Oak and Dagger (14 page)

“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)

W
HILE
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 the 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.

What if Nadeem had applied for the assistant curator position not because of a burning desire to learn from Frida, or to sabotage the talks with Turbekistan, but because he was searching for lost treasure? His arrival at the White House had marked the start of trouble between Frida and Gordon.

But if D.C.'s treasures from that time period ended up on a sunken ship, why would Nadeem be searching for Thomas Jefferson's treasure at the White House?

“Oh, well. It doesn't matter anyhow. He wasn't in the garden at the time of Frida's death,” I said. “He told me that he'd left her before she entered the Children's Garden.”

“What's that?” Alyssa asked as she dumped the last of her vegetables into the frying pan.

“Nothing. Just thinking something through.” There was no way I was going to tell Alyssa she'd been right about Nadeem. Encouraging her generally led to trouble.

So I closed the book and then pulled several wineglasses from the kitchen cabinet's top shelf. “Have you heard from Barry about . . . this morning?”

“You mean about the article you refuse to pitch into the trash? Yeah, he called back. He got all prickly about it, too. Wanted to know why I was asking about James Calhoun's whereabouts and then put his supervisor on. The jerk. I asked him to do me a simple favor, and he turned it into some big federal case.”

Ah. That was why she was cooking tonight. Guy trouble.

“So he had no answers for you?” I asked as I filled each wineglass with a little water before setting a carrot top in the water.

“No. What in the world are you doing?” Alyssa asked as she stirred our dinner.

“I'm gardening.” She should have known that about me by now. When I had a problem to work through, I needed to keep my hands busy with gardening . . . even if it meant making do with the materials at hand.

“Gardening in wineglasses? That's a new one.”

I lined up the glasses on the plant shelves I'd built in front of the kitchen window. “I'm rooting the carrot tops. When I plant them outside in the spring, the swallowtail butterflies will love their leafy greens.”

“Okay. And the bottoms of the onions?”

“Once they dry out a bit, I'll plant them. They'll eventually grow new onions.”

“Only
you'd
think of that.” Alyssa shook her head. “How's Gordon?”

“The same, I'm afraid. The nurse promised that no change was still good news at this point,” I was quick to add. “Is dinner ready yet?”

“The rice still needs five minutes,” she answered.

I'd started setting the table when the doorbell buzzed.

“It's your turn,” Alyssa said from the stove.

I wasn't sure whose turn it was to answer the door; not that it mattered. She was cooking. I wasn't. My stomach grumbled with every step through the living room and to the front foyer. I peeked out the window and smiled.

My hunger forgotten, I eagerly swung the door open.

Jack, dressed in jeans and a black leather coat, leaned against the door frame.

“Just the guy I was hoping to see,” I said. “Would you like to come inside? I could split my dinner with you.”

The way he backed away, you'd have thought I'd told him that I'd just armed a bomb. “You—you cooked?”

“No, Alyssa is cooking. Thai, I think.”

“Oh.” The corners of his lips hitched up just a smidge. “You had me worried there for a moment. After the last time you tried to cook for me, I now have the fire department on speed dial.”

I gave him a playful push. “Very funny. Are you coming in?”

“Alyssa's in the kitchen?”

I nodded.

“Let's keep what I've learned this afternoon between the two of us for right now. Besides, I could use a little alone time with you.” His gaze brushed against me like a tender caress before zeroing in on the entrance to the basement apartment. His shoulders dropped. “So that's where he lives.”

“It is,” I said.

“Is he home?”

“I don't know.”

Jack gave a single stiff nod. Clearly he didn't like my new living arrangements. And I didn't like an unhappy Jack.

I grabbed his hand. “Since you're not interested in coming inside, let's go for a walk around the block.” The storm had passed, leaving in its wake a brisk evening and a large harvest moon hanging low in the sky. A cold wind gusted down the street.

“I've been thinking about what happened today with Lettie.” I tucked my arm around his and snuggled against his warmth. We fit together nicely. “What's going on with her?”

“You know I can't discuss the First Family,” Jack said.

“I know, but this is me. I'm not going to run to the press. Is Lettie giving the agents a hard time? They acted as if she had the plague this afternoon.”

“There have been a few . . .” He shook his head. “I can't talk about it.”

“She's irritating, isn't she? I get that. Don't forget that Seth sent her to help in the grounds office. Barely an hour into her task, she stumbles across the missing Dolley Madison research—purely by chance—and she thinks she's the greatest sleuth ever.”

Jack stopped and glanced over at me. “Can't take the competition?”

“As if,” I huffed. “She thinks Gordon is guilty. Anyone with half a brain can see he's not.”

“Detective Hernandez would disagree with you, and he's a smart guy.”

“He's being rushed. He'll change his mind once he looks at all the pieces.”

“Unfortunately, no one can seem to find those pieces. That's why we need to gather them together for him.”

“I handed over the imprint of that threatening note Frida had written, and Manny barely looked at it. Frida wouldn't have written ‘I know who you are' to Gordon. She'd just go and yell at him. It has to be someone she didn't know well.”

“Or someone she was afraid of,” Jack suggested. “It's almost as if she didn't want the recipient of the note to know she wrote it.”

He had a point. Frida hadn't signed the note.

“Neither of us knows all the details of the investigation,” Jack continued. “Manny's keeping his mouth shut. He might already have the original note. Or he can't use what you found because you removed it from where you found it. Anyone could have written that note you discovered. If you find evidence, tell someone about it, but leave it for the professionals to pick up. It's important to their job and may help Gordon.”

“You're right. I should have already known that,” I said. I'd read enough mystery novels to have picked up a thing or two about police procedure. “It's just Nadeem was watching me, and I got nervous and shoved it in my pocket.”

Jack drew a slow, controlled breath. “Nadeem. I'm worried about your working with him. The information on his background is locked up tighter than . . . than . . . the White House.” He shook his head. “I don't know how he got clearance for the assistant curator position. I sure as hell wouldn't have given it to him.”

“Most of the time Nadeem acts like a nervous assistant. Are you certain your sources are right about his past? He's not at all suave and smooth like an international spy.”

“Believe me, Casey, the movies don't always get it right. Most of the spies I've met act like bumbling idiots. Who would you suspect of espionage—the sophisticated, cool-under-pressure playboy or the dimwitted, jump-at-his-shadow tourist?”

“The playboy. Oh, I see what you're saying. Well, it doesn't matter because I know Nadeem isn't our guy. After all, he came over and talked with me before Frida entered the Children's Garden. So he couldn't have murdered her.”