Echoes in Death (In Death #44)(5)

She gestured him one way, went the other, each calling out “Clear!” when they’d swept a room.

She didn’t need Roarke to tell her someone had walked off with some trinkets. She spotted a couple of empty wall niches—and the dinner-party debris no house droids had dealt with.

They rounded back, started up to the second floor, once again separated.

She caught the scent as she walked toward the room in line with the balcony, the one with double white doors open.

Blood and death … and flowers.

She found all three in the spacious suite with its wide bed flanked with high posts of burnished gold. Like the floor, drops and smears of blood marred the knotted white linens. A chair with gold finish lay with its back broken and trailing duct tape—bloodied and ragged. Trampled white lilies swam in a pool of blood or scattered bruised petals over the white-and-gold carpet.

A large vase of deeply cut crystal had spilled its flowers and water over the carpet and lay smeared with blood and gray matter.

More blood on the footboard, at the edge where board met post, and what looked like blurry handprints, red against the white of the carpet.

Among the blood and gore, Anthony Strazza lay like a penitent at the altar, arms and legs outstretched. Still fully dressed, he wore a dark gray suit with a paler gray shirt. Cuff links winked at his wrists. His face, barely recognizable, showed red and purple from a beating in the slice of profile Eve could see.

Blood, gore matted his dark blond hair where it had seeped and run from the gaping wounds in the back of his skull.

“I’ve got a body!” Eve called out.

Roarke joined her, standing in the doorway with her.

“No one does this to steal—and then not take so much that’s easily transported.”

“Maybe it got out of hand,” Eve said. “We still have to clear the third floor.”

“Why don’t you do that, as we both know whoever did this is long gone. I’ll go out and get your field kit.”

Long gone, Eve agreed, but procedure was procedure for a reason. She cleared the top floor, Strazza’s office suite, a bathroom, a kind of media room in the contemporary and manly style, a shiny automatic kitchen, a full bar, a secondary workstation …

And an open safe built into a small cabinet.

She went down as Roarke came up.

“Nearly empty safe on three. At a quick glance it didn’t look compromised. I lean toward the assailant beating the code out of Strazza, but you could check it out.”

She looked down at her shoes—needle-thin heels attached to her feet by a bunch of glittery straps. Resigned, she took them off, sealed her bare feet, her hands, handed him the can of Seal-It. “Haven’t cleared the closets or the master bath. Why don’t you seal up and do that? I need to officially ID the vic, call it in.”

“You’ll be getting Peabody up early, I take it.”

“It’s never early when you’re a cop. I need real clothes, damn it.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“How?” she demanded when he put the can back in her kit.

“By getting Summerset up early.”

She thought of Roarke’s majordomo, the pain in her ass. “But—”

Amused at her expected reaction, Roarke skimmed a finger over her bare shoulder before he went into the bedroom. “Your choice whether to do what you do more comfortably or in formal wear.”

“Damn it. Clothes. And boots. And my regular coat. And—”

“He knows what to send along. Another safe in the closet—his closet—open and empty.”

Eve tossed her coat behind her, walked over the soiled carpet, crouched in a sheer dress of red and silver. The skirt consisted of dozens of thin, floaty panels that swirled like ribbons when she walked and exposed a long length of leg. Straps, as narrow and sparkly as those on the discarded shoes, crisscrossed over her bare back.

She pressed dead fingers to her Identi-pad.

“Victim identity verified as Anthony Strazza of this address.” She took out a gauge. “TOD, zero-one-hundred-twenty-six. COD to be determined by ME, but by visual exam of primary, most likely the skull fracture.”

“That would do it,” Roarke said from behind her. “No safe in the wife’s closet. I’d suggest the one in his is large enough to hold her jewelry and any he might have had. And I’ll take a look at the one upstairs.”

“Check the security feed first, would you? He likely cleared it out or compromised it, but we could get lucky. And the doors and alarms.”

“As an expert consultant, I’d have to say burglary wasn’t the point here, or not the primary one.”

“No, just a really big bonus to top off rape and murder.” She started to reach for her ’link. “Damn it. My ’link’s in that shiny thing.”

“No, it’s in your field kit, and the shiny thing’s now empty in the car.”

“Oh, yeah, here it is. Thanks. Look, I’m going to tell Peabody to bring McNab, as this place is loaded with electronics. You could head home, catch some sleep.”

When he just raised his eyebrows, she shrugged. “Or not.”

“Or not. I can tell you the … intruder bashed the components in the security room. As I was clearing I didn’t look beyond that, or the droids—a trio of house droids, also smashed.”