My attention locks on the six white votive candles in simple glass holders on the red lacquer coffee table. They’ve never been lit. They aren’t dusty and look new. I lean close to them, isolating the familiar scents of jasmine, tuberose and sandalwood. I recognize musk and vanilla, the rich erotic fragrance of Amorvero, Italian for true love, the signature perfume of the Hotel Hassler at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome where Benton proposed to me eight years ago.

I have Amorvero perfume, bath oil and body lotion at home. He always buys it for my birthday and now I smell it here inside this house. I sniff my wrists to make sure it isn’t me even though I know it can’t be. I didn’t put it on this morning.

“What do you smell?” I ask Marino.

He sniffs, shrugs. “An old house, maybe flowers. But my nose is stuffed up because of all the dust in this place. It’s like it’s been closed up for a long time. Have you noticed?”

“Do you recognize anything?”

“Like what?”

“What you described as a flowery fragrance. Is it familiar?”

“Yeah. It smells sort of like what you wear now that you mention it.” He walks closer to me, sniffs a few more times.

“That’s because it’s the same fragrance but I don’t have it on right now. It’s also uncommon and I rarely run into it anywhere. Benton has to order it from Italy.”

“You’re saying it’s your special scent.” Sweat is popping out on top of Marino’s shaved head. “And people close to you would know it.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I reply and he’s thinking the same thing I am.

“It’s like the clocks,” Marino says. “I walked through this room this morning and I know the clocks weren’t working. I didn’t hear them. I don’t remember seeing these little white candles or smelling anything in here except dust.”

“The candles haven’t been used.” I point a gloved finger at one on a side table. “And if I pick one up”—I do it as I say it—“there’s no sparing, no round shape in the dust on the tabletop. It appears the candles were placed in here recently and the room hasn’t been cleaned in a while.”

Marino’s eyes dart around as the clocks tick tock tick tock, and the rain drums the roof louder, softer, then in a hard roll. The wind rushes and moans as I listen for the tactical team. I turn on alabaster sconces and a chandelier, and they glow wanly. The centuries-old oil paintings of landscapes, the stern portraits on the oak-paneled walls are just as dark, the room just as gloomy.