Witness in Death (In Death #10)(26)

"Maybe it was just personal shit."

"No, Nadine's not going to ask for a meet like that unless there's trouble." Nadine was her friend, too, and part of Peabody was bruised that she'd been brushed aside. "I think it ties to the case. Dallas should've told me." Peabody crunched on chips. "She should trust me."

"Want me to poke around?"

"I can do my own poking. I don't need an E Division hotshot running plays for me."

"Suit yourself, She-Body."

"Just lay off. I don't even know why I told you. It's just sitting in my gut. Nadine's a friend. She's supposed to be a friend."

"You're jealous."

"Bullshit."

"Yeah, you are." He was beginning to have an intimate relationship with the feeling. "Dallas and Nadine are playing without you, so you're jealous. Girl Dynamics one oh one."

She shoved him off the arm of the chair. "You're an ass**le."

"And there," he said as his security bell rang, "is the pizza."

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 f**k?"

"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."