“What did you find?” I ask, my tone demanding.

“Fentanyl.”

“What?” Commodore asks. “Where would she get it?”

“I was worried about this.” Bard looks at me and then my grandfather, his expression concerned. The glass of Scotch dangles in his hand. “You didn’t know. And . . .”

“What?” I snap.

“From the hospital chart, I understand it was assumed that Mrs. Riscoff died of a heart attack.”

“Yes, that’s correct,” I say.

The coroner slides the glass onto the desk and sits straighter in his chair. “The hospital was incorrect. Based on the tox screen, her cause of death was an overdose.”

My heart pounds in my ears. “An overdose? On fentanyl?”

The coroner nods, and I drop my head into my hands. Holy fucking hell. This can’t be happening.

I lift my chin and meet Bard’s gaze. “Is there any possibility it wasn’t an overdose?”

Bard shakes his head. “No. None at all. That’s the official cause of death.”

“But is there a chance it wasn’t self-inflicted? Could someone else have given the drug to her without her knowledge?”

Bard’s bushy eyebrows dive together. “I suppose . . . that could be possible, even though in my experience, it’s highly unlikely. I know families don’t want to think that their loved ones could have been hiding this kind of behavior, but—”

“But there’s a chance my mother was murdered. Isn’t that right?”

The coroner meets my gaze, his face pale. “Yes, Mr. Riscoff. Even though it’s not probable, it is possible.”

Twenty-Four

Whitney

Lincoln comes into the library where I’m writing and McKinley is working, and he looks like he’s gone ten rounds with the champ in the last few hours.

I bolt out of the window seat I’ve taken over, sending papers flying, and rush across the room to him. “What’s wrong?”

His haggard expression leads me to come to only one conclusion. Something awful has happened.

“What happened?” McKinley asks, rising from her laptop.

When I reach him, he wraps one arm around me and squeezes tight. Over my shoulder, he looks at his sister.

“I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. There’s a chance that Mother was murdered.”

My heart drops to the intricate rug covering the floor, and McKinley’s gasp echoes from the high ceilings.

“Murdered? No. That’s not possible. How could that be possible? Who? Why?”

Lincoln holds out his other arm and his sister comes toward him, walking slowly, like her brain isn’t functioning completely right.

She shakes her head. “No. No. That’s not possible.”

“We don’t know anything for sure yet, except the fact that it wasn’t a heart attack. It was an overdose of fentanyl.”

“Fentanyl?” I stiffen in Lincoln’s hold. “Are you sure?”

He nods gravely. “Why?”

“Because that’s how Ricky died.”

Lincoln’s arm falls away from where he was cradling me against his chest. “Fuck. I forgot.”

McKinley’s mouth drops open as she meets my gaze. “I thought he died of a heroin overdose.”