by Stuart Woods
“I’m experiencing that,” Stone said, “and I feel guilty about it.”
“So did I, and all I can tell you is don’t worry about it. It takes care of itself, eventually.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“The other thing I remember vividly was how—you should excuse the expression—horny I was. I thought about sex with Jackson every time I lay down to go to sleep. After a few weeks, it surprised me that I thought about sex with you.”
“That does surprise me.n se”
“I know, we’d only just met, but some reptilian part of my brain began to distinguish between a dead lover and a potential lover who was out there, alive. So, when we finally had the opportunity, I was ready for you. And I’ve enjoyed every moment in bed with you since then, when we had the opportunity.”
“And I with you. When you walked into Elaine’s last night, I felt . . . as the song says, ‘that old feeling.’”
“Good. That means you’re alive and well, and you’re about where I was at this stage. Do you want me now?”
Stone stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. “Oh, yes. And I feel guilty about that, too.”
“Don’t,” she said, taking his hand and leading him toward the open bedroom door. “Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle.”
And she was. She undressed them both and lay in Stone’s arms, caressing and kissing various parts of him. When she was ready—and when he was ready—she took him inside her, and for an hour, maybe more, they did the things they had always done with each other.
STONE WAS AWAKENED BY sunlight coming into his room. The curtains were open, and he could hear the shower running. He joined Holly, and they soaped and scrubbed each other, then they made love again.
Finally, they got into robes and went into the living room, where Dino was sitting in a comfortable chair, reading the Washington Post. “Good morning,” he said. “I’ve ordered breakfast for us.”
“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.
6
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.”
7
STONE NAVIGATED THEM ALONG PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE TOWARD Georgetown, and they began driving down tree-lined streets of town houses. “Two down on the left,” Stone said, pointing to a house.
Dino invented a parking place and turned down his visor, which had a government business notice on it. They got out of the car and approached the front door. There was a discreet FOR SALE sign attached to the wrought-iron fence enclosing the small front garden, bearing the name and number of a realtor. Stone pulled away a couple of inches of yellow crime-scene tape from the front door, then unlocked it and led the way in.
“Pretty nice,” Dino said, looking around.
Stone walked into the living room and stopped. There seemed to be some pieces of furniture missing, and there were outlines on the walls where pictures had hung. “Burglary, you think?” Stone asked.
“Pretty picky burglars,” Dino said, looking up. “There,” he said, pointing at one of the beams across the room. “There’s a mark where the rope was.”
“That’s, what, twelve feet up?” Stone asked.
“About. There must have been a ladder here. Maybe the burglars took that, too.”
They walked around the house, checking the kitchen, which seemed to have been remodeled recently, and a comfortable study, where the bookcases were more than half empty and there were more missing-picture marks.
Stone opened a few drawers. “Pencils, paper clips, that sort of stuff. No paper, no files in the file drawers.”
“Burglars wouldn’t bother with that stuff,” Dino said. “The family must have come into the house and lifted whatever they wanted.”
A voice suddenly came from the doorway behind them. “Why not?” a man asked. “It was all ours.”
Stone and Dino turned to find a young man of medium height and slim build, wearing surgeon’s scrubs, standing behind them. “Are you FBI?” he asked.
Stone and Dino produced their White House IDs.
The young man looked closely at them. “Anybody I can call to verify you are who these say you are?”
“Tim Coleman, chief of staff,” Stone said. “Or Charleston Bostwick, his deputy.”
“Yeah, I know them,” he replied, handing back the IDs.
“You have us at a disadvantage,” Stone said.
“Oh, sorry, I’m Tom Kendrick. They were my parents.”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Stone said.
“Losses,” Tom replied. “The whole thing was screwy.”
Stone pointed at a leather sofa. “Why don’t you sit down and tell us about it?”
Tom didn’t mov F>
“Some people at the White House were not satisfied with the investigation into your parents’ deaths,” Stone replied. “They asked us to look into it.”
Tom went to the sofa and sat down, while Stone and Dino took chairs. “And what are your qualifications for that work?”
Dino spoke up. “I’m a detective lieutenant on the NYPD,” he said. “Stone is a retired homicide detective.”
“Then I guess you’re qualified. Actually, I’m glad you, or somebody like you, is looking into the situation, because it’s completely crazy.”
“Tell us about it,” Dino said.
“First of all, who would want to kill my mother? No sweeter human being ever existed. She had no enemies, not even in politics. And my father was just not the type to kill either my mother or himself. He’s the type who would have been all over the cops until they caught the killer. He met with the FBI and Secret Service people and answered every question, broken up as he was.”
“Being broken up is enough to cause some people to take their own lives,” Stone pointed out. “And being a suspect in the murder of a loved one could push a lot of people over the edge.”
“I guess all that is right, in theory,” Tom replied. “But it doesn’t jibe with who they were.”
“Well,” Dino said, “that’s enough of a reason for us to be here. Tell me, what happened to all the things that have obviously been removed?”
“My wife and I removed them and took them to our apartment,” Tom replied. “I’m a last-year resident at Washington Metro Hospital, and my wife works in a government office, so we couldn’t afford to keep this house. I doubt we could pay the taxes. We took the things we could use, or that were of sentimental value to us, and put the house on the market.”
“How long ago?” Stone asked.
“Ten months,” Tom replied. “The market is moribund for all the usual reasons, and it probably won’t come back until the change in administrations. That always causes a huge upswing in Georgetown house sales, what with people leaving Washington and others moving in.”
“May I ask what the value of the house is?” Stone asked.
“We were told it would bring four and a half, five million in better times, and maybe three and a half, four million if we can hang on until the change of administrations, which is another year and a half. Or we could take a lowball offer now. We’ve had a couple of those.”
“What’s upstairs?” Stone asked.
“Four bedrooms and baths, a smaller study for my mother, and a kitchenette.”
Stone nodded. “I’m not all that familiar with the market here,” Stone said, “but it sounds like you got good advice from your realtor. What was the estate worth in toto?”
“Six and a half million,” Tom said. “More than half of that is this house, which they owned for more than thirty years. There was no estate tax last year, some legislative quirk.”
“I’m familiar with that,” Stone said. “Did you consider moving into the house until it sold? At least you wouldn’t be paying rent.”
“I pointed that out to Kath, but she’s spooked by the fact that my father hanged hims Kr h/font>
Stone nodded. “By the way, how did he get a rope tied to that beam?”
“He used an eight-foot stepladder. It’s in the garden shed.”
Stone nodded.
Dino spoke again. “Was there anything going on in the life of either of your parents that might have be
en a factor in what happened?”
Tom looked puzzled. “What sort of thing are you talking about?”
“Anything unusual, out of the ordinary. Could either of them have been having an affair?”
Tom emitted a short laugh. “They had been married for nearly forty years,” he said. “Since college. Doesn’t seem likely at this stage of the game, does it?”
“I guess not,” Dino said.
“What really gets me about this,” Tom said, “is that they both died within a day of each other, both violently. I just can’t come up with a scenario that would account for that. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.” He got to his feet. “I have to go to work.” He handed Dino a card. “My cell number is there,” he said. “Please call me if there’s anything else I can tell you, and please, please call me if you start to make any sense of this.”
Stone and Dino shook his hand and walked him to the front door.
“Well,” Dino said when he had gone, “forty years of marriage doesn’t mean a lot if one partner gets the love bug up his ass, does it?”
“
You’re right,” Stone said, “but I don’t think we should explain that to Tom, unless we can prove it.”
8
STONE AND DINO HAD A FOUR O’CLOCK APPOINTMENT WITH the deputy director of the FBI, a man named Kerry Smith, who, they had been told, was the Bureau’s supervising agent for the investigation into the deaths of Brixton and Mimi Kendrick. They presented themselves in his reception room on time and were kept waiting for ten minutes. As they were shown into Smith’s office, Stone saw a door closing on the other side of the room.
“Good afternoon,” Smith said. “I’ve been expecting a visit from you gentlemen.” He indicated a seating area away from his desk. “Please sit down and be comfortable.”
Everyone settled into chairs. “I understand that someone at the White House is not happy with the conclusions reached by our investigators.”
“I think you might say that,” Stone replied equably. “Why do you think that is?”