The forensic audit his estate set in motion had been filed with people whose job it was to act on it long before any of us stood in that cemetery, and it would run its course in offices and courtrooms over the following years without my ever lifting a hand — the embezzlement, the wire fraud, the paid-for hotel record surfacing as one more thread in a much larger unraveling.

Standing at the grave, I did not threaten her.

I only said, because it was true, “You should call a lawyer, Elke.

Not about me.

About what Ames found.” And I watched her understand, for the first time, that the old man she had underestimated had reached out of his own grave and taken hold of her, and that there was nothing left for her to say to any of us.

Chapter 10 — Ames Knew