“My God,” Sophie breathed. “That’s bloody clever.”

“You’re not kidding. It gets better, though,” Lindsay said drily, flicking the “page down” key to bring up a fresh screen.

“In order to pay these non-productive, fake employees, the company has to have a much higher turnover. They pretend to produce fake magazines, which are sent to outlets that are Mob fronts. Outlet claims to have sold, say, 100 copies of computer magazine per week, thus legitimately putting an extra $500 through their till. They pay Sam’s company for the magazine at wholesale, say $250 a week. And so Sam has, on paper, a string of highly profitable magazines with a team of commissioning editors. Only nothing is real.”

Sophie looked up and grinned admiringly. “That is wicked,” she said. “That is so clever. Where on earth did Penny get an idea like that? I never heard her show any interest in that kind of scam, did you? She was always much more interested in the psychology and sociology of lawbreaking than the mechanics.”

“Read on,” Lindsay said, gesturing towards the screen. Sophie scrolled down and carried on reading. “Sam’s a keen yachtsman, likes racing yachts. One weekend, he’s sailing and he meets a woman who’s crewing on the yacht he’s helming. Martha Denny. Twenty-nine, undercover Treasury agent working on anti-racketeering crackdown. She’s infiltrated Sam’s social world to try and gather information on Mob-related activities. He thinks she’s a photographer, and he falls for her. Soon, they’re lovers—Martha battles with conscience as government agent, but figures he’s clean, his company is clearly legit. Then odd things start happening. He gets his magazines to commission her to take pics, so she’s around the office a lot. She notices a lot of calls come in for people who are never there; messages get taken, and presumably passed on, but she never meets the guys attached to those names. Then she finds out they all supposedly work on the mysterious tenth floor—in a nine-story building???

“Martha’s torn between love and duty. (Watch out—bit of a cliché? Or is that just men?) Sam realizing early on that she’s got suspicions, but he loves her too much to want to lose her, so at first he finds justifications and then has to cope with idea of ??Martha dead?? or ??himself dead?? if his Mob connections find out he’s harboring a viper in their midst.

“Resolution???”

Sophie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Powerful stuff,” she said. “I mean, it’s a great story by any standards, but when you know what Penny could have done with it . . . it makes her death seem so much more tragic. I know that’s a terrible thing to say, like saying some people’s deaths are more significant than others, but that’s how I feel about Penny.” She buried her face in her hands, feeling the prickle of tears in her eyes.