At the bottom of the stack were auto insurance receipts. Low premium for no smoking and good driving record. No financing on the Buick meant she probably owned the car. No way for her to know it would end up being a coffin on wheels.

Milo scribbled notes and placed the paper back in the carton. I thought of what we hadn't found: mementos, photographs, correspondence, greeting cards. Anything personal.

No property tax receipts or deductions for property tax. If she rented, why no record of rent checks?

I raised the question. Milo said, "So maybe the ex paid the mortgage and taxes. Maybe that was his alimony."

"And now that she's gone, he's off the hook. And if he's maintained some ownership of the house, there's a bit of incentive for you. Any idea who gets the two hundred forty? Any will show up?"

"Not yet. So you like the husband?"

"I'm just thinking about what you always tell me. Follow the money."

He grunted. I returned to the bookcase, pulled a few books out. Foxed pages, neatly printed notes in margins. Next to five years' worth of Brain was a collection of journal reprints.

Articles Claire Argent had authored. A dozen studies, all related to the neuropsychology of alcoholism, funded by the National Institutes of Health. The writing was clear, the subject matter repetitive. Lots of technical terms, but I got the gist.

During graduate school and the five years following, she'd filled her hours measuring human motor and visual skills under various levels of intoxication. Easy access to subjects: County Hospital was the treatment center of last resort for physically wasted alcoholic paupers who used the emergency room as their private clinic. E.R. docs called them GOMER's-Get Out of My Emergency Room.

Her results had been consistent: booze slowed you down. Statistically significant but hardly profound. Lots of academics drudged through undistinguished careers with that kind of stuff. Maybe she had tired of the grant game.

One interesting fact: she'd always published solo-unusual for academic medicine, where chairmen commonly stuck their names on everything underlings produced.

Maybe Myron Theobold had integrity.

Letting Claire do her own thing.

Claire going it alone from the very beginning.

A rattling sound made me turn. Milo had been handling the objects on the desktop and a pen had dropped. He retrieved it and placed it next to a small calendar in a green plastic frame. Another drug company giveaway. Empty memo pad. No appointments, no indentations on the pad.

Such a spare life.

Several books trumpeting the virtues of serene simplicity had recently gone best-seller. I wondered if the newly rich authors practiced what they preached.

This house didn't seem serene, just blank, hollow, null.

We left the office and moved to the bathroom. Shampoo, soap, toothpaste, multiple vitamins, sanitary napkins, Advil. No birth control pills, no diaphragm. The travertine deck around the tub was clear of niceties. No bath beads or bubble bath or loofah sponge-none of the solitary pleasures women sometimes crave. The porcelain was streaked with amber.