Flowerbed of State

by Dorothy St. James

  “I agree,” I said, relieved to hear that Gordon planned to take charge and speak to the Secret Service. Keeping out of their way appeared to be necessary for my own job preservation now more than ever. “And give them hell,” I whispered.

  “There you are.” Margaret Bradley hurried toward us. The fabric of her lavender silk dress swished around her legs with each step.

  I was surprised to see her coming from the direction of the offices and shops located underneath the North Portico. Members from those offices would go to her, not the other way around.

  Milo wiggled happily the moment he saw her.

  “Mrs. Bradley,” Gordon said as he jogged over to her. “As you can see, he’s been found.”

  “Thank goodness.” She gave my disheveled state a once-over. Her warm smile grew wider. “You found him, then?”

  “He’s been digging up the Rose Garden, I’m afraid.” I held up the damaged rosebush as evidence.

  “What a mess. He’s quite coated in mud, too,” she observed, and patted Milo’s head. “There’s not much time to get him cleaned up, either.”

  “We’ll see to it,” Gordon offered.

  We would? I supposed we could use the hoses outside to give him a quick bath. But would we be able to get him dried off in time for the press conference?

  “No, I wouldn’t hear of it. The two of you have enough to do. Give him to me.” She held out her arms.

  “He’ll ruin your dress,” Gordon protested.

  “I can put on another one. Now, hand him to me. I’ll see to him. You look after the Rose Garden. Our social secretary is on the brink of a nervous breakdown already. I don’t want him to find out that the puppy has been digging up—”

  “Seth already knows,” I told her.

  “Oh, dear.” Her impeccable poise slipped for a second, causing her lower lip to tremble. She swiftly bit down on it and forced a smile. “Well, it can’t be helped. We’ll simply have to deal with this as it comes. Two of the upstairs maids are a whiz with hair. I’m sure they’ll be able to wash and fluff this little guy back into shape.”

  She hugged Milo to her chest, his huge puppy paws smearing mud on yet another outfit that morning.

  “Don’t worry about the Rose Garden,” Gordon told her. “The grounds crew is out there already.”

  “They are?” I asked. Gordon never ceased to amaze me with his efficiency.

  “Sprucing up the area is standard procedure before a press conference, even last-minute press conferences,” Gordon explained. “It’ll look perfect.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Thank you again,” Mrs. Bradley said as she hurried off.

  Back at the grounds office, I was surprised to find Lorenzo at his desk filling out a stack of paperwork that rivaled the pile Fisher had left for me. A large white bandage stood out in stark contrast to his dark brown hair. Other than that, he looked like the freshly pressed, perfectly groomed gardening assistant I’d grown used to seeing every day.

  I couldn’t be happier.

  “Lorenzo! You’re okay!” The muscles in his shoulders tightened as I gave him a great big hug. After questioning him on how he was feeling—his head throbbed—and Gordon had a chance to scold him for not taking the day to rest and recover, I finally got the chance to ask the question that had been burning on my mind since the attack.

  “Do you remember what happened? Did you see the guy who did this?”

  “Or was it a lady?” Gordon put in.

  “As I told both the police and the FBI, I barely remember being attacked.” Lorenzo pressed his hands against the sides of his head and pinched his eyes closed. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “Not even a pair of shoes?” Gordon asked with a glance in my direction.

  Lorenzo opened his eyes and stared intently at me. “No. I’m sorry, Casey. I shouldn’t have blamed you for not getting a good look at your attacker. I didn’t understand that something like this”—he rubbed the back of his neck—“could happen so unexpectedly or so quickly. I didn’t see a damned thing. I didn’t really understand what had happened until it was explained to me at the hospital.”

  “I’m still convinced I can help identify Pauline’s killer. I haven’t given up, Lorenzo.” A promise was a promise.

  “Thanks, Casey, I appreciate that.” Lorenzo said.

  After this morning’s revelations, my mind whirled with scenarios and possibilities. Pauline had been intimately involved with Brooks. So had Joanna.

  Joanna had expressed regret at introducing the pair.

  Did she regret it because Pauline had been murdered? Or did she regret introducing Pauline to Brooks because Pauline had caught her lover’s roving eye?

  Joanna had been present in the park the morning Pauline had been murdered.

  Brooks and Lillian may have ruined Joanna, but Pauline had betrayed their friendship by taking Joanna’s lover to her own bed. Perhaps the murder didn’t have anything to do with the banking reform legislation after all. Perhaps I was completely wrong about everything.

  “Have you seen this?” Lorenzo handed me the newspaper.

  The headline stopped me cold: SENATOR PENDERGAST’S BRUSH WITH DISASTER. I quickly scanned the article. Last night, while I enjoyed dinner with Richard, a car had swerved onto the sidewalk and nearly run down Edith Pendergast as she walked her dog near her house in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Both she and her small white dog, Churchill, were shaken but had sustained only minor cuts and bruises. The FBI was investigating.

  “No, not that.” Lorenzo snatched the paper away, flipped to the last page of the first section, and slapped it down on the desk in front of me. He tapped his finger on the corner of an editorial cartoon at the top of the page.

  Gordon leaned over my shoulder to look. “This could prove problematic.”

  Building on the scathing article Griffon Parker had written, the national newspaper, Media Today, had run an editorial cartoon envisioning an overgrown White House grounds that resembled an abandoned city lot with weedy flowerbeds and an unkempt lawn littered with kitchen waste, including banana peels and rotting tomatoes. A cartoon depiction of me, complete with floppy straw hat, stood at the center of the drawing with her hands on her freakishly wide hips. The caption at the bottom of the cartoon read Organic Gardener Runs Amok.

  “About that,” I said, looking up at Gordon. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn’t used to eating crow. And boy, did I have a lot of stringy bird to eat this morning. “I am so sorry about the presentation the other day. I got totally carried away and, well, I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I was criticizing the way things have been done around here. I have nothing but the utmost respect for both you and Lorenzo. I honestly didn’t mean to steamroll over either of you.” I sighed and pulled a hand through my hair. “I messed up.”

  “You sure did,” Lorenzo agreed.

  Gordon crossed his arms over his chest. “What do you plan to do about it?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. If I wanted their forgiveness, I needed to prove that I wasn’t going to act like Seth Donahue anymore. “I suggest that we take things more slowly. Change doesn’t have to happen overnight. The implementation of the program should be gradual. Take the lawn, for instance. The tall fescue grass is well suited to the climate and use. There’s no reason to change it. But perhaps we could raise the mower height from two and a half inches to three. The taller the leaf blade, the stronger the roots, which means it’ll need less water and be less susceptible to weeds, insects, and disease. I also suggest that we should water deeply and less frequently and always in the morning, when there’s no wind, to give the grass roots the best chance to absorb the water.”

  “There’s nothing controversial about raising the mowing height an inch or altering the watering schedule,” Gordon agreed. “We don’t even need committee approval for something like that.”

  “Right. And by doing this over the summer season, hopefully we can wean the lawn off its dependence on chemical fertilizers
, herbicides, and insecticides.”

  Gordon nodded thoughtfully. “That could work.”

  “As for the vegetable garden,” I continued, “that’s the First Lady’s project. I’ve not really heard anyone criticize growing a few vegetables in the South Lawn. So that can still go forward as planned.”

  “No one can fault the family for wanting to have fresh backyard vegetables,” Gordon agreed. “It’s an American tradition.”

  “Okay. So do we have a plan?” I asked.

  “Sounds like one to me,” Gordon said.

  “The rest we can add in over the next couple of years. It’ll be gradual. If something doesn’t work, we’ll stop and reconsider. Do you think the committee will go for that?”

  “With my support they will,” Gordon said.

  “Will you support it?”

  I held my breath, waiting.

  When Gordon nodded, I threw my arms around him and gave him a hug big enough to cover the entire south coast and left him blushing a bright red that extended deep into his hairline.

  “Don’t forget about Griffon Parker.” Lorenzo tapped the cartoon. “It doesn’t matter what the committee thinks. If public opinion swings against the plan, it’s done.”

  “What can I do to fix that end of things?”

  “Nothing publicly,” Gordon reminded me. “This is the First Lady’s house. But you might try giving Senator Pendergast a call.”

  “I did talk to her a little bit yesterday.”

  “Good. Keep working that angle. I’m sure that’s where Parker is getting his information. No one on the committee would be foolish enough to talk to the press about White House affairs, not without prior approval. As you know, Senator Pendergast has been unhappy with both the President and the First Lady because of their deep friendships in the banking world.”

  I remembered the senator making those rather sharp accusations to the First Lady the other day. “And yet, she’s kept quiet about those accusations to the press.”

  “Have you seen her approval numbers? They’re not good. She’s up for reelection and facing a tough battle,” Gordon pointed out. “The President, on the other hand, is riding high with his approval numbers right now, especially in the senator’s home district. It’d be political suicide to attack either him or his wife directly.”

  “So she’s attacking me?”

  “I’m sure that’s not all she’s doing. But it’s her most visible attack, and safest. She’s mainly complaining about the cost of the program.”

  “But it’s not costly!”

  “Doesn’t matter. All she has to do is put the question out there in order to swing public opinion. Don’t forget all the special news reports that have been questioning whether or not the President will support strong regulations against an industry that seems to have him in their pocket.”

  “You think the senator is behind those negative news reports as well?”

  Gordon shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. If you want to try and swing public opinion back our way, keep working on the senator. See if you can’t win her over with this new plan of ours. And I’ll talk with the committee.”

  “Okay, we can do this.” I hoped.

  While Gordon went to oversee the crew working in the Rose Garden, I found the business card Senator Pendergast had given me and dialed her number, hoping I could also find out about what had happened to her yesterday evening.

  Did she think the driver of the car was angry about her renewed efforts on the financial reform bill?

  Did the police?

  Unfortunately the senator wasn’t taking calls this morning, her chipper secretary informed me.

  “Could you give her a message?” I asked. “It’s important. I’m working with Mrs. Bradley on the White House garden plans. I understand that the senator has some concerns with the proposal, and I’d like to discuss—”

  “You’re calling from the First Lady’s office? You should have told me that right away.” The secretary put me on hold. A few minutes later she came back on the line. “The senator has already made her position clear. She also suggested”—the secretary hesitated—“I’m sorry, she wants me to tell you that you should consider seeking other employment alternatives. I’m sorry.”

  So was I. I stared at the phone, not sure what to do. With the senator working so diligently to embarrass the First Lady, I feared the organic garden plan, no matter how much Mrs. Bradley wanted it, would soon become a casualty of the battle being waged between the two powerful women.

  Despite Gordon’s promise to help me, I doubted my future at the White House could look any bleaker.

  “Casey.” Lorenzo swiveled around in his office chair to face me. He was smiling for the first time this morning. “That was Mike Thatch on the phone. He sounded really angry. He said he needs to see you right away.”

  My heart sank.

  Forget about having to survive the senator’s attacks on my job—that was nothing compared to facing an entire division of the Secret Service who appeared eager to see me gone.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  SQUEEZING my hands together in my lap, I fought an urge to brush at the mud caked on the front of my white blouse or pick at the tiny dirt blobs speckling my gray pants as I sat in the plastic chair across from Mike Thatch’s desk. The white walls, the long stretches of silence, and Thatch’s grim expression brought back the same gut-sinking queasiness I’d suffered with every trip to my high school principal’s office.

  Thatch sat behind a large mahogany desk with a laptop open in front of him. Like his salt-and-pepper hair, his office didn’t have even a stray piece of paper out of place.

  He leaned back in his burgundy leather chair and beat the tip of his pen against the desk while he listened to my story, the rhythm of his tapping increasing when I got to the part where Turner had arrived.

  Line by line, Thatch went over the statement I’d made at the greenhouses. He’d read a section and then would pause, look up, and wait for me to comment.

  “Yes, that’s what happened,” I’d answer meekly.

  He’d sniff and read on.

  His quiet demeanor did nothing to quell my rattling nerves. I figured that as soon as he finished reviewing the statement, he’d yell at me for interfering in the investigation or for causing that ruckus this morning when I’d chased after Milo. Or worse, he’d call in Ambrose and have me fired. My hands tightened on the chair’s arms as the scenarios playing in my mind of what might happen grew increasingly worse as the minutes stretched into an hour.

  “And you’re sure Turner is okay? I mean, you spoke with him personally this morning?”

  Thatch stopped tapping his pen and looked up from the statement in front of him. “All my agents are tough. I assure you it would take much more than a scrawny gardener to put one of them out of action. Now where were we?”

  After an hour and a half of his quiet torture, my nerves had frayed so much that when the assistant director in charge of Protective Operations, William Bryce, stuck his head into Thatch’s office to let him know the press conference in the Rose Garden was about to begin, I jumped out of the plastic chair with a startled yelp.

  Thatch had nodded and rushed through a couple more questions, not touching on the banking reform legislation except to mention the protesters. My foot jangled with impatience.

  “Do you think the driver who tried to run down Senator Pendergast last night is linked to Pauline’s murder and yesterday’s attack at the greenhouse?” I finally built up the courage to ask.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Brooks Keller had motive. His shoes matched the ones I’d remembered seeing at the scene of the crime. And the senator’s proposed bill put the squeeze on banking institutions.

  Without the senator pushing so fiercely for the bill’s success, I doubted many of its most stringent regulations would make it to the final version.

  Aunt Willow had told me more times than I cared to count not to look a gift horse in th
e mouth. I never really did understand what that meant—I grew up in a city with absolutely no interaction with horses, unless you counted the workhorses that would ramble up and down Charleston’s historic streets pulling carriages filled with tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a bygone era.

  And yet suddenly I knew what Aunt Willow had been telling me. This was one mouth I didn’t want to pry open.

  “Well?” Thatch pressed.

  “I don’t know,” I lied.

  “Good,” he said as he stood. “Keep it that way.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder as he walked me through the Secret Service offices. “Stay clear of this, Casey. We’re going to make an arrest . . . and soon.”

  “Who? One of the banking protesters?”

  “Perhaps.” He squeezed my shoulder. “If you don’t stop meddling in the investigation and in Secret Service affairs, I’ll have to report you to Ambrose. No one wants that, right?”

  “Right.”

  A sense of dread followed me as I left the Secret Service offices. I was supposed to stay out of the investigation, but no matter how many times I worked out the scenario in my mind, I kept coming back to the same thing—the Secret Service was looking for their killer in the wrong place. The protesters had gained nothing with Pauline’s death. And why would they attack the senator? She was on their side.

  Still, the Secret Service knew what they were doing. They were experts at recognizing threats. Who was I to question them?

  I rubbed my suddenly throbbing temples and decided to focus on my job. With the Easter Egg Roll just three days away, my to-do list wasn’t growing any shorter, not when Seth kept adding items to it.

  The press conference was under way in the Rose Garden. President John Bradley stood at his official podium in front of the doors that led into the West Wing. Margaret Bradley, dressed in a light green pantsuit, stood to his right. Milo sat between them, his clean, glossy coat gleaming. He tilted his little puppy head to one side. His ears were tipped forward as he watched with a bemused expression at how everyone was staring at him.

  There were rows and rows of the press sitting in the folding chairs that had been set up on the grass. Hordes of cameramen filled every available space behind a rope barrier on the left side of the seating area. On a raised platform behind the seated reporters, cameramen snapped still photos with ridiculously large lenses and filmed every aspect of the press conference.