I snapped photos of all the medicine labels. I wanted to know what the meds were for. Maybe that would tell me something. Back on deck, I breathed in fresh air and carefully replaced the tape. I stood for a moment under the boat’s overhang and e-mailed the photos to Dr. Sue Jankovic, a physician I’d worked with several cases back. She’d be able to identify the medication and tell me what it was for. Maybe something Tim was taking contributed to his state of mind at the time of his death. The e-mail sent, I slipped the phone into my pocket and headed back to the ladder.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?”

I turned to find a white guy with a receding hairline and horn-rimmed glasses standing on the deck of the Miraculous. He was middle-aged, dressed in thigh-length swim shorts and a tank shirt, revealing the palest arms I’d ever seen on a living person. He didn’t look friendly. The scowl tipped me off. He did, however, look very observant. Needless to say, I’d have preferred it the other way around.

“Now what?” he yelled, his voice more than carrying over the short distance between his boat and the one I was standing on. There couldn’t have been more than eight, nine feet separating us. “We finally get rid of one problem and you guys bring another.”

I peered over at him, my hand shielding my eyes from the sun. “Excuse me?”

“More cops,” he called out. “You guys have to get through over there so they can move that boat out. It’s a prime slip and I know somebody who wants it. What’s your endgame?”

“We’re waiting for a respectable amount of time to pass, in deference to Tim Ayers’s memory.”

I didn’t know this to be true. I had no idea what Tim’s family planned to do with the boat, or when they’d move it, but I was fed up with all the pettiness—Cap’s, this guy’s. The man gripped the rail on his boat, his knuckles stone white, testifying to the ferocity of the hold. “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how glad I am that guy’s gone? The ruckus from over there you wouldn’t believe, and him thumbing his nose at all the complaints. Good riddance, you ask me. And exactly how long’s all that respect going to take?”

I shrugged. “Open ended. You have to feel when the time’s right.”