D.C. Dead (Stone Barrington 22)

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?”