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set it when he got done following around Corus Dykstra from YourHouse. Dead. He laughed as he slid the phone in his pocket. “I was actually wondering why my daughter called the landline yesterday. Don’t get old,” he told her. It was the drifting part of age, the way his mind seemed to have no home on earth, which often surprised him.
    He offered Evon coffee, but she declined.
    “Grew up in a Mormon town,” she said. “My dad was a Jack, but I just never developed the habit. I’ll take a glass of water, if that’s OK.”
    He was in a plaid flannel shirt and twill pants and Evon could see he’d been asleep. His face was red and his white hair, some of it starting to yellow, was sticking straight up in patches where it should have been pushed over his bare scalp. He had a lumpy, marked face like an old potato, and he had become one of those elderly guys with a permanent wary expression, seemingly afraid that any second now somebody might take advantage of him. Tim handed her the glass and then led her back toward the family room, where he said he liked to sit. She had some memory that Tim was a widower, and the house probably looked just the same as when his wife passed a few years back, crowded with the relics of a lifetime. It was the kind of place where you had to turn sideways to move around the furniture. The walls were thick with photographs, both family shots and scenery, as well as children’s paintings. And every tabletop was forested with objects: Limoges figurines. Little lacquered boxes. Glass paperweights. Books and more framed photos. They could have done Antiques Roadshow here for a month.
    In the back room, a sunny add-on with tall windows, there was soft music, a swing take on “It’s All Right With Me.” A crooner’s voice yielded to a trombone solo, and Tim stood for one second, listening with his eyes closed and a finger raised. Then he silenced the old phonograph and lifted an LP tenderly from a turntable, slipping it into a grayed sleeve. He had been reading, too, and slid a mark into a huge volume.
    “Greek myths,” he answered, when she asked about the book. “Once Maria passed, I figured I better get on to what was left on my lists. Said I’d read Shakespeare and got through The Comedy of Errors , but that’s kind of a slapstick piece, you know, twins separated at birth. I can handle the comedies, but King Lear , whoa, that’s tough. These old tales”—he hefted the book with both hands—“don’t seem to put me to sleep so fast.” In the light, she could see the white whiskers he hadn’t shaved this morning standing on his cheeks. “So you here about Dykstra and YourHouse?” he asked.
    “Not really. But Hal says you turned up a lot of great stuff following him around. Frankly, if I’d known what the boss had you up to, I’d have tried to stop him. The whole deal could have cratered.”
    Tim shook his head. “Nobody notices an eighty-one-year-old guy. They look right through you.”
    The melancholy frankness of the observation silenced Evon for a second, but Tim didn’t seem to be seeking sympathy. She turned the subject and asked Tim if he’d seen the papers this week. Laughing, he pointed to a pile in the kitchen, all sheathed in blue plastic, another thing that seemed to be getting past him. Evon handed over Wednesday’s front page, and he groaned at the headline: “Kronon: Gianis Part of Sister’s Murder.”
    “Me oh my,” he said, as he scanned the article.
    “Paul sent Hal a letter demanding a retraction, and Hal won’t budge. In fact, he repeated this stuff to a couple more reporters. And he’s planning to put ads on TV saying the same thing. Gianis filed suit for defamation late yesterday.”
    “Oh dear,” said Tim. He knew all about how people could be when somebody they loved got murdered. A brick could fall off a building and kill someone you cherished, and it wouldn’t be quite as hard to accept as a homicide. When some goofed-up stranger made a