Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  Even though I didn’t agree with how he vented his frustration, I was beginning to understand it. He’d spent the past nine years trying to catch the notice of the various first families who called the White House home, only to be ignored. Finally when a true gardening enthusiast had moved into the White House, he must have expected he’d get the recognition he’d long deserved. But that didn’t happen. Margaret Bradley had, instead, hired me.

  “Aren’t you going to ask what I found out in the Children’s Garden?” I said.

  “Why should I? It was a crime scene. Off-limits.”

  “Actually, it’s no longer a crime scene. We’re free to send our crew in there to clean up at any time.”

  Lorenzo looked up from the schematic. “And?”

  I explained to him about the missing branches. “The surveillance video shows Gordon entering the Children’s Garden and not leaving. So where did those branches go?”

  “Gordon must have taken them out through a gap near the gardening sheds,” Lorenzo answered without even having to think about it.

  I’d known there were narrow gaps in the Children’s Garden’s fencing and landscape fabric. I’d torn my way through one of them when pursuing a killer this past spring. I’d torn my way through. “I don’t understand. He would have had to cut through the fabric.”

  “No, he wouldn’t. He could pin back the landscaping fabric and pass through an opening next to the gardening shed.” Lorenzo pushed back from the drafting table. “We use it all the time.”

  “An opening in the fencing? Does the Secret Service know about this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see why they should. It’s not a security matter. The fencing is there as a visual barrier. It has nothing to do with fencing someone in or keeping someone out.”

  “And there’s an opening, a gap in the fencing?” I said again as the idea took root. “You mean I didn’t have to maneuver the wheelbarrow down that winding path this past spring when planting all those thousands of bulbs? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Why should I have told you?”

  “Right. You wouldn’t have. But why didn’t Gordon—”

  “I told him you already knew about it, but you didn’t care to use it.” Lorenzo smiled. It was a teeth-flashing, not particularly friendly, expression.

  “Gee, thanks, Lorenzo. Okay, there’s a gap in the fence. So . . .” I wished Lettie would stop that infernal humming. I needed to think. I hurried back to my desk and grabbed my yellow pad. “So anyone on the South Lawn at the time—”

  Lettie broke out singing. The loud tuneless song she belted out made me completely lose my train of thought.

  “Do you know who else was in the gardens at that time?” Lorenzo asked.

  I closed my eyes and tried to block out Lettie’s off-key tune. “What is that song?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Focus, Casey.” Lorenzo snapped his fingers. “You were on the South Lawn. Who else did you see?”

  “I saw some East Wing staffers, but they went in before Frida came out.” I lowered my voice. “Lettie Shaw was out there.” I’d overheard her odd phone conversation. It sounded as if someone had been pressuring her. “Marcel Beauchamp was outside, again, getting inspiration for his designs. And Nadeem Barr, but Frida had sent Nadeem back inside before she went into the Children’s Garden. And I’m pretty sure Marcel went back inside a few minutes before Nadeem did.”

  “We’ll need to find out if anyone else was out there. Perhaps your boyfriend can help out with that.”

  “Okay, I’ll ask Jack.”

  “Ask Nadeem, too.”

  “Ah . . . not him.”

  “Why not? He might have seen someone.”

  “Because . . .” Should I tell Lorenzo what I knew about Nadeem? Knowing Lorenzo, he wouldn’t believe me. “We shouldn’t talk with him yet. He might still be a suspect. And if he isn’t, he might insist on helping our investigation.”

  That last part convinced Lorenzo. “Good point. We don’t need anyone taking credit for the work we’re doing.”

  “Right. When Gordon was carrying away the pruned branches, anyone could have slipped through the gap in the fence—”

  “Or through the second one where the Children’s Garden backs up to the kitchen garden.”

  “There’s more than one?” I asked.

  Lorenzo nodded.

  “Okay. Someone slipped through one of the many gaps and killed Frida,” I said as I started to put some of the pieces together. “Gordon returned and found Frida.”

  “The shock of it caused his heart failure, and he fell forward into the pond,” Lorenzo added as I wrote this all down on my yellow notepad.

  Lorenzo snatched the notepad out of my hands. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go look for evidence that this is what happened so we can show it to that detective friend of yours.”

  He didn’t make it more than a step when Lettie stopped singing. “Lorenzo,” she called from inside Gordon’s office, “you have to see this—

  “Oh, Cathy, you’re here, too,” she said as she poked her head out of Gordon’s office.

  “Casey,” I corrected.

  “Right,” she said. She waved a file folder in the air. “I found this in Gordon’s cabinet. Look! It’s Frida’s missing research. How do you think it got into Gordon’s office?”

  “It can’t be the same research.” Even Frida had admitted Gordon couldn’t have taken it.

  But Lettie was shaking her head. “No. Frida had let me look through her papers and notes from the Madison administration one afternoon. I remember seeing this.” She flipped through the pages. “And this. What could it mean?”

  “It means nothing,” I said. And yet I needed to be sure. I took the file and carried it to the curator’s office. Lettie and Lorenzo jogged behind me to catch up.

  The curator’s offices were located on the same floor as the grounds office, but in the main part of the White House off the north hall. The office was created in 1961 after the White House was officially declared a museum, a move that had been spearheaded by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

  The oddly shaped space had first served as a kitchen. It later became a furnace room, a servants’ dining room, and an upholstery shop before becoming the curator’s office. Bookshelves crammed with documents lined every available wall space in the windowless room.

  That’s where I found Nadeem . . . the killer spy.

  Half-moon glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read from the pages of a three-ring binder stuffed full of papers. On the top of the page he was reading was written HMS Fantome.

  The spectacles made him look scholarly, and harmless. Were they props or did he really have bad eyesight? I watched him for a moment, trying to imagine this handsome, dark-skinned man with his beguiling smile traveling the world to kill enemies of the state. He looked more like a researcher, someone who preferred to spend his days in a library rather than dodging bullets or installing bombs in world leaders’ cigars.

  I tentatively knocked on the door. I didn’t want to startle someone who might kill first and ask questions later. “Nadeem? Are you busy?”

  The way he flipped his notebook closed and jumped up from his chair made him look suspicious. “Yes? Has—has something happened?”

  Either that or his nerves were shot. If he were a spy, wouldn’t Frida’s murder just be another day at the office for him? Wouldn’t he be trained to hide his nerves?

  I handed Nadeem the file folder. “Tell me this isn’t part of the research that is missing from Frida’s files,” I said, “and we’ll get out of your way.”

  He flipped the folder open and thumbed through a few of the pages.

  “Where did you get this?” He flipped through some more pages.

  “I found it in Gordon’s office,” Lettie announced.

  Nadeem swallowed hard and slowly turned to the next page. “Let me check something.” He sat down at his desk and punched some keys on his computer. A table popped u
p on his screen. “Yes. Yes. It’s all there. This is the missing research. All except for Frida’s personal notes.”

  “How can you be sure?” I asked.

  “They’ve been indexed in this database. This is the research Frida had accused Gordon of stealing.”

  I could have kicked Nadeem for saying that in front of Lettie.

  “Ow!” Nadeem cried and grabbed his shin.

  “Sorry,” Lorenzo said. “My foot slipped.”

  I bit back a smile, but Lorenzo’s kick had come too late. Lettie pushed her way in front of me and leaned over the desk to look at the computer screen. “I knew it! This is the stolen folder,” Lettie crowed, sounding even more excited.

  “Missing,” I corrected.

  “I found it in Gordon’s file cabinet. You don’t think . . .” Lettie’s voice trembled with excitement. “It has to be . . . Gordon killed Frida because he wanted Jefferson’s lost treasure for himself. I can picture what happened now. Frida caught Gordon trying to steal the treasure, and when she confronted him—” She made a slicing motion over her throat. “We have to take this to the police.”

  “No, we don’t need to involve the police.” Lorenzo grabbed the folder. A photocopied letter fell out and fluttered to the floor.

  I snatched up the paper before Nadeem could. The assistant curator shifted nervously in his chair as I studied what looked like a copy of a letter Dolley Madison had penned a few years after her husband’s presidency. She was writing to a woman whose name I didn’t recognize.

  I read the part aloud that had immediately caught my attention. “I had entrusted Jefferson’s treasure to the gardener, a Mr. McGraw, I believe he called himself. In the pandemonium following our return to Washington and having to contend with the near-destruction of the White House, I never had a chance to quiz him about the fate of the treasure. Did the British take it as part of their spoils? My attempts to contact Mr. McGraw have been for naught, but I am continuing my efforts to locate the man in question. I am steadfast in my determination to find the treasure my friend Mr. Jefferson had left to our proud nation. I would appreciate any assistance you might provide in my endeavor.”

  Lettie punctuated the air with her finger. “Oh, it’s the treasure Cathy was talking about earlier!”

  “Casey,” I corrected.

  “I’m going to take this to the police. I’m a very good sleuth, you see. Like a young Miss Marple.” Lettie jabbed her finger in the air again. “I already know what happened.”

  Did I sound that silly when I claimed to be like Miss Marple? No, I’d never made that claim aloud. Well, maybe just once or twice . . .

  “Gordon hasn’t even looked at these files,” Lorenzo said. “He was only working on the project with Frida because he had to. Casey, how in the world do you always manage to make things worse?”

  “Me? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Exactly! You haven’t done anything to help Gordon.”

  “You were the one who suggested I should play amateur sleuth.”

  “Well, stop. You’re not helping.”

  “You were trying to solve the case, too? We should pool our mental resources, Cathy. But then again, I don’t really need help, do I?” Lettie said as she picked up the phone receiver on Nadeem’s desk. “I’m sorry to have to do this to your supervisor. I’m sure you were fond of him,” she said as she dialed. “But guilt is guilt. It would be wrong to try and cover up evidence.” She stood up straighter. “Hello? This is Lettie Shaw, the First Lady’s sister. No, I’m not in trouble. Why do you people always ask that? Listen to me. I’m in the curator’s office. And I have proof the head gardener is a murderer.”

  While Lorenzo sputtered, clearly fighting the urge to tell the First Lady’s sister she was nuts, Nadeem leaned back in his desk chair and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked oddly pleased with himself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It’s odd that you can get so anesthetized by your own pain or your own problem that you don’t quite fully share the hell of someone close to you.

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

  WHILE we waited for the Secret Service to come take a look at the folder and listen to Lettie’s wild theory, I pulled out Frida’s desk chair. I sat down with my elbows propped on my knees and my chin in my hands.

  Everything was going wrong, so wrong. I knew in my heart Gordon was innocent. Why couldn’t everyone else see it that way, too? Everyone who knew Gordon liked him. Except Frida, apparently. Was it a case of professional jealousy? Or had something else happened?

  Had that something else involved Gordon’s wife, Deloris? I hadn’t expected her cold-blooded reaction to Frida’s murder.

  My thoughts whirled while Lettie chattered excitedly, carelessly forgetting that the three people in the room with her had personally worked with and, for the most part, liked the two players in what she was now calling a “fascinating drama.”

  Nadeem watched her with a look of amusement, although he’d flinch whenever Lettie mentioned Frida’s name.

  Lorenzo, who’d never been able to hide his emotions, cursed under his breath and then stomped out into the hallway.

  Lettie just kept on talking.

  Trying my best to ignore her, I swiveled Frida’s desk chair around. Frida’s desk was clear of any papers. Was that Nadeem’s doing, or the police’s? The only thing on her normally messy desk was a small notepad.

  Although the top page was blank, I could see a faint imprint of writing, which was presumably from the last sheet that had been torn off. Was I looking at the last note Frida had written before her death? I picked up the notepad, turning it this way and that. I couldn’t make out the words.

  I grabbed a pencil from a White House coffee mug Frida had used as a pen holder and, like any junior spy knows, rubbed the lead lightly over the paper to reveal the imprint from the previous page.

  I know who you are. I know what you’re doing, appeared on the paper. I glanced over at Nadeem. He was no longer listening to Lettie but was now watching me. His brows furrowed deeply as I ripped off the page with the ominous message and stuffed it into my pocket.

  “What was that?” he asked me.

  Lettie stopped her monologue about how she was such an asset to her sister. “What was what?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just a scrap piece of paper.”

  “Oh,” Lettie said and launched back into how she was saving the taxpayers thousands of dollars by bringing the investigation to a quick close. She wondered if there would be a reward.

  Nadeem didn’t say anything. But the assessing look he gave me made the hair on the back of my neck take attention.

  Nadeem had admitted it himself. He wanted Frida’s job. And now Frida was dead. Jack was right. I needed to be careful around this ex-assassin.

  • • •

  “If the police refused to listen to her, what are you so worried about?” Alyssa asked later that evening as she chopped carrots. She had kicked off her high-heeled leather boots and was cooking, which meant trouble was brewing up on the Hill. I reached for the tops of the carrots before she could toss them into the trash, but Alyssa slapped my hand away.

  “Well?” she said, holding the leafy carrot tops hostage. “Tell me what happened after Lettie handed the papers to the police. What has you so worried?”

  “I’m worried because Manny didn’t listen to me, either. I told him about the gap in the Children’s Garden’s fencing and the missing branches from the garden. But he brushed me off. I gave him the paper from Frida’s notepad, and he barely looked at it before stuffing it into a file folder. Worse, he wouldn’t even look at me. It was as if Manny had already made up his mind that Gordon is guilty.”

  “If they’ve already sent Gordon down the figurative river, why would both the Secret Service and the police ignore Lettie’s new evidence?” Alyssa dropped the carrot tops into my hand and started chopping onions. “Why would they dismiss anything th
e First Lady’s sister tells them? That seems politically”—she paused, searching for the right word—“hazardous.”

  Alyssa was right. The Secret Service agents should have treated Lettie with the same consideration they gave any other member of the First Family—equal measures of friendliness and caution. But they’d acted as if they’d wanted to get away from Lettie as fast as possible. Had they heard her singing? The agents had handed both Lettie’s and Frida’s research over to Detective Manny Hernandez with a head-spinning speed.

  “She imagines herself a young Miss Marple,” I said.

  “Is that so?” Alyssa peered at me speculatively.

  “I bet she’s been keeping the Secret Service busy with her so-called sleuthing. I’ll have to ask Jack about it.”

  “You do that,” Alyssa sniffed when I scooped the discarded root ends of the onions from the counter and set them on the windowsill above the sink. “Where is that hunky Secret Service agent of yours anyhow?”

  “Still on duty at the White House. I left early to visit Gordon at the hospital, plus I needed to look something up at the library.” I carried the bright green carrot tops back to the kitchen table, where I had a history book open to a section that talked about the 1814 burning of the White House. “Did you know the British carried off a cache of silver flatware and china from the White House, and a wealth of gold coins from the Treasury Building?” I asked Alyssa as I read the account of the siege. As I read, I plucked all but a few small leaves from the discarded carrot tops. “The Brittish then shipped the treasures back to England on the HMS Fantome.”

  “I do remember something about that in history class,” she said as she dumped the chopped carrots and onions into a sizzling frying pan. She started working on the next set of vegetables that she planned to add to her vegetable stir-fry. “Didn’t the Fantome sink shortly after leaving port?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t say.” I made a note to find out. The HMS Fantome was written on the document Nadeem had been so quick to hide when we’d brought him the missing Dolley Madison research.