D.C. Dead (Stone Barrington 22)

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.