slip out of a gate or get into something he shouldn’t.

  Like the Rose Garden.

  The naughty pup plowed into my legs and would have knocked me over if Turner’s stand-in hadn’t caught my arm. Not to be deterred, Milo reared up. His muddy front paws landed with a squishy splash on my expensive tailored pants. His tail thudded with unleashed excitement against the ground as he showed off his treasure.

  Milo was carrying a rosebush, roots and all, in his mouth.

  The naughty puppy hadn’t dug up just any rosebush. The plant hanging from his drooling mouth, a floribunda “Pat Nixon” rosebush, was covered with delicate buds that would have produced rich burgundy red blooms. The only place on the White House grounds where this particular variety grew was in the Rose Garden.

  I shuddered to think about the extent of damage Milo might have wrecked in the planting beds. Seth had lost sleep worrying over a few sprigs of crab
grass in the Rose Garden? Just wait until he discovered the new First Puppy had ripped out part of the plantings a few hours before the press conference was to begin.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I reached down to snatch the bush away from Milo, but before I could get a good grip on the prickly plant, the gangly puppy gave a muffled woof. He shook his large head and ripped the branch I’d grabbed out of my grasp. He took off with an amazingly quick bouncy gait toward the East Wing, dropping a trail of twigs, leaves, and rosebuds in his wake.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and took off running after him.

  In retrospect, chasing after a puppy wasn’t a good idea. He woof-woofed as he played hide-and-seek, darting between the parked cars in the east lot of the White House grounds. He jumped over a low hedge and darted left and right under a thick canopy of trees on the South Lawn. For a moment it looked as if he’d run right back up to the house. But he heard a car behind him and made a sharp turn back toward the south gates. The fences were open. And the traffic in the streets was hectic as usual.

  If he went much farther, I feared the worst.

  “Milo!” I clapped my hands.

  He ignored me.

  The guard hut was only a few yards away. I called for the uniformed Secret Service officers manning the gate to help me stop Milo, because once he ran past that point, he’d either take off into the fifty-two acre park behind the White House known as the Ellipse or dash out onto the street. I could see the headline now: WHITE HOUSE GARDENER LOSES FIRST PUP.

  Forget the headlines, forget that in a few hours the President planned to hold a press conference to introduce Milo to the country, I couldn’t let anything bad happen to the oversized puppy. To him, he was simply playing a game. He didn’t know the dangers lurking beyond the iron fence.

  “Come on, Milo. Let’s go.” I ran in the opposite direction.

  That got the puppy’s attention. He crouched down on the grass with his tail end up in the air and watched me running around like a lunatic before deciding to join in on the fun.

  “Got him!” Janie Partners crowed. I don’t know where the Secret Service agent had appeared from or how she’d managed to grab Milo’s bright blue collar, but she had.

  Milo’s entire rear half wiggled with delight as I jogged over to them.

  Today, Janie was wearing a jet-black suit with a sedate brown scarf tied around her neck. When I got closer, I noticed the scarf was decorated with tiny paw prints.

  “Thank you for catching the scamp. Where did you come from? How’d you know I needed a hand?”

  “It’s not every day someone runs suspicious zigzag patterns full speed across the White House lawn. You attracted a lot of attention.” She gestured behind me.

  I turned to look. About a dozen Secret Service agents, most of them from the uniformed Emergency Response Team with their beefy P90 assault rifles that could blast through armored vehicles, had fanned out across the lawn. They were all staring at me. Even the snipers on the roof had trained their binoculars in my direction.

  Biting my lower lip, I gave a small wave.

  “They’re not going to let me forget this, are they?” I murmured.

  “Not on your life.” She turned to Milo. “And what do you have there, mister? You haven’t been into Miss Calhoun’s hybrid teas, have you?”

  Still happily thumping his tail, he dropped the bush. His bright pink tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. I scooped up the plant before he decided to grab it again.

  “Actually, it’s a floribunda rose, which is a little bit different from the hybrid teas. For one thing, they’re hardier. Their flowers form in dense clusters. See here and here?” I pointed that out on a part of the bush that wasn’t too damaged. “All those blooms will open at about the same time and continue to bloom over a longer period of time than a hybrid tea. And you don’t care about any of that, do you?”

  “Not really. I heard you’ve come up with yet another theory about what happened out in Lafayette Square.” She lowered her voice. “You might want to think twice before throwing around accusations that involve friends of the First Lady like Brooks Keller.”

  “Do you Secret Service types have nothing better to do than to sit down in your basement lair and gossip?”

  “We don’t have to go to our lair.” She pointed to her earpiece. “Radio chatter.”

  “I’ll have to remember that. What evidence do y’all have on the banking protesters? Do you have any idea which one of them is the prime suspect in Pauline’s murder?”

  “I’m not sure I can talk about that.”

  “Don’t you think I deserve to know who I should be worried about?”

  Janie thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right. I’d want to know when I needed to watch my back. Reader’s Digest version is this: We don’t know who it is, but we’ve picked up some intel that there’s a person or persons involved with the banking reform protests who is so angry with the President’s ties to Wall Street that he or she is plotting an attack.”

  “So I’ve heard. But if that’s the case, why not cancel the permit and send them away?”

  “We can’t punish everyone in a group just because we suspect—but have no proof, mind you—that one of them might, and I stress the word might, be planning something.”

  “And you also believe this is the same guy who killed Pauline and then attacked me in the park and again at the greenhouse?”

  Janie nodded. “That’s the working theory. Uh-oh, don’t look now. Seth Donahue is heading this way.” She pushed Milo over to me. I grabbed his collar before he could take off again. “I’m out of here.”

  “You’re not going to leave me, an unarmed woman, alone with him?”

  Janie didn’t seem to care. She trotted off through the trees toward the south gates without a backward glance.

  “Looks like it’s just you and me, Milo.”

  “Ms. Calhoun.” Seth’s crisp voice cut through morning air. “The Rose Garden is in shambles, and the President and First Lady are scheduled to hold their press conference there in less than two hours.”

  “Have you talked with Gordon about this?”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “Yes, I see that. Here, you can give me a hand.” I picked up Milo and dropped the muddy puppy into Seth’s arms. He gave a startled yelp. Milo yipped.

  I ignored both of them and started to walk up the sloping lawn toward the White House.

  “Ms. Calhoun! You have to do something. When I contacted you last evening—”

  “At three in the morning.”

  “You promised to have the crabgrass out of the gardens. And yet, the crabgrass is still there and several of the plants have been dug up.”

  “I’ll get the crew working on it right away.”

  “You do that. When I took this position, I’d expected a higher degree of professionalism. No one seems to understand how to do anything around here.” He practically threw Milo back at me and stalked off.

  “No, Seth, you’re the one who doesn’t seem to understand. You’re making everyone change how they’ve operated for years,” I said even though he’d already disappeared through the entrance at the South Portico. “You should be listening to how things are done and then suggest gradual adjustments.”

  Child, what do they say about pots calling out kettles? my inner voice chided.

  Gracious, I could have slapped myself in my forehead for not heeding my own advice. No wonder Gordon had refused to support my gardening plans the other day. I’d stood in front of a room of his peers and declared that everything he’d been doing for the past quarter century was wrong.

  Milo whined as I tucked him, all mud-coated and everything, under my arm.

  “You look as if you’ve been out rolling in the marsh, little gnome.” He was going to need a bath before his debut in front of the world press, but that would have to wait. With the rosebush in one hand and the puppy in the other, I set out to find Gordon and make things right.


  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY SWEET PUPPY?” Gordon exclaimed the moment he spotted us coming through the Diplomatic Reception Room.

  “What about your helpless rosebush?” The plant’s small green leaves rattled as I shook it for emphasis. A mistake. Clumps of mud landed on my once pristine white blouse and on the robin’s-egg blue and gold rug under my feet. Emblems representing all fifty states encircled the one-of-a-kind rug’s border. I planned to apologize profusely to the maid charged with cleaning up the clumps of mud now staining it.

  Thanks to muddy puppy paws, my blouse already looked as if I’d been rolling in the mud along with Milo.

  “The rosebush doesn’t have a press conference in a few hours.” Gordon grabbed Milo and started cooing over the pup that had been entrusted to his care. He didn’t seem to mind that his forest green polo shirt was getting just about as muddy as my blouse.

  The oval Diplomatic Reception Room, which had once served as a boiler and furnace room and later as the site of FDR’s Fireside Chats, was elegantly furnished in the Federal style. It was not a place for an unruly puppy.

  Jacqueline Kennedy had installed a fanciful mural wallpaper called “Views of North America,” featuring vignettes of American landscapes. Although the original wallpaper had been printed in 1834, the images had a colorful and timeless feel to them.

  “I found Milo running through the North Lawn with the rosebush in his mouth. No one was watching him,” I explained to Gordon as we headed out into the vaulted Center Hall.

  “What! That’s unforgivable.” He glanced at a group of primary school children taking the White House tour heading our way and pursed his lips. We quickly crossed into the basement hall that led to the grounds office and, thankfully, was not part of the White House tour.

  “He could have gotten lost,” Gordon continued more softly, though not with any less passion. “Or even killed. I’m going to have to have some sharp words with the Secret Service about this. They need to keep as close an eye on this little fellow as they would any other member of the First Family.”