As the girl laid it carefully across the bed her hands lingered, smoothing the heavy fabric. It was a beautiful thing; heaven only knew what treasured antique the dressmaker had cut up in order to make it. It didn’t look like modern fabric; the muted blues and pinks and golds might have formed part of a sultan’s regalia a century before. Linda reapplied her lipstick. It was a bright orange-red. The color would clash horribly with the dress. She ought to use another shade.

She dropped the carved gold case on the table top and reached down into the lowest drawer of the dressing table.

“Get me a glass,” she ordered, taking the top off the bottle. The contents, half gone, swam amber gold with the movement of her hands.

Anna hesitated, her eyes bulging as they focused on the bottle.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Linda asked gently. “Hurry up. You lazy little fool.”

Anna jumped, and then ran into the bathroom. Linda took the glass without looking at it or the girl who held it. She poured it half full. Her elbows on the table, she sipped, and watched Anna in the mirror; and Anna stared back with her big, bulging, watery-blue eyes.

Cocktails in the den before dinner. Very classy, Linda thought, for a cop’s daughter from Cleveland. She came down the stairs carefully, holding up her heavy skirts with one hand. The other hand, beringed and graceful, trailed nonchalantly along the curved mahogany rail. She didn’t need to hold on. A couple of drinks-or even three or four-didn’t affect her at all, physically, except to dull the sharpness of her hearing. With a couple of drinks-or maybe three or four-she could hardly hear the voice of the house.

There was no one in the marble-floored foyer to appreciate her entrance, so she turned to the right and went along the hall, past the drawing room, past the morning room, past the dining room; her skirts rustling stiffly, her head high.