FILE UNDER: JEOPARDY

Days after popping up in Leah Hunter's life again, her old schoolfriend Jeannie Johnson, now a customs officer assigned to get the goods on a money-laundering operation, disappears. A loose end, it seems—except that the people who've beaten and drugged Jeannie within an inch of her life (one of them will return to close the gap) don't believe in loose ends. In rapid succession, they attack Jeannie's mother, two lowlifes she'd met while she was undercover, and two of her housemates. David Nicholls, Leah's CID bedmate, is satisfied that Jeannie was skimming from the thugs she was supposed to be investigating, but Leah, unable to believe the worst of Jeannie, drops her Inland Revenue chores to nose around among the customs types. And types they are. Leah's fourth (File Under: Arson, 1996, etc.) is pleasingly tart, but the supporting cast is too dim to make very interesting suspects.