Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  Behind a draped partition in the large, wood-paneled hospital room, we found Gordon looking like a sultan draped in sheets and surrounded by pillows in his elevated hospital bed. A blue monitor beside the bed beeped softly.

  “Hel-lo.” His voice sounded muffled as if he had cotton stuffed in his mouth. He looked pale. His skin sagged as if it was too loose for his face. But his blue eyes sparked with life when he spotted Lorenzo and me. “Ca-sey,” he rasped.

  “I’m here, Gordon.” I rushed to his side. “Do you need anything? Water?”

  “No, no water. The allée of little-leaf lindens, Casey.”

  “Yes, Gordon.” I patted his hand. His skin felt as fragile as dried leaves. “We’re rescheduling the President’s commemorative tree planting.”

  “No. No.” He thrashed around in the bed. “Not there.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’ve relocated it. And Lorenzo has re-created the lost schematic for the South Lawn. There won’t be any problems this next time. I promise.”

  He nodded and swallowed several times. “You’re a good girl. Both you and Lorenzo . . . you two are like the children I never had.”

  That was an odd thing for him to say.

  “Your boys are here. Kevin is by the window,” I said gently, in case he was confused about the identity of the young man standing by the window. “Junior took your wife to an early dinner.”

  Gordon tightened his grip on my hand. “They hate gar- dening.”

  “We do,” Kevin agreed. “I’m glad he has the two of you.”

  “It doesn’t upset you?” I asked.

  “Why should it?” Kevin said. “He’s happy. And we’re not constantly being pestered about raking leaves or mucking around in his backyard. It’s a win-win.”

  “I see.” I smiled and shook my head.

  “They’re good lawyers.” A weak smile tugged at Gordon’s dry lips. “Always could talk their way out of their chores.”

  “Don’t listen to him. He never let us get away with anything,” Kevin protested as he laughed.

  We laughed with him. It felt good to laugh.

  “Gordon,” Lorenzo said, “do you remember anything about Monday? We’ve been trying to piece together what happened in the Children’s Garden, but we’ve hit one dead end after another.”

  Gordon closed his eyes. “No.” His breathing sped up. He started to pant as his head thrashed side to side. “She’s dead,” he said.

  Kevin shot to his feet. “I should get the doctor,” he said and left the room.

  “Gordon, it’s okay. You’re safe now.” I held on to his hand. “Take a deep breath. You’re safe.”

  “Did you see anyone in the garden? Anyone other than Frida?” Lorenzo pressed.

  “Frida,” he growled. “Stupid, stupid woman. The treasure. It’s not there. It’s not there. Frida. She started shouting. But the treasure. Her damned treasure. It wasn’t there. The hole. It was empty. Of course it was empty. Frida didn’t know.”

  Was it me, or had the room suddenly turned to ice?

  “Gordon, what . . . are . . . you saying?” I whispered.

  “She needed to be silenced.” Gordon’s voice grew weak. I lowered my ear to his mouth and even then could barely hear him as he repeated over and over. “She needed to be silenced.”

  The doctor and a couple of nurses rushed into the room with Kevin following. The nurses nudged Lorenzo and me out of the way as the doctor checked on Gordon’s vital signs.

  The medical staff talked in steady, hushed voices. They reminded me of the buzzing of honeybees back in the kitchen garden.

  Or was that my head that was buzzing?

  I looked over at Lorenzo. He’d backed into the corner by the window. His fingers were digging deeply into the arms of his sleeves. All of the color had drained from his face.

  “Gordon?” he mouthed to me.

  • • •

  LORENZO AND I LEFT THE HOSPITAL WITHOUT discussing what we’d heard or what either of us planned to do about it. I didn’t know where Lorenzo was headed. Nor did I know where I was going until I ended up wandering through a gap in a large granite stone mountain jutting out from the eastern end of the tidal basin known as the Mountain of Despair.

  The clouds had cleared. The sun hung like a bright beacon in the early November sky. A herd of schoolchildren ran past. A little girl squealed with delight as she pointed to the large structure beyond the mountain.

  I hugged myself as I surveyed the tidal basin’s ancient cherry trees intermixed with a new planting of crepe myrtles, liriope, English yew, and jasmine. The jasmine reminded me of my home in the Lowcountry of South Carolina.

  I walked around the granite boulder that had been pushed out of the Mountain of Despair and found an empty bench to contemplate what had happened at the hospital. The police and Secret Service both felt as if they had enough evidence to prove Gordon had killed Frida. What if they were right? What if Gordon did do the awful deed?

  After Frida’s death the strange thefts had stopped. Neither Lorenzo nor I had been especially secretive as we searched through Dolley Madison’s files for clues to the treasure’s location and no one had threatened us.

  Only Milo continued to dig holes in the lawn. And all in one general spot, too. I’d thought the killer had been digging the holes, and having Milo cover the tracks with his digging. But what if I’d been wrong? What if Milo had continued to dig the holes after Frida’s death as a learned behavior on the overgrown puppy’s part?

  Had the thefts and odd happenings stopped because Gordon had been in a coma and was unable to cause any more trouble?

  My phone started to sing, indicating an incoming text message. I checked its readout. Seth was looking for my site plan for Monday’s commemorative tree planting. He needed it on his desk ASAP. Just as I hit Ignore, another text came in. Again, from Seth. FLOTUS asking for full list of seeds procured for the founding fathers’ garden. Wants project to move forward ASAP.

  I’d been able to find a few seeds. Too few.

  My shoulders dropped in defeat. I’d contacted seed savers, plant historians at obscure arboretums, and seed banks searching for the seeds I needed, to no avail. Most of the plants simply no longer existed, at least not in the form that the founding fathers would have served at their dinner table.

  I hadn’t wanted to believe Dr. Wadsin, but her dire prediction that I’d run into trouble had been spot on. I’d learned from the last seed saver I’d contacted that a staggering ninety-seven percent of the vegetable crops being grown at the turn of the twentieth century were now extinct.

  I was going to have to tell the First Lady that I’d failed. There’d be no founding fathers’ vegetable garden this spring. At least not like the one we’d envisioned.

  I’d failed with the President’s commemorative tree planting—when had a tree planting ever blown up in anyone’s face? I’d failed to find the vegetable seeds. And now I’d failed to save Gordon.

  What was it about the father figures in my life? Was I doomed to cling to men with murderous streaks? Or had Gordon been able to get through my iron-clad emotional defenses because he was too much like my father?

  But my father wasn’t a murderer.

  The schoolchildren had moved on to another site, leaving me alone in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to contemplate what, if anything, I was going to do with this new piece of information.

  “She needed to be silenced,” Gordon had said about Frida. Not exactly a confession. But . . .

  Kelly Clarkson started to sing about being stronger on my cell phone. Even though I didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, I answered.

  “Casey? Where have you been?” It was Jack. He must have picked up a new phone since Simone had smashed his. “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”

  “I—I, um . . .” I stared at the massive granite stone that had been pushed out from the Mountain of Despair. A larger-than-life figure of Martin Luther King Jr. was carved into the rock
as if he was emerging from the mountain. The memorial designer called the sculpture the Stone of Hope.

  I could use a healthy dose of hope right now.

  “Talk to me, Casey. Lorenzo wouldn’t tell me what’s going on or where’d you’d gone. He’s being nice. I mean, he . . . he complimented your gardening skills. Why would he do that? What’s happening? How’s Gordon?”

  “He’s . . .” What could I say? Did I tell Jack that I heard our beloved head gardener confess to murder? He’d feel duty-bound to report it to Manny, which would only strengthen the DA’s case. I respected Jack too much to put him in that kind of difficult position.

  “Casey? Where are you? I’m coming over.”

  “No, don’t do that. I need some time alone.”

  There was a long pause. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Gordon’s still weak. So weak. And confused.” That must be it. He must have been confused. “I just need time.”

  There was another long stretch of uncomfortable silence. Jack did that sometimes when trying to get more information. The interrogation technique wasn’t going to work this time. I wasn’t going to be the one to condemn Gordon.

  “Okay,” Jack said with a resigned sigh. After assuring me Lorenzo was keeping a close eye on Lettie and setting up a dinner date for tonight where we could have a mini-council of war, Jack reluctantly disconnected the call.

  I stared at the Stone of Hope, wondering what the heck I was going to do. Things were looking blacker than a devil’s heart. At times like these, my grandmother would tell me to keep my chin up because that would be the only way I could see the good things coming down the road.

  My father wanted back in my life. That was something I needed to tell Grandmother Faye. Though she tried to hide her feelings from the rest of us, I could tell she fiercely missed and worried every day about her fugitive son. She deserved to know he was alive.

  I reluctantly pulled my phone from my pocket again. But instead of dialing the number for Rosebrook, I punched in the number for someone I never thought I’d call.

  “Hello, Nadeem?” I said.

  “Casey! Have you spoken with Jack? He’s been trying to get in touch with you.”

  “I’ve talked with him.”

  “What’s going on? Where have you been? You’ve had us all worried.”

  “I needed some time to think.”

  “I can understand that.” He tried the long silence technique on me as well.

  I closed my eyes.

  “Casey? Are you still there?”

  “Yes. I just . . .”

  I don’t know why it was so difficult to say the words. I tapped my foot on the pavement. The Calhoun women might be eccentric and even the tiniest bit foolhardy, but we weren’t cowards.

  My foot kept tapping a quick beat on the pavement. “I think it’s time I met my father.”

  • • •

  NADEEM WASTED NO TIME IN SETTING THINGS up. Less than an hour after my phone call to him I walked up to the red brick row houses on O Street in Dupont Circle. Three of the houses had been joined together to create the Mansion on O Street, a hotel and restaurant known for its theme rooms, fancy events, and Sunday teas. In recent decades every President had stayed in the hotel’s special presidential suite at least once prior to his inauguration.

  A tall, attractive woman dressed all in black greeted me at the door. She lit up like a halogen lightbulb at the mention of James Calhoun. Before she left to check on whether he was in residence, she directed me into a sitting room just off the front foyer. I perched nervously on the edge of a flowered sofa that was at the center of a room crammed with artwork and collectible knickknacks available for sale, and I waited. A friendly member of the waitstaff carried in a pot of chamomile tea and a delicate bone China teacup.

  I took a sip of the flavorful tea. Even it couldn’t ease the tension coiled around my throat. The clock hanging on the wall looked like an orange tabby cat, with great big eyes that moved from side to side and a tail that swished with each passing second.

  Ten minutes passed.

  Fifteen minutes.

  I finished most of the tea. Tired of waiting, I rose from the sofa and swung my backpack over my shoulder. A loud creak stopped me in my tracks as one of the room’s bookcases swung out to reveal a secret passage.

  Startled, I jumped back. My backpack knocked over a small figurine of a shepherdess that had been sitting on one of the sofa’s end tables. The poor shepherdess tumbled off the table to smash into a thousand pieces on the hardwood floor.

  I glanced at shattered porcelain and then back at the opening in the wall. The man who emerged from the other room wasn’t the towering hero everyone had been telling me about, but the unfriendly guy who protested in front of the White House.

  He leaned heavily on his cane as he hobbled into the room. “Let me help you with that,” he said, wagging a crooked finger at the smashed figurine.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got it.” My hands trembled as I scooped up the broken pieces and set them on the table. “I suppose I’ve bought it.” I turned the broken piece with the price tag around in my hand. “It won’t break the bank.”

  “Glad to hear it. Do you mind if I sit with you a bit? It’s been a long day.” He settled on the sofa where I’d been seated.

  “I was supposed to meet someone,” I said. It was twenty-five minutes past the hour. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

  The old man thumped his cane on the floor. “You were stood up? Impossible!”

  I smiled at his burst of anger on my behalf. “It’s okay. I think I’d much rather talk with you.” I glanced at the shattered shepherdess on the end table. “I don’t think I was ready to meet the man who was supposed to come. I doubt I ever will be.”

  “That sounds ominous. Who were you waiting for?”

  I thought about how I should answer that before saying, “No one important.”

  “Hm . . . Should I call you on that lie or change the subject? No, don’t worry,” he swiftly added. “I know who you’re meeting is none of my business, so I’ll change the subject. How is Gordon doing?” His voice was gentle and nearly as soothing as the chamomile tea.

  “He’s finally awake.”

  “But that troubles you?” He tapped the sofa cushion, inviting me to sit next to him.

  “The murder investigation troubles me,” I said after joining him on the sofa. “What if Gordon isn’t the man I think he is? What if—”

  “No one ever is truly who they appear to be on the outside,” the old man said. “We all wear masks of some form or another.”

  “But—”

  He clutched my hand in his. “Listen to me, Casey. Forget the evidence that has been thrust upon you. Trust what you feel in your heart. If your heart tells you that Gordon Sims is innocent, then you have to believe it. You have to fight to make others believe it.”

  “But he practically confessed to the crime when I visited him.” I don’t know why I’d said that, and to a man who was a stranger to me. But once I’d started, it was as if a dam had broken. The words I had been too afraid to tell Jack or anyone else poured out of me. “Gordon knew all about the treasure. He said that Frida knew too much and had to be silenced. I don’t want to believe it, but he confessed to the crime.”

  “Did he?” the old protestor asked.

  “I think so.”

  “What exactly did he say?” When I hesitated, he added, “You can trust this old protestor. I won’t say anything to help the fuzz.”

  I had to smile. “That’s what my aunt Willow calls the police.”

  I then related what I could remember about the conversation Lorenzo and I had with Gordon. His frown deepened with each new detail.

  “Listen to me going on and on. You’re so easy to talk to. I appreciate your company,” I said, realizing I’d taken up too much of this nice man’s time.

  “What about the thefts you were telling me about? How are they connected to Gordon killing Frida?”
he asked, tapping his finger to his chin.

  “The killer needed the papers to help him find the treasure. Wait a minute. Why would Gordon steal the schematic to the South Lawn when he could have access to it at all times?”

  “Good point.” He leaned heavily on his cane as he rose to leave. “I’ve only met one other woman as clever as you are. Lord, I miss that girl more than a flower misses the sun.”

  He started to walk away.

  “Wait. You’ve never told me your name,” I said.

  He extended his hand. “I’m James.” He hesitated. “James Calhoun.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.”

  —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1933–1945)

  “YOU?” I shot up from the sofa. “You’re my—”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  My emotions erupted in a blinding flash. I suddenly couldn’t catch my breath. I sank back to the sofa and buried my face in my hands.

  “Why? Why did you abandon us? How could you? She died. Because of you, she died.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen that way.”

  I lifted my head. The old protestor . . . um . . . my father started to pace. It was a slow, uneven gait as he leaned heavily on his cane.

  “I left because your mom and I thought that if I ran, the Yurkov brothers would follow me. They were hunting us because of the information we’d found.”

  “But it didn’t happen that way,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No . . . It didn’t. We were set up.”

  “Who were they, these Yurkov brothers?”

  “KGB.” His icy gaze made goose bumps run up my arms. “They were part of a large sleeper cell in the U.S. You don’t have to worry about them, though. Justice was served.”

  “So if they were gone, why didn’t you come back for me? For two years I was lost in the foster system. No one knew my identity. Or if they did, they ignored it. They sure as heck knew who you were. Your name was plastered in the newspapers, even. How could you have let that happen? How could you have let me suffer alone?”