The routine at the big house in Lexington seemed to be the same today as it had been the three preceding mornings. The silver Cadillac left at seven thirty, with a man in a suit driving a teenage girl. Then a woman, presumably O’Connor, left around eight in her Prius.

Jake finished his coffee and waited across the street for a few minutes after the Prius pulled out, just in case one of them had forgotten something. Then he pulled the nondescript white van, rented the night before, into the driveway. Wearing a dark shirt with a yellow vest and carrying a large Amazon box, he was just another delivery guy. Nobody the neighbors would pay any attention to. If they even noticed.

He rang the front doorbell just to be sure. No answer, so he went around back. Anyone watching would assume he was going to leave the package at the back door. But instead he put on gloves and picked the lock on the sliding door to the back deck.

A quick look upstairs revealed five bedrooms. The master suite, a room that had all the props of a teenage girl and one that looked unused, probably a guest room. The other two were used as home offices. One was cluttered with legal papers. The other had piles of scientific articles neatly arranged on the desk. He plugged the keylogger into the back of the computer in the science room and left.

Easy. Less than five minutes for the whole operation.

Except the doorbell rang just as he was about to go downstairs. He ran to the window. Two women with cleaning supplies at the front door. The housecleaners. Parked right behind his van.

He hurried downstairs and out the back door. Then he grabbed the Amazon package and ran back around to the front.

The women were still bringing their supplies into the house.

“Good morning,” he said. “I was going to leave this in the back, but then I heard you out here. Maybe you can take it instead. Can you sign for Miss Collins?”

“Collins? Nobody here by that name,” one of the women said. “This is the O’Connor’s.”

“Isn’t this twenty-two Clearfield Lane?” Jake asked.

“No, you have the wrong house. This is number two twenty-two.”

“Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry.”

Jake got back in the van and drove away. Another lost Amazon delivery driver.

• • •

“Is she online yet?” Pam sat looking over the ocean from Jake’s living room, knowing that she sounded like a kid on a road trip. Are we there yet? But it was the morning after Jake had planted the keylogger. And nothing. Didn’t O’Connor work at home?

But this time Jake came in from the kitchen with a smile. “She just logged in. We’ve got her password.”

Pam straightened up on the couch. “About time she got to work. So can I get into the chemical library now?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

The adrenaline surged through her. Identifying the drug might be just keystrokes away. “Oh, I’m ready. I’ve waited long enough for this.”

Jake sat next to her as she picked up her laptop and went to the Langmere home page. There was a link to the chemical library and from there a link to the library intranet. She clicked on it and was asked for a user ID and password.

“Looks like here’s where we sign in.” She passed him the laptop and he logged in. A link to the compound database appeared.

He smiled and passed the computer back to her. “Your turn again. I’ll watch.”

“Okay, the first thing is to search for compounds with a molecular mass corresponding to what we got from the chemistry analysis in Michigan. It was 388.”

She did the search and a list of thirty-two compounds with that molecular mass appeared.

“Alright, these are the candidates. Now let’s see if the library has mass spectra for them.”

There were spectra for nineteen of the compounds. Pam went through them, comparing them to the printout Ed Coleman had given her. None matched. Not there yet.

“Well, I guess by elimination we have it down to one of the other thirteen,” she said. “Let’s see what more we can learn about those. I’ll have to check through all the references, so it’s going to take a while.”

“Should I go down to the village and get us some sandwiches?”

She nodded without looking up from the computer. One of these compounds is the drug I’ve spent years searching for. Maybe the key to restoring my life.

When he returned, she was still concentrating intently. She ate her sandwich without noticing what it was. Nearly two hours later she looked up.

“I think I’ve milked this as far as I can. Of the thirteen candidates, it turns out that eight were tried as cancer drugs, like Holly said aneurinide was. Those are probably the strongest candidates, but all thirteen are available from one chemical company or another, so I could just send the list to Karl and he could check them in his lab. And see if his friend Ed Coleman can run mass spectra on them.”

Jake nodded. “Sounds good. And you think one of these is the real thing?”

“I sure hope so. It pretty much has to be if the compound came from the Langmere library.”

“So how long will it take for your friends in Michigan to test them?”

“The chemical analysis is quick, it’ll probably just take a few days. But it’ll be a lot of work for Karl to do the biological experiments, especially to get all the data we need to convince everyone. What do you think of my going out there to help?”

“Didn’t Karl say it would be better if you weren’t there for the experiments?”

“When he did the first experiment, yes. But it doesn’t matter now that he’s confirmed there’s an active drug. And I’d like to be there when we get the definitive answer.”

Jake got up and kissed her forehead. “And you should be. Go ahead, I can handle things from here as far as looking into Holly goes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to start by finding out more about her. We know that she tried to steal the real drug, and you’ll find out what it is. Somehow that will be important in unraveling what happened. But I want to tackle the question of how she died. One possibility is that she killed herself when things went south. But the alternative is that she was murdered by an accomplice who set it up as a fake suicide, the same way Anita suggested the cops might suspect you of having done. Do you think she could have killed herself?”

Pam shook her head. “I don’t know. She was certainly crazy and vindictive to do all this with the drug, but a suicide? Who can say?”

“Could there have been something else that pushed her over the edge? Do you know if she had any history of mental illness, maybe previous suicide attempts?”

“No, nothing that I know about.”

“How about drugs or alcohol abuse? Or any kind of personal crisis she might have been dealing with?”

“Again, not that I know of. Although we never talked about personal things.”

“Did she have family? Any friends that you know of?”

“She never spoke about her parents or other family, so I don’t think there was anyone she was close to. She did have a boyfriend who used to come to lab parties, but they broke up over a year ago. I don’t think there’s been anyone serious in her life since then, although I believe she socialized with some of the graduate students and other postdocs at the Langmere.”

“What was her boyfriend’s name, do you remember?”

“Dave something. I’m not sure.”

“No problem, it’ll surface when I start learning more about her. But I don’t see anything in her history or personal life that sounds like suicide, do you?”

“Being caught in a major fraud case could be reason enough,” Pam said. “Other scientists have killed themselves in similar situations. And the idea of someone murdering her sounds pretty far-fetched.”

Jake shrugged. “There have been plenty of murders set up to look like suicides before. I’ve worked cases like it myself. If she had an accomplice in stealing the drug, it would have made sense for them to kill her when it looked like the investigation committee wasn’t going to buy her story. And take the opportunity to lay the blame on you at the same time.”

Pam shook her head and sighed. “I guess it’s possible. But what a terrible thought. For someone to commit not just fraud but even murder for this.”

“I know,” Jake said. “But at this point, I think murder is at least as likely as suicide. And there’s another implication.”

“I don’t think I can take anymore, but go ahead.”

“If she was murdered, it means there’s a killer still out there. And you could become a loose end in their scheme.”

Pam shuddered. “So you think I’m in danger?”

Jake took her hand. “I just want to play it safe until we figure this out. How about staying here instead of going back to your place when you come home from Michigan?”

“Sure, that’s easy. Thanks for offering,” she said.

Jake smiled. “Good. And one more thing.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a black canister about the size of her hand. “Pepper spray. Just keep it handy as an extra precaution.”

Pam took it and examined it for a minute. “Okay, I will. But what are you going to do in terms of looking into Holly? The police already investigated her death and didn’t come up with anything suspicious.”

“I’m pretty good at this kind of thing. And I know a few things the cops didn’t.”

“Such as?”

“That you’re innocent for a start. And that Holly had a real drug. Plus I have you to help me unravel the science. In fact, you can start by putting together a list of key dates in the progression of all this. When did the experiments show the compound was first active, when did you do the double-blind experiment, when did the fight about authorship happen, when was the paper submitted, and so forth. You see what I’m after—pretty much a complete timeline so I can put things in context as I work.”

“Sure, that’ll be easy. And then what are you going to do?”

He squeezed her hand. “Same thing I always do when I don’t know what’s going on. Ask questions and see what shakes out.”