“Why would he want to do that?” Pena had said the family pressed to have Tim’s death ruled accidental. That they suspected he’d killed himself and didn’t want the stigma of suicide associated with the Ayers name. So why would Stephen draw attention to his brother’s instability? Why make sure Marta Pena knew he’d had a rocky past? What did Stephen hope to gain? “It just doesn’t make sense.”

Jung stomped around, pulling at his hair, tearing at his clothes. “It does if he hated Tim. That lying, pompous, small little man . . .” He turned to face me, his eyes pleading. “Why would he do it? What possible reason? Jealousy! Tim had friends. He had his art. He had a life. He got out of that smothering family and didn’t look back. Stephen got stuck. He got the power, the status, but he also got all the responsibility, all the burdens. Tim was everything he hated, so whatever he could do to bring him down, he’d do it.” Jung’s eyes widened. “Maybe he wanted all the money, not just his part? Do you think that’s it? He cut Tim off from the money, but it was still Tim’s. As long as Tim was alive, he had a shot at getting it back. Dead, it all goes to Stephen. That’s it. It’s the money, isn’t it? Why is it always the money?”

Jung, deflated, leaned hard against the rusted car, his head in his hands. The car groaned as if someone had harpooned it and it was dying a slow and agonizing death. I was going to have to talk to Stephen Ayers. Jung had just given me a solid motive for why he might have wanted to kill his brother. Could I be looking at a clear-cut case of fratricide? Was it jealousy and greed that led to Tim Ayers’s death?

I stood and watched Jung as he slowly settled. When he did, he said, “I hate this. I hate Stephen.” He lifted from the car. “We’ll go talk to Tim’s mother. She’s the only one who can get Stephen to tell the truth.”

“Again, no we,” I said. “Get back in the car.”

Jung’s eyes fired. “No way. I’m doing this.”

“Jung, get back in the car.”

“But she won’t see just anybody, and she doesn’t know you. Without me, she’s a wall too high for you to get over. You need me.”

“I do not need you,” I said, opening the Chevette’s door, unsettling the rust again. “Go home. Go now before you do something you shouldn’t.”

I stood there with the door open, but Jung wasn’t moving. He was deciding. I let him.

“You can’t stop me,” he said.

I could stop him. “I’m hoping you’ll stop yourself.”

He quietly slid into the car. “You’re making a mistake.”