Brazen Virtue

pride, and to be frank, she always resented—never mind.” She took a long breath. The brandy had headed straight for her stomach and was turning it over. Regardless, she drank again. “The other line was for business. She was moonlighting. For a company called Fantasy, Incorporated.”
    Ben cocked a brow as he wrote it down. “Fantasy calls?”
    “That’s a PG way of putting it.” On a sigh, Grace rubbed the heels of her hands under her eyes. “Phone sex. I thought she was being pretty innovative, even wondered how I could work it into a plot.” Her stomach turned over again, so she reached for a cigarette. When she fumbled with the lighter, Ben took it, flicked it, then set it beside the tumbler of brandy. “Thanks.”
    “Just take it slow,” he advised.
    “I’m all right. She was making a lot of money, and it seemed harmless. None of the callers had her name or number, because everything was put through from the main office, then she called the john—I guess that’s the word for it. She called him back collect.”
    “Did she ever mention anyone who got a little too enthusiastic?”

    “No. And I’m sure she would have. She told me about the job the first night I got here. If anything, she seemed to be a little amused by it, and a bit bored. Even if someone had wanted more personal contact, they wouldn’t have been able to find her. Like I said, she didn’t even use her own name. Oh, and Kath told me she didn’t talk anything but straight sex.” Grace spread her palm on the table. They’d sat at this very spot that first night, while the sun went down. “No bondage, no S and M, no violence. She was very picky about who she’d talk to. Anyone who wanted something, well, unconventional had to go elsewhere.”
    “She never met anyone she talked to?” Ed asked.
    It wasn’t a fact she could prove, but one she was sure of. “No, absolutely not. It was a job she took just as professionally as her teaching. She didn’t date, she didn’t go to parties. Her life was the school and this house. You lived next door to her,” she said to Ed. “Did you ever see anyone come here? Did you ever see her stay out past nine in the evening?”
    “No.”
    “We’ll need to check on the information you’ve given us,” Ben began as he rose. “If you remember anything, just call.”
    “Yes, I know. Thanks. Will they call me when—when I can take her?”
    “We’ll try to make it soon.” Ben glanced at his partner again. He knew, better than most, how frustrating it was to mix murder and emotion, just as he knew that Ed would have to work out his involvement in his own way and time. “I’ll file the report. Why don’t you tie things up here?”
    “Yeah.” He nodded to his partner as he rose to take the cups to the sink.
    “He’s a nice man,” Grace said after Ben had left. “Is he a good cop?”
    “One of the best.”
    She pressed her lips together, wanting, needing to accept his word. “I know it’s late, but would you mind not going yet? I have to call my parents.”

    “Sure.” He stuck his hands in his pockets because she still looked too delicate to touch. They’d only begun to be friends, and now he was a cop again. A badge and a gun had a way of putting a lot of distance between him and a “civilian.”
    “I don’t know what to say to them. I don’t know how I can say anything.”
    “I can call them for you.”
    Grace drew hard on her cigarette because she wanted to agree. “Someone’s always taking care of the ugly things for me. I guess this is one time I have to do it myself. If something like this can be easier, it’ll be easier for them to hear it from me.”
    “I can wait in the other room.”
    “I’d appreciate it.”
    Grace watched him walk out, then braced herself to make the call.
    Ed paced the living room. He was tempted to go back to the murder scene and sift through everything but held back. He didn’t want to chance Grace walking in on him. She didn’t need that, he thought, to see it all, to remember it all. Violent death was his business, but he’d never grown completely immune to the ripples it caused.
    One life was over, and often dozens of others were affected. It was his job to look at it logically, to check out the details, the obvious and the elusive ones, until he compiled enough evidence for an arrest. It was the compilation that was the most satisfying aspect of police work for him. Ben was instinct and intensity; Ed was method. A case was