Flowerbed of State (20 page)

Under normal circumstances, a summons to the President’s office would have made me giddy with excitement. I blamed the dread I was feeling on Turner. He’d planted a bumper crop of doubt in my head this morning with his threats and warnings.

He had no right talking about my mom.

I wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my khaki pants, which made me notice what I was wearing. The khakis were clean and pressed, but a dress or suit would have been much better. And my top, gracious, why had Alyssa let me leave the apartment this morning wearing a V-neck cream-colored cardigan sweater over a plain light blue blouse? I looked like a female Mr. Rogers.

Unlike everyone else on the staff, the gardeners had a pretty lax dress code. Perhaps I should have followed Lorenzo’s example and dressed as if I worked in an office instead of under the bright sun with dirt caked under my nails.

At least I’d taken extra care with my makeup this morning. The bruising on my temple was hardly noticeable, and my eyelids sparkled with shimmering champagne and honey tones. My hair was another matter.

“Stop tugging at it. You’re making it look worse.” Ambrose wrinkled his nose as he grimaced at the top of my head. Walking with his usual dignified, straight-back bearing, he accompanied me down the North Hall and through the heart of the White House’s busy center.

All the while, I had a devil of a time keeping my hands out of my hair. Every time we passed a window or a piece of furniture with the slightest mirrored surface, I slowed down and, peering at myself in the glass’s reflection, tried to tame the stray strands that had decided to stick straight out to one side or the other.

“Ms. Calhoun!” Wilson Fisher spotted me as we passed the Map Room. His hard-soled shoes clacked on the floor as he hurried after us. “The forms, I need them—”

“Later,” Ambrose calmly informed his assistant, without altering his stride. “She has an appointment.”

At the far end of the light-filled Palm Room, Ambrose held open the door to the West Colonnade for me. The vigorous spring gale whipped down the narrow walkway, tangling my hair and completely undoing all the hasty finger-styling I’d done to make my hair look halfway presentable. A nervous giggle snuck out as I headed out into the wind. After the terrible morning I’d had, a little messy hair really didn’t matter.

At the other side of the walkway, I passed through the glass doors that led into the West Wing. Without Ambrose rushing me along, I took a detour to the nearest ladies’ room to make sure I looked presentable.

I opened the ladies’ room door and nearly smacked heads with Senator Pendergast, who had just declared my position at the White House a frivolous extravagance.

“Good morning, Senator,” I said amicably. I’d dealt with enough problem clients in my career to know that the surest path to losing a disagreement was to let your emotions show.

“Oh! Ms. Calhoun, I’m surprised to see you.” Judging by the way her eyes widened and the quick step she took away from me, I’d say she was more startled than surprised. She swiftly regained her composure and narrowed her gaze suspiciously. “Does your work take you to the West Wing often?”

“Not usually. Important business with POTUS,” I said, feeling damn glad the President had summoned me, even though I still had no clue why he wanted to see me.

“Well, I’ll not keep you,” she said.

Mirroring her behavior the other day, I followed along the hallway beside the senator. I wanted to ask her about something I’d read in that newspaper article.

No, not
that
article, but the other one, the one I’d crawled into the recycling bin to retrieve.

“Perhaps you can answer a question for me,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she returned coolly. “I’m afraid I’m in a hurry.”

“This shouldn’t take long.” I pulled the newspaper article from my pocket. “It’s about this.”

“I was afraid you were going to bring that up,” she said. “You understand that it’s nothing personal against—”

“According to this article, you’ve withdrawn your sponsorship of the Banking and Finance Stabilization Bill.” I tapped my forefinger to the headline: BANKING REFORM BELLIES UP ON THE HILL.

“Oh, that article. What about it?” Bless her heart, her usually tight lips gaped just a bit. She glared at me as if she thought I were half a bubble off plumb. “I don’t see—”

“The text explains that you pulled your support for the bill after the Office of Domestic Finance’s audits came back with no evidence that any of the banks have shuttled more toxic assets into the derivatives market. Now I know how reporters don’t always get their facts straight. So I wanted to make sure that what I’ve read was true.”

“I still don’t see how—”

“Please, indulge me a minute,” I said, feeling every inch like my favorite heroine, Miss Marple. “Wasn’t Pauline Bonde a senior policy accountant with the Office of Domestic Finance? And wasn’t she one of the main auditors working on the banking investigation that spurred you to author the Banking and Finance Stabilization Bill in the first place?”

“Yes. I believe she was. But I was told that her death had nothing to do with her position at the Treasury Department.”

“I’d been told that as well. But the article claims that the audits were completed and reviewed by not only Treasury officials, but also by the Senate committee.”

“That’s true.”

“How do you know that you had all of the reports when Pauline’s laptop was stolen on the day of her murder?”

Senator Pendergast shook her head. “No one told me that.”

“She kept her computer in a silver hard-sided briefcase, which the killer took from her.”

“But I’d been led to believe that we had all of the completed reports. But if what you say is true . . .”

I rubbed my bruised temple. “I’m sure it’s true. I wonder what was on her laptop. Perhaps there was information on it that someone didn’t want you to see.”

“I’d been under the impression that Ms. Bonde’s reports had been recovered. I’ll be sure to look into this.”

“Good. Oh, and Senator, I do hope you’ll give me the chance to explain in further detail the First Lady’s organic gardening plans. I assure you, the reporter who worked on that story didn’t get even half his facts straight.”

“About that—” the senator started to say.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I cut her off. “The President is waiting.”

I
rushed back toward the ladies’ room to check my hair. As much as I hated to keep President Bradley waiting any longer than I had already, I didn’t need the added worry that my hair might be sticking up at odd angles. I was nervous enough just trying to guess why the President of the United States wanted to meet with
me
and not Gordon or Lorenzo.

Before I made it halfway down the hallway, Jack Turner, the last person I wanted to see, rounded a corner and put himself directly in my path. Since I was still reeling from our earlier confrontation, his sudden appearance upset my generally unshakable balance. That, and the fact that I’d tripped over one of his black combat boots.

He caught my arms just long enough to steady me.

“What do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

I glanced meaningfully at the restroom door down the hall behind him. “I think that would be obvious.”

“I mean with the senator.”

“Senator Pendergast? We met the other day and started talking gardening. She’s a plant nut like me. We’re becoming fast friends.”

“I’m sure the two of you are like sisters.” He paused a beat. “I read the article.”

My face heated just a bit. “Reporters are notorious for mangling stories.”

“True. But I’ve never seen one get a quote quite so wrong. ‘The new gardening position at the White House is not only unnecessary, but the organic gardening plan proposed by Cassandra Calhoun is a lavish experiment that will cost hardworking taxpayers money they can ill afford to lose.’ ”

He’d memorized the article?

“Doesn’t sound too friendly to me,” Turner said. “So what were you
really
doing with the senator, Casey? I hope you aren’t pursuing your unauthorized and unwelcomed investigation right here in the West Wing just a few hours after I’d warned you not to do so.”

“It’s not what you think,” I tried to explain, kicking myself for getting caught in that little white lie about being friendly with the senator. I’d never had much luck with white lies. Now big whoppers, well, that’s another story.

“Come on now, just admit you couldn’t stop yourself from talking to the senator about the murder.”

“How do you know what we were talking about? Are you lurking around corners spying on me?”

“I assure you I
do
have better things to do than to follow the gardeners around. But I did happen to hear you tell the senator that Pauline’s laptop had been stolen.”

“I felt she had a right to know that the killer stole a huge chunk of potentially important information, considering how the banking legislation Senator Pendergast had been drafting relied so heavily on what Pauline and her colleagues had gathered.” I handed him the article that I’d retrieved from the recycling bin.

Turner glanced at it and handed it back to me. “It wasn’t stolen,” he said.

“What wasn’t?”

“The reports. Pauline had downloaded all of them to the Treasury’s server the night before her death.”

“What?” That didn’t make sense. “Then why did the killer steal her computer?”

“That’s a puzzle for the experts to solve.” He spun me around toward the hallway that led back to my office. “I’m sure you have soils to test, weeds to pull, roses to spray, or whatever it is you do around here.”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “the President is waiting for me in the Oval Office. If you’d let go of my arm, I’d like to check my hair before meeting with him.”

“Of course.” He released me.

I dashed into the restroom and hastily tucked my hair behind my ears and patted down an errant curl on the top of my head. It was the best I was going to manage without a comb or hairspray.

My mind kept circling around the stolen laptop that hadn’t been stolen. Did the killer take the case but not the laptop? That didn’t make sense. Or did the killer take the case, hit me with it, and then return it to where he’d left Pauline’s body? That made even less sense.

Then again, nothing about Pauline’s death made any sense.

When I emerged from the restroom, I found Turner waiting for me. He was beginning to remind me of a persistent weed. A strong, healthy, and rather handsome weed with a crooked grin. “Ready?” he asked.

“In addition to the embarrassing searches at the gate, am I now required to have an armed escort everywhere I go?”

“I’m just making sure you arrive safely at the Oval Office, if that’s really where you’re heading.”

I rolled my eyes.

“You’re sure about the reports on her laptop?” I asked him as we headed down the hallway again. “Perhaps she found something important at the last minute that she hadn’t had a chance to download.”

“Let it go, Casey.”

“But—but there has to be a reason why the laptop was stolen. It had to be because of the audits.”

“No, it doesn’t. Let the professionals do their jobs.”

“But I think you’re missing an important point—”

“As I’ve told you again and again, you’re not part of this investigation. You don’t know what we do and do not know.”

“But I do know—”

“Here we are.” He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze at the door to the President’s outer office. He opened his mouth to say something else, but stopped himself. “Keep out of trouble,” he finally said and walked away.

I turned the brass handle on the mahogany door that led into the secretary’s office, which served as the gateway to the Oval Office. This outer office had a pair of arched glass garden doors that led out to the Rose Garden. From this angle there was a lovely view of the Jackson magnolia and the south side of the White House beyond.

Inside the cream-colored walls of the office were two large desks. The President’s personal secretary was seated at the desk closest to the door. Seated at the other desk was the President’s personal assistant. Both men were on the phone. Piles of papers, folders, and notebooks crowded the personal assistant’s desk. Bright yellow sticky notes almost completely covered his computer monitor. The secretary’s desk, in contrast, was the picture of organization with a small pile of paperwork in a clearly marked in-box and a slightly larger stack of papers waiting in the matching outbox. I wondered how the two men managed to share the same workspace.

On top of a filing cabinet near one of the glass doors that led out to the garden sat a television tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station. As I waited for the secretary to finish his call, I took a seat on the office’s leather sofa and watched the news program. After a lighthearted report on a new dog breed, the news turned to the banking summit. A pretty blond-haired reporter frowned as she explained that without Senator Pendergast’s support of the Banking and Finance Stabilization Bill, she doubted any meaningful reforms would come out of the summit, leaving the American public vulnerable to another financial collapse.