D.C. Dead (Stone Barrington 22)

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.”