Echoes in Death (In Death #44)(60)

“What does that tell you?”

“Potentially … Strazza breaks out of the chair, charges. He’s probably still tangled up some, and he’s hurting from the beating. Killer grabs the heavy object, spilling water and flowers as he bashes Strazza with it. She may still be restrained and/or unconscious. Maybe just dazed, in shock, but I lean toward restrained or out as Morris estimates about fifteen minutes between the initial blow to the head and the killing blows.”

“That’s quite a gap.”

“Yeah.” Fifteen minutes could equal a lifetime, she thought. “Potentially. Killer thinks Strazza’s dead or dying, Daphne is out of it or restrained. He leaves the room to clear out the safes, select what he wants, clean up. He’d have blood on him. Or he took the time to rape the female again. Potentially, one more time, he comes back to get his zip ties, his rope, his tape, his light, whatever else.”

Everything into the case, she thought. The case he’d carried in with him, in front of witnesses.

“Now Daphne’s unrestrained—he released the other vics, so pattern indicates he’d release her. But Strazza comes to, not dead, starts to get up. Killer bashes him again and again. Daphne tries to stop him, or to just run. He gives her a knock, hard enough so she cracks her head on the footboard, and she’s out. She crawled through some of the blood—Strazza’s, her own. It was on her hands, on her knees. We’ve got smears of it on the floors from her feet where she walked through it.”

She left it there, checked something else, stared out at the snow.

“He abused her in the will. Even dead he’s slapping at her.”

“What do you mean?”

“The lawyer had to circle, use hypothetical, but was a lot more cooperative than I expected. He didn’t like Strazza.”

“Did anyone?”

“Not so far. In any case, Strazza left the bulk of his estate to the hospital—with strings. They use it for whatever purpose he designated, and name it after him.”

“What of his wife?”

“She gets the house, her clothes, her jewelry—which was stolen—and whatever’s left in the house he didn’t earmark to be sold to go to the hospital. No financial trusts or whatever toward her maintaining the house, or paying it off. I got the impression he didn’t own it free and clear. And since you showed up, you could check on that.”

“I could indeed.”

“And a good dig into the rest of his finances.”

“Now it’s a happy day for me. I feel as giddy as Peabody in the snow.”

He would, she thought. Roarke wasn’t—thank God—a cheerful optimist, but he had his moments.

“You saw the house. Just an educated guess on what it’s worth.”

“Double townhouse, that neighborhood, well maintained? Twelve to fifteen million. Unless he’s heavily mortgaged or borrowed against it, she’ll be more than fine.”

“She doesn’t want to go back there, and the lawyer says she can’t sell it until the estate’s settled. At least a year, more like two. He didn’t want her to just be able to walk away, not with his money, if he popped first. I couldn’t wrangle any details on the prenup, but clearly Wythe felt Daphne got screwed over there. He says he advised her to get her own attorney, but she didn’t.”

“Neither did you, it turns out.”

She aimed a look at him. “Did I get screwed over?”

“No, but…” He lifted a hand, let it fall. “We settled that, didn’t we?”

“Add this: He worked things so she needed him for money. No job, no family—and I’m contacting them when we get home, because I want to know those details—no friends. It’s classic. She was completely dependent on him, and he structured the will so she gets a house and her own damn clothes, plus the baubles he gave her. She nearly always calls him ‘my husband,’ rarely actually uses his name.”

Eve shrugged it away. “Not the issue, it just pisses me off in general. I don’t know if it applies. I can’t see how it would, except the killer might have targeted her because he saw and recognized it, saw her as weak. An easy target. He may have seen Rosa that way, too. But Lori doesn’t come off as soft or easy.”

She brooded about it as he turned through the gates, then reached over, laid a hand on his arm. “Stop a minute.”

When he did, she slid her hand down, linked fingers with his. “I hate winter mostly. It’s cold, wet, messy, and inconvenient. But that? That’s a hell of a visual.”

Some droid, she supposed, had cleared the long, winding drive and the steps leading to the house. All else stood white and perfect with that house rising up from the snowy carpet, the stone laced on the rooflines. Trees and shrubs, wrapped in white mink, shimmered in the lights.

“I’m glad we came home,” she told him.

He leaned over to kiss her. “So am I.”

He drove the rest of the way as more lights flickered on inside the house. When they stepped inside that light, Summerset and the cat waited.

“Early and together,” Summerset observed as Galahad pranced over to slither between two sets of legs.

“I expect the city will be shut down in another hour or two,” Roarke told him. “You shouldn’t plan to go anywhere.”