Oak and Dagger (8 page)

Alyssa had a habit of making up facts and figures to suit her purposes. I usually called her on it. But this was one lie I needed to believe.

“Thank you,” I said, and hugged her back.

“Now, what was I saying?” Alyssa asked as she took her rich, fragrant coffee back to the kitchen counter and dosed it with far too much sugar. “Oh, right. It's such a shame he's a spy.”

“Who? Gordon?” I couldn't think without my coffee.

“No. No. You're not listening to me. He. Is. A. Spy,” she said, speaking slowly as if talking to a simpleton.

I glanced down at the ancient article on the table in front of me. I brushed my hand over its damning headline:

MURDERER ESCAPES POLICE

“You—You think my father is a spy?” That would explain a few things. God, I hoped he was a spy, unless . . . “You don't think he's spying for the enemy?”

“
Your father?
” Alyssa whirled toward me. She moved so quickly her long black hair slapped her in the face. “Get rid of that article already. Are you, or aren't you, the one who said you didn't want me to mention anything about
that man
ever . . . ever . . .
ever
again?”

“I did say that. And I don't.” A wave of heat traveled up my neck. I'd also said that if I ever saw him on the street, I'd cross to the other side and then call the police.

He didn't deserve a daughter. And yet part of me cried out for him. What if he was a spy? The good kind like the ones who wore the white hats in the
Spy vs. Spy
cartoons?

I shook my head to put a quick stop to the thought.

Magical thinking. That's what the therapist had called it. Wishing for something that couldn't be true.

My father had never really been a part of my life, and I turned out about as normal as anyone else I knew. I wouldn't be thinking about him right now if Gordon wasn't in the hospital fighting for his life and unable to fight for his innocence.

“It's been three months since you were given that article, and you still can't throw it away? Have you at least talked to Jack about it? Have you even shown it to him?” Alyssa asked.

“Er . . . I haven't had the chance.”

“Haven't had the chance? That's the excuse you're going to use?” Alyssa quirked her already arching brow. She'd graduated top of her class from Yale Law School and could outdebate the President. “And how long have the two of you been dating?”

“I wouldn't exactly call going on a couple of dinner dates with Jack as ‘dating.' He hasn't even invited me to his house. Of course, he's been busy traveling with the President.”

“But he was with you late into the night last night?”

“We were at the hospital with Gordon's wife. It wasn't the time or place to talk about murderous fathers.”

“Are you going to see Jack today?”

“I don't know.” Jack was scheduled to be on duty at the White House, although that didn't necessarily mean I'd get to see him.

“This thing with your dad is obviously eating at you, Casey.” Alyssa waved her coffee mug like a magic wand. “
Talk
to Jack.”

I wanted to talk to Jack about these things. Nothing reported in the newspaper article would surprise him. He'd already read the extensive background check required for my security clearance. My father's history must be in there.

But what if he knew something about my father I wasn't ready to hear? Wasn't it better to pretend James Calhoun didn't exist? That's what I'd done for a quarter century, and my life had been good. I'd been whole.

I barely remembered the life I'd lived before my grandmother Faye had rescued me. It wasn't until this past spring when I'd found a dead body in Lafayette Square that the door to those repressed memories had been blown wide open.

I started to fold the article back into a small square, but Alyssa snatched it out of my hands. She frowned as she read it for the first time.

A fresh wave of panic hit me. Although I'd told her about it, I hadn't let her read the article.

“This doesn't make sense.” She stabbed the brittle paper with the tip of her painted nail. “Wasn't your family living under an assumed name at the time of your mother's murder?”

“Yes,” came my strangled answer. I didn't want to go back to that time. Not with Alyssa. Not with anyone.

“And didn't it take several years for officials to figure out who you really were and get you to your grandmother?” she pressed.

I swallowed hard and then nodded. I'd spent nearly two years in foster care, being shuttled from home to home, never really given an opportunity to grieve or heal.

“So why in the world would the newspaper report that
James Calhoun
killed his wife? How did the reporter know his name or that he was even your mother's husband for that matter if the police didn't know it?”

“Perhaps the police—”

“No, something isn't right here. Something doesn't add up. You should have showed this to me sooner . . . or to Jack. Oh, I can tell by the look on your face you're not going to talk to Jack about this.”

She whipped out her cell phone with dizzying speed and punched speed dial. “Barry, sweetie. Did I wake you?” A wicked smile spread across her lips. “Yeah, I liked that, too. But that's not why I called. I need a favor.”

While Alyssa explained to what sounded like her current boy toy that she wanted him to run a trace on James Calhoun and how the police connected him to my mother's murder so many years ago, I protested. Not that it made any difference. Once Alyssa gets an idea in her head, there's very little anyone can do to change it.

I eased the article out from between her fingers, and after carefully folding the brittle paper, I tucked it into my backpack.

“There has to be another explanation. Perhaps he'd been living a double life and killed his other wife?” I dug my nails into my palms. “He didn't kill Mom. I was there.
He
wasn't.”

If he had been there, my mother would still be alive. Those men who killed her had been searching for my dad, for
James Calhoun
. And the newspaper had mentioned James Calhoun's name. Not his false identity.

“If the police had known my parents' identities, why was I overlooked? Why did the officials allow a damaged child to bounce around in a foster system that wasn't equipped to help her?”

“I don't know, Casey,” Alyssa said after she finished her call with Barry. “That's what we're going to find out.”

I wasn't sure I wanted to. I certainly wasn't in a mood to travel back to that dark time. So I closed the door to those memories and took a page from Alyssa's playbook and bluntly redirected the conversation. “Who were you calling a spy?”

Alyssa, unable to contain her excitement, danced around the room. “The cute guy who's moved into the basement apartment. Man, he's got sex appeal dripping out his ears.”

“Nadeem?”

“I've met plenty of spies since moving to D.C.” Alyssa waggled her huge coffee mug at me again. “I know the look. And I also know they're always up to no good.”

“Oh. He has a ‘look'? That's not very convincing evidence,” I said, eyeing Alyssa's coffee mug with envy.

“CIA or Special Forces or one of those divisions that has no ‘official' name. Or perhaps he's working for a foreign government. It doesn't matter. He's a spy.”

“For once your spider senses are wrong. Nadeem Barr is the new assistant for the White House curator's office. And believe me, the White House thoroughly screens its employees. No spies allowed.”

“Have you met him?”

“Sure I have. And I'm glad he took the apartment.” The basement apartment in our brownstone townhouse had remained vacant the entire time Alyssa and I had lived in the building's upper two stories. The basement was in need of a total renovation, vital repairs the owner seemed unwilling to make. Instead of paying to make the place habitable, the owner kept lowering and lowering the rent until I'd started to seriously worry about what kind of dangerous character might move in below us.

Not one to sit on my hands and fret, I did something about it and had told everyone at the White House that the apartment was available.

“He's been working on the History of the White House Gardens project with Frida and Gordon.”

“Don't you find it curious that shortly after this assistant”—she used air quotes when she said “assistant”—“started working in the curator's office, the curator is found dead? Do you know anything about his past?”

“I think he said he was from Michigan.”

“Well,
I
know something.” Alyssa tapped the side of her slender nose. “Nadeem is not a researcher. He's nobody's assistant. He can't hide the truth from me. He's a spy.”

Could that be true? Could he have been planted by a foreign country to thwart the White house talks with Turbekistan? If Frida had learned Nadeem was a fraud, she would have confronted him. But . . .

“Why would a spy want to work in the curator's office? I mean, they deal with historical documents and antique furniture. It's hardly a hotbed for espionage.”

“I don't know why. To get inside the White House? Spies are clever. You never know what they are up to until it's too late.”

I wasn't going to win this argument, and since there was no coffee to be found in the house because Alyssa had finished the pot I'd brewed, I scooped up my backpack. “I'll see you this evening, Alyssa. Try not to get into the middle of any international intrigues while I'm gone.”

“Joke all you want, but mark my words. Something bad has already happened. Frida was murdered. And if that spy living in our basement is any indication, there's more trouble coming,” Alyssa warned as I hustled out the back door. “Trouble spreads like weeds whenever there's a spy involved.”

Chapter Eight

You've got to fight for what you believe in. You have to finish what you start.

—JACQUELINE KENNEDY, FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES (1961–1963)

W
HEN
I stepped onto the townhouse's back landing, I spotted a man scurrying down our apartment's back steps. He was dressed in a camel-colored trench coat. His lapels were pulled up around the ears, and a camouflage hat was jammed low on his head. I only glimpsed the backside of him as he jumped down the last few steps and stumbled.

“Nadeem?” I called. The man limped to the basement apartment's back door and yanked it open.

“Nadeem? What are you doing?”

He must have heard me, but he didn't even look up before stepping inside and slamming the door closed behind him.

Had Alyssa been right about our new downstairs neighbor? Was
Nadeem
a spy?

The man had been wearing a long trench coat, the kind spies wore in bad movies. But then again, it was raining.

I stepped back inside and grabbed my rain slicker and umbrella from the hook on the wall behind the door. Determined to find out why the new assistant curator was lurking at our back steps, I rushed back outside and down the steps to stand at the door the man had disappeared through.

“Nadeem!” I beat my fist against the door. “Nadeem! I know you're in there. I saw you.”

When no one answered, I moved along the side of the brownstone building to a small window that I had to stand on my tiptoes to peek into. The window looked into the basement apartment's kitchen. The lights were off. A dish and cup had been neatly lined up on a drying towel laid out next to the sink. On the round linoleum kitchen table sat a fat file folder with a White House emblem on it.

What I didn't see in the apartment was Nadeem.

Had he run through his apartment to escape out the front door, or was he hiding?

Either way, I was getting no answers by standing there.

I shivered as I walked to work through the chilly rain, but it wasn't the rain that made me feel cold. It was the icy prickle of fear.

First, Frida's murder and Gordon's near-fatal attack. Then I overheard Bryce and Thatch talking about how Aziz had believed Frida's murder was somehow connected to the meetings with Turbekistan. And now Nadeem, a new member of the White House staff, was acting strangely. How could I not be worried?

Had Nadeem been listening at the back door to Alyssa's and my conversation? A conversation we'd been having about him?

I needed to find out what was going on.

And I knew exactly how to do it.

• • • 

“Jack?” I was surprised he'd answered his cell phone. His shift at the White House had started an hour ago. I checked the readout of my cell phone, worried I'd misdialed.

“Casey?” he asked. “Is everything okay? Are
you
okay?”

He sounded genuinely concerned, which was sweet.

“I'm fine.” I'd ducked into the Freedom of Espresso Café. The barista waved and started to make my regular mocha cappuccino as I shook off my umbrella. On my way to the checkout, I picked up a bag of organic shade-grown hazelnut blend coffee beans.

“And Gordon?” Jack asked. “How's he doing?”

“No change there.” I paid for my coffee at the counter and took a deep sip. “Actually, I called to ask about Nadeem Barr. Remember him? He's Frida's assistant.”

“I remember.” I could have cut nails with his voice. “He's your new downstairs neighbor.”

“Good memory. Alyssa has it in her head that Nadeem is a spy. I know, I know. I already told her she was crazy.”

Jack remained silent on the other end.

“But here's the thing. I might have caught Nadeem with his ear pressed to my back door just now. Well, I didn't exactly see him at the back door. I saw someone—the back of someone—on the bottom steps that leads to the back door. I don't know if it was Nadeem, but he went into Nadeem's apartment. When I knocked, no one answered. If it was him, why would he do that?”

“I don't know,” Jack said, his voice still hard. “With everything that happened yesterday, I don't like it.”

The “I don't like him” remained unspoken.

“I'm not even sure it was Nadeem. The man didn't seem as tall as Frida's assistant. But he was wearing a trench coat. Does that mean he's a spy? Of course it doesn't. It's raining.” I took another sip of my coffee. Caffeine zinged through my body like an electric current. “Oh, it's probably nothing. Forget I said anything. Alyssa is putting weird ideas in my head.”

“Can't do that. Not when it comes to your instincts about people, Casey. Not when Frida was murdered yesterday.”

“I've been wrong in the past.”

“You've also been right. Let me see what I can find out about your new neighbor.”

“Thanks, Jack. You're a good friend.”

He didn't answer.

“Jack? Are you still there?”

“I hope by now, and after everything we've been through, you think of me as more than a friend,” he finally said.

“Well . . . um . . . um . . . of course you are.” I could feel my cheeks heat with a deep blush.

“What, no declarations of undying love for me? You wound me, Casey.”

“I . . . um . . .”

His deep chuckle made me smile. “You're blushing, aren't you?”

“No, I'm not,” I huffed.

He went silent again. I felt like a fish dangling on his hook.

“Okay, I might be blushing . . . a little.”

“You're too easy to tease.” His deep, playful voice made my entire body feel all tingly and happy inside. “Drat, I've got to go. How about this, I'll ask you how friendly you want me to be next time we're kissing?”

“Or I'll ask you.”

“And Casey?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

• • • 

IN THE WAKE OF FRIDA'S MURDER, THE SECRET
Service had tripled security patrols. As I approached the White House, I counted more Secret Service agents and park police officers than tourists. And that was saying something. Despite the persistent rain, crowds lined the iron fence surrounding the White House grounds. Cameras flashed like streaks of lightning.

Nothing like a murder at a national landmark to lure people off their sofas and into the miserable weather to gawk. Not that there was anything to see from the North Lawn. The Children's Garden, which had been designed to provide the maximum amount of privacy for the First Family, was located on the other side of the White House on the South Lawn.

“Vultures, all of them,” a gruff voice growled behind me.

I spun around to see who had said that and found myself eye to eye with an elderly man dressed in camouflage fatigues and a floppy camouflage hat. He leaned heavily against his cane.

I knew him in passing only. He was one of the regular protesters who set up day after day in Lafayette Square, the park located directly in front of the White House's North Lawn. He'd sit in his faded old lawn chair—the kind with the colorful plastic webbing—while holding a sign on his lap that declared: “Everyone deserves a safe workplace.”

None of the grounds crew knew his name. We all called him “the unfriendly guy,” because unlike many of the regular protestors, who would engage in conversations even if it was just to sell us on what they were railing against, he rarely spoke to anyone.

I could count the number of times I'd spoken with him on one hand and with most of my fingers folded down.

“I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by the crowd. People are curious by nature,” I said to him.

The unfriendly guy shrugged. “Still, it's a circus. Of course I haven't been here as long as Connie.” He nodded to the nuclear weapons protester who had lived outside the White House for years now as she huddled in her tent. Several tourists were hunched down beside her, listening as she spoke with animated gestures. “So what do I know?”

He placed his timeworn hand on my rain slicker's sleeve. “I heard what happened. Are you okay?”

“It's upsetting,” I admitted, my gaze lingering on where his hand was pressing down on my arm.

The old man seemed to sense my discomfort. He lifted his hand and backed up a few steps. “I like Gordon. He's a good man. He'd bring me coffee.”

“He did?” I didn't know that.

The man nodded once, causing the rain that had puddled on the rim of his hat to drip down his nose. “We'd talk sometimes about gardening. I used to garden when I was younger. At my mother's knee, I tended plants before I learned to walk.”

“She must have been an amazing lady,” I said, thinking of my own grandmother, who had taught me how to escape my demons by losing myself in the garden.

“She still is,” he said.

I handed him my umbrella. “You shouldn't be out here in this weather. It's going to be cold and wet all day.”

“You are too thoughtful.” He held the umbrella over the both of us and walked with me toward the security checkpoint at the northeast gate. His halting gait made it slow going. “I have something here for you,” he said when we reached the gate. He dug around in his large coat pocket. “Here. You'll see it anyway.” He pushed a soggy newspaper into my hands. “They'll print the worst kind of gossip to boost their sales. I don't believe it. Never will believe it.”

“Thank you, sir.” I dug out a few dollars and handed them to him as well as insisting he keep the umbrella. “Find somewhere warm to go. The tourists will be back tomorrow. They can see your sign then.”

As I waited in the line to pass through the Secret Service security checkpoint, I unfolded the newspaper the man had handed me. It was the morning edition from the national paper
Media Today
. The headline printed in an extra large font shouted:

MURDER AT THE WHITE HOUSE! CHIEF GARDENER MAIN SUSPECT