A deep tremor rolled through me when I read it. I was surprised but not that surprised. Terry had always seemed to be a man on borrowed time. But there was nothing suspicious in what I had read or what I had then heard when I went out to Catalina for the funeral service. It had been his heart-his new heart-that had failed. It had given him six good years, better than the national average for a heart transplant patient, but then it had succumbed to the same factors that destroyed the original.

"I don't understand," I said to Graciela. "He was on the boat, a charter, and he collapsed. They said… his heart."

"Yes, it was his heart," she said. "But something new has come up. I want you to look into it. I know you're retired from the police, but Terry and I watched on the news last year what happened here."

Her eyes moved around the room and she gestured with her hands. She was talking about what had happened in my house a year earlier when my first post-retirement investigation had ended so badly and with so much blood.

"I know you still look into things," she said. "You're like Terry was. He couldn't leave it behind. Some of you are like that. When we saw on the news what happened here, that's when Terry said he would want you if he had to pick someone. I think what he was telling me was that if anything ever happened to him, I should go to you."

I nodded and looked at the floor.

"Tell me what has come up and I will tell you what I can do."

"You have a bond with him, you know?"

I nodded again.

"Tell me."

She cleared her throat. She moved to the edge of the couch and began to tell it.