Zoe shook her head. “No, not to that. She had another drug in her system, but I haven’t been able to determine what it is. Do you have a list of everything you found in her apartment?”

“What I found is listed in my report. I noted that she had a needle mark on her arm, but there were no traces of any other drugs in the apartment.”

“Dr. Blythe documented the injection site too. My guess is that whatever this is, this is what she was allergic to. Standard tests aren’t giving me any answers as to what it is, but so far I only tested for routine street drugs. It doesn’t appear to be anything typically used for recreational purposes. I’m going to have to do a bit of detective work to figure out what it is.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to do it?” she asked hopefully, feeling that Dr. Blythe would probably hold her responsible for this even though it was Zoe’s job to figure it out.

“I’ll try. Her post-mortem serum can be tested for several weeks yet. I’ll let you know what I find.”

Val thought for a minute. No other drugs were found in the house. No needles either. Someone had obviously gotten rid of them. Though Samantha died from an allergic reaction, she couldn’t have done it on her own. She needed to talk to Gavin ASAP. He needed to know about this.

14

It was just after 6pm and despite leaving messages about the Samantha Ritcher case all afternoon for Gavin to call her, Val had yet to hear from him. But she really wasn’t all that concerned with Samantha Ritcher’s death right now. Samantha could wait. Something else was bothering her more.

Julia hadn’t come into work that day and no one could reach her by phone.

Val was supposed to meet her for dinner tonight and planned on keeping that date, if for nothing more than to see if Julia was all right. She pulled into Julia’s driveway and looked around before getting out of the car.

The houses in the development were huge. Manicured lawns and neatly-trimmed shrubs lined the walkways and front garden beds. A woman with a straw hat and pink gloves stood along the flagstones carefully tending to her bushes, trimming ends with a pair of shears. She looked up at Val, studying her briefly. Then returned to her pruning. Moments later she glanced up at her a second time.

The evening was warm and voices and music carried through the open windows. Several teenagers were outside bouncing a basketball around a hoop.