Stolen in Death (In Death #62)

Chapter One

As she stood in skinny-heeled shoes instead of boots, a gown instead of trousers, Eve Dallas thought whoever invented the gala should be brutally murdered.

Maybe they had been, and their body fed to wild dogs.

Regardless, the strange institution of the gala remained a part of society’s fabric. At least it did if you happened to be a murder cop married to a billionaire.

The Marriage Rules demanded it.

The whole deal supported Sarah’s Song, a worthy charity, a national network for victims of domestic abuse founded around the turn of the century.

While she couldn’t argue with the cause, she wondered why people needed to wear fancy clothes in a big, fancy ballroom, stand or sit around making small talk, spend buckets on drinks and dinner instead of staying home, comfortably, and sending those buckets.

But that was just her, obviously, because people packed the big-ass ballroom and the big-ass space outside of it where various bars served various drinks.

In the rosy light and flower-drenched air of the ballroom, hardly anyone sat at the swankily decorated tables yet. She’d learned the gala had a specific order to things.

You had your arrival time, where you had to walk a kind of media gauntlet while society-type reporters took photos or videos so they could tell people who didn’t rate an invite what you were wearing.

Then it was for-God’s-sake-get-me-a-drink time, where you hit one of the various bars.

Fortunately, she’d crossed both those off the list.

Now it was mill-around time, where you stood in those skinny heels and talked to people you didn’t actually know, and likely wouldn’t have any further business with unless they ended up in the morgue.

After mill-around time came sit-around time, while servers served some sort of salad, and people went up onstage to thank everybody, to make their speeches.

Blah blah blah.

Then a meal, but you had to keep talking around the table, or to people who decided to come by and talk while you were trying to eat the fancily plated whatever they served you.

She had no doubt the food and the service would be top-notch. After all, the ballroom and the whole damn hotel belonged to Roarke. Which probably meant the gala people hadn’t paid buckets for the space.

Once the servers whisked away those plates, brought out dessert, someone would make another speech—applause, applause.

Then the entertainment. Which, since Roarke had connections, would be Avenue A, with a guest appearance from Mavis.

Bright spot, she admitted, except she’d probably have to dance, and in these damn torture shoes. Dancing with Roarke, okay, fine, but dancing with whoever?

Marriage Rules, she reminded herself, and took another sip of very nice wine.

And even after all that, when it was finally socially acceptable to get the hell out, there was departure time, where you had to have yet more conversations before the mercifully short drive home.

Maybe the gala inventor should’ve been thrown to those wild dogs while still breathing.

Then Roarke, gorgeous in his tux, as comfortable in the formal wear as she imagined he’d once been in cat-burglar black, smiled at her.

“It’s only a few hours,” he murmured with the Irish flowing through it like harp song over green, mist-soaked hills. “And for a cause that matters, in so many ways, to both of us.”

“You say that, but you’re not standing on stilts.”

“Fashion’s a killer even you can’t toss in a cage, Lieutenant. You’re stunning.” He took her free hand, kissed her fingers while those impossibly blue eyes looked into hers.

“All right now, time to share this beautiful woman.”

Eve recognized the man who approached and the woman at his side as the heads of Sarah’s Song. She knew the story—he’d been eight when his widowed mother had remarried. The abuse began shortly after the I-do’s. Eventually, she’d taken her little boy and run, but not far enough or fast enough.

Now, some sixty years later, the boy who—on his mother’s orders—had run for help that had come too late, held out a hand to Roarke.

“It’s lovely to see you both. Eve, Martin and Sylvia Ellison, the brains, brawn, and heart behind Sarah’s Song.”

Martin caught Eve’s hand in both of his. He had hair the color of old pewter that shot out in the same kind of electric shock bush sported by her former partner and current captain of EDD, Feeney. He had a ruddy, lived-in face and a toned-up, lightweight boxer’s build.

His deep, dark brown eyes smiled into hers as if she were the only person in the room. Inside a streaky silver-and-white goatee, his lips curved.

“It’s wonderful to meet you at last. Sylvia and I are big fans. That’s probably not the right word,” he said with a laugh she could only describe as jolly.

“Admirers of the work you do, and how well you do it.” Sylvia nudged at Martin so she could shake Eve’s hand. “Fair warning, we’ll probably ask a thousand questions about that work before the night’s over.”

She smiled, a tall woman, thin as a whippet in a gown the color of her husband’s hair. She wore her own in a cap of black curls, and had eyes of molten green.

Martin winked. “We’ve used our status for the privilege of sharing your table. Lots of schmoozing to do, but we’ll enjoy sharing the meal with you, Roarke, Nadine Furst, your friends Louise and Charles, and, when they’re not performing, Jake and Mavis.”

“Not to mention Leonardo. That’s one of his designs, I’m sure, and just gorgeous.”

Eve glanced down at the gown. Roarke had called the deep purple bleeding and blending lighter and lighter as it rose up her body ombre. All she knew was it fit, had pockets—and a slash up one leg nearly to her damn waist.

“Ah—”

Roarke laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder, bare but for the skinny strap that went back to the deep purple. “Leonardo’s not only a good friend and Mavis’s husband, but he understands just what the lieutenant needs in wardrobe.”

“It has pockets.”

Sylvia just beamed. “Shouldn’t everything?”

“We won’t keep you now,” Martin said. “We want you to know how much we appreciate all you do. Dochas…”

He trailed off as he mentioned the women’s shelter Roarke had built, and Eve saw clearly that some grieving lasts forever.

“It represents,” he continued, “what my grandmother hoped for when she founded Sarah’s Song. Not just safety, but hands outstretched to help, to renew, to rebuild. I hope you enjoy the evening.”

Eve gave a little sigh when they walked away. “They’re nice.”

“They’re exactly what they seem. Generous, intelligent, caring people. They’re also interesting. You won’t be bored. Let’s get you another glass of wine.”

Because she figured it made her a moving target, she went along.

It didn’t stop people from waylaying them.

She blamed it on Roarke. People recognized him.

And if they didn’t, who wouldn’t be attracted to the tall and gorgeous?

All that black silk hair, the wild blue eyes, the mouth sculpted by a particularly artistic angel?

She saw plenty giving him a second look, a third, murmuring behind their hands as they did.

When she said just that to him, he laughed.

“And no one notices the long, lanky woman with the cap of deer-hide hair, the eyes like aged whiskey that take in every detail she sees. The chin that looks like it could take a punch. And has,” he added, brushing a finger down its shallow dent.

“There’s a group of three women at your two o’clock. Every one of them’s mind-fucked you, a couple times each.”

“Ah, is that why I feel so used yet oddly unsatisfied?” Deliberately, he touched his lips to hers. “There, that’s better.”

She had to smile, especially since one of the three women heaved a sigh and laid a hand on her heart.

“Enough of the milling. It’s got to be sit-down time by now.”

“Then we’ll find our table and do just that.”

They not only found their table—after the gauntlet of stop, talk, go, stop, talk—but Nadine and Mavis were already seated there.

They huddled together, giggling over something. Or Mavis giggled. Nadine, Eve considered, had more of a snicker.

They couldn’t have looked more different, less like two women who would be not only friends, but great, good friends.

Mavis Freestone, former grifter, current rock star, mother of one with another on the way, had her hair in a spilling fountain of twisty curls tinted electric blue.

A tiny woman, at least from Eve’s stance of five-ten (without the stilts), she wore glittery, gleaming gold that hugged her impressive baby mountain like loving arms.

Eve figured she could’ve put her fist through the hoops dangling from her ears.

Beside her, Nadine Furst, ace on-camera reporter, bestselling crime writer, Oscar winner, and cohab of Avenue A’s front man, wore a gown of smoky red.

A sophisticated hue in a sophisticated cut that left one well-toned shoulder bare.

She’d rolled her streaky blond hair into some sort of twist. A couple of jeweled pins sparkled in it.

Mavis spotted them first. Her face, already glowing, lit like the sun. “You’re here! No dead bodies!”

“Night’s young,” Eve said, and put a hand on Mavis’s shoulder before her oldest friend tried to haul her baby mountain out of the chair.

Roarke bent down to kiss her cheek, then Nadine’s. “Breathtaking, both of you. How fortunate am I to share a table with three stunning women? Ah, and here’s yet another,” he added when Louise and Charles approached the table.

Dr. Dimatto did stun, Eve supposed, in a pale lavender gown that looked delicate enough air might tear it. And somehow added the faintest lavender tint to her gray eyes. Beside her, tall and lean, Charles Monroe looked as if he’d been born in a tux.

The doctor who’d turned her wealthy upbringing on its ear by opening and running a free clinic, and the former licensed companion, now sex therapist, made a solid couple, a solid marriage.

So hug time postponed sit-down time.