Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  “He’s quite a pill,” Dr. Wadsin said.

  “He’s good at what he does,” I felt the need to say. Even if it rarely felt that way, Lorenzo and I were, after all, supposed to be on the same team.

  “You don’t have to explain. Despite all her faults, I considered Frida my friend.”

  Soon, we were back at the Visitor Center. I gave Dr. Wadsin a big hug and thanked her for her help.

  “I’ll ask a few colleagues about what you’ve told me. If I find anything out, I’ll give you a call. We all want the same thing,” she said. “Justice.”

  “Frida deserves at least that much,” I promised.

  “What we need are Dolley Madison’s notes back,” Lorenzo said. “There’s a reason someone stole them. The key to why Frida is dead must be in those pages.”

  “That may be true,” Dr. Wadsin said. “But it’s just a file folder of old letters, such a small thing. You don’t really need it.”

  Such a small thing.

  I wanted to believe her. Truly, I did. But like the tiny but deadly rosary pea, I knew the smallest things could prove the most dangerous.

  I agreed with Lorenzo. If we were to find out what had happened in the Children’s Garden on Monday, we needed to walk in the killer’s footsteps. We needed to find out why Frida had written “I know who you are and what you’re doing” on a notepad. And more important, we needed to find out why that note proved to be a deadly threat to its mysterious recipient.

  Lorenzo and I waved good-bye to the garden historian and took the path to the gravel parking lot where we’d left the White House grounds van. As we walked, a niggle of worry tickled the back of my neck.

  I whirled around and spotted a tall man dressed in a putty-colored raincoat hurrying in the opposite direction. The mysterious man looked like Nadeem. I called his name and jogged after him. But he took off running and disappeared into the woods before either Lorenzo or I could get a good look at him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

  —MARTHA WASHINGTON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1789–1797)

  I didn’t make it home until close to nine o’clock that chilly Wednesday night. Outside, winter was nipping, anxious to rip the golden leaves from the trees. The weatherman on the radio had warned that temperatures might dip into record low territory. As a precaution, I’d carried my potted plants inside before collapsing on the sofa and tossing my arm over my eyes.

  Alyssa, dressed in gray sweatpants and her favorite pink T-shirt that had been bead-dazzled with the word Sexy across the chest, had already staked out her favorite spot on the sofa. Her feet were propped on the coffee table. Her long legs were crossed at the ankles.

  She’d taken her contacts out for the night. Oval-shaped glasses perched on her nose as she wrote notes on a stack of papers on her lap.

  Playing on the TV was one of my favorite movies, a romantic comedy. The scene unfolding on the small screen was one that always made my heart clench. As I watched it, I felt nothing as the hero kissed the heroine after telling her he was leaving. No tingling on the back of my neck. No longing tug in my chest. Nothing. I was numb.

  “What happened today?” Alyssa asked as she sipped a glass of wine. “You look worse than when you left this morning.”

  “I feel worse.” After spinning my wheels all day, I felt no closer to finding out what had happened in the Children’s Garden on Monday than I was yesterday. The only bright spot was that, after returning from the National Arboretum, Lorenzo and I set aside our differences for a few hours and made real progress listing what vegetables were grown during those first few administrations. Not that many of the seeds for those plants were commercially available. Or privately available.

  “Where’s your Secret Service man?” Alyssa asked as she marked a line through a sentence and scribbled some notes in the margin of some papers she’d brought home from the senator’s office.

  “I don’t know,” I said. And that was part—albeit a large part—of the reason I felt like my heart had taken a tumble over a rocky ledge.

  Shortly after five o’clock, Lorenzo and I had headed through the security checkpoint and out the southeast gate. It closed behind us with a loud clank as we walked over to Sherman Park.

  Located behind the Treasury Building, the small pocket park looked almost as if it were part of the White House lawn. More often than not, the park might as well be considered within the iron fence since the Secret Service used the area to line up groups prior to White House tours.

  Because of its location, the care and management of the small, square park fell under the purview of the grounds office. Our fall plantings of flowering chrysanthemums in the flowerbeds created what looked like a bumpy carpet of orange. At the center of the park was a larger-than-life statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman as he sat astride a horse atop a tall granite pedestal. Apparently, this was the spot on which Sherman had stood when reviewing the troops who were returning from the Civil War in 1865.

  I don’t know if he stood in this exact spot or hundreds of yards away. It really didn’t matter. What mattered to me was the dark-haired man dressed in jeans and a black leather jacket who was leaning against the granite base of the statue. My heart picked up a beat. I widened my stride.

  “Jack,” I called with a smile. As I closed the distance, I went to wrap my arms around him. But before I could, Lorenzo pushed his way in between us.

  “Where is it?” Lorenzo demanded of my dark knight. He must have overheard me talking with Jack on the phone earlier. I was quickly learning Lorenzo’s hearing was nearly as sharp as Frida’s had been.

  After talking with Dr. Wadsin and learning very little about how to find out more about this missing treasure, I’d contacted Jack to see if he could use his Secret Service cachet to get Manny to release Dolley Madison’s papers to him.

  “Tell me you succeeded where Casey has failed. Tell me you persuaded Manny to return the research papers,” Lorenzo said.

  “No can do.” Jack reached around Lorenzo to clasp my hand. “Hi, Casey. Manny said he’s holding on to everything until he’s completed his investigation.”

  “I can’t believe it. Casey, this is your fault, you know. You should have never let Lettie anywhere near Gordon’s files.”

  “My fault? You were practically jumping up and down with excitement when I suggested you work with Lettie. Besides, I thought you were project manager and senior assistant gardener and all. So doesn’t that mean this is your fault by default?”

  Lorenzo answered with a not-safe-for-work word.

  “Why is that one folder so important?” Jack inquired. Lorenzo let loose all of his pent-up frustrations with a string of creative gardening curses. There was one about a slug and a gardening glove that made Jack’s mouth drop open. He shook his head and asked, “Didn’t you say the file Manny found wasn’t Frida’s?”

  “You’re right. It’s not important,” I said. “Come on, Lorenzo. If you’re done venting your spleen, let’s get to the hospital.”

  “But—but,” Lorenzo sputtered. “Those papers are the only clue we can find to Thomas Jefferson’s lost treasure.”

  Jack raised a brow as he gave me an appraising look.

  “I’m sure there isn’t actually a lost treasure,” I said before Jack could ask if I’d lost my mind. “But someone seems to believe strongly enough that there’s gold—or something—buried in the South Lawn that he . . . or she . . . is willing to steal and kill for it. I was hoping that we could look for the treasure in an effort to trick the killer into acting. But without Dolley Madison’s letters and notes, our boat is as sunk as the HMS Fantome.”

  “You know the Fantome?” Marcel appeared from behind General Sherman’s statue like a magician stepping out of a sudden puff of smoke.

  I jumped
. Even Jack seemed to have been taken by surprise, which almost never happens.

  “What were you doing back there?” I asked.

  “I was studying the color contrast of the flowers with the statue in the evening light. It is complicated, do you not think so?”

  “You have been warned to stop lurking around like this,” Jack said.

  “I am beyond the fence.” He made a face. “Until I talk with the First Lady and change the inconvenient rules, I must make do how I can.”

  “You know about the Fantome?” Lorenzo asked, much to my chagrin. We had involved too many people with the investigation as it was.

  Involving Lettie had only strengthened the police’s case against Gordon. We didn’t need another busybody working to pin Frida’s murder on the wrong person.

  But it was too late. Marcel sounded only too excited to talk about the infamous ship. “Oui, oui. I have read articles about the ship’s sinking. So full of treasure, but lost at the bottom of the ocean. History is fascinating, is it not?”

  “The Fantome? More treasure?” Jack sounded amused.

  I was surprised to find out Jack already knew about the British ship that had been carrying American gold and treasures the troops had stolen from the White House in 1814.

  “It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” I said.

  “Oui, that is where I believe the First Lady’s sister will also find Monsieur Jefferson’s missing treasure, rotting away in its hull. She seems so adamant about looking for the treasure. But it will take years before anyone knows exactly what is on the Fantome. I believe I read somewhere that the English, they want to steal the treasure from the brave explorer who discovered the sunken ship. The matter . . . it is in the courts.”

  “Lettie?” I asked. “You’ve been talking to Lettie about the HMS Fantome?”

  “Oui, the lady, she seemed most interested in Monsieur Jefferson’s work. It is all she talks about. Please, pardonnez-moi. I have more to see before the darkness, it falls.” With a brisk nod in my direction and a glare in Jack’s, he shuffled out of the park and up the street toward the Treasury Building.

  “Lettie?” I said again. “Why would she be talking to Marcel about Thomas Jefferson and sunken treasures?” She wouldn’t be interested in such things unless she was . . .

  Chapter Twenty

  I wish that my husband’s friends had left him where he is, happy and contented in retirement.

  —ANNA HARRISON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1841–1841)

  NOT Lettie. Not the First Lady’s sister. She wouldn’t . . . She couldn’t . . . Could she have . . .

  Those thoughts kept circling my mind as the three of us—Lorenzo, Jack, and I—made our way to the surface parking lot that looped through the Ellipse Park, a park directly adjacent to the White House’s South Lawn. The parking lot was reserved for White House employees and was where both Lorenzo and Jack had parked that morning.

  Neither Jack nor Lorenzo said a word as we crossed the wide expanse of grass to where Jack had parked his Jeep. I wondered if the men were pondering the same thing I was. Was Lettie, flaky Lettie, guilty of murder? Why else would she be researching the HMS Fantome if she wasn’t searching for clues to where Jefferson’s missing treasure had gone?

  If Lettie was guilty, it would explain why Frida had written the anonymous note I’d found. It would have been political (and career) suicide to sign a note that baldly said, “I know who you are, and I know what you’re doing.”

  Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place as I was forced to look at Lettie’s motivations in a new light. What if she’d been working to set Gordon up to take the blame? She’d been in the general area of the garden at the time of Frida’s murder. And she’d been the one to find Gordon’s copy of Dolley Madison’s papers. But how could she have set up finding the papers? Wouldn’t it have been easier to plant the stolen copy of the notes in Gordon’s filing cabinet?

  No, that part didn’t fit. Also if Lettie needed money, why not simply ask her rich and powerful sister for help? That part didn’t fit, either.

  “No, it couldn’t be her, could it?”

  “What’s that?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled. “Just thinking something through.”

  We’d reached Jack’s Jeep. “Would you like to ride with us?” I asked Lorenzo.

  “No, I . . . um . . . have a date tonight. I’ll need to leave directly from the hospital to get there on time.”

  “A date?” I smirked as I asked. “With who?”

  As expected, his complexion darkened with embarrassment. “I already told you that I—”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t really want to know,” I said. “I’m going to stop at the bakery and pick up something for Deloris and her sons. That is, if it’s okay with you, Jack?”

  “It’s a good idea,” Jack said.

  “Good. We’ll meet you at the hospital, then,” I said to Lorenzo.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll follow along to make sure you don’t get Deloris and her sons some kind of inedible girly food,” Lorenzo said and then headed off to where he’d parked his car.

  “He’s really going to follow us to the bakery?” Jack asked as he backed out of the parking space and started driving toward my favorite bakery.

  “Apparently.”

  Jack fell silent, which wasn’t unusual for him. But in the silence, I could definitely feel tension building, which was unusual. “Did you talk to Nadeem this afternoon?” he asked.

  “He was never in the office. However, I think—”

  “Good,” Jack said before I could tell him that I might have seen Nadeem at the National Arboretum.

  “No, not good. How can I prove who killed Frida and set up Gordon if the suspects are never around?”

  A muscle in Jack’s jaw twitched. “I want you to stay away from him.”

  “Why? What have you heard?” I asked.

  Jack didn’t immediately answer. “Just stay away from him, Casey.”

  “Why?” I asked again. “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing,” he answered too quickly. He pulled a frustrated hand through his hair. “Even if Nadeem is innocent, I shudder to imagine how he’ll react if he thought you were poking around in his business.”

  “Okay.” I decided not to tell Jack about what had happened at the National Arboretum. After all, I’d probably startled an innocent tourist—not Nadeem—by charging the poor man like I had.

  Sure, Nadeem was the one who’d been acting oddly and showing up in the most unexpected places. Nadeem was the one who I’d caught researching the HMS Fantome. And Nadeem was the one who was a trained killer.

  But there were still too many questions that needed answering, like what was Lettie doing?

  It was a stellar piece of lunacy—as Grandmother Faye would say—to doubt Nadeem’s guilt and suspect the First Lady’s sister, but . . . why was Lettie so intent on proving Gordon guilty of Frida’s murder?

  Was she playing sleuth or treasure thief?

  If Frida had suspected Nadeem of being a treasure thief, she would have confronted him. In person. Not via an anonymous letter.

  Despite the heavy traffic, by the time we’d finished at the bakery and arrived at the hospital, I was still chewing on my thumb and trying to work out the puzzle that just seemed to lead me to more questions.

  Jack steered his old Jeep into a parking spot. Lorenzo parked his tan sedan next to the Jeep.

  I had looked forward to visiting Gordon all day. Although I knew he was still on a respirator and in a medically induced coma, I wanted to tell him about our progress in the gardens and how we were fighting for him. I also needed to tell him how much he meant to me.

  The Secret Service and D.C. Police still had guards posted at the entrance of the private suite at the hospital. Jack remained behind to chat with the agent on duty as Lorenzo and I hurried on through the double doors.

  Deloris, her hair and makeup as perfect as ev
er, rose from a waiting room chair when she spotted us. A thirty-something version of Gordon was slumped in the chair beside hers. He looked as if he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep in days. Another man in his late twenties, who had Deloris’s good looks, had been pacing. He turned to greet us.

  “We brought chocolate croissants,” I said, offering the bakery box. “I know they are Gordon’s favorites. I hoped you’d enjoy them, too.”

  “Thank you. They are my favorite.” Even though Deloris accepted the gift with a smile, she placed the box on a coffee table in the middle of the waiting area without even peeking inside.

  Her son wasn’t so shy. He tore into the box and took a huge bite of a croissant.

  “They are good,” he said with his mouth full.

  “Swallow before you talk.” Deloris nudged him with her elbow. “This is Kevin. And Junior is sitting over there.” She then introduced Lorenzo and me to her children as Gordon’s assistants. It was basically true—we were Gordon’s assistants. Still, I bristled at the description. I considered Gordon as close to me as my grandmother or my aunts.

  Kevin nodded since he’d stuffed the rest of the croissant into his mouth and was still chewing. He looked as if he didn’t want to take another elbow to the ribs.

  “It’s been a tough night,” Junior mumbled from where he was slumped in the chair.

  “I can only imagine,” Lorenzo said. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your father. We’re doing everything we can on our end to help him, but if you can think of anything you might need, we’ll get it for you.”

  “You are helping Gordon?” Deloris asked as if no one had told her about the impending indictment. “Helping him how?”

  When Lorenzo started to tell Deloris about Manny and his determination to bring murder charges, I stomped on his foot. “We’re helping by keeping the gardens in good order, of course. We’re working extra hard on all the projects.” I paused. “Can—Can we see him?”