Witness in Death

by J. D. Robb

“Screwed that up,” Peabody muttered. “Big time.” She blew out a breath, trying not to be embarrassed she’d had her wings pinned in front of Roarke. “She’s pissed now.”

  “She’s angry. Not at you, particularly,” Roarke added, “nor at me.” He looked back at the corpse, the pathetic waste of it, and understood his wife perfectly. “Death offends her. Each time. Every time she deals with it.”

  “She’ll tell you that you can’t take it personally.”

  “Yes.” He watched Eve sit beside Ralph, automatically shielding his view of death with her body. “She’ll tell you that.”

  • • •

  He could be patient. Roarke knew how to wait, to choose his time and his place. Just as he knew that Eve would seek him out, would find him, if for no other reason than to assure herself he hadn’t stuck his fingers too deeply into her work.

  So he sat on the stage, still dressed with the final courtroom set. An odd place for a man with his background, he thought with some amusement, as he used his personal palm computer to scan updated stock reports and revise a departmental memo.

  He’d turned the stage lights on, though that had simply been for convenience. When she tracked him down, he sat in the dock under a cool blue spot, and he looked as seductive as a condemned angel.

  “They ever get you that far?”

  “Hmm?” He glanced up. “You’ve seen my records. No arrests.”

  “I’ve seen what’s left of your records after you played with them.”

  “Lieutenant, that’s a serious accusation.” Still, a smile flirted with his mouth. “But no, I’ve never had the pleasure of defending myself in a court of law on a criminal matter. How’s the boy?”

  “Who? Oh. Ralph. A little shaky.” She climbed the stairs to the dock. “I had a couple of uniforms take him home. We shouldn’t need to talk to him again. And after he recovers, he’ll have all his pals buying him a beer to hear the story.”

  “Exactly so. You’re a fine judge of human nature. And how’s our Peabody?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a good teacher, Lieutenant, but a fierce one. I wondered if she’d recovered from the bruising you gave her.”

  “She wants to make detective. She wants to work murders. First rule, you go on a scene, you don’t bring anything with you. No preconceptions, no conclusions. And you don’t take what you see at first glance on face value. You think Feeney didn’t slap me upside the head with that a few times when he was my trainer?”

  “I imagine he did and had plenty of bruises of his own when he hit the rock of it.”

  “If that’s a fancy way of saying I’m hardheaded, it doesn’t insult me. She’ll learn, and she’ll think more carefully next time. She hates screwing up.”

  He reached up idly to brush his knuckles over her cheek. “I thought the same myself. Now, why don’t you think this is self-termination?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t. There are a number of tests to be run. The ME will make the call.”

  “I wasn’t asking for the medical examiner’s opinion but yours.”

  She started to speak, then set her teeth and jammed her hands in her pockets. “You know what that was down there? That was a fucking insult. That was a stage carefully set for my benefit. Somebody thinks I’m stupid.”

  Now he did smile. “No. Someone knows you’re smart—very smart—and took great care, right down to the bottle of what will undoubtedly turn out to be Quim’s own home brew.”

  “I’ve checked his locker. You can still smell the stuff. He kept a bottle in there, all right. What did he know?” she muttered. “Head stagehand? That means he’d have to know where everything needs to be and when. People, props, the works.”

  “Yes, I’d assume so.”

  “What did he know?” she said again. “What did he see, what did he think? What did he die for? He wrote down stuff in this little notebook. The handwriting on the death note looks like a match. If the ME doesn’t find something off, he’s likely to rule it self-termination.”

  Roarke rose. “You’ll be working late.”

  “Yeah. Looks like.”

  “See that you eat something other than a candy bar.”

  Her mouth went grim. “Somebody stole my candy bars again.”

  “The bastard.” He leaned down, kissed her lightly. “I’ll see you at home.”

  • • •

  If Eve’s preconception that theater people led richly bohemian lives had taken a dent after a look at Michael Proctor’s living quarters, it suffered a major blow when she reached Linus Quim’s excuse for an apartment.

  “One step up from street-sleeping.” She shook her head as she took her first scan of the single, street-level room. The anti-burglar bars covering the two grimy, arrow-slot windows were coated with muck and caged out whatever pitiful sunlight might have struggled to fight its way into the gloom.

  But bars and muck weren’t enough to keep out the constant clamor of street traffic or the uneasy vibrations from the subway that ran directly under the ugly room.

  “Lights on,” she ordered and was rewarded with a flickering, hopeless yellow glow from the dusty ceiling unit.

  Absently, she stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. It was colder inside than it was out in the frisky, late-winter wind. The entire place, such as it was, smelled of old sweat, older dust, and what she assumed was last night’s dinner of hash and beans.

  “What did you say this guy pulled down a year?” she asked Peabody.

  Peabody pulled out her PPC, scanned. “Union scale for his position is eight hundred and fifty a show, with ascending hourly wage for put-ups, tear-downs, turnaround, and overtime pay. Union takes a twenty-five percent bite for dues, retirement, health plans, and blah-blah, but our guy still raked in about three hundred thousand annually.”

  “And chose to live like this. Well, he was either spending it or stashing it somewhere.” She strode across the bare floor to the computer unit. “This piece of crap’s older than the piece of crap I just got rid of. Computer on.”

  It coughed, wheezed, snorted, then emitted a sickly blue light. “Display financial records for Quim, Linus.”

  Password required for data display…

  “I’ll give you a password.” Halfheartedly, she rapped the unit with her fist and recited her rank and badge number.

  Privacy Act protects requested data. Password required…

  “Peabody, deal with this thing.” Eve turned her back on it and began riffling through the drawers in a cabinet that had the consistency of cardboard. “Arena ball programs,” she announced while Peabody tried to reason with the computer. “And more notebooks. Our boy liked to bet on the games, which might explain where his salary went. He’s got it all written down here, wins and losses. Mostly losses. Petty-ante stuff, though. Doesn’t look like he was spine-cracker material.”

  She moved on to the next drawer. “Well, well, look at this. Brochures of tropical islands. Forget the financials, Peabody. See if he went searching for data on Tahiti.”

  She moved onto the closet, pushed through a handful of shirts, feeling the pockets, checking for hiding places in the two pairs of shoes.

  As far as she could see, the guy had kept nothing—no mementos, no photographs, no personal discs. Just his notebooks.

  He had a week’s worth of clothes, obviously old, which included one wrinkled suit. His cupboards turned up several dehydrated single packs of hash, several bottles of brew, one jumbo bag of soy chips, as yet unopened.

  She took the bag out, frowned over it. “Why does a man so obviously tight with his money spring for a jumbo bag of chips, then hang himself before he eats them?”

  “Maybe he was too depressed. Some people can’t eat when they’re depressed. Me, I head right for the highest caloric content available.”

  “Looks to me like he ate last night and again this morning. Autopsy will confirm that, but his recycler’s overstaffed.” Wincing, she reached into the slot and pulled out an emp
ty bag. “Soy chips. My guess is he finished them off yesterday and had his backup bag ready for his next nutritious meal. There’s a half bottle of brew chilling in his friggie box, and two backups in the cupboard.”

  “Well, maybe…Good call on Tahiti, Dallas.” Peabody straightened. “It was his last data search. We’ve got pictures, tourist data, climate scans.” As she spoke, the machine began to play exotic music, heavy on the drums. “And half-naked dancing girls.”

  “Why does our urbanite do scans of faraway islands?” Eve walked back over, watched the native women shake impressively in some tribal dance. “Computer, replay most recent search for transpo choices and costs from New York City to Tahiti.”

  Working…Last search for transpo data initiated oh three thirty-five, twenty-eight March, 2059, by Quim, Linus. Data as follows: Roarke Airlines offers the most direct flights daily…

  “Naturally,” Eve said dryly. “Computer hold. Quim spent time just this morning researching flights to Tahiti. Doesn’t sound like a guy suffering from guilt and depression. Computer, list Quim, Linus, passport and/or visa data.”

  Working…Quim, Linus: Request for passport initiated fourteen hundred hours, twenty-six March, 2059.

  “Going on a trip, weren’t you, Linus?” She stepped back. “What did you see, what did you know?” she murmured. “And who were you going to tap for the money to pay for your island vacation? Let’s take this unit in to Feeney, Peabody.”

  • • •

  Eliza Rothchild had made her debut on stage at the age of six months as a fretful baby causing her parents distress in a drawing room comedy. The play had flopped, but Eliza had been the critic’s darling.

  Her own mother had pushed her, pulled her, from audition to audition. By the age of ten, Eliza was a veteran of stage and screen. By twenty, she’d been a respected character actress, with a room full of awards, homes on three continents, and her first—and last—unhappy marriage behind her.

  At forty, she’d been around so long no one wanted to see her, including producers. She claimed to be retired rather than used up, and had spent the next decade of her life traveling, throwing lavish parties, and fighting excruciating boredom.

  When the opportunity arose to play the nagging nurse Miss Plimsoll in the stage production of Witness, she’d pretended reluctance, allowed herself to be wooed, and had privately wept copious tears of relief and gratitude.

  She loved the theater more than she had ever loved any man or any woman.

  Now, as her security screen announced the arrival of the police, she prepared to play her role with dignity and discretion.

  She answered the door herself, a sternly attractive woman who didn’t bother to disguise her age. Her hair was a rich auburn threaded with silver. The lines around her hazel eyes fanned out without apology. She wore a hip-skimming tunic and sweeping trousers over a short, sturdy body. She offered Eve a hand glittering with rings, smiled coolly, and stepped back.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in her smooth voice that held the granite of New England. “It’s comforting to see the police are prompt.”

  “I appreciate your time, Ms. Rothchild.”

  “Well, I don’t really have a choice, do I, but to give it to you.”

  “You’re free to speak through or with a lawyer or representative.”

  “Of course. My lawyer is standing by, should I decide to do so.” She gestured toward the living area. “I know your husband, Lieutenant. Quite the most fatally attractive man I’ve ever encountered. He may have told you I was reluctant to come out of retirement and accept the role of Miss Plimsoll. But quite frankly, I couldn’t resist him.”

  She smiled again, sat in an elegant high-backed chair with a tapestry seat, rested her elbows on the wide arms, folded her hands. “Who could?”

  “Roarke persuaded you to come out of retirement.”

  “Lieutenant, I’m sure you’re aware there’s nothing Roarke couldn’t talk a woman into. Or out of.”

  Her eyes measured and judged Eve, then shifted idly to Peabody. “Still, you’re not here to discuss Roarke but another fatally attractive man. Though, in my opinion, Richard lacked your husband’s charm and underlying…we’ll say decency, for lack of a better word.”

  “Were you and Richard Draco involved romantically?”

  Eliza blinked several times, then laughed. The sound was a steady, bubbling gurgle. “Oh, my dear girl, should I be flattered or insulted? Oh me.”

  With a sigh, she patted her breast, as if the bout of humor had been a strain on the heart. “Let me say that Richard would never have wasted that particular area of his skills on me. Even when we were young, he considered me much too plain, too physically ordinary. ‘Too intellectual,’ I believe was one of his terms. He considered cultural intellect a flaw in a woman.”

  She paused, as if realizing she’d gone too far in the wrong direction, then opted to finish it out. “Gallantry was not one of his talents. He often made snide little jokes about my lack of appeal. I chose to be neither amused nor offended as what it came down to was simple. We were of an age, you see. Which meant I was years too old for his taste. And if I may say, several notches too self-reliant. He preferred the young and the vulnerable.”

  And that, Eve thought, had come out in a flood, as if it had been dammed up quite some time. “Then your relationship with him would have been strictly professional?”

  “Yes. We certainly socialized. Theater people tend to be an incestuous little group—metaphorically, and literally as well, I suppose. We attended many of the same parties, performances, and benefits over the years. Never as a couple. We were civil enough, as we both knew he wasn’t interested in me in a sexual manner, it took away that tension.”

  “Civil,” Eve repeated. “But not friendly.”

  “No, I can’t claim we were ever friendly.”

  “Can you tell me where you were on opening night, between the scenes that took place in the bar and the courtroom? The scene where Christine Vole is called back as a witness.”

  “Yes, of course, as it’s as much a routine as what I do onstage. I went back to my dressing room to check my makeup. I prefer doing my own makeup, as most of us do. Then I was backstage for a time. My next scene has me in the balcony, watching the courtroom—and Sir Wilfred—along with the character of Diana and a number of extras.”

  “Did you see or speak with anyone between those scenes?”

  “I’m sure I did.” Eliza lifted her fingers, making a little steeple. Then collapsed them. “A number of the technical crew would have been backstage, and I might have exchanged a word or two. Carly and I passed each other.”

  “Passed each other?”

  “Yes. As I was coming out of my dressing room, she was going toward hers. Hurriedly, as our cue was coming up shortly. Did we speak?”

  She paused, pursing her lips, searching the ceiling as if for the memory. “I believe we did. She made some offhand complaint about Richard. I think she said he’d given her ass a bit of a pinch or pat. It annoyed her, as well it should, given his treatment of her.”

  She continued to sit, regally, her eyes bright and fixed on Eve’s. “I find it hard to sympathize, as she’s smart enough to know better than to get involved with a man of his nature. I believe I made just that sort of comment to Kenneth before I started up to the second level of the set to take my mark.”

  “You saw him as well.”

  “Yes, pacing about, muttering to himself. He often does so before a scene. I couldn’t tell you if he heard me or noticed. Kenneth tries to stay in character and he works very hard to ignore Nurse Plimsoll.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Well, I…Yes, I saw Michael Proctor. He was in the wings. I’m sure he was dreaming of the night when he might have his chance to play Vole. Not that I believe for a moment he arranged to do so. He has such a helpless air, doesn’t he? I can see this business devouring him whole in another year or so.”

  “And Areena Mansfield. Did you see
her as well?”

  “Certainly. She made the dash to her dressing room. She had a full costume and makeup change between those scenes. She raced right past me. But honestly, Lieutenant, if you want the positions and activities of the cast between scenes, you don’t want to talk to one of us. You want Quim. He’s head stagehand, a rumpled little man with sneaky eyes that miss little to nothing. He’s everywhere.”

  “Not anymore,” Eve said quietly. “Linus Quim was found hanged this morning in the theater. Lower level.”

  For the first time, Eliza’s polished veneer cracked. Her hand went to her heart, trembled there. “Hanged?” The well-trained voice was husky on the single word. “Hanged?” she repeated. “There must be a mistake. Who would kill a harmless little toad like Quim?”

  “It appeared to be self-termination.”

  “Nonsense.” Eliza got to her feet. “Why, that’s nonsense. It takes great bravery or great cowardice to end your own life. He had neither. He was just an irritating little man, one who did his job well and never seemed to enjoy it. If he’s dead, someone killed him. That’s two,” she said almost to herself. “Two deaths in the theater. Tragedies come in threes. Who’s next?”

  She shuddered, lowered herself to her chair again. “Someone’s killing us.” The avid interest in her eyes was gone, the play of amusement around her mouth turned down to worry. “There’s another play, Lieutenant Dallas, by the late Dame Christie. And Then There Were None. Ten people, subtly linked, who are murdered one at a time. I don’t intend to have a role in it. You have to stop this.”

  “I intend to. Is there a reason anyone would wish you harm, Ms. Rothchild?”

  “No. No. I have no enemies on the scope that leads to murder. But there will be at least one more. It’s theater, and we’re a superstitious lot. If there’s two, there must be three. There will be three,” she said. “Unless you do something about it.”

  She jolted when her security beeped. The lobby clerk’s face came cheerfully on-screen. “Ms. Landsdowne is here to see you, Ms. Rothchild. Shall I send her up?”

  “I’m engaged at the moment,” she began, but Eve held up a hand.