Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  I felt like an excavator in search of a treasure. Still there was no sign of the lost Ark of the Covenant or the missing schematic—not that I’d expected to find either.

  I did locate my to-do list under a series of letters between Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Latrobe, a land surveyor, which I couldn’t stop myself from reading. After some discussion back and forth, the two men had concluded the White House grounds should be divided into two sections. The northern section was designated as public grounds, and the southern section, which overlooked the Potomac River, was designated as private grounds for the President’s family.

  Tucked in another pile, I found an interesting letter Dolley Madison had penned to her friend Eliza Collins Lee that could help me in researching my founding fathers’ kitchen garden. In it, Dolley detailed the building of hotbeds for cucumbers, how they’d grown a giant variety of beets that her husband had received from France, and had transplanted some of Madison’s hautboy strawberries from Montpelier.

  Another find in the pile was a copy of a journal entry written by James Madison that listed the Latin names for the plants grown in their kitchen garden their first year at the White House.

  I jotted down the plant list on my notepad and then went searching on the Internet to check on the availability of the plants through our approved vendors. The hautboy strawberry, also known as a musk strawberry, was available. A hardy native of France, the small fruit boasted a mix of strawberry, raspberry, and pineapple flavors.

  The other plants on Madison’s list, however, didn’t come up in any of the vendors’ databases.

  I was puzzling over this problem when Nadeem Barr barged into the office. His white shirt was half-untucked from his neatly pressed suit pants and his silver tie was more than a little askew.

  “Frida was right. The research she’d compiled on the gardens during the Madison administration is gone.” He dredged a hand through his dark hair. “And now Frida is gone. I—I don’t know what to do.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I feel as if I’m on stage for a part I never rehearsed.

  —CLAUDIA “LADY BIRD” JOHNSON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1963–1969)

  “YOU mean this research?” I pointed to the towers of folders I’d stacked neatly on my desk.

  “Are—are you kidding me?” Nadeem sputtered in that shy way of his. “Those papers didn’t belong to Frida. That’s my personal research. They, um, came from various outside sources. Most of it came from the National Arboretum and Dr. Wadsin. Only Frida had access to the curator’s papers, although, you know, I think Frida had showed her work to Gordon at their last meeting.”

  “Don’t tell me you think Gordon actually took her stupid research?” I said. The skin on the back of my neck started to prickle.

  “Of . . . of course not.” Nadeem backed up several paces.

  “What about the First Lady’s sister?” I asked. “Didn’t Frida say Lettie was working with her on the project?” And Lettie was in the gardens at the time of her murder. Not that I suspected the First Lady’s sister of anything sinister . . . yet.

  Nadeem nodded. “Yes. Yes. Lettie was helping some.”

  “Well then, perhaps you should ask her where Frida’s research went. Perhaps she borrowed it.”

  “Oh, no. I mean, Frida didn’t let anyone close to her special files and notes. She didn’t even trust me with the keys to the filing cabinets. In the time I’ve worked here, I’ve only been allowed to read her notes just a handful of times.”

  “If you don’t have access, how do you know what is missing and what isn’t?”

  “Considering”—he cleared his throat—“how Frida died, um, I thought I should look through her things. See if I couldn’t find her notes on Dolley Madison. So . . . so I came in early this morning and jimmied the top drawer of her desk to get to her keys. And when I opened the filing cabinet that held her research for the Madison administration, all the folders marked Gardens were empty.”

  “What would someone want with those moldy old papers? They’re not even originals, are they?” I asked.

  “They’re not. But she had more than just documents in her folders.” He started to pace. “The value of her files was her personal notes. She could see things and put together facts in a way that just boggled my mind. And those notes are gone. Vanished. Poof!”

  “Listen, Nadeem, there’s no reason to panic over this. Not yet. We don’t know why anyone might want to steal Frida’s work. We don’t even know the papers are truly missing.”

  Had Frida stumbled across a map to a forgotten treasure, the same treasure she’d accused Gordon of wanting to find? I doubted it. “The most likely explanation is Frida misplaced her work and wrongly accused Gordon of theft. Not a good explanation, however, since it does nothing to help clear Gordon of Frida’s murder. What other projects was Frida working on?”

  Nadeem listed several projects. Most involved the restoration of important pieces of furniture or the documentation of various pieces of work held in one of the White House’s many storehouses.

  “She didn’t happen to be involved with planning President Bradley’s meeting with Turbekistan’s envoy?” The question popped out of my mouth even before I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know about the meeting.

  “Tur—What are you talking about?” His dark brows flattened as he frowned.

  “Nothing. Forget I mentioned it.”

  “If you know something about . . .” His voice lowered. He took a step toward me.

  I backed up. My leg bumped against my desk. “I’m simply trying to figure out why someone would want to hurt Frida, and who at the White House had a motive.”

  According to Pearle and Mable, Frida had more enemies than friends, thanks to her out-of-control ambition. I looked at the piles of meticulously detailed research Nadeem had left on my desk yesterday. What if he’d made an important discovery? And what if Frida had stolen from him the proof of that discovery? What if she’d been getting ready to claim Nadeem’s research as her own?

  That would explain why Nadeem had been so anxious to dig through Frida’s locked filing cabinets the morning after her death. It would also explain why he’d be so upset to discover her research was actually missing.

  Or was Nadeem a spy, planted by a foreign government to disrupt the oil negotiations with Turbekistan?

  Had I bumped into him at the hospital?

  Had he been lurking at my back door?

  That sounded like spy behavior to me.

  I grabbed Nadeem’s arm and pulled him away from Gordon’s private office, where I suspected Lorenzo was sitting near the door, listening to our every word.

  “What were you doing outside my apartment this morning?” I demanded in a harsh whisper.

  Nadeem jerked back. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Nadeem. I saw you running down the back stairs,” I said, still keeping my voice low. “When I knocked on your apartment door, why didn’t you answer? What’s going on?”

  “I—I—” he stammered.

  I folded my arms over my chest and raised my brows, waiting for him to give me an answer. He glanced at the door to the hallway as if calculating an escape route.

  “The person you saw, it—it wasn’t me,” he said at last.

  “I suppose I also didn’t bump into you at the hospital yesterday afternoon, either?”

  He held up his trembling hands in surrender. “I swear. Ask your roommate. I met, um, Alyssa this . . . this morning as I left for the White House. She nearly tackled me as I walked out of the backyard.”

  That sounded like Alyssa. She had a habit of coming on too strong the first time she met a man. Any man.

  “Then who did I see at my back door?”

  Nadeem’s top lip started to tremble. “I don’t know. It wasn’t me. I—I was anxious to get into the office to look for the research Frida had claimed was stolen. I want to impress the East Wing by taking charge. I, you know, I was
hoping they might consider me for the head curator position.”

  “That is something I can believe.” Everyone who worked at the White House possessed some degree of ambition. Apparently Frida had more than her fair share. “Who else has a key to your apartment?”

  His eyes darted uncertainly toward the door again. “I mean it, Casey. I wasn’t there. I don’t know who or what you saw.”

  I watched him. He was acting unsure, nervous . . . and exactly like I’d expect a brand-new White House staffer to act, especially one who was as sensitive and soft-spoken as Nadeem.

  Alyssa was crazy. This guy wasn’t a spy. Spies had to be cool under pressure. That wasn’t Nadeem. The more I questioned him, the more his top lip trembled.

  Besides, although Nadeem might have a motive—make that several possible motives—for killing Frida, he didn’t have the opportunity. Frida had sent him back to the East Wing before she entered the Children’s Garden to talk to Gordon. He’d told me that himself.

  “Okay,” I said, “I believe you.” Maybe.

  Unfortunately, believing him didn’t get me any closer to helping clear Gordon’s name.

  “Cathy? Oh, Cathy, there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” came a singsong voice from the open door behind me. I cringed.

  Lettie Shaw, the First Lady’s sister, clomped into the office and picked up a file folder from the stack I’d already sorted.

  Lettie was dressed casually in a blue-and-white-striped blouse. Her deep blue wide-legged pants swirled around her legs as she came to an abrupt stop. The heavy makeup she wore didn’t completely hide the dark circles under her eyes. “I see you have some filing for me to do, Cathy.”

  “It’s Casey,” I gently corrected her and retrieved the file folder before she could lose it in her unfathomable filing system. “These papers need to go back to the curator’s office.”

  “Of course.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples and winced.

  “Can I help you?” I asked when she continued to stand there rubbing her head.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a flask of something hidden away in your desk drawers? I could use a little eye-opener this morning.” She waved that thought away before I could answer her. “Never mind. You wouldn’t. Everyone is such goodie-goodies around here. Anyhow, Seth said you’re in desperate need of help. So I’m here to work. I could organize your desk again.”

  “No!” I jumped in front of my desk before she could upset the organized piles. “I mean . . .” My face heated. Please tell me I hadn’t just shouted at the First Lady’s sister. If she wanted to make a mess of the neat piles on my desk, I should let her.

  “Lettie!” Lorenzo called out with obvious glee, confirming I was correct he’d been listening from behind Gordon’s office door. He bounced into the room, his voice booming.

  Lettie winced and backed away from him.

  “As senior assistant, I’ll be taking over the History of the White House Gardens project and anything else Gordon happened to be working on. And we’d love any assistance you could provide.”

  “Of course you would,” Lettie muttered. She dropped into my desk chair and rubbed her temples some more.

  “Wait a minute, Lorenzo,” I said. “Why should you take the lead? I’ve been working on the founding fathers’ kitchen garden project, which will be part of the historical garden exhibition. So it only makes sense I step in and fill the void until Gordon returns.” I’d initially volunteered to take the lead on the entire exhibition. “If Gordon hadn’t insisted on acting as project leader, I would have taken that position. Come to think about it, why did Gordon volunteer to take charge of the project if he hated working with Frida?”

  “Because he didn’t want you to work with Frida,” Lorenzo said as if I should have already known.

  “What? Why? Did he think I’d believe her crazy stories about missing treasures?”

  “Missing treasure?” Lettie lifted her head long enough to ask.

  Lorenzo glanced over at Lettie slouched in my desk chair and then at Nadeem, who was leaning forward on the balls of his feet, watching with rapt interest.

  “Well?” I pressed.

  “No, he wasn’t worried about what you’d do, okay?” Lorenzo huffed. “It was because Frida had a nasty reputation for getting people fired. No one in the White House wanted to work with Frida. No one.”

  “I did,” Nadeem said softly.

  “I thought I did, too,” I said. “She had a solid reputation for knowing everything about White House history.”

  Nadeem nodded. “All of the professors I studied under called her a savant. Her focus was clearly on the White House.”

  “She knew her history inside and out,” Lettie agreed.

  Lorenzo huffed again. “Fine. She was a genius and a saint. But that doesn’t change the situation at hand. In Gordon’s absence, someone needs to take charge.”

  “And you assume it should be you?” I asked.

  “I am the senior assistant.”

  “And I’m in charge of implementing the organic gardening program,” I countered.

  Lorenzo snorted. “What does that have to do with any- thing?”

  “Casey, I need to have a word with you,” Jack said from the doorway. He was dressed in his battle dress black fatigues that made him equal parts sexy and dangerous. My heart sped up at the sight of him. He entered the room and stood directly between me and Nadeem.

  Nadeem widened his stance and seemed determined not to be pushed out of the conversation. “We’re, um, in the middle of something right now.”

  “I see that.” Jack turned to glare at Nadeem. “Casey, it’s about that situation we discussed this morning.”

  “This morning? Oh! Forget what I said. I’m sure I was wrong.”

  “You weren’t wrong.” Jack linked his arm with mine, which made my arm feel all tingly and happy.

  “I wasn’t?”

  “If we can go somewhere private?” Ah, if only he wanted to go somewhere private for another reason . . .

  Alas, Jack was on duty. And we were at the White House with security cameras covering nearly every inch of the building.

  And Nadeem was a spy? My cheeks heated as I sneaked a glance in Nadeem’s direction. His dark gaze narrowed. He watched me as if he knew Jack and I were talking about him.

  “Go on, Casey, I have everything under control here. I’ll take good care of Lettie.” Lorenzo’s eyes sparkled with barely contained excitement. Rubbing elbows with the wealthy and the powerful in D.C. gave him endless joy. He snaked around me toward my desk and the tidy piles of research on it. “Of course Casey would like you to organize her desk, Lettie. Just the other day she was commenting on your unique filing system.”

  “Was she?” Lettie brightened when she heard that. She picked up a pile of Nadeem’s folders. “I have to admit my system tends to confound some people.”

  Just those who need to find anything in their office. I couldn’t let her wreck havoc with my filing system again. It was already chaotic enough. “Uh, uh, Lorenzo? Doesn’t Gordon have an entire file drawer devoted to historical documents?” I said. “And shouldn’t we use Lettie to organize those files and pull out anything that will help us with the History of—”

  “Sheesh, Casey, you didn’t let me finish,” Lorenzo said. “What I was saying before Casey interrupted was that even though Casey needs help, she can straighten her own desk. Lettie, since you’ve already been working with Frida on the gardens project, wouldn’t you rather go through Gordon’s files in search of additional information that can help us?” He briefly explained what was involved.

  Lettie readily agreed.

  “Fantastic,” I said. “Let me show you—”

  “I’ll do that,” Lorenzo cut in. “I’ll be taking over as project leader.”

  “Very well. You win. I need to talk with Jack anyhow. Nadeem, why don’t you get these papers back to your office and then continue going through Frida’s filing cabinets? Perhaps
the papers she lost fell behind a cabinet or desk?”

  “I suppose . . .” Nadeem sounded like a heartbroken schoolboy.

  “Once I’m done here and while Lorenzo is busy working with Lettie, you can catch me up on everything Frida’s been working on,” I said and pushed him toward the door. My plan was simple. Lorenzo would take the lead on the project and keep Lettie busy and out of trouble, which was a full-time job, while I worked with Nadeem to retrace Frida’s last days. I hoped to figure out who else at the White House had a motive for wanting Frida dead.

  “Jack,” I said as I marched out the door, “aren’t you coming?”

  • • •

  ONCE EVERYONE WAS SETTLED, JACK DIRECTED me toward a set of heavy double doors that opened out onto a sunken courtyard beside the North Portico.

  The rain was still coming down steadily. The deep rumble of thunder vibrated in the cool air.

  Although there wasn’t usually shelter anywhere in the courtyard, the kitchen staff had erected a large tent just outside the double doors so they could unload incoming produce and canned goods from a large delivery truck that had backed into the space.

  “Rain, rain, and more rain. I hope the kitchen garden isn’t flooding. Volunteers are coming in tomorrow to harvest seeds. I’ll need to send an e-mail telling them to be ready for mud,” I said as Jack put his arm over my shoulder and led me to the far corner of the tent and out of the way of the kitchen staff.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “You and Nadeem looked chummy back there. You aren’t planning to ditch me in favor of letting Mr. Tall, Dark, and Creepy play sidekick?”

  “Only if you don’t spill what you know about him.” I playfully shoved his chest. “What did you learn?”

  “Only that Nadeem’s security clearance is well above my pay grade,” Jack said. “And that’s saying something. It also means I can’t touch his file.”

  “But he’s an assistant curator.”

  “Exactly. Why would he need a security clearance level that rivals the Secretary of Defense’s?” Jack said. “So I did a little poking around. Made a few phone calls to some of my buddies working covert ops. My mentioning Nadeem Barr’s name caused quite a stir in the intelligence community this morning. Turns out, our new assistant curator worked dark ops for both the military and the CIA. Apparently he implemented off-the-book espionage plots and assassinations. And these guys don’t like anyone, not even the Secret Service, poking into their business.”