“Our guests left at eleven-thirty. If I’d planned better, they’d have left at eleven. My husband has rounds in the morning. He’s very busy. He’s a surgeon, so respected, so talented. We’d normally go to bed after the guests left, and the house droids cleared up. We’d go to bed, and—”
Her breathing shortened again. This time Eve gripped her hand before Del could interfere. “You’re safe, but you need to tell me what happened when you went up to bed.”
“Someone in the house.” She whispered it, like a secret. “Not a guest. Not. Waiting. A devil, it’s a devil! His face is a devil. My husband … He fell. He fell and the devil laughed. I don’t know. I don’t know. Please. I don’t know.”
She began to sob, tried to curl up into herself.
“That’s it,” Del snapped at Eve. “She needs to rest. Give her some time.”
“I’m going to check under her nails. If she got a piece of who did this, I need it.”
“Make it fast.”
The visual with microgoggles showed nothing, but she got her tools, gently scraped. Nothing.
“Either she didn’t fight back, or didn’t get the chance.” Eve studied the ligature marks on the wrists. “If she tells you anything else, I need to hear about it. I’ll be back in a few hours, and I’ll be assigning a uniform to sit on her room.”
Eve stepped out with Roarke.
“Are you assigning a uniform to keep someone out, or to keep her in?”
“I don’t know yet.” She pulled out her ’link as they walked. “Let’s go check on Anthony Strazza.”
Not exactly the end-of-the-night plans they had expected, Eve thought as she did a quick run on the Strazzas during the short drive.
The surgeon had more than twenty years on his wife—his second wife, Eve noted. Wife number one—divorced five years ago—currently lived in Australia and had not remarried.
Current wife, of three years, had been a student and part-time event planner (or assistant planner) when they’d married. No updated employment listed.
As trophy wives went, Eve supposed Daphne fit the bill. Young, beautiful when her face hadn’t been pummeled. Probably an excellent hostess with the event-planning bent.
Eve wondered, though she was Roarke’s first and only spouse, if some considered her a trophy.
She glanced at him as he maneuvered into a street slot outside the double redbrick townhouse where the Strazzas lived.
“You didn’t get a shiny prize.”
“I’m fond of shiny prizes,” he said. “Why didn’t I get one?”
“Your own fault. As trophies go, I’d be in the dull-and-dented category.”
“Not in the least. But then again, you’re no trophy.”
She got out, navigating from curb to sidewalk in the stupid fancy-girl shoes. “That’s a compliment?”
“It’s truth. If I’d wanted a trophy, I’d have one, wouldn’t I?” He took her hand, rubbed his thumb over her wedding ring. “I much prefer my cop. You’re thinking of Daphne Strazza, and the generational difference in age with her husband.”
“How do you know? You haven’t had time to do a run.”
“Simple enough, as Strazza’s a surgeon of some repute—and the name rings a dim bell. He’s bound to be twenty years or so older than she.”
“Twenty-six. Second wife. First, close to his age, divorced after about a dozen years. Lives in Australia, on a sheep ranch, which is a pretty far ways from New York and dinner parties in town mansions on the Upper East.”
She gave the house a study. Three stories of old elegance, New York style. Strazza had merged two townhomes into one, widening one entrance to highlight the main with carved double doors. Tall, slim windows, privacy screened for the night, stood like blank eyes in their frames of dark wood. A pair of glass doors on the second floor led to a kind of Juliet balcony with a stylized S centered in the rail.
The same ironwork flanked the three steps leading from sidewalk to entrance.
And there, Eve noted, he had top-of-the-line security.
“Cam, palm plate, intercom, double swipe,” she said as they approached. “He paid for the dignified look, but he’s got a pair of high-end police locks on here. Audio, visual, and motion alarms.”
“Back in the day, this is just the sort of house in just the sort of neighborhood I’d have targeted.” The thought of those days as a master thief brought a nostalgic smile to his lips. “It’s quiet, settled, and inside? That’s where all the goodies are. Art, jewelry, cash as well.”
“If we were back in the day, how long would it take you to compromise the security?”
His hair blowing in the wind, Roarke angled his head to study the locks. “With proper due diligence and preparation? Two or three, I’d say. Likely closer to two.”
“Minutes.”
“Of course.”
He wasn’t bragging, she mused. Just stating a fact.
Eve rang the bell. She expected an automated comp response, but got nothing at all.
She rang again. “I’d call that a security lapse. No warning, no response from the system, no attempt to scan.”