Oak and Dagger (2 page)

Chapter One

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1933–1945)

Present Day

A
dozen inky black starlings in the nearby oak trees craned forward as they twisted their heads left then right in that jerky motion birds make when trying to unscramble some unfathomable puzzle. I agreed with the birds. I might only be an assistant gardener with less than a year's experience working at the White House, but even I knew this wasn't how an official tree planting should happen. That's why the activity unfolding on the lawn in front of me made me shake my head with consternation.

“
Casey Calhoun
”—Grandmother Faye Calhoun would scold and wag her gnarled finger if she could see me now—“
I didn't raise you to stand around like a lazy peach
.” I still had no earthly idea why my grandmother thought peaches are lazy, but she was right—I'd been raised to work, not stand idle while others did my job. So why was the shovel in the President's hands, when the entire gardening staff was standing on the sidelines with our more than capable hands stuffed in our pockets?

President Bradley, a tall handsome man with a charismatic presence and a full head of brown hair, posed as he flashed his trademark smile for the cameras before thrusting his shovel into the South Lawn's rich soil.

Let me repeat that last part in case you missed it. The
President of the United States
had thrust a shovel into the ground!

Don't get me wrong. It's no skin off my nose if the President wanted a pair of commemorative trees planted. What had me quaking in my leather loafers was the fact that the President had
insisted
on
planting
the trees
himself
.

From digging the holes to dropping the root balls into the ground, President Bradley had insisted on doing it all. Well, not exactly all of it. I'd ordered the trees from our preapproved nursery and had selected the planting site. But when it came to the grunt work, he had insisted on taking over.

The President's large, farm-bred hands wrapped around the red handle of the slightly rusty shovel he'd personally selected from the gardener's shed. No golden commemorative shovel would be used today.

“In honor of dedicated fathers across the country, I plant a pair of little-leaf lindens. I plant these trees in thanksgiving for my twin sons.” President Bradley's voice boomed across the South Lawn while a small army of photographers snapped pictures from behind a roped-off partition line.

“Speaking of Thanksgiving, Casey,” Gordon Sims, the silver-haired White House chief horticulturist, standing beside me, whispered as if nothing odd were happening on the lawn in front of us, “Deloris and I would love for you to join us at our Thanksgiving feast this year.”

“Hm? Thanksgiving?” I whispered back, unable to tear my gaze off the President. “Oh, you know I'd love to, Gordon, but I need to go home to Rosebrook. My grandmother and aunts have been calling daily about it.”

The early morning sun was rising above the White House's iconic round South Portico. With the grand home's stately columns in the background reflecting a soft pearly white, and President Bradley dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the photos would probably become a defining picture of his presidency . . . as long as President Bradley managed to dig the pair of holes without any trouble.

A prickle of unease worried the back of my neck.

“I should have predug the holes,” I whispered to Gordon.

“If you had, Bradley would have noticed. The press would have noticed,” Gordon whispered back.

I don't know how Gordon could stand there looking so calm. So many things could go wrong. The President could hit a root. He could pull a muscle. It could start raining.

I studied a particularly worrisome line of dark clouds on the horizon. The weather reports had called for an afternoon storm. A chilly fall breeze swirled around us, signaling a cold front was threatening to move through the area several hours earlier than predicted.

“He should have at least let you serve as his right-hand man. It's tradition,” I pointed out.

Gordon put a steadying hand on my shoulder. “It's okay, Casey. President Bradley wants to plant his children's trees, not just throw a shovel of dirt at them. It's our job to give him what he wants.”

“Even so . . .” I dug my teeth into my bottom lip as the President removed his first chunk of soil.

“He needs to do this,” Gordon said. “The poor man.”

A month and a half ago, First Lady Margaret Bradley had given birth to a pair of tiny baby boys. Neither the pregnancy nor the birth had been very easy on her or the babies. Whispers on the backstairs continued to warn that the three of them were still frightfully weak.

And the new father, President Bradley . . .

His troubles were more numerous than ever. The economy was still struggling. Clashes in foreign lands had the military strained to the point of breaking. And gas prices were heading up again.

Bradley's advisors, all wearing black suits today, had lined up in the same way the starlings had on the branches in the tree. They tilted their heads in just about the same way, too, as they checked their cell phones. Only his press secretary, who was a new father himself, appeared content to watch the leader of the free world spend the morning digging a couple of holes in the South Lawn.

The President's strong features strained with each thrust of the shovel. An odd tightness squeezed my chest as I witnessed the grief of a man who clearly loved his wife and his children. Here was one of the most powerful of men, and he couldn't make his wife strong again. He couldn't make his newborn sons healthy. All he could do was dig that blasted hole.

Gordon was right. Who was I to take that away from him?

Even the press seemed to sense they were watching something extraordinary and remained unusually subdued.

“If anything goes wrong, Casey”—Lorenzo Parisi, Gordon's assistant for the past nine years, sent a sly look in my direction—“you'll get the blame for not talking Bradley out of this.”

“I know. I know.” I clutched my sweaty hands behind my back and bounced anxiously on the balls of my feet, praying for clear skies and easy digging.

Lorenzo was a tall man with dark Mediterranean looks. For the event he'd worn a modern-cut black Italian suit. Not real sensible if he was called on to help with the tree planting. But that was Lorenzo. He rarely wore anything sensible. Gordon and I looked like gardeners with our khaki pants, pullover shirts, and dark blue windbreakers with the White House logo stitched in white thread on the front.

Lorenzo pointed to the same ominous clouds I'd spotted earlier. “He could get struck by lightning.”

Gordon shushed us.

“Should I tell Deloris you'll be joining us for Thanksgiving again this year?” Gordon asked Lorenzo. Lorenzo's family lived in California, and he rarely visited them. “She's baking your favorite sweet potato pie.”

“Of course
I'll
be there,” Lorenzo said. “I would never miss a family gathering.”

While Lorenzo preened about how he'd attended many, many family events with Gordon, a movement at the far end of the East Wing caught Gordon's attention. “What is the Wicked Witch of the East doing out here?” Gordon grumbled.

“Who?” I squinted into the sunlight but only spotted bushes, trees, and a few staffers.

“Frida.” Lorenzo nodded toward the squat woman lumbering in a crooked line toward us.

“The curator?” Frida Collinsworth was the White House's curator and seemed to keep to herself in the curator's office. She had a keen eye and a sharp mind for finding historical treasures in the White House storehouses. What she didn't have was sharp vision. The thick glasses perched at the edge of her nose seemed to tilt the plum-shaped woman slightly forward.

“She stopped by the grounds office this morning when you were out preparing for the planting,” Lorenzo explained while Gordon continued to grumble underneath his breath. “Words were exchanged.”

“Really? Gordon gets along with everyone,” I said.

“I've never known
Frida
to get along with anyone,” Lorenzo said. “But in the nine years I've worked here, I've never seen her as angry as I did this morning.”

Gordon bared his teeth as Frida moved closer. The two had been working together on a Historic Plants of the White House exhibition with the National Arboretum. It was one of the First Lady's pet projects.

I'd been helping by researching the varieties of vegetable plants grown in the White House kitchen gardens during the office's early years so we could plant a founding fathers' kitchen garden in the spring.

“Frida accused Gordon of theft,” Lorenzo whispered.

“Theft? Gordon? When?”

“She came in ranting and raving I'd stolen her research and notes she'd been compiling on Dolley Madison. Like I'd be able to find anything in that office of hers. The place is as disorganized as your desk,” Gordon said.

“My desk isn't
that
bad,” I protested. Both Gordon and Lorenzo laughed, acting as if that were the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

I shushed them.

We were standing far enough away from the press and the President that there was no danger any of the reporters might accidentally overhear our conversation. Or might accidentally snap our picture. The first rule for White House staff was to keep out of the photos.

The second rule was to always act in a dignified manner.

While Gordon and Lorenzo wiped their goofy grins off their faces, Frida spotted the three of us. She wagged her finger at Gordon and then pointed to her watch.

“Look, the bat's trying to hex us,” Gordon said.

“She's scheduled a meeting with the chief usher to discuss the so-called theft,” Lorenzo clarified.

“Discuss, my foot.” Gordon narrowed his gaze as he turned back to watch the President thrust the shovel into the ground again. “She wants to ruin me.”

“Ambrose will put her in her place,” I said. The chief usher had a firm rule against drama of any sort from the household staff.

“I don't know what will happen. This battle has been brewing for a long time,” was all Gordon would say about it. After a few moments he added, “But if the Wicked Witch of the East thinks she can scare me, she can get on her broom and fly it up her—”

“
Gordon!
” I gasped.

He smiled.

It wasn't a friendly smile, and it seemed to warn even half-blind Frida to keep her distance.

I was still wondering about Frida's out-of-character behavior when President Bradley stopped digging. He leaned on his shovel. “The planting of commemorative trees has a long history,” he said, “dating back to the 1830s when Andrew Jackson planted a pair of Southern magnolias in honor of his late wife, who tragically didn't survive long enough to see him take office.”

“I know for a fact Andrew Jackson didn't personally plant those trees,” I whispered to Gordon. Extra shovels were tucked discreetly behind some nearby boxwoods. Gordon, Lorenzo, and I were ready to lend a helping hand at a moment's notice.

When Gordon had suggested I take the lead in planning today's event, which had included picking out the planting site and coordinating with the Secret Service and the press secretary, I'd eagerly agreed and had pictured turning the event into a “teaching moment” for instructing the public on the correct way to plant a tree. So many people did it wrong.

Doing as much prep work as the President would allow, I'd removed the thick carpet of tall fescue grass and had marked how wide the two holes needed to be dug. I'd explained to him the holes needed to be deep enough to just cover the root ball.

To save President Bradley's back, we'd selected tree specimens that were barely six feet tall. Even so, the proper size of the holes for the trees was as deep as the root balls, and at least twice their width. A wider hole would have been better, but since the President was personally doing the digging, I went for the minimum recommended size.

It was the
depth
of the hole that was critical.

If the holes were too shallow, the roots would dry out and die. If the holes were too deep, the roots would be smothered.

Digging the holes was a task the gardening staff should have been allowed to perform. It was, after all, our job. If the trees died, we would be the ones to take the blame.

“I suppose I could sneak in at night and replant the trees if I need to,” I mumbled to myself.

“Margaret carried my sons at no small cost to her health,” President Bradley stopped digging to tell the reporters. “I told her and everyone else, ‘I'm going to plant these trees.'” He drew a ragged breath. “It's the least I can do.”

His gaze traveled over to me as he added, “And we're going to care for these trees without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides.”

I nodded. The First Lady had personally hired me last year to implement the White House's first all-organic gardening program. She'd been pregnant at the time and had been looking to make the White House as safe a place for her new babies as possible.

President Bradley thrust the shovel into the ground again. “If you get bored, feel free to leave at any time. This might take a while.”

“It will if he continues to give a speech between each shovelful of dirt removed,” Lorenzo whispered in my ear.

I'd started to bat Lorenzo and his unhelpful comments away when the President's shovel hit something that clanked.

Frowning, I took a step forward. Gordon and Lorenzo followed.

“Nothing should clank there,” I said. I'd studied the plans for the grounds well enough to know that.