by Stuart Woods
“I began as deputy press secretary, and after a couple of years of that Tim got promoted to chief of staff, and I became his deputy.”
“That sounds like a wonderful opportunity,” Stone said.
“I got lucky,” she replied. “When Senator Hart died, Tim went to the White House, and the senator’s appointed replacement hired me to be his chief of staff. The guy knew nothing, and that made me look like I knew everything, but I have to say, I did a good job for him. That led to a job in the press office at the White House, during Will Lee’s first term, and when he got reelected, Tim Coleman moved me over as one of his two deputies.”
“So you’ve been in the White House for how long?”
“Nearly seven years.”
“It must seem like home by now.”
She laughed. “It seems like a sweatshop.”
“Will you be glad when it’s over, and Will Lee goes home to Georgia?”
“I suppose I’ll have mixed feelings,” she said.
“Any plans for after the White House?”
“I’ve got my eye on a House seat in Virginia,” she said. “I don’t think the guy is going to run again, and I think I’d be good at it.”
“And after that, what? Governowhat? Gor? Senator? President?”
She gave him a sly smile. “Who knows where the road may lead?”
The house phone buzzed, and she told the doorman to send up the food. Stone met the deliveryman at the door, paid him, and brought the big bag into the kitchen. Fair gave Stone a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge to open, then they heaped food onto their plates and took their trays into the living room.
Fair switched on the TV. “Do you mind? I TiVo the evening news.”
“Not at all.”
They watched the news silently, and Fair spoke only when fast-forwarding through the commercials. When it was over, Stone said, “I thought there might be a mention of the Muffy Brandon murder.”
Fair shook her head. “Nope, that’s a local story. If Paul Brandon were still in the Cabinet, it might have made the national cut.”
“Since you worked for Senator Hart, you must have known his wife.”
“Milly? Sure. She was in and out of the office all the time. I liked her.”
“How about Muffy Brandon?”
“I met her a few times at dinner parties. I liked her less. She was too skittish for my taste, too brittle. She was beautiful, of course, but, as far as I was concerned, not an attractive person.”
“Any thoughts about who killed them?”
She looked at him in mock surprise. “Are you kidding? You’re the investigator: you tell me.”
Stone watched her closely for her reaction to his next statement. “I think the killer may very well work in the White House.”
She choked on her wine. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“Please, please tell me why you think that.”
“Things have come out in our latest round of interviews with White House people.”
“What things?”
“I haven’t reported to the president yet, so I can’t tell you.”
“Have you mentioned this to anyone outside the White House?”
“Just the people involved in our investigation.”
“Please promise me you won’t breathe a word of that to anyone else. It’s the sort of thing that the media would go nuts over, and we’d be overwhelmed for days, maybe weeks, dealing with it. It would just make it harder for us to get our work done in the months Will Lee has left in office.”
“I won’t tell anyone else. It’s just a theory, at this point.”
“Well, it’s a very scary theory,” she said. “When do you plan to wrap up your investigation?”
“We were about ready to do that, until the two women were murdered,” Stone said. “Now we’ll have to wait and see how everything plays out.”
“I wish to God Will
and Kate hadn’t asked you to look into Mimi’s and Brix’s deaths,” she said. “Everything that’s happened seems to be because you’re here, doing this.”
“Sometimes I feel the same way,” Stone said.
“Enough shoptalk,” she said. “I have an early day every day, so we should so we shget into bed now.” She took his face in her hands and kissed him, then she took his hand and put it inside her sweater, on her breast. “Are you game?” she asked. “I don’t have time for foreplay.”
“I’m game,” Stone said, stripping off her sweater, while she worked on his buttons. He was astonished at how swiftly she had inflamed him.
36
STONE WAS WAKENED BY AN ELECTRONIC BEEPING. MOMENTARILY disoriented, he first thought he was at home in bed, then that he was back at the Hay-Adams. Then Fair rolled over on him and brought him fully awake.
She came quickly, then made it her business to see that he did, then she was out of bed and heading for the bathroom. “Go back to sleep,” she said. “I’ve got an early national security briefing, but there’s no need to roust you out of bed.”
Stone looked at the bedside clock: just after five A.M. He felt oddly rested, then it occurred to him that they had been in bed by eight-thirty the evening before. He had had a full eight hours of sleep. He heard the shower turn on.
He got out of bed, found his clothes, and got dressed. He was combing his hair, using her dressing table mirror, when he saw the lipstick. He picked it up: Pagan Spring. He opened the cap, and it seemed almost unused. So what? he thought. It seemed to be a very popular lipstick.
He went to the bathroom door, and she was getting out of the shower. “Dry my back?” she said.
Stone grabbed a towel and rubbed her down all over, enjoying the process.
“I want to do it again,” she said, “but I’m on the clock. Start the coffee, and put some muffins in the toaster oven, will you? I’ll drop you at your hotel on the way to work.”
Stone did as he was told, and by the time the coffee was ready, she was in the kitchen, standing while eating a muffin and drinking coffee. “You’re an extremely good lover,” she said.
Stone looked at her, surprised. “Thanks. So are you.”
“I haven’t had enough sex since my last relationship,” she said. “It’s the job. There’s no time to meet anyone.”
“I’m glad to have been of service,” Stone replied.
She tossed off her coffee. “Let’s go,” she said. She led him out of the apartment, and they took the elevator down to the garage, where her Prius was parked.
“I would have thought they’d send a car for you,” Stone said.
“When I’m chief of staff,” she replied, driving out of the garage. “The president doesn’t like it when staff start ordering up White House transportation without some real need. It’s easy for me to drive myself.”
She stopped just short of the portico at the Hay-Adams. “You’d better get out here. We don’t want to be seen together at this hour of the morning.” She gave him a kiss, waited until the door was closed, then drove away.
THE MUFFIN HADN’T BEEN enough for Stone, so he ordered a full breakfast from room service. He was already eating his eggs when Shelley came out of Dino’s room, followed shortly by Dino. They sat down. “When did you get in?” Dino asked.
“Late, but I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I ordesred breakfast.”
“And what did the evening reveal that will aid our investigation?” Dino asked.
Stone thought about that. “As far as I’m concerned, it eliminates Fair as a suspect,” he said.
“Why is that?” Shelley asked.
“She’s too normal to have murdered three people.”
“Too normal?” Dino said. “I see murders committed all the time by people who seem normal.”
“You’ll have to trust me on this, Dino,” Stone said. “I can’t prove she didn’t do it. She worked in Senator Hart’s office and knew Milly, said she liked her. She knew Muffy Brandon, too, but didn’t like he
r. There’s not the slightest evidence that she could have killed either of them. She does use Pagan Spring, though. It was on her dressing table in her bedroom.”
“I checked with the drugstore chain that sells it in D.C.,” Shelley said. “They’ve sold about nineteen hundred tubes of Pagan Spring since it came out a little over two years ago.”
“Swell,” Dino said.
“Since the two women were killed, my office is taking a new interest in the Kendrick deaths.”
“Great,” Stone said. “As far as I’m concerned, you folks can take over the investigation today, and I’ll go home and practice a little law.”
“Yeah?” Dino said. “I’m starting to get interested again.”
“Who, specifically, is getting interested over at the Hoover Building?” Stone asked.
“My boss, Kerry Smith.”
“Does he think you screwed up the original investigation?”
“Let’s just say that if something comes up that contradicts our conclusions, he wants to be ready with some answers to the inevitable questions.”
Dino spoke up. “I think we need to take a deeper look at Charlotte Kirby.”
“Why?” Shelley asked.
“Because when we talked to her, she was very uptight, very defensive.”
“That’s true,” Stone said. “She seemed to recoil.”
“And we don’t have anybody else who’s recoiling,” Dino said. “So she’s my suspect, until she isn’t.”
“Agreed,” Stone said.
“I’ll pull her FBI file,” Shelley said. “Everybody who works in the White House has one. There might be something there that will help.”
“Good idea,” Stone said. “Especially since we don’t have another one.”
A COPY OF CHARLOTTE KIRBY’s FBI file was delivered just before lunchtime, and Dino read it first.
“Anything interesting?” Stone asked.
“She’s divorced, one grown daughter.”
“Gee, that’s damning, isn’t it?”
“She was valedictorian of her class at Vassar.”
“We’re lucky she hasn’t murdered more people.”
“And she was a suspect in a murder case four years ago, when her sister was killed. She was cleared when the sister’the sists boyfriend confessed. He’s in a hospital for the criminally insane.”
Stone thought. “So she wasn’t cleared by evidence, but by
the confession of a lunatic?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“How did her sister die?”
“Head trauma from a blunt instrument.”
“I see.”
“And Charlotte inherited her sister’s share of her father’s estate, which amounted to a couple of million bucks.”
“She gets more and more interesting, doesn’t she?”
“I was interested before, remember?”
“This time, let’s not make an appointment. Let’s just show up.”
37
THEY ARRIVED AT THE WHITE HOUSE, AND STONE TOLD THE receptionist that they were there to see Fair Sutherlin. Two minutes later, as he had hoped, Charlotte Kirby appeared.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but Ms. Sutherlin wasn’t expecting you. She just left for a meeting at the State Department.”
“Then we’ll settle for speaking with you, Ms. Kirby,” Stone said. “Since Fair’s office is not in use, we can talk in there.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Ms. Kirby, you should know by now that we have the run of the White House.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, all right. Follow me.”
Stone and Dino fell in behind her, and as they walked down the hall, Stone said quietly to Dino, “Do you think she’s Brix Kendrick’s type?”
“I don’t think Brix had a type,” Dino replied. “Or if he did, it included most of the female gender.”
Kirby ushered them into Fair’s office and closed the door behind them. “Now,” she said, “what can I do for you?”
“You can have a seat,” Stone said, indicating the sofa. He and Dino took chairs opposite.
“What is this about?”
“The same thing it was about the last time we talked,” Stone said, “except we did most of the talking, and you were reluctant to answer.”
“I don’t know anything you want to know,” she said.
“On the contrary,” Stone replied, “you know just about everything we want to know, but don’t want to tell us.”
“You knew about each and every one of Brix Kendrick’s affairs, didn’t you?” Dino said.
She looked alarmed, but said nothing.
“Ms. Kirby,” Dino said, “if you continue to obstruct our investigation, the president is going to hear about it, then Ms. Sutherlin is going to hear about it, and then you’re going to find yourself working in a government basement somewhere, if you’re still employed at all.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Dino handed her a box of tissues from Fair’s desk. “Let’s start at the beginning,” he said. “When did you first meet Brix Kendrick?”
“Two years ago,” she said. “At a White House staff party. I was working for the director of the General Services Administration, and Mr. Kendrick needed someone with my experience in government.”
“And when did you come to work for him?”
“A few weeks after meeting him.”
“And when did the two of you first have sex?”
The tears came again. “The night we met,” she said.
“Where?”
“In his office, on the sofa.”
“Brix was a fast worker.”
“Mr. Kendrick was a very persuasive man.”
“And when did you next have sex?”
“The following evening, at my apartment.” Dino started to ask another question, but she held up a hand. “After that, it was three or four times a week, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes he’d come by my apartment early in the morning—five or six—on the way to work.”
Stone spoke up. “And when did Brix stop having sex with you?”
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “As soon as I came to work for him. He said that since we were working together, we couldn’t take the chance. After that, he was all business, except when he was talking about his affairs.”
“He talked with you about other women?” Dino asked.
“I know it sounds perverse, and maybe it was, but he’d talk about what they’d done in bed, and in great detail. He knew it made me . . .”
“Jealous?” Dino asked.
“Horny,” she replied. “He would insist that I . . .”
“Go on.”
“That I masturbate while he talked about the other women.”
Dino seemed to have run out of steam, so Stone stepped in. “And how did that make you feel?” he asked.
“Less horny.”
“Did you enjoy these experiences?”
“I’m ashamed to say I did,” she replied. “I began to look forward to them.”
“No need to feel ashamed, Ms. Kirby,” Stone said. “You’re telling the truth now.”
“And I feel better for it,” she said.
“How long did these . . . conversations continue?”
“Until the day he died,” she replied.
“Now,” Stone said, “let’s start from the day you went to work for Mr. Kendrick: who were the women he slept with?”
“There were nineteen of them,” Kirby replied.
Now Stone ran out of steam, and Dino stepped in. “Their names, please.” He opened his notebook.
“He never used their names. He either made up names, like ‘Shotzie,’ or ‘Toots,’ or he gave them nicknames, like ‘the Bunny,’ or ‘the Grasshopper.’”
“What did he call Milly Hart?” Stone asked, recovering.
“I think she was the one he called ‘the Rabbit,’” she said, “but I can’t be sure. He saw the Rabbit for a long time, and often.
”
“And what name did he give Mufd he givfy Brandon?”
“‘The Doggie,’” she said, “because that was her preferred position.”
“And when, in the chain of events, was he seeing her?”
“Only for the last month or so of his life, I think. She lived in Georgetown, and he would run over there, screw her, and be back in half an hour. He said he would walk into her house, and she’d be waiting for him, already naked. He’d just drop his pants and stick it in. Ten minutes later, he was on his way back to the office.”
“You make it sound as though Brix was not a considerate lover,” Stone said.
“Oh, I don’t mean to make it sound that way,” Kirby said. “He took pride in giving them what they wanted, the way they wanted it. He was very . . . proficient. If he was seeing Milly Hart, he’d be gone for a couple of hours. She liked everything.”
“Ms. Kirby,” Dino said, “would you describe Brix Kendrick as a sex addict?”
She laughed at that. “What else? He practically turned me into an addict, too, except I was addicted only to him.”
“Did you like him?” Stone asked.
“I loved him, and I loved working for him, too. He was a good boss, and he got a tr
emendous amount of work done every week, in spite of his extracurricular activities. I made a lot of that possible, of course, but he always gave me a list of things to accomplish before he went out.”
“Ms. Kirby,” Stone said, “this is important. Early in the afternoon of the day he died, he had sex with a woman in the family quarters—in the Lincoln Bedroom, in fact. Who was she?”
“Yes, he came back, went to work, and then, a little after five, he changed and went to play tennis on the White House court.”
“Who was she?” Stone asked again.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but he called her ‘the March Hare.’”
38
STONE AND DINO WERE QUIET ON THE DRIVE BACK TO THE Hay-Adams. When they were back in the suite Stone called Holly.
