Private eye Eugéne Tarpon is back to sleeping in his office, waiting for a paying job to turn up. Then he gets a call from a sometime contact in the police department. He's referring a nice old lady—a distant relative—to Tarpon; her daughter's gone missing and, the copy says, there's no finding her. There are no leads. She's gone. But the old lady's pigheaded. Do me a favor, he tells Tarpon. Humor her. Take her off our hands. Take her money, too. And, by the way, there's no need to investigate the actual business at all.
