“And hopefully never will.”
“I absolutely love this,” Connie said as she came back carrying Eve’s coat.
Just as Eve saw the first real glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, Matthew Zank, dripping wet, came bolting out of the elevator. Marlo, pale as wax, stumbled out in his wake.
“On the roof. On the roof. It’s K.T. It’s—she’s on the roof.”
“I think she’s dead.” Marlo sat down on the floor, eyes fixed on Eve. “She’s dead. She’s dead up there. You have to come.”
“Stay down here.” She rounded on Connie. “Don’t let anyone leave until I check this out.”
“I—no—it must be a mistake,” Connie began.
“Maybe. Just keep everybody here.”
With Roarke, she stepped into the elevator. “Are you fucking kidding me?” was her first comment.
“Roof level,” Roarke ordered. “Maybe she passed out drunk like Julian.”
“Let’s hope, because it annoys the shit out of me to investigate a death at a dinner party where I’m a guest.”
“It doesn’t happen often.”
“Once is plenty.”
They stepped out into a lounge—another fire simmering, low sofas plumped with pillows, a mirrored bar with an open bottle of wine sitting on it.
The glass doors to the roof terrace whispered open at their approach. When they stepped across the terrace, through another set of auto-doors, the scent of night and flowers filled the lap pool dome.
She felt a flutter of breeze, glanced up.
“Dome’s open a little,” she noted, and wondered if it had been that way all evening.
Drenched, K.T. lay faceup beside the sparkling blue water of the lap pool. The staring eyes were Peabody-brown, and gave Eve a hard moment.
She crouched to check for a pulse. “Shit. Not only dead, but going cold. He pulled her out. Or he pushed her in, drowned her, then pulled her out. Either way, he moved the damn body. Shit!”
“She looks too much like our girl at the moment.”
“But she’s not. You’d better go get our girl, and a field kit if you’ve got one.”
“In the limo.”
“Good. Tell McNab to secure the house—nobody leaves—and to find out if there’s any security running up here. Don’t let anybody but Peabody come up.”
“All right.” He looked at the body a moment longer. “A bad end to the evening.”
“It sure was for her.”
As Roarke went down, Eve took her communicator out of her stupid little purse and called in a suspicious death. Then fixed her recorder on the narrow strap of her party dress.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, on record,” she began.
Broken glass, she noted, and a puddle of red wine, likely from the bottle open on the bar inside.
“The victim is visually ID’d as K.T. Harris.”
She filled in details for the record: the location, the reason for the victim’s presence, the names—including her own and Roarke’s—of the other people in attendance.