Drew got home at around eleven, which was still early for her. After parking her car in the driveway, getting all of her stuff and closing up the car, she stopped just outside their front door, suddenly stricken with shyness and a little bit of worry. She didn't know how her dad would take the new her. But after a moment, she squared her shoulders and let herself in.

"I'm home!" she called.

Dad stepped into the living room from his study, carrying a large book, his glasses on top of his head. Obviously, he'd been studying again.

"Hi, Honey," Carson said after Drew pecked him on the cheek. Months ago, when she kissed him for the first time as "Drew," Carson didn't know how to react. But now he had come to expect it. In fact he'd come to like it as well. In many ways, Drew was now the daughter he never had.

"Let me look at you," he said and held her at arm's length.

"You likeee?" she asked, giggling nervously. She was worried.

"It's very pretty," he said. He thought it was actually quite sexy. It was a revelation. Drew was actually sexy. Good God. And it bothered him. "Does this mean I will need to fend off boyfriends now?" he thought.

Drew gave him another peck. "Thanks, Dad!" she said in relief.

"Drew," he said, hesitantly, trying to put his thoughts into words. "Don't you think it's too much?"

"It is? What do you mean?"

"Well, don't you think you'll attract too much attention? Especially from the boys?"

"That's not such a bad thing. ... Is it?"

Carson didn't react to that. Wasshe actually okay with that? In the end, he decided to trust her. Carson shrugged. "Well, so long as you think you can handle it."

"I'm cool with it," she giggled. She then brought out her netbook.

"Listen," she said, "here's what I got so far..."

Drew powered on her netbook and showed her dad what she had unearthed.

Carson pored over her material, again amazed at her skill. The concatenation of ideas, the distillation of clues brought together to yield this much information - only Drew/Andy could have done it.

Drew had identified seven possible people, and three possible companies. Carson knew that it was still not a sure thing but at least Drew was eliminating names. She also dug up certain news articles that showed certain shenanigans happening over there. Unexplained deaths, illegal activities, unexplained income, but all unprovable. She said that there was not too much else she could get from Dave's files anymore, and that it would be Carson's turn to "do research" soon.

He nodded soberly. "All right," he said. "I know enough now that I think I can talk a good enough game to fool people and get a job. Is it safe to surf the net for job openings over there?"

"Sure," Drew said. "It's in character, after all. Just be sure to use the Gmail profile Lt. Hardy gave us. If someone were to check your computer's Internet access, it'll just look like you're looking for a job - to break back into the corporate world, and all three of the companies we're interested in are in the top ten corporations of greater New York. It's logical for you to check 'em out. Just be sure to throw in maybe half a dozen ringers in there as well. Just to make it look like a legitimate job search."

Carson nodded. "So - we go into spy mode now?"

Drew nodded. "Yeah, Dad. As soon as you send out your first resume. But we need to give Frank everything we got so far."

"Okay. Get all of your research printed out and I'll drop it in the dead-drop tomorrow." Frank Hardy preferred hard copies, which Drew agreed with - digital copies could be traced.

"S'okay, Pop. I'm meeting the girls in Central Park tomorrow after our Sunday out. I can do the dead-drop then. Can you make the call?"

Carson nodded. "Since we're about to do the spy thing, do you mind if we go to a Best Buy tomorrow, during our Sunday out, and get those gadgets you mentioned?"

"Sure! Maybe we can..."

Carson smiled and shook his head. "Oh, no you don't," he said. Andy was gadget-crazy, but Drew was supposed to be a girly-girl, and girly-girls are into cute clothes, not electronics. "No gadgets for you, honey. We agreed."

Drew pouted. "Pooh..."

Carson had gone to bed, but Drew stayed up a while. She printed up her notes using the netbook and the inkjet printer in her dad's study. She was careful to use gloves, and paper from a fresh, sealed ream bought from a random New York store, not touching the paper itself with bare fingers so as not to leave prints, and then slid the sheets into a manila envelope, untouched as well. She had also included some extra notes about their next moves, trying to be cryptic so it couldn't be traced back to them.

She then sealed it using a drop of glue on the inside flap, slipped it into a used plastic bag from her dad's last grocery run, and put it on the dining room table so they wouldn't forget it.

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She heard the big grandfather clock out in the living room start tolling.

"Bong!"

She looked at her slim girl's wristwatch and noted that it was midnight.

"Bong!"

She gathered up all of her stuff, put the netbook and its associated paraphernalia in the little backpack, as well as the prepaid Internet cards she had bought earlier. She thought of getting rid of her paper notes, but it was good to have a backup of all of her notes on paper, so she stuffed them into the bag as well.

"Bong!"

Yawning, she turned off all the lights in her dad's study, turned off the living room lights as well, and went to the stairs. Boy, was she tired.

"Thud..."

Eh? Was that the clock?

"Thud..."

She turned the living room lights back on and hurried to the big antique grandfather clock at the far end.

"Thud..."

She peered through the clock's glass front and looked through its works. Why wasn't the bell tolling properly?

"Thud..."

She saw the hammer striker hit the three hollow metal tubes that were the clock's bell and she saw that there was a small piece of weathered brownish paper blocking the hammer, and therefore preventing the bell from sounding out properly. So the only sound it could make was a dull...

"Thud..."

She opened the clock's front by slipping the catch hook on the side. Yes, there was indeed a small piece of paper blocking the striker.

"Thud..."

She fished out the little folded-up piece of brownish paper, and the clock sounded out the last three strikes properly.

"Bong... Bong... Bong..."

That's better.

But she wondered where the paper came from? She definitely didn't put it there. Did Dad? If he did, why? To stop the clock from tolling the time? She became curious. Dad often said she was too obsessive-compulsive for her own good. But she couldn't help herself.

She looked at the paper in her hand. Carefully unfolding it, she discovered it was a browned page from a regular-size desk memo pad folded over and over so that it became as thick as two sticks of gum.

The memo pad was "from the desk of Luigi Falcone," and had a long note written on it.

"Louie," the note said in girlish, curlicued half-faded letters, "they found out. I'll leave the key to the safe deposit box in my dresser at Riverdale. There's a gun there, too, just in case you need one. I'll meet you back here tomorrow, but for now, I have to keep up appearances - Rocky and I are taking the Imperial to watch Kismet before it closes. I'm going to Chloe's now to get my party dress. Promise to lie low and watch out for Ziggy and his gang. Don't get yourself killed! My telephone number's on the back of the picture. Call me later. I love you - xoxo - Marlee"

Drew found the note pretty cryptic, and really mysterious. But the most immediate question was - why was the note in their clock?

She read it over and over again. It was obviously a warning to this Luigi Falcone, that someone named Ziggy was after him, and it had something to do with whatever his girl, Marlee, had hidden in that safe deposit box.

But, at the same time, it was a love note. His girlfriend, Marlee (if she was indeed his girlfriend), was desperate to protect him, and the note at the end was so poignant yet romantically cliché.

Drew stuck her head into the clockwork and saw a little piece of tape sticking out, one end taped against a piece of metal near the gears that turned the hands of the clock. She could only assume that the paper was taped there to hide it but why there?

Over time, either the tape lost its stickiness or it became so brittle with age that the paper it was stuck to came loose because of the mechanical vibrations of the clock tolling, and fell and got wedged between the ringer tubes and the striker.

She reached in to take the tape off but it crumbled into dust in her fingers.

She straightened, dusted herself off and, seeing how dry and brittle the tape was, she gingerly held the paper between two fingers so the paper wouldn't crumble away, too. She went to the kitchen, got a Ziploc bag and sealed the paper inside to protect it, and examined it through the plastic.

She heard the clock chime again: It was one AM. She'd been studying the note for an hour now. Best to wrap all of this up soon.

She went back and looked the clock over as best she could one final time, but couldn't find any other clues to the origins of the note. She even went back to her dad's study and got his round magnifying glass and a flashlight, looked the clock's case over and felt slightly foolish as she did so. She felt she should be wearing a deerstalker as well as smoking a calabash pipe.

But nothing seemed amiss - no loose panels that opened to a hidden compartment, nor screws or hinges where she thought there shouldn't be any, nor any odd nicks nor scratches. There were scratches, of course, but they all seemed to be the normal wear and tear of an old antique clock (or so the store that sold it to them said that it was).

She did find a picture, though, at the bottom of the inside of the clock (it was probably included in the note) - an old and yellowed picture of a pretty blonde girl in a cardigan and a poodle skirt standing outside an expensive-looking house with a gabled roof, a very large, well-manicured front yard dominated by what looked like two fruit trees, and an open four-port garage on the side of the house, with four fifties-era cars parked inside. The girl was smiling widely and was posing in front of the door of the house making a kissy face. There was a house number plate near the door that said "43." None of the houses Drew knew had that near the door anymore.

Drew surmised the picture fell when the memo paper got unstuck from the tape. On the back was written "Edgewood 49-688." Clearly a telephone number, even if it was an old one. The picture was also signed "Marlee," with a big heart beside it.

Drew wondered if there was a way to trace the address of that old number. She sealed the picture in a Ziploc bag as well and looked at the picture again through the transparent plastic. If this was Marlee, she was quite a looker, Drew thought.

She carefully moved the clock so she could look at the back, but couldn't stop the pendulum from hitting the bell tubes. Thankfully, the noise wasn't too loud and her dad didn't wake up.

The back wasn't as well finished as the front. Though polished, the back had neither wood staining nor varnish - just the bare wood. She supposed that was what came from mistakenly buying imitation antiques, even if it was a really old and nice-looking imitation antique.

She looked the back over with her dad's magnifying glass but there was nothing again, except for the faint tracing of fingers, like someone had grabbed the side of the clock at the edge, fingers wrapping around and onto the back.

She didn't know what the material was that caused the marks. Wood stain on the fingers maybe, or oil, but the automatic assumption was that it might be blood. The prints had probably been there a while, but Drew didn't touch the area nevertheless.

Something about the fingers made her think they were made by a man. The fingers were thick and stubby-looking, unlike a girl's. But she wasn't sure, of course - she wasn't a forensic scientist, just a high-school kid, although being a CSI was what she wanted to be in her previous life. She didn't know if it was something she still wanted to pursue now, but since she "came to life" a year younger than Andy, that gave her an extra year to think about careers.

She took several pictures of the print with her phone, went back to her dad's study and printed them. She put the pictures, the Ziploc'ed memo paper and the Ziploc'ed old photo into a big manila envelope, to study some more later.