Nick Mancuso sat behind his grandfather’s antique oak roll top desk. Snow gusted outside the small one-bedroom home. Long icicles hung from the overloaded gutters. Frost covered his inadequate windows. The cast iron stove kept the air warm and dry. Nick remembered the motto of the State of Maine: Dirigio, Latin for I lead.

Whoever led anybody up here should have had a spear shoved up his ass, Nick thought.

The phone interrupted Nick’s introspection. He arched his eyebrows when he saw the display. He answered and heard a woman say, “Nick, it’s Sutton.” Her voice had the casual tone she used to have around Nick’s ex-wife.

“Nice to hear from you. Been a while,” Nick replied.

“Yes, well, it got kinda complicated, with you and Barbara getting divorced. Then I got divorced. I guess we fell out of touch.”

“I understand, Sutton. I’m sure it had nothing to do with you calling me a philandering swamp toad and pouring a Sierra Nevada IPA down my pants during the annual picnic on your estate.”

Nick heard her take a long breath.

“I didn’t call to start a fight, okay? I’m sorry. I believed her. Now I know the truth,” she said.

Nick’s marriage was a corpse best left buried.

“Good enough,” Nick said. “So…?”

Another long breath. Not a good sign.

“Cassandra’s gone off the grid,” Sutton finally said.

“You say that like it’s news.”

“Not funny, Nick. I know she’s a bit wild, but this time it’s serious.”

“Sutton, Cassandra makes Miley Cyrus look like Taylor Swift. Why are you calling me?”

“I want you to bring her back.”

“Sutton, I write detective novels. I’m a retired Fire Chief. I’m lucky if I can find my car keys most days.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Nick. You worked in the city, and you were on that counter-terrorism task force. You know a lot of guys, and I know you do a ton of research for those lousy books.”

“Lousy books?” Nick replied.

“Oh shit, did I say that? Sorry.”

“Sutton, Cassandra is an adult, of sound mind, more or less. Let her live her own life.”

“Not when she’s on the board of directors. I need her back here.”

Nick nearly dropped the phone. “Whose idea was that? No, I don’t want to know. Sutton, call the cops, call the FBI, call a real private eye. I have no qualifications for this.”

“The cops took a report, the FBI pretended to be interested, and I don’t want some skeevy keyhole peeper to know my family’s business. Besides, once he sees the house, he’s gonna charge me out the ass and do nothing. I need you, Nicky. Besides, you owe me.”

“Owe you? For what?”

Nick scoured his mind, trying to remember some set of circumstances under which he would owe Sutton a favor. Had he ended up in bed with her? That wouldn’t be bad, even though she had at least twenty years on him. Even at sixty-seven, Sutton Rogers had a body that could cause more heart attacks than a Zumba class at the nursing home, but her personality could freeze mercury solid. Besides, he never drank much at parties for just this reason, so there was no chance of a memory lapse.

“For that thing,” she said. “You know.”

“No, Sutton, I don’t know. Stop trying to gaslight me. What’s really going on?”

“The annual meeting is in two weeks. I’m making by-law changes, and I have to have her vote. I’ve asked her, begged her to come back. She has no intention of honoring her corporate obligations. We got in a fight last time I called her, same shit as always. That loser she was married to dragged her out to Wyoming and got her into that ‘save the animals’ crap. Now she won’t answer her phone, and the local cops won’t go find her. She has a trust fund, her own credit card, and her passport. I need you to go get her. You know her, how she thinks. You’re her age. I’ve never understood her. She’s deep.”

“Know her? What was it, eighteen years ago, maybe more? Your husband was playing golf in the Himalayan Open in Kathmandu. You begged me to go get her at some club. I found her face down on the floor blowing bubbles in a pool of her own barf. Oh, the ride to the hospital was enlightening. Her on the cot fighting the restraints and singing the overture from Les Misérables while wetting her pants. We bonded, so much in common. Know how she thinks? When we got to the hospital, she asked me to bring back handcuffs, a jar of dill pickles, a small-caliber handgun, and a sex toy that I would be embarrassed to describe, which I didn’t. The girl is as deep as a parking lot puddle and as responsible as a five-year-old with a hammer. No, Sutton. Get a professional.”

No answer. Then Nick heard the sobbing. Nick hated it when women cried. It was like the nuclear bomb of the estrogen set. For Nick, refusing a crying woman was worse than drowning puppies. But he had to be strong.

“Sutton, I can’t do this. Crying is not being fair, and it won’t help. The answer is no,” Nick insisted.

A snot-filled gurgle came through the phone, along with some mumbled words.

“What?” Nick asked.

“I’ll pay you,” Sutton snuffled. “Five hundred a day, plus expenses.”

Nick wanted to go back to drowning puppies. If crying wasn’t fair, this was worse. His eyes fell on the open letter from Voleur, Lugner & Tramposa, full of legal sewage threatening action if he didn’t pay his lawyer’s bill. Sutton had hit him right where it hurt the most. He had spent every cent he had defending his ex-wife when she’d been falsely accused in a capital case. Now he lived from pension check to pension check. His bank account was emptier than a politician’s promise.

“Six, two days in advance, and a credit card,” Nick countered.

The crying stopped. What a surprise.

“I love you, Nicky,” Sutton said. “Come by the house in an hour. I’ll have the twelve hundred in cash and the credit card. You can sign the contract then.”

Contract?

“Oh, and Nicky,” Sutton added, “you do have a passport, right?”