by J. D. Robb
In the main salon, filled with treasures Roarke had collected from around the known universe, an elegant, intimate party was happening. Glossy canapés sat elegantly on silver trays, pale gold wine filled sparkling crystal. Roarke was a dark angel in what he would have seen as casual attire. The black silk shirt open at the collar, the perfectly draped black trousers cinched with a belt gleaming silver at the buckle suited him perfectly, made him look exactly as he was: rich, gorgeous, dangerous.
Only one couple joined him in the spacious room. The man was as bright as Roarke was dark. Long golden hair flowed over the shoulders of a snug blue jacket. The face was square and handsome with lips just slightly too thin, but the contrast of his dark brown eyes kept the observer from noticing.
The woman was stunning. A sweep of deep red hair the color of rich wine was scooped up into curls that tumbled flirtatiously down the nape of her neck. Her eyes were green, sharp as a cat’s, and over them were shapely brows as black as ink. She had skin like alabaster creamed over high cheekbones and a sensually generous mouth.
Her body matched it and was currently poured into a clinging column of emerald that left strong shoulders bare and dipped between her staggering breasts to the waist.
“Roarke.” She let out that fluid laugh again, slid one slim white hand into Roarke’s mane of hair and kissed him silkily. “I have missed you dreadfully.”
Eve thought about the weapon strapped to her side and how, on even its lowest setting, it would send the bombshell redhead into a jittery dance. Just a passing thought, Eve assured herself, and set Galahad the cat down before she squeezed through the layers of fat and cracked one of his ribs.
“You didn’t miss him that time,” Eve said casually as she stepped inside. Roarke, damn him, glanced over and grinned at her.
We’ll just have to wipe that smug look off your face, pal, she thought. Real soon.
“Eve, we didn’t hear you come in.”
“Obviously.” She snagged an unidentifiable canapé from the tray and stuffed it into her mouth.
“I don’t believe you’ve met our guests. Reeanna Ott, William Shaffer, my wife, Eve Dallas.”
“Watch yourself, Ree, she’s armed.” With a chuckle, William crossed over to extend a hand. He moved in a lope, like a thin horse going out to pasture. “A pleasure to meet you, Eve. A genuine pleasure. Ree and I were so disappointed we were unable to attend your wedding.”
“Devastated.” Reeanna smiled at Eve, her green eyes sparkling. “William and I were desperate to meet, face to face, the woman who brought Roarke to his knees.”
“He’s still standing.” Eve flicked Roarke a glance as he handed her a glass of wine. “For now.”
“Ree and William were in the lab on Tarus Three, working on some projects for me. They’ve just gotten back on planet for some well deserved R and R.”
“Oh?” Like she gave a rat’s skinny ass.
“The on-the-board project’s been a particular pleasure,” William said. “Within a year, two at most, Roarke Industries will introduce new technology that will revolutionize the entertainment and amusement world.”
“Entertainment and amusement.” Eve smiled thinly. “Well, that’s earth shattering.”
“Actually, it has the potential to be just that.” Reeanna sipped her wine and sized Eve up: attractive, irritated, competent. Tough. “There are potential medical breakthroughs as well.”
“That’s Ree’s end.” William lifted his glass to her with easy, intimate affection in his eyes. “She’s the med expert. I’m just a fun guy.”
“I’m sure, after putting in a long day, Eve doesn’t want to hear us talk shop. Scientists,” Reeanna said with an apologetic smile. “We’re so tedious. You’re just back from Olympus.” Silk whispered as Reeanna shifted that staggering body. “William and I were part of the team that designed the amusement and medical centers there. Did you have time to tour them?”
“Briefly.” She was being rude, Eve reminded herself. She would have to become accustomed to coming home and finding elegant company, to seeing gorgeous women drool over her husband. “Very impressive, even at midconstruction stage. The medical facility will be more so when it’s staffed. Was the hologram room in the main hotel yours?” Eve asked William.
“Guilty,” he said with a sparkle. “I love to play. Do you?”
“Eve considers it work. As it happens, we had an incident while we were there,” Roarke put in. “A suicide. One of the autotronic techs. Mathias?”
William’s brow furrowed. “Mathias . . . young, red hair, freckles?”
“Yes.”
“Good God.” He shuddered, drank deeply. “Suicide? Are you sure it wasn’t an accident? My recollection is of an enthusiastic young man with big ideas. Not one who’d take his own life.”
“That’s what he did,” Eve said shortly. “He hanged himself.”
“How horrible.” Pale now, Reeanna sat on the arm of a couch. “Did I know him, William?”
“I don’t think so. You might have seen him at one of the clubs while we were there, but I don’t remember him as much of a socializer.”
“I’m terribly sorry, in any case,” Reeanna said. “And how awful for you to deal with such a tragedy on your honeymoon. Let’s not dwell on it.” Galahad leaped onto the couch, skimmed his head under Reeanna’s elegant hand. “I’d so much rather hear about the wedding we missed.”
“Stay for dinner.” Roarke gave Eve’s arm an apologetic squeeze. “We’ll bore you to tears with it.”
“I wish we could.” William offered Reeanna’s shoulder the same smooth stroke as she gave the cat’s head. “We’re due at the theater. We’re already late.”
“You’re right, as always.” With obvious regret, Reeanna rose. “I hope you’ll give us a rain check. We’ll be on planet for the next month or two, and I’d so love the opportunity to get to know you, Eve. Roarke and I go back . . . a long way.”
“You’re welcome any time. And I’ll see you both in the office tomorrow, for a full report.”
“Bright and early.” Reeanna set her glass aside. “Perhaps we can have lunch someday soon, Eve. Just females.” Her eyes twinkled with such easy humor that Eve felt foolish. “We can compare notes on Roarke.”
The invitation was too friendly to give offense. Eve found herself smiling. “That should be interesting.” She walked them to the door with Roarke, waved them off. “Just how many notes,” she said as she stepped back, “would there be to compare?”
“It was a long time ago.” He snagged her by the waist for a delayed welcome-home kiss. “Years. Eons.”
“She probably bought that body.”
“I’d have to term it an excellent investment.”
Eve lifted her chin to eye him sourly. “Is there any beautiful woman who hasn’t bounced on your bed?”
Roarke cocked his head, narrowed his eyes in consideration. “No.” He laughed when she took a swing at him. “You didn’t mean that, or you’d have hit me.” Then he grunted when her fist plowed into his gut. He rubbed it, grateful she’d pulled the punch. “I should have quit while I was ahead.”
“Let that be a lesson to you, lover boy.” But Eve let him sweep her off her feet and over his shoulder.
“Hungry?” he asked her.
“Starving.”
“Me, too.” He started up the stairs. “Let’s eat in bed.”
chapter four
Eve awoke with the cat stretched over her chest and the bedside ’link beeping. Dawn was just breaking. The light through the sky window was thin and gray from the storm rolling in with morning. With her eyes half closed, she reached out to answer.
“Block video,” she ordered, clearing sleep from her voice. “Dallas.”
“Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Suspicious death, Five oh oh two Madison Avenue, Unit Thirty-eight hundred. See resident Foxx, Arthur. Code four.”
“Dispatch, received. Contact Peabody, Officer Delia, to assist. My authorization.”
/> “Confirmed. Transmission terminated.”
“Code four?” Roarke had shifted the cat and was sitting up in bed, lazily stroking Galahad into feline ecstasy.
“It means I have time for a shower and coffee.” Eve didn’t spot a robe handy, so she walked toward the bathroom naked. “There’s a uniform on the scene,” she called out. She stepped into the shower unit, rubbing her gritty eyes. “Full power all jets, one hundred two degrees.”
“You’ll boil.”
“I like to boil.” She let out an enormous sigh of pleasure as pulsing jets of steamy water battered her from all sides. Tapping a glass block, she dispensed a palm full of dark green liquid soap. By the time she stepped out of the shower, she was awake.
Her brow lifted as she saw Roarke standing in the doorway, holding a cup of coffee. “For me?”
“Part of the service.”
“Thanks.” She took the cup into the drying tube, sipping while warm air swirled around her. “What were you doing, watching me shower?”
“I like to watch you. Something about long, lean women when they’re wet and naked.” He stepped into the shower himself and called for sixty-eight degrees.
It made Eve shiver. She couldn’t understand why a man with all the luxuries in the world at his fingertips would actually choose cold showers. She opened the drying tube and combed her fingers through her unstyled cap of hair. She used some of the face glop that Mavis was always pushing at her, brushed her teeth.
“You don’t have to get up because I am.”
“I’m up,” Roarke said simply and chose a heated towel rather than the drying tube. “Do you have time for breakfast?”
Eve watched his reflection in the mirror: gleaming hair, gleaming skin. “I’ll catch something later.”
He hooked the towel around his waist, shook back his dripping mane of hair, cocked his head. “Yeah?”
“I guess I like looking at you, too,” she muttered and went into the bedroom to dress for death.
Street traffic was light. Airbuses rumbled overhead through the sizzling rain, carting night shift workers home, dragging day shifters to work. Billboards were quiet and the ubiquitous glida grills and carts with their offerings of food and drink were already setting up for the day. Smoke billowed through the vents in streets and sidewalks from the underground world of transportation and retail. The air steamed.
Eve headed across town, making good time.
The section of Madison where a body waited for her was pocked with exclusive boutiques and silvery spears of buildings fashioned to house those who could afford to shop there. The skywalks were glassed in to separate the clientele from the elements and from the noise that would begin to boom within an hour or two.
Eve passed a taxi with a lone passenger. The elegant blonde wore a glittery jacket, a sparkling rainbow of color in the dingy light. Licensed companion, Eve mused, heading home after an all-nighter. The wealthy could afford to buy fancy sex along with their fancy clothes.
Eve swung into an underground garage at the scene, flashed her badge for the security post. It scanned it, scanned her, then the light blinked from red to green and flashed the number of the empty space assigned to her.
It was, of course, at the far end of the facility from the elevator. Cops, she thought with resignation as she hoofed it, aren’t given optimum spaces.
Eve recited the number of the unit into the speaker box and was whisked up.
There had been a time, not so long before, when she would have been impressed with the sumptuous foyer on the thirty-eighth floor, with its pool of scarlet hibiscus and bronze statuary. That was before she’d entered Roarke’s world. She scanned the small, tinkling fountains flanking the entrance and realized that it was highly possible that her husband owned the building.
She spotted the uniform guarding the door of 3800, flipped up her badge.
“Lieutenant.” The cop shifted subtly to attention, sucking in her stomach. “My partner’s inside with the deceased’s housemate. Mr. Foxx, on discovering his companion’s body, called for an ambulance. We responded in addition, as per procedure. The ambulance is on hold, sir, until you clear the scene.”
“Is it secured?”
“It is now.” Her gaze flicked toward the door. “We weren’t able to get much out of Foxx, sir. He’s a bit hysterical. I can’t be sure what he might have disturbed—other than the body.”
“He moved the body?”
“No, sir. That is, it’s still in the tub, but he attempted to, ah, revive the deceased. Had to be in shock to attempt it. There’s enough blood in there to swim in. Slashed wrists,” she explained. “From a visual confirmation, he’d been dead at least an hour before his housemate discovered the body.”
Eve took a firmer grip on her field kit. “Has the ME been notified?”
“On the way, sir.”
“Fine. Clear Officer Peabody in when she arrives, and continue to stand. Open it,” she added and waited for the uniform to slide her master key in the slot. The door slid open into the wall. Eve immediately heard the hard, ragged sobs of terrible grief.
“He’s been like that since we arrived,” the uniform murmured. “Hope you can tranq him soon.”
Saying nothing, Eve walked in, letting the door slide shut and lock at her back. The entranceway was elaborate in black and white marble. Spiraling columns were draped in some sort of flowering vine, and overhead, a black glass chandelier dripped in five ornate tiers.
Through the portico was a living area that followed the theme. Black leather sofas, white floors, ebony wood tables, white lamps. Drapes striped in black and white were drawn shut, but lights showered from the ceiling, spotlighted up from the floor.
An amusement screen was switched off but hadn’t been slipped back into its recess. Glossy white stairs angled up to a second floor, which was ringed with white banisters, atrium style. Lush green ferns hung in enameled pots from the lofted ceiling.
Money might drip, she mused, but death had no respect for it. It was a club without a class system.
The sounds of grief echoed and drew her into a small den lined with antique books and cushy with deep chairs the color of good burgundy.
Sunk into one was a man. His handsome face was pale gold and ravaged from tears. His hair was gold as well, the glint of new coin, and was tufted in spikes from his hands. He wore a white silk robe that was spotted and smeared with drying blood. His feet were bare, and his hands were studded with rings that sparkled as his fingers trembled. There was a tattoo of a black swan on his left ankle.
The uniform who was sitting miserably beside the man glanced over at Eve, started to speak.
Eve shook her head quickly, keeping her badge in plain sight. She gestured toward the ceiling, cocking her head in question.
He nodded, jerked his thumb up, then shook his head.
Eve slipped back out. She wanted to see the body, view the scene before she dealt with the witness.
There were several rooms off the second floor. Still, it was simple enough to find her way. She simply followed the trail of blood. She stepped into a bedroom. Here the scheme was soft greens and blues, so that it felt like floating underwater. The bed was an oblong of blue satin sheets, mountained with pillows.
There was statuary here as well, of the classic nude variety. Drawers were built into the walls, giving it an uncluttered—and to Eve—an unlived-in appearance. The ocean blue carpet was soft as a cloud and spotted with blood.
She followed the trail into the master bath. Death didn’t shock her, but it appalled her, and she knew it always would: the waste of it, the violence and cruelty of it. But she lived with it too much to be shocked, even by this.
Blood had spurted, showered, streamed on gleaming tiles of ivory and seafoam green. It had fountained over glass, pooled over the mirrored floor from the gaping wound in the wrist of the hand that hung limply over the lip of a huge clear-sided tub.
The water inside was a dark, nasty pink, and the metallic
smell of blood hung in the air. Music was playing, something with strings—perhaps a harp. Fat white candles had been lighted and still burned at both the foot and the head of the long oval tub.
The body that lay in that cloudy pink water had its head resting on a gilt-edged bath pillow, its gaze lifted and fixed on the feathery tails of a fern that hung from the mirrored ceiling. He was smiling, as if he’d been desperately amused to watch himself die.
It didn’t shock her, but she sighed as she coated her hands and feet with clear seal, engaged her recorder, and carried her kit inside to stand over the body.
Eve had recognized him. Naked, bled almost dry, and smiling up at his own reflection was the renowned defense attorney S. T. Fitzhugh.
“Salvatori’s going to be very disappointed in you, Counselor,” she murmured as she got to work.
Eve had taken a sample of the bloody bathwater, done her initial scan to estimate time of death, bagged the deceased’s hands, and recorded the scene when Peabody appeared, slightly out of breath at the doorway.
“I’m sorry, sir. I had some trouble getting uptown.
“It’s all right.” She passed Peabody the ivory-handled buck knife she’d secured in clear plastic. “Looks like he did it with this. It’s an antique, I’d guess. Collector’s item. We’ll run it for prints.”
Peabody tucked the knife in her evidence kit, then narrowed her eyes. “Lieutenant, isn’t that—”
“Yeah, it’s Fitzhugh.”
“Why would he kill himself?”
“We haven’t determined that he did. Never make assumptions, Officer,” she said mildly. “First rule. Call in the sweepers, Peabody, and let’s get the scene tagged. We can release the body to the ME. I’m done with it for now.” Eve stepped back with blood smearing her sealed hands. “I want you to take a prelim from the two uniforms who responded while I talk to Foxx.”
Eve glanced back at the body, shook her head. “That’s just the way he’d grin at you in court when he figured he’d tripped you up. The son of a bitch.” Still studying the body, she used the cleaner from her kit to remove the blood, tucked the soiled wipe into a bag as well. “Tell the ME I want toxicology ASAP.”