Sacred Sins

could smell her cool, quietly sexual scent over everything else.
    “Dean, I'd like you to meet Ben Paris and Trixie Lawrence. Ben's a detective with the local police.”
    “Ah, one of the city's finest.” Dean gave him a hearty handshake.
    The guy looked like a cover of Gentlemen's Quarterly and smelled like a Brut commercial. Ben had an irrational urge to grip his hand Indian-wrestle style and go a round. “You one of Tess's colleagues?”
    “No, actually I'm on the staff at American University.”
    College professor. It figured. Ben stuck his hands in his pockets again and took a small, telling step away from Tess. “Well, Trix and I just walked in. We haven't had a chance to absorb yet.”

    “It's almost too much to take in in one evening.” Dean cast a proprietary eye at the mangle of copper beside him. “I've just bought this piece. It's a bit risqué for my office, but I couldn't resist.”
    “Yeah?” Ben looked at it, then stuck his tongue in his cheek. “You must be thrilled. I'm going to stroll around and see if I can pick up something for my den. Nice meeting you.” He slipped an arm around Trixie's sturdy waist. “See you, Doc.”
    “Good night, Ben.”

    I T was still shy of eleven when Tess stepped into her apartment alone. The headache she'd used as an excuse to cut the evening short had only been half a lie. Normally she enjoyed her occasional dates with Dean. He was an undemanding, uncomplicated man, the kind of man she deliberately dated in order to keep her personal life equally undemanding and uncomplicated. But tonight she just hadn't been able to face a late supper and discussion of nineteenth-century literature. Not after the art gallery.
    Not after seeing Ben, she made herself admit, and slipped out of her shoes two feet inside the door. Whatever progress she'd made in soothing her ego and alleviating the tension since that last morning she'd seen him had been blown, quite simply, to smithereens.
    So she'd start from scratch. A hot cup of tea. She took off her fur jacket and hung it in the hall closet. She'd spend the evening in bed with Kurt Vonnegut, camomile, and Beethoven. The combination would take anyone's mind off their problems.

    What problems? she asked herself as she stood listening to the quiet of the apartment she came home to night after night. She had no real problems because she'd made certain she wouldn't. A nice apartment in a good neighborhood, a dependable car, a light and consistently casual social life. That was precisely how she'd planned things.
    She'd taken step A, and made certain it led to step B, and so on until she'd reached the plateau that satisfied her. She was satisfied.
    She took off her earrings and dropped them on the dining room table. The sound of stone hitting wood echoed dully in the empty room. The mums she'd bought earlier in the week were beginning to go. Bronzed petals lay fading against the polished mahogany. Absently Tess picked them up. Their scent, sharp and spicy, went with her to the bedroom.
    She wouldn't look at the files on her desk tonight, she told herself as she pulled down the zipper of her ivory wool dress. If she had a problem, it was that she didn't allow herself enough time. Tonight she would pamper herself, forget about the patients who would come to her office on Monday morning, forget about the clinic where she would have to face the anger and resentment of drug withdrawal two afternoons next week. She'd forget about the murder of four women. And she'd forget about Ben.
    In the full-length mirror inside the closet, her reflection leaped out at her. She saw a woman of average height, slim build, in an expensive and conservatively cut ivory wool dress. A choker of three strands of pearls and a fat amethyst lay against her throat. Her hair was caught back at the temples with pearl-trimmed ivory combs. The set had been her mother's, and as quietly elegant as the senator's daughter had been.

    Her mother had worn the choker as a bride. Tess had pictures in the leather-bound album she kept in her bottom dresser drawer. When the senator had given the pearls to his granddaughter on her eighteenth birthday, they had both wept. Every time Tess wore them, she felt both a pang and pride. They were a symbol of who she was, where she had come from, and in some ways, what was expected of her.
    But tonight they seemed too tight around her throat. She slipped them off, and the pearls lay cool in her hand.
    Even without them the