In Death 12 - Betrayal in Death

advertised. See here, he goes to the nurse's station, tries to pump for information. Concerned friend. Charm, charm. She bends enough to look up the chart and give him exactly what we want him to have. Severe allergic reaction resulting in seizure. Complete bed rest and mild sedation in quarantine for forty-eight hours while tested."
    Eve watched Gerade walk toward the elevator. "They won't like it, but they're not going to abort a plan this long-term and complex because one of their group's in la-la land. As far as they're concerned, he'd already done his job."
    She ejected the disc, filed it. "Now let's go do ours."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
    It was seventeen hundred hours when Eve walked into The Palace Hotel. She used the main lobby entrance. She wanted to do a walk-through, using her own eyes and ears and instincts to map out the hotel and gauge its rhythm before she went up to base control.
    The two-tier lobby was a sea of marble and mosaic, the kind of rich and regal colors and designs she'd seen on one of her trips with Roarke to Italy.
    Exotic arrangements of flowers speared and spilled out of urns taller than a man. The staff was dressed in royal red or blue, depending on their function.
    The guests dressed rich.
    She watched a six-foot woman, wrapped in what looked like filmy scarves from neck to knee, lead a trio of tiny white dogs on a triple leash.
    "Augusta."
    "What?"
    "Augusta," Peabody repeated in Eve's ear, nodding toward the whip-thin woman and her furballs. "This year's primo model. God, I'd kill to have legs like that. And that's Bee-Sting over there. Lead singer for Crash and Bum. And, oh jeez, just coming off the elevator, left bank, is Mont Tyler. Screen Queen Magazine voted him sexiest man of the decade. It sure is fun working with you, Dallas."
    "If you've finished gawking, Peabody."
    "If we have time, I could gawk a little longer." And her head did swivel, seesawing back and forth, up and down as she followed Eve across the lobby.
    Eve was doing some scanning herself. She measured distances to exits, to elevator banks. She spotted two of the undercovers pulling bell staff duty. She re-checked security cam positions. She looked for holes.
    And as she climbed the three flights to the ballroom level, she checked out every floor between.
    Security, human and droid, were on duty, flanking the entrances to the Magda Lane Display, discreetly rounding the perimeter. People queued up, wandered through to sigh and gasp over sparkling gowns, glittering jewels, the photographs, the holo-prints, the small mementos, and grand costumes.
    Each display or bank of displays was ringed inside red velvet rope. That was for show. The sensor shields ringing those same displays were invisible.
    Those were for security.
    Auction catalogues, disc or commemorative hard copy, were on sale to those who wanted to shell out over twelve hundred dollars.
    A sampling of the catalogue could be accessed onscreen in hotel guest rooms at no charge.
    "They're shoes," Eve finally said, pausing by a pair of silver pumps. "Somebody else's shoes. You want to wear somebody else's shoes, you go to a recycle mart."
    "But, sir, it's like buying magic."
    "It's like buying somebody else's shoes," Eve corrected, and satisfied for the moment, started out.
    Magda, and her entourage, stepped off the elevator.
    "Eve. I'm so glad I've ran into you." Magda hurried forward, both hands outstretched. Her waterfall of hair was scooped up at the neck. And her eyes were tired. "My son."
    "Yes, I know. I'm sorry he's ill. How's he doing?"
    "They tell me he'll be fine. Some silly reaction. But they're keeping him sedated and quarantined. I can't even let him know I'm there."
    "Now, Magda, of course he knows." Mince patted her arm, but his gaze skipped uneasily to Eve's. "Magda's worrying herself sick over that boy," he said. And his eyes said clearly: Make it stop.
    "He's being well taken care of." Eve gave Magda's hands a reassuring squeeze.
    "Well, I hope... In any case, I'm told you were there with him when he became ill."
    "Yeah, that's right. I'd dropped by to see him to go over some of the security details."
    "He was fine when I left." Liza gave Eve a piercing look. "Just fine."
    "He certainly seemed to be. So, he didn't complain earlier about being a little queasy, dizzy?"
    Back to you, sweetheart, Eve thought.
    "No, he was fine."
    "He probably didn't want to worry you. He mentioned he'd been feeling a little off. But that was after he started to look