"Darling, you flatter me."
"Anyway, this guy's an operator, and he does a good job with the honest, innocent act of a hopeful, trusting man who's down on his luck. But great-looking guys with beautiful wives don't piddle time away with older, much less attractive women unless they have an agenda. And his goes a lot deeper than selling some goofy kitchen tool he invented."
She sipped her champagne, settling back as the house-lights flickered to signal the end of intermission. "The wife knows he did it. She's the key, not him. She's the study. If I were investigating, she's the one I'd be looking into. Yeah, I'd have myself a nice long talk with Christine Vole."
"Then the play's working for you."
"It's pretty clever."
When the curtain rose, Roarke watched Eve instead of the courtroom drama.
She was, he thought, the most fascinating of women. A few hours before, she'd come home with blood on her shirt. Fortunately, not her own. The case that caused it had opened and closed almost immediately with the dead she stood for and a confession she'd drawn out within an hour of the crime itself.
It wasn't always that simplistic. He supposed that was the word. He'd seen her drive herself to exhaustion, risk her life, to bring justice to the dead.
It was only one of the myriad facets of her he admired.
Now she was here, for him, dressed in sleek and elegant black, her only jewelry the diamond he'd once given her, dripping like a tear between her breasts, and her wedding ring. Her hair was short, a careless cap of dozens of shades of brown.
She watched the play with those cool cop's eyes, dissecting, he imagined, evidence, motive, and character, just as she would a case that landed in her lap. Her mouth was unpainted – she rarely remembered or thought of lip dye. Her strong face with its take-me-on chin and its shallow cleft didn't need it.
He watched that mouth thin and those eyes narrow and gleam as the character of Christine Vole took the stand and betrayed the man she'd called her husband.
"She's up to something. I told you she was up to something."
Roarke danced his fingers over the back of Eve's neck. "So you did."
"She's lying," Eve murmured. "Not all the way. Pieces of lies. Where does the knife come into it? So he cut himself with it. It's not a vital point. The knife's a red herring. Not the murder weapon, which, by the way, they haven't introduced into evidence. That's a flaw. But if he cut himself slicing bread with the knife – and everyone agrees he did – why do they need it?"
"He either cut himself on purpose to explain the blood on his sleeves or by accident as he claims."
"Doesn't matter. It's smoke." Her brow furrowed. "Oh, he's good." Her voice lowered, vibrated with the intense dislike she'd developed for Leonard Vole. "Look at him standing in the… what is it?"
"The dock."
"Yeah, standing in the dock looking all shocked and devastated by her testimony."
"Isn't he?"
"Something's off. I'll figure it out."
She liked putting her mind to it, looking for the angles and the twists. Before her involvement with Roarke, she'd never seen an actual live play. She'd passed some time in front of the screen, had let her friend Mavis drag her to a couple of holograph acts over the years. But she had to admit watching live performers act out the scenes, deliver the lines, and make the moves took the whole entertainment aspect to a higher level.
There was something about sitting in the dark, looking down on the action that made you a part of it, while separating you just enough that you didn't have a real stake in the outcome.
It removed responsibility, Eve thought. The foolish and wealthy widow who'd gotten her skull bashed in wasn't looking to Lieutenant Eve Dallas to find the answers. That made looking for those answers an interesting game.
If Roarke had his way – and it was rarely otherwise – that rich widow would die six nights a week, and during two matinees, for a very, very long time for the amusement and entertainment of an audience of armchair detectives.
"He's not worth it," she muttered, drawn in by the action enough to be annoyed by the characters. "She's sacrificing herself, performing for the jury so they look at her as an opportunist, a user, a cold-hearted bitch. Because she loves him. And he's not worth a damn."
"One would assume," Roarke commented, "that she's just betrayed him and hung him out to dry."
"Uh-uh. She's turned the case on its ear, shifted it so that she's the villain. Who's the jury looking at now? She's the center, and he's just a sap. Damn smart thinking, if he was worth it, but he's not. Does she figure that out?"
"Watch and see."
"Just tell me if I'm right."
He leaned over, kissed her cheek. "No."
"No, I'm not right?"
"No, I'm not telling, and if you keep talking, you'll miss the subtleties and the dialogue."
She scowled at him but fell silent to watch the rest of the drama unfold. She rolled her eyes when the not guilty verdict was read. Juries, she thought. You couldn't depend on them in fiction or in real life. A panel of twelve decent cops would have convicted the bastard. She started to say so, then watched Christine Vole fight her way through a crowd of spectators, who wanted her blood, into the nearly empty courtroom.
Eve nodded, pleased when the character confessed her lies and deceptions to Vole's barrister. "She knew he was guilty. She knew it, and she lied to save him. Idiot. He'll brush himself off and dump her now. You watch."
Eve turned her head at Roarke's laugh. "What's so funny?"
"I have a feeling Dame Christie would have liked you."
"Who the hell is that? Ssh! Here he comes. Watch him gloat."
Leonard Vole crossed the courtroom set, flaunting his acquittal and the slinky brunette on his arm. Another woman, Eve thought. Big surprise. She felt both pity and frustration for Christine as she threw herself into Vole's arms, tried to cling.
She watched his arrogance, Christine's shock and disbelief, Sir Wilfred's anger. It was no less, no more than she expected, however well played. And then, she came straight up out of her chair.
"Son of a bitch!"
"Down girl." Delighted, Roarke dragged Eve back into her seat while onstage, Christine Vole plunged the knife she'd snatched from the evidence table into her husband's black heart.
"Son of a bitch," Eve said again. "I didn't see it coming. She executed him."
Yes, Roarke thought Agatha Christie would have enjoyed his Eve. Sir Wilfred echoed those precise words as people rushed out onstage to huddle over the body, to draw Christine Vole away.
"Something's wrong." Again, Eve pushed to her feet, and now her blood was humming to a different beat. This time she gripped the rail tight in both hands, her eyes riveted to the stage. "Something's wrong. How do we get down there?"
"Eve, it's a performance."
"Somebody's not acting." She shoved the chair out of her way and strode out of the box just as Roarke noted one of the kneeling extras scramble to his feet and stare at the blood on his hand.
He caught up with Eve, grabbed her arm. "This way. There's an elevator. It'll take us straight down to backstage." He keyed in a code. From somewhere, down below, a woman began to scream.
"Is that part of the script?" Eve demanded as they stepped into the elevator.
"No."
"Okay." She dug her communicator out of her evening bag. "This is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. I need a medivac unit. New Globe Theater, Broadway and Thirty-eighth. Condition and injury as yet unknown."
She tossed the communicator back in her bag as the elevator opened onto chaos. "Get these people back and under control. I don't want any of the cast or crew to leave the building. Can you get me a head count?"
"I'll take care of it."
They separated, with Eve shoving her way through to the stage. Someone had had the presence of mind to drop the curtain, but behind it were a dozen people in various stages of hysteria.
"Step back." She snapped out the order.