In Death 16 - Portrait in Death

care. Clear?"
     
     
It appeared to be as he scuttled to the door, coded through security. "If Professor Browning was expecting you, I should've been informed."
     
     
He was so prim and pompous about it Eve gave him a fierce grin. "You know, I've got one just like you at home. Do you guys have a club?"
     
     
He merely sniffed, and danced his fingers over a keyboard. "It's Monty, Professor. I'm sorry to disturb you, but there's a Lieutenant Dallas at the desk. She'd like clearance to come up. Yes, ma'am," he said into his earpiece. "I've seen her identification. She is accompanied by a uniformed officer. Of course, Professor."
     
     
He turned to Eve, lips so thin they could have sliced paper. "Professor Browning will see you. Please take the elevator to the fifteenth floor. You will be met."
     
     
"Thanks, Monty. How come doormen always hate me?" she asked Peabody as they moved to the elevator.
     
     
"I think they sense your disdain, like pheromones. Of course, if you told them you were married to Roarke, they'd immediately fall to their knees and worship you."
     
     
"I'd rather be feared and hated." She stepped inside. "Fifteenth floor," she ordered.
     
     
Chapter 3
     
     
The elevator opened on fifteen where a domestic droid was waiting. He had black hair slicked back over a round head, and a thin mustache over his top lip. He was dressed in a formal suit, the kind Eve had seen characters wear in some of Roarke's old videos. It had a jacket with a short front and long tails at the back, and the shirt beneath looked stiff and impossibly white.
     
     
"Lieutenant Dallas, Officer," he said in a fruity voice, heavy on the Brit. "Might I trouble you for identification?"
     
     
"Sure." Eve pulled out her badge, watched a thin red line shoot through the droid's eyes as he scanned it. "You're top-line security?"
     
     
"I am a multifunction unit, Lieutenant." With a slight bow, he offered the badge back to her. "Please follow me."
     
     
He stepped back to let them exit the elevator. There was a kind of lobby, or entrance area with white marble floor tiles, glossy antiques topped with urns that were elegant with flowers.
     
     
There was a tall white statue of a nude woman, with her head tipped back and her hands in her hair as if she were washing it. There were artfully arranged flowers at her feet.
     
     
On the walls were framed images-photographic and multi-media. Additional nudes, Eve noticed, that were more romantic than erotic. Lights of filmy draper and diffused light.
     
     
He opened another set of doors and bowed them into the apartment.
     
     
Though apartment. Eve mused, was a poor word for it. The living area was enormous, full of color and flowers and soft, soft fabrics. More art decorated the walls here as well.
     
     
She noted wide doorways right and left, another leading down the side of the room and calculated that Browning and Brightstar didn't live on the fifteenth floor. They were the fifteenth floor.
     
     
"Please be seated," the droid told them. "Professor Browning will be right with you. And might I offer you some refreshment?"
     
     
"We're fine, thanks."
     
     
"Family money," Peabody said out of the side of her mouth when they were left alone. "Both of them, but Brightstar's seriously loaded. Not Roarke loaded, but she can roll naked in it without worrying. Angela Brightstar's the Brightstar of Brightstar Gallery on Madison. Swank artsy joint. I went to a showing there once with Charles."
     
     
Eve stepped up to a painting that was slashes of color, lumps of texture. "How come people don't paint houses or something? You know, stuff that's real?"
     
     
"Reality is all perception."
     
     
Leeanne Browning entered. You couldn't say she came in, Eve thought. When a woman was a good six feet tall, lushly built, and draped in a glistening robe of silver, she entered.
     
     
Her hair was a long fall of sunlight to her waist, her face equally striking with its wide mouth and deeply indented top lip. Her long nose tipped up at the end, and her wide eyes were a vivid shade of purple.
     
     
Eve recognized her as the model for the white statue in the entrance area.
     
     
"Excuse my appearance." She smiled in the way a woman smiled when she knew she made an impression. "I was posing for my companion. Why don't we sit, have something cool, and you can tell me what brings the police to my door."
     
     
"You have a student. Rachel Howard?"
     
     
"I have a number of