Flowerbed of State (29 page)

“Right. And by doing this over the summer season, hopefully we can wean the lawn off its dependence on chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.”

Gordon nodded thoughtfully. “That could work.”

“As for the vegetable garden,” I continued, “that’s the First Lady’s project. I’ve not really heard anyone criticize growing a few vegetables in the South Lawn. So that can still go forward as planned.”

“No one can fault the family for wanting to have fresh backyard vegetables,” Gordon agreed. “It’s an American tradition.”

“Okay. So do we have a plan?” I asked.

“Sounds like one to me,” Gordon said.

“The rest we can add in over the next couple of years. It’ll be gradual. If something doesn’t work, we’ll stop and reconsider. Do you think the committee will go for that?”

“With my support they will,” Gordon said.

“Will you support it?”

I held my breath, waiting.

When Gordon nodded, I threw my arms around him and gave him a hug big enough to cover the entire south coast and left him blushing a bright red that extended deep into his hairline.

“Don’t forget about Griffon Parker.” Lorenzo tapped the cartoon. “It doesn’t matter what the committee thinks. If public opinion swings against the plan, it’s done.”

“What can I do to fix that end of things?”

“Nothing publicly,” Gordon reminded me. “This is the First Lady’s house. But you might try giving Senator Pendergast a call.”

“I did talk to her a little bit yesterday.”

“Good. Keep working that angle. I’m sure that’s where Parker is getting his information. No one on the committee would be foolish enough to talk to the press about White House affairs, not without prior approval. As you know, Senator Pendergast has been unhappy with both the President and the First Lady because of their deep friendships in the banking world.”

I remembered the senator making those rather sharp accusations to the First Lady the other day. “And yet, she’s kept quiet about those accusations to the press.”

“Have you seen her approval numbers? They’re not good. She’s up for reelection and facing a tough battle,” Gordon pointed out. “The President, on the other hand, is riding high with his approval numbers right now, especially in the senator’s home district. It’d be political suicide to attack either him or his wife directly.”

“So she’s attacking me?”

“I’m sure that’s not all she’s doing. But it’s her most visible attack, and safest. She’s mainly complaining about the cost of the program.”

“But it’s not costly!”

“Doesn’t matter. All she has to do is put the question out there in order to swing public opinion. Don’t forget all the special news reports that have been questioning whether or not the President will support strong regulations against an industry that seems to have him in their pocket.”

“You think the senator is behind those negative news reports as well?”

Gordon shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. If you want to try and swing public opinion back our way, keep working on the senator. See if you can’t win her over with this new plan of ours. And I’ll talk with the committee.”

“Okay, we can do this.” I hoped.

While Gordon went to oversee the crew working in the Rose Garden, I found the business card Senator Pendergast had given me and dialed her number, hoping I could also find out about what had happened to her yesterday evening.

Did she think the driver of the car was angry about her renewed efforts on the financial reform bill?

Did the police?

Unfortunately the senator wasn’t taking calls this morning, her chipper secretary informed me.

“Could you give her a message?” I asked. “It’s important. I’m working with Mrs. Bradley on the White House garden plans. I understand that the senator has some concerns with the proposal, and I’d like to discuss—”

“You’re calling from the First Lady’s office? You should have told me that right away.” The secretary put me on hold. A few minutes later she came back on the line. “The senator has already made her position clear. She also suggested”—the secretary hesitated—“I’m sorry, she wants me to tell you that you should consider seeking other employment alternatives. I’m sorry.”

So was I. I stared at the phone, not sure what to do. With the senator working so diligently to embarrass the First Lady, I feared the organic garden plan, no matter how much Mrs. Bradley wanted it, would soon become a casualty of the battle being waged between the two powerful women.

Despite Gordon’s promise to help me, I doubted my future at the White House could look any bleaker.

“Casey.” Lorenzo swiveled around in his office chair to face me. He was smiling for the first time this morning. “That was Mike Thatch on the phone. He sounded really angry. He said he needs to see you right away.”

My heart sank.

Forget about having to survive the senator’s attacks on my job—that was nothing compared to facing an entire division of the Secret Service who appeared eager to see me gone.

S
QUEEZING my hands together in my lap, I fought an urge to brush at the mud caked on the front of my white blouse or pick at the tiny dirt blobs speckling my gray pants as I sat in the plastic chair across from Mike Thatch’s desk. The white walls, the long stretches of silence, and Thatch’s grim expression brought back the same gut-sinking queasiness I’d suffered with every trip to my high school principal’s office.

Thatch sat behind a large mahogany desk with a laptop open in front of him. Like his salt-and-pepper hair, his office didn’t have even a stray piece of paper out of place.

He leaned back in his burgundy leather chair and beat the tip of his pen against the desk while he listened to my story, the rhythm of his tapping increasing when I got to the part where Turner had arrived.

Line by line, Thatch went over the statement I’d made at the greenhouses. He’d read a section and then would pause, look up, and wait for me to comment.

“Yes, that’s what happened,” I’d answer meekly.

He’d sniff and read on.

His quiet demeanor did nothing to quell my rattling nerves. I figured that as soon as he finished reviewing the statement, he’d yell at me for interfering in the investigation or for causing that ruckus this morning when I’d chased after Milo. Or worse, he’d call in Ambrose and have me fired. My hands tightened on the chair’s arms as the scenarios playing in my mind of what might happen grew increasingly worse as the minutes stretched into an hour.

“And you’re sure Turner is okay? I mean, you spoke with him personally this morning?”

Thatch stopped tapping his pen and looked up from the statement in front of him. “All my agents are tough. I assure you it would take much more than a scrawny gardener to put one of them out of action. Now where were we?”

After an hour and a half of his quiet torture, my nerves had frayed so much that when the assistant director in charge of Protective Operations, William Bryce, stuck his head into Thatch’s office to let him know the press conference in the Rose Garden was about to begin, I jumped out of the plastic chair with a startled yelp.

Thatch had nodded and rushed through a couple more questions, not touching on the banking reform legislation except to mention the protesters. My foot jangled with impatience.

“Do you think the driver who tried to run down Senator Pendergast last night is linked to Pauline’s murder and yesterday’s attack at the greenhouse?” I finally built up the courage to ask.

“What do you think?” he asked.

Brooks Keller had motive. His shoes matched the ones I’d remembered seeing at the scene of the crime. And the senator’s proposed bill put the squeeze on banking institutions.

Without the senator pushing so fiercely for the bill’s success, I doubted many of its most stringent regulations would make it to the final version.

Aunt Willow had told me more times than I cared to count not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I never really did understand what that meant—I grew up in a city with absolutely no interaction with horses, unless you counted the workhorses that would ramble up and down Charleston’s historic streets pulling carriages filled with tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of a bygone era.

And yet suddenly I knew what Aunt Willow had been telling me. This was one mouth I didn’t want to pry open.

“Well?” Thatch pressed.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

“Good,” he said as he stood. “Keep it that way.”

He put his hand on my shoulder as he walked me through the Secret Service offices. “Stay clear of this, Casey. We’re going to make an arrest . . . and soon.”

“Who? One of the banking protesters?”

“Perhaps.” He squeezed my shoulder. “If you don’t stop meddling in the investigation and in Secret Service affairs, I’ll have to report you to Ambrose. No one wants that, right?”

“Right.”

A sense of dread followed me as I left the Secret Service offices. I was supposed to stay out of the investigation, but no matter how many times I worked out the scenario in my mind, I kept coming back to the same thing—the Secret Service was looking for their killer in the wrong place. The protesters had gained nothing with Pauline’s death. And why would they attack the senator? She was on their side.

Still, the Secret Service knew what they were doing. They were experts at recognizing threats. Who was I to question them?

I rubbed my suddenly throbbing temples and decided to focus on my job. With the Easter Egg Roll just three days away, my to-do list wasn’t growing any shorter, not when Seth kept adding items to it.

The press conference was under way in the Rose Garden. President John Bradley stood at his official podium in front of the doors that led into the West Wing. Margaret Bradley, dressed in a light green pantsuit, stood to his right. Milo sat between them, his clean, glossy coat gleaming. He tilted his little puppy head to one side. His ears were tipped forward as he watched with a bemused expression at how everyone was staring at him.

There were rows and rows of the press sitting in the folding chairs that had been set up on the grass. Hordes of cameramen filled every available space behind a rope barrier on the left side of the seating area. On a raised platform behind the seated reporters, cameramen snapped still photos with ridiculously large lenses and filmed every aspect of the press conference.

A smattering of Secret Service agents were spread out across the garden. While looking deceptively relaxed and slightly bored with the entire affair, they kept a close watch on every movement.

Seth Donahue stood watch near the back of the group. He kept his hands clasped behind him as he bounced nervously on the balls of his feet.

I don’t know what he had to worry about. The pink, yellow, and white tulips were in their peak of bloom. The rosebushes looked healthy and ready to burst forth with an impressive show within a month or so. And there wasn’t a weed in sight.

I weaved through the West Wing staff members who had gathered on the colonnade that connected the West Wing to the White House to watch the proceedings. Gordon stood next to a column with his arms crossed, smiling like a proud papa.

Everyone clapped when President Bradley reached down and shook the paw of the star of the show.

“Just think, a week ago he was locked in a cage in an animal shelter with a bleak future. Now he’s living in the White House as the nation’s First Dog, the Commander in Leash,” President Bradley mused, much to the delight of the reporters. “I’d say this little guy is the epitome of the American dream.”

When the President opened the press conference up for questions, a lanky man with leathery tanned skin was the first person to jump up.

His stark black hair had obviously been dyed. His narrowed gaze made him look as if he was too proud to admit that he needed glasses. “Griffon Parker with
Media Today
.”

So this was the weasel who’d been writing all those critical articles about my organic gardening program? I stopped to watch.

“Mr. President, is it not true that your puppy was a gift from your friend, the banking CEO, Richard Templeton?” the reporter demanded. “How can you stand up there and say that you support stringent banking regulations when you not only accept campaign contributions from Wall Street but also welcome top executives to the White House, call them your friends, and accept their gifts and bribes?”

Everyone in the audience seemed to hold their breaths, waiting to see how President Bradley would respond to such a pointed attack.

Relaxed and looking completely in control of the situation, President Bradley placed his arm on the podium and leaned forward slightly. “I’m glad you asked that, Parker. You raise a very good point. What is the role of friendship in government? We’ve seen friendships abused so often in politics that the very idea has become tainted. To say that someone is friends with a politician often is code for them receiving special favors. And that may be true for some people.