by Stuart Woods
“Thank you,” Stone said.
“I find you a very attractive man,” she said, standing. Her peignoir had fallen open, and her body was exposed its whole length.
She was a real redhead, Stone noted. He slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her, and the peignoir fell to the floor.
“Come,” she said, taking his hand and leading him into her bedroom, a large sunny place with a bed that was already turned down. She did not bother to close the curtains, she simply lay on the bed and watched him, smiling, as he undressed.
In his arms she was luscious and ready, and she welcomed him with all her charms.
An hour later, both of them spent, they lay beside each other. Then she got out of bed, left the room, and returned, still naked, with half a bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes. They piled up the pillows and sat back, sipping the cold wine.
“And now,” she said, “having had carnal knowledge of you, I will tell you why else I asked you here. I meant to tell you sooner, but I was overcome.”
“Tell me,” Stone said.
“I was not Brix’s only lover,” she said.
“I heard that he was seeing Muffy Brandon. I spoke to her.”
“Oh, not Muffy,” she said. “I mean, yes, he was fucking her, but I also mean he was seeing someone much more important to him.”
“Brix was quite a guy,” Stone said.
“Someone in the White House,” Milly said quietly.
Stone nearly choked on his champagne.
“You se="3llye, in his position, Brix had the run of the place, saw everyone, knew everyone, knew when he could take a quiet moment, lock a door, and conduct an assignation.”
“In the White House?” Stone asked, flabbergasted.
“Oh, yes. For Brix, knowing what he knew about that world, there was no safer place.”
“I’m having some difficulty accepting this.”
“I’m telling you only what Brix told me. It wasn’t always in the White House, he said. After all, Mimi worked, and he did have his own house. There is a garage, and someone could drive right in and enter the house unseen.”
“How very convenient,” Stone said.
“On other occasions they used the White House family quarters.”
Stone sat up in bed and faced her. “Are you telling me he was having an affair with . . .”
“With Katharine Rule Lee? Possibly, he wouldn’t say. But the family quarters were sometimes available when the president was traveling, or just in the daytime, and Brix had full access, keys and everything. I mean, not in the presidential bed, but there are a number of bedrooms in the quarters, and they are usually unused. Brix knew the schedules of the cleaners, and the Secret Service wouldn’t enter the quarters without his permission. I think that the apparent impossibility of what he was doing was a big thrill for him.”
“I can see how it could be,” Stone said. “As far as you know, did anyone at the White House suspect?”
“He told me once that there was someone who had seemed to know something, but he couldn’t be sure. So he just continued as he had before.”
“Did he mention a name?”
“No, Brix was a very discreet man.”
“Did Mimi know about these other women?”
“I think she preferred not to know. If Mimi had been a more attentive and adventurous wife, none of this would ever have happened. I think she viewed sex, perhaps for religious reasons, as a means of procreation and little else. He told me once that she was shocked when he tried to give her cunnilingus, and disgusted by the thought of giving him fellatio. She wouldn’t touch his cock with her hand.” She glanced at the bedside clock.
“Perhaps I’d better go,” Stone said.
“I do have an appointment at five o‘clock, and God knows, after what we’ve been doing, I need a nap.”
Stone got into his clothes, and she walked him to the elevator, still nude. “I’m in New York once, sometimes twice a month,” she said. “I have an apartment at the Carlyle Hotel. Would you like to see me there sometime?”
“I would be delighted,” Stone said. He gave her his card.
“No attachments, no entanglements. I prefer it that way,” she said.
“I understand. That’s fine with me.”
They kissed, then he got onto the elevator. His last image of her was her standing, naked and relaxed, blowing him a kiss.
“Dino is not going to believe this,” Stone said aloud to himself. “Not any of it.”
26
“The Yankees, of course,” Dino said.
“You want to wait until it’s over before I tell you what happened?”
Dino muted the TV. “You ended up in the sack with her, didn’t you?”
“I don’t like your accusatory tone,” Stone said, “and a gentleman would never answer that question.”
“You just did,” Dino said.
“Never mind that. Milly had a lot to say, and I think you’ll find it interesting.”
“There was time for talking?” Dino asked “You’re losing your touch.”
“You want to hear this, or you want to watch the fucking ball game?”
Dino switched off the TV. “All right, I’m all ears.”
“First of all, she didn’t fall on hard times after her husband’s death-quite the contrary. And she doesn’t take money from men.”
“And you bought it?”
“She has a list of lovers, all or most of them married, but she’s not a hooker-she just likes sex.”
“She told you that?”
“No names, except the guy we saw yesterday, and of course Brix Kendrick. He was her first lover after her husband died.”
“Did anything she say have anything to do with why we’re here, or are we just gossiping?”
“Dino, she says that Brix told her he had a lover in the White House.”
“Anybody we know?”
“He wouldn’t give her the name, but they were doing it in the White House.”
“That’s impossible.”
Stone explained why it wasn’t.
“And you think it’s the first lady?”
“No, of course not, even though Milly said that was a possibility.”
“Why don’t we go back to New York and let Milly solve this?” Dino asked.
“You’re not paying attention, Dino. Now we have a motive for the murder.”
“I must have missed that.”
“Jealousy. Brix’s lover was jealous of his wife, or she wanted her out of the way so she’d have a clear shot at Brix.”
“Sounds like she had already hit the bull’s-eye,” Dino pointed out.
“The bull’s-eye was to have Brix all to herself.”
“I can’t say I like your theory all that much.”
“Have you got a better one? Have you got a theory at all?”
“Yeah, I think Brix had a scene with his wife, offed her, then, out of remorse, offed himself.”
“No,” Stone said, “Brix left ahead of Mimi-they were in separate cars, remember, and when he heard she was dead he knew who had done it. His remorse was that his affair led to his wife’s death.”
“Why do you always like the complicated motives?” Dino asked. “What’s wrong with s he knew wsimple?”
“This is just one step removed from simple,” Stone said. “His lover saw Mimi leave the tennis court. Maybe there was a confrontation, words were exchanged, names called. Mimi turned to leave, and the lover grabbed the first thing handy-the brick-and hit her with it or threw it at her.”
“Having first paused to kiss the brick, leaving her Pagan Spring lipstick on it,” Dino said. “I like that part.”
“All right, I don’t know how the lipstick got on the brick,” Stone admitted. “I’ll give you that one.”
“Thanks, I feel so much better.”
“Oh, come on, you know this scenario works.”
“So tell me, how are we better off than before you and Milly did the deed?”<
br />
“We’re better off because we know who to talk to now,” Stone replied.
“We do? I missed another one.”
“The maids who clean the family quarters.”
“You’re saying Brix was using the family quarters to fuck his girlfriend?”
“I explained that, being in charge of the house, he had all the keys, and he knew the maids’ cleaning schedule.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”
“Look, Dino, our backs are against the wall here. We can either send the president and first lady a nice note accepting the FBI report and go home, or we can run down this lead. What’s it going to be?”
“I think ‘lead’ is too strong a term,” Dino said, “but what the hell? You talk to the maids, I’ll listen. Then we’ll write the Lees a nice note and go home.”
“Okay, I’ll set it up with the White House,” Stone said. “And, Dino, you cannot roll over in bed and tell Shelley about it. She has a vested interest in protecting the FBI in all this and she could screw it up for us.”
“You think she’d do that?” Dino asked.
“Inadvertently, maybe, but she might mention it to Kerry Smith, and that would not be good.”
“What about you, pal? You going to roll over in bed and tell Holly about this?”
“We’re working for Holly, sort of,” Stone pointed out. “God knows, we’ve had little else to tell her.”
“You seeing her tonight?”
“Yes. Here.”
“Then lock your door. I’m seeing Shelley here, too.”
“Will do.”
“Gee, I hope you won’t be all worn out after your matinee,” Dino said.
“You have a point. It’s been a while since I’ve had a matinee.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re back in the game,” Dino said. He clicked on the TV. “And so am I.”
The phone rang, and Stone answered it. He listened for a moment. “All right,” he said, “send them up.” He put down the phone.
“Send who up?” Dino asked.
“The front desk said there are two D.C. cops downstairs.”
The doorbell rang, and Stone let in two men he could have spotted as cops from has c”lf a mile.
“I’m Paulson,” one of them said, “this is Padgett.” He nodded toward his partner. “Are you Barrington?”
“I am,” Stone said. “Nice to meet you, gentlemen. That’s Lieutenant Bacchetti, NYPD, over there, glued to the ball game.”
Dino gave them a little wave.
Stone led them to a sofa. “What’s up?”
The two men sat down. “Well,” Paulson said, consulting his notebook, “the head doorman at the Watergate apartments tells us that you paid a Mrs. Hart a visit this afternoon.”
“I had lunch with her,” Stone said.
“And what time did you leave her apartment?”
“Around four.”
“Then maybe you can tell us how the lady got dead.”
27
Stone stared at the cop. “What are you talking about?”
“And you were the last person to see her alive,” the cop said.
“Tell me what has happened before you ask me another question,” Stone said.
The cop consulted his notebook. “A gentleman named Brandon arrived at the Watergate apartments at five P.M., and the doorman, as instructed by Ms. Hart, sent him straight up. No phone call was made. Mr. Brandon arrived on her floor, and when the elevator doors opened, he found Ms. Hart lying in the vestibule, wearing some sort of negligee, dead.”
“How was she killed?” Stone asked.
“It’s too soon for the ME’s report,” the cop said, “but from the looks of her, she was bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument.”
“Time of death?”
“We don’t have that yet, but it happened sometime between when you arrived for lunch, a little after one P.M., and when Mr. Brandon arrived at five.”
Stone looked at his watch. “It’s five forty-five. How’d you get here so fast?”
“There’s a captain, a lieutenant, four detectives, and a crime-scene team on the spot. They didn’t need us, so we were sent over here as soon as we arrived.”
“How’d you know where to find me?”
“Are you kidding?” the cop asked. “Everybody in town knows about you two.”
“Yeah, I know,” Stone said. “It’s Washington.”
“Right.”
“All right, then,” Stone said, “I left at four. She died sometime between then and five. You’ve got a better window.”
“We’ve got a better window, if we buy your story.”
“He got here at four-fifteen,” Dino said. “I’m your witness, and the hotel staff can put me here since breakfast.”
The two cops looked at each other. “Okay,” Paulson said, “she died between four and five.”
“I take it there was a lot of blood,” Stone said. “Was it clotting yet?”
“It was slippery,” Paulson replied.
“Then closer to five than four.”
“Makes sense,” Paulson said. “The woman was wearing a negligee with a kind of robe over it.”
“It’s called a peignoir,” Stone said, then spelled it for him.
Paulson wrote it down. “Okay, if you say so. Is that what she was wearing when you last saw her?”
Stone took a breath to answer, then stopped.
“Let me make it easier for you,” Paulson said. “There’ll be a rape kit.”
“All right,” Stone said, “she was naked when I last saw her. She walked me to the elevator.”
Paulson made a note.
“But your rape kit won’t show anything from me, she was too fastidious a person. The fact that she was wearing the peignoir is an indication that she bathed or showered, then got dressed.”
“And why do you think she was fastidious?” Paulson asked.
“You’ll have to take my word for it,” Stone said.
“The word around town is that the lady has been receiving paying guests for some time,” Padgett said, speaking for the first time.
“I think that when you investigate further, you’ll find that the rumors about that are untrue, that she doesn’t need funds from men. She did tell me she had had a number of lovers since her husband’s death, and I knew about Brandon.”
“She tell you about him?”
“Dino and I left there yesterday, just as Brandon arrived.”
“That’s true,” Dino said.
“You know Brandon, do you?”
“Only by sight,” Stone said. “We spoke with his wife yesterday at their home, as part of our investigation. We saw him leave the house just before we arrived. Ms. Hart told me she had a weekly appointment with him, always on a different day.”
“So Brandon saw her both yesterday and today?” Padgett asked.
“So it seems.”
“That doesn’t sound like weekly to me.”
“No, it doesn’t. She didn’t explain the extra visit this week. I have to tell you, fellas, Brandon sounds like a better fit for this than me.”
“Maybe,” Padgett said, “but why would he see her weekly for months, then get off the elevator one day, bludgeon her to death, then call us?”
“He made the call?”
“From his cell phone. He waited for us in the lobby.”
“Then maybe he isn’t such a good fit,” Stone said.
“You got any other theories about who might have done this?” Padgett asked. “Anything she said to you … at lunch give you any clues?”
Stone shook his head. “Nobody comes to mind from what she said. I don’t have a name for you.”
“You think this killing might somehow be related to your investigation?” Padgett asked.
“I don’t have any evidence to support that theory.”
“All right,” Padgett said, and the two cops stood up. He handed Stone a card. “If you think of anything, you know the drill.”
“I do,” Stone said. “And I’ll call.” He showed the cops out.
“Well,” Dino said, “you didn’t actually lie to them.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you do think the killing is related to our investigation?”
“I have that hunch,” Stone said. “I think somebody thought Milly might tell us something and wanted to shut her up. But, as I told the cops, I don’t have any evidence to support that.”
“You don’t have any evidence to support anything,” Dino said.
“Don’t rub it in.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think your hunch is right, and I think your theory about a lover inside the White House is looking better, too.”
“Thank you, Dino.”
“Why don’t you make that call and set up the meeting with the maids who clean the family quarters?”
Stone picked up the phone and called Fair Sutherlin’s direct line.
“Ms. Sutherlin’s office, this is Charlotte Kirby,” a woman said.
“This is Stone Barrington, Ms. Kirby. Is Ms. Sutherlin available?”
“She’s got somebody in there at the moment,” the secretary said.
“Would you tell her that I’d be grateful if she would set up a meeting with the staff who clean the president’s family quarters?”
“Certainly, I will.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps?”
“I’ll tell her that, and I’ll probably be the one setting up the meeting. May I reach you at the Hay-Adams, Mr. Barrington?”
“Yes. And thank you, Ms. Kirby.”
“You’re very welcome, Mr. Barrington.” She hung up.
28
Todd Bacon and his team met, by previous arrangement, in the parking lot at Langley, all seven of them.
“What’s going on, Todd?” his number two asked.
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. What I suspect is that we’re being shut down and transferred. Certainly, there’s no reason to think we might be jettisoned. When the day is over, call my cell and leave a message. All I want from you is one of four words: one, ‘excellent’ means you got a better assignment; two, ‘satisfactory’ means it was a sideways move but acceptable; three, ‘unsatisfactory’ means a demotion but you’re still working here; four, ‘unacceptable’ means you got the ax or quit. I’ll respond when I can. Got it?”