Oak and Dagger

by Dorothy St. James

  “Not yet. But I’m close. I hope to have this all resolved tomorrow morning before the DA can bring charges against Gordon.”

  “Is there anything I may do to help? I could scour the gardens with you for this treasure of yours.”

  “Thank you, but no. I have—”

  “You have your Secret Service lover to help you,” he said, apparently not at all concerned I might be embarrassed to discuss my love life (or potential for a love life) with anyone, especially someone I didn’t know very well. “No, don’t deny it. I see the way he looks at you. And the way you look at him. He will help you unearth this missing treasure of yours, n’est-ce pas?”

  “You!” Special Agent Steve Sallis shouted as he charged up the stairs and into the entrance hall. “You’re in big trouble!”

  “Me? I haven’t done anything. Not lately,” I said.

  “Not you, Casey. Him!” Steve grabbed Marcel’s arm. “You were supposed to be meeting with the florist.”

  “Yes, yes. I was with the florist. She and I, we discuss—”

  “I don’t care if you were solving world hunger. You aren’t there now. You can’t roam the residence without a proper escort.”

  “I—I don’t . . .” Marcel threw up his hands. “I must do my job. I don’t understand why you try to stop me. And you speak too fast. I—I can’t understand your—”

  “Cut the crap. You understand well enough.” Steve waved over a uniformed agent. “Please, see that Mr. Beauchamp finds his way to the gatehouse. Thank you.”

  Steve was still bristling with anger as he charged back down the stairs to the ground floor.

  I followed. The scent of spices and fresh vegetables cooking grew stronger with each step. I inhaled deeply, savoring the symphony of flavors floating in the air. Thanks to the talents of the White House chef, the ground floor smelled like heaven at about this time every evening. “Why are you so mean to Marcel?”

  “Because I hate phonies,” Steve answered.

  “I don’t understand. He seems sincere. And a little frightened.”

  Steve snorted. “He’s not even French.”

  “He isn’t?” I asked. “How do you know?”

  “It was in the security check, of course. He’s Mac Baker from New Jersey. Not Marcel Beauchamp from Paris. He legally changed his name, but he can’t change his past. Everyone in the Secret Service knows he’s a fake. A fake who breaks the rules, goes where he’s not supposed to be, and then pretends he barely understands a word of English. It’s infuriating.”

  And very, very interesting.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I must make believe very hard now that I am a different kind of woman,—in some respects,— not all, thank Heaven.

  —ELLEN WILSON, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1913–1914)

  MY desk!” I exclaimed when I returned to the grounds office. I don’t know why it surprised me to find it like this anymore. Once again every inch of my desk was covered with stacks of file folders and rolled-up schematics.

  “Lorenzo, what happened out here? And why just my desk?” I stuck my head into Gordon’s office, where Lorenzo had taken up residence. The office was empty. Lorenzo was gone. He must have left for the day.

  “What’s happened?” Jack rushed into the grounds office only a few seconds behind me. “I heard there was a commotion in the entrance hall involving you and Lettie. Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay. My desk isn’t.” Lorenzo had clearly packed up and left, but not before he’d dumped all of his research on my desk. My poor desk. It was doomed to be in a perpetual state of disorder. I picked up one of the files and recognized it as part of the research Lorenzo had been doing to help us find the treasure . . . and the real killer. “I can’t believe Lorenzo gave up on Gordon.”

  “Why would he do that? And what’s going on with you and Lettie? Don’t hold out on me, Casey,” Jack said. “What’s happening?”

  “Hold out on you? What about you? Why didn’t you tell me about Marcel . . . or should I say Mac?”

  Jack retreated until he realized what he was doing. He then pulled me to him and planted his hands on my hips. “You know I can’t talk about what we find in the security reports. And we’re not talking about random visitors to the White House. You’re the one who disappeared after visiting Gordon at the hospital. And then returned with the First Lady’s sister sobbing all over your shoulder.” He caressed my face with his rough thumb. “I’m worried about you, Casey. What’s going on?”

  “I got a confession, but not the one I was expecting.” I explained to him what had happened with Lettie. “Although she might be guilty of many things, murder probably isn’t one of them. But I think I know who killed Frida.”

  He raised his brows at that. “You do?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  He stood back and crossed his arms over his chest as he watched me. “And?”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t say anything more until I have proof. I don’t want to—”

  “It’s Nadeem, isn’t it? He knows how to circumvent security systems. He’s shifty. And too interested in getting cozy with you. I don’t like it.”

  “That’s unfair. You don’t like it that I’m friendly with Nadeem, but it’s okay for you to have secret meet-ups with your ex-girlfriend?” The angry words popped out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  “No. It’s not fair, but it’s how I feel.” Jack wrapped his arms around me. Our bodies fit together like two puzzle pieces. It would be so easy to sink into his embrace. I lifted my head. Our lips were just a whisper’s distance from touching. So close I could already taste his tantalizing heat.

  I wanted to hold on to this moment and forget all about murder and betrayal and vengeful ex-girlfriends. But Gordon needed me. I had to find the killer before tomorrow afternoon when the DA was going to charge Gordon with the crime.

  “We’ll talk more about fairness later.” I turned away from his tempting lips. And pressed my fingers to his mouth when he tried to follow me. “And no, I don’t think Nadeem is involved. But he did give us an important clue. A clue I would have had days ago if you’d told me about Marcel.”

  I wiggled out of Jack’s embrace and started scooping up random file folders from my desk, dropping them on the floor, until I found my computer’s keyboard. I typed HMS Fantome in the computer’s search browser and scanned newspaper headlines until I found the one that matched the article Nadeem had showed us last night. “Here it is,” I said and clicked on the link that brought up the full article. “Cowboy Baker.” I read the name of the treasure hunter aloud. “I wonder what happened to him. Did he ever get his hands on the treasure he’d found at the bottom of the sea?”

  My next web search led me to Cowboy Baker’s obituary. I read the article aloud to Jack. Tragically, Cowboy had died with the court case still unresolved. The short obituary spoke of how he’d dedicated his life to finding lost treasures, and that he’d considered the discovery of the HMS Fantome to be both his greatest success and most disappointing failure. In his last days he’d become convinced he’d made a mistake and that the most important treasure lost during the British’s 1814 march on Washington had never made it onto his sunken ship.

  While interesting, that wasn’t the reason I’d pulled up the obituary. “Here it is.” I tapped the screen. “He is survived by . . .” I scanned the list until I reached the last name. It was tacked on almost as if it was a last-minute addition. ”. . . and a son from Cowboy’s first marriage, Mac Baker.”

  “AKA Marcel Beauchamp?” Jack said as he leaned over my shoulder to read the obituary for himself. “You might be onto something here.”

  I tamped down the excitement that started to bubble in my chest. “It’s still too early to contact Manny. Just because he’s the treasure hunter’s son, perhaps even an estranged son, it doesn’t mean he killed Frida.”

  “It doesn’t even mean he jumped on the treasure-hunting crazy wagon,” Jack added. “If we have any hope of changing
the DA’s mind, we need to get proof that Marcel is our guy.”

  “Which means I still need to force his hand and search for the treasure tomorrow morning. Only, I don’t know where to look.” I started to dig through the research on my desk. “Why has the treasure remained lost for so many years?”

  “Because it doesn’t exist? Even if a gardener buried treasure in the lawn before the British attacked, why would he leave it there? Why wouldn’t he dig it up as soon as it was safe to do so?”

  “Dolley Madison mentioned in her letters that in the confusion following that time, with the rebuilding of the White House and the need to calm the nation, the treasure had been overlooked, forgotten. Dr. Wadsin had sent over some copies of Dolley Madison’s letters written in the years right before her death that she thought might help. Where is that folder?”

  Jack reached into one of the piles and handed me the file he’d grabbed. “This file?”

  My mouth dropped open. “How did you do that?”

  He gave me one of his infuriating wouldn’t-you-like-to-know looks before admitting, “I remember seeing it on your desk yesterday and just happened to recognize the label.”

  Jack and I spent the next hour reading the many letters Dolley Madison had written to friends and family starting in 1844, when Dolley Madison moved back to Washington, D.C. A sad melancholy filled her letters as Dolley reminisced about her life at the White House. She occasionally alluded to searching for a missing item from that time, but never to a treasure.

  “Given how deeply in debt she was at the time, barely having enough money for provisions,” Jack said, “you’d think she’d be as obsessed with finding lost treasures as you seem to be.”

  “I agree.” As interesting as the letters were, they weren’t really helping us. I was about to call it quits when I reached a series of letters written in 1844 between Dolley Madison and Julia Tyler, President John Tyler’s new First Lady.

  Julia, at twenty-four years old, married John Tyler barely more than a year after his first wife’s death and found herself suddenly thrust into the social obligations of First Lady. Dolley Madison provided advice and guidance to the young First Lady. And that’s where I found a most unusual request.

  In one of the letters, sandwiched between optimal seating arrangements and suggestions for conversation topics, Dolly Madison asked Julia to look for “an item of immeasurable value” that had been lost when the British had destroyed the White House. She noted that she’d recently discovered from someone who knew someone who once knew Thomas McGraw, the White House gardener during Dolley Madison’s time, that this “item” might have been buried next to the third tree in Thomas Jefferson’s allée of little-leaf linden trees.

  “This is it! The clue Frida and our mysterious treasure hunter had used to search for the treasure,” I announced as I dug through the rolled-up schematics on my desk for the old South Lawn schematic. I’d marked on the schematic where the allée of lindens had originally been planted.

  “But Casey,” Jack said as he read through the reply Julia Tyler had sent several weeks later. “She had the gardeners dig up the area, and nothing was found.”

  “She did?” I chewed the inside of my mouth. It looked as if we’d hit yet another dead end. Perhaps Thomas McGraw stole the treasure. Or perhaps some treasure hunter had found it decades ago. Or perhaps . . .

  “Gordon was trying to tell me what happened to the treasure, Jack.” My heart pounded like a drum in my chest. “He wasn’t confessing. He said the treasure wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t there. Many things changed after the White House had been rebuilt. I bet the allée of lindens was relocated.”

  I dug through the archived schematics Lorenzo had dumped on my desk. He’d been reviewing them to see what, if anything, matched where the most recent holes in the South Lawn had been appearing.

  And Lorenzo was right—in 1814 when the treasure would have been buried, that part of the lawn had been . . . just lawn. But when I reviewed a rendering of the South Lawn that showed the location of the gardens and plantings shortly after the White House had been rebuilt, I discovered that Jefferson’s allée of little-leaf lindens had been moved.

  This new location perfectly matched where we’d found the holes in the lawn . . . and it was nowhere near where Jefferson had planted the original allée.

  “No one has found the treasure because everyone has been searching in the wrong place,” I said.

  “That may be true, but it’s flimsy evidence and still won’t prove to Manny that Gordon is innocent,” Jack warned.

  “Which brings us back to my original plan: I need to dig up the treasure. That’ll force the killer to act.”

  “No, Casey. It’s too risky.”

  “Not necessarily. Not if I’m smart about this.”

  Jack grabbed my hands and pulled me out of my desk chair and into his arms again. “I don’t like how you keep talking as if you’re on your own. We’re in this together.”

  When I started to protest, he pressed his finger against my lips. “I know you have doubts about my feelings toward you, but you’re wrong. I care for you, Casey. More than you can ever know. I die a hundred torturous deaths every time you put your life in danger. Please—”

  I kissed him. It seemed to be the only way to get him to stop talking.

  Once I caught my breath—Jack was an expert when it came to seducing me with his lips—I explained my plan.

  Jack listened and helped refine certain points. And once we were done, even he agreed that nothing could possibly go wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  A woman is like a tea bag—you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

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

  THE next morning, I arrived at the White House before sunrise. Save for the distant clank of pots and pans in the kitchen, the hallways were silent. The quiet seemed to amplify my jangling nerves as I flipped on the lights in the grounds office. The fluorescent lights flickered on, bathing the room in a light that felt too bright for the predawn hour. Soon the White House would be bursting with life, but now it felt as if I were in the belly of a sleeping dragon. Waiting.

  I finished up my most pressing projects, such as sending Seth the plans for the rescheduled tree planting, and started searching again for plants to grow in the founding fathers’ kitchen garden. A depressing task. Much of the rich diversity available to our forefathers to grow in their gardens was forever lost to us.

  According to the large industrial clock hanging over the office door, Jack should have arrived for duty by now. I pushed back my desk chair and went searching for him.

  I found him in the Palm Room. He was entering the room from the West Colonnade, and I was entering from the main residence.

  Thatch was with him. Both men were dressed in solid black battle dress uniform complete with assault rifles.

  “Um, Jack, I was wondering if you had a moment,” I said. They looked as if they were getting ready to go on patrol. “I, um, wanted to discuss that project the grounds office is working on.”

  Of course, Jack, a member of the CAT, would never be the agent to consult with on gardening projects, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  “You don’t have to pretend around me,” Thatch said. “I know what you’re up to.”

  “You do?” I cringed, fully expecting him to explode with raging fury.

  “I briefed him on our plan this morning,” Jack said in the awkward silence that followed. “I had to.”

  My shoulders dropped. “I understand.” I turned around and started back toward the grounds office.

  “Where are you going?” Thatch demanded.

  “Back to my office.”

  “Why?” Thatch snapped. “We need to get this started.”

  “Really?” I whirled back around. “Now?”

  “In a minute,” Jack said. “Marcel has arrived. He’s in the florist shop, but . . .” Both Jack and That
ch listened to their earpieces while I bounced anxiously on the balls of my feet.

  “Okay, now we can go. Nadeem has just gone into his office,” Thatch said.

  “Nadeem?” I said.

  “We’re simply covering all our bases,” Jack said with an easy smile. “Now don’t frown like that. You won’t be in any danger out there.”

  “I know.” And I also knew there wasn’t any way on God’s green earth that Nadeem was a killer. But I kept that part to myself.

  In advance of when the President or the First Lady visits the South Lawn, the Counter Assault Team moves into position in the bushes with their assault rifles ready for any contingency. That’s what Thatch and Jack were doing now.

  I waited ten minutes and then headed out to the grounds shed to fetch a shovel. The sky was a dark predawn gray. A light scent of dried leaves hung in the cool air.

  A car honked in the distance as I crossed the lawn with the same red-handled shovel the President had used for last Monday’s tree planting. I scanned the shadowy bushes, searching for Jack or Thatch. I couldn’t find either of them.

  I passed the kitchen garden with its empty rows of bare earth. Gordon’s friends from the USDA were scheduled to arrive in a few hours to install the hoop houses. I passed the South Fountain, its water making a soothing shushing sound in the still air.

  I then pulled out the schematic and paced out where the third tree in the original allée would have been planted.

  “This must be the spot,” I said aloud, sure that Jack and Thatch were listening.

  I thrust my shovel into the ground. As I dug, the leaves on the nearby trees trembled as if someone was moving through them. I glanced up, but saw only long predawn shadows. My heart thudded heavily in my chest as I waited for Marcel to make his presence known.