“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m a stupid old man to mention her.”

“It isn’t just Lila.” Nauman cradled the cup with the fingertips of both hands and gazed at it bleakly. “That’s the worst of this retrospective business, Jacob. I’ll have to look again at so many things I thought I was finished with. I don’t think I want to do that.”

“For a real retrospective, perhaps not, ” Munson agreed, stroking his wispy beard. “But the Breul House-this we will treat like a preview, ja?” he said coaxingly. “The space is small. Friendly. This you will do for your old friend?”

“Preview?” Nauman growled.

“Ja, sure. How much longer can I keep working, Oscar? I tell you alone: I am eighty-two. Most men my age are dead but I cannot retire before we do your retrospective.” He tried to sound frail and pathetic, but his small body was still too wiry and agile and there was a jaunty glint in his black eyes. “You are killing me.”

“Ja, sure,” Oscar said sardonically.

The office door was ajar and Hester Kohn, vivid in red and purple, stuck her head in. The lush scent of her gardenia perfume floated in ahead of her.

“Car’s here,” she said, holding out Jacob’s coat and muffler.

Munson beamed. “Good, good! Now we meet your lady fireman.”

“Lady policeman,” Oscar grinned.

Sigrid had intended to leave work early enough to allow herself plenty of time for a long hot shower and a leisurely hour to dress, but in the late afternoon, she’d been called to an unexpected meeting that ran past six-thirty.

If she hoped to make Sussex Square before the party was over, Sigrid knew she could forget about that shower, much less changing into something more glamorous than the shapeless black wool suit and white turtleneck sweater she’d pulled from her closet this morning.

She rummaged in her shoulder bag and found a tube of lipstick and some mascara. She’d been running late the day before yesterday and had planned to duck into the locker room here at work, then completely forgot about makeup as soon as she saw the papers that had accumulated on her desk over the weekend.

Well, mascara and lipstick were better than nothing, she thought, and headed for the locker room where she washed her face and hands, pushed her hair into place and started on her eyes.

It looked so simple when other women did it. And really, what was so difficult? A steady hand, a bit of bravura and voila!

“Oh, damn!”

“Something wrong, Lieutenant?”

Sigrid whirled to see Detective Elaine Albee peering around the bank of lockers.

“No. ” She turned back to the mirror where she saw that the pretty blond officer was frankly staring at the smeared dark black rings around her eyes.

Sigrid was torn with frustration and embarrassment. “I’m supposed to be at a cocktail party in Sussex Square in exactly thirteen minutes and I look like a goddamned panda!”

“I was wondering if someone had given you a black eye,” the younger woman ventured. This was the first time she’d ever known the lieutenant to worry about her looks and Elaine wasn’t quite sure how to react. Lieutenant Harald could freeze a blast furnace with her tongue when annoyed.

“It’s probably because the light’s so bad in here,” she said diplomatically.

“This is ridiculous,” Sigrid said, grimly washing off the smeared mascara. “I’ll just call and say I can’t make it.”

“Let me help,” Albee offered. “I keep a few things in my locker for emergencies.”

“You have emergencies like this?” Sigrid asked curiously. “You always look so put together.”

“Come with me,” Elaine grinned and Sigrid soon found herself seated on a bench in front of the other woman’s locker.

Five minutes later, her eyes were expertly lined and shadowed, the planes of her cheeks subtly enhanced with blusher, her lips-

“My lip gloss is wrong for you,” Elaine frowned. “I’m blond, you’re brunette. You need something richer than anything I have here.”

Sigrid brought out her own lipstick. “Will this do?”

Elaine uncapped it, examined it critically and handed it back with approval. “Perfect for you. How did you stumble-” She caught herself. “I mean-”

“I know what you meant,” Sigrid said dryly as she leaned toward the mirror on the door of Albee’s locker and applied the lipstick. “It was the woman who cut my hair last month. She picked it out. I’ve just tried to follow her directions.”

She capped the lipstick and looked at the finished result as impersonally as if her face belonged to someone else.

“Uh, Lieutenant?”

“Yes?”

Elaine reached into her locker for a plastic bag with the name of a dress shop located in the next block. “I picked this up on my lunch hour today. It was on sale and looked like something that might come in handy during the holidays. You can borrow it, if you want.”

It was a scoop-necked shell of gold sequins that glittered and sparkled like Christmas lights when Elaine lifted it from the bag.

Sigrid made one weak protest, then shucked off her jacket and sweater, remembering just in time not to smear her lipstick. The sequinned top fit fine. Albee was curvier, but she was taller, so it balanced. With her jacket left unbuttoned, she looked almost glamorous.

Elaine was getting into the sport of it now and pulled out some gold-colored costume jewelry: bracelets and a pair of earrings.

Sigrid accepted the bracelets but regretfully confessed, “My ears aren’t pierced.”

“You have to have earrings.”

Another woman entered, greeted Albee by name, then gave Sigrid a formal nod and a curious glance.

“I’m late,” Sigrid said, looking at the clock on the end wall, but Albee was lost in thought. “Quarante!” she exclaimed suddenly. “In Records. She keeps a wad of costume jewelry in her desk.”

“I have to go,” Sigrid objected.

“Not without earrings,” Albee told her firmly and neither woman noticed that in this area it was now Albee who commanded. “I’ll meet you by the elevators on the first floor in two minutes.”

She sprinted for the door. Sigrid folded her turtleneck and left it in her own locker, put on her heavy coat, then took an elevator downstairs.

True to her word, it wasn’t much more than two minutes later that Elaine Albee raced down the stairs with a glittery dangling earring in each determined hand. Without a shred of self-consciousness, she stood on tiptoe to clip them on Sigrid’s ears, then fluffed her hair and stepped back to look at what she’d wrought.

“Your coat!” she cried. “I think I know someone-”

“No!” Sigrid protested, clutching her camel hair topcoat protectively.

“Well-” said Elaine. “But take it off the minute you get there, okay?”

“Okay.” Sigrid hesitated and awkwardly held out her hand. “Thanks, Albee.”

“Any time, Lieutenant.” Feeling almost maternal, the younger woman watched as her boss hurried out into the winter night, earrings swinging with each long stride.

“There you are,” said Jim Lowry when she returned to the squad room. “What’s funny, Lainey?”

“Nothing,” she grinned. “Except that now I know how the fairly godmother felt when she sent Cinderella off to the ball.”

“Huh?”

“Skip it. Didn’t you want to make the early movie?”

The cabbie had bent the speed limit, and Sigrid, who normally hated fast driving, gratefully added a little extra to her tip as he let her out in Sussex Square. It was only nineteen minutes past seven. Fashionably late, she told herself and hurried up the brick walk.

Remembering her promise to Elaine Albee, she slipped her coat off as soon as she entered the Erich Breul House. There she was greeted by a dignified gray-haired woman in a red jacket and beautiful pearls.

“Welcome to the Erich Breul House,” said the woman, directing her to the cloakroom. “I’m Eloise Beardsley, senior docent.”