Stone and Holly appeared for breakfast in robes and found Dino and Shelley, in robes, already attacking their meal.
“We ordered for you, too,” Dino said.
“Good morning, Holly,” Shelley said, without apparent embarrassment.
“Good morning, Shelley, Dino,” Holly replied, shaking out her napkin and pouring herself and Stone some orange juice. “I hear your conclusions in the investigation are holding up.”
Shelley nodded. “I expected them to, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” Holly said. “This wasn’t my idea. Actually, Stone and Dino were my idea, but only after I had my orders.”
“I like your choice of investigators,” Shelley said, pulling Dino’s earlobe.
“So do I,” Stone said, helping himself from a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon.
“Then nobody has any complaints?” Holly asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Stone replied. “First, I want to see the lab report on the brick.”
Shelley got up and went to a telephone, held a brief conversation, then hung up and came back to the table. “The lab report is on my desk,” she said.
“And?” Dino queried.
“The blood on the brick is that of Emily Kendrick, so we have the murder weapon.”
“Okay,” Stone said. “What else?”
“There was no deposit of DNA by another individual,” Shelley said.
“Shit!” Dino muttered.
“However,” Shelley said, making sure she had everybody’s undivided attention before continuing, “there was something else deposited.”
Everybody stared at her in silence, waiting for the news.
“Lipstick,” Shelley said. “Don’t you want to know what kind of lipstick?”
“I’m just dying to know,” Dino replied.
“Pagan Spring,” Shelley said, “from a house brand made for a national drugstore chain.”
“What’s a Pagan Spring?” Dino asked.
“In this case,” Shelley said, “pinkish.”
“Pinkish?”
“Not exactly pink, but pinkish.”
Stone interrupted. “I take it this is a cosmetic used by potentially tens of thousands of women in the D.C. area?”
“Indeed,” Shelley said.
“Shit!” Dino said again.
11
Holly and Shelley had left the suite, and Stone and Dino were on their second cups of coffee. The phone rang, and Stone got it. “Yes?”
“I’m calling for Director of Central Intelligence Katharine Rule Lee,” a woman’s voice said. “To whom am I speaking?”
“This is Stone Barrington.”
“Director Lee would be pleased if you and Lieutenant Bacchetti could join her for lunch in her dining room today at twelve-thirty.”
“Please tell her we’d be pleased to join her,” Stone said.
“Thank you, Mr. Barrington. There’ll be visitors’ passes for you at the main gate. Would you like directions?”
“Yes, please.” Stone wrote everything down, thanked her, and hung up. “I hope you and Assistant Director Bach haven’t planned a matinee for today,” he said to Dino.
“Funny you should mention it,” Dino said. “I was just thinking about that.”
“Director Lee has invited us to lunch at the Agency.”
“No kidding? I’ve never been there.”
“Neither have I, but I have directions,” Stone replied, waving a piece of paper.
Entry to the Central Intelligence Agency’s grounds was very much like entry to the White House grounds. They gave their names at the gate, were checked off a list, then given visitors’ passes and directed to a parking spot. They were met on the ground floor by a fiftyish woman who introduced herself as Director Lee’s assistant and led them through the security gate and to an elevator, along the way passing a wall where nameless stars represented agents who had lost their lives in the line of duty.
The director’s dining room was pleasant, paneled in a light wood, and featured fo qblf duty.a large window with a view of the woods surrounding the building. Holly was already there, sipping fizzy water.
“Why, Mr. Barrington, Lieutenant Bacchetti, what a surprise to bump into you,” she said gaily.
Before they could respond, the director breezed into the room, followed by her assistant, who was jotting notes on a steno pad. “And tell them to be quick about it,” Kate Lee said, then took a seat at the table, waving the others to chairs. “I’m very much afraid that this is not going to be a very good lunch,” she said, “because I’m on a diet, and you have to suffer along with me.”
A small salad of some sort of leaves, splashed with lemon juice, was served.
“All right,” the director said, after they had begun to eat.
Stone recited what they had learned so far, which he knew would not please her, but she perked up when he came to the brick with the lipstick on it.
“Tell me,” she said, “how do you think lipstick got to be on the brick? Did the murderer kiss it?”
Her question was met with silence.
“Maybe Mrs. Kendrick was wearing it,” Dino said hopefully.
“No,” Holly replied. “She had just come from a tennis date.”
“Well,” the director replied, “I have played tennis with women who were wearing lipstick, but Mimi Kendrick never wore makeup at all. She had this glowing skin that cosmetics had never touched, and she looked great.”
“The lipstick does suggest that the murderer was a woman, though,” Stone said.
“Or a transvestite,” the director murmured.
Holly couldn’t resist laughing. “At the White House? That would be something!”
“Yes,” the director said, “it would be something, but you’re right, Stone, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion but that the murderer was a woman.”
“Or,” Dino said, “a man with a tube of lipstick who left some on the brick, just to drive us crazy.”
“That would indicate premeditation,” Stone said, “but a brick is not a weapon of premeditation, just the first thing the murderer could lay his or her hands on.”
“Stone’s right,” Dino said. “A premeditator would bring a knife or a gun.”
“Not at the White House,” Holly pointed out. “He-or she-would never be able to get a weapon past security.”
Everybody was quiet again.
Stone finally spoke up. “Of the people on the FBI’s list of those in the area, six were women: Charleston Bostwick, one undersecretary of state, one Secret Service agent, and the president’s three secretaries. And they all have unimpeachable alibis.”
They waited while a waiter took away their salad plates and replaced them with dinner plates, each containing a spoonful of a green substance and a single lamb chop.
“Well, there is one helpful thing about this information,” the director said, finally. “I never knew Brix Kendrick to wear lipstick.”
After lunch, Holly walked Stone and Dino down to the lobby, and the three paused at the front door.
