“This isn’t a gangster movie, it’s a hi-tech thriller,” Lindsay replied, her voice bitter and sharp. “One of those ones where somebody gets burned because they pick up too many pieces of the jigsaw by accident and suddenly they’re looking at the whole picture. That’s what happened to Penny.”

“But how? Penny wasn’t an undercover FBI agent. She was just an ordinary writer.”

“She was an observer,” Lindsay pointed out. “Penny was shrewd and sharp when it came to watching people. That’s why her psychology was always so spot on, why her characters felt so real. Think about it. All those afternoons she spent at the mall or the bowling alley, hanging out, watching the teenagers, listening to them, absorbing everything about their culture. And she had that uncanny skill for identifying what was a nine-day wonder and what was a genuine trend that would still have resonance for her readers five or ten years down the road. You mean to tell me that if the jigsaw pieces were there for the grabbing, Penny wouldn’t have gone for them with both hands?”

Sophie disentangled herself from Lindsay’s encircling arm and got up, fanning herself with her hand. “Nothing personal, I was just overheating. I can’t believe this weather, it’s hotter than at home.” She sat down by the open window, trying to convince herself there was a breeze. “So what were these jigsaw pieces you reckon Penny picked up on?”

“The phone messages. When I read that in her synopsis, I knew exactly what she meant. I didn’t really register it at the time, but both times I’ve been at Monarch, Lauren the receptionist has dealt with phone calls a bit strangely. Some are totally routine—‘Hold the line, I’ll see if she’s free,’ ‘Hold the line, I’ll put you through to her secretary,’ that sort of thing. But there were others where she said straight off, ‘I’m sorry, he’s not here, can I take a message?’ Not, ‘Let me see if he’s available.’ Or, ‘He’ll be in later, can I get him to call you?’ Or, ‘Would you like to speak to his secretary?’ Just a flat offer to take a message. But if Danny King’s operating a ghost-employee scam, that would be exactly what would happen!” Lindsay’s voice was excited, her eyes sparkling for the first time since Sophie had arrived in the UK.

Sophie frowned. “Okay, I grant you it makes a certain kind of sense if you reason it backwards. But how did Penny get from noticing a peculiarity in the receptionist’s phone habits to working out the whole ghost-employee scam? I mean, you heard the same thing and it meant nothing suspicious to you until you understood what was really going on.”