The Scarlet Pepper (33 page)

Her enthusiasm proved contagious. The kids were bouncing up and down, chanting that they were ready to eat their vegetables.

As we’d discussed, Gillis stepped up to the podium after the First Lady to talk about organic gardening. He kept it brief and on a level that held the third and fourth graders’ interest.

“Chemical free! Fresh produce, yum!” he led the kids in chanting as we all headed into the garden.

“There you are, lass,” Gillis said as he dumped a pile of his books into my arms. “Stick with me. You might learn a thing or two.”

Grinding my teeth to keep from saying something I knew I would regret, I had no choice but to follow Gillis. People gathered around him like flies to honey. He was loud and flamboyant and, okay, he could talk knowledgeably about plants. He was also preventing me from keeping a keen eye out for trouble. Frank, I noticed, had vanished. I needed to find out where he’d gone, and I couldn’t do it with these books in my hands.

“Annie,” I said as I dropped the books into her arms, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mind?” she said, shifting the books in her arms. “I love his show! I love him!”

“Great.” I wished I could share her enthusiasm, but I had a harvest to oversee and a killer to follow.

Apparently, though, Gillis’s sparkle wore off quickly for Annie as well. The next time I noticed him, Francesca was lugging his books around. Annie was nowhere in sight.

The harvest couldn’t have gone better. Within twenty minutes, the schoolchildren had filled their baskets with several varieties of lettuce, kale, leafy collard greens nearly as tall as the youngest children, snap peas, beans, rhubarb, and one tiny cucumber.

Thanks to the Secret Service’s quick actions, not only was sampling permitted as they harvested the vegetables, it
was encouraged. My chest tightened as I watched the kids scamper through the garden. I’d once been exactly like them, learning about the joys of harvesting a garden from my grandmother and aunts.

The constant click, click, click of the press photographers’ cameras reminded me of my Charleston childhood and the hum of cicadas in the summer heat.

I missed my family. I missed Rosebrook.

Maybe I should take some time off, go back to Rosebrook, and let my grandmother and aunts pamper and spoil me.

I smiled at the thought.

The kids carried their bounty over to the tents and the chefs took over. The volunteers started to carry the gardening supplies back to a nearby small storage shed screened by bushes.

I drew in a deep breath. It was time for the press Q&A.

Frank was still missing.

Seth Donahue, looking unusually happy, patted Gillis on the shoulder and waved me over to the podium. The gathered reporters moved to where schoolchildren had stood not more than an hour earlier.

“It’s time,” Seth said.

“Good luck, lass,” Gillis added.

I glanced around. Frank had promised to stand by me, to jump in if I got in over my head.

He had the charm and the necessary skills for dealing with the national press. I, on the other hand, was a simple girl from the South. If you looked hard enough, you’d find the turnip truck that took me into town.

So where the hell was Frank? Had this been his plan all along? Had he wanted to so humiliate me that I’d have no choice but to run back to Charleston?

I knew it. I knew he was up to no good.

T
HE
First Lady, bless her, stepped away from the cooking tent and joined me at the podium. The nearly dozen reporters gathered fell silent.

“Where’s Frank? He promised he’d be here,” I whispered.

“He must have been called away. Don’t worry.” She squeezed my hand. “You’ll do fine.”

She looked out from behind the podium and smiled.

“I know there have been several biting reports out there that claim I have delegated all the work of my vegetable garden to the grounds crew. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s true.” She rested her hand on her growing belly. “Bending over has become quite difficult lately.”

Several reporters chuckled.

“I’m grateful to Cassandra Calhoun and to the rest of the staff and our volunteers for keeping our gardens green and the vegetables fresh and healthy. As requested by many of you, Casey has agreed to answer some questions about the garden and how it was developed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day and my ankles are swollen.”

Seth moved quickly to assist the First Lady. She leaned heavily on his arm as they walked over to a waiting black town car to drive her back to the White House.

Steeled for the worst, I cleared my throat and stepped up to the podium.

“As the First Lady said, many hands made this garden possible. The chefs played a major role in selecting the plants, many of which are heirloom varieties from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. These are seeds that are available to any home gardener.

“We prepared the soil using a method of sheet composting, also known as lasagna gardening. No, we weren’t growing pasta.”

A couple of reporters chuckled.

“Sheet composting is a method of planting on top of a modified compost pile that feeds the plants as they grow. We started with a layer of paper—”

“This month’s issue of
Organic World
reports that dangerous levels of lead have contaminated the soil,” a reporter from the
New York Times
tossed at me.

“Yes, I have read the article.” I’d expected that question and had come prepared. I retrieved a copy of the soil report from my pocket. I explained how the White House regularly tested the soil for nutrients and contaminates and pointed out that testing the soil is a practice any home gardener should follow. “Many local cooperative extension offices offer soil testing. What we found was that the lead levels in the soil here was ninety-three parts per million. That may sound surprising, alarming even, but you have to understand lead commonly occurs in urban soils. According to the EPA, anything below four hundred parts per million is safe.”

“But other countries require much lower levels than even ninety-three parts per million,” the reporter shot back.

I smiled. “I’m glad to see that you’ve done your research. That level of lead was our starting point. We amended not only the existing soil, we planted above the soil using the sheet composting method that I was explaining. To avoid further contamination, all of the amendments and compost material came from organic sources. At the end of the season, we will run another soil test and, like before, make the results publicly available. With those changes I expect to find that the lead levels have dropped to under twenty parts per million.”

The reporter nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer.

“Do you wish to respond to the Watercressgate reports that the garden is an elaborate fake?” another journalist asked.

“I’d be glad to.” I took a deep breath. “You can ask any volunteer who spent hours under the blazing sun that most of the plants we harvested today were in the ground the day we broke ground and planted the garden.”

“Most? But not all?” someone else asked.

“That is correct. We are practicing succession planting in the garden. This means that we plant some varieties over a period of time to ensure the chefs have a steady stream of vegetables. You wouldn’t want all the tomatoes to ripen over one weekend, for example.”

I started to relax as the questions continued along that vein. It was easy to talk about something I felt so passionate about.

I explained the placement of the garden, along with the back-and-forth that the gardeners had had with the Secret Service. I talked about the varieties of vegetables. How we used integrated pest management methods. I even explained the difference between being certified organic, which the White House garden was not, and following organic practices, which we did.

The press conference kept going along smoothly until a young male reporter shouted, “Cassandra Calhoun, isn’t it true that you’ve been questioned in Griffon Parker’s death?” The cameras snapping pictures and filming the press conference seemed to close in on me. “Isn’t it true that Griffon Parker had been planning to write a scathing
exposé detailing the shenanigans taking place in this garden?” He did air quotes as he said “garden.”

“He had mentioned—” I started to say.

“Isn’t it true that you brazenly planned his murder out in the open, calling it a game, and that you drew on your horticultural education, an education that included several classes on poisonous plants?”

“I didn’t—”

“Come now, everyone knows about how you were planning the perfect murder for a ‘charity dinner.’ And isn’t it true that shortly after Parker’s replacement, Kelly Montague, interviewed you about this garden”—again with the air quotes—“for an article she was planning to write, she was run down and nearly killed?”

“She was, but—” He didn’t give me a chance to answer any of the questions he rapid-fired at me.

“And isn’t it also true that the garden we see today was planted only hours ago?”

Expecting him to continue, I didn’t even try to answer that last one. Unfortunately, he had no more questions. My silence seemed to last forever.

“I—I don’t know what to say to that,” I stammered. “Yes, some plants had to be replaced because of damage that occurred last night. The replacements came from our greenhouses. They—”

“Did you kill Griffon Parker to cover up the ruse that is happening in this garden?” he demanded.

Where the hell was Frank?

I looked around, searching desperately for the curiously absent press secretary. Or his assistant. Or anyone with experience dealing with the press. My hesitation sounded like guilt.

“Stop this havering. It would take more work to fake a kailyard like this than to simply grow one in place,” Gillis jumped in to say. “Although the First Lady’s kitchen garden doesn’t follow all the methods outlined in my book
Gardening the Farquhar Way: Organic!
—celebrating its
fifth week on the
New York Times
bestseller list and currently number three—it is as organic and pure as Highland snow. The rest of your questions are bollocks and don’t merit answering by Casey or anyone else.”

“I think Casey has answered enough questions.” Penny, Frank’s assistant, had finally shown up. “If you need any follow-up information, I’ll be happy to arrange that for you.”

“Thank you,” I said to Gillis, stunned that he’d jumped in and helped me. “That last reporter—I didn’t know how to begin to answer his charges.”

“Don’t thank me, just look happy. Didn’t an American coin the phrase ‘Never let them see you sweat’?”

“In this heat, all I seem to be doing is sweating.”

Gillis flashed his trademark grin and, after tossing his arm over my shoulder, struck a pose for the cameras.

As the cameras flashed, Special Agents Steve Sallis and Janie Partners came to stand a few feet out of range of the pictures. They both looked grim. I tried to keep from staring in their direction—it wasn’t good for the picture—but my gaze kept traveling back to them.

“Stop frowning,” Gillis managed to say without altering his flashy smile. “The papers always print the worst pictures out of the lot. It’s up to you to always look your best.”

I forced a grin to my lips. But my brows remained furrowed.

“There, we’re done. That should get my face on the front page of several papers.” Gillis lifted his arm and sauntered over to the press. “Do you have a copy of my book?” he asked the reporter from the
New York Times
.

At the same time Steve and Janie moved in.

“What’s happening now?” I asked them.

They continued past me without answering.

“Mr. Farquhar,” Steve said, his voice calm and polite, “will you please accompany us to the White House?”

“Och!” Gillis boomed. “Looks as if the President needs my advice on how to solve the budget crisis. If you have
any questions about my work or my media empire, my publicist’s name is on the book’s front flap.”

He waved as he followed Steve and Janie to the West Wing.

I hurried over to where Jack was still stationed. “What did Steve and Janie want with Gillis? Please don’t tell me he actually scored a meeting with the President.”

Jack held up his hand. His mobile gaze brushed over me as if I didn’t exist.

“Jack?” I was starting to get nervous.

He nodded. “Sorry about that,” he said to me. His entire body remained tense as if on high alert. “Jerry and Bower are talking. The garden sabotage wasn’t their idea. According to Bower, someone paid them handsomely to make you look bad.”

“Who? Who paid them?”

“Apparently, your charming Gillis Farquhar.”