Witness in Death

CHAPTER SIX

"Don't touch anything, and stay out of the way."

"Darling." Roarke watched Eve slip her master into the security lock on Penthouse A. "You're repeating yourself."

"That's because you never listen." Before she opened the door, she turned, met his eyes. "Why does a man whose primary residence is New York, whose main source of work is New York, opt to live in a hotel rather than a private residence?"

"First the panache. 'Mr. Draco keeps the penthouse at The Palace when in the city.' Next, the convenience. At the crook of a finger, whatever you need or want done for you can be. Is. And lastly, perhaps most tellingly, the utter lack of commitment. Everything around you is someone else's problem and responsibility."

"From what I've learned of Draco so far, that's the one I go for." She opened the door, stepped inside.

It belonged to Roarke, she thought, therefore it was plush and lush and perfect. If you went for that kind of thing.

The living area was enormous and elegantly furnished with walls of silky rose. The ceiling was arched and decorated with a complicated design of fruit and flowers around a huge glass and gold chandelier.

Three sofas, all in deep, cushy red were piled with pillows bright as jewels. Tables – and she suspected they were genuine wood and quite old – were polished like mirrors, as was the floor. The rug was an inch thick and matched the ceiling pattern grape for grape.

One wall was glass, the privacy screen drawn so that New York exploded with light and shape outside but couldn't intrude. There was a stone terrace beyond, and as the flowers decked in big stone pots were thriving, she assumed it was heated.

A glossy white piano stood at one end of the room, and at the other, carved wood panels hid what she assumed was a full entertainment unit. There were plants of thick and glossy foliage, glass displays holding pretty dust catchers she concluded were art, and no discernable sign of life.

"Housekeeping would have come in after he left for the theater," Roarke told her. "I can ask the team on duty that evening to come up and let you know the condition of the rooms at that time."

"Yeah." She thought of Nadine. If she knew the reporter, the condition of the rooms had been something approaching the wake of a tornado. She walked over to the panels, opened them, and studied the entertainment unit. "Unit on," she commanded, and the screen flickered to soft blue. "Play back last program."

With barely a hiccup, the unit burst into color and sound. Eve watched two figures slide and slither over a pool of black sheets. "Why do guys always get off watching other people fuck?"

"We're sick, disgusting, and weak. Pity us."

She started to laugh. Then the couple on the bed rolled. The woman's face, soft with pleasure, turned toward the camera. "Goddamn it. That's Nadine. Nadine and Draco."

In support, Roarke laid a hand on Eve's shoulder. "It wasn't taped here. That's not the bedroom. Her hair's different. I don't think it's recent."

"I'm going to have to take it in, prove it isn't. And I've got a damn sex tape of one of the media's cream as evidence on a murder case." She stopped the play, ejected the disc, and sealed it in an evidence bag from her field kit.

"Damn it. Damn it."

She began to pace, to struggle with herself. All this relationship stuff was so complicated and still so foreign to her. Nadine had told her what she'd told her as a friend. In confidence. The man currently, and patiently, watching her from across the room was her husband.

Love, honor, and all the rest of it.

If she told him about Nadine and Draco, was she breaching a confidence and the trust of a friend? Or was she just doing the marriage thing?

How the hell, she wondered, did people get through life juggling all this stuff?

"Darling Eve." Sympathizing, Roarke waited until she'd stopped prowling the room and turned to face him. "You're giving yourself a headache. I can make it easier on you. Don't feel you have to tell me something that makes you uncomfortable."

She frowned at him, narrowed her eyes. "I hear a but at the end of that sentence."

"You have very sharp ears. But," he continued, crossing to her, "I can deduce that Nadine and Draco were involved at one time, and given your current concern, that something happened between them a great deal more recently."

"Oh hell." In the end she went with the gut and told him everything.

He listened, then tucked Eve's hair behind her ear. "You're a good friend."

"Don't say that. It makes me nervous."

"All right, I'll say this: Nadine didn't have anything to do with Draco's murder."

"I know that, and there's no hard evidence indicating any different. But it's going to be messy for her. Personally messy. Okay, what else is in this place?"

"Ah, if memory serves. Kitchen through there." He gestured. "Office, bath, bedroom, dressing room, bath."

"I'll start in the office. I want to run his 'links and see if he had any conversations that involved threats or arguments. Do me a favor." She handed him her kit. "Bag the rest of the video discs."

"Yes, sir. Lieutenant."

She smirked but let it ride.

She worked systematically. He loved watching her at it: The focus, the concentration, the absolute logic of her method.

Not so long before in his life if anyone had suggested he could find a cop and her work sexy, he'd have been both appalled and insulted.

"Stop staring at me."

He smiled. "Was I?"

She decided to let it pass. "Lots of communications in and out. If I were a shrink, I'd guess this was a guy who couldn't stand being alone with himself. Needed contact on a constant basis. Nothing out of the ordinary though, unless you count some pretty heavy 'link shopping – eight pairs of shoes, three snazzy suits, antique wrist unit." She straightened. "But you wouldn't count that."

"On the contrary, I'd never buy snazzy suits via 'link. Fit is everything."

"Ha ha. He did have a short, pithy kind of conversation with his agent. Seems our boy discovered that his leading lady was pulling in the same salary for the run of the play. He was pretty pissed off about it, wanted his rep to renegotiate and get him more. One credit more per performance."

"Yes, I knew about that. No deal."

Puzzled, she turned away from the neat little desk. "You wouldn't give him a credit?"

"When dealing with a child," Roarke said mildly, "you set boundaries. The contract was a boundary. The amount of the demand was inconsequential."

"You're tough."

"Certainly."

"Did he give you trouble over it?"

"No. He may have pla

"Okay, that keeps you clean. I want to check out the bedroom." She moved past him, across a small, circular hallway and through the door.

The bed was big, elaborate, with a high, padded wall behind and covered with sheer, smoky gray. It looked like a bank of soft fog.

She moved briefly into the adjoining dressing room, shook her head at the forest of clothes and shoes. A built-in, mirrored counter held a chorus line of colored bottles and tubes: enhancers, skin soothers, scents, powders.

"Okay, we've got vain, selfish, egocentric, childish, and insecure."

"I wouldn't argue with your assessment. All those personality traits are motive for dislike, but for murder?"

"Sometimes having two feet's a motive for murder." She moved back to the bedroom. "A man that full of ego and insecurity wouldn't sleep alone very often. He dumped Carly Landsdowne. I'd say he had someone else lined up to take her place." Idly, she pulled open the drawer of the bedside table. "Well, well, look at the toys."