Stuart Woods: D.C. Dead

“How considerate of you, Dino,” Holly said, kissing him on the forehead. She sat on the sofa and poured herself a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from a pitcher already delivered by room service. “Tell me, Dino, do you have a girl these days?”

“One or two,” Dino replied.

“Why don’t you invite one of them down here to join you? I’m going to be taking up a lot of Stone’s evenings, and I wouldn’t want you to feel neglected.”

Dino looked over the top of his newspaper. “That’s a very good idea,” he said. “Does she get per diem, too?”

“From you, not from the Agency.”

“I’ll make a call after breakfast.”

The doorbell rang, and room service wheeled in a large cart containing bagels, smoked salmon, sour cream, and a dish of caviar. They arranged themselves about the table and pitched in.

“I’ll bet you read the files last night, didn’t you?” Holly said to Dino.

“I did.”

“Any conclusions?”

“I found them carefully crafted to leave no alternative to Brixton Kendrick as the murderer. His suicide must have been an enormous relief to the Bureau.”

“I think you could say that,” Holly agreed. “I think it was an enormous relief to everybody except the people who knew them best, who believe that Brix could never have murdered his wife.”

“Stone,” Dino said, “I want us to go over to the White House today and walk the route from the tennis courts to the parking lot, the one that Mrs. Kendrick took. I want to see where she died.”

“Good idea,” Stone said. “What did the medical examiner’s autopsy report say about the ca siabout tuse of death?”

“Oddly, the ME’s report was missing from the files.”

Holly stopped chewing her bagel. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I’ll get on that this morning,” she said.

“It could be critical,” Dino said. “It often is.”

“I agree,” Stone echoed, “and while you’re scaring up that report, see if you can find out who neglected to include it. That could be very interesting to know.”

“I’ll do that,” Holly said.

After breakfast, Holly got dressed, and Stone noted that she wore an outfit different from the one the night before. Holly had planned ahead.

He kissed her good-bye at the door. “Thank you,” he said, “for last night. You were correct in all your observations.”

“I’m glad you agree,” she said. “Will I see you tonight?”

“Book a table at your favorite restaurant, and come here for a drink first, say, six-thirty?”

“You’re on,” she said, and she was gone.

They arrived at the White House reception desk, and Stone and Dino flashed their IDs. “We have an appointment with Tim Coleman,” Stone said to the receptionist.

A call was made. “Someone will be out for you in a moment,” the receptionist said.

“We know the way,” Stone replied.

“Someone will be out for you in a moment.”

In not much more than a moment a young male staffer materialized in the reception area and introduced himself. Everybody shook hands. “Right this way.”

They were led almost to the Oval Office and then were turned into a small waiting room outside the chief of staff’s office. They could see him inside, feet on his desk, talking into two telephones, a secretary waiting with a stack of papers.

Coleman hung up one of the phones and waved them into his office. “Good,” he said, “you caught me on a slow day.” The phone that he had hung up rang, but he ignored it and pressed the other to his chest. He pushed a button on a console. “Fair. Come in here,” he said.

A moment later, a very tall woman in a short dress entered through another door. “Stone Barrington, Dino Bacchetti, this is one of my two deputies, Fair Sutherlin.”

Everybody shook hands. Stone noticed a very firm grip.

“Gentlemen,” Fair said, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. We all appreciate your taking the time to come down here and look into this for us.”

“We’re glad to be here,” Stone said.

“That go for you, too, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“Yep, and call me Dino. He’s Stone.”

“I’m yours for the morning. What do you want to see, and who do you want to talk with?”

“We’d like to walk the route that Mrs. Kendrick took from the tennis court to the place where her body was found,” Stone said.

“Of course. Come with u iwme.”

Stone and Dino said good-bye to Tim Coleman, then followed Fair Sutherlin, which Stone found to be a pleasant experience. She led them past the Oval Office and down a hallway, through a couple of doors, and out onto a walkway, then stopped after a few steps.

“This is where I found Mimi Kendrick,” Fair said.

“You found her?” Stone asked. “What were you doing out here?”

Fair looked a little embarrassed. “I had just finished a very heated phone conversation with a member of Congress, and when I hung up I was still angry. I came out here to get a little air and calm down.”

“Why here?” Dino asked.

“It’s the closest place to my office that’s outside,” she said, “unless of course I had gone through the Oval Office, and that’s not something I make a habit of, unless I’m called in there.”

Dino began looking at the ground around him, while Stone continued to talk with Fair. “Do you have a bad temper, Ms. Sutherlin?”

“Fair,” she said. “And you might say I have a fairly bad temper, under some circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“On that occasion, I was blatantly lied to by a congressman. I knew he was lying, and so did he, but he persisted.”

“What else makes you angry?” Stone asked, but she was staring at Dino.

Stone followed her gaze. Dino was standing next to a flower bed, holding a flat piece of granite. “What have you got there, Dino?”

“The murder weapon, I think.” He walked over to where Stone and Fair stood. “It’s an edging rock, and it was out of line with the others. It appears to have blood and hair on it and what looks like a lipstick smudge.” He pointed at a smear of something pink.

“And it was still there after a year? And with blood, hair, and lipstick on it?”

“It was stuck in the ground,” Dino said, “under a bush. Evidence can sometimes last like that.”

“And what does all this mean?” Fair asked.

“It means the murder was heat of the moment, not planned,” Dino replied. “Mrs. Kendrick might have had an argument with someone she encountered, an argument that made the other person angry or frightened. The murderer grabbed the first weapon available and hit her on the head with it. At least, that’s my guess at what a day in the FBI lab will determine.”

“Very good, Dino,” Stone said.

“And we’re just getting started,” Dino replied.

“I find this something of a stretch,” Fair Sutherlin said.

“Murder is always a stretch,” Dino said, “and usually improbable. In this case, what could one woman have said to another that made her angry enough to kill?”

“I can’t imagine,” Fair replied.

“Perhaps Mrs. Kendrick threatened her,” Stone said.

“Threatened her with what?”

“Perhaps she threatened to expose something that the other woman didn’t want to become general knowledge.”

“Like what?” Fair asked.

“That remains to be seen,” Stone replied “Thank you for your help, Fair. We’ll find our way out.”

Fair left, and Stone turned to Dino. “How the hell did you come up with that?”

“I merely observed, my dear Watson,” Dino said, affecting a terrible English accent. He produced a zipper bag and dropped the stone into it. “Now we’d better get this to the lab.”