Marietta whispered, teetering in her strappy high heels, immobilized at the door of the hotel ballroom. On a logical level she knew exactly why she was there: five murdered men, that was why. Despite her red flirty-skirted dress and the “Sunlit Chestnut” temporary dye covering her gray, Marietta Becker was on duty, her badge tucked into her capacious purse. Just doing her job. But on a woman’s gut level…good grief, a singles dance? With a disco ball, of all things, spinning a slow juggernaut from the ceiling and hurling flakes of confusion onto the women sitting at the circular tables, the men standing in the shadows, a few couples looking awkward on the dance floor? Lord, she’d been married almost as long as she’d been a cop; she didn’t venture to places like this. “What am I doing here?” Marietta complained aloud. “Honey,” answered a woman about her age crowded next to her in the doorway, “I ask myself that same question every blessed week.” Marietta hadn’t expected the other women, who should regard her as competition, to speak with her, but she tried not to show her surprise as she turned.
