“My God,” Catriona said, voice dripping contempt, “I didn’t know private snoopers like you knew cui bono from Sonny Bono. Ms. Gordon, to kill Penny Varnavides for the income generated by one short burst of sales would be akin to killing the goose that laid the golden eggs in the hope of pushing the market price of gold higher. I stood to earn a lot more cash from Penny Varnavides alive than I could ever hope to gain from her death.”

“Maybe so. But it would still make a nice tale in the tabloids. I’m not asking you to breach commercial confidentiality. All I want is some answers to a few innocuous questions. I’m not the one who got heavy here.”

“I despise blackmail,” Catriona said, lighting a second cigarette.

“Me too,” Lindsay said cheerfully. “It doesn’t half get results, though.”

“You must go down like a cup of cold sick in a euphemistic society like America.”

“They love it. Penny used to call me a breath of fresh effluvium. They think all the Scots are brutally frank. They’ve been watching too many historical Hollywood epics. So, are we going to talk to each other, or am I going to talk to the tabloids? Did I mention I used to be a national newspaper journalist?” Lindsay’s smile alone would have been accepted by any court in the land as sufficient provocation for GBH.

Catriona fiddled with her cigarette. “There’s so little to say that it’s not worth arguing over. I’m far too busy to have to deal with muckraking journalists as well as interfering busybodies.”

It wasn’t a graceful climbdown, but Lindsay wasn’t proud. “Thanks,” she said. “I know Penny would have wanted you to help.”

Catriona looked as if she’d bitten into a profiterole and found a slug. “Such convenient knowledge,” she muttered.

“You’ve been Penny’s agent right from the start, am I right?”

“Since before she was ever published. She brought The Magicking of Danny Armstrong to me after it had been rejected by all the major American houses and her agent in New York had let her go. I was able to place it for her over here, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Lindsay took out her notebook, more for show than necessity, and scribbled a note. “This latest book? Very different, I hear.”

“Penny decided she wanted a challenge. She was doing three Darkliners titles a year, and she wanted to break out of what had started to feel like a rut. Heart of Glass was going to be her first adult thriller. It was very noir, very passionate and very powerfully written. I had great hopes of it.”

“How much of it was actually finished?”

“Penny had written about three-quarters of it. She came over here to do some research she needed for the last part of the book, and to finish writing it. I read what she’d completed before she arrived. But within days of getting to London, she announced she was doing a major rewrite. I was surprised, because what I saw was very good. But Penny was adamant that it needed some substantial alterations.”