Eve saw the long, dark lashes flutter. Then the eyes—almond shaped and strikingly, softly green—opened. Stared blindly.
Del held up a hand to stop Eve as he leaned over Daphne. “You’re okay. You’re in the hospital. Nobody’s going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”
Those eyes darted around the room. As her breathing began to rush and hitch, Del took her hand. “You’re okay,” he repeated. “I’m a doctor. You’re safe. I’m going to give you something for the pain.”
“No, no, no.”
“Okay, okay, we’ll wait on that.” His voice stayed calm, stayed easy. And though the monitors charted her vitals, Eve noted he laid his fingers on her wrist, taking her pulse the old-fashioned way. “I just want you to relax,” he continued, “to breathe slow. Can you tell us what happened to you?”
“I was dead. I think I was dead.”
Her gaze landed on Eve. “Were you there?”
Eve moved forward. “What do you remember?”
“I … went away. Or the world did.”
“Before that. Can you remember before that?”
“We had dinner, a dinner party. Dinner for fifty at eight, with cocktails beginning at seven-thirty. I wore the Dior with the crusted pearl trim. We had lobster medallions, seared scallop salad and winter squash soup, prime rib and fingerlings roasted with rosemary, with white and green asparagus. Croquembouche and coffee. The wines were—”
“That’s okay, what happened after dinner?”
“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.”