"But I don't know if—"

  "We have to be going," Irene repeated. "Let's not take up any more of the nice doctor's time. We'll get those credentials to you right away, Doc," she called over her shoulder.

  He nodded once and vanished into the office.

  I followed her out, thinking I might as well start preparing myself for the indictment that was sure to be on its way. The only occasion where I was likely to see Dr. Watson again was when he took the witness stand to testify against us.

  * * *

  "Seriously? Hemlock Holmes?" I got into the car and yanked my seat belt across my body. "What kind of crazy made-up name is that?"

  "Sherlock. And it was the best I could come up with on the spot, okay? I didn't see you making one up."

  No, I hadn't. I'd figured we'd already dug a deep enough hole.

  "What were you thinking?" I asked.

  Irene slid behind the wheel. "I was thinking that you want that report, right?"

  "Yes," I mumbled.

  "And you don't want to wait, right?"

  "Yes."

  "And saying we work for a PI was pretty quick thinking, right?"

  "Yes! Okay, fine. You're right."

  Irene grinned. "Besides, that doctor was pretty good looking, right?"

  This time I shot her a look instead of answering.

  "It wouldn't be a terrible thing to see him again, would it?"

  "He's not my type," I argued.

  Irene arched one perfectly threaded eyebrow at me. "Oh really? You're not into hot doctors?"

  "He's…" I paused, struggling for the right words to describe him. Gorgeous. Drool worthy. Lava flow hot. "…completely inflexible," I finally settled on. "He's like an 80-year-old man trapped in a…" I trailed off again, biting my lip.

  "Hottie's body?" Irene suggested.

  "I didn't say that."

  "You didn't have to. Your tongue practically hit the floor when you saw him."

  "It did not," I said. "He's not that good looking. And stop trying to hook me up, will you? All I want from Dr. Watson is information."

  "And that's what you'll get." Irene pulled out of the parking lot and up to a red light. "Just as soon as we get Sherlock Holmes to send over his credentials."

  I slid down in my seat with a groan. "How are we supposed to do that? Shylock Holmes doesn't exist!"

  "Sherlock," she corrected again. "And yeah, that could be a slight problem."

  I shot her a look again. "Only a slight problem?"

  Irene grinned. "We have the will. I think we should go out for drinks and work on the way. I've got an idea."

  I grimaced. "You always do."

  Fifteen minutes later, we pounced on an open table at the Cavern, a trendy gathering spot for twentysomethings on the waterfront. There was a huge circular bar dead center of the room, floor-to-ceiling windows with remote darkening shades facing the bay, and enough vibrations from gigantic speakers to rearrange internal organs.

  I stared at the fake candle on the table shooting a flickering fake flame that neither warmed nor brightened. My jaw hurt from gritting my teeth. I didn't take rejection well, and I'd been rejected twice in the same day when all I'd wanted was information. Not like I was asking for state secrets. Those I could probably get.

  "I can't believe he wouldn't tell family how she died," I groused into my martini. "Who does that? Don't you think he could have just given me Kate's cause of death?"

  "Uh-huh." Irene pulled her tablet from her bag and began typing.

  "I mean, it could be important information." I watched her. "It sounds like she had some health problem that could be hereditary. I don't know much about my dad's side of the family. Don't you think it would be important for me to know that?"

  "Uh-huh." The typing stopped for a second while Irene read something. "It wasn't necessarily something hereditary," she said. "She could have had pneumonia or something. That house is sure drafty enough to catch pneumonia." She started typing again.

  "What are you doing?" I asked, irritated. "Am I boring you or something?"

  "I told you I had an idea," Irene said. "Ideas take work."

  "If you say so." I drained the glass and stood. "I'm going to get a Coke. Want anything?"

  "Nuh-uh."

  It was almost ten minutes before I dropped back into my chair again with the soda and some more grievances. "It's just so frustrating to find out I have this relative I never knew, and now I can't find out anything about her." I noticed a business card lying on the table. "Is that the doctor's?"

  "Uh-huh." Irene turned the tablet sideways and assessed.

  "I don't know why you took it. It's not like we actually need Dr. Watson's contact information." I took a sip. "And by the way, you weren't much help. Why would you tell him we were private investigators? Don't you know it's a crime to lie about a thing like that?"

  "Only to a police officer, maybe," Irene said. "Not to a doctor. Besides, I didn't lie." She held up the tablet with a triumphant grin. "Voila."

  I stared at the screen. "Impressive. Is this what you do for a living?"

  "Yes." Irene made a face. "I falsify government documents. What do you think?"

  "You don't have to be snarky about it." I took another look at an official-looking license with the words Department of Consumer Affairs, Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. And below that was the name Sherlock Holmes.

  I looked at her. "What is this?"

  "That," Irene said, "is the answer to your prayer."

  "That," I said, "is forgery."

  Irene cocked her head, appraising the screen. "Huh. Never considered myself a forger before. I think I'm kinda good at it."

  I tried not to roll my eyes as I imagined her adding that to her resume. Hacker Entrepreneur, Fake PI, Forger.

  The tablet chimed softly, and her grin widened. "I think I hear the medical examiner calling."

  "You actually sent that to him?" My hand was shaking on the glass.

  "Kind of the point, Marty." Irene swiped away the fake PI license and opened her email with a smile. "I've got to hand it to him. He's true to his word. That's a good quality in a man, don't you think?" She handed me the tablet, where Dr. Watson's prelim report was open to page 1.

  My eyes widened. "We shouldn't read this. We got it under false pretenses."

  "We should read this," Irene insisted. "We didn't steal state secrets. It's a report. She's your family."

  Right. Family. Family trumped forgery, right? Not like Dr. Watson would be likely to look into the authenticity of Sherlock Holmes's license. Why would he do that? He'd asked for credentials, he'd gotten credentials, and he'd sent over the report, one of hundreds that he sent out every year. He'd probably already deleted the phony license and put the whole transaction behind him. He'd never be able to describe me to, say, the Department of Homeland Security. As painful as it was to admit, I was pretty sure I hadn't made much of an impression. And that was okay, because I wouldn't be able to describe him either. I'd forgotten all about the broad shoulders, the blond hair, the blue eyes, the pouty lips. Especially the pouty lips.

  There. I felt better already.

  Since Irene had gone to all that trouble, and since the report was right in front of me, I scanned the first few lines. Since it was only preliminary and only meant for internal distribution, a lot of the findings were bare bones. But if there was such a thing as medical examiner boilerplate, that was it. The language was so clinical and nonspecific, it could have been referring to anyone.

  Except it wasn't. My throat caught as I read on, glossing past the unsettling particulars of the autopsy itself. Organs had been average sized. No signs of recent trauma on the body. According to stomach contents, her last meal had been a pasta in an alfredo sauce followed by a glass of red wine. Cause of death: Dr. Watson had determined that my great-aunt Kate had suffered sudden cardiac death.

  My eyes welled, imagining Kate alone in that house, hoping she hadn't suffered, hoping she hadn't even realized what was happening, that she'd been asleep in her bed when she'd passed.

  Silently, I pushed the tablet across the table.

  Irene picked it up and read over the report. "So natural causes," she said. "At least Lestrade was honest."

  For what that was worth. At the moment, it didn't feel like much.

  "I'm sorry, Mar." Irene shut down the tablet and dropped it back into her bag. "Does it help at all to know?"

  "Yes." I shook my head. "And no. I just wish I had known her—even known about her—before now."

  "Maybe clearing out the house will fill in the gaps," Irene said. "Do you want me to help?"

  "You already have," I said. "Thanks, but that's something I should do myself."

  Irene nodded. "Just call if you need me to whip up any more phony records." She held up her own virtually untouched martini glass. "To new beginnings."

  I touched it with the rim of my own glass, suddenly melancholy. "And old friends," I said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next morning was foggy, drizzly, windy, and made for staying in bed. That was just what I would have done if I hadn't had a house to clean out. I ate a hurried breakfast, took a quick shower, slipped out of the apartment quietly to avoid 2B and whatever horror Mr. Bitterman might be whipping up for breakfast, and was on the road to Baker Street before nine.

  For better or worse, the house was still there, sagging dispiritedly beneath the shroud of fog. I put my weight against the front door until it surrendered, and once inside went through the chilly first floor flipping every light switch and turning on every table lamp I could find. Which did nothing to make the place cheerier, but it did make it less eerie. I paused in the kitchen, taking in the Formica, linoleum, and ancient gold appliances. And yesterday, I'd thought clutter was the only problem. The kitchen had less in the way of clutter, more in the way of ugly. The layout was wrong, the fridge was small, and the counter space was inadequate. I had a vague idea how expensive a new kitchen could be and also the certainty that I couldn't afford one.

  But I wasn't going to learn about my great-aunt from going through the pots and pans and dishes. I'd be better off starting upstairs, in the bedroom, where I could get a sense of Kate's favorite colors, her personal tastes, her preferred styles.

  I grimaced as I passed through the living room. Maybe I already knew Kate's style. Clearly Kate had subscribed to the more is more philosophy of home décor. All of the stuff made me feel a little claustrophobic. I could only hope the second floor would be different.

  There were three bedrooms up there, all of modest size, each with dentil molding, solid oak doors, with multifaceted glass doorknobs. The colors were bland, the furniture was dark, and the hardwood floors were dull and scarred. Like the rooms downstairs, the bedrooms bulged with too many things—clothes and blankets and shoes and belts and purses. The contents of each room seemed to ooze into the next like water over a bulkhead.

  The bathroom was on the small side, with garish pink tile and outdated fixtures, and there was a small linen closet in the hall just outside the bathroom door that also seemed to serve as a makeshift medicine chest. The top shelf was loaded with soaps, pain-relieving ointments, a heating pad, a bottle of aspirin, a box of blonde hair color, a blow dryer, a set of hot rollers, bottles of witch hazel, hydrogen peroxide, and rubbing alcohol, a half dozen scented jar candles, and two flashlights, both with dead batteries.

  No grand master bedroom, no luxurious en suite. I hadn't really expected to find either in a house of this age.

  There was also no 2B. That went a long way in compensating for the home's deficiencies.

  Despite its shortcomings, and beneath the layers and piles of stuff, the house did have a strangely homey feel to it—the feel of a place that had been lived in, if not cared for, well. Some soap and water and furniture polish, a broom and a dustpan, some new drapes, and it would be positively…

  Adequate. As long as you didn't notice the water stains in the corner of the ceiling or the fact that planks of wood flooring were gouged or missing altogether or that the windows were only filtering the wind, not blocking it, as evidenced by the gentle stirring of the drapes.

  Hard to get excited about being a homeowner when the only working feature of the home seemed to be electricity. And who knew how old the wiring was.

  The bedroom nearest the stairs must have been Kate's, since the bed wasn't buried under piles of clothes. It might have been wholly a figment of my imagination, but I thought I detected a lingering trace of lavender. Or maybe it was dust.

  A handbag was sitting on a chair in the corner, under yet more piles of folded laundry. It was unzipped and gaping open. Tissues, keys, compact, a small change purse, some pens, a few Bank of San Francisco deposit slips, and a wallet containing a few credit cards, a driver's license, a couple of shopper's cards from the grocery store and pharmacy, and $67 in small bills.

  I lingered over the driver's license a moment. It was a typically unflattering DMV photo, but Kate was smiling, her eyes crinkling at the corners. I wondered if she'd done that often. Her hair was a brassy blonde, styled in a poof around her face that was a tad on the wild side—instantly reminding me of my own hair on a humid summer day. Height was listed as 5'5". Same as mine. I wondered if she'd had to stand on tiptoes like I did to stretch to that. Weight 145. Was that accurate…or had she, like most women, shaved a few pounds off her official record? Regret hit me that I'd never really know the answers to any of those questions.

  I put the license back and zipped the bag, leaving it where it was before moving on.

  The top of the dresser looked like the tops of dressers looked: a jewelry box, some cosmetics and perfume bottles—nothing high end—a pair of pale blue-framed glasses with the arms extended, a box of tissues. Nothing unusual there. The jewelry box held a mix of jumbled gold chains, a few wristwatches, stud earrings that looked like cubic zirconia rather than the real thing. It also held a strand of pearls too lustrous to be costume, and a diamond cocktail ring too brilliant to be CZ. I admired them, but I didn't slip them on. Instead, I tucked the real items carefully beneath some tarnished chains and slid the entire jewelry box into a drawer. It would be safer there than in my apartment, where the door would provide about as much barrier to a determined thief's entrance as a shower curtain.

  That was when I noticed the prescription bottles buried at the back of the drawer, beneath a jumble of socks and pantyhose. Three of them, with labels intact. It felt like an invasion of privacy, but I dug them out anyway. Synthroid. Fioricet. Actonel with calcium. All three looked like they'd been recently refilled.

  I set them on the dresser. A niggling of something touched the back of my mind. I knew Synthroid was synthetic thyroid hormone—fairly commonly prescribed for those with low thyroid production. Not a huge surprise to find, considering many women of Kate's age could have hypothyroid issues. Fioricet was used for migraines, and my mom took Actonel to prevent bone loss. Kate had been on medication for her thyroid, for migraines, and for osteoporosis.

  I felt a frown pulling at the corners of my mouth. None of these prescriptions spoke to cardiac problems. Nothing for high blood pressure. No blood thinners.

  Of course, not everyone who had a heart attack had warning signs. Still…

  I sat on the end of the bed, a forensic pathology class I'd attended a couple of semesters ago immediately leaping to the forefront of my thoughts. A guest lecturer had presented and discussed autopsy findings in various cases that had been initially and erroneously ruled natural death. Scary, but it happened more often than one would like to think.

  I took another look at the prescription bottles. Dr. Watson's conclusion had been sudden cardiac death. If these were the only meds Kate took, then her sudden cardiac death had been sudden indeed. She hadn't had any of the classic risk factors.

  I nibbled on my lip, thinking. Maybe there were more bottles somewhere. I dug around some more—through the drawers, through the tiny medicine chest, through the hall closet. There were none. Nothing in the vanity under the sink. Nothing in the kitchen. From all appearances, Kate had been fairly healthy for a woman in her seventies.

  And now she was dead.

  A strange tingle ran up my spine. I was probably being paranoid. I'd probably attended one too many forensics lectures. I mean, Kate wasn't that young. And things like heart attacks didn't always come with warning signs. Still, I found myself slowly walking around the bedroom, studying the floor, lifting the blankets, checking the sheets. It was impossible to know what might be out of its normal order when everything was out of order. I didn't know just where Kate's body had been found; I was only assuming it had been her bedroom. It just seemed reasonable that if the authorities had immediately assumed natural death, and the medical examiner had corroborated that assumption, no one would have had reason to do a deeper dive into the rest of the house, and it was clear that they hadn't.

  Should they?

  I hurried through the house, turning off lights and closing drapes. While I was 90% sure I was just being paranoid, that lingering 10% pushed me to visit Dr. Watson again. Just to be sure.

  A half hour later, I sat staring at the same bland white wall in the same bland waiting room, waiting on the decidedly un-bland Dr. Watson to make an appearance. Which he did a few minutes later, looking harried and impatient and none too pleased to see me.

  "Miss Hudson." His handshake was brisk. "I'm told you were desperate to see me. I only have a few minutes."

  "Uh, right." I self-consciously smoothed my hair with one hand and wiped sweaty palms on the thigh of my jeans with the other. What was it about the doctor that inspired a sudden lack of confidence in me? Maybe his intense eyes. His strong jaw. His broad shoulders. Idly, I wondered if he ever took off the lab coat in the office. I'd pay to see him take off the lab coat. If I had any money.

  I really needed to focus.

  "I need to speak to you about the conclusion in your report on my aunt."

  "I sent the report over to Mr. Holmes yesterday."