“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.