Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  If I lost Gordon . . .

  “Patience,” I whispered.

  Without even thinking about what I was doing, I stuck my hand in my top dresser drawer. After digging around in the drawer’s rolled socks, I removed a creased and yellowed newspaper article I’d buried in the back of the drawer.

  “Alyssa?” I called as I padded down the stairs of the old brownstone townhouse.

  I stuck my head through the arched opening that led to the kitchen. It was unusual for the kitchen to be so silent in the morning. My roommate tended to celebrate mornings with a symphony of grumblings and pot banging.

  The brownstone’s kitchen had been updated from its Victorian roots about thirty years ago. The large modern avocado green appliances looked out of place in the narrow room with tall ceilings that caused sounds to echo throughout the two-story apartment.

  “Alyssa?” I called again.

  No answer.

  She must have left early for her job as a congressional aide to Senator Finnegan at the Capitol.

  I was too worried about Gordon to eat, so I skipped my morning bowl of oatmeal and instead scooped the last of Alyssa’s organic shade-grown hazelnut blend coffee grounds into the French press. After jotting down a note to myself to buy another bag of the nutty-flavored coffee, I settled at the small maple kitchen table and retrieved the yellowed newspaper article from my pocket. I carefully unfolded the brittle paper. This wasn’t something I would have dared do if Alyssa had been around. Don’t get me wrong; I liked Alyssa. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate. She did more than her fair share to keep the house clean, always paid her half of the rent on time, and had a wonderfully twisted sense of humor.

  She also had an uncanny ability to read my emotions like the back of a cereal box, something she liked to do while she sipped her morning coffee.

  My obsession with this old newspaper article was something I didn’t want her to see.

  She wouldn’t understand.

  I smoothed out the paper’s creases with the flat of my thumb. Three months ago a White House correspondent had found the article and had given it to me. The newspaper was dated the same year my mother had been murdered.

  The article detailed six murders my father had committed. I worried my lowered lip as I reread the damning article even though I’d read it enough times to have memorized every gory facet of his crimes.

  Good old Dad had even killed a police officer to escape capture. The article went on to indicate the police believed he might also be responsible for my mother’s death.

  I closed my eyes against the images of that terrible night when I’d lost my mother. The memories flooded my mind with the force of a hurricane, threatening to sweep me away.

  Picture a safe place. That’s what a therapist had taught me to do when the memories overwhelmed me like this. Picture a safe place and go there.

  My grandmother’s attic.

  I was safe up there.

  It was a place where the past couldn’t touch me.

  I never really knew my father. Never really dwelled on his absence. But Gordon . . .

  He’d filled a void in my life I hadn’t fully realized existed.

  Gordon didn’t kill Frida.

  I didn’t care what Manny or Lorenzo or anyone else believed happened in the Children’s Garden yesterday. Gordon didn’t kill anyone.

  He couldn’t have.

  So his wife had been happy to see Frida gone, bloodthirsty even. Gordon wasn’t a violent man.

  He was nothing like my father.

  I fought off another dizzying wave of panic with a series of deep breathing exercises. I’d just completed the first set when Alyssa burst through the back door and swept into the kitchen with a blast of crisp fall air following in her wake. The heels of her designer leather boots clacked on the tile floor. Her dark blue silk fitted suit seemed to take on a life of its own as she hurried toward me. “Have you met the guy who’s moved into the basement apartment? What a hunk! Too bad he’s a—”

  “Alyssa! I—I thought you’d left for work.” I moved my arm to cover the article. Too late. Alyssa stopped mid-step. Her manicured brows rose as her gaze shot first to the half-hidden article, then to my arm, and finally to my face.

  “Casey Calhoun, I thought we’d agreed you’d throw that damned article out,” she said.

  “I was going to, but . . . I couldn’t.” I pursed my lips and, sitting up straighter, moved my arm out of the way.

  Alyssa watched me for several uncomfortable seconds before sighing loudly. “Keeping that article isn’t healthy. It makes you a slave to things you can’t change.” She spun toward the narrow counter behind her and poured the fresh-brewed coffee into her freakishly oversized mug.

  I cried out a strained “No!” That was my coffee! Well, I had brewed it using her hazelnut beans, but I’d been the one who had scooped them into the French press.

  “No? You think you can change things now?”

  “No, of course I don’t think that.” I almost had to sit on my hands to keep from reaching out for her coffee mug.

  Alyssa took a long sip. Her voice gentled as she asked about Gordon. I told her what the nurse had told me this morning, and I had to blink away tears as I spoke.

  “Oh, Casey.” She set her oversized coffee mug on the table in front of me, wrapped her arms around my shoulders, and pulled me into a tight bear hug. “He’s going to be okay. I promise, honey. Ninety-one percent of men who experience a sudden cardiac arrest make a full recovery.”

  Alyssa had a habit of making up facts and figures to suit her purposes. I usually called her on it. But this was one lie I needed to believe.

  “Thank you,” I said, and hugged her back.

  “Now, what was I saying?” Alyssa asked as she took her rich, fragrant coffee back to the kitchen counter and dosed it with far too much sugar. “Oh, right. It’s such a shame he’s a spy.”

  “Who? Gordon?” I couldn’t think without my coffee.

  “No. No. You’re not listening to me. He. Is. A. Spy,” she said, speaking slowly as if talking to a simpleton.

  I glanced down at the ancient article on the table in front of me. I brushed my hand over its damning headline:

  MURDERER ESCAPES POLICE

  “You—You think my father is a spy?” That would explain a few things. God, I hoped he was a spy, unless . . . “You don’t think he’s spying for the enemy?”

  “Your father?” Alyssa whirled toward me. She moved so quickly her long black hair slapped her in the face. “Get rid of that article already. Are you, or aren’t you, the one who said you didn’t want me to mention anything about that man ever . . . ever . . . ever again?”

  “I did say that. And I don’t.” A wave of heat traveled up my neck. I’d also said that if I ever saw him on the street, I’d cross to the other side and then call the police.

  He didn’t deserve a daughter. And yet part of me cried out for him. What if he was a spy? The good kind like the ones who wore the white hats in the Spy vs. Spy cartoons?

  I shook my head to put a quick stop to the thought.

  Magical thinking. That’s what the therapist had called it. Wishing for something that couldn’t be true.

  My father had never really been a part of my life, and I turned out about as normal as anyone else I knew. I wouldn’t be thinking about him right now if Gordon wasn’t in the hospital fighting for his life and unable to fight for his innocence.

  “It’s been three months since you were given that article, and you still can’t throw it away? Have you at least talked to Jack about it? Have you even shown it to him?” Alyssa asked.

  “Er . . . I haven’t had the chance.”

  “Haven’t had the chance? That’s the excuse you’re going to use?” Alyssa quirked her already arching brow. She’d graduated top of her class from Yale Law School and could outdebate the President. “And how long have the two of you been dating?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call going on a couple
of dinner dates with Jack as ‘dating.’ He hasn’t even invited me to his house. Of course, he’s been busy traveling with the President.”

  “But he was with you late into the night last night?”

  “We were at the hospital with Gordon’s wife. It wasn’t the time or place to talk about murderous fathers.”

  “Are you going to see Jack today?”

  “I don’t know.” Jack was scheduled to be on duty at the White House, although that didn’t necessarily mean I’d get to see him.

  “This thing with your dad is obviously eating at you, Casey.” Alyssa waved her coffee mug like a magic wand. “Talk to Jack.”

  I wanted to talk to Jack about these things. Nothing reported in the newspaper article would surprise him. He’d already read the extensive background check required for my security clearance. My father’s history must be in there.

  But what if he knew something about my father I wasn’t ready to hear? Wasn’t it better to pretend James Calhoun didn’t exist? That’s what I’d done for a quarter century, and my life had been good. I’d been whole.

  I barely remembered the life I’d lived before my grandmother Faye had rescued me. It wasn’t until this past spring when I’d found a dead body in Lafayette Square that the door to those repressed memories had been blown wide open.

  I started to fold the article back into a small square, but Alyssa snatched it out of my hands. She frowned as she read it for the first time.

  A fresh wave of panic hit me. Although I’d told her about it, I hadn’t let her read the article.

  “This doesn’t make sense.” She stabbed the brittle paper with the tip of her painted nail. “Wasn’t your family living under an assumed name at the time of your mother’s murder?”

  “Yes,” came my strangled answer. I didn’t want to go back to that time. Not with Alyssa. Not with anyone.

  “And didn’t it take several years for officials to figure out who you really were and get you to your grandmother?” she pressed.

  I swallowed hard and then nodded. I’d spent nearly two years in foster care, being shuttled from home to home, never really given an opportunity to grieve or heal.

  “So why in the world would the newspaper report that James Calhoun killed his wife? How did the reporter know his name or that he was even your mother’s husband for that matter if the police didn’t know it?”

  “Perhaps the police—”

  “No, something isn’t right here. Something doesn’t add up. You should have showed this to me sooner . . . or to Jack. Oh, I can tell by the look on your face you’re not going to talk to Jack about this.”

  She whipped out her cell phone with dizzying speed and punched speed dial. “Barry, sweetie. Did I wake you?” A wicked smile spread across her lips. “Yeah, I liked that, too. But that’s not why I called. I need a favor.”

  While Alyssa explained to what sounded like her current boy toy that she wanted him to run a trace on James Calhoun and how the police connected him to my mother’s murder so many years ago, I protested. Not that it made any difference. Once Alyssa gets an idea in her head, there’s very little anyone can do to change it.

  I eased the article out from between her fingers, and after carefully folding the brittle paper, I tucked it into my backpack.

  “There has to be another explanation. Perhaps he’d been living a double life and killed his other wife?” I dug my nails into my palms. “He didn’t kill Mom. I was there. He wasn’t.”

  If he had been there, my mother would still be alive. Those men who killed her had been searching for my dad, for James Calhoun. And the newspaper had mentioned James Calhoun’s name. Not his false identity.

  “If the police had known my parents’ identities, why was I overlooked? Why did the officials allow a damaged child to bounce around in a foster system that wasn’t equipped to help her?”

  “I don’t know, Casey,” Alyssa said after she finished her call with Barry. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I certainly wasn’t in a mood to travel back to that dark time. So I closed the door to those memories and took a page from Alyssa’s playbook and bluntly redirected the conversation. “Who were you calling a spy?”

  Alyssa, unable to contain her excitement, danced around the room. “The cute guy who’s moved into the basement apartment. Man, he’s got sex appeal dripping out his ears.”

  “Nadeem?”

  “I’ve met plenty of spies since moving to D.C.” Alyssa waggled her huge coffee mug at me again. “I know the look. And I also know they’re always up to no good.”

  “Oh. He has a ‘look’? That’s not very convincing evidence,” I said, eyeing Alyssa’s coffee mug with envy.

  “CIA or Special Forces or one of those divisions that has no ‘official’ name. Or perhaps he’s working for a foreign government. It doesn’t matter. He’s a spy.”

  “For once your spider senses are wrong. Nadeem Barr is the new assistant for the White House curator’s office. And believe me, the White House thoroughly screens its employees. No spies allowed.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Sure I have. And I’m glad he took the apartment.” The basement apartment in our brownstone townhouse had remained vacant the entire time Alyssa and I had lived in the building’s upper two stories. The basement was in need of a total renovation, vital repairs the owner seemed unwilling to make. Instead of paying to make the place habitable, the owner kept lowering and lowering the rent until I’d started to seriously worry about what kind of dangerous character might move in below us.

  Not one to sit on my hands and fret, I did something about it and had told everyone at the White House that the apartment was available.

  “He’s been working on the History of the White House Gardens project with Frida and Gordon.”

  “Don’t you find it curious that shortly after this assistant”—she used air quotes when she said “assistant”—“started working in the curator’s office, the curator is found dead? Do you know anything about his past?”

  “I think he said he was from Michigan.”

  “Well, I know something.” Alyssa tapped the side of her slender nose. “Nadeem is not a researcher. He’s nobody’s assistant. He can’t hide the truth from me. He’s a spy.”

  Could that be true? Could he have been planted by a foreign country to thwart the White house talks with Turbekistan? If Frida had learned Nadeem was a fraud, she would have confronted him. But . . .

  “Why would a spy want to work in the curator’s office? I mean, they deal with historical documents and antique furniture. It’s hardly a hotbed for espionage.”

  “I don’t know why. To get inside the White House? Spies are clever. You never know what they are up to until it’s too late.”

  I wasn’t going to win this argument, and since there was no coffee to be found in the house because Alyssa had finished the pot I’d brewed, I scooped up my backpack. “I’ll see you this evening, Alyssa. Try not to get into the middle of any international intrigues while I’m gone.”

  “Joke all you want, but mark my words. Something bad has already happened. Frida was murdered. And if that spy living in our basement is any indication, there’s more trouble coming,” Alyssa warned as I hustled out the back door. “Trouble spreads like weeds whenever there’s a spy involved.”

  Chapter Eight

  You’ve got to fight for what you believe in. You have to finish what you start.

  —JACQUELINE KENNEDY, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1961–1963)

  WHEN I stepped onto the townhouse’s back landing, I spotted a man scurrying down our apartment’s back steps. He was dressed in a camel-colored trench coat. His lapels were pulled up around the ears, and a camouflage hat was jammed low on his head. I only glimpsed the backside of him as he jumped down the last few steps and stumbled.

  “Nadeem?” I called. The man limped to the basement apartment’s back door and yanked it open.

 
“Nadeem? What are you doing?”

  He must have heard me, but he didn’t even look up before stepping inside and slamming the door closed behind him.

  Had Alyssa been right about our new downstairs neighbor? Was Nadeem a spy?

  The man had been wearing a long trench coat, the kind spies wore in bad movies. But then again, it was raining.

  I stepped back inside and grabbed my rain slicker and umbrella from the hook on the wall behind the door. Determined to find out why the new assistant curator was lurking at our back steps, I rushed back outside and down the steps to stand at the door the man had disappeared through.

  “Nadeem!” I beat my fist against the door. “Nadeem! I know you’re in there. I saw you.”

  When no one answered, I moved along the side of the brownstone building to a small window that I had to stand on my tiptoes to peek into. The window looked into the basement apartment’s kitchen. The lights were off. A dish and cup had been neatly lined up on a drying towel laid out next to the sink. On the round linoleum kitchen table sat a fat file folder with a White House emblem on it.

  What I didn’t see in the apartment was Nadeem.

  Had he run through his apartment to escape out the front door, or was he hiding?

  Either way, I was getting no answers by standing there.

  I shivered as I walked to work through the chilly rain, but it wasn’t the rain that made me feel cold. It was the icy prickle of fear.

  First, Frida’s murder and Gordon’s near-fatal attack. Then I overheard Bryce and Thatch talking about how Aziz had believed Frida’s murder was somehow connected to the meetings with Turbekistan. And now Nadeem, a new member of the White House staff, was acting strangely. How could I not be worried?

  Had Nadeem been listening at the back door to Alyssa’s and my conversation? A conversation we’d been having about him?

  I needed to find out what was going on.

  And I knew exactly how to do it.

  • • •

  “Jack?” I was surprised he’d answered his cell phone. His shift at the White House had started an hour ago. I checked the readout of my cell phone, worried I’d misdialed.