His brother, on the other hand, had always been trouble. Cord could readily believe Jon had promoted himself to even bigger trouble-but still, nothing like this. Not dead. Not murdered.

Cord swiped a hand over his face, tried to surface from the weight of shock. And guilt.

“Where’s my brother now?” Cord asked hoarsely. “Who did this? What-?”

The detective quietly interrupted. “It took us a few hours to track you down. Initially, we assumed your father was the primary family connection, but then we realized…”

“That he’s in a rest home.”

“Yes. So from there, we tried to ascertain if your brother had any other direct relatives-which is how we came across your name. Obviously, you weren’t at your home address, so we tracked you down through the university, and then where you’d be lecturing at this hour-all of which is to say, this all took time. It has been a few hours since the event. Initially we weren’t certain if your brother fell down the stairs or if there could have been foul play-”

Impatiently, Cord pushed away from the desk. Bassett was talking a lot, but saying very little, arousing Cord’s worry buttons even more. Obviously, his brother hadn’t had an accidental fall. And obviously, even a murder must have had unusually complicated implications, or these two men would never have shown up together.

“What do you need from me?” he asked curtly, addressing the private cop rather than the detective. The man had been silent all this time, but Cord sensed he was the higher authority of the two.

“Mr. Pruitt…the situation is complex.”

Cord had already guessed that. Situations involving Jon were always complicated. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to fathom how his dad was going to survive this.

“Are you familiar with a young woman named Sophie Campbell?”

“No,” Cord said.

“She’s the tenant who lived next door to your brother-from the time she moved here, somewhere around nine months ago. She’s the person who found him. She apparently knew your brother quite well.”