The priest was Father Ray Heaton, Pop—the nearest thing I’d had to a father. When I found him, a bullet in his head, I knew it wasn’t suicide, because I knew him. The battle with the police had been a hard slog, one I didn’t want to repeat, at least not so soon. It’d only been two months. I still found myself picking up the phone to call him, only to realize too late that he’d never be on the other end. That’s why, for now, I was sticking to work I didn’t have to think too much about, giving myself time to get used to a new normal. Jung’s problem didn’t sound like it’d offer me either time or space, and my first impulse, my prevailing impulse, was to push it and him away as surely as I’d pushed away Deek’s pancakes.

Jung folded his arms across his chest, as though giving himself a much-needed hug, as though he were cold right down to the bone and couldn’t get warm. “My friend. His name is . . . was . . . Tim Ayers.”

I recognized the name from the papers. Ayers, the scion of a notable family, had been found floating in Lake Michigan, his yacht adrift. Though his death had quickly been ruled “accidental,” as I read the news reports, there was some speculation that Ayers may have deliberately caused his own death. “DuSable Marina,” I said, recalling the details. “He took his boat out in a storm.”

Jung shook his head. “The papers got it all wrong, the cops, too. He never would have done it.”

I cocked my head, more than a little skeptical. Ayers’s death had gotten a good deal of coverage due to his family’s prominence, but not much had come of it. Money has a way of insulating those who have it from prying eyes and intrusive questioning. Ayers drowned, the victim of a tragic accident, case closed. As such, the media spotlight quickly turned elsewhere, leaving the Ayers family to deal with the death on their own.

“There was no evidence of foul play,” I said gently. “He was drunk. There was nothing missing from the boat.”

Jung read my look and shot me a wan smile. “And now you’re thinking what the cops are, but I’m telling you all that’s wrong. I mean, those are the facts, but they don’t mean what everybody thinks they mean. Tim was solid. He was a painter, a good one, I guess. I don’t know much about it. He wasn’t a Warhol, or anything, but he was good.” Jung smoothed down the hair he’d disrupted moments ago. He rolled his eyes. “He wasn’t careless and he wasn’t depressed, and I know for sure somebody did this to him.”