“No, no, please, go out and sit with Eliza. She’s had a very difficult day. Dolby was here for most of it. He’s such a comfort to her.”
“As I’m sure you are.”
She smiled at Roarke. “I’m trying. Go right out. I’ll only be a moment.”
She gestured toward the open terrace doors across the living area. Not as spacious as Lane’s penthouse, and, to Eve’s eye, homier with its beachy wall art and faded colors.
Sylvie turned off into a dining area where a glossy gray table held a colorful arrangement of summer flowers and a breakfront displaying framed photos and the shiny whatnots people seemed hell-bent on collecting.
Eliza reclined on a lounge chair under the shade of a candy-pink umbrella. She wore black skin pants, her feet bare and her toes painted tropical blue, with a sleeveless white shirt. She’d done her makeup more carefully than her friend, but not well enough to cover the circles under her eyes.
She stared out at New York while twisting her wedding set, a thick white gold band paired with a square-cut pink diamond, around and around her finger.
“Ms. Lane.”
She jolted, blinked at Eve, then at Roarke. “I’m sorry, I was…” She started to get up, but Roarke touched a hand to her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Eliza. I didn’t know Brant well, but liked and admired him very much. I hope you’ll call on me if there’s anything I can do.”
“Thank you. He admired you, and was grateful for your generosity to Home Front. Please, sit. The desk said you were coming up, but I got lost in my thoughts. I went—we went, Sylvie, Lin, and Dolby went with me—to see Brant. Dr. Morris is very kind. Still, it doesn’t seem real.”
“I’m sorry I have to intrude at such a difficult time,” Eve began.
Eliza shook her head. “It’s not an intrusion. You’re going to find who did this to Brant. I’m holding on to that. Sylvie.” She smiled a little when her friend came out with the drinks. “My rock.”
“You’re your own rock, Eliza.” She set the tray down, passed Eliza her wine, Eve her coffee, handed a glass to Roarke. “Should I leave you alone?”
“That’s not necessary,” Eve told her. “First, I can tell you we’ve cleared your apartment. You’re free to go back at any time.”
“Oh.”
“Stay,” Sylvie said immediately. “At least tonight, Eliza. If you’re ready to go back tomorrow, I’ll go with you.”
“My rock. Yes, I’ll stay tonight. But you have your table read in the morning. No,” she said before Sylvie could object. “You’re not going to put it off. I have to face it sometime, and I’ll ask Dolby to be there. I need to start making arrangements. Brant deserves a memorial as wonderful and loving as he was.”
“I’ll help you. So will Dolby and Lin. Cela, too.”
“We joked about it, Brant and I, the way you do. ‘When it’s my time, Eliza, I want my best clips run on the biggest screen you can find, and you singing “My Always.”’”
“Oh, honey.”
“I sang it—by his request—at our wedding. And I’m going to do it, Sylvie.” Her eyes filled, but the tears didn’t fall. “I’m going to find it in myself to give him that. Because he is. He’s my always.”
Sylvie sat on the edge of the lounger, took her hand.
“I know some of this is repetitive, but it’s part of the process.” Eve waited a beat. “Can you take me through last night? You could start when the caterers arrived.”
“All right. I dressed early. That’s my habit so I can be ready early and supervise the setup.”
“You’ve used this caterer in the past?”
“Years, but…”
“Eliza’s fussy,” Sylvie supplied, and earned a weak laugh from Eliza.
“Controlling is the word she’s too polite to use. I want things a certain way—and that’s my way. Brant came in just as I was finishing, and we had our usual ‘plenty of time’ from him, ‘don’t take too long’ from me. And he said he’d be dressed and down for our pre-party good-luck drink. It’s our tradition, and this was supposed to be a big night, a celebration.”
“You invited media.”
“Yes, carefully handpicked. I wanted … want,” she corrected, “a lot of positive buzz for the revival. It owns a big part of my heart, and playing the role of Lily is a kind of milestone for me.”
“You said ‘want,’” Sylvie interrupted. “You’ve decided to go on with it.”
“Yes. The cast and crew have put in so much time, so much work. I won’t say it can’t go on without me, but frankly, it wouldn’t have the same punch. And, if I’m honest, I need it. I need to get out of my own head.
“They’re family,” she told Eve. “When you put your heart and soul, your art into forming a company, putting a play together that you hope will run and run and run, six days a week, eight performances a week, you’re family. I need them, every bit as much as they need me.”
“It doesn’t concern you one of them might have killed your husband?”
“I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that,” she said, her voice firm and steady. “I simply can’t. Maybe that’s naive and foolish, but I can’t and don’t believe that.”
“What did you do when you came downstairs, while your husband was dressing?”
“I talked with Dolby. He was here to take the floral delivery. Then, of course, I fussed with that.” She sent a sidelong look to Sylvie. “The caterers arrived, and I went over the menu, the setup, the timing—which, of course, wasn’t necessary to anyone but me. I took a walk through the entire apartment to make sure everything was in place. Spoke with Cela when she arrived about doing the sweeps on the second and third floors.
“We prefer guests stay on the main level,” she added, “but some will wander. We once found a guest asleep in a guest room tub. He’d had a little too much to drink and wandered up, decided it was a fine place to take a nap.”
She shifted to draw her legs up, sit beside Sylvie.
“I think that’s about the time Brant came down. He made the drinks. We went out on the terrace. It was just perfect weather. He was leaving the next evening for New Zealand, and I told him how much I’d miss him. It’s the longest we’d be apart since we married. We’ve usually been able to mesh our schedules so it would never be more than a week, two at the very most, but we both had these major projects hit at the same time.”
She looked at Roarke. “I suppose you have to travel quite a bit with all your interests.”
“Now and then.”
“And of course your work keeps you here,” she said to Eve. “It takes sacrifice and balance to make it work. In any case, guests began to arrive. We had security in the lobby, and on the door here as well. We’ve been very careful since Ethan Crommell.”
“The man who stalked you. You didn’t mention he’d been released recently.”
“I didn’t? I’m sorry. God! So much is confused in my head after … But he couldn’t have gotten in! I would have seen him, surely, and that would only happen if he got through security. They have his name, his photo. I—”