Oak and Dagger (27 page)

Chapter Thirty

No news at 4:30 a.m. is good.

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

L
ETTIE
clung to me with her arms wrapped around my shoulders like an exhausted child as I guided her back to the White House. “I'm such a failure, Cathy,” she wailed as we entered through the North Portico.

Chief Usher Ambrose Jones stepped out of his office, located next to the front door, to see what the commotion was about. When he spotted Lettie in hysterics, he made haste backtracking to his office and closed the door behind him.

“How can I ever face Mags again?” Lettie released me and turned around and around in the large entrance hall. “She's so perfect. Look at this place. She's the freaking First Lady of the United States. She's never made any mistakes in her life. Not one.” Sobbing with renewed vigor, she collapsed against me again.

“That's not true, Lettie. Just this summer Margaret realized she'd been neglecting some of the most important power players in Washington. Her oversight threatened to collapse President Bradley's political support structure from the inside out.”

She lifted her head from my damp shoulder. “Really? She did that?”

I nodded. “We all make mistakes. It's the owning up to our mistakes and doing what needs to be done to make it right that defines us, that gives us grace. Are you willing to do that?”

“What has happened?” President Bradley demanded, giving Lettie the perfect opportunity to do the right thing. Dressed in a suit with his tie loosened and his coat draped over his arm, he had a strained expression that made me wonder if this was one more crisis than he was prepared to handle today. Even so, his gait increased in length as he closed the distance between us in the grand entrance hall. “Lettie? What's wrong?”

When his personal secretary surged forward to intercept his sobbing sister-in-law, he waved her off. “I'll take care of this.”

“Oh, John, I am so sorry!” Lettie cried.

“Not here,” he said and looked genuinely concerned for his wife's sister as he led us into the adjacent Green Room. He took the time to close each of its many doors.

Thomas Jefferson once used the Green Room as a dining room with a green floor covering. James Madison converted the room to a sitting room, which was its use today. In this very room in 1812, Madison signed the nation's first declaration of war. Two years later the British, in retaliation, burned the White House to the ground. And had—apparently—been the reason a priceless treasure had been buried and lost somewhere in the South Lawn.

President Bradley didn't look as if he was thinking about the history of the room with its green silk-covered walls, or how the events that had happened in this very spot two hundred years ago may have led to a very modern murder. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “I've been patient with you,” he said to Lettie.

This was a private family moment I had no business witnessing. I tried to quietly move toward the door, but Lettie refused to loosen her grip on my arm.

“I didn't mean to hurt anyone,” she whispered, squeezing my arm with bruising strength. “It's just—just that—”

“You've been drinking again,” Bradley said not unkindly.

Lettie nodded.

“Did it start before or after your troubles at the college and with your marriage?”

“Before.” Her voice sounded small, distant. “I—I met . . .”

“Another man, Lettie? Again?” Bradley walked over to gaze into a round gilded mirror hanging on the far wall. “And I suppose you liked to go out drinking with him?”

She pressed her face to my shoulder and started sobbing again. “I didn't mean to. I didn't mean for him to . . . He loaned me money. I don't even remember what I spent it on. But when it was gone, he loaned me more money.”

“Not again, Lettie,” Bradley said, still gazing into the mirror as if he could wish his problems away. “How much this time?”

“He said that he loved me and didn't need it back right away. But then things changed. He's been threatening to go to the press. I thought that maybe I could use . . .”

Bradley turned away from the mirror. “I don't understand.”

Lettie looked to me for help. I nodded encouragingly. This was something she needed to own up to. In halting sentences, she explained to her brother-in-law her money troubles and how she'd planned to sell pictures of his wife and two young babies.

“Do you have the pictures?” He held out his hand.

“Cathy has them,” Lettie said.

Without bothering to correct Lettie, I handed the President the folder. He nodded as he looked through the pile of pictures. “These are all very similar to the shots we're going to release to the press tomorrow morning.”

Lettie sniffled. “I know. Although I needed the money I didn't want to hurt Mags and her boys. But it seems I've hurt her. And I don't have the money. I've gotten myself into a real pickle, John.”

“Yes, you have.” He pulled her into his arms and held her as she cried some more. “But you're family, Lettie. We'll take care of this together. And we'll get you help. I promise. We won't let you face this alone.”

Smiling to myself, I started quietly for the door.

“Casey,” Bradley whispered over Lettie's shoulder. “Thank you.”

I nodded.

• • • 

NOT TEN FEET OUTSIDE THE GREEN ROOM I RAN
into Marcel Beauchamp. His round belly bounced as he followed me across the colonnade in the entrance hall. “Casey, the President, is he in that room? I have a desperate need to speak with him.”

“He's busy right now. Perhaps his secretary is still waiting somewhere near here?” I looked around, but the entrance hall was now curiously empty.

“It is most urgent that I get an extension. Monday is impossible. Creativity cannot be rushed,” Marcel explained.

“I doubt he'll have time to talk with you,” I warned. But he looked so upset, with his round flushed cheeks and quivering brow, I wanted to help him. “Have you spoken with the First Lady's secretary?”

“
Mais oui
, I have. No one in the East Wing understands the artistic process. I'm sure President Bradley, he is a smart man, will give me the additional time. You understand the need for time, do you not? With Gordon, he is to be charged with the murder tomorrow. It must be most troubling to you, with your work to clear his name. Have you found your proof? I overheard you tell the gendarmes that you know how to find the treasure Lettie has been so intent on uncovering. Have you done so? Do you know where the treasure is hidden?”

“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)

M
Y
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.