“You take chances with your body all the time in your work, but you never take the big chances, life-changing chances,” he argued. “Fly to Basel with me, see what will unfold for you. There’s so much music there! It would inspire you in ways you can’t predict.”

“Listening to music and loving it, or loving you playing it, isn’t the same as making music,” I objected. “I can see myself in my life in Chicago. I love my work, and I don’t know what kind of work I could find in Basel that would bring me as much satisfaction.”

“Take a chance, see what opens up,” Jake urged. “If you spend the rest of your life chasing con artists and corporate maniacs, they’ll destroy your soul in the end.”

He flushed as soon as the words left his mouth.

“That’s what you think of my work?” I said after a stunned silence. “Soul-destroying? I thought I was helping people who’d lost all other options gain a measure of dignity.”

We’d kissed and made up, sort of, but in the two months since he’d left, our Skype sessions had become shorter, less intimate, and a few days before Bernie and Angela had come to me, Jake had sent me an e-mail saying he wouldn’t be back at Thanksgiving, as he’d originally planned.

“That’s the only week that Galina Yakovna can come to Basel before our Christmas concert, so it’s imperative that I stay here. Why don’t you fly out to join me?”

Yakovna was a Belarusian cellist whose name cropped up more and more frequently in Jake’s more and more infrequent messages. Maybe that’s why my message back was a terse, single sentence:

and develop a soul?

A trip out of town, even to Kansas, began to seem like a good way to keep my mind off my troubles.

At the end of the meeting with Troy Hempel and Emerald Ferring’s other neighbors, I drove over to Max Loewenthal’s house. He lives on one of the quiet streets fronting Lake Michigan, and I knew Lotty Herschel was there that evening.

Lotty is a doctor who’s mended the breaks and tears my investigations have inflicted on my body; I’ve helped her navigate the painful journey through her murdered family’s history. It’s not a contest, no one’s keeping score, it’s just that despite the difference in age and background, we each keep the other going.

“The choice is between Kansas and Switzerland, and you choose Kansas?” Lotty’s mouth twisted in affectionate mockery.

“Mountains versus prairies, artisanal chocolate versus wheat, cuckoo clocks versus cuckoo politicians—who wouldn’t make the same choice?” I said. “Besides, even though I miss Jake, I don’t want to be a third wheel with his Belarusian cellist. Eighth wheel, since High Plainsong has seven members already.”