Nick Reynolds, his pilot's rating barely a month old, drops off the radar one night over the Chesapeake Bay. Investigating agencies call it another tragic pilot-error accident. No trace of the plane is found in the Bay's murky waters. While on vacation nearby, Picketsville, VA, sheriff Ike Schwartz is approached by Charlie Garland, an old friend from his CIA days, to look into the disappearance. The missing pilot was engaged to Charlie's niece, and...

Sheriff Privette doesn't take a deep interest in this cold crime, but Jesse is not letting it go. The body has been found with a money belt fat with fifty dollars, a small fortune. Twenty of the seventy dollars that Sutherlin Sr. was carrying is missing. So is his heirloom watch given to him for "thirty years' service in the AM and O Railroad which is now the Norfolk and Western. It was gold and big as an onion." What happened to the money and to...